The team at MS NOW’s “The Weekend” was sent into ‘delirious’ laughter Sunday morning after the network played a video montage of President Donald Trump touting his administration’s “fair” system of justice and supposed end to political prosecutions.

The montage was queued to provide context on a recent interview of former special counsel Jack Smith, who revealed the steps he took to prepare for potential prosecution by the Trump administration in retaliation for his investigation.

“Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents,” Trump can be heard saying in the video montage. “My administration has acted swiftly and decisively to restore fair, equal and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law.”

As the clip montage concluded, a smirking Jonathan Capehart struggled when trying to cite the countless examples of the Trump administration targeting the president’s political opponents with investigations and prosecutions.

“Perhaps on Earth 2 that is what Trump did, for those living here on Earth 1…” Capehart said before bursting into a wheezing laugh. “We've seen the exact opposite as his own personal law firm going after his perceived enemies while rewarding his allies!”

Capehart continued to laugh before apologizing and conceding that the outburst may land him and his MS NOW colleague “totally in trouble.”

“I just want to apologize to everybody, we are all delirious because it was a late night because of the 4th,” Capehart said. “So we just tired!”

Hundreds of people died last month across Europe from the heat; they’re a symptom of a larger problem that governments around the world have failed to address — that goes far beyond simply global warming — and that the Trump regime is making far worse.

Its foundation is one of the most troubling aspects of human nature called predation: while most people just want to live their lives, raise their kids, and have a comfortable old age, some small percentage of those among us have simply become, for lack of a better word, predators.

In nature, there are natural predators and natural prey; foxes and rabbits are the classic example.

Rabbits, like most prey animals, have wired into them by evolution a response called “tonic immobility”; we used to think that when a rabbit or mouse was seized by a fox or eagle and went limp that they were playing dead (“thanatosis”) but, in fact, we now know their body is suddenly flooded with hormones, chemicals, and nervous reactions that essentially put them into a coma to either/both fool the predator or avoid experiencing the pain of being torn to pieces.

Predator animals — including humans — also have this instinct/mechanism; we see it when people “faint from fright” or are paralyzed by PTSD. But it’s far less frequently activated in predatory animals, particularly social animals like apes and humans, largely because we invent social systems to discourage predation.

Among modern humans, according to psychology, predation against other humans is a form of psychopathy, twisting the predator instinct our species once used to hunt food, instead, against others of our own kind, whether it be via physical/sexual violence or via theft and fraud.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote to his dear old friend and advisor Edward Carrington on January 16, 1787:

“If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves.

“It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions; and experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.”

To prevent this psychopathic predation within our societies is why we created governments. I’m reminded of the years Louise and I spent living in Europe where the landscape is dotted with castles and walled cities built not to defend against wolves and bears but against other humans.

It’s been this way for millennia; the castles and walled cities of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East were designed to keep out invading human predators, be they the Huns, Vikings, Ottomans, or Crusaders.

Modern cities, as technology improved, developed the equivalent of walls to keep the predators out; airborne missile defense systems and the like.

But the problem we Americans now face — one that citizens of modern nations have faced in various parts of the world for centuries — is that our government, seized and then run by psychopathic predators, has become predatory itself rather than protective.

For example, JD Vance, who once wrote proudly about how when his father left the family and his mother was stealing drugs from the nursing home where she worked he and his sister existed on food stamps (SNAP benefits), is now “actively working to strip American children who were just like him of their SNAP benefits…”

And now our federal government is hand-delivering notices that “You may have violated federal law” to people who’ve criticized ICE murdering American citizens in Minneapolis.

That is what is happening today in America, with the Trump family, Republican politicians, massive monopolistic corporations, and the Epstein/Oligarch class extracting billions from us at the same time they threaten us when we protest. The top headline of a recent online edition of The New York Times, for example, was:

“Trump Cut a Billion-Dollar Mining Deal. His Sons Stand to Profit.”

Predation has also become the new American business model as well; everything, it seems, is a hustle designed to prey on us.

We pay a fee for our car to open remotely or have navigation; to use a word processing or other necessary program; or must surrender all of our private information simply to have a laptop operating system function properly, even though we paid thousands for the hardware.

But as much of a problem as corporate predation has become (largely through the GOP’s Reaganism, neoliberalism, and Clinton’s Third Way deregulation), the biggest danger is government predation, because — unlike Microsoft or Apple or a car company, which can each just hustle a few bucks from us every month — government has the power to take all of our money, end our freedom and lock us up, and even — as Alex Pretti’s and Renee Good’s families learned — kill us with impunity.

This is where America stands today. The Trump regime, and those states controlled by Republicans more generally (which are almost universally the poorest, with the highest rates of illiteracy, poverty, STDs, unwanted pregnancies, murder, rape, and other violent crimes), have turned predatory.

They are using the weapons of theft and violence (which our government holds legally) against us citizens when we protest their modern forms of predation: their corruption, ICE violence, encouragement of predatory corporate behavior, and general rigging of the system to the benefit of the Epstein/billionaire class and the politicians it owns.

Now we find that even people protesting against ICE and other Trump regime abuses are being arrested and sentenced to decades in prison, people posting about these outrages are being visited by DHS to intimidate them, and the Trump regime promises to rig the upcoming elections.

It’s a problem as ancient as our government itself. As Jefferson also wrote in that same letter to former Continental Congress member Edward Carrington:

“I am persuaded myself that the good sense of the people will always be found to be the best army. They may be led astray for a moment, but will soon correct themselves. The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution.

“To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro’ the channel of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people.

“The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

This is why the acquisition/control of our news and social media sites by morbidly rich Epstein/billionaire class predators — whose first loyalty is to their peers rather than democracy — is so dangerous to both our republic, the poor, and what’s left of our middle class.

It’s why Trump taking hundreds of millions from the fossil fuel and other industries and then either ignoring their lies and their poisoning our planet or their theft from us via banking and insurance predation is so destructive of both faith in government and life itself.

It’s why the 50-year-long project funded by American oligarchs to pack our courts (particularly the Supreme Court) with toadies and ideologues, to build rightwing media empires, and to seize control of our universities and public schools has done such violence to our society, be it in school massacres, women dying because doctors are afraid to provide lifesaving reproductive care, or working families watching their children inherit a nation with fewer rights, fewer opportunities, and a planet pushed ever closer to ecological collapse.

