A high-profile ex-CNN anchor singled out the insider said to be the "biggest leaker" in the Trump White House.

Don Lemon said during an interview with Legal AF host Michael Popok that Vice President "J.D. Vance is like the biggest leaker of them all" in the White House based on what "many people have said and according to some of the reporting."

Lemon and Popok were talking about Trump's efforts to hunt down the insider who leaked details of a "freakout" in the Situation Room over the Epstein files. The freakout is detailed in the forthcoming book Regime Change by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.

"Donald Trump could very well be one of the people who leaked to" Haberman, Lemon admitted, adding that it's possible Trump "doesn't even realize it."

However, he and Popok made the case for suspecting Vance is at least "the biggest source for people," as Lemon put it.

"He looks good in the story, relatively," Popok said, referring to the NY Times reporting on the Epstein freakout in the Situation Room. "Among the liars in the room, he looks like he's the one that says, 'let's get the story out about Donald Trump'...I'm like, among those people in the room, that was like the best thing to say."

Lemon pointed to reporting on the Iran war that also seemed to favor Vance.

"Remember, the reporting was that J.D. Vance was the only one in the room who was against it," Lemon explained. "It's like, well, how does J.D. Vance always come out looking better than anyone?"

CNN pundits couldn't hold it together as they heard about a new detail in an upcoming tell-all about the Trump White House.

The upcoming book Regime Change, written by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, detailed how Trump showed them a document that argued he was more powerful than historical strongmen like Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler.

After a little digging, it turned out that the document wasn't written by a presidential historian like Trump claimed, but by Hall of Fame golfer Gary Player's long-time caddy, according to reports.

CNN anchor Abby Phillip explained as much to her pundits on Thursday, but she cracked up and couldn't get through the whole recap.

"It's not a joke," Phillip said as she laughed. "This actually happened."

Political commentator Xochitl Hinojosa and Democratic former congressional candidate Isaiah Martin couldn't contain themselves either and laughed out loud alongside Phillip.

"This is the president of the United States," Hinojosa said, covering her face.

Hinojosa admitted, "It is scary that he is comparing himself [to those figures]. He has unlimited power. He is essentially saying that he is a lot like a dictator." She did find consolation in describing Trump as a historically unpopular president, though.

"He can try to say in his head that he is the most powerful, that he is like a dictator, that he has all the power in the world," Hinojosa said. "But the reality is that this man is going to go down as probably one of the least popular presidents."

Department of Justice lawyers ditching the Trump administration to work in a blue state took parting shots, according to a Democratic Attorney General.

During an appearance on the Legal AF podcast, Colorado AG Phil Weiser, who's running for governor in his state, detailed the "brain drain" at the DOJ as lawyers flee, with one prosecutor named Hagan Scotten telling his superiors that only "a fool or a coward" would work for Trump.

"Trump might find someone to do his bidding, but it was either going to be a fool or a coward, and it was never going to be me," Weiser said, quoting Scotten. "The people, like Mr. Scotten, who had integrity, they're leaving. They're often not being replaced."

Weiser said that the Colorado AG's office has already hired "over 22 people and counting from the federal government who want to stay in public service but can't be a part of an administration that is so lawless."

Weiser said, "We're hiring people from Main Justice, and we're hiring from Washington agencies, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, who basically have concluded, 'I can't do this anymore. I'm leaving.' And they look to Colorado."

Legal AF host Michael Popok brought up DOJ prosecutor Danielle Sassoon, a "shining star" from the Southern District of New York. Sassoon quit with an eight-page letter rather than follow orders to drop an indictment against New York Mayor Eric Adams. Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general, gave the orders, Popok noted.

"She was, by the way, Republican, an Orthodox Jewish woman that was destined to be the U.S. attorney in that office," Popok explained. "She left. She said, 'Dismiss the indictment?' as she was ordered to do by Emil Bove. 'Dismiss the indictment?' I'm ready to come get permission to bring a superseding indictment for more charges,' and then quit with an eight-page letter, which detailed everything."

A CNN pundit couldn't believe the description of President Donald Trump's super glue fiasco revealed in an upcoming book.

The upcoming book Regime Change by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan detailed how White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt walked into the Oval Office to find Trump "clutching a tube of super glue and attempting to affix gold decorations to the marble fireplace mantle."

SE Cupp, a conservative political commentator, described the episode as "unfathomable" during an appearance on CNN on Thursday.

"It is unfathomable to imagine a U.S. president super-gluing anything in the Oval Office," Cupp said. "That's wacko, but it's easier to imagine this president doing it."

She added that, "It's the perfect metaphor" for the Trump presidency, "as so many things are, from the Reflecting Pool to the ballroom," referring to two embattled and lavish Trump projects.

