Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent got a serious beat-down Friday as an MS NOW analyst accused him of not living up to his reputation and coming off as just another “clown car” appointee of President Donald Trump's.

Catherine Rampell, a former economics journalist for the New York Times, argued Bessent and Fed Chair Kevin Warsh's unexpected missteps have stunned and outraged Wall Street.

“These two guys were supposed to be serious people,” she said. “They were people that the markets trusted, and they were chosen because the markets trusted them.”

The problem, argued Rampell, is the company the pair keep.

“Look, everybody else in this administration came out of the clown car, right?” she said. “These are people plucked out of Fox News green rooms and Trump's own personal legal team."

Rampell argued Bessent and Warsh's past resumes should have guided their decision-making more.

“They both worked for legendary investor Stan Druckenmiller, who I know you've talked about quite a bit recently on your show," she said. "

"The problem is, Bessent in particular, has not been acting like a serious person. I think he kind of shot his credibility almost immediately in some of the actions that he took early on when he got confirmed, when he basically invited those goons in to have unprecedented access to the Treasury payment system.”

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Attorney General Todd Blanche drew a profane rebuke from the attorney suing him over the Epstein files after he appealed a judge's order to release documents.

In a video posted to Instagram on Thursday, attorney and independent journalist Katie Phang, who sued Blanche in April, tore into him for defiance in the face of a preliminary injunction issued by Senior U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in June. Blanche finally appealed the order on Aug. 24 after claiming he had complied with it.

"So I'm going to say it again in really, really basic terms for you, Todd Blanche. Just some free legal advice. Okay?" Phang said.

"He either granted the motion or he didn't," she said.

Blanche's notice of appeal told the court that whether the June order can even be appealed is "inconclusive."

"If he didn't grant the motion, then what the f--- are you appealing? If he granted the motion, then you have been violating all sorts of canons and ethics and rules by pretty much trying to snow the court — which, trust me, Judge Sullivan has got your f---ing number — or you're so damn stupid, you don't know what the hell is going on," Phang continued.

Sullivan refused Blanche two stay requests in his June opinion, and the Justice Department asked for a third on Thursday.

"If you don't get a stay from Judge Sullivan or from the appellate court, it's not stopping s---," Phang said.

Blanche has never filed an answer to the complaint, according to Phang's court filings.

"But if you're saying — which you [have] been saying and writing — that Judge Sullivan never granted my preliminary injunction... then you blew the deadline and you're basically in default," she added.

"So you don't have any defenses. It's not like you ever raised any defenses," Phang said.

Sullivan reached a similar conclusion in June, writing that "by not responding substantively, the Attorney General has conceded Ms. Phang's merits arguments."

The Epstein Files Transparency Act required the Justice Department to publish the files by Dec. 19, 2025, and Blanche declared the department finished in January. The redaction log the law demanded did not appear until Thursday.

Blanche is still withholding handwritten notes from four FBI interviews, telling the court in a Thursday filing that they are duplicative and risk exposing victims.

Sullivan warned Justice Department lawyers at an Aug. 13 hearing that he had held prosecutors in contempt before, CNN reported.

"The public has a right to know what the hell is going on in this case. The victims have a right to know. The court has a right to know," Sullivan said.

"Either way, you look dumb," Phang said.

Barron Trump has retreated into an increasingly guarded, low-visibility existence as he turns 20 years old.

President Donald Trump's youngest son spent much of the summer, after finishing his sophomore year at New York University, with his mother Melania Trump at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey, reported the New York Post.

“He doesn’t go out,” said one longtime Trumpworld figure, while another source added: "The kid’s pretty reclusive."

The first lady's office asked the Post to exclude details about his private life "in light of recent threats," which includes a $10 million bounty on his life offered by Iranian hardliners.

The report also attributed his retreat from public life to a mounting climate of political violence surrounding his father, including at least three assassination attempts against the 80-year-old president since July 2024 and an April shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Barron was reportedly also shaken by the September 2025 assassination of Charlie Kirk, telling his father, "This is what happens when you go out there," according to an account first reported in Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's book "Regime Change" and confirmed by the Post.

The youngest Trump son has drawn recent scrutiny, as well, for his alleged role connecting accused sex traffickers Andrew and Tristan Tate to his father's political orbit during the 2024 campaign, and Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) publicly pressed for Barron to testify before the House Oversight Committee.

"Barron Trump is an adult," Ansari said. "He is a full-blown adult, and he is very influential in the Trump White House orbit."

The Post's report notes that Barron already maintains private living spaces at each of his parents' residences, including a suite at Mar-a-Lago and a custom-built room furnished for his 6-foot-9 frame at the White House.

He was last seen publicly on July 19 watching the World Cup final from behind bulletproof glass. Unlike his more publicly visible siblings, Barron has avoided a public-facing role as he pursues business ventures, including a yerba mate beverage startup.

A “mentally unstable” President Donald Trump is growing “increasingly out of control” as he stares down a major reckoning in November, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) claimed on Thursday, a reckoning that could ultimately see the president finally lose his grip on power.

“He is a president who is, in my view, mentally unstable and increasingly out of control,” Sanders said in a video published Thursday evening by APT News, an international news outlet with more than 1.1 million subscribers on its YouTube channel.

“What we are seeing is that the American people in poll after poll are really quite tired of a president who is a pathological liar, who is an authoritarian, [and] who wants more and more power in his own hands as he ignores the Constitution and the rule of law.”

Despite the dangers Trump posed to the country, Sanders argued a reckoning was within reach, pointing to the recent wave of progressive electoral victories in Democratic primary races as evidence Democrats had momentum heading into November.

“We've got an election coming up in a couple of months,” Sanders said. “The good news is we are winning. We got a good trajectory — let's keep it going.”

Sanders went on to further condemn Trump’s unprecedented tenure during his second stint in the White House.

“This guy is a narcissist who would like to name half of the buildings in America after him,” Sanders continued. “He is a kleptocrat, his family, since he returned to the White House, is now over $2 billion richer.”

A wave of progressive candidate victories kicked off in June with the election of three Democratic congressional candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Since then, progressive Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic nomination in Michigan for Senate, and progressive state lawmaker Angie Nixon defeated her Democratic primary opponent despite being outraised by more than 16-to-1.

President Donald Trump’s professed support for a high-profile Republican congressman threw more than a few of his fans into a rage-filled tizzy Friday morning.

Trump praised Rep. Mike Lawler's (R-NY) recent appearance on a conservative news network — and was met with immediate scorn.

"Open Border RINO RAT,” Truth Social user Gravelrun raged at the president. “Get someone better. The guy is literally Scum."

Gravelrun and his ilk were responding to a surprisingly succinct message from the president, urging his followers to vote for Lawler in the 2026 midterm elections as experts warn Republicans could lose control of the House.

“Congressman Mike Lawler of New York was fantastic on FoxBusiness today," Trump wrote. "Important that we keep him in Congress. A total winner!!!"

That did not sit well with some of the president's fans who pointed out that Lawler has not toed the MAGA line, with many accusing the NY Republican of being a “Republican in Name Only” or “RINO”

While one Trump supporter was sympathetic, writing, “I know you can’t keep track of everything they do, but Lawler is from a purple district. His voting record in Congress has not been great. He’s improved somewhat since Biden was removed from office,” other were decidedly not on board.

