A prominent MAGA lawyer bankrolled an election denier now working inside the Trump administration, according to tax filings.

According to reporting by Democracy Docket, a dark money fund run by election denier and anti-voting attorney Cleta Mitchell granted just over $72,000 in the last fiscal year to Heather Honey. Democracy Docket described Honey as an "election conspiracy theorist" hired by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to oversee election integrity.

Mitchell granted the money through her Foundation for Accountability, Integrity and Research in Elections Fund. Honey accepted the money through her company, Verity Vote, for consulting and research services, according to tax filings reviewed by Democracy Docket.

In fiscal year 2024, Honey's company took in more than $120,000 from Mitchell's fund, Democracy Docket added. Honey is also listed as the vice president and director of Mitchell's fund, and Honey founded a Pennsylvania group that operates under Mitchell's Election Integrity Network, according to Democracy Docket.

Mitchell and Honey have a long history of undermining election security and spreading false voter fraud claims, according to Democracy Docket. DHS appointed Honey in August 2025 to a newly created post in its election integrity division, and two months later, the watchdog group American Oversight sued DHS for hiring her.

The American Oversight lawsuit pointed out that Honey suggested that Trump could seize control of elections from states by declaring a national emergency, Democracy Docket reported.

"Transparency about Honey's appointment and tenure is key to understanding who is tasked with overseeing our election infrastructure," American Oversight wrote about its lawsuit. "The records at issue in our lawsuit could show how Trump and his allies intend to undermine, and potentially subvert, the security of future elections."

Mitchell, meanwhile, keeps working to restrict voting from outside government, Democracy Docket noted. Her fund tripled its grant spending last fiscal year on election-denial groups, according to reporting by Sludge, and the Guardian reported that some used the money for deceptive 2024 election ads, including some aimed at Spanish-speaking voters.

Senior Trump administration officials are "furious" about a new dress code for an embattled federal agency, a journalist revealed.

In a Friday post on X, reporter Anna Giaritelli shared that senior Trump administration officials and officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are "furious with changes to ICE's dress code."

According to reporting by The Intercept, the new dress code bans ICE agents from wearing jeans, sweatshirts, hoodies, non-collared shirts, and T-shirts displaying graphics while they're working in public spaces. Giaritelli wrote in her reporting for the Washington Examiner that the new guidelines went into place on July 17.

The Intercept noted in its reporting that the new dress code came "in direct response" to a pair of deadly shootings by ICE agents in Maine and Texas, as well as a botched arrest attempt by two plainclothes ICE agents at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas on July 13.

Giaritelli posted that senior Trump administration officials and ICE officers are now complaining "it could lead to more assaults against federal police because of how easy they will be to spot in polo shirts and khaki tactical pants."

However, online commentators showed their support for the dress code. In an X post reacting to Giaritelli's post, policy analyst Sarah Pierce said, "Heaven forbid the public know that it is a law enforcement officer that is questioning, arresting or shooting them."

"I am obviously sympathetic to concerns of officer safety," wrote immigration policy analyst Aaron Reichlin-Melnick. "But I find ICE's claim to need to be in hiding particularly strange in light of every other law enforcement agency in the country that manages to do its job with its officers in uniform."

A photographer snapped a photo over Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's shoulder that revealed a plan hours before a notable currency jump.

During a Trump Cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday, Reuters news photographer Daniel Heuer captured Bessent's jottings on a notepad in front of him. At the top, the note read, "To Do," and underneath that, Bessent had written, "Buy Japanese Yen (JPY) $5-10 bil."

According to reporting by Reuters, the Treasury had already put banks on alert for a possible U.S. intervention in the market for Japan's currency when Heuer took the photo.

The Financial Times later reported that a "historic" intervention by the Treasury actually happened. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York sold euros to buy yen on behalf of the Treasury, according to The Financial Times.

The dollar fell from about 158.9 yen to about 157.6 yen just before 5 p.m., as the yen strengthened about .8 percent, according to Reuters. A Treasury spokesperson did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the contents of the note or whether the Treasury had intervened to prop up the yen's value against the dollar on Friday.

According to reporting by Bloomberg News, the yen dipped last week to its weakest level since 1986 because of rising oil prices and a number of other factors.

Reuters noted that the Treasury hasn't intervened to affect the yen since 2011, when it coordinated with other G7 countries to help Japan recover after a major earthquake.

Bessent's Cabinet meeting jottings have been captured by a Reuters photographer before. In late May, Reuters photographer Evan Vucci caught scribblings by Bessent that read "resilience" on the top and bottom and "prosperity" alongside it, though it's unclear why.

During a White House press briefing the next day, Daily Mail reporter Elina Shirazi asked why he had written "resilience" multiple times. Bessent laughed and said, "So people could look over my shoulder, photograph them, and think they got a scoop."

The Trump administration's threat to a program meant to pull kids out of poverty is alarming advocates, the New York Times reported.

According to reporting by The Times, the Trump administration is teeing up a "major rollback" of the federal requirements for Head Start, an early education and antipoverty program created in 1965. Advocates and experts told The Times that the rollback threatens to upend the 60-year-old program.

Ruth Friedman, a child care policy expert, told The Times that the proposed changes to Head Start are a "massive gutting." The Times noted that the program currently serves about 700,000 kids under the age of 6 and has served more than 30 million children since 1965.

The White House is eyeing changes that would remove most of Head Start's requirements for math and literacy curricula, class sizes, medical screenings, home visits, and even that children brush their teeth after meals, according to The Times, which spoke with three anonymous sources familiar with the plan.

