The ongoing peace talks in Switzerland between American and Iranian officials got off Sunday to a rocky start, according to one Emirati political analyst who went on to describe the spectacle as nothing short of “humiliation” for Vice President JD Vance, who’s leading the U.S. delegation.

“This was humiliation. No one in modern history has made America wait and beg for negotiations. This was the moment JD Vance should have returned to Washington. The Islamic regime did this on purpose,” argued Emirati political analyst and author Amjad Taha in an analysis published on social media.

Taha flagged several key details from the meeting between the two delegations that made it, he argued, “easy for the world to draw its own conclusions” on “who looked confident and who looked desperate.” Chief among them was the U.S. delegation entering the venue “well before the Iranians,” according to Taha.

“In diplomacy, the side with leverage doesn't wait in the room,” Taha wrote. “You claim to be leading and winning, yet you arrived first. First mistake.”

Taha also flagged a telling moment from Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghci, who Taha claimed “entered last and refused to shake hands,” a claim supported by reporting from the Iranian news outlet Tasnim News Agency.

Ron Filipkowski, the editor-in-chief of the progressive media organization MeidasTouch, reacted to Taha’s analysis with a bleak assessment of the United States’ global standing.

“The US has never looked smaller or weaker on the world stage,” Filipkowski wrote in a social media post on X to his more than 1 million followers.

President Donald Trump's account of a phone call he says he had with Iranian officials, in which he reportedly threatened to wipe out their country, take over the Strait of Hormuz, and more, has set off a wave of disbelief, ridicule, and alarm across the political spectrum.

The threats were relayed by Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst, who said he spoke with Trump for more than 20 minutes and came away with what he called "new insight" into the president's posture as nuclear talks opened in Switzerland. According to Yingst, Trump described what he told the Iranians about the strait in blunt terms. "You close it and you won't have a country," Trump said he warned them. "You won't even make it back to your f------ country." Yingst added that Trump said, "We may take over the Strait, if we have to."

The response from Trump's critics was immediate and caustic. Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, who served briefly in Trump's first term before becoming a frequent antagonist, summed up his reaction in three dry words. "Normal Presidential behavior," he wrote, sharing a MeidasTouch post that reported Trump had told Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, after Pezeshkian said Iran would not give up enrichment, "He better watch his mouth ... or we will take over the rest of the country."

Journalist Aaron Rupar, who posted Yingst's full segment, catalogued the threats without restraint. "We'll take over the rest of your country ... I'll blow the s--- out of them," Rupar quoted, describing the "bonkers phone call" as one that "apparently included threats to assassinate Iran's leadership, impose draconian US tolls in the Strait of Hormuz, and occupy Iran with the US military."

Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California zeroed in on the practical and legal emptiness of the threats. "US troops would die during any ground invasion of Iran," Lieu wrote. "It would also be brazenly illegal without Congressional authorization." He warned that seizing the strait would trap American forces in a quagmire, adding that "Iran would try to kill them every day in a forever war." His conclusion was that Tehran is not impressed: "Iran knows these are empty threats by Trump."

Some questioned whether the call even happened as described. Author and Iran expert Hooman Majd, who has written extensively about the country and served as an informal interpreter for past Iranian presidents, flatly disputed the premise. "President Trump did not speak with an Iranian official and say anything of the sort directly to him," Majd wrote. He then floated a mocking theory about how Trump might be staging these confrontations: "Is it possible the WH staff has arranged for a Persian-accented staffer to man a phone for Trump to call whenever he wants to yell at an 'Iranian official'?"

Notably, the criticism was not confined to the left. David Pyne, a self-described America First analyst who posts as @AmericaFirstCon, called the president "completely unhinged" and accused him of "threatening to assassinate Iran's diplomatic representatives and invade, conquer and occupy all of Iran." Pyne, who opposes new wars, argued the bravado was hollow. "His threat to take over all of Iran is a bluff since he's reportedly afraid to invade Iran knowing that it would lead to thousands of US military servicemembers being killed in action," he wrote, adding that even committing the entire active-duty Army and reserves "likely wouldn't be enough to conquer all of Iran without a US nuclear first strike."

The threats were also amplified, approvingly, by right-wing accounts. Commentator Nick Sortor, whose post was boosted by conservative legal activist Mike Davis, framed the same language as a triumph. "HOLY CRAP! President Trump issued a DIRECT THREAT to Iranian negotiators in Switzerland," Sortor wrote, presenting "You close [the Strait] and you won't have a country" as evidence of strength rather than instability.

US troops would die during any ground invasion of Iran. It would also be brazenly illegal without Congressional authorization.

And if US troops took over the Straight, Iran would try to kill them every day in a forever war.

Iran knows these are empty threats by trump. https://t.co/x3ZDeY52Zt
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) June 21, 2026

President Donald Trump appeared to threaten Iranian peace negotiators with assassination Sunday in a “bonkers” phone call with Fox News’ Trey Yingst, the details of which Yingst revealed on air just moments later.

Last week, Trump officially agreed to a tentative peace deal with Iran, giving the two parties 60 days to finalize a more permanent agreement to end hostilities. Vice President JD Vance arrived in Switzerland Sunday to meet with an Iranian delegation of negotiators led by Speaker Mahammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghci.

However, after Iranian military officials announced on Saturday that they would, again, close the Strait of Hormuz due to violations of the tentative peace deal, Trump suggested, Yingst said, that the Iranian negotiators may not “make it back” to their home country.

“President Trump tells Fox News he spoke with Iranian officials overnight and said ‘you close it and you won’t have a country,’” Yingst said, recalling his phone call with Trump held moments earlier. “He went on to tell these officials, ‘you won’t even make it back to your f---ing country.’”

Whether Trump’s remarks suggested he may order the Iranian negotiators assassinated before their return home remains unclear, though multiple Iranian negotiators have been assassinated throughout the duration of the U.S. war against Iran, such as Ali Larijani, the former speaker of the Iranian Parliament who was killed in March in an Israeli airstrike.

JD Vance's path to the presidency may run through Tehran, and not in a way that helps him. That is the striking implication of a new analysis by Iran expert Karim Sadjadpour, who argues in The Atlantic that the vice president's political future now depends heavily on whether hardline Iranian officials decide to play along with Donald Trump's latest gamble.

Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, lays out how Trump handed Vance responsibility for an enormous and unlikely task: not merely striking a new nuclear deal, but engineering a wholesale transformation of US-Iran relations after a war that Sadjadpour says ended in humiliation for the president. The memorandum that paused the fighting, he writes, is so lopsided that it reads as if Tehran drafted it, with 13 of its 14 provisions amounting to boilerplate or favoring Iran outright.

That is the project Vance has been told to deliver, and Trump has been remarkably candid about who absorbs the blame if it fails. "If it works out, I'm going to take the credit," the president said, according to the piece. "If it doesn't work out, I'm blaming J.D."

The expert's sharpest observation is about where that leaves the vice president. Vance's prospects, Sadjadpour writes, "may rest as much on Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers as on Republican-primary voters." In other words, a man eyeing the 2028 nomination has tied his standing to the cooperation of the very military and clerical figures who built their careers on resistance to the United States.

