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Donald Trump wants to crush The Swamp. The leaks, the sneaks, and the secrets are all there. Our writers, David Gardner, Farrah Tomazin, Sarah Ewall-Wice, and Laura Esposito, are sifting through the ooze so you don’t have to. Don’t miss out.
In this week’s news from the ooze: Lateefah Simon, Daniel Băluță, Katrina Shealy, Larry Nordone, Emily Moreno, Sean Hannity, Kim Yo Jong, Ivanka Trump, Sydney Kamlager-Dove, Stefano Forte and Melania Trump.
Trump’s Choice in South Carolina Could Be S’more Than a Graham Cracker
Darline Graham Nordone, 62, has given little away since her beloved brother’s death rocketed her through the glass ceiling and into Congress as senator for South Carolina.
She told Sean Hannity on Monday that she planned to do things her way rather than as a carbon copy of her famously hawkish sibling.
With a MAGA civil war set to erupt over the Senate race in the state where the first shots were fired in the real thing on April 12, 1861, it seemed only right to inquire further about a politician known only for having a brother named Lindsey Graham.
So The Swamp has been digging. And we have learned that Donald Trump may have cause for second thoughts about his ringing endorsement for her as Lindsey’s full-term successor.
In 2020, Darline donated $100 to the re-election campaign for then-State Senator Katrina Shealy, according to South Carolina ethics filings, which list the donation from “Darlene Graham.” Shealy was a disability rights advocate who went on to become known as one of the “Sister Senators,” who blocked a total abortion ban in South Carolina in 2023. The group was made up of three Republicans, one Democrat and an independent. Their effort outraged some Republicans in the state and all three faced GOP challengers in the 2024 primary. All three were ousted, reducing the number of Republican women in the state Senate to zero.
Notably, it is the only donation which The Swamp could trace to the new senator.
Darline hasn’t spoken publicly about abortion—or anything much else politically—but her brother made no secret of his views on the subject, introducing national abortion ban legislation every year for a decade from 2013, and noisily celebrated the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
The new senator’s career has largely focused on working with those with disabilities, including for the South Carolina Vocational Rehabilitation Department and then the South Carolina Commission for the Blind. She also sits on the State Workforce Development Board, and is president-elect of the National Council of State Agencies for the Blind (NCSAB), with a term set to start next year. The outgoing president of NCSAB praised her for “outstanding job” at the South Carolina Commission for the Blind to The Swamp and said she brought the same “dedication and competence” to NCSAB. He did not, however, address her politics.
Friends say she would tend to be at the back of a room rather than the front. “She was never very political,” said a former co-worker.
Even her private life has been cryptic. But The Swamp can unravel that: Her first husband, Terry Lee Boggs, 60, is more into Harleys than state dinners, if his Facebook page is to be believed. The marriage may not have worked out, but they did have a daughter, Emillie, now 32, who is married herself with a child, making Darline a grandmother. From the photos on her elder daughter’s social media, Emillie appeared to also have a close relationship with the late senator, who took the family on trips to Disney and even to the Fox News studios to meet Hannity, the anchor to whom Darline gave her first interview to announce her candidacy
Emilie posted a tribute to “Lindsey” in which she called him the strongest, most thoughtful. person she had ever known and that she was beyond proud of her mother for stepping up in her time of grief.
After divorcing Biggs, Darline went on to marry Larry Nordone, with whom she has a daughter, who is 17. They live in Lexington, S.C., just outside Columbia.
The new senator may not be political, but she did campaign for her brother—telling the wholesome tale of how she was orphaned at 13 and her brother, then 22, pledged to take care of her.
Brothers handing power to sisters is rare but not unheard of. In North Korea, Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un appointed his little sister Kim Yo Jong to be his chief foreign policy maker and propagandist. If you want to know more, check out The Sister: North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong, The Most Dangerous Woman in the World.
