For the first time in 53 years — and for the first time in many of our lifetimes — the New York Knickerbockers are world champions.

They achieved the ultimate goal in sports and now stand alone atop basketball's Mount Olympus.

This gritty, ridiculously talented, never-say-die bunch won 13 straight playoff games, tying an NBA record before finally stumbling at home against San Antonio in a game remembered almost as much for the chaos outside Madison Square Garden as for what happened on the court. Depending on who you ask, the culprit was poor defense, bad luck — or the appearance of a certain individual whom superstitious fans have since blamed for jinxing the team.

Hexes aside, no sooner had the Knicks hoisted the Larry O'Brien Trophy than speculation began swirling about a visit to the White House.

Within minutes of the buzzer, I posted:

"Congrats @NYKnicks! Please don't ruin it by visiting the White Supremacist House!”

Then I waited.

Because we all knew this moment was coming.

Because our president has to make moments like this about him.

And now it's here. And so is the reckoning. For a team. For a city. For a country.

The Knicks are facing a decision that extends far beyond basketball.

On one side sits tradition: championship teams have long been invited to the White House regardless of who occupies it. On the other sits conscience: the reality that the majority of Americans view the current administration as, to put it mildly, fundamentally at odds with the values they, as well as our founding fathers, hold dear.

Complicating matters further is the fact that the Knicks are owned by a man who has been an outspoken supporter of a president whose behavior seems to embody the opposite of the qualities we associate with champions: humility, character, grace, and dignity.

Which raises the question:

What does a championship team owe tradition when tradition collides with principle? And duty?

Because whether they accept the invitation or decline it, the decision will resonate far beyond Madison Square Garden. Especially when you consider that no NBA championship team has visited the White House during the Trump era. If nothing else, should they go, the Knicks would be breaking a decade-long streak.

For whatever reason, the NBA has been the exception. Across most of the sports world—professional and collegiate alike—teams from The Dodgers to The Panthers to The Hoosiers, and many more, have eagerly accepted invitations to this White House. Whether it's a desire to honor tradition, avoid controversy, or simply enjoy a once-in-a-lifetime experience, the result is the same: a photo opportunity that inevitably becomes political.

For those who view this administration as morally bankrupt, those images carry a different message. They signal acceptance. Endorsement. Normalization.

To them, these athletes’ willingness to break bread with this poor excuse for a president also confirms a sad truth: that these role models apparently have no issue with the message they’re sending to the kids who idolize them — “being a bully is not only okay, it can lead to the White House.”

Take the recent example of the U.S. men's hockey team. Fresh off an incredible Olympic victory, several players found themselves embroiled in controversy after laughing at remarks many viewed as misogynistic and disrespectful toward the women's team. What should have been a moment of pure celebration instantly became something else. Forever.

That's the risk.

A single visit to shake this toxic man’s hand can alter the conversation around an achievement forever. Is it worth it, New York?

Let’s face it, Donald Trump is the kind of guy to whom, if you gave him a plastic replica of the Larry O’Brien trophy, would go around telling everyone he won the NBA championship, too.

Perhaps Knicks owner James Dolan supports a man like Trump because both men have one thing in common: They are the epitome of fragile, petty, power-hungry billionaires.

After all, like Mr. Trump, Mr. Dolan’s desire for total control has been well documented; be it his countless lawsuits against anything and anyone who challenges him, or banning Knick fans from the Garden simply for shouting “Sell the team!” Going as far as to install facial recognition security cameras to keep the undesirables out. Heck, a friend of mine who’s a well-known sports writer told me he can’t write anything ‘bad’ about the Knicks because Dolan keeps a ‘hit list’ of his enemies and will subsequently ban him from all MSG events, permanently. Sound familiar?

Donald Trump is a man whose blatant racism has been on full display going back decades. Whether it was discriminating against Black tenants in the '70s, calling for the execution of the Central Park Five in the '80s — and refusing to apologize when they were acquitted, or the now infamous “Good people on both sides” vitriol. We’re now supposed to believe this man gives a damn about these players? About the city that booed him into oblivion less than two weeks ago?

Looking at it from another angle, should the Knicks have lost, which response do you think would’ve been more likely to come from this president?

“We’ll get ‘em next year, boys! You fought the good fight! Be proud!”

Or

“Just like their weak mayor, the Knicks are losers. They couldn’t handle the pressure and they choked. Pathetic. And have you seen Jalen Brunson’s wife? Is she a man?”

Men like James Dolan and Donald Trump represent the antitheses of what champions are made of. Both were gifted their companies by their fathers, both have demonstrated rancid pettiness and cruelty throughout their lives, and both refuse to lose with grace and dignity. After all, one of them is still trying to redo the 2020 election.

The Knicks' championship belongs to New York. It belongs to the fans who waited more than half a century for this moment. It belongs to the players who sacrificed, bled, and battled to bring a title back to the Garden. It definitely does not belong to either of these men who have a knack for making everything all about them.

Incidentally, you could even say the Knicks won in spite of James Dolan, as he’s had complete control of the team for 27 years, yet only has one title to show for it.

The question now is, not whether a trip to Washington enhances that legacy or distracts from it. It’s how bad will it tarnish this incredible decades-in-the-making victory?

Because once that photograph is taken, it doesn’t just become part of the story. It becomes the story.

Forever.

And the world is watching.

President Donald Trump suffered a severe humiliation this month when the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was finally ordered by a federal court to remove Trump's name from the side of the building, clarifying that Congress only allowed Kennedy's name to be on the facility.

Now, days later, tarps are still covering the spot where Trump's name was, and, according to The New York Times, it's starting to arouse suspicion. Some are even questioning whether the name was in fact fully removed at all.