Vance is reportedly pinning hopes on Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, a former IRGC general and current speaker of Iran's Parliament, with whom he spent more than 20 hours in Islamabad and supposedly developed a rapport. Sadjadpour is skeptical that private warmth means anything. He notes that Qalibaf's public appearances, where he mocks America, praises Hezbollah, threatens Israel, and celebrates partnership with China, are a far more reliable guide to Tehran's intentions than any backroom assurances.

The broader picture Sadjadpour paints is of an Iranian regime that thrives on isolation and treats sabotaging American presidents as a point of pride. He traces that pattern back to the 1979 revolution and the hostage crisis that helped sink Jimmy Carter's reelection. This time, he suggests, Tehran stands to claim an unusually rich prize. The Islamic Republic, he writes, may get "a two-for-one": the presidency of Donald Trump, and the presidential ambitions of JD Vance.

If Sadjadpour is right, Vance has accepted a mission whose success is largely outside his control, with a boss already rehearsing the line that will pin any failure on him. The clerics and generals in Tehran, not the voters in Iowa, may end up deciding how that story turns out.

President Donald Trump unleashed a flurry of threats, promises and ideas Sunday in a phone call with Fox News’ Trey Yingst, the details of which left one independent journalist in utter shock.

The phone call occurred Sunday morning, just one day after Iranian military officials announced they would be closing the Strait of Hormuz again, citing violations of the tentative peace deal agreed to by Washington and Tehran last week. As Trump’s coveted peace deal imploded in real time, the president issued a series of threats and statements that independent journalist Aaron Rupar described as “bonkers.”

“President Trump [told] Fox News he spoke with Iranian officials overnight and said ‘you close it and you won’t have a country,’” Yingst said on Fox News, recounting his phone call with the president that occurred just 20 minutes earlier. “He went on to tell these officials, ‘you won’t even make it back to your f---ing country.’"

Trump also responded to recent comments from Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who said that Iran would not give up its right to enrich uranium, which has a wide list of non-military applications.

“President Trump [told] Fox News [Pezeshkian] better ‘watch his mouth,’ he better ‘shape up or we’ll take over the rest of the country,’” Yingst said, recalling his call with Trump.

“He said ‘I have a 60-day option, and I can do whatever I want after that option,’ so again, President Trump leaving a variety of considerations on the table.”

According to Yingst, Trump also floated a new idea – one that would involve a U.S. takeover of the Strait of Hormuz.

“President Trump [told] Fox News that the U.S. may take over the strait in the future, if they have to, and collect tolls,” Yingst said this weekend. “The president described this as the United States being the ‘guardian angel’ of the Strait of Hormuz and the Middle East, and the president said that would involve the U.S. taking 20% of the oil that passes through the strait.”

Authoritarianism scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat is predicting that President Donald Trump's praise for China's Xi Jinping will end the same way his Iran standoff did: with the president backing down to a strongman he admires.

Her forecast came in response to an Axios clip in which Trump gushed about the Chinese leader on "The Axios Show." Asked about Xi, Trump described him in the language of physical admiration he often reserves for fellow autocrats, calling him tall, "6-foot-2," and praising his "great stature," "great confidence," and intelligence. For Ben-Ghiat, a historian of fascism and author who has spent years studying how leaders flatter and accommodate dictators, the fawning was a tell rather than a throwaway line.

"He will cave to Xi in the end just as he capitulated to Iran," Ben-Ghiat wrote, situating the comment within what she sees as a consistent pattern across Trump's foreign policy. She tied the prediction to a larger argument about whose interests the president ultimately serves, describing Iran as "an ally of China" and noting that Trump "has consistently acted to help Russia," which she also called a Chinese ally. Her conclusion was blunt: in her telling, Trump "is in office to make the strongmen leaders he admires do well."

The framing reflects the through-line of Ben-Ghiat's broader work, which holds that authoritarian-minded leaders are drawn to one another and that public displays of admiration often precede real concessions. Her reference to Iran points to the recent memorandum of understanding that ended Trump's war, a deal numerous analysts described as lopsided in Tehran's favor. By her logic, the same dynamic of tough talk giving way to accommodation is poised to repeat itself with Beijing.

Ben-Ghiat's argument lands at a moment when Trump's critics are increasingly scrutinizing the gap between his strongman rhetoric and his actual outcomes. Her point is that the admiring description of Xi's height and confidence is not idle praise but a window into how the president approaches the world's most powerful authoritarians, and that the flattery, in her view, tends to be a preview of where the policy is heading.

Former CNN anchor Jim Acosta stunned journalist John Harwood in an interview published Sunday after predicting how President Donald Trump’s presidency may end – a prediction that included a potential early departure from the White House amid growing turmoil.

“Do you think there’s a chance that Trump will resign before the end of his term?” Harwood asked Acosta in an interview published by Zeteo.

“I think it’s very possible that he walks away,” Acosta said, citing the ever-increasing list of issues plaguing the Trump administration, from rising costs to the president’s own struggles with supposed cognitive decline.

Acosta said that he believed a Trump resignation was possible, but also predicted another scenario in which the president would leave the White House early – one far more “dangerous,” he warned.

“It may be more in Trump’s nature for him to downward spiral in such a dangerous way that he does maybe go out with a boom or a bang,” Acosta said. “I don’t see him losing these midterms so badly that he just says ‘that’s it, I quit the presidency, I’m walking away’ – I think it’s something that will be bigger than that forces him, perhaps, to leave the presidency.”

As to what could force Trump out of the White House before the end of his term, Acosta pointed to the growing list of reports suggesting the Trump administration may attempt to “steal the midterms.”

“If he tries to steal these midterms… that’s the scenario that I worry about. He’s already trying to steal the midterms, but if it’s done in an overt way where our democracy is really at stake, we’re at the dark side of the moon at that point and I don’t know what happens to this country,” Acosta said.

“I am very worried that he will push this country to the brink to avoid accountability. Everything that he shows us right now – all of the moves he’s making, the way he is falling apart, declining cognitively and so on – leads me to think that this is all heading to a bad place.”

Donald Trump's habit of punishing Republicans who cross him may have just cost him the political cover he needs to sell his Iran deal, according to political analyst Sabrina Haake, who argues the president's domestic vendettas are actively undermining him abroad.

In her latest newsletter, Haake makes the case that Trump's "personal thirst for revenge at home is hurting him on Iran." Her logic is straightforward: the lawmakers Trump targeted in primaries, several of whom lost as a result, no longer owe him anything and are now free to attack his foreign policy without fear of consequences. As she puts it, they "have zero Fs left to give."

The result has been a chorus of Republican criticism aimed at the memorandum of understanding that ended Trump's war with Iran. Haake points to Sen. Bill Cassidy, who called the agreement "the worst foreign policy blunder in decades" and warned that Iran learned "threatening the Strait of Hormuz works." Sen. Thom Tillis flagged the war's $100 billion price tag, while Rep. Thomas Massie noted that figure is five times what Congress spends annually on roads and bridges. Even former Vice President Mike Pence said the deal "smacks of appeasement," and Sen. Ted Cruz blasted a reconstruction fund he described as handing "billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics."

Haake's central argument is that this is a self-inflicted wound. Trump alienated the very voices he would now need to defend the agreement, and he is reportedly planning to skip the congressional review required under the 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, a move that members of both parties have urged him not to make. Having burned those bridges, she contends, he is left without allies to make his case.

The analyst is also sharply critical of the deal's substance, which she says bears no resemblance to the "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER" Trump demanded fifteen weeks ago. Instead of regime change, disarmament, or American control of Iranian oil, Haake writes that the MOU waives sanctions immediately, lets Iran resume oil exports, and steers an estimated $300 billion reconstruction package toward the country, while securing only a temporary 60-day window of toll-free passage through the Strait of Hormuz. She frames it bluntly as the US "effectively paying Iran to stop threatening international shipping."

A former senior Pentagon official sounded the alarm on Sunday over their belief that the Trump administration was likely to bury an internal investigation into an incident that coincided with the launch of the U.S. war against Iran, an incident one Democratic lawmaker described as “one of the most horrific episodes” of the “illegal Trump war.”

Trump’s Operation Epic Fury began with “double tap” strikes on Shajareh Tayyebeh, an Iranian girls’ elementary school, which killed at least 156 people, 120 of them children. Trump initially blamed Iran for the strikes before it became clear that a U.S.-made Tomahawk missile was used in the attack.

While the U.S. military is reportedly still investigating the incident, several former Pentagon and national security officials “expressed doubt” to The Guardian for its report published on Sunday that the results of the investigation would ever be made public.

“It’s very rare that you would have a military operation and not have some incidents where there was a mistaken target and civilians are harmed or killed, but then there is a system for investigating, assessing accountability and taking responsibility,” one former senior Pentagon official told The Guardian, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

“There’s a very clear process for this, and I’m very doubtful that the [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth Pentagon will follow through.”

Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ), also speaking with The Guardian, said that she had vigorously pressed the Trump administration for answers, only to be stonewalled.

“The US strike [on the girls’ elementary school] is one of the most horrific episodes of the entire illegal Trump war in Iran,” Ansari said.

“Donald Trump is hiding the truth from the American people and Congress, and deflecting blame to Secretary Hegseth, because he does not want the public to know the true horrors of what he unleashed on the Iranian people with absolutely nothing to show for it.”

A corner of the MAGA online world has found a new enemy, and it is not a liberal news organization. It is Reason, the libertarian magazine, which set off a wave of right-wing fury by criticizing outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat.

The flashpoint was a Reason piece arguing that Gabbard, on her way out the door, "revives a Russian disinformation campaign" with her recent biolab disclosures. To a slice of Trump's base that views Gabbard's release as vindication, the framing was an act of betrayal from a publication they had assumed was on their side.

Journalist Paul Thacker led the charge, casting the dispute as a battle against willful blindness. He argued that critics once accused people of pushing "a 'Russian disinformation campaign' about US funding for foreign biolabs," and that now, with Gabbard having released internal documents, those same critics accuse her of "reviving Russian disinformation." His verdict on Reason and its defenders was unsparing: "No amount of proof can alter the thinking of those with broken brains."

Former Trump official Michael Caputo was even blunter, taking aim at Reason science writer Ronald Bailey by name. He accused the "TDS-infected Trump hater" and the magazine of "lying to defend the indefensible," insisting the US was "quietly researching deadly pathogens like bird flu in overseas research labs." Mocking the idea that the work was merely "veterinary," he compared it to the Wuhan lab, "only more dangerous," and signed off with a directive to readers: "Throw your Reason Mag in the trash."

The pile-on extended to anonymous accounts, with one calling Reason's reporting "the corrupt deep state criminal cartel disinformation" and branding the outlet "traitorous scum," while another suggested the magazine "should rebrand to 'Emotion'." The common thread was a sense that a publication nominally aligned with limited-government conservatives had sided with the establishment against one of the movement's own.

What is actually in dispute is murkier than either side allows. Gabbard, in one of her final acts as DNI, declassified material she says documents longstanding US funding for more than 120 biolabs across over 30 countries, including more than 40 in Ukraine, and she accused Biden-era officials and Anthony Fauci of lying about their existence. Her supporters treat that as proof that years of "conspiracy theory" warnings were correct.

But the records confirm a narrower set of facts than the celebration implies. As outlets across the spectrum have noted, the existence of US-funded laboratories abroad was never secret. Much of the funding flows through the decades-old Cooperative Threat Reduction program, created to secure dangerous pathogens left over from Soviet-era weapons research. Critics quoted in coverage from Fox News and elsewhere maintain the facilities were public-health and threat-reduction efforts designed to safeguard pathogens, not bioweapons programs. Reason's argument, and the reason it drew MAGA's wrath, is that conflating that established funding with a sinister coverup echoes a narrative Russia aggressively promoted to justify its invasion of Ukraine.

The fight, in other words, is less about whether the labs exist than about what their existence means, and whether Gabbard's framing illuminates a real scandal or repackages a propaganda talking point. For the activists turning on Reason, that distinction is beside the point. The magazine declined to treat Gabbard's release as the vindication they wanted, and in the current environment, that alone was enough to get it branded an enemy.

U.S. and Iranian officials met in Switzerland Sunday ahead of negotiations to solidify the tentative peace deal between Washington and Tehran and bring about an end to the U.S. war against Iran, but according to one expert, President Donald Trump and his administration are ignoring a pressing issue that risks blowing up talks before they’ve even started.

“I'd be surprised to be that optimistic,” said Richard Haas, former policy director at the State Department, during an appearance Sunday on MS NOW when asked about his thoughts on the likelihood of peace talks succeeding.

The pressing issue, Haas warned, was Israel’s ongoing bombardment and occupation of Lebanon, which since March has killed nearly 4,000 Lebanese, wounded close to 12,000 and sparked a humanitarian crisis affecting more than one million people. In the first clause of the tentative peace deal agreed to by Washington and Tehran, a provision explicitly calls for Israel to end its military operations in Lebanon.

“What happens if and when Iran demands that Israel vacate Lebanon altogether, that Israel not go back into Lebanon?” Haas said.

“That is going to be something of a red line for Israel, and the question is what does the United States do? Do we put pressure on Israel, or do we tell Iran 'no way?' So there's no way you can solve the Lebanon issue once and for all, this has been an open problem for decades and it's going to continue to be one of the many things that's going to really bedevil these negotiations going on.”

Trump has tried to pressure Israel to halt – or at least shrink – its military operations in Lebanon, but has been refuted by Israel each time.

President Donald Trump threatened to resume the U.S. war against Iran on Sunday with a fiery ultimatum to Iranian officials, warning that if his demand was not met, the United States would “hit Iran very hard.”

“Iran must immediately stop their highly paid PROXIES in Lebanon from causing trouble,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social over the weekend. “If they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder!!!”