“He sucks!" Darkhorse wrote. "Insisted on SALT deductions so we can contribute to reckless NY spending.”

Wrote Tigdigity, “Didn’t he just vote against a key piece of legislation? Against you Don?”

TimoHiggins hurled a demand at Trump, writing, “Lawler is an Israeli controlled RINO!!!! Stop pushing America second candidates!!!!”

“Use your position of power and influence to seek out an America First candidate who will work for WE THE PEOPLE," ranted HeraldEarnestGoodwill. "Lawler doesn't even have a Truth Social account... HE HAS NO REGARD OR CONCERN FOR WE THE PEOPLE!!!”

MadOMac64, attempted, “As a posed to a dim but he is a rino.”

President Donald Trump's approval rating has been frozen underground for four straight months, and historical trends suggest there's little reason to expect it to improve before November's midterms, according to CNN's Harry Enten.

The 80-year-old president's net approval rating has held at roughly negative-20 points since late May, moving only slightly from minus-19 to minus-21 points over that span – which Enten flagged as a warning sign for the White House and Republicans.

"This is a president who is stuck on empty," Enten said. "It's just consistently low. It's stuck on empty, stuck on neutral, whatever type of gasoline analogy you want to use."

While there are still two months until the midterms, Enten said modern political history offers little comfort for Trump. Looking at shifts in presidential net approval between late August and Election Day, he said the average swing from 1946 to 2002 was 11 points, when approval could move dramatically in either direction.

But over the last 20 years, in what Enten described as a more polarized political era, the average shift has been just two points, meaning presidents' standing tends to stay roughly where it is at this point in the cycle.

Enten pointed to two historical parallels for a president sitting at or below negative 15 points in net approval this close to a midterm – Harry Truman in 1946 and George W. Bush in 2006.

In both cases, Enten said, the president's party lost control of the House and the Senate, and he singled out the Bush comparison as the closest match to Trump's current situation.

"Right now," Enten concluded, "the plurality leader is actually a Democratic sweep."

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President Donald Trump’s new plan to help America’s “wonderful farmers and ranchers” landed with a thud Friday among critics, of which several described it as a misguided attempt to quell rancher uproar against his mystery deal to import ground beef.

“You've already cost far too many families their farms and ranches. This does nothing to bring them back,” wrote Texas-based journalist Arturo Dominguez Friday in a social media post on X.

Last week, Trump sparked outrage from ranchers after announcing that he planned to import 300,000 metric tons of ground beef to be sold at 25% below market price, and without revealing the country or countries of origin.

On Wednesday, Trump appeared to endorse the idea of rolling back beef processing regulations during a conversation with right-wing media figure Glenn Beck, and on Friday, made good on those remarks by revealing he had authorized “legal documents to be drawn” to target “big processors,” whom he called “nasty.”

Specifically, Trump's plan appears designed to let ranchers and farmers process their own livestock for commercial sale, rather than requiring the product to go through a federally or state-inspected meat processor.

In a scathing write-up published Friday in The Cattle Report — a weekly cattle-market newsletter published by The AG Center — Trump’s plan was met with ridicule.

“It is unlikely as the mid term voting approaches that Trump supporters from the AG sector will switch in mass to the democrats or democratic socialists. More likely is the possibility they simply won’t vote,” the newsletter reads.

“This threat caused him to participate in an AG interview with the conservative commentator Glenn Beck in which the President tried to redirect the reason for the recent cattle market decline to the greedy big 4 packers and government regulations.”

Chris Kleene, a Nebraska-based commodity trader with a focus in the “livestock nutrition sector,” also argued that Trump’s plan was mere “positioning for the midterms,” and in a follow-up post, Dominguez predicted that the ploy to address rancher outrage would ultimately fail.

“Farmers and ranchers are turning on Trump, and the White House thinks this will solve the problem,” he wrote. “Tell it to all those who have already lost their farms and ranches, and to the families who have fallen victim to suicide.”

Opposition is mounting to a Trump administration plan to hand a strip of land inside Yosemite National Park to a private developer, with conservation groups and Democratic lawmakers calling the effort a betrayal of the park's 150-year legacy.

For more than a year, National Park Service staff have been working, at the direction of Interior Department political leadership, to arrange a land exchange that would give a Nevada-based company tied to real-estate developer Jeff Pori's Kingsbarn Realty Capital an easement or interest in Yosemite land, NOTUS reported, citing four people familiar with the discussions and internal agency documents.

In exchange, the Park Service would receive land of equal value elsewhere in California.

The goal is to let Kingsbarn build a short private road connecting an 83-acre property it owns outside the park's western boundary — marketed as "Sanctuary at Yosemite" — to one of Yosemite's central roads, giving it rare private access near an ancient sequoia grove.

The Park Service has rejected similar proposals for the same property, formerly called Hazel Green Ranch, for more than two decades, including under the Bush, Obama and Biden administrations, and courts twice ruled against the previous owner.

The National Parks Conservation Association said it "strongly opposes" the plan.

"This is an attack on the American people that own this national park," said Mark Rose, the group's Sierra Nevada program manager, adding that a court had already rejected a similar road proposal and calling the current effort unlawful.

California Sen. Adam Schiff agreed, telling NOTUS the administration "appears hellbent on moving forward in the face of opposition from the public, Congress and the courts," and vowing, "We will fight this."

Fellow California Sen. Alex Padilla said funding meant to protect natural areas should not be steered toward "an applicant's connections to high-ranking Trump administration officials."

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-R), ranking member of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee overseeing the relevant conservation fund, formally objected to including the Yosemite project on a list of endorsed projects, according to his office.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told senators during his 2025 confirmation hearing that his department would "support and protect every single inch" of national parks, and Trump issued a statement this August pledging to protect "every acre" of public lands — commitments critics say the Yosemite proposal directly contradicts.

A National Park Service spokesperson told NOTUS "no final decisions have been made," and that any exchange would go through required environmental review and public notice. Kingsbarn did not respond to NOTUS's request for comment.

Rep. Jeff Crank (R-CO) drew laughter at a debate after he claimed to be unaware of President Donald Trump's order renaming Lake Ontario.

The moment came Thursday at the Pikes Peak Center in Colorado Springs, during a debate hosted by KOAA News5 between the candidates in Colorado's 5th Congressional District.

Colorado Politics reporter Ernest Luning put the question to both candidates hours after Trump signed the order amid a trade war with Canada.

"Lake Ontario or Lake America? The president issued an order changing the name of Lake Ontario," Luning asked.

"Lake Ontario," answered Jessica Killin, Crank's Democratic challenger.

"I'm unaware of — what's the reference?" Crank said.

The lawmaker's answer drew laughter and groans from the audience.

"He did this morning. He changed the name to Lake America," Luning told him.

"I don't know. I — I have other more pressing issues I'm working on. Goodness!" Crank replied.

The debate crowd erupted once again.

Minutes earlier, Luning had asked the same pair whether the body of water to the south is the Gulf of Mexico or the Gulf of America. Killin said, "Gulf of Mexico."