Matt Floca, the operations chief for the Kennedy Center, "filed a sworn declaration with a federal court later that day saying that Mr. Trump’s name had been removed," noted the report. And at least some letters were taken off, as "a New York Times photographer captured evidence through an opening in the tarp that the letter 'A' came off," as well as a "D" in a separate photograph.

The Kennedy Center will not give a direct explanation for why the tarps aren't coming down, with one spokesperson saying, “The scaffolding and tarp will remain up as crews address maintenance needs of the marble and soffit panels. Best, Public Relations.”

Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), the Kennedy Center board member who sued over Trump-aligned officials' mishandling of the facility in the first place, told The Times, “Donald Trump is embarrassed. He lost in court, his name came down, and now he is trying to hide the result from the public.”

It's the latest episode in a long saga of Trump efforts to assert control over the Kennedy Center, which has seen a collapse of ticket sales and the withdrawal of a number of performers as the facility has grown more explicitly MAGA-aligned.

Trump also attempted to shut down the Kennedy Center for two years of "renovations" in response to the decline, which was also blocked by federal courts.

President Donald Trump is hemorrhaging support from a key business community as they express "buyer's remorse," according to a new report.

NBC News reported on Friday that support for Trump from Latino business owners has seemingly fallen off a cliff during his second term. Latino voters were one group that swung heavily in favor of Trump during the 2024 election, and some business owners interviewed by NBC said they supported Trump because of his economic agenda.

However, Trump's immigration policies and tariffs have changed their minds, according to the report. It cited recent polling data that showed support for Trump among the Latino business community had dropped from 69% to 39%. That could prove costly as the 2026 midterm elections approach.

"The very guy that we thought would fix things for me, and make my life better, these circumstances are even worse now," Javier Palomares, CEO of the U.S. Hispanic Business Council, said in an interview with NBC News.

NBC News' Valerie Castro characterized the sentiment as "buyer's remorse."

"They're really rethinking the choices they made," Palomares added, referring to the business owners the USHBC represents. "We're kind of stuck right now. That's not to say that it's too late."

A Republican town official in New Jersey with a colorful history that includes ties to the mafia and a 14-year prison sentence for murder told constituents he was now on the straight and narrow — but now he's been arrested again.

According to the New Jersey Globe, John Alite, who was appointed to serve on the Englishtown council last year, "made loans that exceeded the maximum legal rate and later threatened to commit violent acts to obtain property and cash," per charges brought by state Attorney General Jennifer Davenport. He faces charges of theft by extortion, corporate misconduct, usury, and terroristic threats — and Davenport "also accused Alite of misusing a business he owns, Straightened-Out Entertainment, as part of the scheme."

“Our office is dedicated to ensuring that all businesses conduct themselves fairly and lawfully," said Davenport in announcing the charges. "The conduct alleged in this case was anything but, and we will work to hold those who cheat and steal accountable.”

Criminal involvement would not be a first time issue for Alite.

As The Guardian noted last year, Alite "once served as a top 'earner' for John 'the Teflon Don' Gotti, and later for his son John Gotti Jr.," some of the most infamous American mafia bosses, and he was "nicknamed 'the Calculator' because of his financial acumen in helping to move 8kg of cocaine a month."

However, after being caught in Brazil, "Alite turned cooperating government witness against the younger Gotti, and pleaded guilty to racketeering charges, including two murders."

After serving his time, Alite insisted he wanted simply to put his experience in organized crime to do honest work in politics.

"People ask me why? I tell them I have more experience than all these politicians," he said when he was first appointed. “Plus I’m not a criminal any more – I’m on a mission to do things the right way.”

The recently released Broadview Six transcripts revealed a stunning pattern of behavior by President Donald Trump's Department of Justice, raising multiple red flags for a legal expert.

Andrew Weissmann, a former federal prosecutor, said during a new interview on "All Rise News" with Adam Klasfeld on Friday that the federal prosecutors who brought the Broadview Six case broke some verboten rules in the legal profession. They include trying to sway a grand jury, trying to cover up prosecutorial misdeeds, and bringing weak evidence to support their case.

One of the most flagrant abuses, according to Weissmann, was the prosecutors' own admission that they chose a specific grand jury because they "trusted them."

"Choosing the grand jury because you trust them and they trust you and you like them and they like you ... this is like blatantly saying I engaged in grand jury shopping," Weissman said. "But then the second thing is you cannot ever say whether the grand jury stage or the trial stage, 'Trust me, I'm telling you there's probable cause. I would never present something without probable cause.'It is verboten. Everybody knows that."

Weissmann said the prosecutors' misconduct was so egregious that it made him question whether it was intentional.

"This is so fundamental that you have to know that it's wrong," he said.

Republican strategist Doug Heye is alarmed by the rift between President Donald Trump and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a right-wing leader who was initially close with Trump but is now on the outs with him.

Tensions came to a head on Friday as Meloni posted a public video raging about Trump's false claim that she had "begged" to get a photo with him at the G7 summit.

"Doug, you say that this dispute between Trump and Meloni is an embarrassment," said CNN's Boris Sanchez on Friday's edition of CNN's "OutFront."

"It's an embarrassment, and it comes at the very worst time, I think, possible that it could for the president and frankly, for the global coalition that the U.S. has put together over decades," said Heye, who has often fretted about the drama Trump creates in his party.

Notably, he said, when Meloni was first put in office, "she was viewed as sort of like an Italian MAGA candidate. So she and Trump were going to get along famously." However, he continued, Meloni is now learning what "so many other people learn about Donald Trump if they get close to him," which is that "Donald Trump doesn't give points. He only takes them away one at a time."

