Extra Extra: Are Ticks Actually Government Bioweapons?

July 18, 2019, 5:30 p.m.

Plus unsealed documents detailing the Stormy Daniels hush-money payments, a Jon Hamm cameo, a meme run amok, and more end-of-day links.

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• Newly unsealed documents detailing Michael Cohen's hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign suggest Donald Trump was very involved in the scheme.
• New York's FBI field office worked with Italian police on a widespread mob crackdown, arresting Thomas Gambino and 18 others in Palermo, Italy, while U.S. authorities raided his Staten Island home.
• Oh hey, looks like Jon Hamm is in the new Top Gun movie, did you know?
• For the record, Donald Trump did not try to stop the "Send her back!" chants he whipped up about Rep. Ilhan Omar at last night's campaign rally.
• Congress would very much like to know whether or not the Defense Department unleashed Lyme disease-infected ticks into our landscapes as a bioweapons experiment.
• An arsonist screaming, "You die!" set fire to an anime studio in Kyoto, Japan, killing 33 people.
• The judge who ruled that an alleged teen rapist (who allegedly bragged to his friends about having raped a girl at a party, and sent them video) deserved leniency because he came from a "good family" and stood to attend a "good college" has resigned.
• The man behind the "Storm Area 51" Facebook page is reportedly terrified of the monster he created.
• I'm putting on a concert for all my friends this weekend: