Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) publicly broke with the Trump administration this week over its push to sell advanced F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, warning that the deal raises serious national security concerns.

In a post on social media, Lawler laid out his opposition to the proposed sale of one of the most sophisticated weapons platforms in the U.S. arsenal.

"The Administration's push to sell F-35 fighter aircraft to Turkey raises significant national security concerns," the congressman wrote.

Lawler acknowledged Turkey's status as a NATO ally but argued that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's conduct has repeatedly cast doubt on the country's dependability as a strategic partner. That track record, he noted, is precisely why lawmakers acted to block such a transfer in the past.

"That's why Congress legally prohibited the transfer of F35s to Turkey in the first place," Lawler wrote.

Pointing to Turkey's posture toward U.S. allies in both Europe and the Middle East, Lawler said he remains firmly against the sale.

"I remain deeply opposed to the sale of one of America's most advanced military platforms to Turkey and do not believe it is in the best interests of the United States," he wrote.

The pushback is notable coming from a Republican lawmaker, marking a point of friction between the administration and members of its own party on a sensitive foreign policy and defense matter. Lawler's post was amplified by conservative commentator Erick Erickson.

Turkey was previously removed from the F-35 program during Trump's first term over its purchase of a Russian missile defense system, a decision that reflected long-running concerns about Ankara's reliability within the alliance.

A rising MAGA star's vacations with one of his top aides are quietly fueling rumors, according to a former Republican strategist.

In a recent episode of The Bulwark Podcast, Tim Miller spoke with political reporter Will Sommer about rumors spreading regarding MAGA Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ) and his relationship with his senior aide, Will Hannen.

Miller explained that stories broke earlier this week, citing two sources who say that Hannen is living with Hamadeh at his Capitol Hill residence, and the two have gone on vacations together.

"Sources say the relationship is a little closer than the typical member-staffer dynamic," Miller explained. "It's led to a lot of questions about what's exactly happening there."

Miller noted, "I don't actually know if Abe's made any official statements about his sexuality, but he's not openly gay. So we don't exactly know what's happening."

Still, the rumors "are kind of the buzz out there in MAGA" circles, as Hamadeh is "a rising star of the MAGA wing. He is very much of the MAGA Trump era within the party."

Sommer admitted that the rumors about Hamadeh were "a surprise to me," but he added that Hannen was Hamadeh's "highest paid congressional staffer, who's now with his campaign" for re-election.

"He was unreachable when he was on vacation with this guy," Sommer said. "So I think there's a lot of smoke here. We'll have to see if there's fire."

Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) warned this week that President Donald Trump has openly acknowledged directing federal prosecutors to investigate elections whose results he dislikes — a statement the congressman argued the president made plainly and even boasted about.

"Trump just told the country, out loud, that he picks up the phone and orders federal prosecutors to investigate elections when he does not like how the vote is going," Levin wrote, adding that the president "bragged about it twice this week."

According to Levin, Trump described calling a U.S. attorney in California, telling the prosecutor to "do me a favor" and look into a race his preferred candidate was at risk of losing.

The congressman then laid out why he sees the claim as baseless. There is no evidence of fraud in California's primary, Levin wrote, noting that even Steve Hilton — the Republican candidate Trump claims to have rescued — said he never heard about any such call. Levin added that Los Angeles County's top elections official stated that no one at the Justice Department had touched their process.

Levin attributed the slow count not to fraud but to the thoroughness of California's system, where every registered voter is mailed a ballot, every returned ballot has its signature checked against the voter's file, and late-arriving mail ballots remain valid if postmarked by Election Day.

"Slow is not fraud," he wrote.

Levin said he would support responsible, legal efforts to speed up vote counting through better funding and modernized ballot processing. What he would not accept, he argued, is a president investigating his way to a preferred outcome.

The congressman tied the behavior back to 2020, writing that because Trump still can't admit he lost that year, "every election he dislikes becomes a crime in his mind." The post was amplified by political scientist Norman Ornstein.

Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as President Donald Trump's communications director, argued this week that Vice President JD Vance lacks the one quality that makes Trump politically formidable — and that the deficiency is Vance's central problem heading into any future presidential run.

Scaramucci, who has become a frequent critic of his former boss, framed his assessment in blunt and decidedly modern terms.

"JD Vance doesn't have Trump's rizz," he wrote, using slang for charisma or charm.

Despite the criticism, Scaramucci offered a backhanded acknowledgment of Trump's political gifts. "Like him or hate him, Trump's got it going on," he wrote. "He captures peoples' imagination."

But the former aide was quick to clarify what he believes actually drives the president. In Scaramucci's telling, Trump "cares about: money and attention," and that pairing amounts to "the whole operating system."

He went further, arguing that Trump is "not there to serve the American public" but rather "to serve himself and enrich his family." Once that lens is applied, Scaramucci contended, everything else falls into place — the decisions, the chaos, and the late-night posts all become "completely predictable."

The throughline of his argument was that Vance, whatever his ambitions, simply can't reproduce the quality that animates Trump's appeal.