The consequences of the rift could be far-reaching, Heye warned.

"Whether you're talking about Europe — and by the way, things aren't terribly stable in England right now either — and what that means for Iran and thus the whole world are really important right now, I would want to keep our allies as close as possible," said Heye, but Trump appears totally unconcerned with this. "It's a huge gamble."

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President Donald Trump has talked a lot about the strength of the stock market recently, and a new analysis suggests that his recent surge in trading activity may be a motivating factor.

The New York Times published an analysis of Trump's stock trading activity on Friday that found the president's brokerage account has placed about 3,600 trades in thousands of stocks and bonds worth roughly $100 million during his second term. The activity largely stems from an appellate court ruling that threw out the $500 million judgment secured against Trump arising from a civil fraud lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. That ruling freed up more than $175 million in liquid assets for the president, and most of it has gone into the stock market, according to the analysis.

"Mr. Trump’s brokerage firms have authority over the accounts, the documents show, and are prohibited from accepting trade requests from him and his family. The firms also cannot provide the family notice of trades ahead of time, and The Times found no indication that the president had directed the firms to trade for him, or that he had used inside information to trade," according to the report, noting that the president seems to be abiding by the same rules as everyone else when it comes to trading.

But there is some evidence that Trump may be trying to boost stocks he already owns, according to the analysis. For instance, the NYT noted that Trump touted Intel's stock shortly before it was awarded a big government contract. Some of Trump's announcements about the war with Iran have raised red flags among market watchers as well.

"Regardless, even if Mr. Trump took official action to support any of those companies, federal law does not prohibit it. The president is exempt from a conflict-of-interest law that prohibits federal employees from taking actions in their official roles that benefit their own financial interests," the report added.

Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, told the NYT that Trump “only acts in the best interests of the American public,” and that “there are no conflicts of interest.”

Vice President J.D. Vance's comments about Israel have sparked an ugly, public brawl of words among two of the Florida GOP's most controversial figures.

This comes after Vance lashed out at Israel for publicly opposing President Donald Trump's memorandum of understanding with Iran to end the war that has been raging over the last three months.

“If I was in the Cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world,” Vance said, according to The Hill.

This infuriated Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), a far-right Jewish lawmaker who has repeatedly called for Israel to attack its neighbors and even commit war crimes.

“I thought JD’s comments yesterday were absolutely inappropriate and frankly disgusting,” said Fine, during an interview on Real America's Voice.

Fine's attack on Vance was soon countered by a furious retort on social media from Lake County Commissioner Anthony Sabatini, a former member of the Florida legislature known for alienating his colleagues.

"Sweaty Randy Fine is a morbidly obese & very disgusting piece of [expletive] who should be deported ASAP," said Sabatini on X.

This comes shortly after Sabatini played with a congressional run under the new, more aggressively gerrymandered maps passed by the legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis, but decided against it as state law would have required him to resign from his county office first.

A former U.S. ambassador to Russia was shocked to read some of the proposals included in President Donald Trump's recent deal with the Iranian regime, according to a new essay.

Michael McFaul, who was the ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration, wrote in a new Substack essay that Trump's 14-point memorandum of understanding, signed this week at the Palace of Versailles in France, included language that precludes the U.S. from meddling in Iran's internal affairs. McFaul argued that the clause could allow Iran to continue funding terrorist groups in the region, and continue to suppress democracy activists in the country, which were two issues the Trump administration claimed as the war's raison d'être.

"As for the goal of stopping Iran’s funding of terrorists, Trump and team have said nothing of late. The MOU ending the war does not even mention this issue. It looks like Trump is just giving up," McFaul wrote.

The sentence that committed the U.S. “to refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs," also shocked McFaul.

"I was shocked to see this sentence in the agreement. This is the language championed by dictators all over the world," he wrote. "Other American presidents have refrained from interfering in the domestic affairs of dictatorships. But to the best of my knowledge, no president signed an agreement that codifies an American commitment not to support human rights or democratic values in an autocracy, let alone in a brutal dictatorship that holds power in the Islamic Republic of Iran. That was a major concession to the Iranian theocrats for which the United States got nothing in return."

Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo admitted some bad news on Friday — his pet referendum will not make it onto the ballot.

According to The Nevada Independent, Lombardo stated on social media that his ballot question restricting participation of transgender athletes in school sports will not go to voters this year, because "legal delays and uncertainty surrounding this case have made it impossible to complete the initiative process in time for the 2026 ballot."

He is likely to push for the next legislative session to take up the issue, which is likely not to go anywhere unless Republicans can break the Democratic majorities in both chambers. If that fails, he has signaled his intent to try to get it onto the 2028 ballot instead, since the Nevada Supreme Court has ruled it is a legal ballot measure.

"Female athletes deserve a permanent solution that protects female athletics," he said.

The ballot question "would have limited transgender athletes to sports based on their assigned sex at birth and required entities overseeing school sports to categorize them as male, female or coeducational," noted the report — a policy that polls in recent years show is strongly popular with voters, but that Republicans have had mixed to unclear results translating into wins at the ballot box.

Lombardo, a Republican who has on-again, off-again tried to keep President Donald Trump at arm's length in a key swing state where the president is deeply unpopular, is facing a tough re-election battle in November, and likely wanted the transgender athletics question on the ballot as a way to encourage Republican voters to turn out.

