The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has a new problem: it's reportedly starting to smell.

Washington, D.C., freelance photographer Joe Flood posted a photo on X on Monday of the pool being actively drained. "As they drain it, the Reflecting Pool is starting to smell," he wrote.

President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social on Saturday that the pool would "probably be forced to release and drain much of the water in order to do the necessary repairs."

The drain order came after a $14 million no-bid renovation cratered almost immediately. Workers painted the pool bottom "American flag blue" — then algae bloomed within days, turning the water green and sending the new paint peeling off in strips.

Trump blamed unnamed vandals, without offering evidence. United States Park Police separately arrested David Carter Hearn, 67, a three-time Olympic canoeist who says he stopped at the site out of curiosity and reached down to touch a piece of peeling paint. He was charged with misdemeanor destruction of government property.

"I was just a curious, concerned citizen," Hearn told the Washington Post. "I guess I was there at the wrong place, wrong time."

Scientists weren't surprised by the algae. National Public Radio reported that the pool's dark new surface absorbs more sunlight, warming the water and creating ideal conditions for blooms.

President Donald Trump claimed on Truth Social Sunday he inspected the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and consequently blamed its seriously vandalized conditions on sick, deranged people. He also announced work would immediately begin to fix it.

Trump's renovation project, allegedly aimed at restoring Washington, D.C., exceeded its proposed $14.2 million budget and was criticized by historians. In addition, days after its initial blue paint application, algae reappeared across the pool.

Trump ended his post by saying, "We will fix it?"

As Trump posted his inspection, MeidasTouch reported a dead duckling was found floating in the Reflecting Pool.

Political analysts reacted with skepticism on social media.

Conservation biologist Marcelo Lima posted on Bluesky, "bonkers."

Historian T.J. Stiles noted on Bluesky, "As someone said, Trump claims he made Washington the safest city in America, but now says he was unable to protect a national monument, despite constant work and attention on site," adding, "Faced with a choice of claiming incompetence in redecorating or in public safety, he went with the latter."

"Someone just told him that the murder of a duckling just took this feckless, incompetent disaster to another level," Said Ron Filipkowski, editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch.

Watch the video below.

The Justice Department is dangling nearly $1 billion in public safety grants in front of cities and police departments nationwide — but with a condition that critics say is designed to freeze out Democratic-led communities.

The grants announced this month comes with a catch requiring local officials to work with federal immigration officers as the Trump administration works to draw local police deeper into immigration enforcement in the wake of widely criticized federal surges in cities like Minneapolis and Chicago, reported NPR.

"They are trying to take dollars that local agencies have been depending on for years and saying, 'Oh, well, if you want these dollars, then you need to help us out with our immigration enforcement work,'" said Tahir Duckett, executive director of the Center for Innovations in Community Safety at Georgetown Law.

About $700 million comes through the DOJ's long-running COPS grant program, which has funneled more than $20 billion to local police departments since 1994 for everything from hiring officers to school safety initiatives. An additional $300 million — a new program called the Model Cities Initiative, created under Trump's tax-and-spending law — will go to just two to four midsize cities, with the DOJ bypassing its standard competitive peer-review process in favor of direct review by agency leadership.

Buried in the fine print is a mandate that any program that "impedes or hinders" federal immigration enforcement, including failing to honor requests from the Department of Homeland Security, won't be funded. The COPS grants similarly give "priority consideration" to jurisdictions that cooperate with immigration authorities.

"That is highly unusual and especially concerning, because the grants appear to be bypassing the standard competitive peer review process," Amy Solomon, senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice and former head of the DOJ's Office of Justice Programs, told NPR.

Teams of reviewers with expertise in diverse subjects would typically evaluate the grant applications, but critics say the new plan would have he practical effect of shutting out Democratic-led cities entirely.

What's the end result? The only cities and localities that apply are Republican-led cities," said Insha Rahman of the Vera Institute of Justice, predicting the administration will use the contrast on the campaign trail to paint Democrats as soft on crime.

Police chiefs have long resisted entangling local law enforcement with immigration enforcement, warning it erodes community trust and discourages witnesses from cooperating with investigations. Research has also found immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than U.S.-born citizens, and federal data shows more than 70 percent of current immigrant detainees have no criminal convictions — undercutting the administration's public safety rationale.

The DOJ declined an interview request, but in a statement called the disconnect between immigration and public safety "ludicrous," touting the arrests of "hundreds of thousands of criminal illegal aliens" including alleged terrorists and gang members. DHS, meanwhile, said cities refusing cooperation force federal agents into a "more visible presence" in their communities.

The first Trump administration tried a similar tactic, but it was challenged in court and later reversed under President Joe Biden.

Republicans have signs of trouble ahead of the midterm elections after President Donald Trump has "failed to deliver on his economic promises," an analyst argued on Monday.

In a column for The Guardian, journalist and author Steven Greenhouse pointed out how the GOP will have to face this growing problem among white, blue-collar voters in the fall.

"If any demographic group was key to Donald Trump’s election victories in 2016 and 2024, it was white, blue-collar voters," Greenhouse wrote. "But in perhaps perilous news for Republicans, Trump’s support from that group has plummeted – as many white, working-class voters have grown upset about everything from increased inflation and gas prices to Trump’s war against Iran. These glaring cracks in Trump’s blue-collar base point to big trouble for Republicans in this November’s midterm elections."

The disappointment among GOP voters is "bad news" for Republicans, Greenhouse argued. And polls point to that mounting dissatisfaction — a new CBS poll revealed that 54 percent of white voters without a college degree disapprove of Trump's performance as president. Trump won 66 percent of white voters without a four-year degree in the 2024 presidential election.

"This shows severe cracks in Trump’s white, blue-collar base, a group that candidate Trump wooed by promising to crack down on immigration, to reduce prices on day one, to bring back manufacturing jobs and to not start new foreign wars," Greenhouse wrote. "Many blue-collar voters see that Trump has failed to deliver on any of these promises except for his massive crackdown on immigrants – that crackdown has grown unpopular, however, after Trump’s masked agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis."

Democratic candidates in states with a large population of blue-collar, white workers could benefit in midterms from voters turning on Trump, especially in states such as Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas.

"To increase their chances of taking back the House and Senate, Democrats need to tap into the growing blue-collar disenchantment with Trump and Republicans," Greenhouse wrote. "And let’s not forget that it’s not just white, blue-collar voters who have turned against Trump – many working-class African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans are also upset that Trump plunged the US into war and that gas prices have soared and that tomato prices are up 32% over the past year, coffee prices up 17% and beef up 13%."

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has "pretty much killed" a cousin's political future, former Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy said.

Patrick Kennedy — a longtime mental health advocate — made the admission in a NOTUS interview Monday. He is one of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s last remaining family allies.

"Many Kennedys say they're mortified," NOTUS reported.

"I would not be able to run for office and probably survive a Democratic primary," Patrick Kennedy told the outlet, "with all the work that I've done with the secretary."

Caroline Kennedy has described the HHS secretary as a "predator" in a January 2025 letter to senators. She urged them to reject his nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

"'Enough is enough,' human rights activist Kerry Kennedy wrote last September, demanding her brother resign. 'Secretary Kennedy must resign. Now.'"

"'Rabid dog" was congressional candidate Jack Schlossberg's verdict — JFK's only grandson, who is running for a Manhattan House seat.

Tatiana Schlossberg, writing for the New Yorker, insisted that RFK Jr. was "mostly... an embarrassment to me and the rest of my immediate family."