Trump’s Vanity Projects Go Worldwide
What could be tackier than The Great American State Fair, or the Arc de Trump? You may have to travel thousands of miles to find out. Because The Swamp has learned that Paulo Zampolli, the former modeling agent-turned-presidential envoy, is trying to create a 450,000-square-foot “Donald Trump” Romanian-American Friendship Park in Bucharest. Marvel at the renderings. There is everything from a White House replica at the center of the park (notably sans ballroom), a Las Vegas zone, a NASA-themed playground, a Route 66 skate ramp and a Hollywood section… because apparently subtlety was never on the table. Zampolli, fresh from hosting accused rapists Andrew and Tristan Tate at a summer soiree at his D.C. residence, told The Swamp the idea came together while sitting in Bucharest traffic earlier this year.
“The Mayor told me he wanted to create a park so I told him it was the president’s birthday soon and America’s 250th birthday: could we call it Trump Park?” says Zampolli, who is often credited with introducing the president to Melania Trump in the naughty 90s when she was represented by his model agency. “He looked at me and said, ‘That’s a good idea.’ We secured the deal in 20 minutes.”
The name was ultimately approved after an online public vote following lobbying by District 4 Mayor Daniel Băluță, and construction could begin as early as next month. Next stop? Serbia.
Zampolli says he’s now pushing for a Trump Street in Belgrade, arguing the Serbian capital already has streets named after other U.S. presidents. Why stop at a park when you can have your own GPS directions?
The timing is hardly accidental, given the Trump family is currently embarking on a series of luxury projects, notably Trump Tower Bucharest, a proposed Transylvanian golf course and apartment development in Cluj, and Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s island off Albania. Somewhat uncomfortably, Romania was also home to the Tate brothers for a while. As the Tates face extradition to the U.K. on a stomach-churning list of charges (which they deny), Zampolli is now distancing himself from the controversial creeps. Sure, he met the pair on the sidelines of a Milken Institute conference in May and recorded a podcast with Andrew discussing “high-level networking” and international dealmaking. And yes, he invited the notorious misogynists to a party at his infamous D.C. house, which as The Swamp revealed earlier this year, is filled with giant portraits of Trump and presidential merchandise in every room.
But Zampolli insists he knew little about their vile reputations or court battles and only met the Tate brothers three times before they were arrested in Miami last week. “Honestly, with all my problems, I didn’t know,” he claimed. “They told me they had some lawsuits - but everybody has lawsuits.” Let nothing stand in the way of Donald Trump Park!
JD and Usha and the Name of the Game: A One-Act Play
The conversation after the Vance baby birth might have gone something like this.
USHA: “So, what shall we call him, honey?”“I was thinking about my dad’s name, Krish.
JD: “Nobody’s ever going to spell that correctly in Ohio.”
USHA: “Buchipapayya? After my grandfather?”
JD: “Buch! I don’t think that’s gonna go down well with our base.”
USHA? What then? I’m not going to give him initials, like you.”
JD: I was kinda thinking about … Donald?”
USHA: “No way!
JD: “After my biological dad.”
USHA: “You didn’t even like your dad!”
JD: “How about John?”
USHA: “That’s the president’s middle name.”
JD: “There’s lots of Johns. Like Chief Justice John Roberts–you clerked for him."
USHA: “This is about our son, not our position in D.C.”
JD: “What about DC? DC Vance? I could just tell him it’s for Donald.”
USHA: “What’s gotten into you?”
JD: “It’s just–I hear Marco’s having another kid just so he can name it after Trump. He’s gonna call it Trump Rubio, if it’s a boy. Or a girl.”
USHA: “I don’t care. You are not naming our son after that man.”
JD: “Okay, okay, well how about we let him release the first baby pic?”
USHA: “Really? Why would we let him do that?”
JD: I’ll get you a farm in Middleburg...”