The United States agreed to a tentative peace deal on Friday only for it to immediately fall apart after Iranian officials announced Saturday that it would be reclosing the Strait of Hormuz to commercial traffic, citing a violation of the agreement. The violation, the officials said, was Israel’s continued bombardment and occupation of Lebanon, which since March has killed nearly 4,000 Lebanese and sparked a humanitarian crisis.

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which is supported by Iran, has attacked Israeli invading forces, as well as launched attacks in Israel proper in response to Israeli hostilities. In response to that, Israel has expanded its military operations in Lebanon, with one Israeli official pledging Friday that “for every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep,” and that “all of Lebanon must burn.”

Joe Rogan thought he was making nervous small talk with the president of the United States about the possibility of a terrorist attack. Donald Trump, by Rogan's account, treated the prospect of their shared demise as no big deal.

On a recent episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience," the podcaster who endorsed Trump's campaign recounted a conversation he had with Trump while serving as master of ceremonies and fight commentator for the UFC event staged on the White House lawn, a spectacle tied to the president's 80th birthday and the nation's 250th anniversary celebration. Rogan, who had voiced security concerns about the gathering for months beforehand, said he raised those fears directly with Trump. "I said to Trump, 'I hope we don't die in a terrorist attack,'" Rogan recalled. "He goes, 'We gotta go somehow.' I go, 'What the f---, dude?'" Rogan said, cracking up at the memory.

The exchange capped a podcast conversation that also included MMA coach Trevor Wittman and UFC lightweight champion Justin Gaethje, who won his bout at the event. Both men admitted they had entertained the same dark thoughts about the unprecedented setting. Wittman said he was "honestly really nervous," sensing that "something could happen." Gaethje took a more fatalistic and characteristically fighter-brained view of the danger. "I was like, f--- it," he said. "If I get taken out in the middle of the cage, how f---ing legendary would that be?"

Rogan's unease before the event was no secret. Speaking on his show back in March, he had described the plan as inherently risky, noting it would be "very high-security and high stress and weird to have a fight at the White House in the middle of a f---ing war." He had openly hoped the conflict abroad would be resolved by the time the fights took place in June, while admitting he was not confident it would be.

The clip circulating online has racked up millions of views, with supporters sharing it as a lighthearted glimpse of an unbothered president. The line lands differently depending on the listener. To fans, "we gotta go somehow" reads as fearless. To critics, a commander in chief shrugging off the possibility of mass casualties at his own event is exactly the kind of remark that made Rogan blurt out the question a lot of people might have asked in the moment.

Donald Trump asked the public to celebrate ICE as misunderstood heroes Saturday, and veteran White House correspondent Brian Karem answered with a single word: "LIE."

The president had posted what he framed as a poll, declaring that "ICE has been abused by the Fake News Media at levels never seen before." He called the agents "Great Patriots who work hard, and do a fantastic job in a very hostile environment," and blamed the criticism on "the Dumocrats and the Fake News." Karem, a longtime reporter who has sparred with multiple administrations from inside the briefing room, was not interested in the patriotic framing.

"ICE ignores due process and hides behind masks as if they're the KKK riding through the south during the 1920s," Karem wrote, before invoking two names that have become central to the case against Trump's immigration crackdown. "Renee Good and Alex Pretti were fatally shot in Minneapolis during the Trump administration's 'Operation Metro Surge'." His conclusion was blunt: "ICE are not patriots. They're criminals."

The history behind those names is not in dispute. Renée Good, a 37-year-old US citizen and mother, was shot and killed by an ICE agent on January 7 while in her car. Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old US citizen and intensive care nurse at a Minneapolis VA hospital, was shot multiple times and killed by Customs and Border Protection officers on January 24 while filming agents with his phone. Both deaths occurred during Operation Metro Surge, the aggressive enforcement campaign that drew more than 3,000 arrests, mass protests, a Minnesota general strike, and a homicide ruling from the county medical examiner in Pretti's case.

What followed deepened the controversy Karem was pointing to. Minnesota officials sued the administration for withholding evidence in the shootings, accusing federal authorities of shielding the agents involved. Local police chiefs and the Hennepin County sheriff condemned the operation, with one calling the agents' conduct "not just only wrong, but illegal." The administration has defended the shootings as self-defense and declined to release the agents' names.

That record is what makes Trump's "Great Patriots" framing so combustible. The president is asking Americans to rally behind an agency whose officers killed two of their fellow citizens months ago, in killings still tangled in lawsuits and stalled investigations. Karem, who has spent a career being told by presidents that the press is the enemy, simply refused to let the rebranding pass unchallenged.

LIE. ICE ignores due process and hides behind masks as if they're the KKK riding through the south during the 1920s.
Renee Good and Alex Pretti were fatally shot in Minneapolis during the Trump administration's "Operation Metro Surge".
ICE are not patriots. They're criminals. https://t.co/p6mH6O2IbJ
— Brian J. Karem (@BrianKarem) June 21, 2026

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who vacated her seat after a failed bid for governor and will leave Congress early next year, recently revealed a new bill she intends on filing, the details of which left critics in disbelief.

Labeled the “TRANS MICE Act,” Mace’s new bill would prohibit federally funded research “aimed at altering an animal’s biological sex.” The bill is consistent with President Donald Trump’s past false claim that taxpayers were funding medical research to make “mice transgender.”

The claim likely stems from a misreading of medical research studies involving “transgenic mice,” which are mice whose DNA has been altered, often for disease research purposes. Nevertheless, Mace proudly touted her new bill on social media as a tool to end “ideological cruelty” toward animals – and critics were quick to correct the record.

“Apparently this is not an April Fools joke,” wrote Susan Oliver, who runs the science-based online show “Back to Science.” “This person really doesn't know that trans mice are transgenic and not transgender.”

Political strategist Mike Nellis proclaimed Mace to be “the dumbest member of Congress,” which he noted was “really saying something.” Zack Nelson, a popular tech reviewer, told his close to 1 million followers on X that he found Mace’s bill to be “depressingly funny,” and clarified that “nobody is making transgender mice.”

And Ari Drennen, a media strategist and writer, questioned why Mace would support the president given that his endorsement of her GOP primary opponent in the gubernatorial race may have helped sow the seeds of her ousting from politics.

“You lost, Nancy, you don’t have to do this s--- anymore,” Drennen wrote in a social media post on X to her nearly 100,000 followers.

In one of his most astonishingly oblivious moments, President Donald Trump may have revealed more about himself — his honest, true beliefs regarding his “talents” and place in history — than at any point in his public life. During an interview with Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman for their forthcoming book, Trump proudly offered what he called an “expert historian’s” impression of his raw fortitude. As you might guess, Trump bragged he topped a list of history’s most powerful rulers.

Now, that cringe you already feel is more than warranted. Presidents and other leaders are rarely measured by raw power alone. Nixon was an extremely powerful president in many ways, and you know how that played out. But everyone understands that this particular president sees power for power’s sake as the gold standard — the measure of the job. Prepare for that cringe to evolve into rage upon learning of the leaders he “trumps,” so to speak. “Our” president believes he tops a list that includes Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler.