"'None of us will be spared the pain he is inflicting," former Rep. Joe Kennedy III wrote on X.

Critics pounced on Vice President JD Vance Monday over what some alleged to be “operational security” failing captured on camera during the ongoing U.S.-Iran negotiations in Switzerland.

Vance was photographed Sunday working on a laptop while sitting beside Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, who in the photograph is seen gesturing and looking directly at the laptop screen.

With Qatar not being a signatory to the U.S.-Iran tentative peace deal, some critics, such as Travis Akers, a retired U.S. Navy intelligence officer, argued that Vance may have breached standard protocols relating to data security.

“This photo was published [by] the Prime Minister of Qatar, Vice President JD Vance and Jared Kushner. What’s the problem?” Akers wrote in a social media post on X to his nearly 180,000 followers. “Giving a foreign leader visual access to a [United States government] laptop, while using someone else’s [Common Access Card] to log in. Pure incompetence at every turn.”

Fred Guttenberg, a gun-safety advocate whose daughter was killed in the 2018 Parkland school shooting, echoed Akers’ assessment.

“Incompetence at every step of the way,” Guttenberg wrote in a social media post on X to his more than 460,000 followers. “America is less safe and less secure because of this administration.”

Takaya Suzuki, an assistant professor at Tohoku University in Japan, sarcastically invoked the rallying cry "But Hillary's emails" – a reference to the email controversy that dogged Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and became a fixation of conservative critics.

And Dave Vorland, a former Biden administration appointee, called on voters to send a message regarding Vance’s alleged security breach at the ballot box in November.

“Yes, this is all true and we should expect and demand better,” Vorland wrote in a social media post on X. “But that needs to come at the ballot box, we already knew that a Trump Administration would be terrible at data security and operational security.”

The Washington Post obtained over 25,000 memos and documents revealing former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard's political actions were directed by Chris Butler of the Science of Identity Foundation.

The documents show Butler provided directives on legislation, policy positions, and television conduct, with memos instructing what bills Gabbard should propose, according to the report published Sunday.

"They had an air of authority," wrote The Post, adding, "A memo about a proposal to partition war-torn Iraq into three states quoted an unnamed person as saying it was 'time for TG to come up with this idea'."

The report also includes Butler's criticisms of Gabbard, calling her mealymouthed in response to a bill she introduced.

Political analysts expressed shock at the revelations.

"It’s kind of a relief that all her insane policy positions came from a Hindu cult leader and not from [Vladimir] Putin," Sir William Browder, who leads the Global Magnitsky Justice campaign, posted on X.

"Hillary was right about her," Jen Monroe, host of the "Ambitious Crossover Attempt" podcast, posted on X.

"Strong test of the Unitary Executive Theory," James Goodwin, policy director at the Center for Progressive Reform, posted on Bluesky.

Watch the video below.

Voting rights advocacy groups warned last week that a North Carolina House bill proposing extensive changes to state election laws is “harmful” to voting rights.

Representatives from Common Cause North Carolina, Democracy North Carolina, Forward Justice, North Carolina Asian Americans Together, and North Carolina Black Alliance gathered outside the state Legislative Building at the hour state lawmakers inside were expected to vote on House Bill 958

Republican lawmakers who authored the bill said Tuesday that it was intended to improve the “integrity” of the election process. But Kathleen Roblez, senior voting rights counsel at Forward Justice, highlighted a provision of the bill that would prohibit state and local election board members from “encouraging or promoting voter turnout in any election.”

“This is like saying you own a restaurant, but you cannot go online and say, ‘Please come eat dinner today.’” Roblez said. “This is saying a state or county board election member cannot say ‘Today’s election day, register to vote, voting is good.’ That’s their job. This is a First Amendment violation, plain and simple.”

Roblez also expressed concerns that the bill’s proposal to require military and overseas voters to provide documentation showing their most recent North Carolina address along with their registration applications would result in fewer people voting overseas.

“It’s important now, as always, to remember that if your vote wasn’t so important, they wouldn’t be working so hard to take it away from you,” Roblez said.

The bill would also require overseas and military voters to submit photo identification with their ballots, codifying a state Supreme Court decision in Republican Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin’s unsuccessful attempt to throw out ballots in his 2024 race for a Supreme Court seat.

The influence of the Supreme Court decision in Griffin’s case appears in the bill a second time in the bill’s move to make overseas voters who have never lived in North Carolina but vote in the state because their parents last lived here ineligible to vote in state or local elections. These voters are referred to as “never residents” in Griffin’s lawsuit.

Other key changes of H958 include:

• Allowing state Auditor Dave Boliek, a Republican, to select counties for post-election audits instead of counties being randomly selected.
• Extending the deadline from three to five business days for voters who cast provisional ballots because they did not show their ID, or who have mistakes or omissions on their absentee ballot envelopes to show their ID or correct the mistakes.
• Gives county election boards two additional business days to announce absentee ballot counts, extending the deadline from Friday after an election to Tuesday.

North Carolina Black Alliance Executive Director Marcus Bass said the bill’s provisions, taken together, will disproportionately affect younger, poorer and minority voters.

“We are here to make sure that the individuals behind us don’t just operate in the cover of darkness or in the confines of this concrete building,” Bass said, “but that their actions are met by voters in the district, by individuals that they’re elected to serve, and by the citizens who deserve free and fair elections.”

The state House Elections Committee approved the bill Tuesday along party lines. Republican bill sponsors had planned to fast-track it through another committee and onto the state House floor as quickly as possible. However, they delayed the bill after dozens of protesters crowded into legislative meeting rooms and hallways Tuesday. It did not resurface for debate Wednesday. House leaders say they’re continuing to work on it.

During Wednesday’s press conference, advocates also expressed concerns over the rollback of early voting sites in various counties, including a decision last week in Wake County to relocate a site from NC State University’s student center to a building at the edge of campus, as well as a decision by Granville County election officials to relocate two early voting sites out of Oxford and Creedmoor, where the majority of the county’s Democrats live, into rural areas of the county that are more heavily Republican.

“It is targeted to Black voters, but the fringes are also cutting a wider gap in democracy than I think that they’re anticipating,” Bass said. “Everybody should be upset about what’s happening.”

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman warned the damage from President Trump's failed war in Iran — and his broader approach to governing — will outlast his presidency, leaving the U.S. diminished on the world stage for years to come.

In an interview with The New Republic's Greg Sargent on his "Daily Blast" podcast, Krugman dismissed Trump's claims of victory in Iran as detached from reality.

"Iran won," Krugman said. "Iran is in a much stronger position and the U.S. in a much weaker position than before the war started."

Krugman called the resulting ceasefire deal "vastly inferior" to the Obama-era nuclear agreement Trump abandoned during his first term, adding that the conflict cost lives, depleted weapons stockpiles, and exposed the limits of American power.

"He could have just done nothing — that would have been better," he said.

The conversation centered on a series of early-morning social media posts in which Trump demanded credit for the outcome and touted economic gains. Krugman pushed back point by point, noting that job growth has actually been slower than in the last two years under Biden, with unemployment essentially flat and real wages lower due to inflation accumulated since Trump took office, and he argued stock market gains reflect a global rally rather than anything specific to Trump's policies.

"The stock market is up, no question about that," Krugman said. "Although the stock market rose a lot under Joe Biden, too, Trump would like you to put that down the memory hole. Stocks are up, by the way, around the world. There’s a stock market boom. I haven’t checked the numbers lately, but I believe that they’re up substantially more outside the United States than inside the United States."