"Gulf of America," Crank said.

"Audience, please!" moderator Alasyn Zimmerman of KOAA said over the reaction that followed.

Trump signed the Lake Ontario order after imposing 50% tariffs on roughly $20 billion in Canadian goods, according to Axios. It directs the Interior Department to update federal maps within 30 days.

"Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always," Prime Minister Mark Carney wrote, per NBC News.

Crank was also deferential to Trump's name for the Department of Defense at Thursday's debate.

"Department of War," he told the moderators.

Killin pointed out that no act of Congress had changed the name.

The Republican governor of deeply conservative Wyoming is vowing to open an investigation into federal election monitors who invaded his state, according to a new report.

Two election monitors from the Justice Department showed up at polling places during Wyoming's primaries last week, drawing outrage from the state's Republican governor, The New York Times reported Friday.

"It was aggressive, unexpected, disruptive — certainly didn't seem to show respect for the state," Gov. Mark Gordon (R) complained. "We're going to get to the bottom of it as best we can."

Federal election monitors arrived without notice at a polling site in Cheyenne, Wyoming’s capital, about 7 a.m. last Tuesday, Laramie County clerk Debra Lee told the New York Times.

The monitors' demands to interview voters and inspect machines were denied, the Times reported.

"The Justice Department often monitors polling sites during elections," the report noted. "But the visits to Wyoming came amid President Trump’s ongoing fixation with finding evidence of fraud and vote tampering."

The president and his allies have made claims that voting machines switched votes in 2020, and "he has tried and failed to find evidence of widespread fraud or vote tampering ever since," the report stated.

Gordon, described by the Times as "low-key," is a term-limited Republican who leads one of the country's most conservative states, and made the case that he has long spurned federal intrusions.

"I feel very strongly about the federal government coming in and taking our guns — I don't like that," Gordon said at a meeting with state election officials. "And I don't like the federal government coming in and taking our votes, either."

The monitors ultimately visited six polling places, showing their credentials only when asked for them. Gordon described their behavior as "very odd" and said he had asked the state attorney general, Keith Kautz, to investigate the matter, the Times is reporting.

President Donald Trump advanced efforts Friday to roll back regulations for meat processors amid the growing outrage from American cattle ranchers in response to the president’s mysterious plan to import 300,000 metric tons of ground beef.

Trump announced last week that he’d secured an arrangement to import 300,000 metric tons of ground beef over a 90-day period that will be sold at 25% below market price in an effort to combat soaring beef prices. Trump refused to reveal the origin of the beef imports, which ranchers have argued will undercut their industry.

On Wednesday, Trump suggested he was considering rolling back regulations on beef processing plants, and on Friday, appeared to make good on those comments.

“Ranchers and Farmers have always been a number one priority for me. They work very hard, are smart, efficient, and immaculately CLEAN, but for years I have heard that they have had a tremendous problem with the Big Processors, who many say are a nasty Monopoly,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

“There are, essentially, 4 of them, a very non competitive number, and they make life miserable for our wonderful Farmers and Ranchers, and I can’t let that happen, can I? So, in order to break this powerful monopoly, with much of its ownership based outside of the U.S., I am authorizing legal documents to be drawn in order to allow Farmers and Ranchers to be given the right to PROCESS THEIR OWN FOOD. This should move quickly.”

President Donald Trump's close personal aide Natalie Harp, recently dubbed his human "binkie," has become one of the most controversial figures in his administration, and multiple sources revealed how she controls the information he relies on to make decisions.

Scrutiny of the 35-year-old Harp's role intensified this month after Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) publicly highlighted her constant presence alongside the 80-year-old Trump — now Zeteo is reporting on how the executive aide has leveraged her relationship with the president.

"If you’re a senior administration official, Cabinet-level appointee, or a political activist close to the White House who wants Donald Trump to blast something out on social media, you can just ask the president directly," wrote Zeteo's Asawin Suebsaeng. "You can shoot him a text, even. Or, as is now common practice, you can ask the one and only Natalie."

"Since at least 2024, one of the things that’s cropped up in my own reporting is that Harp, as strange and off-putting as the idea may be, is one of the most influential people on the planet today," Suebsaeng added. "That is largely because of her direct access to President Trump and how she feeds him a constant diet of online agitprop and kookery. It is also due to the fact that she helps control his MAGA social-media megaphone."

Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, has shown Harp anti-immigration content on multiple occasions with instructions to get it posted quickly, according to two unnamed sources. One unnamed Trump adviser told Zeteo they successfully got a crypto-related post published simply by asking Harp.

The report also linked Harp to a February incident in which Trump shared a racist video depicting the Obamas as apes.

Zeteo described Harp as unpopular among senior Trump staff, who reportedly view her devotion to the president as unusual, even as they avoid criticizing her publicly given her proximity to him. The outlet also reported that people seeking pardons or commutations have approached Harp directly.

The White House has not issued a detailed on-the-record response to the Zeteo report. The report characterized Harp not as a policymaker but as a gatekeeper who influences Trump's mood and, at times, his decision-making by controlling what information and content reaches him.

As one example, the report cited an unnamed official who described a meeting meant to focus on an economic matter that instead was dominated by Trump's complaints about an elections-related article Harp had printed out for him from a far-right website.

Zeteo said Harp appears driven less by policy than by personal devotion to Trump, though the outlet reported she has taken a particular interest in election-fraud claims and content popular on the online right.

"The president of the United States – who is furiously trying to rig elections at home while plunging us all deeper into no-end-in-sight wars on Iran, his fellow Americans, and f---ing Canada even – is living in his own head, a frenzied world that is in part of Natalie Harp’s own crafting," Subsaeng wrote. "A whisper or a printed-out piece of far-right garbage can swiftly affect President Trump’s mood and actually, according to those who’ve seen it happen, tinker with his official decision-making."

The Trump administration has sparked a full-blown “financial crisis” within the U.S. Navy after pillaging coffers earmarked for service member payrolls, The Guardian reported after speaking with U.S. Navy officials and reviewing new documents.

Dollars earmarked for U.S. Navy payrolls were being moved, according to The Guardian, to cover costs associated with President Donald Trump’s deeply unpopular war against Iran, a conflict that has drained the United States’ supply of munitions stockpiles. A Pentagon memo reviewed by the outlet warns of “shortfalls in payroll” accounts for U.S. service members due to Pentagon “raiding.”

“The piggy bank is broken,” said Harlan Ullman, a retired U.S. Navy officer and military academic, speaking with The Guardian.

Another U.S. Navy official who spoke with The Guardian on the condition of anonymity revealed the “imaginative” workarounds being employed to circumvent payroll shortfalls.

“The money for payroll was robbed to pay for overseas contingencies and is being backfilled by money that hasn’t been spent,” the U.S. Navy official said. “They are backfilling payroll so we get enough money in our paycheck.”

While a U.S. Navy spokesperson dismissed reports that U.S. Navy payrolls were at risk of falling short, the “cash shortage” within the branch was “no secret,” The Guardian reported.

“They’re just not speaking publicly about it,” said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C.

“And I suspect that is a deliberate decision of the civilian leaders in the Pentagon, starting at secretary, that this is for political reasons, that they don’t want to look like they’re damaging future military readiness over a war that is becoming increasingly a political liability.”