"Eliminating Head Start's performance standards guts the science-backed standards that ensure our youngest learners get what they need to arrive at kindergarten ready to succeed," Friedman said.

The White House last year called the Head Start program "radical" as it tried to cut off spending for it, and a White House budget document said that ending Head Start would help end the "radical indoctrination of our children," The Times noted. An anonymous White House official told The Times that the federal funding for Head Start will stay in place, and that the Trump administration will support efforts to reduce the administrative burden of running it.

MS NOW's Michael Steele kicked off his segment Friday night with a bizarre tale of an encounter he once had with President Donald Trump that revealed his twisted priorities.

Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, regaled viewers with this story to make more sense of Trump's humiliation earlier in the day, as his Justice Department was forced to throw out a defective criminal case against an Olympic canoeist for "vandalizing" the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

"Remember, Trump spent months micromanaging this project, folks," said Steele, noting the president went on and on about the pool's lining, its new color, and every detail of the project before it went awry. "He went around the normal process for government projects and contracts and handed out a no-bid contract to a company that apparently just screwed the whole thing up."

Trump, said Steele, famously "doesn't have a whole lot of interest in the minutiae, the details, the importance of public policy. But when it comes to the stuff he really cares about, well, like his pet projects, his businesses, the stuff that he gets, you know, money from that puts money mo money in his pocket, Trump becomes the ultimate micromanager."

Steele then dove into his personal story of encountering Trump years before.

"A long time ago, I was in a meeting with Donald Trump, and at one point, Ivanka Trump walked in with options for different paint colors for the bathroom walls of one of his hotels," said Steele. When that happened, he continued, "Trump stopped the meeting for a full 15 minutes as he looked through the different colors, before settling on the one he liked. And folks, you better believe that was the color they used for those bathrooms."

This sort of thing is far from a one-off, said Steele, since new Wall Street Journal reporting revealed that "Almost every night in the White House, President Trump calls his fundraiser, Meredith O'Rourke for an update ... which companies and donors have cut checks and which haven't, and for how much," and he then instructs her on exact amounts to ask those companies and donors to give.

"Even a president who's up for re-election should not be that intimately involved in his own fundraising operation," said Steele, saying he has seen this process up close as a party operative, and it simply doesn't happen. But Trump isn't even up for re-election. "He's in his second term as president. He has no more campaigns to run."

Despite that, said Steele, "the man is still taking time out of his day. A lot of time to make sure that some of America's richest people and corporations are giving him money that he can play with."

- YouTube youtu.be

President Donald Trump posted a lengthy 253-word rant on Truth Social Friday attacking Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) over his opposition to the $1.7 billion taxpayer-funded "anti-weaponization fund" designed to compensate Jan. 6 Capitol riot participants.

"Perhaps there has never been a group of people treated so badly in our Nation’s history," Trump wrote.

Cornyn has vowed to block Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's confirmation until the fund is eliminated.

Trump claimed the fund does not benefit him personally but rather "great American Patriots who were hunted down like dogs" by the Biden administration.

"They are suffering still, many ruined, and I felt that they should be given compensation for what has been done to them," Trump continued.

"I gave up any payments for myself, which would have been substantial, including for the illegal and unprecedented raid on Mar-a-Lago, my home in Florida, even though many legal experts, and others, including John Cornyn, said it was a shocking and disgusting display of ‘weaponization’ against me.”

"I will always feel that these victims of government abuse should be paid back for what they were forced to endure, their lives have been ruined!”

Watch the video below.

In what Democratic Sen. Patty Murray described as a “slap in the face to moms and dads,” Republicans have blocked her proposed resolution to restore a rule that could have saved low-income parents thousands of dollars per year on childcare before the Trump administration axed it.

Under a rule that went into effect earlier this month, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rescinded a Biden-era rule that capped families’ copayments at 7% of their household income for the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), which helps about 994,000 low-income families pay for childcare so parents can work, attend school, or participate in job training.

The program is administered at the state level, and under the abandoned rule that was enacted in 2024, all states were required to begin phasing in the 7% cap, which is considered a federal affordability benchmark.

Under the Trump policy change, states will not be required to cap parents’ copayments as long as they continue to use a sliding scale based on income level and don’t present a “barrier” to receiving assistance, though it’s not specified what that means.

As of March 2026, 19 states had not lowered their maximum copayment to 7%.

An April analysis by the Center for American Progress found that, by eliminating the federal cap, families in 10 states that have not enacted it would lose between $450 and more than $15,000 in potential annual savings, depending on how high their state sets the threshold.

In Ohio, which caps copayments at 27% of household income, families could lose up to $15,482 in annual savings under the maximum copayment. In Vermont, which caps copayments at 14.9% of household income, families could lose up to $11,712.

Murray (D-Wash), the former chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), introduced a resolution last month under the Congressional Review Act, which would have nullified the administration’s elimination of the 7% cap.

It also would have restored other Biden-era requirements that were reversed under the same rule, including requirements that states pay childcare providers based on enrollment rather than attendance, pay them in advance, and use grants and contracts to fund childcare for infants, children with disabilities, and those in underserved communities.

In a speech on the Senate floor before the resolution came to a procedural vote on Thursday, she told her colleagues bluntly, “You are either voting to lower childcare costs or to increase them.”

She challenged the senators who planned to vote against the resolution to “go home and tell the parents in your state you voted to raise their childcare bill,” adding that “you cannot call yourself pro-family while voting to make it more expensive to raise one.”

In a party-line vote on Friday, the bill was blocked from advancing by a margin of 52-47, with every Republican voting against it except for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who is absent after being hospitalized in June.