It's a common tactic used by both parties to try to push their voters to the ballot box. One of the most infamous cases was the GOP's extensive promotion of ballot questions prohibiting same-sex marriage in 2004 to drive evangelical turnout for then-President George W. Bush's re-election. Although Bush won, some experts have argued the ballot questions weren't much of a factor in the end.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sparked mockery on Friday after he uncorked what some analysts described as an "absolutely insane" claim about what Kennedy referred to as the "most consequential crime" in American history.

On Thursday, former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard posted a video on her professional X account that claimed to expose evidence that Anthony Fauci, the former chief medical advisor to the President, had committed crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Kennedy retweeted the video and thanked Gabbard for "documenting Dr. Fauci's central role in causing the COVID-19 pandemic — among the most consequential crimes in human history."

Kennedy's claims garnered swift mockery online.

"An insane accusation from an insane man," Mehdi Hasan, founder of Zeteo News, posted on X.

"If this was true (it's not), shouldn't we hold Trump responsible?" Steven Bonnel II, a political commentator who goes by the name "Destiny" online, posted on X.

"My god. Bats--- f------ lunatics," Jeff Timmer, a senior advisor to Project Lincoln, posted on X.

Reporters received exclusive tours of the new Air Force One, a former Qatari jet reported to have "gold plating throughout" to match the design requests of President Donald Trump.

The tours offered the public their first look inside the plane.

The aircraft, designated the VC-25B Bridge, arrived Friday at Joint Base Andrews after a $400 million military overhaul that added secure communications and anti-missile defenses to the Boeing 747-8 once owned by the Qatari royal family.

The U.S. Air Force kept the interior largely intact.

"This feels more like a house than a plane," Daily Caller White House correspondent Reagan Reese wrote on X.

She counted solid wood tables, lounge couches, photos of the National Mall in the conference room, and a presidential seal on every seatbelt buckle. The press cabin is two to three times the size of the old plane's.

Center Square Washington bureau chief Sarah Roderick-Fitch saw white leather, wooden paneling, cream carpet, and silver accents. The decor was "simple, but elegant," she wrote.

GB News Chief U.S. Correspondent Ben Leo called it "INSANE."

Trump's office and meeting rooms, he said, were "better than five star hotels." He counted 24 press seats reclining fully flat and four Rolls-Royce engines.

"This plane was transformed into a flying White House at a level of luxury that nobody has ever seen before," Trump said as "God Bless the USA" played.

"Nobody tops this one," Trump said of landing at foreign airports, "and that's the way we have to have it for our country."

The New York Times reported Trump's personal plane has "gold plating throughout, including on the seatbelt buckles," and that he wanted "gold trim" on the new jet.

The Qatari interior, by French firm Alberto Pinto Cabinet, featured gold-colored walls and gold furnishings. The Air Force said the layout was kept "minimally changed."

Qatar gifted the 747-8 amid ethics objections. Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, called it a "brazen" violation of the Constitution's Emoluments Clause. Trump dismissed the criticism as "stupid."

The plane will complete commissioning flights before entering presidential service. Trump has promised it will lead a flyover of Washington on July 4.

It's a "precarious day for our country," MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace said in her opening of "Deadline: White House" — because President Donald Trump got his chosen partisan loyalist in charge of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

"Donald Trump's personal political attack dog, Bill Pulte, officially assum[es] the role of acting Director of National Intelligence today," said Wallace. "It's a job for which Pulte has zero qualifications except for his unwavering loyalty to Donald Trump."

And already there are huge red flags showing, she noted, as Pulte — whom experts already warned was likely to try to use the office to interfere in the midterm elections on Trump's behalf — is planning a top-to-bottom housecleaning to install people who will help him do it.

"Pulte showed up at his new job a day early on Thursday after asking for a list of every employee in the office so he could assess whether to fire them," said Wallace, relying on new CNN reports. Specifically, he "is eyeing to cut hundreds of jobs ... and his appearance at the headquarters "caught staff off guard, including the outgoing director, Tulsi Gabbard, who was given a brief heads up on the visit," since Trump had previously said Friday would be his first day.

So far, Wallace said, Pulte's experience "includes serving as the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, where he drummed up mortgage fraud cases against Trump's perceived enemies." Meanwhile, even Republican lawmakers were so outraged over the appointment that Trump had to nominate federal prosecutor Jay Clayton for the permanent role instead. However, Trump delayed the hearing last minute to ensure Pulte would get at least some time in charge.

Trump, after all, has proven himself "if nothing else erratic," Wallace noted. And now Pulte is free to pursue his "plans to purge the office."

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President Donald Trump seemed mildly taken aback when a pair of Air Force officers got a bigger round of applause than he did, while speaking about the unveiling of the new Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews on Friday.

"That's pretty good. That's the best hand. You got a bigger hand than I did," said Trump. "That's the end of your job. I don't like that. I'm not happy about it."

Trump then seemed to find himself again. "Nah, these are great pilots. These are great, very talented people."

The president's new plane was a gift from the government of Qatar, which has made it controversial from the start as observers believe it was intended to curry favor with the U.S. government and shape American foreign policy.

Previous reporting indicated that the interior of the plane will be far more luxurious than prior aircraft used to transport the president — and have limitations compared to previous aircraft, including an inability to fly so-called "Golden Eagle" missions carrying the remains of former presidents.

Fox News's seemingly lone liberal host, Jessica Tarlov, stunned a political analyst after she humiliated Vice President JD Vance during a recent appearance on "The Five."

David Pakman, host of the "David Pakman Show" on YouTube, described Vance's recent appearance on Fox News during a new episode as an "unfortunate stop" on his book tour because Tarlov "had the facts" to counter Vance's narratives about the Iran deal the Trump administration agreed to.