Krugman framed Trump's behavior as part of a broader pattern of decline, arguing the war revealed that the U.S. could not impose its will on a "third-rate military power" and that American allies increasingly understand they don't need Washington — citing Ukraine's continued resistance despite a U.S. cutoff of arms and funding. He warned this erosion of credibility is not easily reversible.

"There’s a lot that has obviously been made much worse by Trump screwups," Krugman said. "What the world now has to suspect, even when Trump is gone from the stage, is who’s the next guy? How do we know that we won’t have another Trump-like figure? Does an agreement with America mean anything, since we’ve just seen an American president rip up every agreement that we had?"

"We don’t get that back," he added. "It took generations to build the reputation of America. You don’t get that back unless you give us three generations of good governance from here on in."

Krugman was equally blunt about Trump personally, describing him as someone living through a kind of public unraveling.

"If you look at some of those late-night tweets, the tweets we’re talking about here, you kind of get hit by a real dose of somebody in very steep mental decline," he said. "It’s sort of two-layered. On the one hand, it’s the sheer nakedness of the demand for adulation, which is just completely crazy. Somebody who’s sunsetting very plainly in plain sight, who knows he’s on his way out and is desperate to have something that he can call a legacy. That’s what we see there."

"But at the same time, you also see him completely detached from the reality of what he’s actually done to us," Krugman added. "What he’s done to you and me, to liberal America, to blue America, even to red America, even to MAGA country."

Krugman highlighted the administration's renovation of the National Mall's Reflecting Pool — drained, repainted and resealed, only to be overtaken again by algae — as an almost literary metaphor.

"Everything Trump touches turns to crud," he said.

Rep. James Comer (R-KY) suggested on Monday that pardons issued by former President Joe Biden should be declared "null and void," prompting a wave of reactions online.

The Chairman of the House Oversight Committee appeared on Fox Business to discuss pardons, including the preemptive pardon issued by Biden for Dr. Anthony Fauci. In an explosive new Washington Post report, new details emerged involving former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard's actions and her accusations that Fauci had led a COVID coverup.

Comer argued during the live interview that Biden had never held any meetings ahead of pardons.

"There's no evidence Joe Biden had any decision-making in the pardon process. So I think that, alone, is more than enough evidence to declare all the pardons issued by Joe Biden in the last days of his presidency null and void," Comer said.

The internet responded to the Republican lawmaker's claims, with experts raising questions over what Comer's remarks could mean for President Donald Trump's pardons.

"If Biden's pardons can be declared null and void, so can Trump's under the next president, and for the same reasons. Be careful what you wish for," writer and political commentator Gary Gifford, who has more than 34,000 followers, wrote on Bluesky.

"I would welcome the death of the pardon power!" John Castiglione, lawyer and assistant editor of The Steinbeck Review, wrote on Bluesky.

"Got his marching orders," Dr. Marina Archer, psychologist and progressive commentator with nearly 15,000 followers, wrote on Bluesky.

"When you run out of real talking points," Anthony M. Hopper, author and professor at ECPI University, wrote on X.

The Washington Post’s bombshell report Sunday that revealed Tulsi Gabbard may have been guided throughout her political career by a “cult guru” cemented the Trump administration’s legacy for the worse, argued Zeteo’s Martin Pengelly, who noted how the revelation made clear that the federal government had transformed into a full “kakistocracy.”

Gabbard, who resigned from her position as Director of National Intelligence last Friday, was revealed to have received guidance throughout her 20-plus years in politics from Chris Butler, the leader of a religious group that countless former members have described as a “cult.”

That guidance allegedly shaped nearly every facet of her political life – from her talking points to the bills she introduced – with the Post identifying several instances where she appeared to follow through.

“Ask yourself a question: ultimately, what does Gabbard’s career tell us about how we are governed now?” Pengelly, who previously worked for Raw Story as an investigations editor, wrote in an analysis published Monday in Zeteo.

“A Fox weekend host with an alleged drinking problem is secretary of defense. An anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist runs health and human services. And a dedicated cult member became director of national intelligence, despite the association being long known. This is what a kakistocracy looks like.”

The revelation also painted a rough picture of President Donald Trump’s legacy, Pengelly argued.

“And Gabbard’s extreme behavior in particular, highlighted by [journalist Jon] Swaine and the Post, shows us it’s not just a matter of Trump being mad as a hatter,” Pengelly wrote. “He’s dragged us all through the looking glass now.”

Referring to the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall, Minnesota governor Tim Walz commented on X: “Found an imaginary problem, said only they could fix it, didn’t listen to experts, hired buddies who grifted millions, failed miserably, bragged how great it went. The entire Trump presidency in a nutshell.” (Walz could have added: “blamed others for his failure, conjured up a conspiracy, then prosecuted them.”)

One remarkable aspect of Trump’s horrendous reign is how many crises and problems he’s brought on himself—created them out of thin air. Then he brags about how well he’s handled them. And when they go wrong—as they inevitably do—he casts blame on others or on his political opponents.

Four examples from the last few days:

I. The Return of Operation Metro Surge

US prosecutors in Minnesota on Tuesday announced charges against 15 people they say conspired to “violently oppose immigration law enforcement.”

But when repeatedly questioned by the press, US Attorney Daniel Rosen failed to describe a single example of injuries to federal agents.

Rosen has a dubious track record with this kind of prosecution. In the months after “Operation Metro Surge,” launched by the Trump regime last December, federal prosecutors charged three dozen Minnesotans in a first wave of cases allegedly involving assaulting or impeding federal immigration agents. Most were dismissed or downgraded.

So why is Minnesota’s US attorney announcing new charges? Rosen’s predecessor as US attorney, Joseph Thompson, said he doesn’t understand it. “I think most people, on both of the sides of the political aisle, viewed [Metro Surge] as a disaster for the administration,” Thompson told The Wall Street Journal. “Why you would want to go back and re-litigate this is beyond me.”

One clue lies in the timing of the new charges—coming just two weeks after the John F. Kennedy Library awarded its 2026 Profiles in Courage Award to the people of the Twin Cities for their resistance to Operation Metro Surge.

A bipartisan committee praised the community for defending constitutional rights and demonstrating civic courage:

“Tens of thousands took to the streets to peacefully protest federal overreach and threats to immigrant families and constitutional protections, while others documented enforcement activity and alerted neighbors to federal agents’ presence. Faith leaders organized demonstrations, community groups built rapid-response networks, labor leaders and small business defended workers, and volunteers provided critical support and resources. Across religious, racial, and political lines, a broad coalition of residents of the Twin Cities and surrounding suburbs united in peaceful resistance despite violent confrontation and real personal risk, defending their neighbors’ rights and strengthening the national movement to protect American democracy.”

Trump is presumed to have a grudge against the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage Award because last year’s award went to his former vice president, Mike Pence, for explicitly resisting Trump’s demands to overturn the 2020 election results on January 6, 2021.

II. Trump’s Unending War in Iran

On Sunday, negotiators for Iran and the United States met in Switzerland for a little over an hour. No progress was made. Iranian negotiators insisted on an end to the war between Israel (a US ally) and Hezbollah (an Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon) as a condition for further talks, according to Iranian state media.

The talks were also strained by Trump’s renewed threats against Iran. Fox News reports that Trump, in an interview, said he had spoken with Iranian officials Saturday night and warned them not to close the Strait of Hormuz. “You close it, and you won’t have a country,” Fox said, quoting Trump. “You won’t even make it back to your f—ing country.”

The Iranian delegation in Switzerland decided to suspend the talks due to Trump’s threats, according to Nour News, which is affiliated with Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. IRIB, Iran’s state broadcaster, said it was unclear if the talks will resume.