After the vote failed, Murray described it as an example of Republicans taking money away from American families struggling to afford the basics of life while pushing for lavish spending on war and tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.

“How about instead of a $1.5 trillion war budget, we make sure every working family in America can afford childcare?” Murray said. “If Trump had simply done nothing, and left the 7% cap in place, some of these families would have ended up saving as much as $15,000 a year for their family.”

According to a Century Foundation analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data, childcare costs increased by 5% from August 2024 to August 2025 and now average more than $13,000 per child per year across age groups.

Trump has been surprisingly open about the fact that, under his control, and in direct contrast with his campaign promises, the federal government is prioritizing spending on his war in Iran instead of providing government subsidies for Americans’ basic needs, including daycare.

“We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare,” he said during a speech in April. “You gotta let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it too. It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things.”

“Trump says we can’t afford childcare. But he is wrong,” said Murray, who has co-introduced legislation to expand federal childcare subsidies and cover nearly all costs for low-income families. “The truth is we can’t afford to ignore childcare.”

The Trump administration suffered its 19th straight court loss in its crusade to seize state voter rolls, per a report.

An Illinois-based federal judge tossed a Department of Justice lawsuit that demanded the state's unredacted voter rolls. U.S. District Judge Colleen Lawless wrote in her opinion that amending the complaint would be "futile" and dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning it can't be revived in district court.

Democracy Docket noted in its reporting that the "brutal" loss came two days after another federal judge dismissed the DOJ's lawsuit seeking New Jersey voter rolls.

Illinois had already provided the DOJ with its redacted voter rolls, Democracy Docket noted, but the DOJ lawsuit sought sensitive identifying information, including driver's license and Social Security numbers.

Lawless stressed, in her opinion, that the attorney general has to state a "legitimate purpose" to demand voter rolls. If an AG could simply justify a demand for voter rolls with a statement of any purpose, the current statutory requirement "would be pointless and it would provide him with unfettered authority to demand voting records."

The DOJ argued in its lawsuit that the Civil Rights Act of 1960 requires states to hand over voter rolls and federal voter records that came into their possession. Lawless, however, noted that the executive director of the Illinois Board of Elections created the voter rolls.

"An ordinary English speaker would not say that she has come into possession of something that she created, established, and maintained," Lawless wrote. "Instead, the election officials are required to preserve records that come into their possession from outside sources."

Gianni Infantino has scrapped his plan to sell a slice of the World Cup to private investors, backing down barely 72 hours after the proposal leaked and set off a revolt inside soccer's governing body, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The FIFA president announced Friday that FIFA Forward Enterprise would not proceed, saying the project had created divisions no longer in the interest of the sport.

“Having listened carefully to all the views,” Infantino said, “it has become clear that the project has created divisions of a nature that, regardless of the level of support, are no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place.”

The plan would have raised $4.2 billion at a roughly $20 billion valuation by selling about 20 percent of a new commercial arm, with a one-time payment of $20 million dangled to each of FIFA's 211 member federations.

The lead investor lined up for the deal was Thrive Eternal, a vehicle founded by Joshua Kushner, brother of Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, a link that had already drawn Democratic scrutiny before the reversal.

UEFA's 55 members voted unanimously Thursday to boycott all FIFA competitions if the sale went through, a walkout that would have sidelined powers like Spain, France and England from the men's and women's World Cups. The confederations for Asia and for North America and the Caribbean also rejected the plan.

The pressure reached Infantino's inner circle, with senior adviser Carlos Cordeiro, a former U.S. Soccer president who sat on the White House task force for the World Cup, resigning in protest. FIFA chief operating officer Kevin Lamour, who did not step down, said staff had been deceived by the secretive plan.

Trump, whose earlier phone call pushing FIFA to reverse a red card had fueled questions about his closeness to Infantino, distanced himself Friday. Asked at Camp David whether the FIFA boss had consulted him on the sale, the president told reporters, "No, I never spoke to him."

A Fox News anchor had to get a humiliating fact check from one of his guests after blundering on basic biology.

Will Cain had on Matt DuBoise of Carolina Coops, a poultry coop manufacturer in North Carolina, to talk about boxing legend Mike Tyson's coop for pigeons — and he opened the segment by asking DuBoise, "Mike Tyson knows pigeons don't lay eggs, right?"

After an awkward second, DuBoise said, "Uh, well actually, they — they do, but just not the chicken eggs that we want."

"Ah!" said Cain, smiling as he recovered.

Pigeons, like all birds, do in fact lay hard-shelled eggs. They're even edible, although they're not very commonly sold and fetch a hefty price due to the difficulties in producing them at scale.

This isn't the first Fox News egg-related controversy. The network infamously hosted Trump administration Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Jenkins last year in the middle of a critical egg shortage, where she proclaimed people should just raise chickens in their backyards if they want cheap eggs.

Journalist Brian Beutler argued Friday that the Trump administration faces a potential scandal comparable to or worse than the Epstein controversy.

“This ought to be an existential emergency for the American right-wing elite, MAGA, Inc., and even elements of the international far right,” Beutler wrote on his Substack.

It stems from the Tate brothers' extradition case, where both Andrew and Tristan face charges including child pornography and human trafficking.

Beutler contends the scandal could prove more damaging because the Trump family and administration connections to the Tates are "much clearer and more recent."

Andrew Tate previously boasted about accessing Donald Trump Jr. in 2017 and joining Barron Trump on a 2024 video call.

The brothers were arrested in Romania in 2022 on rape and trafficking charges, though the case stalled after the Trump administration intervened.