So, what do we do?

I agree — as have generations of Americans — with Jefferson’s comment that, “[The] good sense of the people will always be found to be the best army. They may be led astray for a moment, but will soon correct themselves.”

We must, in other words, do everything we can to stop, block, and even prosecute the predators among us who’ve seized outsized control of both our government and our economy.

— To take on the fossil fuel industry and the Republicans who continue to both defend and subsidize it and its executives, who should be investigated for their decades of lies about global warming that are, today, literally killing thousands around the planet every day.

— To rebuild the New Deal and Great Society programs that neoliberals in both parties have been tearing apart for 45 years.

— To replace the predators in the insurance and banking industries with a Medicare For All style national healthcare program and free or affordable higher education like my parents’ generation enjoyed.

Public opinion polling and recent elections show that Americans are waking up; our work — our obligation as both citizens and decent human beings — is to assist and speed along that process by speaking out.

We must demand better of our elected representatives: work to strip our electoral system of the dark and billionaire money five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court authorized in Citizens United; strengthen the right to unionize while raising the minimum wage; rebuild a green electrified America; end the cap on Social Security taxes; and assist the growing progressive movement within the Democratic Party.

Tag, we’re it!

President Donald Trump drew scorn from conservatives and liberals alike for a July 4 stumble that threw his patriotism, and his education, into question.

Trump addressed the nation on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence with stern, and inaccurate, words for his opponents.

"And as our Declaration of Independence tells us," Trump said, "we are all made in the image of one almighty god. And a communist will never say that."

The video clip on X was quickly modified to include readers' added context. That message alerted viewers to the issue.

"The Declaration of Independence does not say 'we are all made in the image of one almighty god,'" the message reads. "It states that 'all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.'"

Viewers were quick to express their frustration with the president.

"Nothing says 'I love America' like misquoting the Declaration of Independence on live TV and then pretending the fake quote proves everyone else hates the country," influencer Khary Penebaker wrote on X.

Alex Nowrasteh, a senior vice president for policy at the conservative think tank Cato Institute, resorted to sarcasm with jab at national conservatives who support Trump.

“Trump may have misquoted the Declaration but that’s ok because the Declaration should have said that," he wrote. "-NatCons, probably."

Matthew Boedy, a professor of rhetoric at the University of North Georgia, urged the president to better his education.

"America in 2026: its president misquotes the Declaration of Independence," Boedy wrote. "Open the civics centers. Just for him."

With Sen. Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) health status still unclear after his latest medical incident, multiple journalists have offered a stunning theory for why his office and fellow Republicans have remained largely silent.

McConnell was rushed to the hospital in mid-June for an undisclosed medical reason, with his spokesperson David Popp issuing a vague statement regarding the reason for the hospitalization. It wasn't until last week that media outlets learned McConnell had been discovered "unconscious" at his home and had to be administered CPR for potential “cardiac arrest.”

It remains unclear why McConnell’s staff refused to share details, but some, including independent journalist and crypto commentator Adam Cochran, have a theory.

“In Kentucky, a special election to replace a Senator will NOT be called if it’s closer than 3 months till the next election,” Cochran wrote Saturday in a social media post on X. “If McConnell’s condition is clearly unfit for office, they’d hide that to avoid being forced to submit a resignation letter until after that date.”

According to Kentucky election law, independent candidates have until “the second Tuesday in August preceding the regular election” to file to run in the case of a vacancy that occurs after the state’s June filing deadline.

And, with a medical expert recently declaring McConnell, “even if he is alive, unfit to serve” based on details of his latest health incident, Cochran suggested that Republicans may be seeking to avoid having ousted Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) make a last-minute grab for McConnell’s seat.

“So all they have to do is drag their feet until [the second Tuesday in August], then tell you that he didn’t make it,” Cochran continued. “And in turn block Massie from disrupting an otherwise safe Republican seat.”

David Morris, a journalist and author, also appeared to endorse the theory with a brutal jab at McConnell and his legacy.

“Mitch McConnell remaining technically alive for an extra three weeks because of a manipulative procedural maneuver is exactly how he would have wanted to go out,” Morris wrote in a social media post on X.

And Hasan Piker, the prominent progressive influencer, asked his more than 1.7 million followers a blunt question regarding McConnell’s health.

“Is Mitch McConnell dead, and if so, will Massie run for his seat?” he wrote in a social media post on X.

A New York Times columnist on Sunday named the one man he believes could take on Donald Trump and come out on top. There's just one problem.

The 22nd Amendment.

"I don’t want to see the 22nd Amendment repealed," wrote Ezra Klein. "But I’ll admit to some frustration that it has denied us the campaign America needed: a direct contest between Barack Obama and Donald Trump."

Klein argued that Obama is perfectly positioned to take on Trump because he provides the perfect contrast to his character. Klein, interestingly, also placed a lot of emphasis on physique.

"Obama is lean, disciplined, deliberate and restrained," wrote Klein. "Trump is hulking, bombastic, gaudy and unrestrainable. Obama is defined by his superhuman self-control, his (exaggerated) seven lightly salted almonds before bed; Trump, by his superhuman appetites — for attention, for fame, for money, for women, for power."

But since the 22nd Amendment restricts U.S. presidents from serving more than two terms in office, Klein suggested future candidates take note, and advantage, of the comparison.

Klein urged Democrats to echo Obama's message, which he delivered at the opening of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, describing his vision for the nation.

“It is worth remembering just how radical the whole idea of self-government really was back in 1776,” Obama said. “To that point, human history was a tale of conquest and caste and rigid hierarchies, a world where the strong dominated the weak, where power and wealth and status flowed through lineage and the many were ruled by the few.”

Klein called this line on of "political genius" with its ability to unite a large swath of political factions.

"In an era when a flag pin adorned nearly every politician’s lapel, he offered a competing vision of what it meant to believe in the country," wrote Klein. "America is a process, not a place; those who believe in it are those who do the work of making its radical vision real."

The columnist then contrasted this message to Trump's.

"Trump memorably anchored his celebration of America’s 250th with U.F.C. Freedom 250, a cage match on the lawn of the White House," wrote Klein. "It was a veneration of the strong’s ability to dominate the weak, not of the weak who joined together to reimagine strength."

As Americans prepare for the midterm election in November and another presidential contest in two years' time, Klein urged upon them a history lesson mingled with some statistics.