"Trump came up in business by putting his name on buildings," Cupp said. "He didn't have to own them superficially. He was looking to look powerful and important."

She admitted that the image of Trump gluing gold decorations onto the Oval Office actually "makes perfect sense."

The Alaska Division of Elections took action to disqualify a man named Dan Sullivan from running on the ballot against the incumbent Republican senator of the same name — but a lawyer advising the state legislature is now warning this was probably illegal.

According to Alaska Public Media, "Andrew Dunmire, an attorney with the nonpartisan Legislative Affairs Agency, wrote a nearly five-page memo on the controversy." According to the report, the other Sullivan, who lives in Petersburg, "appears to meet the three qualifications the U.S. Constitution requires of senators, Dunmire said: He’s over 30, a U.S. citizen for nine years or more, and a state resident."

The Division of Elections ruled Sullivan ineligible because he had not filed in "good faith," and there was strong evidence he was deliberately trying to confuse voters into splitting the vote to boost Democrats.

But that isn't a valid disqualification reason, Dunmire argued: “To impose additional requirements on Mr. Sullivan — such as a requirement that he filed to run ‘in good faith’ — would improperly add to the exclusive list of Constitutional qualifications.”

Additionally, Dunmire argued, the Division of Elections made the opposite argument in 2024, "when the Division argued in court that it had to let Eric Hafner, a federal inmate in New York, appear on the Alaska ballot as a Democrat," potentially taking votes away from other Democratic candidates, despite the state Democratic Party complaining he wouldn't meet the residency requirement because of the length of his sentence.

The other Sullivan, who is also running as a Republican denies that he is a Democratic plant or that his candidacy is meant to deceive anyone, and Dunmire argued that there are sensible compromises where Sullivan could be allowed onto the ballot but displayed in a way that voters would not confuse him for the sitting senator.

Former President Barack Obama delivered pointed critiques of President Donald Trump during the opening ceremony of his presidential center in Chicago Thursday.

Obama gave a history lesson on America's founding ideals, saying, "In over more than two centuries, through petitions and protests ... men and women of all walks of life, from every color and every faith, every region, took up the cause of democracy until we, the people, came to include not just some of us, but all of us."

"And that's why the story we tell in this building begins not with Michelle's origins or my origins, but with our nation's."

In the wake of Trump ordering the Smithsonian and National Park Service to remove exhibits portraying America negatively, Obama reminded the audience of America's founding values.

"A declaration that we are all created equal, that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, that in the new independent United States, there will be no kings or lords, no serfs or subjects, but only citizens," Obama said.

"No one is above the law, or beneath its protection."

Watch the video below.

President Donald Trump's Immigration and Customs Enforcement has quietly started to "abandon" one of its big projects, The New York Times reported on Thursday — and one legal expert is gobsmacked at the reversal.

Specifically, after ICE spent around $1 billion to buy up nearly a dozen mega-warehouses that it planned to convert into detention centers, they are now trying to offload seven of them, either to other federal agencies or to private buyers.

This move, noted the report, "is a rejection of a signature initiative under the previous homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, who pushed the boundaries of what the government can do to aggressively round up potential deportees," as newly appointed Secretary Markwayne Mullin "has said publicly that he wants the agency to be quieter about how it carries out immigration enforcement."

American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick posted on X that the turnabout is a massive deal.

"This is HUGE," said Reichlin-Melnick. "After spending over $1 BILLION on the purchase of multiple commercial warehouses that ICE planned to convert into the largest jails/prisons in the nation, ICE is now largely abandoning the idea and will aim to sell off multiple warehouses at a loss."

Even before now, there were signs the federal government was abandoning the idea of converting warehouses to immigrant jails, and it ran into massive problems.

For one, in some cases ICE was prevented from buying warehouses in the first place because local owners opposed selling, or in one case in Oklahoma, a tribal nation bought it first to stop them. They also had to contend with lawsuits, including one brought by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes.

Vice President JD Vance will have to stay home instead of traveling to Switzerland to finalize the memorandum of understanding the Trump administration struck with the Iranian regime last weekend, according to a White House spokesperson.

On Sunday, Trump announced his administration had struck a deal with the regime that would immediately reopen the Strait of Hormuz and provide a pathway to ending the conflict. The final agreement was initially scheduled to be signed on Friday in Switzerland.

CNN journalist Kristen Holmes reported on Thursday that a White House spokesperson told her, "The Vice President is not departing tonight." The spokesperson added that "as the Vice President said at his press conference, the plans for the upcoming technical talks have not been finalized," referring to the deal to end the Iran war.

"The U.S. delegation has been prepared to depart at the first available opportunity," the White House spokesperson told Holmes. "But the logistics of these negotiations have never been simple or predictable."