Iran’s lead negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said on social media that the United States should be careful about issuing threats, adding that Iranian armed forces were prepared to respond. “No matter how much they talk, it is we who act,” he wrote.

Iran says the strait is once again closed. World oil prices are again rising.

One Republican senator described the war in Iran and the sputtering peace talks as “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”

Trump continues to look for a way out, at least for himself. “If it works out, I’m going to take the credit,” Trump said of the peace agreement, only half in jest. “If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD.”

III. Prices Continue to Rise

On Sunday, Trump celebrated Father’s Day with a social media post touting that the USUS has the “BEST ECONOMY EVER.”

“Happy Father’s Day!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Our Country is doing GREAT. Record Jobs Numbers and Stock Market, BEST ECONOMY EVER! Greatest Military in the World, by far. We are WINNING on all fronts, WINNING LIKE NEVER BEFORE. GOD BLESS YOU ALL!!!”

Inflation in May increased to 4.2 percent, its highest point in three years, with the food index seeing a 3.1 percent increase over the past year and a nearly 4 percent bump in energy prices. Wages are not rising as fast, which means most Americans are becoming poorer.

The latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll released last week shows that only 33 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, his lowest point in both of his terms and 3 points lower than former president Biden at his all-time low.

Trump has long dismissed “affordability” as an issue Americans are concerned about, saying last week that affordability is a “fake word, made up by the Democrats.“

IV. The Reflecting Pool Worsens

All of which brings us back to the Reflecting Pool. Two weeks ago, Trump declared that his decision to repaint the Pool “American Flag blue” was not simply a “paint job” but “highly sophisticated material, industrial strength, that could last for 100 years.” The dark blue paint that Trump insisted on is now peeling, and green algae are returning.

But the blue paint is now peeling and the algae are back.

On Friday night, Trump blamed “Radical Left Lunatics, most likely Dumocats [sic], who have spent their lives trying to ruin our Country” for “some real problems with Vandalism at the beautiful Reflecting Pool” and linked it to the etching of “8647” into the grass on the National Mall days earlier, adding that law enforcement is investigating.

Then on Saturday, Trump doubled down, claiming that “multiple individuals” had taken “some form of knife or blade, and put a 250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade of what took so much work, competence, and money to build and complete. These are very serious crimes having to do with the destruction of National Monuments. Years in jail! Work will begin immediately on its repair.”

So far, five people have been arrested for vandalizing the Reflecting Pool, according to Trump officials. But the evidence against them is weak at best. For example, former Olympic canoe racer David Hearn, 67, was arrested after he touched a flap of blue material partially detached from the bottom of the pool. Hearn, who says he has a background in material science, told CNN he checked out the pool after reading reports of algae in the water and paint or sealant peeling off the bottom. “I didn’t vandalize anything,” Hearn told The Washington Post. “I didn’t destroy or break or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs.”

Yet the Reflecting Pool’s new blue surface isn’t plastic like a typical pool lining, which can be cut. It’s a coarse coat of dark blue paint. It’s peeling because the paint job—done by a Trump donor who had been given the no-bid contract—was obviously done badly, as well as being way over budget. And the algae have returned not because of vandalism but because the dark blue paint has trapped more heat, rapidly creating a friendly habitat for the algae.

As Tim Walz says, it’s the entire Trump presidency in a nutshell.

Sen. John Cornyn spent years voting as President Donald Trump's demanded, cheering the president's speeches, and trying to rename a Texas highway after him. He lost his Senate seat anyway. Now he's done toeing the line for Trump and the Republican Party.

The four-term Texas Republican was ousted in May by Ken Paxton, whom President Donald Trump endorsed at the last minute. Paxton won by 28 points.

Cornyn sat down with Semafor this week and said what he apparently kept quiet through years of courtship.

The contrast with what came before is stark.

Cornyn wrote on X that he had a 99.3 percent voting record with the president and was "proud of what we have accomplished together." He pushed a state bill to rename a Dallas-area highway as Interstate 47 in Trump's honor — an effort he told the Daily Beast "may not make it into my priorities the next seven months." He posed for a widely mocked photo in which he appeared to be reading Trump's ghostwritten book, The Art of the Deal.

None of it was enough.

"The president seems to revel in chaos, which is so different from any other leader that I've ever seen," Cornyn told Semafor recently. "I don't know about you, but I like to minimize the chaos in my life. He just seems to revel in it."

Cornyn also made clear he has no illusions about Trump's reliability. Conversations with the president aren't "particularly useful," he said, "because he can and will change his mind depending on the next person he talks to on the phone."

Cornyn showed his remaining leverage by withholding his vote on Trump's immigration spending bill until the White House agreed to release more than $10 billion in border security reimbursements owed to Texas.

On Trump's decision to back Paxton over him — and spend on the general — Cornyn was dry. "The president picked Paxton, and he's got $350 million dollars," he said. "I think he can spend his money."

After the primary loss, Cornyn posted what he called "an old, but apt fable" — the frog and the scorpion. "The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite knowing the consequence," he recited, "to which the scorpion replies: 'I am sorry, but I couldn't help myself. It's my character.'"

And as for taking on his own party, Semafor noted Cornyn was "positioned to play more hardball" in an "unusual" move for him.

“That’s one example I think of what you can do when you have some cards to play," the senator told the publication.

A pair of President Donald Trump's appointees raised eyebrows by floating conspiracy theories about the Watergate scandal that ended Richard Nixon's presidency.

Pardon attorney Ed Martin marked the 54th anniversary of the June 17, 1972, Watergate break-in that set in motion the chain of events that led up to Nixon's resignation two years later by blaming the scandal on U.S. intelligence and Washington Post reporters Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

"We should mark the 54th anniversary of the Watergate break-in (a few days ago) by remembering this: it is the OG hoax with the pre-FISA CIA running wiretaps on domestic politicians," Martin posted Sunday on X. "And then blaming the Nixon campaign. And Washington Post leading (not reporting)."

"The only thing worse than the lying CIA is the two-faced liar John Dean and the fiction-writer Woodward," Martin added. "May they suffer in eternity."

Martin's conspiracy theory was co-signed by Monica Crowley, the U.S. chief of protocol and a former Fox News commentator.

"President Nixon was the target of a Deep State hoax," Crowley posted. "He will be vindicated. NIXONMAXX!"

The pair's posts set off alarm bells and renewed personal scandals involving each of them.

"NBD - it's just the US Pardon Attorney and US Ambassador and Chief of Protocol talking about how the CIA framed Nixon for the Watergate break-in and it was all a hoax," posted law professor Corey Rayburn Yung.

"My heart goes out reading this, because I know that if this ass-ignorant dogs – understanding of what happened in Watergate was indicative of my original academic work, I'd have to plagiarize in my dissertation and published books too," said columnist Jeb Lund, recalling a 2017 report about plagiarism in one of Crowley's books that dredged up similar concerns about her academic work.

"Monica Crowley has all the credibility of the plagiarist that she is," agreed historian Larry J. Simon.

"I don't know what this Monica Crowley person is so worked up about," opined public defender Don Zeko. "Nixon has been vindicated already; it's called Trump v. US."

"Nixon absolutely thought that he was set up by the CIA for Watergate – not ‘framed,’ he did do it – & he would agree with Monica Crowley in principle, but he’d never say it in public," argued writer and director Justin Sherin. "I can’t go there anyway. Maybe if he were still a parody acct but for better or worse people take him seriously."