Sweet Jesus.

With the possible exception, and only to a degree, of Napoleon, every other ruler on that list accrued power by killing people in the sole furtherance of “more power,” and thus killed even more people as both a means of expanding and keeping it. Looked at another way, Trump excitedly showed Swan and Haberman a list he believes puts him atop history’s greatest monsters.

Well, that fits. And it is scary AF.

Because there is nothing wrong with seeking power if it’s in the pursuit of something worthy. Martin Luther King Jr. surely sought every ounce of authority that his gentle hands could hold, but made non-violence his most powerful ally to accrue, well, power. To the extent that the United States even approaches racial equality, at least in written law, we owe it in large part to MLK Jr., who sacrificed his life for it, and that’s pretty damned powerful, especially given his influence extended far beyond this nation’s boundaries. King’s words and message are remembered today at least as much as any American president’s — the most “powerful man in the world.” Gandhi is cut from the same cloth, to use an apt metaphor, and took on an entire empire and subcontinent.

The West defeated Soviet Communism without firing a direct shot, a pretty impressive power move. And yes, part of the “fall” owed itself to an American President in Ronald Reagan, whose main tactic was to militarily spend the U.S.S.R. into oblivion — the Soviets unable to keep up. But Reagan couldn’t have succeeded without the real power of a fairly humble but stubborn and infinitely brave Polish shipyard worker named Lech Wałęsa, and an even more humble Polish Pope in John Paul II, who both stood up to communism on moral grounds, smothering a communist empire unable to keep up.

There is also power over our day-to-day lives that we all but take for granted now. Alan Turing ushered in the idea of “computation,” but Steve Jobs gave the average person the desire to even have one at home, and that was just the first act; he then changed how the world does nearly anything, bringing about the smartphone. Ideally, Steve Jobs’ “power” will infinitely impact your life more than anything Donald Trump ever does… ideally, no guarantee. Elvis Presley forever altered the role music plays in our lives.

Power comes in many forms. Whoever came up with high definition television deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, but I digress.

Given we’re sure that Trump is talking about national leaders, we can circle back to that category and ably come up with many who managed to accrue far more power with far less brutal killing. George Washington founded this nation by fighting a king who wouldn’t peaceably deal with the colonies. Abraham Lincoln almost personally kept this nation together for four years, certainly killing a lot of people in a war that he would have given up everything to avoid except for continued slavery. And FDR not only kept this nation’s head above water during the worst worldwide depression since the Dark Ages, but he also invented modern economic liberalism in America, and then went on to rally a nation to defeat Hitler. That is a pretty powerful guy.

The story gets even Trumpier. He told Swan and Haberman that he got the list at a golf benefit with Gary Player, handed to him as a paper put together by a noted historian. But when Swan and Haberman investigated the matter further, the “report” had been put together by golfer Gary Player’s caddy. But the list's scholarly authority couldn’t matter less. It’s Trump’s reaction to having his name among those names that takes one’s breath away.

We weren’t in the room and thus can’t know how the conversation went, but wouldn’t it have been wonderful to hear Trump’s response to a follow-up: “Mr. President, why would you even want to be on this list? This is essentially a list of ‘worst people in human history.’”

Pity. Because it’s tough to predict how Trump would’ve talked himself around that one, probably something along the lines of, “But see? I’m more powerful than them, and I’m one of the most loved men in…”

It should go without saying that a president should enter that office committed to doing the best he or she can for the American people — do that, and the power takes care of itself. Lincoln saved the Union. FDR brought us Social Security and led us through World War II. Lyndon B. Johnson made us a greater society by bringing in Medicare and Medicaid and signing the Civil Rights Act (and yes, got a lot of Americans killed in Vietnam, duly noted). Ronald Reagan did open up a real dialogue with the U.S.S.R. that helped lead to communism’s downfall (I don’t need a primer on all the horrid things Reagan also did). George W. Bush — for all his innumerable faults — got this nation through the first month after 9/11 with bravery, resolve, and love toward American Muslims, not a single act of vigilantism. Barack Obama made universal healthcare an expected right, perhaps saving millions of lives. Pretty powerful.

If one really wants to get cynical, look to Mitch McConnell, who engineered the process by which we have a Supreme Court that managed to give Trump a free pass with respect to criminality, steal a woman’s right to control her body, and disenfranchise Black Americans in the South. Pretty powerful.

Donald Trump effected the first violent transfer of power in American history, and perhaps therein lies a clue to his “formidability.” Like Khan, Stalin, and Hitler, Donald Trump is out to get all he can personally get in his name as American president, whether it is semi-invading Venezuela, dropping billions in bombs in Iran (killing a school full of little girls), threatening war over Greenland, and this new “thing” with Cuba — and that’s just on the international scale. At home, Trump has organized masked stormtroopers marching around the country, rounding up brown people, changed the structure of Congress, put his name and face on money, and strongly considered suspending habeas corpus to do it, avoiding courts altogether. If there is a secret sauce to Trump’s power, it is that he is constrained only by balancing what he can get away with at no personal cost.

And, to be sure, if you have the most powerful military force ever amassed on the planet and the personal fealty of nearly every Republican in government to back domestic efforts, that affords someone an enormous amount of power. But if Trump has proven anything, it is that he seeks power to improve his fortunes, and only his fortunes. In that respect, he most certainly is right at home with Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Hitler, etc.

Last, to the extent one ever needed more concrete evidence as to the danger in mixing self-glorification within a uniquely undereducated man, the fact that Trump is proud to head up this list is Exhibit “A,” and all that would ever be needed to demonstrate that he lacks the emotional IQ to even understand the position he holds. The fact that it didn’t occur to Trump, “What if fifty years from now, someone reads a list about history’s most powerful leaders, and Donald Trump is alongside Stalin, Hitler, and Genghis Khan — is that bad branding?” should scare us all. Not that we weren’t already scared.

Nor are we surprised.

Check that. Some of us are indeed surprised, surprised only in the way Trump continues to find astonishingly original ways to evidence his true weakness. Leaders who seek power as the goal in and of itself are, by definition, some of the most dangerous figures in history. Leaders who dare to dream so powerfully of all that good that can be done if one only had the power are some of history’s most revered leaders, as they selflessly work to get it done. MLK Jr., Nelson Mandela, Susan B. Anthony, Cesar Chavez, Isaac Newton, Carl Jung, St. Francis of Assisi, Shakespeare… The list of history’s most powerful people who never sought “power” itself, merely propounded ideas so powerful they still impact us today, is a list to which one should aspire.

It is doubtful that anyone, even the most hardened MAGA, is surprised by the slot into which Trump most comfortably slid himself. The only somewhat surprising — and worrying thing is his obliviousness as to what it says about him, near and long term.

Indeed, history will have a lot of powerful things to say about Donald J. Trump and, perhaps topping the list, will be that from day one, he sought evermore personal power as both goal and measure.

Pretty weak.

