Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson dismissed the need for Ebola vaccines, arguing federal health agencies are orchestrating mass vaccination campaigns targeting Hantavirus and Ebola.

During a LindellTV interview with Cara Castronuova, Johnson claimed Ebola generally snuffs itself out and can be controlled through basic quarantine procedures, contradicting scientific evidence.

The FDA-approved Ebola vaccine Ervebo demonstrated 100% efficacy in clinical trials during the 2014-2016 West Africa outbreak, which killed over 11,000 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC.

Ebola case fatality rates range from 25% to 90%, according to the World Health Organization, or WHO.

Johnson warned that FIFA tourists could introduce Ebola to the United States, but simultaneously rejected vaccine preparedness.

The WHO declared an Ebola public health emergency on May 17, tied to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda outbreaks. The current Ebola strain lacks an approved vaccine, contradicting Johnson's dismissal of preparation measures.

The U.S., Mexico, and Canada implemented coordinated travel screening for World Cup visitors.

Watch the video below.

Vice President JD Vance hasn't announced if he plans to run for president in 2028, but Republican insiders have pointed to a recent "ultra sneaky" move that could reveal more about his decision.

Vance and his wife, second lady Usha Vance, have been "cultivating their image as ultra-MAGA-friendly religious family folk," with Vance's upcoming book "Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith" and with Usha's new children's story podcast, Radar reported.

By doing so, the vice president has tried to get closer to faith-based voters and "bolster his standing as an early Republican contender among Bible-thumpers ahead of the 2028 presidential election," insiders told Radar.

"Another party insider said the vice president's long-standing relationship with religious communities could be 'seriously strengthened' by the publication, particularly among Catholic voters looking for a candidate whose faith is central to his public identity," Radar reported.

President Donald Trump has received mixed responses among Catholics and Protestants in recent polling. And as a result, Vance has been looking for ways to step out of the president's shadow and prepare to reestablish his independence from the Trump administration, which could be tricky, Christopher Devine, a vice-presidential scholar at the University of Dayton, told Radar.

"A vice president, while angling for leadership in his own right, has to avoid challenging the leadership of the current president that they serve under; that is incredibly difficult," Devine said. "And to the extent we have a track record over the last 70 years from Nixon on, rarely has it gone well."

Senate Republicans backed off their plans to formally block President Donald Trump's "Anti-Weaponization" slush fund in the reconciliation package — and this infuriated former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, who laid into them in his latest Substack.

The Trump administration, facing massive backlash from lawmakers and the public alike, agreed to kill the fund unilaterally, but with the Senate not acting, the fund could theoretically be restored at any time.

“I think what, what was talked about, and then ultimately done away with, is, in my view, it’s a settled issue,” Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told the press.

This isn't good enough for Schmidt.

"Then why not kill it? Why not prohibit it? Why not bury it once and for all? Why preserve the possibility that it might live again?" he wrote. The answer could only be because "the modern Republican Party no longer functions as an independent political institution. It functions as an extension of Donald Trump’s will."

The fund itself, wrote Schmidt, is a "masterpiece of Orwellian absurdity" that allows Trump to corruptly reward his allies under the guise of restitution for corrupt government action. Meanwhile, he continued, "The people who spent years insisting that government power had been abused now seek to preserve a mechanism that could one day be used to abuse more of it."

Ultimately, court cases might finish the fund off, Schmidt continued, but that doesn't resolve the issue: "Why were Republicans unwilling to permanently prohibit it? Why were they unwilling to draw a line? Why were they unwilling to say no? The answer is because saying no to Donald Trump has become the one unforgivable sin in American politics."

"The corruption is no longer hidden. The abuse is no longer denied. The mask has come off," he concluded furiously. And the biggest question is no longer how much power Trump will try to grab for himself, but "why so many Republicans remain unwilling to deny it to him."

Trump's "triumphal arch" will need to have red lights on top of it after a review of its design alarmed a federal agency, according to reporting by the New York Times.

The 259-foot-tall arch will be less than a mile from the Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., leading the Federal Aviation Administration to recommend red, blinking lights to be added on top, the Times reported.

The FAA identified the arch as an "obstruction," but noted it would have "no significant adverse effect on airspace" in a feasibility study released on Friday, ahead of a formal evaluation, according to the Times.

However, aviation experts are divided over whether the arch would complicate D.C.'s already congested airspace, especially after last year's collision between a commercial jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter that killed 67 people midair, according to the Times.

The Times' own analysis found that the top of the arch would "jut into an area that is supposed to ideally remain clear for flights."

Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), one of the House GOP's most recently elected lawmakers, flew into a rage on social media over the fact that the mail ballot for the previous resident of his D.C. apartment was sent to him.

"Yesterday, I received an official mail ballot at my Washington apartment for a woman I’ve never heard of," wrote Fine on X, posting an image of the ballot with identifying information blocked out. "I’ve rented this place since I got elected OVER A YEAR AGO. All anyone would need to do is fill it out, sign it, and send it back."

"Democrats are stealing elections every day," he thundered, demanding that Congress pass President Donald Trump's SAVE America Act, a draconian package of new voting procedure restrictions.

But many observers on social media, including a prominent former elections official, immediately poked holes in Fine's claims, noting that a mistakenly-sent ballot is something routine that the law has built-in measures to address, not evidence of anything being "stolen."