"That the CIA had nothing to do with it and Nixon tried to have them lie to the FBI and say they did is, like, the whole scandal," reminded election lawyer Andy Craig. "We literally have it on tape!"

"It absolutely, 100% does not matter to these people that Nixon is on tape doing Watergate and that’s why he was impeached," stated public relations professor Joshua Foust. "Lying is a virtue. What matters to them is being willing to humiliate and dissemble your way through any debate, at any cost to personal dignity, to try to 'own' liberals."

President Donald Trump took to social media Monday to warn Americans against vandalizing his beautification projects in Washington, D.C., threatening those who “even attempt” to destroy “such things” with a decade behind bars.

“Of the MANY Statues and Fountains that we rebuilt, renovated, cleaned, and fixed, the only one that was Vandalized was the Reflecting Pool, which is being taken care of, ASAP!” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social, repeating a claim that’s been disputed by critics.

“It has been given a 300 foot long gash, chemicals have been illegally placed in the water, and the beautiful new grass field has been destroyed with a gigantic 86 47 chemically carved into it (Probably inspired by Dirty Cop, James Comey!). Please remember that there is a 10 year prison sentence for the destruction, or even the attempted destruction, of such things - Which will be fully enforced!”

Trump’s $14 million Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool restoration project has become a headache for the administration when, just days after the project’s completion, a sea of green algae returned to the iconic pool along with what appeared to be the president’s “American flag blue” paint peeling off the pool’s floor.

One man was arrested by law enforcement last weekend for allegedly touching the pool’s water, the second known enforcement action in recent days.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) unloaded on trillionaire Elon Musk Monday morning over his tenure in the Trump administration – namely, his time leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the initiative’s federal spending cuts that are projected to cause millions of preventable deaths.

Khanna recently appeared on the progressive podcast “I’ve Had it” with host Jennifer Welch, during which he noted that a one-time 5% tax on Musk’s wealth would generate enough revenue to fund “universal child care for every family” in the United States. Musk responded to a clip of Khanna’s appearance posted on social media Sunday night, calling the California Democrat “such an evil liar.”

The next morning, Khanna fired back, sharing research suggesting that the spending cuts enacted under Musk’s leadership at DOGE may cause 14 million preventable deaths by 2030.

“Elon, how about just paying the 5% instead of hurling random insults?” Khanna wrote. “And here are the facts, man. Your [United States Agency for International Development] cuts did this.”

Khanna shared a report from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health citing a peer-reviewed study that found as many as 4.5 million children under the age of five may perish due to the recent U.S. foreign aid cuts spearheaded by Musk.

Over the past 20 years, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is estimated to have “helped save 91 million lives,” per the report, with USAID-supported programs “associated with a 15% reduction in all-cause mortality and a 32% reduction in mortality among children under five.”

During his time leading DOGE, Musk oversaw around $60 billion in cuts to U.S. foreign aid, leaving “few surviving USAID projects” after he departed from the Trump administration last year amid controversy.

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade lost it, calling for President Donald Trump to replace JD Vance as Iran negotiator — blasting his Israel criticism as "ridiculous."

On Fox & Friends, Kilmeade unloaded on Vice President JD Vance after Vance warned Israeli cabinet members Thursday that Trump is "the only powerful ally" they have "anywhere left in the entire world." The remarks came as U.S. and Iranian negotiators were deep into a 60-day sprint to flesh out the memorandum of understanding the two countries signed last week.

"The president's gotta go on the inside," Kilmeade said, "because then the negotiators are wasting their time. No one's happy with this document. The president doesn't seem to be happy."

"The fact that he hopped on Friday and started ripping Israel and said they have no friends — that is ridiculous!" Kilmeade continued. "Have you heard of the Abraham Accords? Do you understand that the Gulf States are tighter with Israel than ever before?"

He then demanded Trump take over directly — and called Vance out by name.

"I think JD Vance, who's late to this party, doesn't understand the depth of the disagreement," Kilmeade said.

MS NOW reported this week that Vance has compounded his inexperience with a series of false claims — including insisting that the deal's terms for destroying Iran's enriched uranium stockpile are "spelled out very clearly," when the memorandum of understanding includes no such provisions. Vance repeated the claim even after it was discredited.

The vice president arrived Sunday at the Lake Lucerne Summit in Switzerland — where U.S. negotiators sat across from Iran's foreign minister and parliamentary speaker — but PBS reported Trump threatened to "hit Iran very hard again" on social media while talks were underway.

Fox & Friends contributor Lawrence Jones, who spoke with Trump over the weekend, said the president told him privately the memorandum of understanding "was a starting point" — and that if Iran kept pushing him, "I gotta strike them."

A majority of Americans – including Republicans – believe that President Donald Trump was desperate to end his war in Iran regardless of whether his goals were accomplished.

The president signed a memorandum of understanding last week to negotiate an end to the war he launched Feb. 28, and CNN's Harry Enten presented polling data that showed public opinion had remained solidly against Trump all along.

"You know, they disapproved of him a month ago, they disapproved of him two months ago, and they still disapprove of him," Enten said. "I mean, the polling is quite steady."

Enten encountered some technical difficulties that prevented him from displaying the polling data onscreen, but he pressed on and recited the numbers from memory.

"Look, people disapproved of Trump two months ago," he said. "His disapproval rating was 64 percent, last month it was 66 percent, and this month it is the same – 64 percent. So what we're talking about is that Americans, you can pay attention to me here. Americans still disapprove of the job that Donald Trump is doing on Iran, and 75 percent of independents disapprove of the job that Donald Trump is doing on Iran. So regardless of any deal that was made, the American people still disapprove of the job that Donald Trump is doing on Iran, despite whatever he's doing."

"The bottom line is this," he added. "No matter what deal has been made, the clear majority, two-thirds of Americans, still disapprove of the job that Donald Trump is doing when it comes to that conflict."

Enten found similar support for the president's agreement to end the war.

"So why did Trump agree to the deal?" Enten said. "Well, it's simply this: Why Trump agreed to the Iran deal, wants the war to end or think the U.S. met its war goals. Look at this, 66 percent of Americans simply think he wanted to end the war, and even among Republicans, his own party, don't think that, in fact, the Trump administration met its war goals. In fact, they think he wants to just end the war."

"So this idea, hey, we won, we won, everyone, we won – the American people don't think that is exactly what happened," he added. "What they think happened was Iran was fighting back, America looked at the chance of victory in terms of what Trump initially laid out as the chance of victory. They did not think that that was possibly going to be accomplished. We're talking about two-thirds of Americans and even a majority of Republicans did."

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Amid the ongoing negotiations in Switzerland between Washington and Tehran, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani shared a photograph of himself and Vice President JD Vance on social media, and an odd detail in the image sparked a wave of speculation among onlookers.

Posted Sunday night on X, the photograph shows a seated Vance typing on a laptop beside Al Thani, who is gesturing toward the laptop screen. Standing behind them is Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and special peace envoy. What drew curiosity from onlookers, however, was what appeared to be inserted into the laptop.

A card can be seen inserted into the laptop sitting in Vance’s lap that appears to be a Common Access Card (CAC), an identification card used by U.S. defense personnel. The photograph on the card, however, appears to be of a woman and not of Vance.

“I would love to know the intended symbolism of Qatar’s prime minister posting a picture of JD Vance logging into a laptop using someone else’s CAC card,” wrote Caroline Orr Bueno, a journalist and social sciences scholar, in a social media post on X. “There is 100% a read-between-the-lines message being sent.”