"And Vance can't replicate any of it," Scaramucci wrote. "That's his problem."

The post is the latest in a series of swipes Scaramucci has taken at the administration and at Vance specifically, coming amid heightened scrutiny of the vice president following his recent comments downplaying Watergate and comparing himself to former President Richard Nixon.

Scaramucci, who lasted just 11 days in the White House in 2017 before being ousted, has positioned himself as one of the more visible former Trump aides willing to publicly question both the president and his heir apparent.

Trump's speech at his Great American State Fair exposed signs of what a specialist is calling his "neurological decline."

In a recent video, Hilary Shae, a licensed speech-language pathologist, pointed out that Trump "couldn't say 250th anniversary" or the word magnificent. She shared clips that showed Trump stopping hard as those words came up.

"Difficulties that Donald Trump has with saying specific words are consistent with dysarthria and ataxia or apraxia," Shae said. "They can occur after a stroke. They can occur with other brain disorders and dementia."

People who have apraxia or ataxia struggle with "phonemic paraphasias," Shae continued. "Phonemic paraphasias are when the motor speech required to coordinate words and syllables together are not coordinated appropriately."

An example would be if a person trying to say telephone accidentally uttered it as "teflone," Shae said, explaining that it's "because my sounds got mixed up, and that is what's happening a lot of the time with Donald Trump's speech."

Trump's brain is having trouble with "the coordination of these syllables in order and in connected speech," Shae said. "It's not just one word because the more syllables that you have, the higher level of motor coordination is required to maintain appropriate speech-sound coordination."

However, the other possibility is that Trump has "something called dysarthria, and dysarthria is kind of like a weakness over time of use," Shae said. "So when someone is speaking, and over a short period of time, they might lose their breath, their voice might go really low."

According to Shae, "He does that a lot in this speech" that he delivered for the Great American State Fair.

"He does that a lot in this speech, and I do think this is one of the newer symptoms," she said. "He has this dysarthria that could be consistent with a TIA, which is a transient ischemic attack, or a stroke."

President Donald Trump issued a stark threat against Iran on Saturday night, warning that the country could cease to exist if it continues attacking, as he announced a new round of U.S. strikes targeting Iranian military sites.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said American aircraft had hit Iranian missile and drone storage locations along with coastal radar sites, accusing Tehran of breaching the ceasefire yet again.

"United States aircraft just struck Iranian missile and drone storage locations, and coastal radar sites, for violating the Cease Fire Agreement, AGAIN!" Trump wrote, adding an exasperated, "It is very possible that they will never learn!"

The president then escalated to an explicit warning about the conflict's potential trajectory.

"There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started," Trump wrote. "If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!"

The post came amid a rapidly deteriorating ceasefire, with U.S. and Iranian forces exchanging fire following attacks on commercial shipping near the Strait of Hormuz.

In a separate post minutes earlier, Trump amplified a quote from adviser Stephen Miller attacking Democrats, linking to a Fox News video.

A conservative former judge described how stunned he was to see how much a historical document reminds him of Trump.

During an episode of The Court of History podcast, Michael Luttig explained that he was reading the 27 grievances, a list from the Declaration of Independence of particular problems Americans had with King George III.

"I set about to understand each and every grievance in its fullness, and I did," Luttig said. "And when I came to the end of that process, analytical, intellectual process, and I stepped back and looked at the 27 grievances, I instantly thought to myself, 'Oh my god. Oh my god.'"

The grievances include complaints about King George, like that he "refused...the most wholesome and necessary for the public good," "called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant...for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance," and "endeavoured to prevent the population of these States...obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners."

Luttig was stunned when reading them because of how much they reminded him of Trump.

"Not only is almost each and every one of these 27 grievances a grievance that Americans have against this president today," Luttig said. "But Americans have today far more and more consequential grievances today against this president."

The former judge compared Trump's tariffs to one of the grievances that said "King George had levied taxes but not allowed those taxes to redound to the benefit of the American colonists," Luttig said, describing it.

"It went on and on and on in astonishing parallel to the acts of this President of the United States," Luttig said. "What Donald Trump wants for America in the future, that will be the end of America as it was founded 250 years ago."

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) threatened legal action against President Donald Trump on Saturday following reports that the United States had launched a new round of airstrikes against Iran, accusing the president of openly violating a war powers measure passed by Congress.

Khanna was reacting to a report, flagged by journalist Acyn, that Fox was claiming the U.S. was carrying out fresh strikes on Iran. The report suggested the situation was escalating and cast doubt on whether a ceasefire would hold, accompanied by footage marked "unclassified" from U.S. Central Command.

The congressman did not hold back in his response, characterizing the strikes as a clear breach of the law.

"These strikes are a blatant violation of the War Powers Resolution that we passed," Khanna wrote.

He then issued a direct ultimatum to the president, warning that lawmakers were prepared to go to court if the strikes continued.

"Trump must stop this war now — or we will take him to court to compel him to do so," Khanna wrote.