One former military officer who now works for a U.S. Navy contracting company and was “briefed on the shortfalls” was far more bleak in his assessment.

“They’re f-----,” the former officer said, speaking with The Guardian on the condition of anonymity. “They shot all their weapons; they trashed all their ships; they ran out of their money.”

President Donald Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran has hit all Americans in the wallet but has hit “his base” harder than anyone.

According to a report from NOTUS, gas prices may be lower in the rural communities that paved the way for his return to the Oval Office, but their driving habits create an unavoidable strain on their wallets.

The report notes gas at the pump now costs 40 percent more than it did before the Iran war began in February, per the Energy Information Administration, and political scientists broadly agree that gas prices "move the needle on presidential approval."

Trump has repeatedly tried to get ahead of the political fallout, telling voters, "So I just say this, so for you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember, you're doing it so that a very evil country cannot have … a nuclear weapon. So remember that, when you have to pay a little bit more."

"Pump prices have climbed more than a dollar in both the reddest and bluest counties since the war began," NOTUS is reporting, but price alone doesn't determine the pain — how much you drive does.

NOTUS is reporting, "Seen through that lens, the initial results look pretty simple: The pain falls more heavily on Trump’s base. About 87% of workers in the Trumpiest fifth of the country commute by car, according to our analysis of the American Community Survey. That’s almost 40% more than the fifth of the country that went most heavily for Kamala Harris in 2024."

Factoring in miles driven, "households in the reddest fifth of America spend about 30% more on gasoline annually" than those in the bluest areas. Measured as a share of income, red-county households spend "roughly twice" as much of their paychecks on gas as their blue-county counterparts.

Six months after President Donald Trump launched the war in Iran on Feb. 28 — predicting it would last four to five weeks — the conflict has instead become a defining liability of his second term.

Iranian forces have withstood months of bombardment, using mines and drones to keep degrading U.S. military capacity cheaply, and Trump's options are narrowed by his own-self imposed limits, reported the Washington Post.

"Trump needs to reopen the Strait of Hormuz while operating within his own red lines: His fierce aversion to becoming a 21st-century Herbert Hoover, who presided over the Great Depression, limits the economic moves available to him," the Post reported. "His decision, at least so far, to hold back from the riskiest and most extreme military moves against Iran similarly limits his war options."

Experts offered a harsh assessment of his strategy so far and questioned his decision to start the war in the first place.

"We are in an absolutely weaker position, and I don't know that there's any redemption for it," said Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution.

Trump has pointed to a soaring stock market and insisted the Strait of Hormuz — a critical global oil corridor — remains open, saying Tehran can no longer pay its troops. But shipping data shows traffic through the strait has collapsed to as few as five vessels a day this week, down from more than 100 daily before the war, according to the tracking firm Kpler, even as U.S. officials say some ships are hiding their transponders. Oil prices have stayed elevated throughout.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent this week announced an "economic D-Day" of sanctions on countries doing business with Iran, then softened the threat by delaying enforcement so as not to "blow up the global financial system" — a hedge that sanctions expert Richard Nephew said signaled weakness to Tehran.

“It clearly sent a signal to the Iranians that there is a limit to how far we’re going to be prepared to act,” said Nephew, who helped formulate the sanctions regime during the Obama administration before the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

“What worries me is whether or not we have now also, in addition, learned the limits to how far military coercion can push, and that actually the Iranian response is going to be, ‘We can handle all of this.’ In which case, it’s not just the the leverage on the economy that we’ve lost. We’ve lost leverage across the board,” Nephew added.

Domestically, the war is dragging on Trump's approval, which a Reuters/Ipsos poll put at 33 percent this week, with support softening even among Republicans, though it remains 69 percent within his own party.

U.S. intelligence assessments say Vladimir Putin now views Washington as weakened by the war and could be emboldened against Europe — prompting CIA Director John Ratcliffe's trip to Moscow this week to warn against further aggression toward Ukraine.

Roughly a quarter of the U.S. Reaper drone fleet has been lost, and Patriot stockpiles are strained, leaving allies like Greece warier of arming Ukraine and pushing the Pentagon to weigh scaling back its Gulf presence.

"We are not going to be the sole dominant presence in the Middle East in the way we were before," said Nate Swanson, a former National Security Council Iran director.

Once a teenage MAGA follower and self-identified conspiracy theorist, Addy Leugers, 24, now finds herself supporting Democratic Socialist candidates.

When she was just 14 years old, Leugers said she was primed to back Trump and his Make America Great Again movement during the 2016 presidential election.

“I was working, so I did have that exposure to other thought processes, but it really wasn't enough to pull what was essentially the foundation that primarily my dad laid for me to become infatuated with Donald Trump and with the thoughts and ideologies that he was putting out into the world around his first election in 2016,” Leugers told Raw Story.

Leugers grew up in a wealthy suburban Kansas City household with “very authoritarian-style parenting” and was homeschooled for religious reasons.

Her home was a “Fox News 24/7 household,” and she came to believe in far-right conspiracy theories like QAnon, which promotes lies that Trump waged a secret war against cannibalistic pedophiles among Democrats, Hollywood elites and the so-called “deep-state.”

“I was raised, ‘You respect the military. You respect the police. You respect the president. These are the people that God put in power. You listen to them because it's your moral obligation, basically,’” Leugers said.

“I feel like that's kind of where things started to go downhill for me.”

Addy Leugers (provided photo)

But when Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd in May 2020 and sparked a national racial reckoning, Leugers began to depart from the MAGA movement.

“I was one of those people that was like, ‘Well, because I haven't experienced it, and everyone else says that racism died when we ended slavery, racism isn't real,’ and people were like, ‘Addy, you're stupid,’” Leugers said.

‘My breaking point was that because I did have friends that I knew closely that were trying to correct me and trying to be kind and helpful, and I was just being nasty, and I doubled down, and they were like, ‘OK, well, I'm not gonna be your friend anymore because you're not being open-minded, and I'm trying to help you, and you're just being ignorant on purpose.’”

Leugers, a registered behavior tech who works with children who have autism spectrum disorder, has now joined dozens of others in Leaving MAGA, a growing online community of former Trump supporters whose allegiance to Trump led them to lose friends, family relationships and marriages, commit crimes in Trump’s name, embrace Christian nationalism, and believe conspiracies.

‘Echo chamber’

Leugers, who now lives in the Honolulu area, said she primarily votes for Democrats these days and is very supportive of younger representation in politics.

“I'm no longer a Republican,” she said.

Her time in MAGA gave Leugers insight into the drastic ways the direction of the movement has changed since Trump’s first election, when MAGA was more about “regular people” whose “support for our president is unmatched,” she said.

Now “MAGA [is] taking such a hit in the last couple of years because of what the president has been doing,” Leugers said.

“The MAGA movement itself is very shallow, but it's based in this sense of community and banding together, almost of ‘Oh, they hate us. They hate our president, but we have each other, and we have God, and everything's gonna be OK because this is God's will,’” Leugers said.

“It does turn into this little echo chamber of everyone believing all the same things and no one challenging anything.”