Jason Miciak is a Rawstory Columnist, former editor at Occupy Democrats, political consultant, author, attorney, and single parent girldad, please follow on Bluesky and he can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com

Donald Trump's insistence that vandals carved up the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool keeps colliding with one stubborn problem his critics will not let go of: if it really happened, where is the footage?

After the president announced on Truth Social that "many additional people have been arrested" over the "disgraceful Vandalism" of the pool, claiming saboteurs cut a 250-foot gash into the structure and poured corrosive chemicals into the water, a chorus of commentators responded with a simple challenge. "Release the video," wrote Brian Tyler Cohen, summing up the skepticism in three words.

The demand cut to the heart of why the story strains credulity for so many. As conservative writer John Podhoretz pointed out, the alleged crime supposedly occurred in one of the most heavily trafficked public spaces in the country. "Someone cut a 250-ft. gash in a location open 24 hours a day in the most visited national park in the United States in one of its most famous sites and nobody saw it happening or filmed it at the time?" he wrote, adding that the claim is "as credible as him saying we won the war."

Others made the same point about the conspicuous absence of evidence. "Weird how there is no video of anyone vandalizing anything," wrote the popular influencer account Spiro's Ghost, before noting that the president had also misspelled "pool" as "poll" in his post. Commentator Al Smizzle was blunter about the administration's credibility, writing, "They lie like they breathe. Video would be everywhere." In a location that busy, the argument goes, a multi-hour act of destruction involving blades and chemicals would have been captured by countless phones.

Tennis legend Martina Navratilova zeroed in on the physical implausibility of the damage itself. "Unbelievable. What could they possibly have done to a pool that is that long???" she wrote, echoing the widespread confusion over how vandals could meaningfully sabotage a shallow reflecting basin stretching more than a third of a mile.

Several critics used the moment to mock the administration's stated priorities. Writer Molly Jong-Fast responded to the vandalism claims with a sarcastic "Laser focused on affordability," needling a White House that campaigned on lowering costs for all but has spent days consumed by the fate of a decorative pool.

President Donald Trump’s bizarre and ongoing spat with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni sparked a chorus of laughter on CNN Sunday morning as panelists mocked the president’s “childish” behavior and issued him a new nickname.

The spat kicked off on Friday after Trump told a local Italian news outlet that he felt “sorry” for Meloni after she had “begged” him for a photograph together. Meloni called Trump’s story “completely made up” and has since fired back at the president for what she called his “fabrication.” Trump has doubled and tripled down on his story, however, reigniting the spat on Saturday with a social media post.

Georgia-based journalists Ernie Sugg and JaQuitta Williams attempted to get to the bottom of Trump’s quarrel with Meloni and proposed a few theories.

“It's an issue for the president because first of all, she went against him in his criticism of the Pope, so he's upset about that,” said Sugg while on CNN.

“And, all of our traditional allies since 1918 are not on board with this war, he's upset with that, so he's picking on her. Whether or not [she] said it – she says she never ‘begged’ for a photo – even for him to bring that up as a talking point is just so childish and so juvenile.”

Williams issued her own assessment of Trump by issuing him a new nickname.

“He's the king of petty, forget 'president,'” Williams said. “The other thing is too, he has a way of making things up in his mind and saying them over and over to make them be true, so probably in his mind she begged... that woman probably didn't open her mouth.”

Sugg asked aloud why, even assuming Trump’s version of events was accurate, he would bother dragging the spat into the public eye.

“Because he's the king of petty!” Williams declared, sparking an eruption of laughter from the panel.

James Carville has a survival strategy for anyone still working inside Donald Trump's White House, and it boils down to two words: start leaking.

On the latest episode of his Politics War Room podcast, the veteran Democratic strategist delivered a blunt appeal to administration staffers, urging them to protect their own reputations before the history of Trump's second term gets written. "Save Yourself! Save Yourself, now!" Carville declared, before adding his prescription: "Leak, leak, and more leaks."

Carville framed the advice as a matter of self-preservation rather than loyalty, arguing that the insiders who cooperate with reporters tend to come out looking better in the long run. "When the history is written, the leakers always do better," he said. He was characteristically crude about the position those aides already find themselves in, telling them they are "already covered in" filth and that the only way to improve their standing is to "leak more."

His comments came as he discussed "Regime Change," the forthcoming book from reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, set for release June 23. Early excerpts describe a White House riddled with leaks, infighting, and recurring crises. Carville summarized the portrait it paints in his own unsparing terms, calling the administration a collection of "stumbling, bumbling" fools and pointing to the volume of damaging disclosures already flowing out of Trump's orbit. "Look at the number of people that are leaking!" he said, claiming aides are so eager to protect themselves that they "leak everything about him."

Carville reserved particular attention for the administration's younger officials, whom he prodded to join the exodus of information. "You got to get on the train," he said, describing his unexpected interest in advising what he dismissively called Trump's "little ambitious" staffers. His closing instruction left little to interpretation: "Everything that you know, every stupid thing that he says, every grotesque, horrible, nasty habit he's got, leak it."

The strategist paired the leak campaign with a striking prediction about the president's future, asserting that Trump would be "gone by April of next year" and describing him in deeply unflattering physical terms, claiming the president "doesn't even know where he is" and "can't get out of a chair."

Whether any West Wing aides take the advice is another matter, but Carville's larger point was that the leaking has already begun and is unlikely to stop. In his telling, the smartest people left in the building are the ones quietly deciding which secrets to hand over first.

President Donald Trump has engaged in something of a martial “arms race” with First Lady Melania Trump, New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan revealed in their forthcoming book “Regime Change,” one that involves the president pillaging gold from the White House hallways in his effort to “have the better room,” The Times reported.

As has been previously reported, Trump and Mrs. Trump sleep in different rooms – Trump, according to the forthcoming book, sleeps in what’s been called the “living room,” and Mrs. Trump, in the master bedroom at the White House complex. Trump’s self-imposed challenge of having a superior living quarters, however, has led to an odd but frequent occurrence.

“To this end he was said to have removed gold pieces that his wife had selected for the hallway and brought them into his own bedroom to sleep among them, like a magpie nesting with [bottle tops],” writes The Times’ Will Pavia. “Melania, according to one biographer, prefers light colors, and lots of whites, while her husband goes for darker furnishings and, apparently, for all of the gold stuff she put in the hall.”

The frequent snatching of Mrs. Trump’s hand-picked hallway décor comes after, Pavia noted, Mrs. Trump’s offices were destroyed by her husband’s White House ballroom project, something the president himself had admitted the first lady was “not happy about."

“Those keeping score might also note that the president had demolished her offices, along with the entire East Wing of the White House, to make way for a ballroom, and that he had paved over the Rose Garden,” reads the Times’ report.

Donald Trump posted a photograph of a blonde woman to Truth Social late on Saturday night, captioned "Great daughter. My Honor!!! President DJT," and set off an internet-wide guessing game over a simple problem: the woman in the picture does not appear to be any of his daughters.