“People well ensconced in Trump world, including members of his administration and even his family were participants in, or at least aware of, what went down in the Tates’ online and in-person network, which they called the War Room,” Beutler argued.

“It’s like a second Epstein scandal, except with the veneer of worldly sophistication and intellectual ferment swapped out for the aesthetics and physicality of a snuff film."

Watch the video below.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is being pressured to backtrack after an airstrike gone wrong, according to The Atlantic.

The Pentagon is moving towards restoring as many as half of the roles that Hegseth cut during a "pugnacious" purge at the Department of Defense, according to reporting by The Atlantic. Hegseth's downsizing included the firing or reassignment of staff dedicated to avoiding civilian casualties in war, the reporting noted.

"The potential reversal, which hasn't previously been reported, now awaits Hegseth's signature," according to The Atlantic. The Pentagon is considering bringing back staff as it deals with the fallout of an airstrike that killed almost 170 people, most of them children, at a school in southern Iran, The Atlantic reported.

The Atlantic also noted that Hegseth said early in the conflict that the U.S. would fight with "no stupid rules of engagement" and "no politically correct wars."

An anonymous Pentagon official confirmed to The Atlantic that the DoD is "currently undergoing a strategic reassessment to inform its future reorganization."

A Pentagon inspector general report this spring determined that the DoD's cuts to civilian-harm protections may have violated laws designed to protect noncombatants, The Atlantic reported. Leaders of the Pentagon's combatant commands also support the restoration of personnel who can safeguard against civilian casualties, a U.S. official told The Atlantic.

"Over the last year, we have seen a total disconnect between the willingness to wage wars all over the world, at an unprecedented pace and scale, while at the same time all but abandoning their leading role in setting up the systems and approaches needed to better protect civilians," Emily Tripp, the head of Airwars, an independent UK-based watchdog, told The Atlantic.

Republican Colorado gubernatorial candidate Victor Marx appears to be trying to solicit unlimited campaign contributions through a legal loophole, 9News reported on Friday.

"Marx is telling donors that they can give without legal restrictions by purchasing campaign merchandise through a newly-created online store, which features Victor For Governor swag packages selling for as much as $1,299. The most expensive package includes an 'exclusive private group Zoom with your next Governor, Victor Marx,'" said the report. Marx put up this online store after taking down his previous one, which included a disclaimer that all purchases were campaign contributions.

"Under Colorado campaign finance law, campaigns must report as a donation any excess amount received for merchandise beyond the campaign's cost for the item," the report noted. However, Marx will not disclose where this money is going and won't clarify whether it is being used for campaign finance anymore.

During the primary, the report noted, "Marx's campaign violated campaign finance laws in the primary by accepting more than 100 contributions in excess of the state's $1,450 limit," per the Secretary of State's office, and he "faces potential fines and penalties at a hearing in September" — but he denies he has done anything wrong and calls the violations a "nothing burger."

"What other people didn't understand, if they made a $1,450 donation, the way it was set up, when they ordered merch, that counted against them," said Marx. He said under the newly created store, "If they order merchandise, there's no limit on that. They can order as much as they want. That will really help us."

But experts have said this workaround isn't real, with GOP-turned-independent campaign finance attorney Mario Nicolais slamming Marx's unlimited merch store as "patently illegal."

Marx, a controversial candidate known for his claims that he was forced to kill a man when he was a child, "has long rejected claims by other Republicans that he is grifting off the race for governor in order to enrich himself" the report noted. His two primary opponents, state Rep. Scott Bottoms and state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, have both refused to endorse him.

CNN anchor Erin Burnett said she was "stunned" Friday after the Trump Justice Department withdrew criminal charges against an Olympic canoeist accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

The DOJ made its announcement that it would drop charges against David 'Davey' Hearn just as Burnett was speaking with former Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA) and political consultant Karen Finney.

"U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro's office admitted in a new filing, this is really important that they learned after filing the charges against Hearn that 'damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, and the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration," Burnett said.

"Karen, Wow. Wow," Burnett said. "They're, they're actually saying it. They're dropping it; there's all this stuff that this guy went out there and slashed it and cut it and that was all a load of b.s. and they're actually not just admitting it by pulling the case, but they're saying it was shoddy construction."

Finney called out the Trump administration for the "lack of seriousness," referring to the ordeal as "staggering" and "a real embarrassment."

Dent suggested that there should be repercussions.

"In this country we have a tradition of investigating incidents like this prior to making charging decisions," Dent said. "And in this case, it's clear that charging decisions were made prior to any kind of a thorough investigation. And now they've admitted it. I mean, it's amazing. You would think that somebody would be fired over this. Maybe the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., they could actually put her name out there and announce charges against this individual, only to announce several weeks later that there's no there there."

Dent called out the Trump DOJ, citing his concerns.

"I'm astounded that this is how law enforcement and our Justice Department is operating," he said. "And it's not just in this case; we've seen it in many other cases where they've engaged in malicious prosecutions of people for what appear to be politically motivated purposes."

A video of President Donald Trump and his cabinet members making statements that bucked recent polling numbers left a CNN anchor shocked.

CNN anchor Erin Burnett aired footage of Trump's cabinet members showering him with praise, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. touting the president's transparency and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent saying the economy under Trump is "the envy of the world" and a feat the founding fathers "could not have imagined."

She contrasted that with recent poll numbers that show Americans don't quite view Trump the same way, including a 34 percent approval rating. It marks Trump's "lowest approval rating among the American people so far," Burnett noted.

"At this point in a term, this is as low as it gets," she said. She also stressed that 73 percent of Americans said that Trump's priorities are wrong.