"*Sigh* I realize my tiny account will never match the reach of @RepFine's, but this is straight-up false," wrote Pat Garofalo of the American Economic Liberties Project. "Unless the signature on the ballot matches the signature on record at the Board of Elections, the ballot is thrown out."

"'All anyone would need to do is fill it out and sign it' as if that would be legal," wrote Julian Andreone of Drop Site. "Nope! That would definitely be fraud!"

The most detailed analysis came from Stephen Richer, the former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona.

"Sure. You'd just need to: 1) Forge her signature (commit a felony). 2) Hope your forgery is sufficiently accurate 3) Hope that she (intended voter) doesn't call election office and ask about why she never got a ballot (in which case that mail ballot would be deactivated, and it would be investigated if returned) 4) Hope that she doesn't send back a replacement ballot or show up to vote in person (in which case the same as #3 would happen)," wrote Richer.

He added that if this were really such a widespread problem, "Where are the mass arrests? Trump has been in office for 18 months now. And there have been lots of ambitious Republican prosecutors and sheriffs in office for 6 years since the 2020 election ... What you have is, at best, evidence of a clerical error that yielded no harm."

FBI Director Kash Patel fired at least five intelligence analysts from the bureau's Richmond, Virginia, office Friday over a long-rescinded 2023 memo that became a years-long fixation for MAGA activists, three people familiar with the matter told MS NOW.

The memo, titled "Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities," argued that white supremacists were attempting to recruit a subset of so-called "radical traditionalist Catholics" and suggested Catholic congregations could present intelligence-gathering opportunities.

After it leaked in 2023, then-FBI Director Christopher Wray ordered it withdrawn and apologized for it in multiple congressional hearings. Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland called it "appalling."

A 2024 Justice Department Inspector General review found no evidence of anti-Catholic bias or bad intent — but concluded the memo suffered from significant analytical problems and poor tradecraft.

Republicans and MAGA activists seized on it anyway, treating it as proof the FBI was targeting Catholics. Friday's firings are Patel's answer to those grievances.

The terminations fit a well-documented pattern. A lawsuit filed by three senior FBI officials alleges Patel admitted White House and DOJ superiors instructed him to fire anyone who had worked on investigations involving Trump. Court papers also describe a DOJ official telling senior FBI leaders he faced pressure from White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller to carry out sweeping terminations mirroring the purge of Jan. 6 prosecutors.

The FBI's own jobs site describes intelligence analysts as "critical to our ability to proactively mitigate risks" and "the first line of defense in identifying and understanding threats." The FBI Agents Association, which represents more than 90% of active agents, has previously condemned Patel's firings as "erratic and arbitrary retribution."

President Donald Trump raged against Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) on Friday after the GOP lawmaker gave Trump's former personal lawyer and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche conditions for approving his nomination, The New Republic reported.

Trump was heading to an event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and boarding Air Force One when a reporter at Joint Base Andrews asked him about the ultimatum from Tillis, who plans to retire at the end of his term in January 2027 and has made it clear that Blanche needs to disavow the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionists for him to consider approving him as attorney general.

"Senator Tillis is a loser," Trump said. "That’s why he didn’t run. He didn’t run because I wouldn’t support him. And he’s just an angry man because he’s not gonna be a senator any longer. He wasn’t respected in the Senate. He fought a lot of people, he fought Pete Hegseth, Pete Hegseth turned out to be a gem. Senator Tillis is a loser. Stone cold.... He was forced to leave the Senate because I wouldn’t support him, and he quit. So now he’s trying to make trouble."

"Todd Blanche is a brilliant guy who everybody likes, everybody respects,” Trump added. “[Tillis is] not qualified; he’s not good for the position."

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) announced Thursday she had left the United States for what she described as a "medical tourism" trip — citing the same broken American health care system she repeatedly hammered during her final months in Congress.

"I'm 52 and enjoying a weekend out on medical tourism for my health," Greene wrote on X. "It's a damn shame that not only do Americans pay absurd amounts for health insurance and healthcare, we also don't have access to incredible treatments at home. More to come on this."

She did not disclose the country, the treatment, or the provider.

Punchbowl News co-founder Jake Sherman had a two-word reply one minute later: "What treatments?"

Greene is hardly alone.

The CDC estimates millions of Americans travel abroad for medical care each year, driven primarily by cost. A November 2025 West Health-Gallup survey found nearly half of U.S. adults — 47% — worried they couldn't afford health care in the coming year, the highest level recorded since tracking began in 2021. A separate West Health-Gallup report found 35% of adults, roughly 91 million people, said they could not access quality care if they needed it at all.

The post landed with particular punch given Greene's record. During the 2025 government shutdown, she broke sharply with Republican leadership and President Donald Trump over the expiration of Affordable Care Act subsidies, warning that her own adult children's premiums were set to double. "Everyone's just getting destroyed," she told CNN.

Trump responded by publicly labeling her "Marjorie Traitor Greene," a moniker Greene said prompted threats against her. She pushed back hard. "I haven't lost my way — I'm for the American people only," she told CBS Mornings.

The feud, compounded by her push to release the Jeffrey Epstein files over Trump's objections, culminated in her November 2025 announcement that she would resign from Congress, which she did in January 2026.