Leugers said she believes MAGA started with good intentions with people seeking community, but “it lacks nuance, and it lacks education, and that is what turns into this slippery slope, because it's like the hills they choose to die on.”

MAGA’s anti-abortion stance is one example, she said.

“You have the anti-abortion on one hand. They also have like ICE is killing people in the streets right now, so it's like it becomes very closed-minded, narrow, blinders-on type of thinking that ignores a broader picture,” Leugers said.

The second Trump administration’s policies have been of particular concern to Leugers and her roommate, especially the aggressive actions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has led to “people getting killed in the streets, shot in the streets, kidnapped in the streets, U.S. citizens being taken into detention centers without due process," she said.

At least 52 people in ICE custody have died since January 2025, and at least 23 people have been shot by ICE in that time, six of them fatally.

Other concerns include food contamination and recalls alongside the historic lows of food inspections by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and "propaganda" coming out of White House, Leugers said.

“We kind of laugh it off every day … but it kind of is getting to feel pretty dystopic,” Leugers said.

Leugers said she knows firsthand “admitting you're wrong sucks,” but she hopes that sharing her story will help others who are considering deconstructing their MAGA beliefs.

“If I can be one person to do my little part in this grand scheme of what is 2026 politics, then that's enough for me, and maybe even one person will see it and be like, 'Well, if she can change, I can change.’”

As the midterms approach, Leugers hopes for historic voter turnout in November.

“I hope that we, the American people, decide to get stuff done, and we decide that enough is enough,” Leugers said.

A conservative commentator fumed at an outgoing Republican lawmaker Friday for taking up a new effort to strip constitutional rights from naturalized citizens.

Republican lawmakers at the state and federal level are pushing proposals to bar naturalized and dual citizens from holding various offices – from governor to federal judgeships, Cabinet positions or seats in Congress – and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) has specifically stated that some of her left-leaning colleagues were motivation for her joint resolution calling for a constitutional amendment on the issue.

"She's put forth a bill that would require members of Congress, federal judges and cabinet members to be natural-born citizens," said CNN's Audie Cornish. "I want to ask, when will I be American? I'm a naturalized citizen."

Conservative radio host Jason Rantz fielded her question on "CNN This Morning," and he had harsh words for Mace – who finished fifth in a South Carolina GOP gubernatorial primary in June.

"You should ask Nancy Mace that question," said Rantz. "She does not represent the mainstream of Republicans or Americans on this particular topic at all. This is being pursued by a small group of folks who are very loud, and to your point, a lot of the bills are already dead. So this is one of those issues that I think is a bad look when you're able to push it upon all Republicans. But all Republicans clearly do not hold this view."

Rantz conceded that perhaps Americans with dual citizenship should perhaps be barred from serving in some roles, but he again stated that naturalized citizens should enjoy full constitutional rights.

"You deserve rights, you deserve respect for agreeing with our culture, our values, our principles, and everything we stand for in this country, and this is a disgraceful bill by a disgraceful Nancy Mace, who's been rejected by Republicans," Rantz said. "Go away!"

- YouTube youtu.be

A member of Vice President JD Vance’s inner circle hurled swears and slurs when asked about a roaring “whisper” campaign among conservatives to destroy the former Ohio senator’s political career, according to a new report.

The Bulwark's Jake Lahut reported Friday that a “civil war” raging inside the Republican Party, with Vance as a primary target, has his allies fuming about plots and ops.

"Do you think we're f-----g stupid?" one Vance ally told Lahut. "Obviously it is [an op]. We're not a bunch of f-----g r------."

According to Lahut, Vance's political operation believes there is a "brewing plot to sabotage the vice president’s chances of winning the 2028 GOP presidential nomination," confined mostly to broadsides on X and a behind-the-scenes back-stabbing network, serious enough to spark real "paranoia inside his camp."

Another Trump-world source described the campaign to The Bulwark's Lahut as an attempt to "kill" Vance's candidacy "in the cradle."

"The attacks have mainly called into question Vance’s support for the Iran war and his failed attempts to negotiate an end to it. They have also resurfaced remarks Vance made casting doubt on the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency," Lahut wrote before adding, "Vance’s network has seemingly tried to get ahead of the charges with strategic leaks to the press."

Trump adviser Alex Bruesewitz, who has previously singled out coordinated right-wing digital campaigns, told The Bulwark that the anti-Vance posting "is not organic and part of a broader move to undermine the vice president."

People in Vance’s network told The Bulwark that "they were not surprised by the apparent effort to take the wind out of his sails going into 2028" and pointedly admitted they were "surprised by how clumsy the effort has been so far."

No one interviewed for the Bulwark story would say Secretary of State Marco Rubio is personally involved, though the tension underscores a simmering rivalry between the two as 2028 approaches.

A Vance ally blew off the vice president's critics as "a collection of establishment neocon operatives and media voices," adding: "Their obvious Never Vance op, which they were hoping to keep clandestine until after the midterms, has already been exposed on social media due to the hamfisted way they've gone about it."

A federal judge ruled against the Trump administration on Thursday after declaring its treatment of the artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic to be unlawful, The New York Times reported.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration was working with Anthropic to integrate its AI model into the U.S. military’s classified systems, though the arrangement soon hit a snag after the company insisted that its technology not be “used to spy on Americans en masse, or to develop weapons that fire with no human involvement.”

The Trump administration ultimately cut ties with the company in March over its objections, and furthermore, designated Anthropic as a supply chain risk, a designation that prohibited the Pentagon from doing business with any contractor that does business with Anthropic.

The decision to brand Anthropic with such a designation, however, was unlawful, federal Judge Rita Lin ruled Thursday.

“The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,” Lin wrote, per the Times. “[The decision came down to] a desire to make a public example out of Anthropic for its ‘arrogance’ in criticizing the government.”

While the Trump administration did not immediately respond to the Times’ request for comment, Anthropic championed the ruling, and in a statement said they “remained focused on working productively with the government,” per the Times.

Lin had previously described the Pentagon’s attacks on Anthropic amid the feud “troubling,” and argued the Trump administration’s retaliation against the company appeared to be no more than an “attempt to cripple Anthropic."

Anthropic sued the Trump administration back in March over what it called its “unlawful campaign of retaliation,” in which the company accused the Pentagon of violating its First Amendment rights.

Veteran journalist Seymour Hersh says he and a “well-informed international source” had a “distressing discussion” about a trove of Jeffrey Epstein-related files currently being withheld by the Justice Department whose release “could cause problems for the past and present members of some in the Trump administration.”

Hersh wrote in his Substack Thursday about that conversation.

“I have been told that specific evidence about Epstein’s connections to foreign and domestic intelligence services, particularly [the Israeli intelligence agency the] Mossad and the FBI, though they do exist in government files, have yet to be the subject of materials made public by the Trump administration’s Justice Department and have not come under scrutiny by the Congress and the media,” he wrote.

“I had a distressing discussion of the Epstein affair with a well-informed international source I’ve known for a long time. He suddenly volunteered last fall to talk about what he knew about Epstein.”

Evidence exists to suggest that Epstein had worked on behalf of a number of different foreign governments, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Russia and Israel, with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) launching House Judiciary Committee probe into the matter last month.