Tarlov pointed out that the administration had done a U-turn on key policy proposals, like giving Iran sanctions relief up front in exchange for future talks about its nuclear program. The memorandum of understanding also does not address Iran's enriched uranium, unlike former President Obama's Iran deal that Trump tore up, Pakman noted.

"Jessica Tarlov humiliated JD Vance," Pakman said.

"She does a very good job here of pointing to JD Vance all the ways in which this Iran deal is pathetic, and Vance really doesn't seem able to counteract any of the substance," he added.

Vance has been defending the Trump administration's deal with Iran all week, including going on "The View," which some political analysts deemed disastrous for the Vice President.

Pakman noted that Vance seemed unwilling to address many of the issues Tarlov raised substantively.

"This is going to be a major problem for Republicans, especially if the deal ends up looking like the letter," he said.

Following his 2024 win, President Donald Trump required help from aides because he couldn't remember the names of the people he promised to retaliate against.

That's the scene described in "Regime Change," a new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.

One of the targets was Chris Krebs, the former head of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — fired by Trump in November 2020 after he publicly declared that year's election "the most secure in American history."

But in a meeting with senior staff, including deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and longtime aide Boris Epshteyn, Trump outright forgot his name.

"I remember there was this lawyer who was in the administration who said the election was fair and there's no fraud. Who was he?" Trump asked, according to the book.

"Oh the DHS — I think you're talking about the DHS guy," Miller replied. "I forget his name."

Epshteyn then Googled it.

"Yeah, Chris Krebs," Trump said. "Whatever happened to him? He was a bad one. Take a look at him."

Haberman and Swan write that Miller then had a presidential memo drawn up, "unleashing the resources of the federal government on a man whose sole offense against Trump had been to attest to the security and validity of his 2020 election."

The anecdote lands as questions about Trump's memory mount. Earlier this year, during a New York Magazine interview, Trump blanked on the word "Alzheimer's" while discussing his father's decline — turning to press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who supplied it.

"Well, I don't have it," Trump said.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wasted no time swiping back at President Donald Trump on Friday after he said that she "begged' him to take a photograph together, a spat that left one GOP strategist completely flabbergasted.

Brad Todd, a veteran GOP operative, discussed Meloni's sharp rebuke of Trump during a segment on CNN's "The Arena." Meloni released a video statement in which she said Trump's comments were "completely made up." She also canceled an upcoming trip to meet Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Miami, Florida.

"I am frankly astonished," Meloni said. "I don't know why ⁠the President of the United States behaves like this towards his allies. It is not the first time, moreover."

Meloni's response earned her cheers across the globe.

Todd reacted to the back-and-forth during the CNN segment.

"I'm equally flabbergasted by this because Giorgia Meloni is Donald Trump's best ally in Western Europe," Todd said. "And furthermore, they share many of the same populist viewpoints and perspectives. And so, to the extent he's always said he wishes Europe would conform more to his view of how things should operate, she's the poster child for that. She's exactly the person for it. So it is odd to me."

"But partnership does not always come easy to President Trump. And in order to continue to have that relationship with her, it would require being an equal partner, much like he has to be an equal partner with John Thune. And that's just not his favorite paradigm," he added.

With Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche refusing to commit to a federal court in writing that the Trump "Anti-Weaponization Fund" will be canceled, he has a new problem, analyst Scott MacFarlane told MS NOW's Katy Tur on Friday: backlash from the Senate Republicans reviewing his nomination to serve as attorney general permanently.

"So the question I had earlier ... is how Republicans are going to react to this," asked Tur. "Are they still going to be content to take Todd Blanche's word for it?"

"Oh, boy, Todd Blanche has got a problem on his hands here," said MacFarlane — specifically, he said, that Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), a prominent Judiciary Committee Republican with no real loyalty to Trump, "says he's got a slush fund issue with Todd Blanche right now. He doesn't want the slush fund moving forward." With Blanche engaging in a "sleight of hand" with the courts, MacFarlane continued, Tillis is likely to be suspicious.

"Blanche and Tillis meet early next week, so they're going to be able to hash this out," noted MacFarlane. However, he continued, "Judge Leonie Brinkema ... wanted this thing in writing for a reason. I'm not sure she's going to accept this five-page argument from the Trump administration that it's unnecessary and has a separation-of-powers issue. I don't think the judge agrees."

Beyond that, MacFarlane said Blanche's repeated insistence that the slush fund is "not moving forward" is "all kinds of sus."

"You could have used different phrases. You could have used different terms," said MacFarlane. "You could have said you're halting it. You could have said, it's never going to happen. You could have said, it's over, not moving forward. It's just the type of passive voice that gives them room for error and room to maneuver, I should say. And I think the court filing does the same today."

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Pro-MAGA influencers erupted in outrage after CNN tested the bright green water in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which President Donald Trump recently renovated.

Trump ordered the landmark repainted "American flag blue" for $14.2 million — far exceeding his initial $2 million estimate. Algae turned the water green within days of the pool being refilled in early June.

CNN sampled the water and had it independently tested, finding phosphate levels far higher than recommended for a pool holding 6.5 million gallons.

"They are having a field day out here," an algae specialist told the network.

Florida's Voice chief content officer Eric Daugherty griped on X that "CNN is digging deeper into water color than they dug into hundreds of billions of fraud" — a post that racked up 2 million views.

"Pond scum gets the full investigative treatment," Benny Johnson, host of The Benny Show and a Turning Point USA contributor, fumed on X. "Massive fraud against the American taxpayer? Crickets."

Kristin Sokoloff, co-host of the Dirtyside of Leadership podcast, was blunter. "CNN [is] obsessed with Reflecting Pool paint while America burns," she posted.