January 6ers who attacked cops won't have much luck with a new workaround to Trump's frozen slush fund, according to a legal expert.

Former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman wrote in his Substack about a loophole meant to compensate January 6ers despite the freeze of Trump's $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund. Litman noted that the slush fund "collapsed under bipartisan political pressure last month."

Litman was responding to an article by The Guardian that reported that January 6ers are trying to get paid anyway by filing a claim through the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), which allows compensation for people wronged by the government.

According to The Guardian, a Florida attorney and longtime friend of Trump named Peter Ticktin has helped January 6ers file about 400 FTCA claims, but Litman warned that their claims won't work.

"The FTCA route is not a workaround," Litman wrote. "It is a recapitulation of precisely the same legal problems that doomed the slush fund."

According to Litman, the Trump administration "has already tried to use the FTCA as a vehicle for self-dealing, and that attempt has been declared constitutionally suspect by a federal judge."

He added that the FTCA "is not a general compensation scheme for grievances against the government." It's narrower than that and is meant to compensate "claims arising from the negligent acts of government employees," Litman wrote.

The FTCA claims are also bound to fail because the Trump administration controls both sides of the settlement that created the fund, and the FTCA only pays bona fide settlements of legitimate "actual or imminent litigation," he added.

"The unsettling part of the Guardian report is that the political mechanism that stopped the slush fund—Republican senators confronted with a floor vote, forced to answer on the record whether they supported paying people who beat police officers—may not exist here," Litman wrote. "These are individual cases, filed quietly across multiple dockets, without a single vote to cast or press conference to hold."

"Courts need to be prepared to jump in and call out this latest maneuver for the bogus self-dealing that it is," Litman added. "Whether the president settles with himself through a $10 billion IRS lawsuit, a $1.776 billion slush fund, or 400 individual FTCA claims filed by a friend of his in Florida, the answer is the same: the government cannot be its own adverse party."

The actions of President Donald Trump's prosecutors in a high-profile case have opened a "Pandora's box" that could unravel the Trump Department of Justice's ambitions, according to one legal analyst.

Liz Dye, host of the "LegalEagle" podcast, said during a new episode on Thursday that the damage Trump DOJ's actions have caused in the so-called Broadview Six case could be "hard to contain." Trump prosecutors were caught lying to grand jury members and attempting to withhold evidence of their misdoings captured in the grand jury transcripts. The prosecutors later dropped the case to prevent the transcripts from being released to the judge.

"It's clear they're not going to be able to limit the damage to just this case," Dye said.

The Broadview Six case arose from a protest outside the Broadview ICE facility in Chicago. The DOJ prosecuted six of the protesters with conspiracy and obstruction, but the case fell apart in a stunning fashion in May 2026. The six former defendants have since asked the government to appoint a Special Counsel to look into the case, All Rise News reported.

Dye noted that judges have started to notice this conduct as well. When the Broadview Six transcripts were finally released, Dye said the judge overseeing the case described them as a "Pandora's box" that raised further questions about the department's credibility.

"I'm guessing this grand jury mess isn't going back in the box anytime soon," Dye said.

Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ) will return to Congress on June 30 after months of unexplained absences, according to his spokesperson Harrison Neely.

Neely revealed, "the 57-year-old lawmaker plans to attend the June 30 House session," according to Politico.

Kean's office attributed his extended disappearance to an undisclosed health issue but provided no details despite repeated promises of an imminent return.

GOP leaders on Capitol Hill remained in the dark about his absence, and reporters visiting his home found neighbors equally mystified.

Neely pledged Kean "plans to be fully transparent regarding the nature of his health issue" during his in-person appearance. The Congressman's prolonged unexplained absence and vague health claims have raised questions among constituents and colleagues about his fitness to serve.

The 57-year-old congressman faces a competitive re-election battle against Democrat Rebecca Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot and Air National Guard officer.

Watch the video below.

President Donald Trump got yet another piece of humiliation about the conclusion of the Iran war — and it came in its entry on Wikipedia.

As of press time, the Wikipedia page for "2026 Iran War" states that the outcome of the war was "Iranian victory."

As evidence, the article provides a number of citations from political analysts, including a piece in The Atlantic by Graeme Wood titled "Iran Has Humiliated Trump," and a piece in The Independent by Sam Kiley, titled, "Trump has achieved none of his aims in Iran. His ‘ceasefire’ can’t work and won’t work."

Trump, for his part, continues to tout the memorandum of understanding that suspended hostilities in Iran as a victory, claiming those who don't like the deal are "fools."

However, Trump is facing opposition not just from Democrats, but a number of conservative Republicans who are generally on his side, like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

Wikipedia outsources its content to a collective of online volunteer editors and, by its own rules, avoids partisan and opinionated entries.