President Donald Trump appeared to cave on one of his key campaign promises, according to several insiders who spoke with The Washington Post for its report Friday, ditching a plan to deport countless migrants at the behest of an “extensive lobbying effort” that had not been previously reported.

Ahead of the 2024 election, Trump vowed to carry out the “largest deportation effort in American history,” Reuters previously reported, and appeared to be making good on that promise last month after his administration announced a rule change that would require the hundreds of thousands of green card applicants to leave the United States and apply overseas.

The rule change didn’t sit well with leaders in the “big business” community, however, which quickly launched a fierce lobbying campaign against the White House, warning the administration that the rule change could harm their workforce – and, per the Post’s report, appears to have won out.

“Late last week, the administration veered sharply in its messaging. [Trump administration] officials privately reassured business leaders in a meeting that most work visas would not be impacted, according to one of the people [familiar with the discussions],” the Post’s report reads.

“The agency also clarified to reporters that most immigrants seeking permanent residency would not have to leave the country, although officials have yet to issue any formal guidance saying so.”

Trump’s “softened stance on green cards,” as the Post described it, represented the latest rift between the business community that often relies on cheap foreign labor – which some critics have labeled as exploitative and “close to slavery” – and the president’s supporters, many of whom are hawkish on immigration.

While the Trump administration appears to have backed off its immediate efforts to force the hundreds of thousands of green card applicants out of the country, the recent lobbying effort that may have forced Trump’s hand was not an outlier, the Post noted.

“The recent lobbying effort builds upon a broader one that has been underway for months. Business leaders have been raising concerns about restrictive immigration policy in conversations with Trump confidantes who they perceive as more friendly with the business community, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and members of the Kushner family, according to two of the people who spoke to The Post,” the report reads.

“Business leaders have also been in direct communication with the White House, specifically the Domestic Policy Council, through private channels to voice opposition to immigration policies that restrict access to workers.”

A red state official ripped the Trump administration for how it mishandled a dangerous parasite now spreading fear.

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said on CNN that he started talking to the White House and Agriculture Sec. Brooke Rollins "for the first time" recently about New World Screwworm, despite giving them information about how to mitigate it much sooner.

Miller was talking about killing the screwworm using fly bait and then sterile flies, and said that the Agriculture Department ignored his calls to deploy it sooner.

"At the USDA, they knew about it. It's not some trial. It's not some pilot program," Miller said. "They launched it, used it, I think six to eight different times. And it worked perfectly every time they used it in the '70s and '80s."

Screwworm can spread "pretty fast," Miller warned. The flesh-eating parasite is mostly a threat to cattle and the price of beef, CNN previously noted. The first U.S. livestock case in decades was detected on Wednesday, according to CNN reporting.

President Donald Trump's Iran envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner made an unannounced trip to visit the nation's top nuclear experts at the national lab in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, according to an Axios report on Friday.

A deal to end the Iran war has not yet been reached, and many of the conditions were still under consideration, but the ongoing negotiations and secret meeting at the energy department facilities on Thursday signaled the experts "could play a role in nuclear negotiations with Iran," Axios reported.

"This meeting in Oak Ridge doesn't mean that a deal is going to happen, but it is a sign that the negotiations are in a very serious phase and that there is a good chance to get it done and we want to be prepared," a U.S. official told the outlet.

"Some of the country's foremost experts in uranium processing and centrifuge technology are based at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Y-12 National Security Complex. In the past, nuclear materials and equipment — including from Kazakhstan and Libya — were routed through Tennessee," according to Axios.

The Trump administration and the National Nuclear Security Administration have not commented on the meeting.

The White House has indicated 'positive indications' of a potential finalized deal; however, internal divides among Iranian leaders have continued.

"If the negotiations advance to the second phase, the team of experts that met with Witkoff and Kushner would have to develop a plan for the disposal of Iran's nuclear material, how to limit the enrichment program further, and how to verify compliance," Axios reported.

An internal government document obtained by 404 Media reveals that Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to arm more than 1,200 local police departments with a "flawed" facial recognition app capable of scanning anyone's face — no warrant, no consent, no notice required.

The app, called the ICE Task Force Module, would run face photos against a database of more than 250 million DHS and State Department records to determine whether someone is subject to deportation. The document — a Privacy Threshold Analysis filed by ICE's own privacy unit — acknowledges that U.S. citizens will inevitably be swept up in the scans. Every photo taken, whether it matches a target or not, gets stored for 15 years.

The technology would be distributed to agencies enrolled in the 287(g) program, which currently includes 1,220 departments across 32 states and two U.S. territories. Those local officers, the New York Civil Liberties Union has argued, are essentially turned into ICE agents.

Civil liberties groups say the plan is a disaster waiting to happen — and point to a track record that backs them up. In April 2025, Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, a U.S. citizen with his Social Security card in hand, was arrested and held for 30 hours after ICE's facial recognition system wrongly flagged him as an unauthorized alien.

Nate Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told 404 Media the plan is built on a broken foundation.