USHA: “Okay fine …”
Taylor Farms Tops the Polls
There are few things that spread faster than explosive diarrhea—except, perhaps, a good political conspiracy theory. Taylor Farms, led by founder and CEO Bruce Taylor, has discovered that the hard way. After the FDA reversed its initial Cyclospora test result and apologized this week, the online conversation didn’t calm down; it detonated. According to PeakMetrics, roughly 60 percent of all virtual chatter about Taylor Farms over the past 24 hours has centered on an unsubstantiated theory that the company’s $1 million donation to Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC—or the company’s White House visit last week—somehow persuaded the FDA to walk back its findings.The politics has now eclipsed the food safety story itself. Overall sentiment toward Taylor Farms is 78 percent unfavorable, but conspiracy-related posts are even harsher, with 85 percent expressing negative views. Welcome to 2026, where every public health scare comes with a side of virtual diarrhea.
Spotted...
High above 15th Street, with wine glasses clinking and hors d’oeuvres circulating, abortion-rights advocates, lobbyists and lawmakers gathered this week to launch the America 250 Reproductive Justice Resolution. Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove set the tone with a confession for the room: Washington has been keeping her up at night. “I have insomnia a lot when I’m here,” the California Democrat declared, “because these people are crazy,” The event, hosted with advocacy group All* Above All, celebrated a resolution introduced by Kamlager-Dove alongside Reps. Lateefah Simon and Ayanna Pressley that frames reproductive justice as central to American freedom.
And the Award for MAGA’s Worst (Ex) Couple Goes to…
A bitter custody battle, a defamation lawsuit, a secret recording, and a pile of abuse allegations. That’s just some of the baggage that Trump-endorsed Congressman Max Miller is lugging into his reelection bid this November for his suburban Cleveland district. Meanwhile, it seems like every day his legal battle with his ex-wife, GOP operative Emily Moreno, coughs up another damning court filing, which was shared with The Swamp.
TLDR: Miller has been accused of violent behavior before. The latest allegations surfaced in a Daily Mail report in May detailing an incident in which Miller, 37, allegedly struck Moreno—the daughter of Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno—in the arm during a custody exchange over their 2-year-old daughter. The Bay Village Police Department confirmed to the Daily Beast that it responded to a report of child abuse that day and that the investigation remains open.
Miller was incensed that those allegations became public. He sued Moreno for defamation, claiming she was the Mail’s source and that he had “lost business opportunities, reduced campaign contributions to aid his reelection campaign to Congress, and other pecuniary harms that will be quantified in an amount to be proven at trial.”
But here’s the catch. The Mail’s story cited court filings and three anonymous sources. Under Ohio’s shield law, the outlet doesn’t have to cough up those sources. So, in typical MAGA fashion, Miller's lawsuit feels like a flashy nothingburger.
On Monday, Moreno’s attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the case and asked the court to require her ex-husband to pay her legal fees. “Congressman Miller’s reign of abuse must end. This lawsuit is an extension of that abuse,” they wrote in the filing.
And to think: Donald Trump attended their wedding at his golf club in Bedminster. Maybe he’s cursed. At least Donald Trump Jr. and Bettina Anderson are marked safe since Trump skipped theirs..
New York Young…Racists?
Another day, another leak of abhorrent remarks from New York’s Young Republican Club. And the boys are fighting again.
After a New York Magazine report outed the club’s former treasurer, Nicholas T. Rafael Jr., for allegedly operating a burner X account filled with antisemitic and racist posts, it appears yet another battle over the soul of the storied club is underway.
On one side is the club’s president, Stefano Forte, who’s been accused of steering the organization toward the far-right fringe—championing causes like “remigration,” the mass expulsion of immigrants and minority groups from their countries, and advocating for White South Africans.
One NYYRC member told The Swamp that under Forte, the club can’t even sell tickets to events “because no socially well adjusted, young professional wants to be associated with a group of unemployable Neo-Nazis who can’t speak to the opposite sex.”
“He’s a 30-year-old with no job who lives with his parents,” the member added. “He’s destroyed a 100-plus-year-old institution in a matter of months.”
Forte declined to comment. His parents couldn’t be reached, either.
We’re going to deliver even more delicious gossip in The Swamp—and to help us get the very best secrets from its murky bottom, we are going to be publishing on Wednesday mornings from August onwards.