"When CNN polled the standings of every living president, Obama topped them all, with 57 percent approval," Klein wrote. "Trump is languishing at 34 percent. In the contests to come, there will be much that Democrats can still learn from Obama, and much that Republicans may find they need to unlearn from Trump."

Fox News captured a surreal moment Saturday night after broadcasting live footage of President Donald Trump watching himself watch the same Fox News broadcast, and critics were quick to note the absurdity of the bizarre visual loop.

“The last decade in a nutshell,” noted Nick Mark, a critical care doctor and podcast host, responding to a screenshot of the Fox News broadcast posted on social media depicting the president watching himself on television in an endless loop.

A Fox News panel took note of Trump watching the broadcast live, and for roughly a minute, pleaded with the president to wave. The president, who could be seen watching the Fox News panel pleading for acknowledgement, stood near-motionless as his gaze appeared fixated on the television.

“My neighbor’s cat does this too,” noted Dennis Herring, a writer and self-proclaimed political strategist, in a social media post on X. “Also orange.”

Journalist Barry Malone, formerly of Reuters and Al Jazeera, referred to the image of Trump watching himself in an endless loop as "art," and Alex Luck, a naval and defense analyst for Naval News, argued the image held a deeper meaning.

“If you zoom far enough into the screen on the screen, you can see the soul of America,” Luck wrote Sunday in a social media post on X.

The bizarre moment was captured just moments before Trump delivered his lengthy speech that The New York Times described as having “all the hallmarks of a Trump rally.”

“As he did one night earlier at Mount Rushmore, Mr. Trump used the nation’s birthday to scaremonger about Democrats four months before the midterms (he talked a lot again about ‘communism’) and demand that Congress pass an act that would make it harder to vote,” the Times’ Shawn McCreesh wrote early Sunday morning.

A judge has slapped down President Donald Trump's latest attempt to dodge the $5.8 million payment a New York court ruled is owed to writer E. Jean Carroll, court records show.

New York federal court judge Lewis Kaplan on Saturday denied Trump's motion to stall in Carroll's sex abuse case and ordered the cash to be paid on Tuesday, according to court records and Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff.

Trump argued on Friday that he needed more time so his new attorney could get caught up on the case. But Carroll's attorney Robbie Kaplan called the excuse just that; an excuse.

"Defendant’s assertion that he cannot respond to Plaintiff’s Motion on the timeline ordered by the Court appears to be little more than yet another play for time," wrote Robbie Kaplan.

"We can only assume that Defendant is seeking, through the instant motion, to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying Plaintiff."

Parloff, who shared the filings online Saturday, identified Trump's new attorney as Josh Halpern and argued Trump's motion contained a fatal flaw.

"Trump’s known for 5 [months] that his lede [attorney] was leaving," wrote Parloff on X. "[He] has co-counsel who’s been on case since day one."

Apparently the New York City federal court judge agreed.

These motions arrived days after the Supreme Court rejected Trump's appeal of the case.

Trump was found liable in 2023 for sexually abusing Carroll in a New York department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. A jury also found Trump defamed Carroll when he denied it. The verdict carried $5 million in damages.

MAGA is raging about Trump “losing” after the Supreme Court voted to strike down his racist and xenophobic birthright citizenship ban. They’re also big mad at Melania Trump for not hating transgender women nearly as much as they do. The Red Hat Death Squad is so in love with their hate, and they hate it whenever they’re forced to face the truths they’ve been avoiding about Trump for years, so they’re currently very busy scapegoating “leftists” for yet another Trump fail.

However, they’re oddly silent over another L that SCOTUS handed Trump on Monday, because they just can’t bring themselves to admit that he’s an adjudicated rapist whose name appears in the Epstein Files nearly as much as Jeffrey Epstein’s.

That’s high art combined with a major historical turning point, as far as I’m concerned. Frame it, hang it in the Smithsonian, and give it a plaque praising E. Jean Carroll for being the first (and hopefully not only) woman who’s ever held Trump accountable for sexual predation and abuse — which is why he has never stopped defaming her.

MAGA lost its collective IQ point when my eternal Shero first beat Trump in court in 2019, and they’ve never stopped crying about the jury verdict. They whined so much that Judge Lewis Kaplan (no relation to E. Jean’s powerhouse of a rock star lawyer, Robbie Kaplan) had to issue a statement explaining what words mean.

"Judge clarifies: Yes, Trump was found o have raped E. Jean Carroll," read a Washington Post headline stating that, though he was found liable for sexual abuse, the judge clarified that what he did met the modern definition of rape.

The most willfully obtuse don’t want to accept this truth about Trump, even after the SCOTUS ruling. But somewhere inside their broken brains, they know it’s true, which is why they’re so, so mad. The fake accounts are particularly triggered and are continuing to spew every Trump lie about E. Jean.

It’s only going to get worse for them because Team E. Jean wasted no time once the decision was announced. Her lawyers immediately filed papers in New York on Tuesday asking a judge to force Trump to pay her the now $5.8 million (oh, that pesky daily interest rate!) he owes her.

Of course, the compromised traitors who legally represent the adjudicated rapist are trying to delay the payment, which is extra weird considering Trump was out there on Wednesday bragging about making billions.

Trump is also still appealing the decision from a separate Manhattan trial, when the jury unanimously awarded E. Jean $83 million after he famously testified and misidentified a photo of E. Jean for his second ex-wife, Marla Maples.

As she writes in her fantastic book Not My Type (reclaiming that Trump insult is another brilliant chef’s kiss by my Shero), one of the jurors had revealed during voir dire that he got his news exclusively from MAGA podcaster Tim “Beanie Baby” Pool. I like throwing that in MAGA’s face whenever they whine about her making up the entire story.

The self-proclaimed Jesus followers in the MAGA Cult have always justified Trump’s creepiness, from his three marriages and trysts with adult film stars to his predation backstage at the Miss Teen USA pageant and his sexualization of both of his daughters.

Meanwhile, Democrats have always held our own accountable whenever they’ve committed crimes. When we found out Eric Swalwell was a sexual predator, we ran him out of Congress within two weeks. The Trumpocrites on the other side of the aisle are simply not capable of doing the same thing, mainly because they’ve all been compromised to filth after a decade of blackmail being held over their heads.