Regarding Epstein’s ties to Israel, leaked emails reported on by Drop Site News have revealed the disgraced financier had deep ties to the Israeli government, having helped broker a defense agreement between Israel and the West African nation of Côte d'Ivoire, established a backchannel for Israel-Russia communications during the Syrian civil war, and helped broker a security cooperation agreement between Israel and Mongolia.

Evidence also exists that Epstein’s home in New York City was fitted with "surveillance cameras,” per a 2019 FBI email documenting the agency’s raid on the townhouse conducted shortly after Epstein’s death. According to Hersh, a Mossad agent may have not only played a role in the installation of said surveillance cameras, but was “caught” by the FBI.

“He was explicitly told to purchase off-the-shelf camera equipment in New York for the risky mission, but, as he sadly related to his friends, he didn’t follow those instructions and instead relied on the high-end equipment on which he had trained for Mossad,” Hersh wrote.

“The young Israeli told his boyhood friends that his operation had been compromised and the FBI caught him and immediately realized — given his nationality and the use of expensive Israeli gear — that Israel was aware of Epstein’s client list and its obvious blackmail and extortion potential in the world of international trade and intelligence collection.”

President Donald Trump's desperate attempt to engage his MAGA base with a terrible rehash of a previously unpopular move provoked a strange theory from a prominent political analyst Friday morning.

Trump's executive order renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America will underline to conservative voters his obsession with trivialities and remind them of one the most unpopular moves he made at the beginning of his second term, CNN's Aaron Blake argued.

"The move recalls one of Trump’s splashiest (so to speak) moves on his first day back in office last year, when he signed an order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the 'Gulf of America,'" wrote Blake. "That went over like a lead balloon."

Polls show Trump's decision to rename the Gulf was more unpopular than his pardons of Jan. 6 defendants with 70 percent of Americans opposing it in multiple polls.

Blake noted those polls were taken before Trump's renaming spree.

"Americans have taken a pretty dim view of Trump’s penchant for renaming things — including after himself," he wrote. After his handpicked board of loyalists tried to rename the Kennedy Center after Trump, Americans said by a 2-to-1 margin that he had 'gone too far.'"

Trump faces shorter odds of winning approval for "Lake America" considering the current political context — prices are rising as his war with Iran wages on, Blake argued.

Also — Americans like Canada, he wrote.

"These kinds of stunts might have felt a little cuter when Trump was riding higher early in his term, they now risk reinforcing how preoccupied he is with not just trifles, but things that Americans decidedly do not want," he wrote.

"Even some Republicans are balking, with the GOP nominee for Wisconsin governor, Rep. Tom Tiffany, saying Thursday that the name should stay the same."

So why did Trump decide to escalate hostilities with Canada? Blake has a surprising theory.

"You could say he’s playing the hits. But it’s really playing the flops," wrote Blake. "It increasingly feels as though President Donald Trump is trying to do unpopular things."

President Donald Trump’s Cabinet is being dispatched across the country to try and sell his accomplishments and are instead running into a buzzsaw of angry voters.

According to a report from Politico, the Trump roadshow is going so poorly that one Cabinet member is being warned to not show up for a return engagement in a key state where Republicans are in trouble.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright visited New Hampshire last week to promote natural gas pipelines and "and got hit with questions about $4 gasoline prices, while Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins traveled to Iowa over the weekend to rally farmers but ended up defending Trump's decision to import foreign beef, "which sparked outcry" with cattlemen.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in Florida to discuss school nutrition, instead got pulled into a fight with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro over two measles-related deaths in Lancaster County — the state's first measles deaths in 35 years, the report noted before adding that Wall Street insider Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has hit a wall with the business community skeptical of his plan to end the Iran war and lower long-term federal borrowing costs.

"The Cabinet kerfuffle comes at a time when the president’s envoys are needed most," Politico is reporting. "The midterms are less than three months away, the president’s approval rating is near record-lows and the White House is on a mission to remind voters of all it believes it has accomplished in the last two years, including a spate of tax cuts, improved border security and reductions in violent crime."

"If you just look at how it's animating people here, if you just look at the breadth of the headlines coming out from it, it's a challenge. It has legs, to be honest," one Iowa Republican operative told Politico, granted anonymity to discuss the fallout.

In particular, Rollins is facing the greatest challenge as she plans to a Tuesday return to Iowa, a GOP stronghold, where Trump beef proposal has ranchers up in arms.

“Trump has a good story to tell on the economy with respect to the tax cut and with respect to the investment that’s coming,” explained economist Stephen Moore, a former Trump adviser. But “if people are going to start confronting her on beef prices or egg prices or whatever it might be, it’s better to avoid being in the spotlight so you don’t get set up.”

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. escalated a public feud with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro this week over two measles-related deaths, accusing the Democratic governor of political theater.

The dispute erupted Tuesday, minutes after a heated phone call between Kennedy and Shapiro, when Pennsylvania health officials announced the state's first measles deaths in 35 years — two unvaccinated residents of Lancaster County, including a newborn who died hours after a midwife-assisted birth, reported the Washington Post.

Shapiro told reporters he informed Kennedy the state did not want additional federal help, then accused the health secretary of "sowing confusion" about vaccines and contributing to the disease's return.

Kennedy responded on social media, calling Shapiro's press conference an "unseemly rush" driven by "giddy delight" and framing the announcement as a "morose commentary on the contemporary political dialogue."

The two have since traded accusations of fearmongering, with Kennedy's office pointing to a CDC social media post that said the agency stood ready to help Pennsylvania and faulted the state for declining assistance — an account Pennsylvania officials dispute.

A Washington Post analysis found left-leaning political influencers discussing measles roughly five times more often than right-leaning figures this week, the highest volume since last year's Texas outbreak.

Kennedy, who founded a prominent anti-vaccine organization before becoming Health secretary, has a lengthy record of disparaging vaccines, including a 2021 appearance in Lancaster County where he called himself a "measles survivor" and touted chicken soup and vitamin A.

As HHS secretary, he has said vaccination is "the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles," though public health experts say Kennedy has undercut that message by falsely claiming the vaccines lack adequate safety testing.

However, even some infectious-disease experts critical of Kennedy have criticized Shapiro's administration, saying state officials should have released more detail from the outset to prevent misinformation from filling the gaps.

“A vacuum in public health information never stays empty — it gets filled by whoever moves fastest and cares least about accuracy,” said Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease physician in the Pittsburgh area. “The state and Gov. Shapiro’s communication failures and opacity invited RFK Jr and his allies in by engraved invitation and they now control the narrative while an unchecked measles outbreak spreads throughout the state.”

Lancaster County Coroner Stephen Diamantoni announced Thursday that the pathologist who autopsied the newborn did not believe measles caused the death and notified the state health department before Shapiro's announcement, but state health officials have said they classify any death as "measles-associated” when the virus is present.

Pennsylvania has recorded 424 measles cases this year, part of a national outbreak on pace to be the worst since 1991.

Just how many protective bunkers does one alleged president need?

If you’re Donald J. Trump, the answer is evidently at least two.

The question, of course, is why?