"Three-quarters of the American people say that the president of the United States is not paying attention to the country's most important problems," Burnett said. "That is a stunning number, three-quarters of Americans."

She also played a video of Trump saying, "America is safer and stronger and far more successful than it was two years ago, and I don't think it's ever been anything like this. We're going to leave this country in very, very good shape, better shape than it's ever been. This is the golden age of America."

The polling showed "stunning" and "unprecedented numbers," but based on the clips, "Trump's not hearing it. It's an incredible cognitive dissonance," Burnett said.

President Donald Trump's Justice Department was forced to withdraw its vandalism case against an Olympic canoeist it accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

In a motion to withdraw the case, flagged by Meidas Touch's Scott MacFarlane, prosecutors threw the Department of the Interior under the bus and claimed they now have evidence the damage to the beloved Washington, D.C. landmark was done by contractors working on Trump's renovation project, and that signs of the damage were seen over a week before David "Davey" Hearn was ever seen in the vicinity.

The end of the case, which followed a series of prosecutorial blunders and national ridicule of Trump for his failure to properly renovate the pool, drew immediate reaction from commenters on social media — with many calling it a monumental failure for Trump's hand-picked D.C. U.S. Attorney, Jeanine Pirro.

"Oh you don’t sayyyyyyyy," wrote political commentator Molly Jong-Fast.

"Holy wow," wrote former Pentagon special counsel and New York University law professor Ryan Goodman. "We've been tracking the DOJ withdrawals of indictments, dismissals by judges, rejections of subpoenas, no bills by grand juries and more ... Add this one to the list."

"How absolutely embarrassing for US Attorney Jeanine Pirro and this Administration," wrote national security attorney Mark S. Zaid. "I trust at least a public apology is forthcoming to all of those adversely affected by these frivolous prosecutions."

"The judge would have forced the prosecution to provide the grand jury instructions/transcripts to the defense," wrote Alex Cole of Newsitics. "Pirro knows she would have been caught red-handed."

"My god I never thought I'd see the day when Jeannine Pirro would (expletive) up her 112th prosecution but here we are," wrote Georgia trial lawyer Andrew Fleischman.

"I hope he sues the ever loving (expletive) out of every single one of these a--holes," wrote podcaster Joanne "JoJoFromJerz" Carducci.

The White House posted a TikTok video Thursday featuring ICE agents detaining immigrants set to Bad Bunny's "LA MuDANZA," a song off his album "Debí Tirar Más Fotos" (2026).

The video altered the song's original lyrics to praise President Donald Trump, reported TMZ.

Instead of the original, "Un aplauso a Mami y Papi porque en verdad rompieron," or "a round of applause for mom and dad, because they really crushed it," the White House wrote, "a round of applause for Donald J. Trump because he really crushed it." The TikTok was captioned, "We're making America great again."

The post drew nearly 3,000 TikTok comments, predominantly expressing outrage and condemnation.

Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican artist born Benito Antonio Martínez-Ocasio, has been a vocal critic of the Trump administration and its policies.

He performed at the Super Bowl halftime show in February, delivering a message of solidarity to Latino and immigrant communities.

Bad Bunny has not yet publicly responded to the White House's use of his music, according to TMZ.

Watch the video below.

A former Republican strategist on Friday argued that a major development in President Donald Trump's Iran war has gone under the radar and will change the outcome of elections in November.

In an interview on his podcast, The Warning, Steve Schmidt discussed the disastrous fallout over the war in a conversation with Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. The two talked about how Americans will rebuke Trump and his administration in the midterms this fall and how the latest incident has changed the shape of the conflict.

"There is a momentous event that occurred this week that I think is underreported and commented on, which is that a Ukrainian drone struck an Iranian ship in the Caspian Sea, combining these two theaters of war," Schmidt said. "What should the American people know about this moment in time and the danger we're facing?"

"The American people should know that Donald Trump and his foreign policy are absolute failures," Beshear said. "He got us into a war of choice that has only made the country that we went to war with more powerful. Iran is more powerful today based on their control of the Strait of Hormuz than they were before this war started."

Beshear criticized Trump for starting a war without a realistic goal that could be achieved. And in the process, putting Americans at risk as the national deficit and debt rise.

"This is not just bungling international. It is really damaging at home," Beshear added. "And he doesn't have a way out of it. And part of it is look at who he sent to negotiate. We have amazing people in the Foreign Service that spend decades understanding every nuance of every word that an Iranian negotiator would say at the table to put us in the best position to get a peace deal that prevents a nuclear weapon. But we don't send them."

He called Trump out for sending developer and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff with his son-in-law Jared Kushner, along with JD Vance, "a vice president who is way out of his league just being vice president, much less trying to negotiate and failing to negotiate any lasting peace."

"It is bananas that foreign policy would be conducted this way and that the Senate and the House haven't stopped it and are allowing a president to just go to war and make decisions on his gut," Beshear added. "When we know our munitions are low, when we know our sailors have been on some of the longest deployments ever. It is the worst that you could ever potentially run a foreign conflict."

A legal analyst slammed the Trump administration's flopped case that sought to pin Reflecting Pool damage on an alleged vandal.

On Friday, the Trump Department of Justice withdrew criminal charges against Olympic canoeist David Hearn after accusing him of ripping up the Reflecting Pool liner with his bare hands. During an appearance on CNN, former prosecutor Elie Honig looked back at the case and the press conference by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, where she announced Hearn's indictment.

"I think you could see the problems with this case right away," Honig said. "I did not expect it to unravel so quickly. It's a real embarrassment, first of all, for the United States Justice Department."