But the biggest takeaway from the SCOTUS decision is that Trump is still being enabled by the entire Republican Party, minus a detractor or two here and there. It’s one thing to weakly discredit a judge’s ruling in one Manhattan courtroom, but that argument doesn’t hold up at all when you factor in the Supreme Court’s dismissal of Trump’s case. Allowing the lower court’s ruling to stand is the same as broadcasting to the entire world that Trump is AN ADJUDICATED RAPIST.

And a convicted felon, which no one mentions nearly enough, because MAGA decided it was cool for Trump to have a mugshot because Johnny Cash also had one. Seriously, the FEC needs to update the eligibility rules and regulations so that convicted felons, adjudicated rapists, and other criminals can’t run for any public office, let alone the highest office in the country.

While we’re on the accountability tip, ALL Congressional Republicans (okay, minus Rep. Thomas Massie) should be asked on the record every day when they’re going to demand Trump’s resignation. And if they refuse, they should be pressured to resign their own seats for choosing to remain loyal to an adjudicated rapist. That’s a little thing called treason, and it does indeed have very serious consequences when there’s a real government in place.

The GOP needs to figure out where they stand ASAP, because Acting AG Todd “Yes Sir, May I Have Another” Blanche has now run out of time to release the remaining unredacted Epstein Files.

On top of everything else that’s insanely wrong about Trump still walking around free, it’s also utterly insane that this is all happening in the days leading up to America’s 250th birthday, which no one seems to want to celebrate. The “Great American State Fair” has become yet another Trump Fail. The Reflecting Pool has a fence around it so no one can “vandalize” it any more than Trump already has. And the White House looks like the set of The Walking Dead by way of Germany circa 1939.

None of this is the winning MAGA was promised, and yet they still can’t accept that Trump can’t stop losing.

WEIRD.

A surreal moment unfolded on Fox News Saturday when a panel of hosts spent roughly a minute begging President Donald Trump to wave – only for cameras to catch him standing near-motionless, apparently fixated on the same broadcast playing on a television in front of him.

Recording from the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the Fox News panel featured the network’s most popular figures, from Sean Hannity to Laura Ingraham. Fox News soon cut to a live shot of Trump, who could be seen indoors through a window watching the same Fox News broadcast.

Panelists expressed excitement when they thought they caught a glimpse of Trump waving.

“Hey, he's waving!” exclaimed Bret Baier.

“Oh, the president waved?” asked Harris Faulkner.

“I think we just got a wave – I'm going to say it happened!” Baier said.

The entire panel immediately started calling on Trump to wave as the network’s feed switched back to the live shot of Trump watching the Fox News broadcast.

“We see you, hi Mr. President!” Faulkner said.

“See if he turns around for us!” shouted Brian Kilmeade.

The broadcast Trump could be seen watching was delayed by around 50 seconds. Once it caught up to the moment the entire panel started pleading with Trump to wave, Trump – whose gaze appeared fixed on the television – stood near-motionless without turning around or waving.

“We're kind of waiting for the president to wave, but that's okay,” Baier conceded as Fox News cut to a commercial break.

Paul Pelosi, the husband of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), could face criminal charges over a vehicle incident that occurred Friday in Northern California, The New York Times reported Saturday.

According to a news release from the Napa County Sheriff’s Office, Mr. Pelosi is under investigation as the driver of a vehicle that struck a parked vehicle before “leaving the scene,” the Times reported. Pelosi told investigators that “he knew he had hit something but didn’t know what and that he kept driving his car, which stopped running a short time later,” the Times reported.

Given Mr. Pelosi’s age of 86, the sheriff’s office plans to submit a request to the Department of Motor Vehicles to evaluate his ability to drive, per the Times.

“Mr. Pelosi has been involved in other car crashes, one as a teenager and another four years ago,” the Times’ report reads.

“When he was 16, he was behind the wheel of a car that crashed. His brother, a passenger, was killed. In 2022, he pleaded guilty to driving under the influence of alcohol in connection with a crash in Napa County.”

As thousands of Great American State Fair attendees “wander the streets” of Washington, D.C. in an apparent attempt to wait out severe weather, a tense exchange occurred that involved a man wearing “a patriotic t-shirt” calling for another’s deportation, The New York Times reported Saturday.

Fair attendees were ordered Saturday evening to evacuate the National Mall after a Severe Thunderstorm Warning was issued, an order that initially sparked chaos as several hundred attendees refused to leave. While President Donald Trump has vowed to continue the festivities – even if it means waiting until “2 o’clock in the morning” – attendees may still have hours to wait.

“The restaurants in the area, largely fine dining, are packed. People seem exhausted and irritable, and it’s causing some tension,” wrote the Times’ Aishvarya Kavi, reporting from the National Mall.

In one tense exchange, Kavi described an incident that sparked one man to call for another’s deportation.

“Two men riding electric scooters veered too close to a couple on the sidewalk, [prompting] a short but heated exchange of words,” Kavi wrote. “Behind the couple, a man in a patriotic t-shirt said, ‘Deport them! Deport them!’”

The National Weather Service’s Severe Thunderstorm Warning is in effect until 10 p.m. ET, close to when Trump was expected to deliver a speech.

Following the severe weather evacuations at the Great American State Fair in Washington, D.C., President Donald Trump remained defiant and vowed to continue festivities – which include a massive fireworks show and a speech by Trump – even if it means waiting until “2 o’clock in the morning.”

“We will wait it out, I don’t care if it’s 2:00 O’Clock in the morning, or in one hour from now,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

“Looks like it is going to pass, they always do. I will be there no matter what, but the ‘what’ usually turns out to be a good thing. It’s Saturday night, LETS HAVE SOME FUN, even if we are out late tonight. They say 11:00 O’Clock for the speech. Who cares???”

Chaotic scenes erupted at the fair Saturday evening after law enforcement officials directed attendees to leave the National Mall, and several hundred attendees initially refused to do so. The Secret Service suspended security screenings for the fair and urged attendees to “move to shelter immediately.”

“I’m not going to let some rain stop our 250th,” Trump wrote. “I’m leaving the White House soon. God Bless America!”

A number of journalists reporting on the ground at the Great American State Fair have shared video of chaotic scenes unfolding after an evacuation order was issued due to severe weather, chaos sparked by “several hundred” attendees who refused to leave the National Mall.