"This embarrassingly cursory document utterly fails to acknowledge the harms that will flow from putting a flawed face recognition app in the hands of many thousands of local police," Wessler said. "Sending local cops out to indiscriminately scan our faces, with a system that is known to generate false matches, that saves our data for 15 years, and that ensnares police into making immigration decisions that they are untrained for and that will undermine community safety efforts, is a recipe for disaster and for terrorizing members of communities across the country. DHS's privacy regulators fell down on the job. Now it's up to lawmakers to ensure this dangerous technology stays off our streets."

Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Center for Democracy & Technology's Security and Surveillance Project, warned when an earlier version of the app briefly surfaced on the Google Play Store that handing "this powerful tech to police is like asking a 16-year old who just failed their drivers exams to pick a dozen classmates to hand car keys to."

Cooper Quintin, a security researcher and senior public interest technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told 404 Media the new document confirms the worst.

"Face surveillance was already a dangerous infringement of civil liberties in the hands of ICE agents," Quintin said. "Putting it in the hands of ICE's local partners will subject even more Americans to omnipresent surveillance and unjust detainment."

Former Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin's child support case took another dramatic turn this week, as a judge refused to grant him relief from his 60-day jail sentence for civil contempt of court.

According to the Courier Journal, Judge Angela Johnson, who issued the 60-day sentence in March if Bevin did not comply with all document requests, was unimpressed when Bevin turned over only some of the documents and requested an extension on others.

"Matt, as the perpetrator of civil contempt, holds the keys to his own jail cell," wrote Johnson. "By consistently refusing to comply with Orders that he produce documents after having multiple chances to comply, he has locked the door behind himself."

Jonah, Bevin's Ethiopian-born adopted son, initiated this legal battle as one of the outstanding aspects of Bevin's divorce from his wife, which was finalized last year, claiming that the Bevins abandoned him, left him to wander Utah homeless, before attempting to lure him into a one-way international trip back to Africa. He has also alleged Bevin exhibited a pattern of abusive behavior, including threats that he could "take your life."

As a result, Jonah is seeking years of retroactive child support.

Bevin, a far-right Republican who was defeated for re-election after a single term, has publicly slammed the judge in the case, alleging "that she is biased and cannot afford him a fair trial," the report noted.

A federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump referred Justice Department attorneys to a disciplinary committee Friday after condemning them for misconduct so severe she said it had shaken her faith in the DOJ entirely.

U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy of Rhode Island issued the referral under the court's Local Rule 210(b), citing both representations made by the respondents' attorneys and the findings of her May 14 order — a 24-page takedown of DOJ conduct in a case involving a subpoena seeking the medical records of minor patients who received gender-affirming care at Rhode Island Hospital.

In that order, McElroy found that DOJ had "misrepresented and withheld information" from both her court and a federal court in Texas, where she said the department had engaged in blatant forum shopping to find a friendlier venue for its demands.

The judge saved some of her sharpest language for DOJ's courtroom behavior, writing that a senior attorney "sat silently by" during a hearing while a junior colleague — someone who had been practicing law for approximately six months — "was forced to answer questions about DOJ's blatant disregard for the proper course of negotiations."

A declaration filed by a senior DOJ official in the Texas proceeding, McElroy found, was "clearly misleading, if not utterly false." She called DOJ's "reckless disregard for the duty of candor owed" to a federal court "appalling," and a serious breach of professional ethics.

"DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case," McElroy wrote.

She also quashed the subpoena entirely and enjoined DOJ from seeking, receiving, or using any patient-identifying records from Rhode Island Hospital, finding the subpoena lacked a congressionally authorized purpose, was issued in bad faith, and violated children's constitutional right to informational privacy.

Politico's Josh Gerstein was first to report the disciplinary referral Friday.

Vice President JD Vance and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller have zeroed in on fraud, but an analyst on Friday revealed what has motivated the move.

Salon's Amanda Marcotte pointed out how, as President Donald Trump has become more "impatient" with Vance, the vice president has pivoted to the "tough guy act" with Miller, looking to capture MAGA's attention using accusations that immigrants are scamming the United States "on a scale that, if true, would rate as one of the worst corruption scandals in history."

"Vance, along with White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, are similarly embracing the view that law, morality and ethics should not get in the way of their radical political agenda," Marcotte wrote.

The two men have created a "task force" to look into the alleged fraud and "false claims," but it was mostly a "press stunt," Marcotte explained.

And although there is a real problem around fraud in health and welfare spending, Marcotte described how it's unlikely the White House has deep concern for the issue. But for Vance and Miller, that's not exactly the point — it's a way to reach right-wing circles and MAGA voters.

"And while Vance and Miller speak in vague terms, they’re relying on popular MAGA propagandist Nick Shirley to fill the [SIC] in the immigrant-baiting gaps for their audience," Marcotte wrote.

"It’s all to spin a larger, false narrative of evil immigrants overrunning blue states, aided by daft Democratic leaders too dazzled by wokeness to recognize the alleged truth that only racists will admit: Immigrants are out to prey on white Americans," Marcotte wrote. "But as anyone familiar with MAGA social media knows, the truth doesn’t really matter. Any content alleging 'fraud,' especially if a non-white face can be forefronted in the images, quickly goes viral in right-wing circles."

"The right’s war on immigrants is about racism and bigotry. But it’s also a pathetic bid for power from Vance and Miller, who both seem to see the immigration issue as a way to keep the MAGA gravy train going after Trump," Marcotte wrote. "But they are likely to be mistaken."

