The Federal Government’s Executive Branch Does More Embarrassing Things; Best of Coachella Valley Voting Has Started! Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Aug. 3, 2026

Indy Digest: Aug. 3, 2026

Here are two revealing news stories you may have missed over the weekend.

First, from The Associated Press:

Bank accounts held by President Donald Trump were closed by Capital One in 2021 after it flagged financial activity that had characteristics of money laundering, the bank disclosed in a court filing over the weekend.

The court filing is tied to a lawsuit filed against Capital One by one of Trump’s financial holding companies shortly after he was sworn into office a second time. Trump alleges that Capital One illegally closed his accounts for political reasons, following the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol.

Capital One wants the lawsuit dismissed.

“The closures were the result of months of analysis and a careful review by Capital One’s AML team in accordance with bank policies and regulatory guidance,” the bank said in the court filing. The term “AML” is an abbreviation for anti-money laundering.

A major bank closed a former and future president’s bank accounts because they had characteristics of money laundering. Can you imagine the cries from Congress had this happened to Biden or Obama?

Next up is this piece from BBC News:

Nigerians might be surprised to learn they live in a landlocked country and people in Ivory Coast shocked that they are southern African not West African— but that is what a map used by a U.S. official at a recent conference showed.

Not only that, the cartographic malfunction included completely unrecognisable shapes of the six misidentified countries.

The flawed map appeared during a State Department slide presentation, at an AIDS conference in Brazil … about Washington’s funding for programmes tackling HIV.

The State Department has described it as “an unfortunate error” caused when a team member “hurriedly altered” the slide deck before the event.

In a statement quoted by news agencies, a spokesperson added that it took “full responsibility for the confusion and misrepresentation it caused for attendees, including our African partners.”

What a mess the United States government’s executive branch is right now …

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Voting takes place through Friday, Aug. 28 at vote.cvindependent.com. Unlike other publications, we’re not desperate for web traffic, so we don’t ask people to vote once per day or anything like that—in fact, we ask readers to vote only once per round. Oh, and be sure to follow the rules!

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More News

• Keeping with the theme of our debacle of a federal government … CNBC reports: “President Donald Trump on Monday hurled more criticism at Jeanine Pirro as he fumed over the federal prosecutor’s decision to drop her Reflecting Pool vandalism case after admitting damage to the water feature was caused by a botched installation. Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, ‘made a mistake’ and ‘choked’ by moving to dismiss the indictment against former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. Asked if he was reconsidering Pirro’s role, Trump did not directly answer, saying ‘I don’t know what’ and then lashing out at the reporter who posed the question. … Pirro’s case against Hearn, filed in early July, accused the 67-year-old of damaging the pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial by ripping up part of its sealant with his hands. But in a Friday afternoon court filing in D.C. Superior Court, Pirro wrote that after filing the charges, her office received additional information indicating that a ‘flawed installation’ by the contractor was to blame for the damage.”

• Immigration and Customs enforcement is collecting a LOT of DNA. Why? Wired reports (and this piece is free to read, btw): “On March 13, 2025, Hugo Moreno-Mendez arrived at the McLennan County Probation Department in Waco, Texas, expecting a routine probation check-in. Instead, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were waiting to arrest him. According to a criminal complaint reviewed by WIRED, officers drove Moreno-Mendez to a nearby ICE field office. There, one deportation officer after another approached him with the same demand. Open your mouth. … Moreno-Mendez’s case is part of a sweeping expansion of DNA collection from people held for civil immigration violations—a federal campaign that, backed by the threat of prosecution, funnels the genetic profiles of nearly everyone in ICE custody into an FBI database built for criminal investigations. New research from Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology estimates that the Department of Homeland Security has become the largest single source of new genetic profiles in the nation’s criminal DNA system, with ICE alone potentially adding as many as roughly 920,000 profiles in 2025. The vast majority of people in ICE custody have no criminal conviction, and residing in the U.S. undocumented is typically a civil, not criminal, offense.”

• The Los Angeles Times (via AOL) looks at sophisticated rental scams in Southern California. The lede: “Pam Yeager thought she had found her perfect next rental in a cute bungalow near downtown Fullerton. It seemed like a no-brainer: It was priced slightly below the region’s average for a two-bedroom home, would allow her to live closer to her son and was available right as her current lease was expiring. But it turned out to be one big scam, costing her thousands of dollars to online fraudsters. ‘It’s ridiculous,’ Yeager, 53, said. ‘There has to be some sort of accountability.’ In California, an incredibly tight housing market and high rents are fueling a new generation of real estate scams that take advantage of people desperate to find an affordable place to live. Officials say the scammers place fake listings on social media and other online marketplaces, sometimes using artificial intelligence to make the content appear legitimate. Often, they simply take existing listings and repost them, collecting as much money as they can before victims learn they were never in touch with a legitimate landlord. And as more people are turning to social media to find rentals and homes for sale, police say it’s created a ripe environment for scammers, given many platforms’ limited regulation and oversight.”

• A new California law requires large AI systems to mark their content as AI-created. KQED reports: “A landmark state law written by Bay Area lawmakers aimed at helping people identify content that’s been generated by artificial intelligence (went) into effect Saturday. The law requires AI companies to ensure that their images and videos contain embedded, difficult-to-remove data about how the image was made—often referred to as ‘provenance.’ Starting Aug. 2, anyone will be able to put an image, video or audio file into a content verifier, like one from the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, and determine whether or not it is AI-generated, state Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park, told KQED. … The new law Becker co-authored along with Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, and Rick Chavez Zbur, D-Los Angeles, will make it easier for everyday people to see what’s real and what’s fabricated. The next phase kicks in on Jan. 1, 2027, and will require large online platforms to give users a way to view that previously stored information and figure out whether or not the content that they’re seeing is AI-generated.”

• Also from KQED (and ProPublica): A last-minute effort to create a state database to protect students from problematic teachers has failed: “The proposed database, introduced by a Democratic member of the State Assembly in June, would have allowed schools to see if applicants for public school teaching positions had been reported to the state after they were fired or resigned over claims of misconduct. The California Federation of Teachers pushed back, warning that teachers could land in the database even if schools had not determined they committed serious misconduct. ‘We would support legislation that targets substantiated reports of egregious misconduct,’ said Tristan Brown, a lobbyist with the California Federation of Teachers. ‘We live in a state with Silicon Valley. The state should be able to support a system that is up to date and tracking substantiated reports of misconduct.’ Democratic Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi had proposed to make it easier for schools to screen teacher applicants after a KQED-ProPublica investigation published in May. The news outlets revealed how delays and inaction, combined with a lack of transparency, allowed educators to get new jobs after school districts reported them to the state teacher licensing agency for sexual harassment or other misconduct.”

• And finally … today’s recall news involves … heated blankets! 9News (Denver) says: “The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced the recall of nearly 180,000 heated sherpa throws and blankets over fire and burn risks. The recall involves OCTROT-branded electrical throws and blankets. There have been 555 reports of the blankets or throws melting, sparking and smoking. That’s resulted in 27 fires and 15 burns or electrical shocks. The issue is with the temperature controller’s cord. It can detach and ignite, which creates a fire, burn or shock hazard.”

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