The War Powers Resolution, enacted in 1973, requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to hostilities and bars sustained military action beyond 60 days without congressional authorization. Khanna has long been among the most vocal members of Congress invoking the resolution to challenge presidential military action without legislative approval.

The renewed strikes, if confirmed, would mark a significant escalation in a confrontation with Iran that has already drawn sharp criticism from lawmakers in both parties who argue the administration has sidestepped Congress in its military decision-making.

Khanna's threat sets up a potential legal clash over the scope of presidential war powers, an area where courts have historically been reluctant to intervene in disputes between the executive and legislative branches.

These strikes are a blatant violation of the War Powers Resolution that we passed.

Trump must stop this war now — or we will take him to court to compel him to do so. https://t.co/DaCp96I09b
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) June 27, 2026

The Trump administration made a small but conspicuous mathematical error in announcing its new nominee to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an immigration policy analyst pointed out Saturday.

The flub came as President Donald Trump announced he would nominate Lance Schroyer, described as a former Oklahoma state trooper and Marine, to serve as the next director of ICE. According to reporting from journalist Priscilla Alvarez, the agency has not had a Senate-confirmed director since 2017.

That timeline is where the administration ran into trouble.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an immigration analyst who closely tracks the agency, flagged that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin had characterized the nominee as the first Senate-confirmed director in 11 years — a figure that doesn't square with the math.

"Someone there did the math wrong," Reichlin-Melnick wrote, noting that the actual gap "would be just under 10 years" rather than 11.

The discrepancy is minor in the scheme of things, amounting to roughly a year's difference in how long the agency has gone without a permanent, Senate-confirmed leader. But it's the kind of easily checkable detail that tends to draw attention when it appears in an official announcement from a cabinet secretary.

ICE has been led by a series of acting directors since the departure of its last confirmed chief, a vacancy that has stretched across multiple administrations even as the agency has taken on an increasingly central role in Trump's immigration agenda.

Schroyer's nomination, if confirmed by the Senate, would end that years-long stretch. Whether it spans 10 years or 11, the gap underscores how long one of the administration's most prominent enforcement agencies has operated without a permanent leader installed through the full confirmation process.

A journalist flagged how a Trump lie was exposed by a recent photo.

On an episode of The Daily Beast Podcast, host Joanna Coles said she's "slightly fascinated" that Trump "gets away" with lying about his height. Coles said she noticed he's "shrinking" after looking at a picture of him standing next to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD).

"He's shrinking into the giant shrimp that Steve Bannon said that he was," Coles said. "I think that Donald Trump is literally shrinking as we see him."

Trump's height has been reported as 6'3" by other outlets citing his medical records. Coles said that Thune stands at 6'4", and when she saw them standing next to each other earlier this week, she thought Trump is "definitely not 6'2"," she said.

"John Thune looks like he's got four inches on him there," Coles said. "I know size isn't supposed to matter, but I think it does in this situation."

Trump biographer Michael Wolff noted, "Donald Trump is 80, and, you know, you shrink."

Thune looked more "presidential" standing next to Trump, Coles added, while Wolff described Trump as "grotesque, clownish."

Coles joked that Trump has "accelerated shrinking syndrome," a diagnosis she made up on the spot because of its initials.

A former senior Department of Homeland Security official said Saturday that Vice President JD Vance's recent comments dismissing Watergate amount to a "tacit admission" that the Trump administration's conduct is more serious than the scandal that ended Richard Nixon's presidency — and could ultimately make it easier to hold administration officials accountable.

Miles Taylor, the former DHS chief of staff who now runs the group Defiance.org, made the remarks during an appearance on MS NOW's "Alex Witt Reports," responding to Vance's claim that Watergate would be little more than a brief news story if it happened today.

Taylor offered a grim partial agreement, saying that compared to what President Donald Trump is doing now, Watergate might warrant only a multi-day story. The reason, he argued, is that Trump has done things he described as substantially more unconstitutional than Watergate — and Vance's comment, in Taylor's view, was an acknowledgment of exactly that.

But Taylor drew a sharp distinction between the two presidencies. Nixon, he noted, tried to cover up his abuses. Trump and his team, by contrast, have carried out actions that federal judges have ruled facially unconstitutional out in the open, without any attempt to hide them.

That brazenness, Taylor argued, cuts both ways.

He pointed to prosecutors who previously worked in the Justice Department who believe the administration's open defiance of the law will ultimately work against it. By wearing what Taylor called the lawlessness on their sleeves, officials may be handing a future Democratic Congress and a future administration the evidence needed to pursue accountability.

Taylor framed the dynamic as a double-edged sword for the administration — the same out-in-the-open conduct that alarms defenders of the rule of law could, down the line, become the basis for holding those responsible to account.

Influential conservative commentator Erick Erickson warned this week that the Trump administration is being outmaneuvered by Iran, arguing that President Donald Trump waited too long to act and has now boxed himself in over oil prices.

Erickson, a longtime radio host and writer with a substantial following on the right, did not mince words in his assessment of the administration's posture toward Tehran.