The Reflecting Pool was plagued with algae after costly taxpayer-funded renovations finished in June, and then the lining along the bottom of the pool started to float up. Hearn was arrested next to the pool, which was captured in a social media video, as Trump blamed vandals for the poor condition. Hearn maintained that he just stopped to reach in and touch the floating liner.

"Let's remember, first, they arrest David Hearn, they charge him initially by complaint with a misdemeanor," Honig said. "Then they upgrade it to a felony. They get a grand jury to indict him for that felony."

Honig then reflected on Pirro's press conference, "where she's pounding the podium and talking about what a serious crime this is and how justice will be done. And now it turns out they dismissed the case voluntarily," he said.

"It's a true embarrassment for Jeanine Pirro," Honig said. "It's a true embarrassment for DOJ, and they brought it on themselves."

Three Houston mothers are suing to stop displaying the Ten Commandments in Texas public school classrooms, arguing that it violates the state’s religious freedom law and a voter-approved parental rights amendment.

Their lawsuit is the latest challenge to Senate Bill 10 — this time under Texas law. Other attempts to prohibit the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools under federal law — primarily the First Amendment’s guarantee of separation of church and state — have been unsuccessful so far.

The mothers’ suit, filed in Harris County, demands that the displays be taken down and that the court act before mid-August, when the school year begins.

Emily Roth, one of the plaintiffs, said in a Friday morning press release that the Ten Commandments poster purposefully ignores religious differences in the classroom and will make students feel like they do not belong.

“It teaches students, and their teachers, that exclusion is acceptable, maybe even preferred. That is not a lesson I want my children learning from the state of Texas,” she said.

The parents are suing under the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which the Legislature passed in 1999 and declares that “a government agency may not substantially burden a person’s free exercise of religion.”

They are also suing under the recently approved Texas Proposition 15 — also known as the “Parental Rights Amendment” — which ensures parents have the right “to exercise care, custody, and control of the parent’s child, including the right to make decisions concerning the child’s upbringing.”

Last year’s Senate Bill 10 requires Texas classrooms to display donated posters of the King James Version of the Ten Commandments. The posters must be visible in the classroom and cannot be smaller than 16 by 20 inches.

However, various faiths — such as Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant traditions — number and word the commandments differently, the press release noted.

Sixteen families sued 11 school districts to block the new law in July 2025. They argued that it violates the separation of church and state and pressures students to embrace religious principles and values they may not align with.

In August 2025, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery blocked the law in the targeted districts.

A 5th Circuit Court ruling this spring then permitted the enforcement of Senate Bill 10, stating that the Texas law did not violate the Constitution. The court also cleared the way for a similar law in Louisiana.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has long argued that the Ten Commandments are an important part of the heritage and history of the United States. Lawyers with his office have argued that the posters — because they are displayed rather than taught — do not qualify as coercive, as students are allowed to ignore them.

This lawsuit comes less than two months after the Texas Board of Education approved a new Bible-infused curriculum for public schools.

The three mothers suing in Houston are Roth, Audrey Rosa Nath and Sanjam Kaur Sohal.

Roth is raising her children without religion; Nath is raising her children across a variety of religious traditions found in her family, including Jainism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Quakerism; Sohal is Sikh, according to the press release.

Megan Hassan, lead counsel for the plaintiffs, said that despite the women’s different religious beliefs, they all want the same thing: “for their children to attend school without being compelled to display a message that conflicts with their faith.”

“They did not want a legal battle with the state of Texas,” she said. “They wanted a poster removed from a classroom wall. That should never have required a lawsuit.”

This story is published through a collaboration between The Texas Tribune and Religion News Service.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

A legal expert warned that a motion filed by the Trump administration in the Supreme Court could become an "October ambush."

Former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman wrote in a Friday piece that he sees the "elements of a potential perfect storm" that could lead to President Donald Trump blocking mail-in voting before the November midterms.

Litman's concerns stem from a Trump Executive Order signed in late March that would create federal voter rolls by directing the Department of Homeland Security to compile state-by-state lists of citizens deemed eligible to vote. It would also direct the U.S. Postal Service to refuse to send a mail-in ballot to any voter who doesn't appear on the list, Litman wrote.

The executive order was blocked by a federal judge's injunction in June, which was upheld by an appellate court in July. However, on Monday, the Trump administration filed an emergency motion asking the Supreme Court to step in and lift the lower court's order.

"It would be an October ambush, if not quite an October surprise," Litman wrote. "Many commentators have explained why such a maneuver — which Trump tries to justify on the tired canard of widespread voting by non-citizens — would be revolutionary and cataclysmic."

Litman noted, "There never has been a federal citizenship roster, much less one assembled and policed by the executive branch." If the Supreme Court lifts the lower court's injunction blocking Trump's order, "all indications are that the upshot would be the disenfranchisement of millions of eligible voters, and of course, disproportionately Democratic."

Because the Trump administration filed an emergency motion, it's only asking the Supreme Court for "a provisional decision" lifting the injunction, not for a final ruling, Litman added.

Trump's longtime die-hard supporters in the right-wing ecosphere are starting to abandon him, MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace revealed with a humiliating supercut on Friday evening.

The reasons for the mutiny are diverse, ranging from frustration over the Iran war to the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein trafficking case files — and it comes amid a general traffic collapse for right-wing media.

"I do want to show you some of the contortions that Trump has forced some of his most rabid followers to make, in their own words," said Wallace to her panel, playing the cut.