Despite this, Republicans have sometimes come after Wikipedia for what they perceive to be unfair bias. Last year, when Trump loyalist Ed Martin was running the U.S. Attorney's office in Washington, D.C., he sent a threatening letter to the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia's parent organization, accusing them of violating their nonprofit status to push "propaganda."

President Donald Trump has already revealed the next big lie that he plans to sell to Americans, a foreign policy analyst said.

Robert Kagan, a contributing writer for The Atlantic and a foreign policy analyst, said during an appearance on CNN that Trump will try to frame his deal to end the Iran war as "regime change" and "unconditional surrender."

He added that Trump will deny that the money going to Iran is "reparations" for the war.

"He's all about the big lie," Kagan said. "And this is going to be his big lie. I just don't think that even he, who is one of the great con artists of all time, can sell the American people on this being anything other than an American surrender."

Kagan also pointed out, "The one thing we're confident is happening is that Iran is going to get billions of dollars, tens of billions, and probably hundreds of billions of dollars in return for nothing," and described it as "an easy tell" that gives away Trump's lie.

"Now, that's called reparations, and if you look at history, reparations are paid by the loser to the winner," Kagan explained. "In World War I, Germany paid reparations to Britain and France. If Germany had won the war, Britain and France would have paid the reparations, so that's how you know what happened in this war."

In other words, "Trump essentially paid the Iranians to give him a fig leaf that would allow him to come home and tell the Americans that everything is fine," Kagan summed up.

Attorney General and Republican U.S. Senate nominee Ken Paxton broke with his state party’s opposition to in-vitro fertilization Thursday, calling himself a “strong supporter” of the fertility treatment.

“Strong families are the foundation of a strong nation,” Paxton said in a statement shared exclusively with The Texas Tribune. “Every child is a blessing, and every family hoping to welcome a child deserves support and compassion. I am a strong supporter of IVF and pro-family policies that help Americans experience the wonders of parenthood.”

Paxton’s support puts him in the same camp as President Donald Trump, but on the opposite side of the issue as the Republican Party of Texas.

The state party, in a platform and legislative priorities adopted last weekend at its Houston convention, called on lawmakers to “protect fetal life from destructive practices, such as IVF and commercial surrogacy.”

Another plank of the state GOP platform states that the party opposes “public funding for procedures that destroy embryonic life, including IVF”, and called for regulation to prevent “embryo discarding, eugenic practices and commodification of human life.”

But Paxton’s campaign said he would work to safeguard IVF if elected to the U.S. Senate. The Republican nominee supports the IVF Protection Act, a bill from Sens. Katie Britt, R-Alabama, and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to bar Medicaid funding for any state that bans IVF. Paxton will cosponsor the bill if elected.

Paxton had taken heat from Democratic nominee James Talarico’s campaign over the Texas GOP’s stated opposition to IVF.

Polling on IVF finds the treatment to be highly popular; a 2024 Pew Research Center survey found 70% of Americans say access to IVF is a good thing, while only 8% say it’s bad. But while high-level Republicans, including President Donald Trump, are supportive of IVF, the treatment is divisive among conservative activists and abortion opponents.

The fertility treatment was thrust into the political spotlight in 2024 when the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children, under a state law extending rights to “unborn children,” and that fertility clinics could be found liable for wrongful death if embryos are destroyed.

The ruling immediately chilled IVF access in the state, with several providers pausing treatments. Top Republicans came out in support of IVF, including then-candidate Trump, and Alabama’s Republican Legislature quickly passed a law shielding IVF providers and patients from civil and criminal liability for embryo destruction, allowing the state’s clinics to resume fertility treatments.

Numerous Texas Republicans, including Gov. Greg Abbott, affirmed their support for IVF access in the wake of the Alabama decision. And Trump made protecting IVF a plank of his presidential campaign, pledging to make the treatment affordable by mandating that insurance companies pay for it or by having the government pay.

As president, Trump has not gone that far. He signed an executive order asking for policy recommendations on the issue. His administration has proposed a rule to attempt to entice employers to offer fertility benefits and negotiated lower prices for a handful of fertility drugs on the TrumpRx government pharmaceutical marketplace.

Senators in both parties have expressed interest in protecting IVF, but the body has not passed any legislation and Republicans voted down a Democratic proposal to establish a nationwide right to IVF. Britt and Cruz’s bill to strip Medicaid funding from any state that bans IVF, introduced in 2024, did not receive a vote. Democrat Patty Murray objected to passing it via unanimous consent, saying it did not address what would happen in states that have fetal personhood laws or whether clinics could dispose of unused embryos.