“Look, look, it’s a stampede, they’re jumping over the things, people are falling down right over here!” said controversial far-right journalist James O’Keefe, reporting from the National Mall in a video uploaded to social media Saturday evening. “They evacuated everything, and now there’s a stampede!”

A Severe Thunderstorm Warning was issued Saturday night, leading local law enforcement officials to order fair attendees to evacuate. The Secret Service suspended security screenings at the fair and urged attendees to “move to shelter immediately.”

According to several journalists reporting on the ground, however, a number of attendees have refused evacuation orders.

“Chaos right now on the Washington Monument ground as the Secret Service tells everyone to leave, then someone says ‘mic check’ on the stage and people rush back in,” wrote CBS News’ Tony Dokoupil on a social media post on X.

Savanah Hernandez, a contributor for the conservative advocacy organization Turning Point USA, shared video of a chaotic scene showing attendees “chanting ‘USA USA’ and attempting to run back into the ‘Salute America’ event.”

And Joe Khalil, Capitol Hill correspondent for NewsNation, shared video showing the National Mall cleared of attendees, but only after the involvement of the National Guard.

“A lot of people were not leaving when directed by staff and by the announcements on the loudspeaker,” Khalil wrote in a social media post, sharing video of the scene at the National Mall.

“The National Guard teams just now cleared the mall. Everything was gentle. Smooth. But it took the Nat. Guard’s presence to finally evacuate the mall area.”

Thousands of Great American State Fair attendees were ordered to evacuate the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Saturday amid a Severe Thunderstorm Warning, but according to The New York Times, hundreds are refusing to follow orders and creating a “chaotic scene.”

“Some are even arguing with Secret Service agents,” wrote the Times’ Aishvarya Kavi, reporting from the scene. “An officer is sternly repeating the evacuation order over a bullhorn, and the crowd is booing. Many have begun chanting ‘U.S.A., U.S.A.’ One man blamed the situation on ‘liberals in the weather service,’ adding, ‘I think this is baloney.’"

The Secret Service has suspended all checkpoint operations at the National Mall due to dangerous weather conditions, the agency said in a statement, according to the Times. Attendees are reportedly being shuffled into “nearby Smithsonian museums and federal buildings,” with officials "scrambling" to get the thousands of fair-goers to safety.

A medical expert issued a bleak assessment regarding the health of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who was recently discovered unconscious at his Washington home and rushed to the hospital.

“Mitch McConnell has been hospitalized for almost three weeks at this point with very little information that has come out about his condition,” said Hilary Booco, a speech language pathologist at Colorado Brain Recovery, in a video published Friday evening.

“Now, it does sound like he is alive – on life support? I don't know. Someone within his staff has said that he is improving – what that means, we don't know. But here's what we do know: even if he is alive, he is unfit to serve and he should not be finishing out his term through January.”

In mid-June, McConnell was rushed to the hospital for an undisclosed medical reason, though new reporting from this week revealed he had been hospitalized for a potential heart attack. This follows his hospitalization in February after experiencing flu-like symptoms, which itself follows several other health scares including multiple falls and freezing up in public.

The new details revealed this week on McConnell’s most recent health incident, however, suggest the lawmaker may be forced into an early retirement, Booco cautioned.

“Now, he was apparently found unconscious and unresponsive, required CPR due to cardiac arrest. That typically means lack of oxygen to the brain, on a brain that has already suffered a lot, that is already 84,” Booco said.

“If I were a speech language pathologist evaluating him and on his medical team, there would be significant concerns for even just the risk of going back to work on his prognosis. I would very likely say, given your age and health history, you should retire immediately.”

Fox News host Mark Levin disturbed onlookers Saturday after expressing disappointment that the Trump administration hadn’t authorized a strike on funeral proceedings for Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in U.S.-Israeli strikes back in late February.

“Yesterday, the enemy gathered [en masse] all in one place,” Levin, a close ally of President Donald Trump’s, wrote Saturday in a social media post on X. “Opportunity lost.”

That Levin spent part of America’s 250th anniversary presumably expressing disappointment that a funeral had not been targeted in an attack disturbed a handful of critics.

“Mark Levin spends July 4th fantasizing about the US breaking its ceasefire with Iran to bomb a funeral,” wrote Chris Menahan, an independent journalist and publisher of Information Liberation.

Conservative podcast host Robb Carter called Levin “the most nauseating human in media” in response to his July 4th musings, and conservative author and political analyst Rich Baris called Levin’s remarks “clinically insane.”

“This is literally talking about executing the heads of state – including allies – and starting a World War we cannot win,” Baris wrote. “Insane.”

Previously a “Never Trump” conservative, Levin has championed the president amid his deeply unpopular war against Iran. After the Trump administration reached a tentative peace deal with Iran, however, Levin appeared to reverse course and repeatedly attacked the Trump administration for having “capitulated” to Iran’s demands.

On America’s 250th anniversary Saturday, The Atlantic republished a decade-old essay that delivered a blistering rebuke of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump – one that was written by now-Vice President JD Vance.

Atlantic writer Peter Wehner revisited the July 4, 2016 column Vance wrote just after the release of his memoir "Hillbilly Elegy." At the time, Vance argued that Trump was exploiting the economic and cultural collapse of working-class America, calling Trump’s promises “the needles in America’s collective vein.”

Wehner pointed to Trump's cratering approval ratings, rising consumer prices and a fracturing MAGA base as signs the "comedown Vance predicted" had finally arrived. He cited one recent poll putting Trump's approval at just 30%, along with cracks among Republican lawmakers and even longtime allies like Tucker Carlson.

“Ten summers ago [Vance] understood, better than most, the threat Trump posed to America. Vance, who described himself as a ‘Never Trump guy,’ thought Trump was an ‘idiot,’” Wehner wrote.

“He admitted to a friend at the time that he goes ‘back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.’ But then ambition made its offer, and Vance, who had seen the danger so clearly, discovered he could see his way around it. The first stop was the Senate; the next was the vice presidency.”

Wehner went on to argue that Vance – someone he described as "a teller of hard truths" – had since transformed into "a peddler of lies he is surely clever enough to recognize as such."

Quoting Vance's own memoir line that "nothing compares to the fear that you're becoming the monster in your closet," Wehner concluded that the private monster Vance once feared "is a public one" now.

As dozens of masked men from the white nationalist group Patriot Front marched in the nation’s capital Saturday, Fox News host Laura Ingraham floated a theory in an apparent attempt to distance the GOP from the neo-fascist march, a theory that left one former Republican lawmaker floored.

