Trump Couldn’t Break Zelensky. Nobody Can.

Plus: A judge in Houston opened a cell door. A governor asked if a senator is still conscious. And the regime’s own statistician walked out talking.

I’ve never had the patience to wait for corporate media to cover a resistance win properly. Neither has our community, and that’s why we still exist. Thanks for reading, I’m glad you’re here.

Before we jump in: hit the like button and restack this one. Stories like this only travel if readers carry them. Nobody with a broadcast license is going to do it for us—and we wouldn’t want them to.

We’re all in on flipping Congress, and paid subscribers fund every piece of it: digging up what other outlets are too nervous to run, getting it in front of millions, and organizing our readers to lean on Congress every single day. Join our movement as a paid subscriber right now and help us finish the job:

THE WITNESS THEY COULDN’T KEEP QUIET

On July 7, ICE officers chased a work van through Houston, TX, and opened fire. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, died. Three men were in that van with him, and every one of them has been sitting in ICE detention ever since.

The officers had no body cameras and no dashcams, so those three men are the only people alive who saw what happened. That’s a convenient arrangement when your agency’s version of events depends on nobody contradicting it.

Jose Trinidad Rojas Pliego contradicted it anyway, from behind bars. ICE claims Salgado Araujo weaponized his vehicle to run down an officer. Rojas Pliego says the officers were beside the van the whole time, never in front of it and never behind it, which blows a hole in the regime’s story. He called their account a lie.

On Monday, US District Judge Keith P. Ellison ordered ICE to release Rojas Pliego. The regime argued its mandatory detention policy requires holding him. Ellison ruled that locking up a man with decades in this country and no criminal record violates the Due Process Clause. His family’s attorney says he’s set to walk free any moment now. Lorenzo’s brother, Victor Salgado Araujo, remains detained and is still fighting.

ARE YOU THERE, MITCH?

Six weeks. That’s how long it’s been since Mitch McConnell said a word to the public he was elected to serve. He’s been hospitalized since mid-June. His office has put out written statements, and this week it released a photo of him with his wife—along with a note about physical therapy. The Capitol physician confirmed he hasn’t been cleared to leave the rehab facility.

Gov. Andy Beshear stopped pretending that’s normal. On Monday, Kentucky’s governor sent McConnell a letter demanding he “directly and verbally address the people of Kentucky and provide proof of your capacity to serve, or resign.” Then Beshear wrote the sentence that should wake Republicans up—stating that he was writing “under the assumption” McConnell can read and respond, “and not incapacitated by means of consciousness or cognition.”

Republicans in Frankfort rewrote state law years ago specifically so that a Democratic governor could never fill that seat. It bought them a senator nobody’s heard from since June.

ZELENSKY GOT AN HOUR AND USED IT

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky came to Washington Tuesday for Lindsey Graham’s funeral, but before the service he sat down with Trump in the Oval Office for an hour. No cameras. No press in the room—which, after Trump and Vance’s ambush of him in that same room seventeen months ago, was the only sane way to walk back into it.

He called it a good meeting afterward. They discussed the Patriot deal Trump agreed to three weeks ago, the one letting Ukraine build its own interceptors—missiles that knock Russian strikes out of the sky before they come through the roof of an apartment building. He said they talked about diplomacy too, which is the closest thing to movement on peace talks in months.

Zelensky went straight from the White House to Capitol Hill and sat down with a bipartisan group of senators. Then he watched from the floor as they voted to advance a massive sanctions package aimed at Russia’s “shadow fleet” and the third-party buyers keeping its war machine afloat.

Putin pays for this war with money from selling oil. More than sixty senators have already signed on to punish anyone who still buys it.

THE FACT-KEEPER QUIT AND SAID WHY

Marc Rosenblum counted things for the Department of Homeland Security for ten and a half years. Immigration numbers, mostly. He took an office of eleven overworked people and built it into a staff of forty-five that the whole department leaned on.

He quit Saturday and wrote about it Sunday on LinkedIn, where he said he was thrilled to be done with the regime. His reasons ran long: the war on immigrants, the war on feds, the war on facts, the war in Iran, and what he called “the brazen corruption.”

DHS gave HuffPost a statement about it. “People are always welcome to their opinion,” a spokesperson said. “That doesn’t make it right or factual.”

Rosenblum’s opinion was built on ten years of the department’s own numbers. The regime stopped letting the public see them—his office’s tracking page hasn’t been updated since February of 2025. Plenty of people have walked out of that building since and said nothing at all. We need a lot more like him—speaking up loudly—and we need it now.

After 23 years of fighting, here’s what I’ve learned. Republicans count on people getting tired. It’s their whole strategy—overwhelm and exhaust the masses, then wait for the pressure to let up. But what they never counted on is us.

This community has sent more than 800,000 letters to Congress since November 2024 alone—millions more if you count back to 2016 when we first started this movement. People stepping up when it matters most.

We have no advertisers or corporate owners. No billionaire writing us checks or controlling our stories. No board members who can call me and kill a story. Because we are completely reader-funded, which is the only way we can report on the resistance and organize it at the same time.

What we do now is what leads to the results we need in November—so help us sprint through the finish. Become a paid subscriber today:

Then hit the like button and restack this edition before you go. Somebody out there needs to know we’re not losing. You can be the messenger they desperately need.

Onward!

Scott

---

Andy Beshear asked in writing if McConnell is still conscious. What does it tell you that a governor had to ask?

Trump ambushed Zelensky in that same room 17 months ago. This time, no cameras, no press—just a deal. Who do you think asked for that?

Let me know in the comments!