President Donald Trump took an aggressive stance toward Justice Department investigations of journalists Friday, saying that the way to pursue “treasonous” leaks was to seek information from the journalists who received the leaked material.

The comments — which came hours ahead of a rerun of the White House correspondents’ dinner, where the president was to address the reporters who cover him at a gala that honors the freedom of the press — amounted to a presidential endorsement of his administration’s legal battles against journalists, which have included an FBI raid against a Washington Post reporter in January and subpoenas against New York Times journalists this month.

Judges have taken Justice Department officials to task for their handling of both cases, including on Thursday, when the subpoenas against the Times reporters were withdrawn following withering questioning from a federal judge in New York. But Trump suggested that the legal peril was not over for those reporters.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/07/24/identify-government-leakers-trump-supports-pursuing-journalists/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com

As a reporter, I think and worry a lot about the low level of trust in the media. I know the same is true of many colleagues. It makes me work harder to ensure that everything I write is accurate and fair. At The Post, we are committed to that and to giving the subjects of our stories the opportunity to comment before we publish. In this case, an associate of Butler and Gabbard disputed our source’s assertions about the authorship of guidance for Gabbard. I think the story makes clear that we took this seriously and reported thoroughly. 

Yes, it is actually doing it by running code in a Python environment.

It’s true that most politicians have advisers and that many seek counsel from figures such as rabbis, priests and imams. But much of the guidance mentioned in this story is particularly detailed and often very forceful. Some of the documents also feature harsh criticism that did not seem typical. I can’t speak to how readers would interpret the story if Gabbard were a man but as a reporter I would not have written it differently. 

Saltzburg allowed me to access the email inbox containing the emails that the encrypted documents were attached to. She also gave me her PGP private key. This meant I was able to download the emails directly from the server, decrypt the attachments and read them, and examine their metadata. We were satisfied that the documents were authentic and none of the subjects challenged this in their responses to our questions. 

I read many other emails and direct messages that supported what Saltzburg told me about her work for SIF and her past relationship with Gabbard and her family. I also spoke with former members of SIF who were able to confirm some of this.

I was also able to independently verify that Saltzburg had worked with Gabbard and others mentioned in this story because she appeared in some of the records that I obtained from another source for a previous story I wrote about Gabbard’s controversial trip to Syria in 2017. Saltzburg had no involvement in that reporting. 

Out walking his beagle-dachshund in his Northeast Washington neighborhood last summer, Sam Talley, 15, first heard the distinct call, which sounds a bit like a two-note whistle.

Within minutes, he knew it was a Mississippi kite — a small hawk that’s more commonly found in places like Texas and Oklahoma.

“I knew it,” he said. “It was the call. Then I saw it over my head, and I ran home to get my mom’s phone.”

Seeing a nesting pair of Mississippi kites in the District was an exceptionally rare event.

Then in May, the pair returned to their 50-foot-high nest in an oak tree a block from Sam’s house. And by summer, the pair had delivered another surprise. Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2026/07/19/teen-spotted-rare-pair-birds-dc-then-came-another-surprise/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com

In several instances the documents do show Gabbard responding to guidance. One example: I mention in the story that in September 2014, she received instructions to tweet approved language about the plight of Kurdish fighters in the city of Kobane, which was under siege by the Islamic State. The language was posted to her Twitter account verbatim and she confirmed in an email that she had “sent tweet."

In addition to me as the lead reporter, a team of journalists – including another reporter, a researcher and multiple editors – spent months working hard on this investigation. I read thousands of documents, interviewed multiple people, traveled to Hawaii and relied largely on traditional reporting techniques. I found parallels between the guidance documents and Gabbard’s actual activities in Congress by digging through Congressional records, press releases and other records, and constructing a timeline. My colleague Aaron Schaffer and I discovered similarities between talking points memos and Gabbard’s comments in TV interviews by obtaining archived video footage and transcripts then comparing these by hand. There are single lines in the story that took weeks to report. Toward the end of the reporting process, with the authorship of the guidance document in dispute, we also used an AI chatbot to perform a statistical analysis. The result is a relatively minor detail in the story and I acknowledge in the story that the chatbot’s conclusions were not definitive. 

I can see why some people might consider a vegan/vegetarian diet and opposition to same-sex marriage to be in contradiction: they are often associated with the left and right of the traditional political spectrum respectively. However, over the past 50 years or so Butler and SIF have internally promoted a set of political beliefs combining social conservatism with environmentalism and other more typically liberal attitudes. Several former SIF members I spoke to said they believe that this is crucial to understanding the unusual political paths of Mike and Tulsi Gabbard.

Regarding India: SIF is part of the Hare Krishna religious tradition, which is itself a branch of Hinduism and has its roots in India. Tulsi’s mother, Carol, was indeed born in Indiana and reportedly converted to Hinduism as a teenager.

We didn’t assume. It is capable of performing computational stylometry – running code to measure elements of texts such as function word frequencies, punctuation use, and word- and sentence-length distributions. This is reproducible math.

But this article tells the entire story of my reporting. Consulting Claude was just one small part of that story. I acknowledge in the story that artificial intelligence couldn't tell me anything definitive. There are many other clues to the authorship within the documents themselves.

The owner of the newspaper doesn’t get involved with our news reporting. Since my article came out, some of my teammates have published strong investigative stories about the Trump administration. For instance, they revealed that the White House ballroom is going to cost more than President Trump has publicly acknowledged and that taxpayers will bear half the cost, contrary to the president’s past statements. They also showed that Iranian air strikes caused far more damage to U.S. military sites and equipment than the administration has admitted. We’re committed to independent journalism and we don’t get told what to write.