"Iran is playing this administration like fiddle," he wrote.

According to Erickson, the core of the problem is timing. He argued that Trump "waited so long that oil prices became a crisis" and now finds himself unable to take any step that might jeopardize the flow of oil.

Erickson went further, claiming the president had effectively conceded the bind he was in. Trump "admitted as much publicly," Erickson wrote, adding that the president "was afraid of a depression."

The contrast Erickson drew was pointed: while Trump fears the economic fallout, "Iran is not."

The post was a notable shot from the right flank, coming from a commentator who is generally aligned with Republican politics rather than an outside critic of the administration.

The criticism adds Erickson's voice to a chorus questioning the administration's handling of Iran, made more striking by the fact that it comes from within conservative ranks rather than from the president's usual liberal opponents.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson's recent "protection program" comment reveals his true fear, according to an ex-GOP operative.

Johnson's comments came at the Faith and Freedom Coalition's annual conference on Friday, where he said, "I run the protection program. I'll take care of you." Johnson made the remark in the context of a warning about electing Democrats in the midterms, which he said will lead to committees investigating Trump along with his family, Cabinet, donors and allies.

According to a Saturday piece by Steve Schmidt, the "extraordinary" and "astonishing" remarks reveal that "Mike Johnson is panicking" about accountability.

"Mike Johnson isn't panicked because he believes innocent people will be persecuted," Schmidt wrote. "He's panicked because he understands that accountability may finally be coming to Washington."

Johnson's speech "sounds like dialogue written for Burgess Meredith playing the Penguin in the old 'Batman' TV series," Schmidt continued.

"He knows there will be subpoenas. He knows there will be hearings. He knows there will be oversight," Schmidt wrote. "He knows investigators will begin asking questions that should have been asked years ago — and he knows the answers may be devastating."

Schmidt predicted that if a Democratic majority "should reclaim the Speaker's gavel in the House" after the November midterms, they would "understand the assignment."

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) seized on Vice President JD Vance's recent comments downplaying Watergate this week, warning that the remarks reveal something fundamental about how the vice president views presidential power.

Murphy was responding to reporting from journalist Aaron Rupar, who flagged Vance's comments at an event tied to the Richard Nixon Foundation. According to that account, Vance said Nixon's "historical legacy is enjoying a bit of a renaissance, and deservedly so," and joked that if Watergate "happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12 hours news story." Vance reportedly added that "the idea that it took down a presidency is crazy."

For Murphy, the remarks were not a throwaway line but a window into the administration's governing philosophy.

"I actually think this statement is a big deal," the senator wrote. "Because it tells you all you need to know."

He then spelled out what he believed Vance had revealed.

"They believe, in their bones, in an imperial presidency where the executive rules absolutely and uses his power to destroy enemies and enrich himself," Murphy wrote.

The exchange adds to a growing back-and-forth over Vance's Nixon comments, which have drawn criticism from Democrats who see in them an attempt to rehabilitate a president forced from office over abuses of power. Hillary Clinton earlier took her own shot at Vance over the same remarks.

Watergate, which unfolded after a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in 1972, led to Nixon's resignation in 1974 amid mounting evidence of a cover-up and bipartisan pressure to step down.

Murphy, a frequent critic of the administration who has positioned himself as a vocal warning voice about democratic backsliding, framed Vance's apparent dismissiveness toward that history as a tell — a signal of how the current White House understands the limits, or lack thereof, on executive power.

A Nobel laureate held the world's richest man Elon Musk responsible for the deaths of millions of children in a scathing takedown.

Renowned economist Paul Krugman called Musk "a horrible, terrible person" in a recent episode of his podcast. Krugman mostly focused on Musk's cuts to USAID while in the Trump administration.

"For most of last year, Elon Musk was the second most powerful man in America," Krugman explained. "He was running a large part of the government's budget, and during that time, he established a track record of evil incompetence."

Musk "fed USAID to the wood chipper," and "more or less personally set out to destroy this aid agency, set out to cut off healthcare, nutritional assistance, just basic necessities of life for millions and millions of extremely desperate people," Krugman said, adding that "he did so callously, carelessly."

Krugman continued, saying, "I mean, really evil and really incompetent on enormous scales, and why aren't people talking about it more?"

USAID was "the principal channel for aid to the most desperate, poorest people in the world," Krugman continued. Cuts by Musk have "led to millions of unnecessary deaths, including millions of children," Krugman added, saying the point was proven by studies, health models, and "field evidence of widespread death as a result of the cancellation."

He described Musk as "quite evil," and "very much like Trump, somebody who can dish it out, but can't take it, can't even handle the kind of criticism that any public figure should expect to receive," Krugman said.

Conservative legal activist Mike Davis floated an aggressive immigration crackdown this week if the Supreme Court rules against the Trump administration on birthright citizenship, including a call to prioritize the detention and deportation of women of childbearing age.

Davis, a prominent ally of President Donald Trump who heads the Article III Project, framed his posts around the expectation that the high court will rule against the administration's position. He accused the justices in advance of preparing to "lawlessly" extend birthright citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants.