"We've got to support Trump or civilization will collapse. Those are quotes. And it's true," said conspiracy theorist webcaster Alex Jones. More recently, he said of Trump, "I'm calling for it right now. 25th Amendment, impeachment, whatever needs to happen to get this front and center to get control of our country."

"I've been very open to the fact that I will be supporting Trump," said former Navy SEAL and podcaster Shawn Ryan. Then, in a more recent clip, he said, "I'm completely embarrassed that I supported Trump in the past because of, you know, the fact that he completely flipped on his entire base."

"You guys ever meet Trump? You talk to him? No, you meet him and he's actually a solid guy," said MMA fighter Sean Strickland. In a more contemporary interview, he said of Trump, "When you're at a Trump rally, you're like, oh, I could definitely see how Hitler happened. Like, I'm not even — I'm not joking, dude."

Wallace turned to her guest, political analyst Rick Stengel, who had a lot to say on the matter.

"Some of it is the proverbial rats deserting the sinking ship, but they're deserting the ship for different reasons," said Stengel. "I mean, all of the folks we just saw, feel betrayed by Trump in one way or another. They realized that he has no ideology at all except get attention and get money."

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Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) publicly criticized President Donald Trump on Friday for accepting guidance from an unnamed "incompetent personal advisor" regarding what he called a "bogus settlement."

The North Carolina senator wrote on X, "The President made it clear today that the so-called Anti Weaponization Fund is still alive, which is exactly why we are attempting to formally end it."

Tillis, alongside Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), is demanding Trump end his Anti-Weaponization Fund or face a blocked confirmation vote for acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

The dispute centers on Trump's support for Jan. 6 rioters, whom he characterizes as "great American patriots" while claiming they were "hunted down like dogs," earlier today on Truth Social.

Tillis countered that those who attacked police officers should remain imprisoned rather than receive federal compensation.

The two outgoing Republicans met with Blanche on Thursday to discuss the fund.

Trump said he'd consider withdrawing Blanche's nomination. Tillis attributed the confirmation delays to poor advice from a Trump insider whose identity he did not disclose.

"I will continue working in good faith to put an end this legal and political albatross and prevent any potential misallocation of taxpayer dollars," Tillis concluded.

Watch the video below.

A Republican lawmaker got frustrated with a CNN anchor who fact-checked him during a live interview on Friday.

CNN's Pamela Brown was asking Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R-WA) about whether President Donald Trump should be focusing on the SAVE America Act when the GOP leader made a false claim — and Brown corrected him.

"It's extremely important that we restore trust in America's elections," Baumgartner said. "It shouldn't be that difficult to make the same requirement to get on an airplane as the requirement to vote. You know, we've seen non-citizens voting in places like New Jersey, and we need to restore that trust to make sure the American people have confidence. So we voted for the SAVE America Act, I think at least four times in the House."

Brown clarified after Baumgartner's comments.

"You don't have to show you're a U.S. citizen to get on an airplane," she said.

Baumgartner tried to argue again, but Brown interjected and shut it down.

"You have to show ID that's different from U.S. citizen," she added.

Far-right activist Laura Loomer erupted at Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott with a string of sexist profanities Thursday after the network canceled a podcast appearance at the last minute.

Loomer had been invited by an unnamed Fox host to discuss her recent reporting trip to Ukraine, where she made headlines this week by reversing her longtime support for Russia.

The recording was set for 4 p.m. — then Fox pulled the plug with 20 minutes to go.

"I was just supposed to record a podcast episode with a Fox News host who invited me on their podcast to discuss my reporting in Ukraine," Loomer wrote on X. "I was supposed to record at 4 pm EST, but then they canceled on me 20 minutes before our interview because Fox News management said they can't have me on."

"What a miserable b—!" Loomer wrote.

Loomer claimed the snub is part of a decade-long pattern, alleging Scott placed her on a blacklist in 2017.

"I've been on this blacklist since 2017," she claimed. "When Pete Hegseth and Judge Jeanine worked for Fox News and tried to have me on, Suzanne Scott (a liberal) told them they couldn't have me on and would be reprimanded if they interacted with me on X," referring to former Fox host Jeanine Pirro.

"I'm told she allegedly directed the entire network to not cover my trip to Ukraine," she added.

CNN reported in September 2024 that Fox mentioned Loomer just once the week she flew with President Donald Trump to his presidential debate.

Loomer has previously called Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) a "lunatic hooker" and a "harlot" during a social media feud, and has lobbed profane insults at other women in public life.

Associated Press reported this week that Loomer traveled to Kyiv and interviewed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, reversing years of pro-Russia rhetoric. Fox News, she said, refused to cover any of it.

"Censorship is alive and well at Fox News," Loomer wrote.

In an admission of error, the Trump Justice Department withdrew criminal charges against an Olympic canoeist accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Justice Department prosecutors acknowledged in a court filing that contrary to the assertions they made that David 'Davey' Hearn had damaged the iconic landmark, "damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor," Meidas Touch's Scott MacFarlane reported.

The DOJ further admitted they have new information "showing that the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism as initially represented by [the Department of the Interior]."

It's an abrupt end to a trial that was plagued with prosecutorial missteps throughout.

Trump's renovation of the Reflecting Pool was announced to great fanfare, with the president complaining that under previous presidents it was full of trash. However, after the pool was painted and sealed, it was taken over by a massive algal bloom. This prompted maintenance workers to dump vast amounts of hydrogen peroxide, which resulted in the lining starting to peel and break.

Trump claimed this damage was the result of a "gash" in the monument inflicted by political protesters, but no evidence of such a gash was found when the pool was drained for remedial maintenance.