For the two men eyeing political life after Trump, it's the next step.

"The right’s fixation on immigrant fraud is a real Russian nesting doll of lies," Marcotte wrote. "If Vance and Miller were actual stewards of the public trust, they wouldn’t work for Trump."

One of President Donald Trump's foes, New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, poked fun at the president, who was seen falling asleep in the Oval Office this week — using the moment to suggest a potential design for his $250 bill with his face on it.

Hochul's press office shared an image on X of Trump with his eyes closed on a mockup, following reports that Trump supporters have been pushing to put his face on a banknote ahead of the nation's 250th birthday.

Trump told reporters on Thursday that he was "honored by it."

People had a hilarious response to the sketch online.

"The President wants to put his face on the $250 bill. That requires a vote of Congress. I would vote YES to authorize the below design," Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) wrote on X.

"I paid for my ticket to Weekend at Bernie's with this bill," longtime boxing publicist Fred Sternburg, who has more than 10,000 followers, wrote on X.

"Most large bills like that are used by con artists, drug dealers, tax evaders or money smugglers. So go forth with his face on it," Ezra Mannix Communications & Outreach Manager for the Middle East Institute, wrote on X.

"Put him behind bars and people will be lining up for that little token of American history," user Cherylkartist, a frequent progressive commentator who has more than 10,000 followers, wrote on X.

CBS's cancellation of Stephen Colbert's "The Late Show" has devastated the network's late-night ratings.

Its replacement, "Comics Unleashed," lost 65% of its audience compared to the same time slot last year, reports The Daily Beast.

According to Nielsen data, Byron Allen's show drew only 628,000 total viewers and just 82,000 in the crucial 18-49 demographic. Meanwhile, competitors capitalized on the exodus: Jimmy Kimmel's show surged to 2.185 million viewers — a 53% year-over-year increase — with the 18-49 demographic jumping 178%.

Jimmy Fallon's "Tonight Show" drew 1.301 million viewers, a 10% increase.

Despite the drop in viewership, CBS's financial exposure is limited. Under a "time buy" deal, Allen purchased the time slot directly and covers production costs, with Allen absorbing the ratings consequences rather than CBS, reports The Daily Beast. A source explained, this model benefits CBS by protecting the network from exposure to audience and advertiser volatility, even as the show collapses into irrelevancy.

Watch the video below.

A MAGA congresswoman told a New York Times writer that she believes she was given the reins of a task force because it would make her look "a little crazy."

In an interview with Times columnist Ross Douthat, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) agreed with a suggestion about why congressional leadership assigned her to chair the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets.

Luna explained that Trump had been talking "about releasing the M.L.K., R.F.K. and J.F.K. files. We had this stuff outstanding with U.A.P. activity," referring to classified information about historical figures, UFOs, and assassinations.

Rep. James Comer (R-KY) set up a task force to follow through on Trump's promises, but "people were a little spooked about taking the position because of everything that it involved."

Luna said she knew "there was a stigma" with the task force before being assigned to chair it. "If you do this, people are going to think you're crazy," she said.

Douthat asked her, "Do you think that this was something that you were given in part because it was like, let's keep her busy, and also it might make her look a little crazy?"

Luna admitted, "I think so. I think maybe they anticipated that, but I also knew."

The House passed a spending bill Thursday night that included $141 million in cuts to a federal food assistance program focused on supporting women and children – a bill that would not have passed without the support of four House Democrats, who in turn drew scrutiny for their “puzzling” decision, The New Republic reported Friday.

The spending bill would allocate funding for the Department of Agriculture and other federal agencies, and was passed by the House with a narrow vote of 213-210. The Supplemental Food Assistance Program, or SNAP, operates through the Agriculture Department, and a program within SNAP – referred to as WIC – specifically provides fruit and vegetable assistance to women, infants and children.

The four Democratic lawmakers in question are Reps. Donald Davis (D-NC), Adam Gray (D-CA), Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX), and Marie Glusenkamp Perez (D-WA). As to why they joined Republicans in helping advance a bill that could reduce food assistance for mothers, children and infants, The New Republic’s Hafiz Rashid was left puzzled.

“Three of the Democrats who voted for the cuts, Gray, Gonzalez, and Perez, are members of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition, and Perez has a reputation for often voting against her party,” Rashid wrote.

“But it’s puzzling why fruit and vegetable assistance for mothers and children was deemed acceptable to cut, especially during an economic crunch. It’s highly likely that WIC enrollment will go up in the coming months, and now, fruits and vegetables will be more expensive.”

Veteran correspondents Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim informed their colleagues they would remain at "60 Minutes" Friday, but public reaction was mixed.

The broadcast legends circulated a memo to CBS News colleagues saying they would stay on despite the firings of executive producer Tanya Simon, executive editor Draggan Mihailovich and three correspondents, including Scott Pelley.

But they struck a defiant tone in their decision to continue work at the venerable news magazine.

“We have had a hard time deciding whether to stay at’ 60 Minutes,’" the memo stated. "We’re still deeply upset by the firings of Tanya and Draggan, strong leaders who everyone respected. As far as we can tell – because no explanation has ever been offered, they were expelled because they fought for our ’60 Minutes’ values and stood up to protect our independence and integrity."