A wing of the religious right opposes IVF on moral grounds. The procedure often involves the creation of numerous embryos, some of which end up discarded if they are not healthy or viable. Some religious conservatives — including Texas Republican delegates — see the destruction of embryos as abortion and think it should be banned. Others see procedures that create embryos outside of the mother’s body as the “commodification of human life.”

The state party platform states that life begins at fertilization, and that IVF is therefore destructive. The Texas GOP wants mandatory reporting on embryo creation, storage and disposition, and wants legislators to instead promote “ethical alternatives,” including holistic infertility treatments.

The Texas GOP’s platform, adopted every two years by delegates at its convention, is a nonbinding document intended to guide the state’s Republican legislators, but is often further to the right than the party’s rank-and-file voters and candidates.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

CNN correspondent Kara Scannell was left flummoxed after accused UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter Luigi Mangione's legal team moved to withdraw their plan for a psychiatric legal defense on Thursday — just a day after having submitted it to the court in the first place.

"This is like 24 hours. It's a reversal," said anchor Phil Mattingly. "Explain what's happening here."

"In the words of one former prosecutor, this is stunning and bizarre," said Scannell, noting that Mangione would have confessed to the murder in court under their initial plan, but claimed to have done so "in a state of extreme emotional disturbance" — and now that appears to be off the table, but "there are no additional details."

"There's nothing concrete to explain why they made this reversal," said Scannell. "Today was the deadline for the lawyers to give the prosecution the name of their expert and other information about this defense," although it's not clear whether this was the cause of the withdrawal, or whether that came first.

One theory of a prosecutor watching the case, she noted, is that "Mangione himself changed his mind." Another reason could be "an issue with the expert or the expert's report."

What does appear to be the case, she added, is that Mangione's legal team wants it sealed that he even asked for a psychiatric defense in the first place, "because if this came out and they didn't go forward, it could potentially prejudice the jury. And now that issue seems to be a potential issue on the table. This trial is just three months away."

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President Donald Trump failed to clasp the Medal of Honor around a decorated veteran, and critics let him have it.

Major Nicholas Dockery received the Medal of Honor, the country's highest military decoration, on Thursday for his heroic actions in Afghanistan. Trump, however, had a problem putting the medal around Dockery during the ceremony.

Video from the ceremony showed Trump struggling to clasp the medal before tying it tightly around Dockery's neck.

Former GOP strategist Tara Setmayer wrote in a post on X, "Imagine if Biden...never mind...."

"Trump spectacularly failed his latest cognitive test," joked journalist Aaron Rupar.

"This really isn’t a difficult physical task to perform," noted Ron Filipkowski, editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch, in a post on X.

"The Medal of Honor doesn't STRETCH," wrote crypto commentator Josh Mandell.

"Why didn't he have this problem with Rush Limbaugh?" social media influencer Morgan J. Freeman joked, referring to the conservative radio personality whom Trump awarded the Medal of Freedom.

Senior Trump administration officials privately criticized President Donald Trump as a lazy warmonger, lacking sustained commitment to prosecute military conflicts.

Zeteo reports, administration insiders claimed Trump's approach to the Iran war resulted in an inevitable defeat, leaving the U.S. in a weakened negotiating position.

One anonymous official said, "They've got him by the balls. We want out, and [the Iranians] know we don't have all the cards."

Trump signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran at the Palace of Versailles Wednesday, which officials characterized as the result of exhausted U.S. leverage and imminent economic crisis concerns.

Pentagon aides acknowledged the administration lacks publicly claimed leverage, citing risks of global economic destabilization and damage to Republican midterm prospects. Trump's repeated threats of resumed bombing have lost credibility with both Iranian and American officials, who recognize his demonstrated reluctance to sustain military operations.

Reporter Asawin Suebsaeng concluded, "Trump lost this one, badly."

Watch the video below.

A legal expert on Thursday flagged a striking detail in the deal President Donald Trump's administration and the Iranian regime signed over the weekend that could derail the agreement entirely.

Dave Aronberg, the former state attorney in Florida, said on a new episode of the "Legal AF" podcast that Trump signed a federal law that could prevent the deal from being effective. Republicans introduced a measure in a funding bill to support the war in Ukraine that designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization for four years, a designation that would be required to be lifted if the Trump administration wants to provide broad sanctions relief, Aronberg noted.

"How does an administration legally trap itself? Well, it comes down to this overlooked piece of legislation," Aronberg said.

"It's hard to believe that the Trump administration would actually overlook something important when it comes to foreign policy," he added.

Some of the points the Trump administration agreed to in the memorandum of understanding it signed with the Iranians on Sunday include allowing the regime to resume oil sales and establishing a $300 billion reconstruction fund for the country that could include funds from other Gulf states.