In one post, Davis wrote that if the court "lawlessly pretends we fought a Civil War and passed subsequent laws to give birthright citizenship to illegal aliens, we must ramp up third-country detainments and mass-deportations."

"With no mercy," he added.

He then went further, singling out a specific group as a target.

"We must start with birthing-aged women," Davis wrote, closing the post with a single word: "Adios."

In a related post, Davis reiterated the framing, declaring that the Supreme Court was "going to lawlessly give away birthright citizenship to illegally aliens" and that the response should "make the top priority birthing-aged women."

That post was attached to a message from Homeland Security official Markwayne Mullin, who had touted the administration's deportation efforts as targeting "illegal alien criminals" including "rapists, murders, pedophiles, and gang members."

Davis is no fringe figure in the movement. He has been floated for senior legal roles in Trump's orbit and has positioned himself as an enforcer for the administration's most combative legal positions.

His suggestion that deportation efforts should begin with women based on their reproductive capacity drew immediate attention on X.

The Supreme Court has not yet issued its ruling in the birthright citizenship case.

A spat between two Supreme Court justices is putting Trump’s plans in jeopardy, a legal expert noted.

Justice Samuel Alito looks poised to stay on as a counterweight to Justice Sonia Sotomayor after their "wacko interaction" spilled out into public view, Michael Popok said during a recent episode of the Unprecedented podcast.

Sotomayor read her "powerful dissent" to Alito's majority opinion on an asylum case, Popok noted.

"So Alito was done reading his summary of his decision, and next up was Sotomayor, and she read big portions of her dissent, and really, I mean, accused the court of being heartless, of comparing it to that famous ship that was turned away by numerous countries filled with Holocaust survivors," Popok explained.

Popok and his guest host, legal analyst Dina Doll, also brought up that Trump is hoping Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas will step down, opening the way for him to add a new conservative justice or two before the midterms.

"Honestly, I thought after that interaction, maybe Alito will not step down this summer because I think he sees himself as this necessary person, probably, to combat Sotomayor right now," Doll said. "It's just the ego in him."

Doll continued, "Somebody like that thinks that they need to be in charge, that nobody else can carry the mantle."

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went after Vice President JD Vance Saturday over his comments downplaying the Watergate scandal, using the moment to land a pair of pointed jabs at both the vice president and the Republican Party.

Clinton was responding to a New York Times report headlined "Vance Downplays Watergate and Compares Himself to Nixon." According to the story, Vance argued that the scandal which ended Richard Nixon's presidency would amount to "like a 12-hour news story" if it unfolded today, and suggested the "deep state" had been responsible for taking Nixon down.

Clinton's first swipe took aim at Vance's grasp of the history itself — and at his administration's record on book bans.

"Maybe Vance doesn't know this history because it's in one of the books his administration banned," she wrote.

Her second was aimed at the broader Republican Party, drawing a contrast between the lawmakers of the Watergate era and those serving today.

"The difference between Watergate and now is that back then, Republicans actually did something about a law-breaking president," Clinton wrote. "Today, they only roll over for their cult leader."

The reference points to the bipartisan reckoning that followed the Watergate break-in, when Republican leaders ultimately pressed Nixon toward resignation rather than defend him through impeachment proceedings.

Vance's reported framing inverts that history, casting Nixon less as a president brought down by his own conduct than as a target of unelected government forces — a narrative that echoes the grievance politics central to the current administration.

Clinton, a frequent and unsparing critic of President Donald Trump and his allies, has shown little hesitation in needling the administration on social media, and her latest post folded two of the left's recurring criticisms — book bans and Republican deference to Trump — into a single response.

Trump ended up making one of his political rivals look better with online critics after a swipe backfired.

In a Saturday Truth Social post, Trump shared a picture of himself when he was younger in his military school uniform next to a picture of an 18-year-old Obama with a cigarette in his mouth while donning a fedora.

However, online critics reacted by saying that Obama looked better and brought up stories about Trump when he was that age.

"Trump just posted a photo of Obama aura mogging him," wrote political commentator Adam Mockler.

"Trump was in his 20s when the DOJ began investigating him for discriminating against Black renters," noted political watchdog account PatriotTakes.

"We all know who the better hang is," posted journalist Aaron Rupar.

"Imagine posting a side by side making your opp look so awesome and you look like a giant big earred dweeb," wrote political strategist Matt Royer. "He really thought he cooked here."

"Trump was actually 17-18 in this photo," political news network MeidasTouch noted. "His parents sent him to a military boarding school for behavioral issues & bullying. Now he uses the photo to pretend he was in the military."

Political strategist Chris Jackson reacted by posting a picture of a smiling Biden in his twenties with the caption, "Joe Biden at 20 > Donald Trump at 20."

Anthony Scaramucci, who lasted about eleven days as President Donald Trump's communications director in 2017, says he finally understands a children's story that puzzled him as a boy — thanks to the man he once worked for.