"Newsrooms are not supposed to be run like dictatorships," the memo added. "Collaboration and argument are the way we have always worked at ’60.’ Don Hewitt actually encouraged loud passionate advocacy for our pieces.”

CBS News has been plunged into turmoil under the leadership of editor in chief Bari Weiss, who was installed by new network owner and Donald Trump ally Larry Ellison. Keeping the three longtime correspondents was seen as crucial to saving the long-running program.

“We don’t want to see ‘60 Minutes’ die,” the correspondents said.

Their decision was met with a wide range of opinion, although many agreed the program would not survive under Weiss.

"Chickens---s. What an insult to Pelley," popped off journalist David Roberts.

"You can't fix him," lamented writer Karl Bode. "It's dead."

"60 Minutes is already dead," agreed blogger Charles Johnson. "It has joined the Choir Invisible. There’s no way it’s ever going to come back from this."

"The only excuse for staying that I would've accepted is to protect the jobs of the many people who work for them," opined journalist Helen Kennedy. "This was not that. They say they want to keep '60 Minutes' alive. But '60 Minutes' has been murdered. It's dead now. They should know that."

"'We Just Want to Reanimate Its Dead Corpse,'" quipped researcher and film studies professor Jon Danzinger.

"Damn. What a betrayal," sighed producer and author Melissa Jo Peltier. "Leslie Stahl certainly doesn’t need the paycheck."

"Seeing a lot of people say that this is capitulation when this is pretty clearly 'f---- you, fire me'?" opined writer David Uzumeri.

"No good options available, just choosing from the bad ones," sighed Media Matters' Matthew Gertz.

Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson is dismissing the need for Ebola vaccines — even as public health officials scramble to contain a real Ebola outbreak ahead of the FIFA World Cup being held across the United States, Canada and Mexico this summer.

In an interview with LindellTV's Cara Castronuova, Johnson argued that federal health agencies are laying the groundwork for another mass vaccination campaign — this time targeting diseases like Hantavirus and Ebola.

"They're setting us up for it," Johnson said. "Hantavirus. Ebola."

But when it came to Ebola specifically, Johnson downplayed the threat — and the need for vaccines.

"Ebola is something that is just so aggressive, it generally snuffs itself out," he said. "If you just handle basic procedures — quarantines, that kind of stuff — you can snuff out an Ebola deal."

The science tells a different story. The FDA-approved Ebola vaccine Ervebo demonstrated 100% efficacy in clinical trials during the catastrophic 2014–2016 West Africa outbreak — which killed more than 11,000 people, according to the CDC. Ebola case fatality rates range from 25% to as high as 90%, per the WHO.

Johnson also warned that FIFA tourists could bring Ebola into the country — even as he dismissed the need for vaccines to guard against it.

"We ought to be a little careful here with FIFA bringing all these people from — we ought to be pretty careful when we do that, right?"

That concern is not unfounded — but the response he dismisses is exactly what officials are deploying.

The WHO declared an Ebola public health emergency on May 17, tied to an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. The U.S., Mexico, and Canada have since coordinated travel screening measures for World Cup visitors from affected regions. The current Ebola strain, however, has no approved vaccine, per the CDC — precisely the scenario Johnson claims is unnecessary to prepare for.

Johnson also reprised familiar attacks on COVID-era treatment decisions, arguing that effective treatments were suppressed to preserve emergency use authorization for vaccines.

"That's why they sabotaged things like ivermectin, why hospitals won't administer it. It wasn't profitable. Remdesivir is highly profitable to them. But if there would have been effective treatment for COVID, they never would have gotten emergency use authorization."

Trump biographer Michael Wolff claimed President Donald Trump has reached a critical moment of demarcation, indicating his presidency is unraveling.

During an episode of "Inside Trump's Head," co-hosted by Wolff and The Daily Beast's Joanna Coles, Wolff cited mounting losses across multiple fronts. He pointed out Trump's newly restricted Iran war powers and his ongoing entanglement in the Jeffrey Epstein saga.

The biographer characterized the situation as paradoxical: while the President remains mendacious and dangerous, the Trump enterprise is simultaneously coming apart.

He identified cascading failures affecting Trump's core policy initiatives: economic troubles, immigration problems alienating his base, and healthcare issues. Wolff argues, these factors combined create a compounding crisis the president cannot overcome.

He noted falling poll numbers reflect these foundational policy failures.

"Immigration was his issue, the issue that was fueling him instead of the issue that is causing him now so many problems, so many problems with his base, the health care issues also causing him problems. It's one problem after another after another that he cannot surmount."

Wolff argues, each crisis compounds the others and predicts systemic collapse across the administration's priorities.

Watch the video below.

President Donald Trump has instructed Bill Pulte, the controversial new acting head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), to execute sweeping personnel cuts across the nation's 18 federal intelligence agencies and units before a permanent successor is confirmed.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump revealed his explicit mandate to Pulte, who lacks the necessary security clearances, to dramatically reduce the size of an agency he views as "unnecessary and/or too big."

"I'd like to see it smaller. I think there are a lot of people in there that shouldn't be there," Trump admitted to The Journal, specifically targeting career officials from the Biden and Obama administrations. When asked directly if he was ordering firings, Trump confirmed the instruction. "I want him to 'start the process,'" Trump said, adding that his eventual permanent nominee should continue the purge once confirmed.

