In today’s edition … Jane Fonda is ready for more activism … A major espionage bill expires on Friday … but first …
Read more Once a rising star, Nancy Mace suffers resounding defeat in governor’s race
Graham Platner won the Maine Democratic primary for Senate after weathering allegations about his past, formally setting up the November bout for a seat that could be pivotal in determining which party controls the Senate.
The liberal upstart will face longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins in a closely watched race that will show whether the Democratic and independent voters whom Platner has courted will overlook his baggage in the general election.
In Maine, as well as South Carolina, Republicans competed in crowded congressional and gubernatorial races. Backing from President Donald Trump elevated some GOP candidates over prominent politicians, including Rep. Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina), who did not make it out of her primary race.
Read more from Praveena Somasundaram here.
Jane Fonda has been arrested for her beliefs since before most Americans were born. Now, at 88, she says the country is facing something more dangerous than anything she’s witnessed in six decades of activism — worse, even, than the Red Scare that once motivated her father.
On Sunday, while President Donald Trump hosts a UFC cage fight on the White House South Lawn for his 80th birthday, the famed actress will be in New York leading a protest sing-along against him. She’s been doing some version of this for nearly 60 years — and she says the stakes have never been higher.
“What’s happening now in this country is much more grave, much more serious than what was happening back in the late ’40s and early ’50s,” Fonda said in an interview with The Washington Post. “Everything is different now, because the rules of democracy, the laws that we, I’m afraid to say, maybe took for granted … are being taken away.”
Free speech under the Trump administration is facing unprecedented attacks and must be defended, Fonda said. It has been nearly 80 years since a group of Hollywood icons, including her father, actor Henry Fonda, was a member and supported the Committee for the First Amendment to stand up to McCarthyism.
The group was formed in 1947 in response to House un-American Activities Committee hearings targeting Hollywood figures accused of being communists, a precursor to the blacklist era often associated with Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin).
In 2025, Fonda relaunched the free speech committee her father was a part of, arguing it was needed at a time when Trump was using the government to target people like ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel and others.
On Sunday, the committee will host a protest celebration in New York called Rise Up, Sing Out: A Concert for the First Amendment. The event, held on Trump’s birthday, will feature performances by Rufus Wainwright, Bette Midler, Patti Smith and others. The event will be streamed online, and organizers hope it is as much a sing-along as a performance. “Standing up and making your voice heard … is not eating broccoli,” Fonda said of the event. “It’s fun.”
Fonda’s activism is the stuff of legend — and for some, derision. A fervent anti-war activist, Fonda traveled to North Vietnam in the 1970s to protest the Vietnam War, earning her the disparaging nickname “Hanoi Jane.” She later apologized for the visit and photos taken during it. Fonda sparred with President Richard M. Nixon’s administration after the trip — including first lady Pat Nixon. And Nixon was recorded on one of his White House tapes saying, “What in the world is the matter with Jane Fonda? … She’s a great actress. She looks pretty. But boy, she’s often on the wrong track.”
Over the subsequent 50-plus years, Fonda has protested everything from the need to address climate change to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to civil rights issues. In 2019, Fonda was arrested multiple times for protesting climate change outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
For her, this work is the culmination of her decades of activism.
“I’m the proudest of what I’m doing right now,” Fonda said. “We’re changing things. We’re actually moving the needle.”
Fonda’s decision to relaunch the committee her father belonged to adds another layer to a complicated relationship with her father, a longtime actor well-known for playing Tom Joad in “The Grapes of Wrath.” “My dad was not a communicative person. He just didn’t know how,” she told interviewer Andy Cohen in 2022.
But, in an interview with Chris Wallace in 2023, Fonda said that before he died in 1982, she was able to “tell him that I loved him and that I forgave him for, you know, whatever didn’t happen.”
Fonda told us she never really talked to her father about his activism, but that the work Henry Fonda undertook in film and life — from “The Grapes of Wrath” to “12 Angry Men” to “The Wrong Man” — “was like the mulch, the fertilizer in my soul for when the time came that I was going to start being an activist in 1970.”
Much of Fonda’s most recent activism has centered on one man: Trump.
The actress has spoken out on everything from Trump’s climate record to his curbing of free speech. She denies personal antipathy — “I don’t hate him. I feel sad for him,” she told CNN — but has said his presidency is the “most frightening” of her lifetime.
Trump, never one to shy away from commenting on his critics, responded to Fonda’s frequent arrests in 2019. “Nothing changes,” he told a rally crowd in Louisiana.