And here we’d all been led to believe that Trump’s hideous ballroom project was really all about the “military component” section of his White House monstrosity. It’s purportedly why the Supreme Court decided, in its infinite corrupt wisdom, to allow the mad-rush construction on it to continue “for now.”

(As an aside, you ever notice how the court’s shadow docket always grants Trump the go-ahead to proceed on whatever the hell he’s involved in “for now?” The thing is, “for now” has thus far always turned into “for good,” as the Supreme Court's majority never seems to return to address their emergency decisions. So very interesting. But I digress.)

It was just this past Sunday that The Washington Post published an exclusive detailing how federal officials had in fact built a highly formidable bunker buried more than 60 feet beneath the very same White House that Trump now calls home – the one he’s done his best to deface and destroy, both physically and spiritually.

This facility was apparently secretly completed during the Obama administration and is designed to withstand a nuclear blast. As noted in the Post article, it was conceived to ensure that “the president and his team have a secure command center to run the country in times of extreme duress.”

Huh. Imagine that. The thing Trump has been so obsessed about actually sounds more like a backup to what’s already been there for more than a decade. So, I mean, just how much security does one dude need?

It begs the follow-up question: exactly who is Trump so damn afraid of that he would need something so much bigger (more gold-encrusted?) than the bunker/military complex that was built for Obama?

Oh wait, that’s right. If it was for Obama, Trump needs to exceed it. We might see it as the presidential equivalent of penis envy. He’s always coming up short, particularly in comparison to a man who is so much greater in every respect that it’s essentially incalculable.

But back to that fear question. The usual collection of terrible totalitarian types are already Trump’s pals, at least publicly. You know, those renowned iron-fisted rulers like Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Viktor Orban and Xi Jinping. So, it doesn’t seem to be them he’s afraid of.

Who, then?

Oh wait. I think it must be us.

Yes, the American people seem to be who Trump believes he needs such massive protection from. The White House has argued that drone technology has created vulnerabilities that the first bunker (let’s call it “Archie Bunker” just for kicks) wasn’t designed to address.

Let’s assume Trump is fearful that the majority of the United States population that can’t stand the sight of him might get its hands on some of those drones and start firing them at him in some sort of organized uprising.

If you’re Trump, you might think you need the bigger space not to hide out in but to set up actual residence inside. Then, you would need not a mere underground fortress protected against attack but a palace. He would require it to house his staff, his family, his defenders, some soldiers, certainly Natalie Harp. Natalie would merit her own wing.

What could spark the need for Trump to hole up in such a facility for months on end, perhaps years? Well, for the sake of argument, suppose that he orders House Speaker Mike Johnson to completely hold off on seating newly elected Democratic representatives after the midterms. And the people take to the streets.

Think this is far-fetched? Think again. It is, in fact, entirely fetched.

Already, the Republican-controlled Congress has refused to function except as Trump’s rubber stamp. The will of the courts is consistently ignored and/or subverted – except for the Supreme Court, naturally, because they’re already in the tank for their master.

The only reason Trump would require a facility that could function as a below-ground Mar-a-Lago is that he needed a spot to hide out for a while without sacrificing any of the creature comforts he so demands. At the very least, it will need its own McDonald’s Bunkerland.

We are all living through the first presidential administration in American history that is bound by no accountability or rule of law. If you’re Trump, the one way to be sure that you remain invulnerable to eviction is to barricade yourself inside a place that can survive any amount of assault.

You think that a man who refuses to acknowledge his defeat in the 2020 Election will allow a little thing like term limits to dictate his power base? Not bloody likely. From what I can see, as has long been speculated, Trump has no intention of allowing any of his current level of authority to be usurped – and that includes refusing to leave in January 2029.

But before that, the accelerated/manic construction schedule of the current ballroom/bunker points to a desire to use it around the midterms and make sure it’s at least habitable on some level by possibly November, or year’s end at the latest.

I’m trying to reassure myself that there will have to be a way to stop Trump if the above is his goal of the moment, but I’m coming up empty. He’s already got immunity. And tens of thousands of ICE goons at his beck and call. And a militia of the pardoned Jan. 6 felons on some sort of slush fund payroll. And a paralyzed Republican Congressional base.

Can we really count on our conventional military to oppose this potential nightmare scenario? I wouldn’t bet my life on it. Would you?

What I don’t want to hear is that I’m ridiculously catastrophizing. I don’t believe that for a moment. What I do think is that our president isn’t rushing to finish a shiny new bunker because he’s concerned that future generations should have it as an option.

It is always, as ever, only about him.

(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)

Both Republicans and Democrats are rallying behind economic fixes that poll well but collapse catastrophically once they hit the real world, a columnist warned.

In a Thursday column, Catherine Rampell argued that the country has entered "the era of FAFO economics." She described the era as a cycle in which politicians push ideas that sound good in the abstract until voters live through the consequences.

Rampell's prime exhibit is price controls. A recent CBS News/YouGov poll found nearly two-thirds of Americans want the government to cap how much companies can raise prices, with a majority of Republicans, about 54 percent, on board. She described the policies as "lazy, poorly researched" fixes that voters sour on once they arrive.

Price controls have a long record of failure, Rampell noted. She pointed to shortages and black markets from the Soviet Union to 1970s America. Support tends to crater once the policies take effect, which is a pattern strategists bank on even as voters turn against the results, Rampell added.

"Politicians have gone all-in on lazy, poorly researched policies that sound terrific in the abstract — until people experience them and live to regret how terrible they are," Rampell wrote.

She pointed to tariffs that came as the "FAFO" cycle had already completed. Broadly popular after President Donald Trump's 2024 win, they have since cratered, with even protectionist Democrats like former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) now running ads against them.

Rampell reserved her sharpest criticism for the operatives she says have displaced actual economists in both parties.

"The experts have been ejected by both parties, often replaced with political operatives masquerading as scholars," she wrote. "Their job seems to be to reverse-engineer fake scholarship 'proving' the wisdom of whatever policy already polls well."

She quoted Heatmap's Matt Zeitlin on the limits of favorable polling. "All the polls in the world can't help you if people are also mad when they get implemented," Zeitlin wrote.

The result is "a sort of economic policymaking race to the bottom" in which both parties "compete to see who can FA harder," Rampell warned.

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman revealed the mood inside the White House amid President Donald Trump's frustration.

During a Thursday appearance on CNN, Haberman was asked about the White House environment as Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wrapped up her final day. CNN anchor Laura Coates noted that the second Trump administration isn't seeing as much turnover as the first, but she expects "a lot of midterm anxiety" in the White House right now.

"What's the morale like right now in the West Wing?" Coates asked Haberman.

"A midterms [race], as you know, is often a time when people leave White Houses. These are grueling jobs. There are, you know, intensity times a thousand," Haberman explained, but she added that staffers are feeling more pressure than usual as Trump is in a bad mood.

"It's not a happy environment by any of the reporting that we have," Haberman said. "The president has been in a pretty frustrated mood for a while about Iran, which, again, is of his own making."

Haberman added that Trump "does not have the patience for long-term diplomacy or having these lengthy conversations to try to get out of a situation."

Haberman and fellow New York Times reporter Jonathan Swan wrote Regime Change, which looks inside the White House during Trump's second administration. She told Coates that the book noted that Trump expected the conflict in Iran "to be a quick war."