A GOP governor is drawing a hard line against a key demand made by President Donald Trump ahead of midterms, per a report.

According to reporting by NBC News, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott said during a panel on Friday that he will defend mail-in ballots despite Trump's efforts to limit them. Scott defended states' rights and rejected the idea of letting the federal government overhaul mail-in voting when asked about Trump's demand for Republicans to "nationalize" elections.

"I would hope that all, if not the majority, of Democrats would agree that this is ours, not the federal government's," Scott said. "We were here before the federal government was, the states were, and so we formed the government. Now they're getting bloated, and we need to protect our rights."

NBC News noted Trump's years-long fight against mail-in voting, which he falsely claims is rife with fraud and abuse. Trump also falsely stated that his stalled SAVE America Act would ban it, and a federal judge struck down one of his executive orders aimed at limiting mail-in ballots and creating federal voter rolls, a ruling Trump has asked the Supreme Court to lift before the midterms.

Scott argued that the states' rights laid out in the 10th Amendment protect their mail-in voting system, per NBC News. The amendment is "clear on the role of the states in terms of elections," Scott said. "So I think that we should follow that, and we're closer to the people."

States are "closer to our people," Scott continued. "We know what's right and what's wrong, and we can control the elections."

He added that participation in mail-in voting has increased among GOP voters in his state and described it as popular with Vermont Republicans, which he said has led to a boost in GOP representation in the state Legislature, NBC News reported.

"In Vermont, I would have to say, mail-in ballots are popular. Who are they popular with? Republicans," Scott said.

The journalist and lawyer suing Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche spotted "the biggest red flag" after unredacted Epstein records were handed over.

In an episode of her podcast, Katie Phang discussed her case against Blanche that demands the release of the Epstein files with appropriate redactions. It marked the first time she's spoken about the case since the DOJ revealed that it handed over unredacted records from the Epstein files.

Judge Emmet Sullivan is reviewing the unredacted records privately and will decide what's worth releasing. However, in a court filing, the DOJ justified its redactions and mentioned an accidental redaction of Jeffrey Epstein's email address.

"Todd Blanche admitted in his filing yesterday that Jeffrey Epstein's email address was redacted. He calls it an inadvertent redaction, but it's been redacted and has since been lifted," Phang explained. "Now, you may not think that's a big deal, but I think it's a very, very, very big deal. And in fact, that is the biggest red flag that you could find from what has happened here."

The main argument in Phang's lawsuit is that the DOJ made improper redactions under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and she's demanding they either release the files or explain their redactions. The inadvertent redaction of Epstein's email address "shows that the way that the redactions were done here was wrong," Phang said.

"This wasn't some one-off mistake," Phang said. "We know for a fact that the Department of Justice released over and over again, hundreds and hundreds of times, the personal identifying information of several victims."

Phang explained that even though the DOJ "wants to say, 'Oops, sorry, we missed it,'" the release of victims' names but not Epstein's email address proves the "process was flawed. We know that it didn't work, and now we know that it also worked to protect the identity of Jeffrey Epstein, the main perpetrator of these crimes."

President Donald Trump just spilled the beans on why he won't cave to the demand of GOP senators holding up Todd Blanche's confirmation, MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace said on Friday.

"Donald Trump is saying the quiet part out loud today when it comes to exactly why Todd Blanche still has not put an official end to the almost $1.8 million slush fund that could potentially award payouts to January 6th insurrectionists," wrote Wallace — the major holdup of Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC), and likely a number of other Republicans in the background.

It would only take "the stroke of a pen" for Blanche to just nullify the slush fund formally and get confirmed, said Wallace. "But if there were any lingering open questions as to why he hasn't done that, and where the resistance to doing that lies, Trump solved that mystery for us today."

Specifically, she noted, Trump put out a rambling manifesto on his Truth Social platform that revealed he does, in fact, still want the slush fund active and even wants it to apply to the Jan. 6 rioters.

"John Cornyn never had a problem with the so called 'Fund,' which will not benefit me, but rather the great American Patriots who were hunted down like dogs and whose lives were unfairly and illegally destroyed by the Crooked Joe Biden Administration, until after I decided to Endorse and Support his Republican Primary opponent in Texas, who easily won the Nomination for the United States Senate," Trump wrote. "Perhaps there has never been a group of people treated so badly in our Nation’s history. They are suffering still, many ruined, and I felt that they should be given compensation for what has been done to them."

To clarify, Wallace said, Trump is talking about people who were "defecating inside the United States Capitol, beating cops to within inches and seconds of their lives, tasing cops, beating cops with flagpoles, ransacking the United States Capitol, obstructing an official proceeding, and threatening the life of Donald Trump's own vice president, Mike Pence."

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President Donald Trump blamed Minnesota for cyberattacks on more than 30 water facilities during a Friday Cabinet meeting at Camp David, despite law enforcement assessments suggesting Iranian involvement.

"I think I blame it on Minnesota because they're grossly incompetent," Trump said, and added, "I would blame it on Minnesota and the governor, the corrupt governor of Minnesota."

Critics viewed Trump's remarks as politically motivated retaliation against a state that rejected him and a governor who called him "weird."

Journalist Aaron Rupar said, "Just incredible to watch the US president take Iran's side when my state's water systems are under cyberattack."

Political strategist Sawyer Hackett noted, "His own FBI assessed it was Iran." Adding, "They also said they attacked multiple states."

Other observers expressed concern that Trump is treating Democratic-leaning states as greater threats than foreign adversaries, with one commentator warning, "Every state that didn't vote for him is now in danger."

Watch the video below.