Aronberg noted that those promises are empty unless the Trump administration plans to drop the terrorist designation for the Iranian regime.

"Trump would have to formally certify to Congress that removing Iranian drone terrorists from our official terrorist watch list is vital to the national security of the United States," Aronberg said. "That's going to be a tough call for even the Republicans who normally just rubber-stamp what he wants."

Vice President JD Vance tried defending President Donald Trump's tone by describing it as in line with the working class, and it backfired.

The New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat asked Vance about the tone of Trump and the administration, saying that it "is not consistently a Christian tone. There is a tone of aggressive uncharity."

Vance responded that "tonal arguments are ways of, frankly, policing working-class ways of communication and covering them in elite preferences."

However, online commentators expressed offense at hearing Vance equate the Trump administration's tone with the way the working class speaks.

Tim Miller, the host of The Bulwark podcast, summarized Vance's defense as "Working class people are all a— who don't care about their neighbor's feelings" in a post on X.

"It seems like he thinks that regular people are all sociopaths like him," Miller wrote. "Classic"

MS NOW host and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough said, "How insulting to suggest that hateful rhetoric that runs counter to the Gospel of Jesus Christ is just the way working class people talk—and that elites don’t get that."

"What an absurd response," Reason reporter Billy Binion sounded off. "Donald Trump is not 'working class.' And this is very condescending toward people who actually *are* working class because it implies they're all mean and uncharitable by default. Is that all the respect JD Vance has for working people?"

Journalist Jane Coaston, the host of What A Day, agreed, "I really think some people think that working class Americans are the worst human beings to ever live."

Christian broadcaster Erick Erickson simply said, "Bad answer."

President Donald Trump's nominee for ambassador to Jamaica, Kari Lake, refused to retract a false claim about Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) during her Thursday confirmation hearing.

During her Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) confronted Lake over her 2024 campaign smear against Gallego, during which she accused Arizona's Senator of being "controlled by the cartels."

PolitiFact rated this claim as "pants on fire."

Gallego, a former House member, was running against her for Senate at the time.

Kaine pressed on, but Lake claimed she had provided receipts, pointing to Gallego's father's criminal history.

Kaine countered, arguing there was no evidence linking Gallego to cartels.

Kaine demanded an apology, but Lake answered, "I don't believe my charge was wrong."

Virginia's Democratic Senator revealed Lake repeated the accusation after the campaign ended, posting at 2:35 a.m., "You are a member of a Mexican cartel family. You are also a fraud! No one is surprised by your take."

Lake maintained her position throughout the confrontation, refusing to acknowledge the debunked nature of her allegations.

Watch the video below.

President Donald Trump is reportedly "determined" to have better sleeping quarters than his wife since she is isolated in the master bedroom, leaving him with the "living room."

New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reveal the details in Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, a copy of which the Daily Mail obtained. First lady Melania Trump occupies the traditional master bedroom with an en suite dressing room and bath; Donald Trump occupies the second-floor space typically labeled the "living room" on White House maps, next to the Yellow Oval.

The competition started almost immediately. With Melania spending little time at the White House in the early weeks, items began disappearing from the corridor into the president's room.

"'In the early weeks of the new administration, items were spirited from the second-floor corridor into the President's bedroom,'" Haberman and Swan wrote. "'Sometimes Trump carried the objects in himself, rearranging things across the private quarters on a whim.'"

When staff reminded him he was taking things Melania had personally selected, the authors said he brushed it off.

"'He made clear he didn't care,'" they wrote.

"'He seemed almost to be competing with her — determined to have the better room,'" Haberman and Swan added.

The dynamic left staff rattled.

"'The President's redecorating generated such a flurry of activity that staff often felt caught between the two Trumps,'" the authors wrote, noting the couple are the only White House pair to regularly use separate bedrooms since Richard and Pat Nixon.

"'Trump's obsessive focus on interior decorating made the staff yearn for the First Lady to return and hopefully rein him in,'" they said.

Following that, the president demolished the East Wing — traditionally home to the first lady's offices — to build a ballroom. By early 2026, the project was expected to be larger than the White House building itself, the authors said.

One of the Trump administration's deportation schemes has seen an "unprecedented" rise in activity over the last year that stunned two CNN reporters on Thursday.

Priscilla Alvarez, a CNN correspondent, and Phil Mattingly, who hosted Thursday's broadcast of "The Lead," discussed the Trump administration's efforts to denaturalize U.S. citizens throughout the second administration. Alvarez noted that only 166 denaturalization cases have been filed over the last 18 years, a figure the Trump administration is now trying to surpass in just one year by filing 250 cases.

"This is a significant ramping up. In fact, it's unprecedented," Alvarez said.