Retired Lt. Col. Buzz Patterson, a RedState columnist, mocked the network as "that crack journalistic enterprise that liberals and airports live on."

"If only they cared this much about Hunter's laptop," Newsmax host Rob Schmitt snapped on X.

President Donald Trump's Department of Justice thrashed a federal judge in a new court filing for demanding that DOJ officials and two Trump cabinet secretaries officially declare that Trump's "anti-weaponization" slush fund is officially dead.

Last month, the Trump administration announced plans to create a $1.776 billion fund to pay claims from people who allege they were wrongfully prosecuted by the federal government. Several of Trump's allies, including formerly convicted members of the Proud Boys, declared that they would seek restitution from the fund, which sparked significant bipartisan pushback.

Political analysts and experts have described the fund as a "slush fund" because the Trump DOJ would have full control over who is eligible for payments, and the legal paperwork establishing the fund states that the federal government bears no responsibility if crimes are committed by people who receive payments.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told the House and Senate judiciary committees that the administration is no longer pursuing the fund, but has refused to put that in writing.

On Friday, the Trump DOJ told a judge in the Eastern District of Virginia that it won't abide by a demand to declare the fund dead. The DOJ argued in the filing that multiple Trump administration officials have said the fund is not moving forward, and those past statements should satisfy the court's demand. It also attached a copy of Blanche's testimony to Congress as evidence of its claims.

"Such declarations are unnecessary, and the compelled testimony of senior officials from the Executive Branch implicates serious separation of powers concerns," the DOJ wrote in its filing.

"Nor is there any basis for the court to compel testimony from the Associate Attorney General and two Cabinet members. The point of Article III limitations on judicial review is to prevent such overreach," it added.

Former Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) laid into President Donald Trump's administration on MS NOW as they head into final negotiations for a deal to end the Iran war, faulting them for not understanding the most basic things about the enemy they attacked and then capitulated to.

"I wonder if the military brass and the intelligence community laid it on the line to the President before he made a decision to go," said Kasich, a frequent critic of the administration who endorsed former President Joe Biden. "Were they not aware of the fact that Iran had the capability to be able to manipulate the Strait of Hormuz? Did they not understand even that 70 percent of the missile capability apparently has survived the bombing?"

Kasich added that it's "hard for me" to understand how they didn't assess these fundamental risks before going in.

"I wonder sometimes if the people who advise the president didn't want to tell him what he didn't want to hear," Kasich added, speculating that "they were more interested, perhaps, in keeping their jobs than they were leveling with the president."

The big question now, Kasich said, is how the Trump administration can negotiate a nuclear deal in just 60 days.

By contrast, he reminded the audience, it "took the Obama administration 18 months to be able to figure out where we were going to be. And it was a deal that it was okay, but it had weaknesses. But it took them 18 months to get there. How are you possibly going to do this in 60 days?"

The upshot, Kasich said, is that now "Republicans are running away" from Trump's work on Iran because "they're upset about where we are in the war. And you see senators now speaking out clearly, because there's a point at which the members of the Senate, members of the House, who are Republicans, it's about their survival" and they can't "go home and explain it" to their voters.

"I hope that in these 60 days they can figure something out," he concluded. "But if they don't, going back to bombing, I don't see that as as an option. So we're kind of in a pickle right now."

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An elected official in a small, rural town in east Georgia bashed President Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security after local residents defeated the department's attempt to turn a local warehouse into one of the nation's largest deportation centers, according to a new report.

Trump's DHS had planned to open a 10,000-person deportation facility in Social Circle, Georgia, which is about an hour drive east of Atlanta, until local leaders like city manager Eric Taylor decided to fight back. In February, Taylor shut off water to the warehouse Trump's DHS had purchased for the center. He has also reached out to Georgia Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, both Democrats, and Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), who is running against Ossoff in the November election, to help stop the Trump administration's scheme, the Guardian reported.

"I never thought I’d have to deal with anything of this magnitude,” Taylor told the outlet. “It’s amazing the focus on this small town, just minding its own business.”

Last year, Trump's DHS purchased a warehouse in Social Circle for roughly $128 million, or nearly five times the warehouse's appraised value, for its deportation agenda. At the time, Social Circle residents pushed back because the warehouse would have tripled the small town's population when it operated at full capacity, which would have put a significant strain on the local drinking water supply and emergency services.

But Trump's administration dropped that plan, even though the warehouse was one of seven in the surrounding area that were purchased for deportations.

The pushback seemed to resonate with Social Circle residents, even though three-quarters of the city's residents voted for Trump in the 2024 election, according to The Guardian.

“Hopefully they’ve learned their lesson here and communicate with us from the very beginning," Taylor said.

Democratic political strategist James Carville warned President Donald Trump that the knives would be out after this fall's midterm elections.

The veteran political operative was discussing the forthcoming book "Regime Change" by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan on his "Politics War Room" podcast, and he said the depth of their reporting showed the White House was leaking.

"Don't trust anybody," Carville cautioned the president. "They got tapes – everybody. Everybody in the administration is sh--ing all over you, and they're just getting warmed up."

The White House could become a pit of vipers in the second half of the 80-year-old president's second term, Carville said.

"The other effect that comes after November is these people will realize that their careers are, for all intents and purposes, gone," he said. "No one's going to want to hire anybody out of the Trump administration, and the way that you get right with history is start leaking and you position yourself as a person that tried to tell them. That's the only future you have. Leak like a sieve, leak like a broken faucet – leak everywhere. You're already leaking. Everybody's leaking on you. Everybody's leaking on everybody else."