The post showed a woman with blonde hair in a black outfit, lounging on a red sofa and talking on a phone in a room decorated with Americana, including a throw bearing what looks like a state seal. It was not Ivanka. It was not Tiffany. It was not a granddaughter or a wife. Independent journalist Aaron Rupar summed up the collective confusion with three words when he shared the image: "Who is this?"

The hunt was on. Mikey Smith, US political editor for the Daily Mirror, went full detective and emerged with an answer. "I'm pretty sure the woman is Margo Catsimatidis," he wrote, placing the photo at the Camp David presidential retreat, where Trump happens to be spending the weekend, and dating it to the Clinton administration. Smith built his case from the furnishings, matching the sofa cushions to old Camp David photos and spotting a "Presidential call box" on the side table, the device he noted Trump refers to as his "Diet Coke Button." He identified Margo and John Catsimatidis as enormously wealthy New York retail magnates and longtime political donors, and added that Margo was involved in building the chapel at Camp David.

What Smith could not crack was the caption. "None of this goes any way to explaining why Trump called Catsimatidis 'great daughter' in a Truth Social post," he wrote, putting his confidence in the identification at about 85 percent.

The account Rogue POTUS Staff offered a theory that filled in that blank, suggesting the photo shows Margo Catsimatidis at Camp David during Bill Clinton's term and that the "great daughter" Trump meant is actually her daughter, Andrea Catsimatidis, the chairwoman of the Manhattan Republican Party. By that reading, the president posted a decades-old picture of the mother while praising the daughter.

The episode quickly became a referendum on the 80-year-old president's grip on his own social media account. Analyst Arieh Kovler doubted Trump was personally digging through 1990s Camp David snapshots, writing that the president "must have told some staffer to post this and nobody queried it or told him 'that's not your daughter'." Commentator Chris LaBossiere was blunter still. "He thinks this is Tiffany. Bank on it," he wrote. "America needs to have a family meeting with grandpa."

Others took the misfire as cause for genuine concern rather than comedy. Brian Krassenstein, asking the same basic question as everyone else, framed it in clinical terms. "Trump just posted an image of this woman on Truth Social. Who the hell is it and why does it seem like he thinks it's his daughter?" he wrote, before adding the pointed observation that "one of the main signs of dementia is confusing people for family members."

Some observers noted that the post was strange enough to leave even Trump's defenders without a script. The account Dem Saints argued that "every once in a while, Trump does something so inexplicably weird that MAGA's Fox News speaking points can't keep up," and that the allies' solution is simply to ignore it. "Like this post tonight from Trump," the account wrote, adding that "no amount of knowledge of the Conservative cinematic universe" could prepare anyone to respond to a picture of a phone-cradling stranger captioned as his own daughter.

Even the machines struggled. When users asked Grok, the AI chatbot on X, to identify the woman, it confidently declared her to be Ivanka Trump, prompting tech critic Jim Stewartson to mock the answer with "I found AGI [Artificial General Intelligence]" along with a laughing emoji.

Friends,

To you fathers, and to those of you who have or have had fathers, Happy Father’s Day.

For the next 135 days, our first and most important goal is to end Republican control of Congress, thereby limiting Trump’s reign of criminality, corruption, cruelty, and treachery.

This is a moral imperative for every one of us who believes in a decent society.

I know, I know — you’re exhausted. You’ve been doing everything you can to fight this regime — to protect the vulnerable, stop the bigotry, end the violence at home and abroad — and you feel worn out. I often feel the same.

But we have no choice. Trump is getting crazier and more dangerous by the day.

A few congressional Republicans are showing a bit of backbone, especially those who aren’t running again because Trump has supported their opponents in a Republican primary (Texas Senator John Cornyn, Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, and Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie).

But most of the GOP in Congress are as cowardly and shameful as any group of politicians has ever been in American history. They should all be swept out of office.

This means we must keep fighting even harder over the next 135 days — ensuring that Democratic candidates have our support (money, time, and energy),** that every qualified voter is registered, that Trump and his neofascist goons don’t interfere in our voting system, and that November 3rd’s blue wave is so large as to overwhelm any attempt by Trump to meddle.

More than 6,000 of you answered my Office Hours question this past week about your most important criterion for supporting congressional candidates in the midterms (I used Maine’s Graham Platner as an illustration).

Over half of you (53 percent) listed taking back control of Congress as most important, 34 percent said it was a candidate’s personal opposition to Trump and the monied interests, and 8 percent of you said a candidate’s history and character were most important. (Five percent cited other criteria.)

Among comments that elicited the most positive responses from you were these:

Chris Lemon: “There’s no second place prize in an election. Furthermore, the moral high ground is a cold windswept place with bad cell phone reception. Getting rid of the GOP is the only goal at this point, or should be. A few years back, I was talking to some folks who were going to vote for Jill Stein instead of H.Clinton. I asked if they were familiar with Ralph Nader’s presidential campaign. None of them knew the name. Sometimes you just want to cry.”

Mike Hammer: “I live in Maine and there is some questioning, some soul-searching about Platner’s character. The big picture is how we begin, at this time to take our country back and understand the damage that Susan Collins has brought by voting MAGA or with Trump was 95% of the time. There’s no law stating that we have to love Platner but that doesn’t mean we can’t vote for him. Time will tell.”

Mary Jean Holt: “I am an old, white Maine woman, faithful democrat from my youth (Republican), and 85 today. WHAT is WRONG with people? Platner is an excellent candidate, IMHO. I live with (and through the Vietnam War) a Vietnam Vet, married 61 years and know the harm that stupid, deadly wars do to all of us. I give Graham Platner a lot of credit, his wife, too. Just wish he’d trim up that beard a bit. Besides Bernie says he’s OK and I have Never disagreed much with Bernie, nor AOC.”

Diana Seidel: “I’m also an old white woman (78) living in Maine and will happily, enthusiastically vote for Platner. He speaks to all the issues I care about.”

Stephen: “I’m a native Mainer, so the Platner question is more than theoretical. Àfter hearing the accusations, the stories, the rumors, and Graham’s own story of personal growth, recovery, and redemption, I have no difficulty giving him a chance. I think the negative image surrounding him is at least as much a product of the media jackals eager to create a scandalous story as it is to the actual facts. I also think there’s an element of social snobbery at work. News pundits and others, look at Platner from their corporate offices and see a guy who’s rough around the edges who they can’t imagine being capable of being a Senator.”

Susan Borden: “There is the possibility that some see in Platner’s story qualities of character one would like more of - the ability to modify one’s behavior in favor of creating a kinder, fairer, more sustainable world/country/community.”

** I’ve listed below the candidates for Senate and House that in my humble opinion both need and deserve your support (for more information, click on their names).

That support isn’t limited to money (although the links below are for funding). It can be volunteering: to write postcards to constituents in the state or congressional district, to phone them, even to go to the state or district (if you don’t already live there) and ensure that voters are registered and have all the information they need about how to vote and whom to vote for.