Immigration was one of the key issues that delivered the White House to Trump during the 2024 election. Administration officials have also floated the idea of suspending habeas corpus, which requires the government to explain why it detained someone, an idea that was shot down by bureaucrats inside the administration.

"Oftentimes with immigration in this administration, when you see something like this, it's a leading indicator of something to come or a scaling process that there are plans for," Mattingly said. "Do we have any sense of how far they want to take this?"

Alvarez noted that the administration is putting "a lot of resources" behind the initiative, suggesting it plans to continue ramping up the operation.

Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, the pro-Trump official in charge of election administration in one of America's largest swing-state counties, got a blistering loss in state court on Thursday, as a panel of appellate judges blocked his sweeping election order against the Board of Supervisors.

Among other things, Heap ordered the board to hand over a trove of election equipment and resources they were withholding from his office, and make a number of changes to the process for approving polling places, including stripping the board of the power to approve new drop box sites without his consent under penalty of felony.

In the order, the judges ruled that the supervisors are likely to prevail against Heap on the merits.

Furthermore, they argued that the "Purcell" principle prohibited the lower court from intervening on Heap's behalf in a way that is likely to substantially change election rules this close to voting.

"Courts are reluctant to order last-minute changes in election rules and procedures because they can burden election workers and complicate and create confusion in the voting experience," said the judges. "We see merit in the Board’s and Purcell’s argument and conclude that the injunction is very likely to be vacated on Purcell grounds."

All of this comes as senior Trump White House aide Stephen Miller seeks to intervene in Arizona elections, which even Heap himself has asked courts to stop.

Former first lady Michelle Obama delivered pointed jabs at President Donald Trump during the Obama Presidential Center grand opening in Chicago Thursday.

Describing her husband as consistently unflappable at every turn, she said.

"Always focused, always calm, always looking at the long view."

"How absurd it is to even imagine that you might have buckled under the pressure even once," she said, adding, "Lashed out in frustration. Lost your temper."

The crowd erupted in applause.

She concluded with a dig at Trump, noting Obama accomplished something he has not: winning a Nobel Peace Prize.

The remarks came days after a MAGA UFC fighter attacked Michelle at Trump's White House birthday celebration.

Her speech highlighted character differences between the former and current presidents during the ceremonial dedication of the Obama Presidential Center.

Watch the video below.

Political analyst Steve Schmidt said the fallout from President Donald Trump's botched Iran war could haunt America for generations in the latest episode of his show, "The Warning," on YouTube.

Schmidt started by praising Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who called the Trump administration's Iran peace deal a disaster. "This will go down as a tremendous foreign policy blunder," Cassidy said. "Iran ends up stronger, our allies in the region are weaker."

Schmidt, a former Republican strategist, agreed, pulling no punches in his assessment of how the war was managed — and placing much of the blame squarely on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

"Pete Hegseth lost the war," Schmidt said bluntly. "He has wrecked the military, hollowed out its integrity, defiled it, and lost a war."

Perhaps most damning is the whiplash over Iran's missiles, Schmidt noted. The Trump administration once promised to destroy Iran's missile program entirely. Now, Trump himself is arguing Iran deserves to keep them. "Missiles aren't the problem," Trump said. "They hurt a little, but they don't blow up the planet."

Schmidt wasn't buying it. He pointed out that Trump spent roughly $80 billion fighting Iran only to turn around and offer the country $300 billion in reconstruction aid, a reversal that Schmidt compared unfavorably to the Obama-era Iran deal Trump once ridiculed.

The political damage appears to be piling up, Schmidt concluded. Recent Fox News polling puts Trump's net approval rating at minus 21 points, with independents sitting 55 points underwater on the president.

"The American people are going, what was the point of all of that?" Schmidt said.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

A Republican senator pleaded with reporters to "take a breath" as they tore apart President Donald Trump's Iran deal claim by claim.

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) found himself on the defensive on Thursday during a Capitol Hill press availability, struggling to answer pointed questions about the memorandum of understanding the Trump administration struck with Iran.

It started with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

"What would you say to your Republican colleagues — like Ted Cruz — who say the deal is bad and that we are sending a lot of money across?" a reporter asked.

"If not this, what would you do?" Moreno shot back. "Give me an alternative."

The reporters kept coming.

"We didn't achieve anything," one pressed. "Nothing was achieved. They've still got their nuclear capabilities."

"That's not a fact," Moreno insisted. "That's an opinion."

A second reporter zeroed in on the MOU's claim that $300 billion could flow to Iran. Moreno explained it was contingent on Arab and other nations investing in Iranian infrastructure — but only if Iran ended its nuclear program and returned enriched uranium.

"They're not going to do that," the reporter said flatly.