In a post shared with his followers, the former White House aide turned vocal Trump critic offered a blunt assessment of the president's fitness, writing that Trump "is not well and he's probably too old for the job." Scaramucci acknowledged the line wasn't "politically correct," but argued it was "probably right."

The bulk of his post, however, was less about Trump than about everyone around him. Scaramucci described an administration paralyzed by fear, staffed with people afraid of losing their jobs, afraid of being attacked online, and afraid of being primaried by a challenger Trump himself would select to take them out.

"That's why we're frozen," he said.

Then came the epiphany that gives the post its punch. Scaramucci recalled his first-grade teacher reading the class "The Emperor's New Clothes," the fable in which a vain ruler parades naked while terrified subjects pretend to admire his nonexistent garments. As a child, he found the premise absurd, wondering why anyone would go along with such an obvious lie.

"I'm 62 now," Scaramucci said. "Now I get it."

The implication was hard to miss: in Scaramucci's telling, the people surrounding Trump are the courtiers too frightened to say what they plainly see, and Trump is the emperor convinced of his own splendor.

Scaramucci has spent years warning about his former boss, but the fable framing casts the dysfunction less as a policy failure than as a psychological one, sustained by everyone too afraid to point it out.

Three days into the 16-day Great American State Fair organized by the President Donald Trump-linked group Freedom 250, the event is already “falling apart at the seams,” argued prominent liberal commentator and podcast host Adam Mockler on Saturday.

“Just like everything else Donald Trump touches, this Great American Fair is falling apart at the seams,” Mockler said in a video published on social media Saturday. “We are at day three of his 16-day fair that is funded by our taxpayer dollars to the tune of $80 million, and it’s falling apart.”

Critics have already noted what they say are small crowd sizes and near-empty exhibits, but several other issues appeared to plague the event within its first few days, including power failures that stalled a Ferris wheel and melted ice cream.

“The exhibits are entirely empty, the fields have nobody in them. Even the main attraction, the Ferris wheel, ran out of power last night and was shut down all evening,” Mockler said.

“We have melting ice cream, we have not enough tables so kids are being forced to eat on the ground. And on top of all of that, even some exhibits have a Confederate flag… I mean, it doesn’t really matter because they’re all empty anyway.”

The Great American State Fair got off to a rough start weeks before opening to the public last Thursday after performing artists bailed on the event upon learning of its ties to Trump. The president would go on to attack the artists for “getting ‘the yips’” and floated himself as a suitable replacement for the musical acts.

“The pungent odor of Kristi Noem lingers in Washington.”

Those are the opening words of longtime conservative columnist George Will, whose column in the Washington Post hammered the 6-3 Supreme Court majority for wrongly dismantling the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program depended upon by hundreds of thousands of immigrants.

According to Will, the conservative majority deliberately ignored overwhelming evidence that Kristi Noem's actions were driven by racial "animus," and therefore "violated the pertinent law."

As he pointed out, within three days of the former Department of Homeland Security head terminating TPS for Haitians and Syrians, which led to the court case that made its way to the nation's highest court, Noem publicly recommended "a full travel ban on every damn country that's been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies" who "slaughter our heroes" and "suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars."

He dryly added, "She [Noem] refrained from echoing Trump’s assertion about kitten-cooking Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. This marks her as a MAGA moderate. JD Vance spread the pet-eating fiction because he said creating 'stories' (his word) makes the media notice Americans’ suffering."

"Surely justices are not required to ignore such rhetoric? And although thoughtful people disagree about whether, or how much, justices should consider the downstream consequences of their rulings," he suggested.

Expressing his disappointment with the conservative-majority court, he offered, "Time and freshening breezes will cleanse Washington, dissipating the legacies of appointees like Noem, and of the president who chose them. The court’s mistaken ruling she provoked will be more lasting."

Emmy Award-winning journalist Eric Flack of WUSA9, a CBS-affiliated D.C. news station, toured the Great American State Fair on the National Mall and found that the fair’s state exhibits ranged wildly in quality.

Exhibits for Connecticut and Maine, for instance, were especially empty.

“Connecticut and Maine are sharing a space and basically just put up some chairs and their state logos,” Flack said in a video he published Saturday on social media.

Some states didn’t participate in helping craft their own state exhibits at all, Flack said. North Carolina’s exhibit, for instance, had no involvement from North Carolina officials, and instead was organized by the company that built tractor trailers for Freedom 250, the organization linked to President Donald Trump that organized the fair.

“Their exhibit is a race car and some North Carolina potatoes,” Flack said, his video showing a small box of potatoes sitting on the ground.

Some states saw above-average interest among attendees, such as Arizona’s, which featured a "black light star experience" and “free cactus pens.” Most state exhibits, however, were largely informational, Flack said.

“Most of the rest of the states and territories just seemed to be using the Great American State Fair as a ‘great American visitors bureau,'” Flack said.

Critics have also noted what appears to be small crowd sizes at the fair, officially started last Thursday but stumbled weeks earlier when performers pulled out after learning of the event’s ties to Trump, who went on to tout himself as a suitable replacement.