Tim Miller, host of The Bulwark Podcast and MS NOW analyst, raised questions about the extent with which Qatar – which is not a signatory to the 14-point memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran – was involved in negotiations.

“Why is a Saudi agent with no security clearance representing America in this meeting?” Miller asked in a social media post on X to his more than 460,000 followers.

The progressive media organization MeidasTouch simply asked “where is Marco,” referring to the notable absence of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Anusar Farooqui, a writer and geopolitical analyst, labeled the photograph as evidence of an “agency fail.”

President Donald Trump has spent the better part of a decade trying to outrun the ghost of Herbert Hoover — and last week, he brought him up twice in two days.

"I never want to be the late, great Herbert Hoover," Trump told Marc Caputo on "The Axios Show." Days earlier, at a G-7 press conference in France, he'd said almost the same thing: Of all the presidents he's studied, Hoover is the one he never wanted to become.

It's not a new fear, Axios reported. Trump first raised it privately in 2018, asking aides whether he could fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, warning that rate hikes would "turn me into Hoover."

In January 2024, he went further, predicting an economic crash under President Joe Biden and saying he hoped it would hit before the election "because I don't want to be Herbert Hoover." Biden's campaign seized on the comment, mocking him as "Donald 'Herbert Hoover' Trump."

The comparison clearly stings because it's not entirely unfair. Hoover, the 31st president, was a wealthy businessman elected on promises of executive competence — much like Trump.

Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, now remembered as a protectionist disaster that deepened the Depression; Trump has built much of his economic agenda around tariffs, betting the same tool that doomed Hoover can revive American industry.

There's also a footnote Trump can't shake: Thanks to the pandemic, he left his first term with nearly 3 million fewer jobs than when he started — making him the first president since Hoover to leave office with a net job loss.

Trump tends to say aloud what other politicians would keep private. In this case, what he keeps saying is the name of the one president he's most afraid of resembling.

As the internet spent the weekend trying to decode why Donald Trump posted a photo of a blonde stranger and called her his "great daughter," progressive host David Pakman walked through the leading theories on his show, including one he noted was "absolutely insane."

In a segment posted Sunday titled "What we know so far about Trump's mystery 'great daughter' post," Pakman laid out the established facts of the bizarre Truth Social message before turning to the wilder explanations floating around online. He started from the basics. "It doesn't take a genius to realize this is not one of Donald Trump's daughters," he said, confirming what Raw Story had previously reported: the photo appears to have been taken at Camp David during the Bill Clinton administration and likely shows New York retail magnate Margo Catsimatidis.

The real question, as Pakman framed it, was why the president posted it at all. Pakman floated the explanation many observers had already landed on, that the 80-year-old simply did not recognize the woman. "Very possible he saw the photo, thought it was one of his daughters," Pakman said, adding that if so, "it's a telltale sign of dementia, not recognizing your own family." Even setting that aside, he found the whole thing baffling. Posting "a random picture of this woman" and announcing "great daughter, my honor" is "still very weird," he said, and "doesn't make any sense."

It was a competing theory that drew his sharpest reaction. Pakman noted he had seen speculation that the post was actually a veiled threat aimed at Margo's husband, John Catsimatidis, hinting that Trump is actually the father of the couple's daughter. "It's all absolutely insane," he said, steering back toward the more mundane conclusion that Trump simply mistook a decades-old photo of a donor for one of his own children.

That restraint is part of why his breakdown stood out, because the rest of the reaction has been anything but restrained. As Raw Story detailed in its own account of the episode, the post showed a blonde woman in a black outfit lounging on a red sofa and talking on a phone, captioned "Great daughter. My Honor!!! President DJT." The problem was obvious to everyone who saw it: the woman is not Ivanka, not Tiffany, not a granddaughter, and not a wife. Independent journalist Aaron Rupar captured the confusion in three words, asking simply, "Who is this?"

The identification work was largely done by Mikey Smith, US political editor for the Daily Mirror, who pieced together that the woman is almost certainly Margo Catsimatidis and that the photo dates to the Clinton-era at Camp David. Smith matched the sofa cushions to old Camp David images and spotted the "Presidential call box" Trump reportedly calls his "Diet Coke Button," but he conceded he could not explain the caption, writing that nothing he found accounted for why Trump called Catsimatidis his "great daughter." The account Rogue POTUS Staff offered a possible answer, suggesting the "great daughter" Trump meant was actually Margo's daughter, Andrea Catsimatidis, chairwoman of the Manhattan Republican Party.

Much of the weekend reaction treated the post as evidence of decline. Brian Krassenstein noted pointedly that "one of the main signs of dementia is confusing people for family members," while commentator Chris LaBossiere quipped that "America needs to have a family meeting with grandpa." Analyst Arieh Kovler suspected a staffer posted the image and that "nobody queried it or told him 'that's not your daughter'."

For all the theories swirling around the post, Pakman's bottom line was that the most outlandish ones say more about the speculators than the president. The known facts are strange enough without inventing a hidden paternity scandal. A sitting president broadcast a decades-old photo of a wealthy donor, called her his daughter, and offered no explanation, and that alone, in Pakman's telling, is the part worth taking seriously.

MS NOW's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski expressed shock over a new report exposing the decades-long influence of Tulsi Gabbard's religious mentor over her political career.

Gabbard recently stepped down as President Donald Trump's director of national intelligence after serving as a Democratic congresswoman, but the Washington Post reported over the weekend that that she has been guided every step of the way by eccentric religious leader Chris Butler, head of a Hare Krishna breakaway group called the Science of Identity Foundation.

"Some people call it a cult," Scarborough said.

A former member of the group provided Post reporter Jonathan Swaine with thousands of emails and documents that revealed Butler's advisory role to Gabbard, who had been asked about her relationship with the guru during her confirmation hearings.

"Dozens of attached memos appeared to document directives and advice for Gabbard from her time in Congress," Swaine reported. "Some contained instructions on what legislation she should propose, which policies she should embrace, and how she should conduct herself on television. They had an air of authority."

The reporter compared Gabbard's remarks in 32 television interviews between 2014 and 2016 and found she used language that was nearly verbatim to Butler's talking points memos, and Scarborough was stunned.

"It is a Hare Krishna-styled group that many people have compared to a cult," he said. "People don't suggest that being in a Hare Krishna group is the same as being in a cult, but in this case, when you have something that may be a spinoff of that and a cult-like leader advising members of Congress how to speak, how to, how to put forward legislation, how how to style their hair. There's a problem here."

Swaine spent a year digging into the documents and reporting on their significance, and "Morning Joe" co-host Jonathan Lemire said the findings raised important questions.

"The endgame of these instructions not quite clear, but Tulsi Gabbard has always been sort of a mysterious figure," Lemire said. "Her politics have sort of been – she's been a shapeshifter. She ran for president as a Democrat not that long ago, and now, of course, she serves, you know, up until Friday, in the Trump administration, and certainly she had fallen out of favor with Trump and, you know, we certainly wish her and her family well. Her husband is battling cancer, it's a pretty devastating diagnosis."

"But we also know from reporting that the Trump administration was looking to move on from her soon anyway," Lemire added, "and why reading this here, and especially with you mentioned, Mika, read the piece about the her words being almost verbatim from these instructions that the this leader Butler often spoke to her really tough language, sometimes like very demeaning sort of rhetoric to her, a member of Congress. Yeah, it raises all sorts of questions as to her background and to what actually was the goal here, you know, in this relationship."

"Yeah," Brzezinski agreed, "very concerning."

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Vice President JD Vance and his team are holding out hope for one thing — that President Donald Trump can stay alive long enough for Vance to have a chance at a two-term presidency, according to an analyst.