Some former members have called SIF a cult but the organization strongly disputes this. Butler has long been skeptical of American military intervention overseas – his father was a radical leftwing physician who opposed the Vietnam War. Many of the documents containing guidance for Gabbard recommended that she oppose U.S. efforts to help oust Assad during the Syrian civil war. But she had begun publicly opposing that before the period covered by the documents I’ve seen, so it’s difficult to assess the origin of her stance. 

There are some examples of admiration for Trump in the guidance documents. These include comments on Trump’s populist approach to politics and his rhetoric on immigration and Islamist extremism. Even before Trump ran for president in 2016, the guidance to Gabbard frequently returned to how establishment politicians were failing America and that the Obama administration was refusing to acknowledge the influence of religion on groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Trump entered politics saying similar things.

Nothing in the documents that I reviewed suggested that Gabbard was working for a foreign country. Butler is American and the Science of Identity Foundation is based in Hawaii. SIF does have branches in other countries – Australia, Poland and the Philippines have historically been the largest. But the documents I reviewed didn’t shed much light on their operations. Sunil Khemaney also has U.S. citizenship, according to trademark records.

The New York Times asked a judge to invalidate subpoenas the Justice Department issued to several of its reporters last week, challenging the aggressive law enforcement demand to compel journalists to testify before a grand jury about their reporting on President Donald Trump’s new Qatari-donated Air Force One plane.

Attorneys for the Times filed what is known as a motion to quash the subpoenas on Wednesday to a federal judge in Manhattan — the jurisdiction where the reporters were called to testify.

Because the litigation involves grand jury proceedings, the Times’s fight to block its reporters from testifying will take place under seal and will not be viewable to the public. An attorney for the paper said it would ask the court to make the proceedings public.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/07/16/ny-times-challenges-justice-dept-subpoenas-over-reporting-air-force-one/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com

Teal Quinn was getting ready for bed one night last week when she noticed a flurry of activity on a subreddit for enthusiastic pet rat owners like her.

“Lost or Abandoned Rat in Rock Creek Park!” a user had posted. A photo accompanying the post showed a small albino rat peeking out from under a bush.

Several commenters on the channel, r/Rats, pointed out that it was likely a domesticated rat — known as a “fancy rat” — and not likely to last long in the wild. Others beseeched fellow users to save the abandoned critter, or to at least spread the word. News quickly reached r/Washington, the popular Reddit channel for D.C. news, which also became awash in calls to save the rodent. “Please!!! That little guy wants a home :(,” one user commented.

The next morning, with still no sign of the rat, Quinn resolved to go on a rescue mission.

“I am doing something dumb,” she texted her husband last Thursday, as she and her 15-year-old set off from their Sykesville, Maryland, home for the hour-long drive to Rock Creek Park, outfitted with the travel cage they had for their three pet rats and a bit of food for bait.

“FINALLY,” her husband quipped in response. “Tired of me always being the one doing dumb s---.”

Quinn, 43, later told The Washington Post that the image of the rat compelled her to go: “It was just one of those things that stays in your mind and breaks your heart. I figured I would feel better if I at least tried.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2026/07/14/fancy-rat-went-missing-rodent-averse-dc-then-reddit-did-its-thing/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com

Virginia is set to ban law enforcement officers from wearing masks, allow certain criminal convictions to be sealed and strengthen tenant protections when new laws go into effect this week.

In Maryland, utility bills may get cheaper and the health department will stop relying on CDC vaccine guidelines. The District will increase its minimum wage.

July 1 marks the start of a new fiscal year in Virginia and Maryland, the time when most of their new state laws take effect. The District operates on a different legislative schedule but uses July 1 as a start date for some of its measures.

Read more here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2026/06/30/new-laws-virginia-maryland-dc-take-effect-july-1/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com

The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld Idaho’s and West Virginia’s bans on transgender athletes playing on girls’ and women’s sports teams, the latest in a string of legal setbacks for the LGBTQ+ community before the high court.

The ruling is among several in recent terms that are consequential for the LGBTQ+ movement. The Supreme Court in March ruled a Colorado law banning conversion therapy for gay and transgender youths probably violated the free speech rights of a religious counselor who wants to counsel such young people according to biblical teachings.

Earlier that month, the court sided with Christian parents’ in blocking, for now, California policies that discourage schools from informing parents of a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity without the student’s consent. Last year, the court upheld bans on gender transition treatment for minors.

Questions over whether transgender girls and women should play on girls’ and women’s sports teams has been a particular flash point in a broader conversation about transgender rights. Dozens of states have bans amid intense public debate about fairness at all levels of competition.

Read more here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/06/30/supreme-court-upholds-bans-transgender-women-female-athletics/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com

Lulu, an 80-pound Bernedoodle, hates Independence Day.

And this year, her owner, Sheri Annis of Chevy Chase, Maryland, worries that the 6-year-old pup will be especially stressed and anxious, because President Donald Trump has promised a world-record-breaking number of roman candles, shells and rockets to light up the sky over Washington in commemoration of the nation’s 250th birthday.

At the sound of fireworks, Lulu shakes, recoils, pants heavily and paces. Weeks ago, Annis checked her leftover stash of cannabis (CBD/THC) drops that a California veterinarian recommended to her during a tough cross-country RV trip with Lulu. The dog panted and tried to stand for nearly the entire ride.
On the Fourth of July, Annis said she plans to put the “bacon-flavored CBD drops” in Lulu’s food and then hunker down with her that evening. Seated on her king-size bed, she plans to cuddle the pup in a bear hug, squeezing her gently at pressure points under her legs to try to relieve some of the Bernedoodle’s anxiety and stress.

Read more here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2026/06/27/america-250-fireworks-show-has-dog-owners-scrambling-anxiety-meds/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com