Trump expected that "this would be over fast, and that just is not how it worked out, and now there is a further depletion of munitions, and there are stories about that all the time," Haberman said. "And he is frustrated about leaks and on and on and on."

As a result, "It's just not a happy environment" in the White House right now. "It is normal that people want to leave and want to go make money at this point, but it is very much not a happy place right now."

Conservative political commentator Scott Jennings found himself stammering as an entire CNN panel turned on his argument that the Iran war is won.

During a Thursday appearance on CNN's NewsNight, Jennings tried to defend President Donald Trump's "mission accomplished" declaration. Other members of the panel, including former White House GOP staffer Sarah Matthews and pollster and Democratic political strategist Joshua Doss, argued that Iran still has nuclear ambitions and is emboldened after the war.

"Their economy is in freefall. They have hyperinflation. Their leader is a cardboard cutout," Jennings said about Iran when Doss argued that Iran is emboldened.

"They're not emboldened," Jennings said. "The economic stranglehold we have on them has not emboldened anybody."

Trump has similarly argued that Iran is weakened by the war in Iran and has repeatedly declared that Iran is losing the war. However, Trump has not been able to strike a deal with Iran that ends the hostilities.

"Then why won't they make a deal?" CNN anchor Abby Phillip asked as Jennings argued that Iran is not emboldened.

"Because they're religious fanatics who are trying to bring about the end of the world," Jennings said.

"Then you're agreeing with Josh," Phillip pointed out, making the argument that Jennings is saying Iran is emboldened enough to reject negotiations with Trump. Phillip also told Jennings he was arguing that Iran is the same despite Trump's war, suggesting it didn't accomplish anything.

Jennings responded to Phillip by shaking his head and asking, "About what?"

"Josh just said that Iran is emboldened. The regime is the same. They are now back against the wall," Phillip said. "You just confirmed that they're religious fanatics, so you're saying nothing has really changed."

Jennings responded by stammering and looking down as he tried to regroup. "Well, I mean, I-I-I have argued from the beginning it was going to be near impossible to make a deal with religious fanatics," Jennings pivoted.

Meanwhile, Matthews yelled out, "So, mission accomplished?" as Jennings tried to save face.

A federal judge blocked the Trump administration's mail-in ballot rule by turning the Justice Department's own courtroom promises against it.

The ruling is the latest twist in the months-long fight over the Trump administration's push to give the federal government a gatekeeping role in mail-in voting. The Supreme Court let the administration move forward on August 24, and the U.S. Postal Service finalized the mail-in ballot rule two days later, which sent states and voting-rights groups racing back to court to block it before mail ballots start going out in September.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani on Thursday granted a fourteen-day temporary restraining order freezing the mandatory core of the U.S. Postal Service's rule for any election on or before November 3, including envelope-design approvals, voter enrollment in a new federal portal and provisions letting USPS refuse to mail non-compliant ballots.

The rule flowed from President Donald Trump's March executive order directing USPS to police mail voting. Two weeks ago, DOJ lawyers had assured her that challengers would have a fast remedy once the rule was issued, Talwani noted in her ruling granting the injunction.

"When the final rule is implemented, if it affects an individual voter's ability to vote, then they certainly have standing to challenge that final rule," Talwani wrote. "And courts are able to work in an expedited basis. It would only take a very short amount of time for a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction to issue."

Days ago, the DOJ said plaintiffs could "simply amend their complaint." But once they did, it reversed course and argued they were now too late because "appellate review in the ordinary course would come too late for the 2026 midterms." Talwani rejected the DOJ's pivot.

"But the question is not when appellate review will be completed," Talwani wrote. "The issue before the court is whether plaintiffs have met the traditional standards for emergency relief."

She found the states likely to win and ruled the USPS lacked authority to regulate election mail. The postal service's interest in "correcting an unsubstantiated problem through likely unconstitutional means is dwarfed by the overwhelming risk of pervasive disenfranchisement," she wrote.

A preliminary injunction hearing is set for September 3.

GOP strategist Marc Short called out President Donald Trump's strategy for lowering beef prices as an admission that he raised prices.

During a Thursday appearance on CNN, Short spoke about Trump's executive order renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America and how Republican candidates are feeling about it ahead of a critical midterm race in November.

"I think there are a lot of Republicans who are facing a midterm election in less than three months, and are anxious to address some of the issues that Americans view as top priorities," Short said. "And not this."

Trump might be "entertained by it, but I don't think it really helps a lot of the Republicans that are trying to win competitive races," Short stressed, adding that "voters face a really short choice in November."

Short said that Republicans have a legitimate attack against Democrats by going after them as socialists and anti-semites, "and yet we're not able to focus on that because we're talking about, you know, renaming lakes."

On top of that, Trump's tariffs with Canada won't help Republicans in the midterm, Short said, adding that Americans have bigger problems closer to home.

"That trade war that's ongoing with Canada is really counterproductive when they have been one of our greatest trading partners," he explained. "Americans are concerned about affordability, and the tariffs continue to raise prices."

Then Short attacked the White House's denial of raising prices through its policies. He pointed out that the Trump administration employed a strategy to lower beef prices by lowering tariffs.

"I know there's a lot of conversation from the administration that says they don't raise prices," Short said. "But just last week, to lower the price of beef, what did they do? They lowered tariffs, and so it's a clear acknowledgement that that's actually the economic formula to lowering prices."

MS NOW's Jen Psaki kicked off the night with a devastating overview of the Hope Florida scandal — a situation, she said, where a grand jury just revealed "corruption on top of corruption on top of corruption."

"Let me just start at the beginning of this story, because back in 2021, officials in Florida learned that a health care company called Centene may have overbilled the state for prescription drugs for kids on Medicaid ... the company was alleged to have overbilled a bunch of states to the tune of nearly $1 billion," said Psaki. "So some states sued the company for Medicaid fraud and started winning back their money in settlements." Florida, however, ignored the case for years, but then suddenly forced a settlement — with a bizarre condition.

Specifically, said Psaki, the grand jury found [Ron] DeSantis' allies "allegedly diverted $10 million from a settlement that was supposed to give poor kids health care and directed that money through a nonprofit affiliated with the governor's wife, and then into political action committees aligned with DeSantis himself, as well as to the Florida Republican Party. And then somehow a bunch of the people involved in making that happen all wound up getting huge promotions from Governor DeSantis."

"If this were written into a TV show pilot about a political scandal, is one of those storylines that would seem too far-fetched to be real," Psaki exclaimed.

Ultimately, she noted, the money ended up being used on campaigns to stop a ballot initiative to legalize marijuana in Florida. "For whatever reason, fighting against recreational marijuana has been one of Governor DeSantis' hobby horses. And in the 2024 election, defeating that ballot initiative was clearly one of his very top goals," said Psaki.

Perhaps most damningly of all, she said, CBS Miami reported "a whole bunch of the people involved in this saga appeared to know how bad it all looked from the start ... Centene's lawyers were concerned about the $10 million they were handing to Hope Florida. Of course they were, especially because it was going to a charity aligned with the governor's wife."

"If that is not a freaking red flag, I don't know what is," she added.

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