On Saturday afternoon, journalist and writer Richie McGinniss uploaded a video of himself questioning people who appear to be members of Patriot Front standing in front of the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C.

Despite there being countless reports by reputable news outlets on Patriot Front’s march through the nation’s capital, Ingraham floated a bizarre theory regarding McGinniss’ video.

“I call fake,” reads a social media post on X published Saturday by Ingraham’s account, responding to the video published by McGinniss “Looks more like Antifa in costume. No one should be allowed to cover their faces.”

Adam Kinzinger, a former GOP U.S. House member from Illinois, issued Ingraham a blistering rebuke.

“Yes of course. Fake. That's the only defense you have to this?” Kinzinger wrote Saturday in a social media post on X. “How about condemning it?”

Billy Ray, a notable film director and screenwriter, also issued Ingraham a fierce response.

“Laura, why is it so scary for you to admit that this exists amid your party – and your audience?” Ray asked in a social media post published on X Saturday. “If you were an actual journalist, you’d have to.”

Donald Trump's assault on the nation's founding democratic promise has handed the political left a perfect opportunity to reclaim its legacy, argued historian Harvey Kaye in an analysis published in Zeteo on Saturday.

Kaye, professor emeritus of democracy and justice studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, wrote that the nation is marking its 250th anniversary even as "Donald Trump and his minions" pursue their "reactionary ambitions" – a timing he called "nothing less than ironic, as if history were playing a cruel joke on us."

“Hardly the grounds for a grand celebration. And yet, the 250th comes at the perfect time for the Left,” Kaye wrote.

“Indeed, rather than dismiss or scorn the occasion as we may be wont to, we progressives, populists, and democratic socialists should step up and embrace it. For are we not also finally seeing the beginnings of a real democratic surge – a surge that might actually lead to taking back the Democratic Party from the neoliberals and billionaires?”

Kaye called on Americans to remember they are "heirs to the promise and project of the American Revolution," invoking Thomas Paine's declaration that "we have it in our power to begin the world over again."

Kaye pointed to past national crises – the Civil War and the Great Depression – as models for how Americans previously responded to authoritarian threats, writing that each generation made the country "radically freer, more equal, and more democratic than ever before."

“Reminding ourselves of all of that, and sensing the democratic possibilities that are emerging, let us toast the 250th with words from the man who first turned us into radicals,” Kaye wrote.

“Angered by misrepresentations of the American Revolution in a history published in 1782 by the famed French writer, Abbe Raynal, Paine replied, ‘It is yet too soon to write the history of the Revolution.’”

As soaring temperatures continue to rock President Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair in Washington, D.C., several state exhibits at the event were forced to shut down Saturday, leaving the pro-Trump network Newsmax wondering whether exhibits had essentially become “hotboxes.”

“Looking at the state displays... we're assuming there's no portable air conditioners in there,” a Newsmax anchor said, speaking with Newsmax’s Alana Austin, reporting from the fair. “Are they just hotboxes?”

Austin conceded that attempts to cool down the fair’s state exhibits for attendees had shown only “mixed success.”

“They do have fans going,” Austin said. “Some of them are quite cool; I've heard Florida and Georgia are doing pretty well. A couple of the booths here and there have actually had to shut down because they said it was just too hot.”

A local D.C. journalist, Eric Flack of WUSA9, recently did a deep dive into the fair’s state exhibits, learning that they ranged wildly in quality, with some amounting to a barren cubicle where organizers “basically just put up some chairs.”

Some states didn’t participate in the state exhibits at all, such as with North Carolina, which instead was organized by a company that built tractor trailers for the Trump-linked group Freedom 250. The North Carolina state exhibit featured a race car and what appeared to be a cardboard box of North Carolina potatoes resting on the ground.

A Trump biographer suggested that Trump is sabotaging his own party ahead of the midterms for a selfish reason.

On an episode of The Daily Beast Podcast, Michael Wolff said that he believes Trump's strategy is to lay the groundwork for the Republicans to take the blame for losing the midterms, and his goal is to prove that the party needs him.

"You can actually kind of get inside his head, and that's what he's doing. He is now undermining the Republicans," Wolff said, adding that it's to "blame it on them, to reinforce the fact that they can't do anything if he's not running."

Wolff said that Trump's strategy when losing is "he just denies it [and blames] it on somebody else," and "it would seem now that he has gone down the path to do almost everything to undermine the Republicans."

On that point, Wolff looks to the bipartisan housing bill that Trump refuses to sign as a sign of undermining the GOP, explaining, "This was actually a bipartisan win that might have helped them during the midterms."

By refusing to sign the housing bill, "what he's stolen from the Republicans is the ability to show that they care, and this would have been very helpful" for them ahead of the midterms, which are now four months away.

Co-host Joanna Coles agreed that Trump is prepared to blame the GOP ranks, predicting, "He's going to blame John Thune (R-SD)," the Senate majority leader, and "He's going to blame John Cornyn (R-TX)," the veteran senator who was "scooped out of the way" by the Trump-endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the primaries.

"He's good at blaming," Wolff said.

Former special counsel Jack Smith's refusal to answer questions about FBI Director Kash Patel during his first television interview since resigning is raising red flags, journalist Kaitlyn Pierce, who writes under the name “Kait Justice,” argued in an analysis published Saturday.

Smith sat down with MS NOW’s Nicolle Wallace on July 2 for his first on-camera interview since stepping down from the investigations into President Donald Trump. When Wallace pressed him on the classified documents case – the probe into national security records Trump kept at Mar-a-Lago after leaving office – Smith repeatedly declined to answer, citing the sealed status of Volume II of his final report.

Writing on her Substack, Justice argued that Smith's silence was notable given Patel's own history in that same investigation. Patel was subpoenaed before the grand jury investigating Trump's handling of classified materials and invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent rather than answer questions. Prosecutors granted him immunity, and a judge issued a sealed order compelling his testimony – an order that remains under seal.

Justice noted that Patel had spent months publicly insisting he witnessed Trump declassify the documents before leaving office, a claim that became part of Trump's defense, before the same man was later put in charge of the FBI.

“I don’t think people are truly looking at how extraordinary that is,” Justice wrote.