In her interview with The Post, Fonda was more concerned about Trump and Republican attempts to silence dissent, through mergers among large media companies as well as through threats against news coverage the president does not like. Fonda said she was heartened by the way many either canceled or threatened to cancel their Disney+ streaming subscriptions in response to Kimmel’s suspension over comments he made about Charlie Kirk.
“This is new. This hasn’t happened during my lifetime to me or the people that I know,” she said. But that response, and Kimmel’s reinstatement days later, showed “this is what is effective. Strikes, boycotts, boycotts.” More are coming, she said.
Read more As Mystics stick with their cozy home, fans see Caitlin Clark’s magic up close
Fonda remains politically active. While she was a fervent supporter of Kamala Harris in 2024, she now thinks she shouldn’t run in 2028. “We have to win. I don’t think she can win,” she said. Fonda also endorses candidates through her own political action committee, where she focuses on backing down-ballot candidates who are “brave” and stand up to power.
Through that work, the actress has begun to feel like Trump, despite his power and office, is on his heels.
“The zeitgeist has shifted,” Fonda concluded, citing “No Kings” protests in deep red communities and other recent protest movements. “And we want to encourage that.”
A major espionage bill expires on Friday, and the intelligence community is urging Congress to get its act together and renew it. But divisions on the Hill are muddying the path forward.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has long been a source of contention among social conservatives, particularly Section 702, which allows the government to collect communications of foreigners abroad without individualized warrants. But Americans’ messages can be swept up when they communicate with those targets.
Social conservatives demand provisions that require warrants to collect the information, but the intelligence community under successive presidential administrations has pushed back on doing so. Trump is no different.
“I want a warrant. If you’re going to surveil an American you’ve got to have a warrant. Tell me how that doesn’t work,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida), one of the holdouts, told us.
To add more complication to the matter, Democrats are refusing to renew the legislation so long as Bill Pulte is serving as acting director of national intelligence. Pulte has no background in intelligence, which is required by law for the position, and even several Republicans were skeptical about his appointment. The White House has indicated Trump will soon pick a permanent appointment for the position.
When asked about finding a new DNI to calm Democratic concerns, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) said: “I think they’re weighing seriously making a longer-term pick.”
Cap City News (Wyoming): Another day, another city council debating a proposed data center plan. This time in Wyoming, where there has been backlash to “the potential annexation of 3,500 acres of land to city limits for Microsoft’s planned data center development.”
The San Francisco Standard: This is a fascinating look at how the rise of AI in Silicon Valley has coincided with the rise in Christianity. “There’s been a shift,” one tech worker told the publications. “There’s a lot of people out there who are being more bold in their faith.”
Tampa Bay Times: International students from countries impacted by the president’s travel ban are graduating from some of Florida’s top schools — and then grappling with their futures in the United States.
We asked about your excitement for the World Cup, and, well, one email from reader Maria Jose Aguilar Porro in Spain really stood out to us.
“My name is Maria, and since I read you every day from Spain, I obviously root for our National Team in the World Cup,” she wrote, adding three exclamation points for her side. “We are willing to watch their debut next Monday, probably with friends to enjoy the quality of our team! We are four in my family and all of us have Spain’s T-shirt ready to wear during the matches!!”
Spain should have a great World Cup. The team is currently ranked second in the world, behind 2022 winner Argentina. But many power rankings have them in the top positions, powered by young stars Lamine Yamal, Pedri and Gavi.
Douglas Corkhill, a longtime reader, said he was going to the Haiti-Morocco match in Atlanta later this month, where he will be “pulling for Haiti because Trump probably won’t let any of their ‘sh****** country’ fans into the country.”
And Michael Fallon said he is rooting for Curaçao.
“Why? Because it’s the smallest nation to ever make the World Cup (both by population and land mass),” he wrote. “I don’t expect that Blue Wave will become the tournament’s ‘Cinderella’ and make an unexpected run. But it feels like they will bring World Cup joy just by stepping onto the pitch with Germany this coming Sunday.”
Please plan for this newsletter to be unabashedly pro-World Cup in the coming weeks.
Today we wrote about Jane Fonda, the widely known actress and activist. She has long divided opinions — Dan here, I know this personally within my own extended family — and her work in Vietnam in the early 1970s made her a target for the next five decades. So we wanted to ask you: What do you think about Jane Fonda’s activism? Do you appreciate the work she has done? Or do you think she has gone too far at times? Let us and your fellow Early Brief readers know at [email protected].
Thanks for reading. You can follow Dan and Matthew on X: @merica and @matthewichoi.
Read more A street in The Hague is drenched in orange as Netherlands soccer fans celebrate the World Cup