"You don't know that!" Moreno fired back. "Maybe they won't."

"They won't."

"Maybe they — well, do you have a crystal ball?"

Moreno had opened the exchange on an upbeat note, calling the deal "a very positive thing" and urging his colleagues and the press corps alike to hope for the best.

"Why not take a breath," he said, "and hope that we have a good outcome — that we have peace and stability?"

"Although," he added, "we aren't allowed to bet on Polymarket anymore."

Along with layers of green algae, the Reflecting Pool took another turn for the worse after Trump's $14 million renovations.

The paint coating the bottom of the Reflecting Pool started peeling off, according to video and reporting online. The Reflecting Pool has already been plagued with a layer of murky green from algae blooms since last week.

The Bulwark's Sam Stein noted that the workers poured hydrogen peroxide into the pool to combat the algae and green color and that the chemical can be used for paint removal.

Stein compared the peeled-off paint to "a dead bird's wing flapping in the water," and others online piled on the mockery about Trump's costly and seemingly failed renovations.

"Trump in a nutshell, cheap, nasty bling," author and professor Phillips P. Obrien wrote on X.

"Trump has made as much a mess of the Reflecting Pool as he has made of our country and its standing in the world," professor and scientist Michael E. Mann commented. "It's the perfect metaphor for Trump and his GOP enablers, going to the next election."

"This is Trump's entire career," author Richard Kadrey chimed in on Bluesky. "Build it sh—, don't pay anyone, then blame somebody else for your f— up. He'll soon declare algae antifa and try to arrest it."

Read on Substack

One of President Donald Trump's attacks on his own cabinet secretary was so vulgar that a CNN reporter wouldn't read it aloud.

CNN special correspondent Jamie Gangel was reading an excerpt from Regime Change, an upcoming book about the second Trump administration by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. She had to stop, however, when getting to a part about what Trump said to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

Trump told Lutnick, "You used to be a killer," according to a passage from the book that Gangel read on-air. "I remember when you were 35, you were a killer."

Gangel had to stop as she read a line where Trump told Lutnick, "Now, you're just soft, and you're a p—."

"I'm not going to say that on TV," Gangel said instead. "My mother is watching."

Trump said the expletive twice in the passage, and when it came up again, she told viewers, "You can look at it on TV."

Gangel read the passage to make a point about Trump's vulgarity, per the book. The others on the roundtable with her couldn't help but laugh as she stopped herself from explicitly echoing Trump's vulgarity.

Charles Blow, the author of "Blow the Stack" newsletter, told Gangel that she could have referred to the expletive by saying it's "the thing" that Trump "confessed he likes to grab people by."

A forthcoming book revealed that President Donald Trump once touted a document that he received comparing him to world leaders like Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler, which he claimed was written by a "presidential historian" but was actually written by the caddy of one of Trump's golf partners, according to a new report.

New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan interviewed Trump for their forthcoming book, Regime Change, in March, where the president showed the reporters a document that argued he was more powerful than some of the most powerful strongmen in history, like Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler. After doing a little digging, the reporters found out the document was not authored by a presidential historian, as Trump claimed, but was written by Gary Player's long-time caddy, who gave Trump the document at Mar-a-Lago, CNN reported.

"But when Swan and Haberman tried to find the author, it turned out he was not a historian, but actually Player’s longtime caddy and personal confidant. The caddy told Haberman and Swan that he 'had first shared his assessment of Trump’s power with Player and later explained it directly to Trump over golf in Florida,'" according to the report.

Trump posted a quote from the document on Truth Social early Thursday morning. Raw Story published a story about the statement, which Trump credited to someone named David King. The story caused a stir among people with the same name as the Trump-identified author, including one David King who works at Harvard and asked Raw Story for a correction.

Trump did not provide any further details on who "David King" is, but celebrated the person's comments anyway.

"Sounds good to me!" Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Veteran Washington reporter Scott MacFarlane predicted Congress will investigate Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller by week's end, following the New York Times' reports on Miller proposing to suspend habeas corpus rights for undocumented immigrants to accelerate deportations.

Habeas corpus, a centuries-old constitutional right rooted in the Magna Carta, requires the government justify detention before a judge. A confidential April 29, 2025 memo from White House staff secretary Will Scharf warned Chief of Staff Susie Wiles the proposal would be struck down, noting only Congress can suspend habeas corpus during rebellion or invasion.

Miller told reporters that suspension was "an option we are actively looking at," claiming the border qualified as an invasion.

Though the proposal faded, the Times reported it was never abandoned.

MacFarlane also revealed GOP Sen. Tom Tillis expressed concerns about the Anti-Weaponization Fund ahead of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's July confirmation hearings.

Watch the video below.