Trump bluntly framed Pulte's temporary status as an operational advantage rather than a limitation. "You're less shackled," Trump said of the acting designation. "It sort of gives you more power, you know, for a somewhat limited period of time."

The president outlined a calculated strategy to complete major structural changes before his permanent appointee takes office, allowing the future ODNI to inherit a smaller, ideologically aligned agency rather than managing the cuts themselves.

"Frankly, it might be good for him to shake it up before people come," Trump explained. "Because, if he [Pulte] reduced the size, in conjunction with me…and in conjunction with possibly the person coming in…he can do a lot of the hard work and we wouldn't have to saddle somebody that goes in."

The approach reflects Trump's broader effort to reshape the intelligence community according to his preferences, The Journal reported. Pulte, who has no prior intelligence experience and has been highly critical of the FBI and other agencies, is widely viewed as unlikely to survive Senate confirmation despite his acting appointment.

Pulte and ODNI representatives declined to comment to The Journal on the directives.

Ex-Trump official Miles Taylor issued a stark warning to those who donated to President Donald Trump's White House ballroom project on Friday, arguing that they and their affiliates “should be losing sleep” over what he cautioned would be a “massive” legal reckoning just on the horizon.

Taylor, who previously served as chief of staff in the Homeland Security Department under Trump, flagged the bombshell report from Public Citizen this week that found more than half of the known donors to the ballroom project had received government contracts in the last six months totaling more than $50 billion.

“The White House calls this a ‘fake’ conflict of interest. But you can almost hear the panic under their voices,” Taylor wrote in an analysis published on his Substack Friday. “It’s not fake. It’s so brazen it should be illegal, and in many cases, future federal prosecutors might discover that it was.”

Last year, it was revealed that the Trump administration had withheld the identities of several ballroom donors despite its pledge to provide full transparency. The Trump administration also went back on its promise that the project would be entirely funded by private donors after a $1 billion ask for ballroom “security” was slipped into a GOP budget proposal.

And now, after further reporting detailed the extent to which ballroom donors have benefited from the Trump administration, Taylor predicted a “huge reckoning” was coming for those involved, and soon.

“Whatever shadow deals might’ve been done to make all of this happen, I can promise they won’t stay secret forever. Although the administration negotiated a covert funding agreement to let donors hide themselves, they were sloppy and stupid,” Taylor wrote.

“Public Citizen pried it loose through a simple FOIA lawsuit, and more disclosures will surely follow. Administrations come to an end. Statutes of limitations do not run out as fast as a news cycle.”

Three remaining “60 Minutes” veterans have decided on their futures with the beleaguered broadcast mainstay.

Longtime correspondents Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim announced Friday they would stay on at the news magazine despite turmoil engulfing the CBS News division under the leadership of editor in chief Bari Weiss.

“We have had a hard time deciding whether to stay,” the trio wrote in a memo to their colleagues. “We don’t want to see ‘60 Minutes’ die.”

The three said they were “heartbroken” over the recent firings of their colleagues, including executive producer Tanya Simon and high-ranking producer Draggan Mihailovich, and they seemed to share concerns with correspondent Scott Pelley, who was also fired this week after challenging the new executive producer, Nick Bilton over the program's direction.

“We feared that our returning might be construed as an endorsement of the existing power structure," the three wrote. "That is simply, categorically not the case."

“Newsrooms are not supposed to be run like dictatorships,” they added in their memo.

Continuing questions about Donald Trump’s health were not helped on Thursday during an Oval Office press availaibility that led to more questions about his ability to keep up at his current pace.

On MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,” co-hosts Johnathan Lemire and Willie Geist highlighted the 79-year-old president “slumped’ in his chair as EPA Head Lee Zeldin talked about clean coal, with the two pundits observing the president was clearly asleep.

That led to jokes about the president’s people defining the napping as an extended “blink,” with Lemire commenting, “I believe the White House pushback of ‘’He was blinking, you moron, ‘is how they would engage reporters who would point out on Twitter that the president seemed to be asleep.”

“So this was yesterday, the scene here,” he added as a clip of the president with his eyes closed ran. “And there's other footage where he seems fully slumped to sleep to one side of his chair, and then he kind of shifts and falls asleep on the other side of the chair. I mean, it's a long blink. We could count it off if you'd like.”

“But this is becoming almost a daily occurrence,” he pointed out. “And as much as the White House likes to push back on this, there are questions about, you know, his health, his fitness. He had another physical at Walter Reed a week or so back. We haven't really gotten much in the way of results. A week from Sunday, he turns 80.”

He then pointed out, “We heard for four years about 'Sleepy Joe Biden.' You know, not that I like to credit John Heilemann with much, but the ‘Confession or projection’ construct here works really well. This is clearly, you know, President Trump projecting his own perhaps frailties and need for naps during the day.”

- YouTube www.youtube.com

A Justice Department lawyer astonished onlookers by arguing in federal court that the Trump administration could "bulldoze" the Statue of Liberty if they moved too quickly to be stopped.

The lawyer appeared Friday morning for oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit over President Donald Trump's controversial White House ballroom project, which is under construction on the site of East Wing he ordered demolished last year without warning, and Judge Patricia Millett pressed the attorney on the matter.