“What [Patel] said behind those closed doors is locked inside the report Judge Aileen Cannon sealed under a permanent order, and two watchdog groups, American Oversight and the Knight First Amendment Institute, are still in court fighting to get released.”

The questions Patel’s secret testimony raised, Justice argued, were endless.

“So what did Kash Patel tell prosecutors once immunity forced him to talk?” Justice wrote. “What did Smith’s team conclude about his testimony? Why did the man who now runs the FBI need immunity before he would answer questions in the investigation into the president who gave him the job?”

Hundreds of members of the white nationalist hate group Patriot Front descended on Washington DC Saturday morning as the nation’s capital prepared to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Members of the group, wearing masks and carrying Confederate and US flags, rode the DC metro and marched around parts of Capitol Hill before departing the city by train, as WUSA reported. Beyond the march itself, no other incidents were reported connected to the group.

“What kind of fascist hellscape is [happening] on Pennsylvania Ave at the Eastern Market Metro stop?” Georgetown Law professor Josh Chafetz wrote on Bluesky upon spotting the group.

Chafetz said the group appeared to be all white and all male.

“Absolutely terrifying to have white supremacist hate group Patriot Front march through our streets today in Washington, DC,” human rights lawyer Mai El-Sadany wrote on social media. “Their manifesto calls for a white ethnostate, excludes people of color from their definition of citizenship, and is deeply antisemitic and xenophobic.”

In one video shared by WTOP reporter Mitchell Miller, members of the group stood in a line outside DC’s Union Station chanting, “Life, liberty, victory” and “Reclaim America.”

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Patriot Front split from Vanguard America after the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, at which white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. drove his car into counterprotesters, killing anti-racist activist Heather Heyer and injuring 35 others.

“Patriot Front is an image-obsessed organization that rehabilitated the explicitly fascist agenda of Vanguard America with garish patriotism. Patriot Front focuses on theatrical rhetoric and activism that can be easily distributed as propaganda for its chapters across the country,” SPLC explains.

The group believes that democracy no longer functions and wants to transform the US into a “pan-European” ethnostate that excludes both citizens of color and new immigrants and refugees.

One image from a Reuters photographer shows the masked Patriot Front marchers standing around a Black woman sitting on the DC Metro.

“This image is from today. A Black woman sits on the DC metro as masked white nationalists prepare to march on our nation’s capital. This is America’s 250th anniversary,” attorney Aaron Parnas posted on social media.

Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, blasted the group for carrying Confederate flags and embracing fascism while claiming the mantle of US patriotism.

“You have no right to call yourself a ‘[patriot]’ while carrying the flag of one of America’s enemies, and claiming victory on behalf of the ideology that fueled another—both of which the US defeated,” D’Arrigo wrote on social media.

A presidential historian slammed Trump's Independence Day speech as nothing more than "Joe McCarthy Red Scare idiocy."

During an appearance on MS NOW on Saturday, Doug Brinkley tore into the speech that Trump gave in front of Mount Rushmore to kick off the Independence Day weekend. In particular, Brinkley found it "deeply offensive" that Trump would spend time warning about communists because of recent primary victories by democratic socialists.

"It was just Joe McCarthy red scare idiocy because he's out there talking about this communist menace as if it's the early Cold War years," Brinkley went off. "It's just what he wants the Republicans to run on in this election cycle."

MS NOW anchor Alex Witt agreed, adding, "When the president says, 'America will never become a communist country,' I was thinking to myself, 'Well, who said it was going to anyway?'"

Brinkley compared Trump's speech to "McCarthy starting to have his list in Wheeling, West Virginia, waving it, that they are infiltrators all over." McCarthy famously tried to root out alleged communists during a period called the Red Scare.

Trump's speech was "utter nonsense," Brinkley continued, while admitting that "politicizing" is "natural in our days."

However, he optimistically viewed most Americans "watching on Main Street" as having the "spirit" of "a red, white and blue blast, and let's have a barbecue, let's see some family, see some friends, and then we'll get on to the bickering of politics during Monday or Tuesday."

He also suggested, "I think our inclination for this weekend should be to try to transcend Donald Trump's rhetoric and just sort of block it out for 48 hours."

President Donald Trump’s record-breaking fireworks show slated for Saturday night has a growing number of critics worried about the safety of Washington, D.C. residents, with one commentator offering a particularly disturbing prediction as to how the event could take a turn for the worse.

Trump announced the fireworks show in June, and proudly touted that it would be “the LARGEST FIREWORKS SHOW IN HISTORY” in a post on social media. Around 850,000 fireworks are expected to be launched during the show, scheduled to begin around 11 p.m. Saturday night.

A handful of internal National Park Service documents obtained this week by The Washington Post, however, revealed that the fireworks show is expected to cause “dangerous pollution” and “very unhealthy conditions” around the National Mall, conditions so severe that several critics feared the event could turn into a disaster.

“They'll probably accidentally set the White House on fire,” predicted Nathan Robinson, editor-in-chief of Current Affairs and political commentator, in a social media post on X Saturday.

The air quality at the fireworks show is expected to be so dire that the Park Service advised that attendees “wear an N95 mask when outdoors,” and that they should “remain indoors as much as possible during and after the show.”

“Air quality is already bad due to the heat, this is gonna be brutal,” predicted Amanda Carpenter, writer and editor at Protect Democracy and former writer for The Bulwark and CNN contributor, in a social media post on X Saturday.

Democratic communications strategist Josh Dorner predicted it was unlikely that attendees would adhere to the Park Service’s warning, further exacerbating the danger present at the event.

“The air is going to be SO BAD because of the enormous quantity of fireworks to be set off tonight in DC that officials cautioned people nearby to wear an N95 mask, which I am guessing approximately no one will do,” Dorner wrote Saturday in a social media post on X.

And Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center of Economic & Policy Research, argued that a show of such magnitude was simply beyond Trump’s ability to oversee safely.

“This is waaaay too complicated for an 80-year-old man suffering from dementia to understand,” Baker wrote Saturday in a social media post on X.

Fears are mounting over President Donald Trump's massive Independence Day fireworks display for one simple reason. His administration "couldn't even paint a pool blue."

That's the criticism from MS NOW editor Ryan Teague Beckworth in an opinion piece detailing his pending dread of a 40-minute pyrotechnics "stunt" slated for 11 p.m. in Washington D.C.