As midterms draw closer and MAGA starts to picture the future, Vance and Republicans have serious concerns over Trump’s declining health, Mike Rothschild, journalist and conspiracy theory expert, told Raw Story in an exclusive interview.

The White House has attempted to quell rumors that the president’s mental acuity and physical well-being have shifted, but behind-the-scenes and among MAGA circles, the conversations are different.

“I think it’s a movement that’s quickly realizing it’s going to be leaderless,” Rothschild told Raw Story. “Whether that’s going to be tomorrow or January 2029. We’re going to be facing a post-Trump future.”

That reality has left MAGA with anxiety, Rothschild pointed out.

“This whole coalition was all held together by Trump because nobody could do what Trump did — that combination of charisma and the shamelessness to lie and say anything and contradict yourself constantly and to risk being humiliated and to know that his humiliation is what actually makes his supporters love him more,” Rothschild explained.

“You have to be Trump to be Trump. No one else can do it,” he added.

For presidential hopefuls in the GOP, that could be problematic. But it’s not the only hurdle.

“Vance can’t do it. Marco Rubio can’t do it,” Rothschild said. “None of these guys have that movie star thing that Trump has — or used to have. I think very quickly we’re seeing what a leaderless MAGA looks like. And I think that’s why you see so many influencers rush to be like him.”

Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes — all former Trump allies — have used Trump to boost their careers but have since turned on him in a move to try and gain more followers and influence in MAGA world.

“They’re throwing Trump off the side of the ship because they don’t need him anymore,” Rothschild said.

Depending on how voters decide in November, it could also reflect how MAGA followers and Republican presidential candidates treat Trump.

“If the midterms are really a shellacking, Trump isn’t going to have any use for them anymore,” Rothschild said.

But for one potential candidate — Vance — the timing couldn’t be more important. The vice president hasn’t committed to a campaign for 2028, but has launched a media tour promoting his new book,“Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith.”

“They really need Trump to hang on to January 2027,” Rothschild said.

Under the 22nd Amendment, no person can be elected as president more than twice. A vice president who has served more than two years of another president's term can only be elected president once more.

“If Vance became president tomorrow, he couldn’t run for two more full terms,” he explained.

MS NOW's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski cut into a live press conference to call out Vice President JD Vance's remarks in real time.

The vice president spoke to reporters Monday morning in Switzerland, where he's been engaged in high-stakes talks with Iranian officials, and Vance was asked about President Donald Trump's threats to kill those same Iranian negotiators before they returned home if the Strait of Hormuz remained closed.

"No, they didn't throw a wrench in the system," Vance said, when asked about the president's threats. "The thing with the Iranians, yes, they did threaten to walk out, or at least there were social media threats that they would walk out. But we were negotiating well past 1 in the morning yesterday, so they didn't walk out, and their technical team is still here in Bürgenstock, working with our technical team, actually, as we speak, though, I imagine maybe some of them are taking a break to watch this news conference."

"But look, what we told the Iranians yesterday is when you guys engage in what us millennials might call trash talk, you can't expect the president of the United States not to respond and not to correct the record," Vance continue. "So when they say things that aren't true, the president is going to respond to it, I'm going to respond to it, Americans are going to respond to it. When they make threats that aren't rooted in reality, they have to accept that the president of the United States is actually going to set the record straight. That's all that happens."

"So, yes, there was a little bit of threatening, there was a little bit of whining," the vice president added. "But at the end of the day, the talks continued and we made great progress."

The "Morning Joe" hosts interrupted to react to Vance's excuses for the president's threats.

"Wow," Brzezinski said.

"While he waits for the next question," Scarborough said, "we will be talking ... about how every statement from the Trump administration is either projection or confession. That certainly was the case on that last preposterous answer about accusing the Iranians of, quote, trash talk destroying civilizations."

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A Republican political action committee (PAC) that “initially took great effort” to hide their identity came clean Monday after admitting to Punchbowl News they had “meddled” in Democratic primaries in several states.

“Republicans are leveling the playing field after over a decade of Democrats meddling in our primaries,” said Samantha Bullock, a spokesperson for Conservative Americans PAC, speaking with Punchbowl News. “And with the Democrat Party in the midst of a civil war, Republicans would be stupid not to take advantage while pushing their candidates farther left.”

According to “a new trove of [Federal Election Commission] data” reviewed by Punchbowl News, Conservative Americans PAC had funded two seemingly Democratic groups: Lead Left PAC and Real Change PAC, two organizations that helped shape Democratic primaries in Nebraska, Maine, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Texas. In total, Conservative Americans PAC dropped $4.4 million in May to “meddle in Democratic primaries.”

“Democrats have been highly suspicious of Real Change PAC and Lead Left PAC, which initially took great effort to hide their leadership and partisan affiliations,” Punchbowl News’ report reads.

“But a few clues were pointing to Republican meddling. The group is now confirming the role it played. This effort has had some success. Conservative Americans PAC got its preferred candidates in Nebraska and Maine. But it’s not clear how decisive their spending was.”

Conservative Americans PAC itself is funded by American Prosperity Alliance, a GOP-aligned nonprofit organization with ties to former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) that advocates for conservative policies. According to the nonprofit organization OpenSecrets, American Prosperity Alliance made more than $22.5 million in contributions during the 2024 election cycle to various GOP-aligned PACs.

President Donald Trump is slated to attend the Senate GOP’s Steering lunch event on Wednesday at the invitation of Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), an invite seen by other Republican lawmakers as “a slight” toward Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) amid the president’s ongoing spat with the chamber, Punchbowl News reported Monday.

Trump has sparked significant “chaos” for Senate Republicans in recent weeks, from derailing the caucus’ entire agenda last week by “canceling” a Senate confirmation hearing, to pushing his controversial voting ID bill the SAVE Act that Thune has said does not have the support to advance.

Trump has also attacked Senate Republicans regularly on social media for their refusal to eliminate the filibuster, the Senate rule that allows members to block bills that receive less than 60 votes, among other things, setting the stage for a potentially contentious lunch on Wednesday as the president comes “face-to-face with Republican senators at his weakest point yet.”

“They’re openly dismissing Trump’s legislative demands, expressing rare public anger over the Iran [memorandum of understanding], bucking his repeated calls to get rid of the filibuster and furious about his abrupt halting of the confirmation process for Jay Clayton, the nominee to be director of national intelligence,” Punchbowl News’ report reads.

“But this session has the potential to become a disaster for Senate Republican leaders. They see Trump’s fixation on the SAVE Act as a strategic misstep that could cost them their majority by turning the MAGA base against GOP candidates and incumbents.”

While Thune has dismissed calls to continue to push the SAVE Act – which he said the odds of advancing in the Senate were “slim to none” – Scott, a loyal Trump ally, has fiercely advocated for the bill to take center stage. As such, “Scott inviting Trump during this row with Thune is seen within the GOP Conference as a slight toward the South Dakota Republican,” Punchbowl News reported.

A new front has opened in the politics of artificial intelligence, and it's coming from inside President Donald Trump's own coalition.

Amy Kremer, a former Tea Party leader who helped organize the rally preceding the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, has emerged as one of the most prominent conservative voices pushing back against Silicon Valley's influence over AI policy, reported the Washington Post. As chair of the advocacy group Humans First, Kremer is attempting to channel the same populist anger that once fueled the Tea Party into a movement against AI labs and the tech billionaires who have aligned themselves with Trump.

"These people do not care about conservatives, about Republicans, or about the American people," Kremer said. "All they care about is power and control and money."

