Wednesday Afternoon News Updates: Inflation, Elections, Iran, and the Epstein Freakout That Broke the White House – 6/10/26

A bombshell New York Times investigation reveals the full scope of the administration's Epstein panic, plus everything else you need to know heading into the rest of Wednesday

Hi all, Ben here. It’s Wednesday, June 10, and we have a lot to get through today. And first, a Happy Birthday to my brother and MeidasTouch co-founder, Brett!

Here’s what we’re tracking:

• Inflation hits 4.2% — highest in three years, and real wages are going negative

• Tuesday primary results from Maine, Nevada, North Dakota, and South Carolina

• Newsom endorses Becerra in the California governor’s race as Steyer urges his supporters to vote for Becerra

• U.S. strikes hit drinking water reservoirs in Iran, per the Financial Times

• Trump says the U.S. is striking Iran more today

• Trump in the Oval Office, rambling, raging, and claiming he loves inflation

• U.S. aircraft losses in the Iran War

• Hegseth and Laura Loomer go to Guantanamo together, which is a sentence I cannot believe I have to write

• The New York Times drops a massive Epstein investigation

• Judicial nominee won’t say who won the 2020 election

• Trump compares his crowd size to Martin Luther King’s

Before I go any further, if you haven’t yet joined as a paid subscriber, consider doing so now by clicking here to support our work. This is how we grow. And if you’re already a Meidas+ paid Substack subscriber, thank you for supporting pro-democracy media. We’re making this update free for everyone to read.

Let’s get into it.

Inflation Spikes, Trump Says He “Loves” It

Inflation jumped to 4.2% year-over-year in May. That’s the highest it’s been in three years, and it’s up from 2.4% back in February, before Trump started his war with Iran. Higher gas and energy prices drove roughly 60% of that increase. Shelter costs are up. Food is up. Restaurant prices are up. Core inflation, which strips out food and energy, hit 2.9%, its highest level since September.

Meanwhile, wage growth is running at 3.4%. Inflation is at 4.2%. That means Americans are losing ground. Every paycheck buys a little less than it did before. For production and non-supervisory workers, the people doing the actual work in this country, wages have effectively been erased back to February 2025 levels. The Iran War alone has wiped out roughly 15 months of previous wage gains.

Add in 7%+ mortgage rates and a 30% loss in the dollar’s purchasing power since 2020, and you start to understand why so many families feel like they’re drowning. This isn’t a vibes problem. This is a real, material squeeze on middle-class and lower-income households trying to pay for gas, groceries, electricity, and doctor’s visits.

When a reporter asked Trump this morning whether he was concerned about the inflation numbers, his response was: “No, I love it. I love the inflation.”

From “I will bring down prices on day 1” to “I love the inflation.”

Quite the shift.

Tuesday Primaries: What You Need to Know

Four states voted Tuesday — Maine, Nevada, North Dakota, and South Carolina — in primaries setting up November’s midterm battles.

In Maine, Graham Platner won the Democratic Senate primary decisively, pulling roughly 72% of the vote. He’ll face incumbent Republican Susan Collins in what should be a genuinely competitive race in a state Kamala Harris carried in 2024. Platner’s victory speech was sharp: he went after Collins for voting to send taxpayer money overseas while hospitals in Maine are closing. On Morning Joe, he was asked, given some tabloid history involving his personal life, whether he could credibly call for Epstein file releases. His answer; consensual adult relationships are categorically different from allegations of child trafficking on a private island. The distinction isn’t complicated.

The Democratic gubernatorial primary in Maine remains unsettled, with Nirav Shah leading in first-round counts ahead of a ranked-choice tabulation. On the Republican side, Bobby Charles led with around 37-38%.

In South Carolina, Lindsey Graham survived his primary with about 57% — enough to avoid a runoff. The open governor’s race is headed to a June 23 runoff between Trump-endorsed Pamela Evette and Attorney General Alan Wilson. Nancy Mace, who gave up her House seat to run, got crushed, finishing around 12%. Meanwhile, Jermaine Johnson won the Democratic gubernatorial primary outright with nearly 60%.

In Nevada, Attorney General Aaron Ford dominated the Democratic gubernatorial primary with about 65%. Governor Joe Lombardo cruised on the Republican side. The key swing district, CD-3, saw incumbents advance comfortably.

North Dakota was largely uneventful, with Julie Fedorchak easily winning renomination in the at-large House seat.

Big News in California

Two major developments in the California governor’s race: Governor Gavin Newsom has officially endorsed Xavier Becerra, and billionaire Tom Steyer has conceded and thrown his support to Becerra as well. In a lengthy statement, Steyer wrote: “It would be a travesty for Steve Hilton to win the governorship, and Californians must unite behind Xavier Becerra to ensure he does not.”

Iran Strikes to Continue

Iranian officials in the Hormozgan Province of Southern Iran told the Financial Times that U.S. strikes early Wednesday destroyed two freshwater storage reservoirs with a combined capacity of 2,500 cubic meters, water supplies serving 20,000 residents in the city of Kuhestak and ten surrounding villages. CENTCOM refused to confirm or deny.

Meanwhile, Trump was in the Oval Office this morning saying “we’re gonna hit ‘em hard again today” while also claiming we’re “really close to a deal.” He said Iran has been “playing us for suckers” because of “very stupid presidents” before him. He said Iran’s military “doesn’t even exist anymore.” And then he said, in the same breath, that Iran will “have to pay the price” for allegedly shooting down a U.S. apache helicopter. Iran is certainly causing a lot of damage without a military!

For context, here is a partial tally of U.S. aircraft losses in this war between February 28 and June 8: one F-35, three F-15Es, one A-10, one AH-64 Apache, one E-3 Sentry AWACS (valued at roughly $700 million), multiple KC-135 tankers, 28 MQ-9 Reapers, one MQ-4C Triton, two MC-130Js, several helicopters, and more.

When a Newsmax anchor asked Rep. Claudia Tenney what she’d say to Americans experiencing war fatigue, voters who backed Trump because he promised to end wars, not start them, her answer was essentially: well, we were in Iraq and Afghanistan for 20 years, so this isn’t that bad yet. Our own Ron Filipkowski noted immediately that this might be the single worst talking point imaginable, given that Trump promised this would be wrapped up in four to six weeks with unconditional surrender and regime change.

Pete Hegseth Goes to Guantanamo — With Laura Loomer

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth visited Naval Station Guantanamo Bay today, continuing a string of high-level U.S. government visits to Cuba. He told troops stationed there that “what happens with the future of Cuba is in the hands of the president.” He also brought along Laura Loomer, the conspiracy theorist and far-right influencer.

The New York Times Epstein Story

The Times published an exhaustive investigation Wednesday into the White House’s internal handling of the Epstein crisis. I’d encourage everyone to read it in full. Here’s what you need to know:

Trump’s senior team, including JD Vance, Susie Wiles, Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, Todd Blanche, and others, convened multiple emergency meetings in the White House Situation Room specifically to manage the Epstein fallout. The same room where Obama’s national security team watched the bin Laden raid was being used by Trump’s people to strategize around their boss’s connections to a convicted child sex trafficker.

Vance, according to the Times, was alarmed, and even floated the idea of getting Tucker Carlson to interview Ghislaine Maxwell in prison, worried that the cover-up strategy would cost Trump young voters. Wiles and Blair, by contrast, initially dismissed the crisis as fringe noise. Bongino, who left his podcast gig to join the FBI, warned them repeatedly that they were miscalculating.

Bondi made things worse at nearly every turn, like going on Fox News to suggest a client list was “sitting on her desk,” then distributing unvetted binders full of largely already-public documents to MAGA influencers in the Roosevelt Room. The White House scrambled to pull the influencers out before they could discuss what was in the binders during Trump’s press conference with British Prime Minister Starmer.

Bongino ultimately exploded at Bondi in a DOJ meeting, and later stormed out of a Situation Room confrontation with Susie Wiles. He privately called the whole situation “Trump’s Iran-Contra.”

The Epstein Files Transparency Act eventually passed with bipartisan support and was signed into law in November, once it became clear that it had a veto proof majority. The resulting document release referenced Trump more than 38,000 times. Flight records showed he flew on Epstein’s private jet at least eight times between 1993 and 1996, despite Trump’s January 2024 claim that he’d never been on the plane.

Trump’s own pollster, Tony Fabrizio, circulated an internal memo in March 2026 noting that “Epstein files” ranked as the sixth most important issue in focus groups, coming up in every single group and registering as “a real negative” with key voters.

The president spent the better part of a year trying to make this disappear. It hasn’t. We will never lit it.

Other Stories Worth Noting

Trump went after Stephen A. Smith on Truth Social this morning, calling him a “low IQ individual” and “dumb as a rock” for apparently floating a potential political career. Smith recently criticized Trump’s decision to cause chaos in NYC by attending the NBA Finals.

Trump also said that he’s considering eliminating the Office of the Director of National Intelligence entirely, saying “a lot of people thought it was a duplication.” Separately, he is pushing to install his henchman Bill Pulte as Acting DNI, a move facing pushback from both Republicans and Democrats who have threatened to withhold their votes on a FISA extension. Trump’s response when told he needs Democratic votes: “Uhhhh. Then I guess something is gonna happen.”

Trump said he doesn’t know if he’ll renew the USMCA because “we don’t need anything that Canada has” or “anything that Mexico has.” Canada and Mexico, two of America’s three largest trading partners, are apparently unnecessary.

HUD Secretary Scott Turner was on CNBC this morning blaming undocumented immigrants for the housing shortage. Meanwhile, Senator Ron Johnson claimed on TV that Republicans don’t actually control the Senate. He said, “Don’t blame Republicans. I know they say we control the Senate. We don’t.”

Representative Kamlager-Dove took to the House floor to raise concerns about Trump’s visible health decline and the administration’s pattern of covering it up.

In case you missed it: Yesterday, Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA) faked a phone call for roughly 90 seconds after being asked by one of our reporters on the ground about Speaker Mike Johnson’s comments regarding potential Social Security cuts. The phone's screen remained visible, with his cheek inadvertently tapping different parts of the display. You have to watch this Oscar-worthy performance for yourself:

And finally, Trump this morning compared the size of his Fourth of July crowd on the Mall to the crowd at Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. He claimed his was bigger.

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