"Organizers aim to launch more than 850,000 fireworks — compared to the 7,000 at the 2025 show," wrote Beckworth. "The fireworks display is just another attempt to force the city to submit to his whims. As with all his grandiose gestures, it won’t work."

Beckworth pointed to multiple problems that have plagued the Great American State Fair in Washington D.C. — the extreme heat, complaints of "inedible" food and a collapsing stage, among them — as reasons not to trust the Trump team to pull off the last big shebang.

The writer also suggested the firework show was a form of revenge.

"Ninety percent of Washington voted against Trump in 2024, one of the largest margins of any U.S. city," wrote Beckworth.

"Trump doesn’t like that. He envisions himself as a grand potentate overseeing the capital city. Like Ozymandias, he wants its residents to build him a great arch and an opulent ballroom and hold elaborate events in his honor."

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Kyle Whitmere had another complaint for Trump, not as a citizen, but a dad.

"Donald Trump might have kids," he wrote on X, "but anyone who schedules fireworks at 11 p.m. never parented children."

Online critics slammed top White House aide Stephen Miller after he implied President Donald Trump's second term was an act of God.

Miller praised the Trump presidency in a Saturday post on X.

"It is impossible to review the events of the last decade and conclude that it is anything other than divine providence that Donald J. Trump is the President of the United States on the year of America 250, July 4th, 2026," he wrote.

Not everyone responding to Miller's post saw the Trump presidency the same way.

Veteran political columnist Bill Kristol reacted by writing, "Stephen Miller, for some reason trying to give divine providence a bad name."

The account PatriotTakes, which monitors right-wing extremism, responded, "Trump is a religion for MAGA."

"Easy to dismiss this as the delusional fevered rantings of a diseased mind," wrote former GOP strategist Jeff Timmer. "But the disease is rampant at the epicenter of the most powerful government ever known on the planet. We should be far more alarmed than we are. Far more."

Tom Nichols, another long-time political commentator and staff writer for The Atlantic, reacted to Miller's post with an Abraham Lincoln quote and a Bible passage.

"The Almighty has His own purposes," he wrote. 'Woe unto the world because of offenses for it must needs be that offenses come but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.'"

Meanwhile, journalist John Harwood simply advised, "Just say no to drugs."

A Justice department whistleblower on Saturday tore into President Donald Trump for what she described as a "staggering" decision to give a fraudster a "second chance."

During an episode of The Lincoln Project Podcast, former DOJ pardon attorney Liz Oyer argued that Trump's pardons were "fundamentally different" from others made in the past.

"He has pardoned quite a few individuals who committed fraud involving government programs, including Medicare and Medicaid," Oyer said. "He's also pardoned all manner of white collar frauds, including those that involve stealing money from investors."

Host and former GOP strategist Rick Wilson described the beneficiaries of Trump's "pay-to-play" pardons as "assertively terrible people who have exploited Americans."

Oyer went on to say, "The most staggering example is this man named Trevor Milton," the former Nikola Motors CEO, who defrauded investors with a clean energy truck that didn't work.

"Trevor Milton's investors lost almost $700 million in the process," Oyer explained. "And Milton got a full pardon from Donald Trump at the start of his second term in office after making a couple million dollars in political donations."

Milton is "already back in business" since his pardon, according to Oyer, who said the convicted fraudster has "now got a new startup in which he's trying to build autonomous aircraft." Milton's return to business is "really galling," Oyer added.

"This is a scam artist who's gotten a second chance at life thanks to Donald Trump," Oyer said. "One of the things that Milton has told the media that Trump said to him is, 'Trevor, you're cleaner than a baby's bottom now.' It just sounds insane, absurd, but this is the caliber of person that Donald Trump is pardoning."

Oyer, who was fired from the DOJ after refusing to recommend the reinstatement of actor Mel Gibson's rights to gun ownership, suggested that Trump "sees something of himself in these rich folks who have been prosecuted for committing frauds."

The wife of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) did something "bizarre" three days after he was hospitalized for a possible heart attack, according to a new report.

Elaine Chao, Transportation secretary during Trump's first administration and McConnell's wife since 1993, left the country, the Daily Beast reported Saturday.

Chao flew to Beijing to discuss China-U.S. relations with Chinese Vice President Han Zheng on June 17, according to the Daily Beast and Chinese media.

This was three days after McConnell, 84, was reportedly found "unconscious" and rushed from his home in Washington to the hospital, reports show.

A dispatcher sent an Advanced Life Support ambulance to McConnell's home on June 14, according to audio released by journalist Desiree Townsend.

McConnell's spokesperson confirmed that day that the former Senate GOP leader had been hospitalized.

A June 22 statement said McConnell was "working closely with staff" on Senate and Kentucky business. A McConnell team member said on June 30 that he was still recovering .

This was McConnell's second hospitalization since February, when he received treatment for flu-like symptoms, according to reports.

McConnell, who has announced his retirement at the end of the year, has faced repeated health scares. The Kentucky Republican was hospitalized with a concussion after falling in 2023.

The childhood polio survivor also froze publicly twice that same year.

Footage of hundreds of masked men storming Washington, D.C., with Confederate flags spurred an outcry online Saturday.

An estimated 400 masked men, whom Reuters reported were with the right-wing extremist group Patriot Front, marching into D.C. on July 4 with Confederate flags, online video shows.

On X, the video spurred outrage.

Former GOP congressman Adam Kinzinger called the marchers "such cowards" in a post on X. "Show your faces b—."

"Bunch of loser cowards," reacted Richard Nephew, a senior researcher at Columbia University and former White House official. "Yet traitor flags are a nice reminder that 163 years ago, their ancestors lost at Gettysburg. May that anniversary also inspire 'increased devotion to [the] cause..that gov't of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.'"

Journalist Nancy Levine Stearns suggested, "Every Republican rep in Congress should be asked if they support Patriot Front, American Nazis."

Former GOP strategist Jeff Timmer joked, "If you've ever longed to experience the vibe of a good ol' fashioned Nuremberg Rally without all the massive crowds, well, Trump's 4th of July MAGA-Bund Fest is the place for you to savor the best of both worlds."

"Maybe Republicans should spend more time condemning stuff like this and less time condemning the mayor of New York," proposed British-American journalist and TV host Mehdi Hasan.

"They wave the American flag yet they are traitors to this great nation, and choose to express their hatred of its founding principles on the day of its birthday for the attention," wrote Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.