"If the government decides very quickly to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty, the people whose ancestors — that was the first thing they saw coming to this country, but the govt moved too fast — nothing can be done?" she asked, according to Politico's Kyle Cheney, who was in the courtroom.

"I think that's right, yes," agreed the attorney, who was not identified by the reporter.

The courtroom exchange stunned social media users.

"They’re out of their minds," marveled Fox News contributor Jessica Tarlov.

"There is nothing left of the Justice Department I worked at," lamented former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance.

"We voted to make him God Emperor of the United States," quipped HuffPost's S.V. Dáte.

"I honestly thought this was a joke," offered The Bulwark's Cathy Young.

"The Trump Admin talking about bulldozing the Statue of Liberty … sick, sick stuff," muttered California Gov. Gavin Newsom's official account.

"Feels like we should have the 'You Can't Just Bulldoze the Statue of Liberty Act' introduced and passed rather quickly now, right Congress?" suggested political strategist Thomas C. Bowen.

"I don't think this is going to help the DOJ," commented attorney Kevin Baum.

"Under Lujan itself, the lawyer’s answer is almost certainly wrong," opined law professor Michael Morley. "A tourist, or even better an art or architecture specialist, who had bought a ticket to fly to New York at a particular time to go look at or study the statue would almost certainly have standing to challenge its destruction. The destruction of the statute would be a tragedy and should absolutely never occur and there should be some way to stop it. It’s not clear that aesthetic injury *should* be sufficient to satisfy article III? Standing doesn’t even seem to be the biggest hurdle under currently doctrine here? I’m not sure who would have a cause of action to challenge the destruction?"

Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump's former chief White House strategist, predicted Republicans will lose the Senate in the November midterms.

During an episode of his "War Room" podcast, Bannon criticized Republicans for abandoning working-class voters who feel "crushed," and said, "That's the backbone of the nation. When we lose sight of that, you lose it all."

He also criticized GOP donors, saying their campaign spending resembles burning money, citing wasted resources on Sen. John Cornyn's Texas race.

Bannon then noted, Republican candidates are falling behind in Maine, North Carolina, and Ohio — areas he characterized as "MAGA country." He attributed GOP failures to lack of grassroots engagement, arguing, "People are not going to go door to door and engage" without proper canvassing efforts.

Bannon emphasized, modern electoral success requires one-on-one voter engagement and volunteers genuinely committed to candidates' causes, which Trump-backed candidates currently lack.

Watch the video below.

A Florida Democrat snapped during a House Appropriations subcommittee meeting Friday, declaring the Republican fiscal year 2027 spending bill "a war on women and girls" after it moved to eliminate family planning funding for millions of Americans.

"I'm mad as hell! I cannot believe what I see!" Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL) shouted during the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies subcommittee markup. "This is a war on women and girls!"

Frankel tore into the bill over a string of cuts she said would devastate low-income women and families. The Republican spending plan eliminates Title X family planning funding — a cut of $286 million — and zeroes out the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, slashing another $108 million. Title X serves nearly 3 million people annually, according to Frankel, mostly low-income or uninsured.

"This is our family planning money," Frankel said, "and not only that, preventative care, cancer screening, diabetes, keeping people healthy — mostly people who are very poor or uninsured."

She didn't stop there. Frankel accused Republicans of pushing women toward unwanted pregnancies while simultaneously gutting the programs that would support them.

"I know you're against abortion. That's one thing. But forced pregnancy, that's another thing."

The bill also cuts the Office on Women's Health within HHS by $14 million, according to Democratic appropriators, and replaces teen pregnancy prevention programs with abstinence-only education, which received a $5 million funding increase.

"Zeroing out teen pregnancy prevention — okay, let's see," Frankel said. "And lastly, not lastly — I go to another page — almost cutting in half the Office on Women's Health within HHS. This is a war! It's a war on women!"

Frankel closed with a direct appeal to colleagues across the aisle.

"If you are a woman or you love a woman — you have a daughter, you have a sister, a mother, a cousin, an aunt — let's keep them healthy."

According to Democratic appropriators, the bill cuts total spending by $19.1 billion — 9 percent — below fiscal year 2026 levels.

Kevin Hassett, Director of the National Economic Council, told Fox News on Friday that the economy under President Donald Trump was booming — and hilarity ensued.

Hassett claimed "the Trump boom" wouldn't be reported by "the fake news," and that the One Big Beautiful Bill has massively helped to improve the economy — dismissing affordability concerns among Americans.

"Right now, Wall Street just doesn't understand that the Trump economy is really creating an economic golden age," Hassett said.

Onlookers immediately attacked.

"Can the numbers be trusted??" Attorney and former public defender Frank Amari, who has more than 64,000 followers, wrote on Bluesky.

"It sure is, for the 1%. Not for Main Street," filmmaker and producer Joel Lesko wrote on Bluesky.

"Trump is creating an 'economic golden age' for his cronies in the top 1/2 of 1%. The rest of us can go suck it," Dawn Humphrey, a retired communications expert with more than 21,000 followers, wrote on Bluesky.

"An economic golden age, eh? I'll leave this here for you," Georgetown University professor Anthony M. Hopper wrote on X, sharing the University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index report showing an economic decline.