"Trust no one," Carville added. "That's my message to anybody that works in this administration, and if I'll give you one piece of advice, Donald Trump, everybody is out for you, even your own people. Be scared. Be very afraid. That's what I see."

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is causing needless suffering within the military ranks by eliminating the universal flu vaccine mandate, according to a new analysis.

More than 160 soldiers at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas because of a growing influenza outbreak, which may have killed at least one person in basic training, according to a new editorial from The Washington Post's editorial board. Since the new mandate was handed down in April, at least half of Air Force cadets have skipped getting the shot, and that is part of why the virus is spreading, the editorial added.

"If it wasn’t already clear why Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to eliminate the military’s universal flu vaccine mandate was an exceptionally bad idea, it should be now," the editors wrote.

The influenza outbreak is happening at a time when the U.S. is engaged in a protracted conflict with Iran, which seems likely to start heating up after peace talks fell apart this week. Vice President JD Vance was scheduled to travel to Switzerland on Friday to sign an agreement between the U.S. and Iran that was brokered last weekend, but abruptly canceled the plans late Thursday night.

The Washington Post editors also took aim at Hegseth's excuse for revising the vaccine mandate, arguing that it makes the military less war-ready.

"When Hegseth announced the new vaccine policy, he claimed that 'overly broad' mandates 'only weaken our war-fighting capabilities' and stressed that his rollback would 'restore freedom and strength to our joint force,'" the editors wrote.

"In reality, his apparent motive was pandering to anti-vaccine elements inside President Donald Trump’s coalition," they added. "Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a former trial lawyer who has profited from lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers, continues plotting to make it harder for people to get immunizations. Never mind that Trump himself received the flu and COVID vaccines last fall."

"The secretary cannot stop seasonal diseases like the flu, but unnecessarily ruling out ways to mitigate harm only degrades military readiness," they continued.

A pro-Trump commentator triggered a White House attack after she called President Donald Trump's preliminary deal with Iran a humiliation for the United States.

Batya Ungar-Sargon, a self-described "MAGA lefty" who hosts a weekend show on NewsNation, broke with the administration over the memorandum of understanding Trump signed with Iran.

Ungar-Sargon is an Orthodox Jewish commentator and vocal Trump supporter who has repeatedly championed his presidency. But the Iran deal crossed a line she said she could not defend — particularly after Vice President JD Vance began blaming Israel for the region's instability.

"This is an utter humiliation of the United States, and everybody knows it," Ungar-Sargon told NewsNation's Elizabeth Vargas. "Everybody knows it, but especially Iran knows it. They are celebrating this."

She went further with Vance.

"JD Vance is out there criticizing Israel, making up fantasies about how it is Israel's fault," she said. "It is the complete Tucker Carlsonification of the Vice President of the United States, and it is utterly deplorable."

The White House's official rapid-response account fired back with a vicious personal attack.

"The only humiliation here is Batya desperately begging for an additional brain cell because her failing TV show is even more irrelevant than the likes of Kaitlan Collins and Fake Tapper," wrote Rapid Response 47 on X. "Only a moron of her caliber could still doubt President Trump's leadership."

The attack made no mention of the Iran deal or Vance's comments on Israel.

The reply also invoked CNN's Kaitlan Collins as a benchmark for irrelevance — notable given that Trump himself has repeatedly attacked Collins, calling her "the worst reporter" after she questioned him about the Epstein scandal.

The White House's response fits a broader pattern. Trump and his administration have repeatedly targeted women journalists with personal attacks — on their intelligence, their appearance, and their careers — rather than engaging with their reporting.

In May, Trump called one woman reporter "a dumb person" and told another she was "a stupid person" during a single South Lawn exchange. He previously called Bloomberg's Catherine Lucey "piggy" on Air Force One after she asked about the Epstein files.

"VP JD Vance just brought the US to its knees with a humiliating deal weeks before our 250th birthday," Ungar-Sargon wrote on X, "and he has the audacity to blame … Israel!"

During President Donald Trump’s second term, White House staff began “monitoring” the president’s trash after it was discovered he had been discarding potentially valuable White House property, according to a new book from two New York Times reporters, the Daily Mail reported Friday.

The book, “Regime Change,” is written by Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan and is scheduled for release next week. After getting a “sneak peek” at the book, the Daily Mail reported on one bizarre detail regarding the White House’s high-end silverware.

“The staff had to begin monitoring the trash after it was discovered [Trump] was sometimes throwing out White House sterling silver utensils,” reads an excerpt from the book, according to the Daily Mail.

According to the Minnesota-based precious-metals buying business Gold Guys, sterling silverware is 92.5% pure silver, “mixed with a small amount of copper for strength,” meaning each piece of silverware could be worth more than $30.

The forthcoming book has sparked panic within the White House amid fears that Haberman and Swan had somehow obtained audio recordings from within the White House Situation Room, arguably the most secure facility in the complex where top officials discuss highly sensitive matters.

President Donald Trump seems to be shrinking himself down, according to a conservative columnist, and his seeming capitulation could diminish him even further.

The president signed an agreement to get out of his war in Iran just days after turning 80, and fellow octogenarian George Will published a column for the Washington Post outlining how all of Trump's flaws contributed to his disastrous military debacle.

"Deferring gratification can be virtuous, but now is the time for an autopsy of Donald Trump’s presidency," Will wrote. "The nation has experienced more than a few failing presidencies, but this flailing presidency is as uniquely unsightly as it is terminal. Trump’s plummet will intensify what is causing it, his self-absorption and self-indulgence."

Will didn't necessarily oppose war with Iran, but he said the operation "became a casualty of presidential frivolousness," and described the terms of Trump's memorandum of understanding to end the conflict as a bribe to Iran and a betrayal of Israel.