Add anti-immigrant activists to the list of Donald Trump allies who feel betrayed by the president after he cancelled a major policy announcement in Wisconsin in early June and instead revealed it in a little-noticed memo.

At the same time, the president has aggravated a substantial number of his MAGA followers by starting a war with Iran, annoyed GOP lawmakers by insisting they pass his SAVE America Act, and seen his approval numbers crater due to the high cost of living. He now he has the Stephen Miller wing of his party mad at him.

According to Washington Post's reporting, the administration announced it would allow dairy farms to bring in migrant labor via an under-the-radar department memo after quietly shelving plans for a public announcement in Wisconsin in early June. One lawmaker and two trade groups confirmed the deliberate coverup, speaking on condition of anonymity about internal discussions.

"We certainly see this as a very good first step," said Trey Forsyth, a lobbyist for the National Milk Producers Federation. "We're just excited to see them doing what they can."

Anti-immigrant activists were not so forgiving.

Rosemary Jenks, founder of the Immigration Accountability Project and member of the Mass Deportation Coalition, articulated their fury in telling the Post, "There's no question that American workers will be pushed out of the dairy industry because H-2A workers will be cheaper."

The report notes that the embattled president has been "trying to address mounting dissatisfaction among farmers fed up with soaring fuel prices, tariffs and fertilizer inflation. On Thursday night, Trump hosted farmers at the Rose Garden Club at the White House to shore up support with a key constituency."

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly attempted damage control in a statement, claiming Trump "listens to a variety of opinions on any given issue, but ultimately decides based on what he feels is best for the country." She framed the policy as merely "clarifying laws currently on the books."

But the Immigration Accountability Project's Jenks dismissed the argument, firing back, "The law that Congress passed very clearly says that H-2A workers have to be temporary or seasonal. Last I checked, there are no dairy animals that take breaks."

Violence near the Strait of Hormuz continued for its third consecutive day Saturday after “American targets” in Bahrain were hit by suspected Iranian strikes, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“Iran didn’t specifically claim responsibility for the attacks. But state media said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had carried out strikes against American targets in the region and reasserted Iran’s claim of control over traffic in the strait,” the Journal’s report reads.

The most recent exchange of violence between the United States and Iran began Thursday after the Iranian military struck a ship passing through an unauthorized route in the Strait of Hormuz. The Trump administration responded with a series of strikes on Iranian missile and drone locations.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a U.S. official told the Journal that two Iranian drones had been shot down Saturday over Bahrain, where the U.S. Naval Support Activity Bahrain base is stationed.

“One [drone] was shot down by a ground-based defense system and the other landed in a remote airfield area without hitting any target,” the Journal reported, paraphrasing the U.S. official. “Bahrain didn’t detail any damage from the attack.”

Donald Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit filed against the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has hit a treacherous hurdle in a new legal filing in Florida where the suit was filed.

According to The Telegraph, BBC lawyers have filed discovery demands requiring Trump to disclose his "telephone logs, calendars, schedules, and diaries," spanning November 3, 2020, through January 20, 2021—the critical period encompassing the Capitol insurrection.

The demand represents a calculated legal strategy by the network to force Trump to either produce damaging evidence or risk judicial sanctions for non-compliance, with the Telegraph reporting the BBC is essentially putting the president and his lawyers in the awkward position of having to lay all their cards on the table.

The report notes that the American president initiated the lawsuit seeking $10 billion in damages over BBC Panorama's reporting that the network had allegedly spliced separate segments of Trump's January 6 speech in a way that misrepresented his words. The edited version suggested Trump urged supporters to "fight like hell" and storm the Capitol.

Trump's legal team is fighting back aggressively, accusing the BBC of attempting to "put the president on trial for the riot" rather than defend against the specific editing allegations, according to the report.

"Defendants are attempting to use this action as a vehicle to conduct a trial as to the events that occurred on January 6," Trump lawyer Alejandro Brito has argued in court filings, complaining, "Defendants' attempts to defend themselves do not entitle them to carte-blanche discovery."

For its part, the BBC isn't backing down and is also demanding that Trump's legal team "identify all persons with whom [Trump] had communicated regarding any aspect of the January 6, 2021 'Stop the Steal' rally, including but not limited to planning the event, your January 6 2021 speech at the event, and discussions about the event after the fact."

The strategy signals what could become a "protracted legal battle," according to The Telegraph — noting that the trial date has been set for February 2027, leaving open months of legal wrangling and accusations.

Critics pounced on President Donald Trump Saturday after video emerged that appeared to show less-than-anticipated crowd sizes at the Great American State Fair.

Organized by the Trump-linked group Freedom 250, the Great American State Fair officially got underway on Thursday, but had already stumbled weeks earlier when performers pulled out en masse after learning of its ties to Trump. In the wake of the mass exodus of artists, Trump floated himself as a suitable replacement.

As of Saturday, the fair was described by The Atlantic’s Kelsey Ables as an event with “holograms, free Frosties and a lot of Donald Trump,” but its crowd sizes drew even more attention from countless political commentators.