Her group is planning anti-data center rallies across five states next month, explicitly invoking "the spirit of the Tea Party."

Polling shows a majority of Americans have grown wary of the AI boom, citing fears over job losses and the proliferation of energy-hungry data centers in their communities. That unease has created an unlikely alliance between Kremer's conservative network and progressive AI-safety advocates — including Brad Carson, a former Democratic congressman, who compared the coalition to the French resistance uniting ideological opposites against a common threat.

For Trump, the dynamic is awkward. His administration has largely taken a hands-off approach to AI regulation, shaped in part by Silicon Valley figures like investor David Sacks, who dismissed Humans First as "a censorship power play dressed up in safety language."

“While everybody wants to make it about President Trump, it’s really not about President Trump," said Kremer, who still believes the 2020 election was stolen and backs much of the MAGA agenda. "It is about our lawmakers doing their damn job."

Yet conservative pressure has already forced changes. The White House revised an executive order last year after MAGA-base backlash, and Kremer's coalition recently sparred with Sacks over how aggressively to regulate AI models' hacking capabilities.

When Trump ultimately signed a pared-back oversight order, Kremer still claimed it as a win — evidence, she said, that "you can promote American innovation without sacrificing American values."

The fight has also exposed strain within Humans First itself. Originally conceived as a bipartisan coalition, the group split its left and right wings after organizers concluded the two sides spoke different political languages and needed separate strategies to be effective.

The White House, for its part, insists it can manage the tension. Spokeswoman Liz Huston said the administration remains "committed to securing American dominance in AI" while creating opportunities for workers — a balancing act that may grow harder as Trump's own base keeps pushing back.

Kremer got involved with the issue after hearing about protests over data center construction in 2024, and she said the anti-elite energy reminded her of the animating spirit of the Tea Party movement.

“If you had told me a year ago I would be doing this, I would have told you to put down the crack pipe," Kremer said.

President Donald Trump and his allies are barreling toward a historic "clash" with the Supreme Court – including with conservative justices he personally appointed – unlike anything seen in nearly 100 years, a legal expert told The Washington Post.

“It seems like almost 100 years since you’ve had a clash approaching this level between the president and the court,” said Jeffrey Fisher, a law professor and co-director of Stanford University’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. “You’d have to go back to the New Deal to have any kind of an analogue.”

The Supreme Court is expected to soon rule on three major cases involving Trump’s agenda – whether the constitutional right of birthright citizenship can be eliminated, whether Trump can fire the heads of independent federal agencies, and whether Trump can reshape the Federal Reserve. The justices – including those appointed by Trump – have “signaled they will rule against Trump” on at least two of those cases.

The “growing conflict” between Trump and his allies and conservative justices was made evident during a gathering last year organized by Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was nominated by Trump, the Post reported. During the event, Mike Davis, a conservative lawyer who helped Gorsuch “secure his first federal judgeship,” was “notably absent.”

The Post learned why Davis – whom Gorsuch had previously issued the friendly nickname of “the general” – was absent for the justice’s gathering.

“The relationship soured last year as the Supreme Court began to rule on some of Trump’s policies, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue,” the Post’s report reads.

“One recounted how Gorsuch became upset when Davis lashed out at Justice Amy Coney Barrett, calling her a ‘rattled law professor’ for siding with the court’s liberals in a pair of rulings against Trump. The other said Davis was angered by Gorsuch’s vote to block Trump’s use of a wartime authority to deport Venezuelans.”

Frustration between President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans is now growing harder to mask.

The 80-year-old president's relentless push to attach the SAVE America Act to various Senate bills has created mounting friction between the White House and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), with GOP lawmakers increasingly expressing frustration at what they characterize as the president's misunderstanding of Senate operations, reported MS NOW.

"Is Trump burning goodwill on the hill? Absolutely," said one senior GOP staffer.

Trump has repeatedly pressured Thune over legislation that lacks the votes to pass, then publicly blamed him when it fails. He's called on the Senate to scrap the filibuster, branding anyone who opposes that "a FOOL," and warned that Republicans who resist "will go down on the wrong side of History." He also tied his support for renewing warrantless surveillance powers to passage of the SAVE America Act, prolonging a lapse in a key national security tool.

Other moves have added to the friction: a proposed anti-weaponization fund delayed an immigration bill, the appointment of Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence helped unravel a bipartisan surveillance deal and Trump's last-minute decision to pull intelligence nominee Jay Clayton from a confirmation hearing further muddied efforts to resolve the standoff.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) attributed the tension to a deeper disconnect. "I don't think he understands [the Senate], and quite honestly, I don't think he cares," she said, while still praising Thune's handling of the pressure.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) framed the dysfunction in broader terms: "The president's inconsistency is making it harder on the nation."

The White House has sought to downplay the discord. Legislative affairs director James Braid acknowledged "a big disagreement over the filibuster" but insisted the relationship remains strong. Spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the administration has "enjoyed working closely" with Thune and Senate Republicans.

Still, as one Republican senator put it, the dynamic between Trump and his party's Senate leadership has become "awkward for everybody" — and the goodwill once extended to the president shows signs of running thin.

Anthony Scaramucci, who lasted barely 10 days as Donald Trump's White House communications director before turning into one of his more persistent critics, says there is one thing about the president that his opponents keep getting wrong: they assume he does not understand the culture war he so often wins.

In a post Sunday, Scaramucci offered an unusually admiring read of Trump's political instincts, casting him as a master strategist of cultural conflict. "He is the Napoleon of the culture war," Scaramucci wrote, reaching for a comparison drawn from Andrew Roberts' biography of the French emperor. Just as Napoleon "saw the entire battlefield" and anticipated his opponents' moves "before they even made the decision," Scaramucci argued, Trump does the same with culture, intuitively grasping issues from transgender athletes in sports to the anti-woke backlash to the sensibilities of the Bible Belt.

The heart of the post was a private remark Scaramucci said has stuck with him for years. "He told me something once I've never forgotten," he wrote. According to Scaramucci, Trump described his coalition in terms that cut against the usual partisan labels: "He said my base is socially conservative and fiscally liberal. They are working class people who need the government's help."

For Scaramucci, that line explains one of the more durable features of Trump's politics, his refusal to touch the social safety net. The president leaves Social Security and Medicare alone, Scaramucci argued, not out of compassion but out of calculation. It is "not because he's generous," he wrote, "but because he has extraordinary political instincts and he knows exactly who put him in office."

The assessment is striking coming from Scaramucci, who has spent years warning about Trump's character and predicting his downfall, including recent calls for White House staffers to leak everything they know. His Napoleon framing is not flattery so much as a warning to fellow critics, an argument that underestimating Trump's feel for the electorate is precisely how his opponents keep losing ground. "He gets the culture," Scaramucci wrote, "and his opponents keep making the mistake of thinking he doesn't."

That tension, a fierce critic crediting his target with genius, did not sit well with everyone in his audience. At least one reply pushed back on the premise outright, arguing that Trump does not read the battlefield at all but is simply "fed that information" and acting as a "puppet." It is a common rejoinder among Trump's detractors, who bristle at any portrayal of the president as a strategic mastermind rather than a vehicle for the operatives around him.

Scaramucci's underlying point, though, was less about praising Trump than about diagnosing why the opposition keeps stumbling. In his telling, the president's enduring connection to working-class voters who want government to leave their benefits alone is not an accident or a mystery. It is the product of someone who, whatever his flaws, understood his own base early and has never forgotten who put him in power, even if his critics keep insisting he does not know what he is doing.