Monday Morning Read

Get Jim Heaney’s recommended readings, and a recap of Investigative Post’s reporting for the previous week, via email on Sunday mornings by subscribing here.


WGRZ anchor, and in this case, muckraker, Maryalice Demler reported on dirty dealings behind closed doors by the North Tonawanda City Council. Sweetheart waterfront leases, negotiated on the q.t., to benefit political insiders.

By now you’ve probably read about Kim Pegula’s health issues. Her daughter Jessica wrote a moving first-hand account for The Players’ Tribune. It’s becoming apparent Kim will not be able to carry on once her much-older husband is no longer in the picture and, as I previously reported, federal estate taxes are going to make it difficult for the Pegula children to inherit the Bills and Sabres. Which makes it increasingly important for the Pegulas to provide the state and county with a succession plan, especially given the relatively easy out the lease on the new Bills stadium provides the team in the event its owner wants to bolt.

New York Focus had a couple of good reads last week, one exploring a huge subsidy for a downstate race track, the other examining Gov. Kathy Hochul’s regressive proposal involving bail.

Florida now has more jobs than New York. How did that happen? The Atlantic explains. (Story can be read via a free trial, if you don’t already subscribe.)

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How the rich – the filthy rich –  get richer: by dodging their taxes. A report from ProPublica.

Three takes on Elon Musk:

Journalism is vital to democracy. Let us count the ways.

Insiders tell us where they think television is headed.

The Bills have done right by Damar Hamlin. But the NFL often casts aside its young injured players. Veterans have gripes, too. Ten just sued over what they contend is the systemic denial of disability benefits to injured players. The plaintiffs include former Bills running back Willis McGahee.

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Joe Kent, the former senior intelligence official who resigned from the Trump administration in protest of the Iran war, made a stunning claim Monday that “something” happened to President Donald Trump that “changed” him from that point forward.

“Something in the late spring, early summer time frame happened – I don’t know what happened,” Kent said during an appearance on the “Julian Dorey Podcast” published on Monday.

“I can’t tell you why his mentality changed, but it went from, ‘we’re gonna create the most space we can for [Iran] negotiations and we’re not interested in the war,’ to, ‘okay, we’re gonna support the Israelis, do Midnight Hammer and we’re gonna continue to entertain this.’”

A key pledge of Trump during his 2024 campaign was that he would not send Americans “to fight and die in stupid foreign wars that never end,” reiterating that promise during his victory speech: “I’m not going to start a war,” he said.

And yet, in late February, Trump launched Operation Epic Fury with a large-scale attack on Iran that months later now risks sparking a broader war.

Kent, who's long championed Trump's anti-interventionist rhetoric, said he was confused by the president's apparent shift, and while he could narrow down roughly when it happened, he still couldn't say what caused it.

“I don’t know what happened. And so for me, when something like that happens, from an intelligence background, you do have to step back and look at what else could be influencing the president,” Kent said.

“Did he just change his mind? For him to go through with [launching the Iran war], ultimately, I do think there’s potentially other factors there: so what could those other factors be? Why would a president make decisions that he doesn’t agree with?”

Other conservative figures have speculated as to why Trump launched a war against Iran despite his frequent anti-war rhetoric, including prominent conservative figure Tucker Carlson, who in April floated a disturbing theory that a “blackmail” operation perpetrated by the Israeli government could potentially have forced the president’s hand.

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