“I've seen more people at my local diner,” noted information technology expert Carl Sizelove, who runs the popular political commentary account “Badd Company” on X, in response to video of the fair that showed a sparsely populated National Mall.

MeidasTouch reporter Aaron Parnas compared the fair to the infamous Fyre Festival, a 2017 music event that ended up as “the world’s biggest festival flop” and landed its creator behind bars. Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) took the small crowds as a sign that “people aren’t very MAGA after all.”

And Kyle Kulinski, a prominent progressive political commentator and podcast host, argued that the fair’s crowd sizes represented the United States’ deterioration under Trump.

“We had a good run but clearly we didn't make it to 250,” Kulinski wrote Saturday in a social media post on X to his nearly 560,000 followers.

Donald Trump's increasing unpopularity with conservative voters who are dissatisfied with his second term was given voice in interviews with Reuters, who appear to be ready to take out their frustrations on Republicans on the ballot in November.

The disaffection stems from a toxic combination of failures: the controversial Iran war agreement, punishing tariffs that have gutted small businesses, and a litany of broken campaign promises.

The Iran deal has proven particularly damaging. Trump's interim agreement to end the war with Iran—which reopened the Strait of Hormuz, lifted U.S. oil sanctions on Iran, and authorized a $300 billion reconstruction fund—has dragged his approval to historic lows.

Juan Rivera, 26, a Trump voter who recently canvassed Latino voters near San Diego, captured the sentiment bluntly, telling Reuters: "He criticized his predecessors about negotiating with terrorists, and he's basically done the same exact thing."

Rivera's frustration extended beyond hypocrisy. He recalled that conservatives are so "demoralized" by the president's handling of the war that they've lost all motivation to support Republican candidates in the midterms.

"A lot of people say: 'Why should I vote when the president's not doing what he promised?'" Rivera claimed.

Steve Egan, 65, a Tampa businessman, said he "soured on Trump" in 2025 when tariff-triggered price hikes devastated his business. The Iran deal only deepened his alienation. Egan now views the war as a "strategic failure" that accomplished nothing beyond jacking up gas prices.

"Right now it doesn't seem like it's been worth it to go through all that," Egan said, noting that the stated goal of regime change "didn't happen." His contempt for the president has reached such depths that Trump's endorsement would be "the kiss of death" for any candidate seeking his vote.

Robert Billups, 35, of Washington state, represents another crucial shift: the defection of swing voters. While cautiously optimistic the Iran peace deal might hold, he believes the war has spawned more hostility toward the United States than it prevented.

Vice President JD Vance, who led negotiations with Iran, has fallen sharply in Billups's estimation, who admitted he was wavering when it comes to the 2028 presidential election.

"Whoever has a better strategy this time, I'm gonna vote for them regardless of their party," he warned.

As the number of Americans arrested for touching the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool continues to grow, the Trump administration appears to have enacted new security measures to discourage loitering, video of which circulated online and left onlookers floored.

Freelance journalist Amanda Moore published video of the Reflecting Pool that appears to show a "surveillance machine,” as Moore described it, relaying an audible message to those passing by the water’s edge.

“Loitering is not permitted in this area. Please proceed to a designated location. Thank you for your cooperation,” a voice could be heard in the video being broadcast.

The reactions were swift. John Ganz, an author and writer, called the scene at the Reflecting Pool a “dystopian satire.” MeidasTouch Editor-in-Chief Ron Filipkowski said the video appeared “Orwellian,” and tennis legend Martina Navratilova argued the scene perfectly encapsulated President Donald Trump’s tenure in the White House.

“Everything Trump touches, dies,” Navratilova wrote Saturday in a social media post on X to her nearly 500,000 followers. “This reflecting pool makes it quite clear. Even with all the algae [that’s in] it.”

A number of other critics commented on the absurdity of “loitering” being prohibited at the Reflecting Pool.

“They turned the Lincoln Memorial into a Lowe's parking lot,” wrote journalist Goad Gatsby.

“No reflection permitted at the reflecting pool,” wrote Adam Klasfeld, editor-in-chief of All Rise News.

After watching a montage of clips of Donald Trump dismissing American consumers’ economic woes, an MSNBC regular noted the president’s physical decline with a new observation.

Speaking with host Jacob Soboroff, attorney George Conway claimed, “I hear a longstandingly mentally ill man, a narcissistic sociopath who is cognitively declining in his elder years, becoming increasingly disinhibited.”

Continuing in that vein he added, “He is somebody who basically doesn't care about anything because, you know, he's obviously physically unwell. We don't know whether he was the person who got that Eli Lilly drug through the compassionate use exemption, and we don't know exactly what his health is — he's drooping on one side.”

“Did he have a left hemisphere CVA?” Conway asked while gesturing at his own face and mistakenly calling it a "CB."

“We don't know any of that, because they obviously would lie to us about any of it,” he added. “He just knows that he doesn't need to answer to anybody anymore, and that's why he's seeking to — he’s just basically doing whatever he wants.”

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