"If Trump believes that Israel, which was excluded from negotiation of the MOU, and which exists to 'never again' depend on others for its security, will allow limits on its measures against Hezbollah, his credulousness is unlimited," Will wrote. "Trump, who said he would make Americans 'tired of winning,' must, by law, submit a final Iran agreement for congressional review."

"To him, however, the law is a cobweb; to his many congressional poodles, it is an invitation to evasion," he added. "Perhaps, though, they have reached the limits of their canine loyalty."

Will faulted the president for obsessing over his 2020 election loss, which he said had "produced a congressional train wreck" and undermined national security in an effort to change election laws, but he pointed to signs that Trump's grip on GOP lawmakers might be loosening.

"The neutering of Trump might continue with the Senate not confirming Todd Blanche as attorney general," he wrote.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio scrambled for a printer inside the Palace of Versailles after President Donald Trump went to the sign his Iran deal — without bringing a copy with him.

A new report sheds light on the chaotic behind-the-scenes details of how the historic agreement came together.

According to Agence France-Presse, Trump decided to sign at a candlelit dinner in Versailles "quite spontaneously" — the text hadn't even been printed, leaving Rubio to hunt down a printer somewhere inside the grand palace.

When Trump finally put pen to paper, he used a fat black marker, the crockery still on the table after a dinner of lobster and caviar.

The deal itself had been announced three days earlier — on Trump's 80th birthday, June 14 — while he was still in Washington, celebrating by watching MMA cage fights at the White House.

The signing venue had shifted multiple times. French President Emmanuel Macron had said the deal had already been signed "electronically."

It had then been expected that Vice President JD Vance would formalize it with top Iranian negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf in Switzerland. Trump then muddied the waters by saying it would be signed "tomorrow, maybe the next day" — before simply signing it himself at the Versailles dinner, reportedly impressed by the palace's "golden splendor."

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed his own copy in a parallel move, with Iranian news agencies showing him brandishing the document for the cameras.

The follow-on talks at the luxury Bürgenstock resort in Switzerland — a mountaintop complex where hotel guests had reportedly been quietly asked to leave — were postponed at the last minute, reportedly due to Israeli military action against Hezbollah in Lebanon late Thursday.

Journalists waiting on the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base to fly to the meeting with Vice President JD Vance received a terse message: the vice president wasn't leaving that evening.

Iran said Friday there was now "no urgency," but that it was "planning to hold a meeting in the coming days."

After sifting through Vice President JD Vance’s new book titled “Communion,” author Colin Dickey found a startling theme that appears to “telegraph” the impending implosion of the MAGA movement — an apparent precursor to a presidential run that Dickey warned may ultimately backfire.

“It’s hard to say how he thinks this is going to work out for him, but Communion makes clear how he sees his path ahead – even if, by releasing this during Trump’s reign, he may be playing his hand a bit too soon,” Dickey wrote in an analysis published Friday in The New Republic.

Dickey wrote that reading Vance’s new book was “one of the strangest experiences imaginable” given that “every premise of the book defies any kind of known reality.” In particular, Dickey flagged what appeared to be Vance’s “attempt to tack suddenly to the center-right” as inconsistent with the current administration’s tenure.

“Does Vance think his readers have the attention span of goldfish?” Dickey asked. “Communion seems to telegraph that MAGA will not last beyond Trump, that the raw nativism and brutality that have defined the past 18 months have an expiration date, and that Vance himself may only be buying into it because he’s good at following orders.”

For instance, regarding the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, Vance carefully avoided litigating the topic “on these pages,” he wrote in the book, and instead issued a generic statement that any controversial policies required “constant evaluation of trade-offs.”

“Certainly Communion is not a full-throated, impassioned case for the righteousness of MAGA,” Dickey wrote. “Instead the book is a chickens--- attempt to have it both ways by appealing to some rational middle that hasn’t existed in this country since at least 2014.”

Despite the Justice Department’s claim that it released every document related to Jeffrey Epstein as required by law, three million remain unpublished – including those from a lesser-known Epstein email account that may contain "references to Epstein's relationship" with President Donald Trump, CBS News reported Friday.

A significant share of files released by the Justice Department (DOJ) are communications from Epstein’s “jeevacation@gmail.com” email address. However, Epstein maintained several email accounts, such as “jeeproject@yahoo.com” – the contents of which were not released by the DOJ but have since leaked – and “littlestjeff@yahoo.com,” the latter of which could hold new details on Trump’s past ties with Epstein.

“A batch of documents raises questions about what the DOJ does have; a series of screengrab images of Epstein's inbox for an email account littlestjeff@yahoo.com from the early 2000s – notably a period of time when Epstein was in touch with Donald Trump, whom he knew through New York and Palm Beach social circles,” the CBS News analysis reads.

“The sender and recipient fields on those records are heavily redacted. Mr. Trump has repeatedly claimed he has never used email, but those communications could potentially have references to Epstein's relationship with Mr. Trump and others. This was also the period in which Epstein was found to have been recruiting underage girls for sexual massages, and would likely have been of high interest to investigators.”

Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing as it relates to his past ties with Epstein and is not facing any criminal charges. However, serious but unverified accusations against the president have emerged with the DOJ’s publication of Epstein-related files.

Regarding communications from Epstein’s littlestjeff@yahoo.com email account, the DOJ has published screengrabs of the email account’s inbox page, albeit with significant redactions and in limited quantities. However, the mere publication of the screengrabs suggests that the DOJ “apparently has access” to that email account, CBS News' report reads, raising questions as to why “only a handful of emails from that account” have been published.