IMHO, these candidates for the U.S. Senate most need and deserve your support:

In Georgia: Jon Ossoff

Ohio: Sherrod Brown

Maine: Graham Platner

Texas: James Talarico

North Carolina: Roy Cooper

Iowa: Josh Turek

Michigan: Depending on the result of the August Democratic primary, either Abdul El-Sayed (a Bernie Sanders-endorsed doctor who supports Medicare for All and getting Big Money out of politics), or Rep. Haley Stevens (a so-called “moderate” Democrat who is receiving major financial support from AIPAC). I favor El-Sayed, but if Stevens is selected, I’m 100 percent for her.

For the House, your support can mean most to these candidates:

AZ-1: Depending on the outcome of the July 21 primary, I’m for either Amish Shah or Marlene Galán-Woods.

CA-45: Derek Tran

FL-14: Kathy Castor

ME-2: Matt Dunlap

MI-10: My favorite is Christina Hines, but I’d take Tim Greimel or Eric Chung over any Republican (the primary there is August 4).

NJ-09: Nellie Pou

NY-19: Josh Riley

OH-9: Marcy Kaptur

• Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org

If you sat down and tried to invent the worst possible person to put in charge of negotiating with the Islamic Republic of Iran — and obviously Donald Trump doesn’t count — you'd have no recourse but to choose JD Vance.

If you didn’t know, and he takes every single opportunity to tell you, he’s the vice president of the United States. And your worst expectations will be met, because he’s leading the way when it comes to negotiating with the wily and wicked Iranian government.

Vance, remember he’s the vice president, is fresh off a book tour for Communion, his memoir about finding his way to Catholicism. I am a lifelong Catholic and, like the Iran negotiations, if I have to invent the worst possible person to explain Catholicism to me, it would again be JD Vance.

This joke of a negotiator and deity is now the face of the most consequential American diplomacy with Iran since arguably 1979. And this joke of a man and his reborn righteousness is now tasked to talk down a regime that has spent four decades building its identity around resisting and rebelling against American foreign policy.

It's hard to imagine a worse match of temperament to task.

I don’t know about you, but I had to pick myself up off the floor when I watched Vance’s press conference from the White House on Thursday. When asked what qualifies him to sit across from Iranian officials, Vance told reporters Joy Behar — who interviewed him on The View earlier in the week — is "way tougher than the Iranians," and that the two are "best friends now."

To say that statement was baffling, bizarre, and ridiculous would be the understatement that trashes all understatements.

Never mind that Behar, and her cohorts at The View, spent the interview grilling him over Trump calling the affordability crisis "a hoax" while Vance scrambled to spin it. The idea that sparring with an 83-year-old daytime talk show host is preparation for negotiating Iran's nuclear program is the kind of line that should disqualify a student from a high school Diplomacy 101 class.

All I could think was that the Iranian delegation heard that quote — they hear everything — and jumped up and down at the prospect of going toe to toe with a neophyte negotiator.

Negotiators who have outlasted six American presidents being told their toughest opponent in Washington uses Joy Behar as his measuring stick. It's not really an insult to Behar. In my previous career as a media relations guy for Kmart and Sears, we had several opportunities to interact, and Behar is as lovely as she is sharp and quick-witted.

But tougher than Iran? It sounds like a self-deprecating remark Behar would make about herself.

But those words from Vance are shocking. It's an admission. If you need a co-host of The View to prep you for the Strait of Hormuz, you've already lost the negotiation before it started.

None of this would really matter much if Vance were just a motormouthed mouthpiece, which he is on his best days. But this? He's leading the actual talks, alongside Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, for an agreement that's supposed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, restart nuclear inspections, and release frozen Iranian funds during a 60-day window before a final deal gets signed.

Vance has spent days insisting the money picture is being overstated, even as Iran's own Revolutionary Guard puts out its own numbers. They are going to twist him in so many directions, and it should worry all of us that Vance is way over his head.

It would help if Vance had any real track record here. He doesn't. The late Richard Holbrooke spent decades in the foreign service before he hammered out the Dayton Accords for Bill Clinton. Zalmay Khalilzad built a career across Republican and Democratic administrations before George W. Bush sent him to broker political settlements in Baghdad.

And who led President Obama’s successful Iran nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA? His secretary of state, John Kerry, who was a U.S. senator for 28 years and chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before President Obama appointed him to his Cabinet.

And Ambassador Wendy Sherman, who worked in the State Department and served as President Bill Clinton’s North Korea policy coordinator, handling early negotiations regarding their nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

And J.D. Vance? He spent two years in the Senate, wrote a book about converting to hillbillies and Catholicism, and went on The View. Can’t think of much else.

By the way, Vance's Catholicism tells him a lot about sin and redemption. It tells him very little about Qom.

Many Republicans — and Fox News — seem aghast at the danger, grumbling now about a war powers vote nobody in the GOP had the spine to force when the strikes started. And now they’re biting their nails and trying to bite their tongues about the Iran deal.

And they served two years with Vance, so they know the horror of which they speak.

Trump bombed Iran without congressional authorization, Congress did nothing, and now the administration that has bungled this from the start chooses to send its most combative, least diplomatically tested official the job of ending a war and signing an agreement?

Trump outrageously told Axios that Iran unconditionally surrendered. So if that’s what he and Vance think, they haven’t read the fine print of the Memorandum of Understanding signed this week.

Floating words like "surrender" to describe a deal that looks more lopsided by the day is a great place for JD to begin negotiations — I’m being facetious, of course.

It's reminiscent of how Trump kept calling the new Reflecting Pool a triumph right up until the algae bloomed and the paint started to peel. Vance can narrate this as a historic win for as long as he wants. The cracks are already showing, and his false diplomatic veneer will peel off faster than the reflecting pool.

The real risk isn't just that Vance fails. It's how. Iran has sixty days to extract concessions from a man with no negotiating record and a touchy temper. Remember when he ridiculously lectured Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office?

And, remember, he has that annoying habit of constantly describing himself as "the vice president of the United States." Iran will be fed up with that brag after one hour.

If this deal collapses — or worse, holds together! — the fallout will land squarely on Vance, not Trump. Is Trump trying to set him up for failure and doom his chances at the presidential nomination in 2028?

If Vance, just one last reminder that he’s the vice president of the United States, hopes an Iran deal becomes his calling card for 2028, he’s way out of his league. Just ask Joy Behar.

The Trump administration has reached the stage of its Reflecting Pool saga where soldiers stand watch over a pond full of algae, and the internet has decided that image needs no embellishment to be devastating.

Video circulating Saturday, licensed through FreedomNews.tv, shows National Guard members in uniform posted along the edge of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool while tourists wander past and cleanup equipment idles nearby. The footage spread quickly, and so did the mockery, much of it from across the political spectrum.

Former RNC chair Michael Steele cut to the obvious question. Responding to a clip of the deployment, he asked simply, "Protect it from what, the algae?" Steven Huffman, posting the same scene, narrated it like a military success story, joked that the Guard and local police "have been dispatched to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to guard the algae" before concluding, "As you can see at the end of this clip, the algae is safe. Well done."

Others leaned into the absurdity of the optics. Physician Carolyn Barber wrote, "Rest easy, America. The National Guard has been deployed to ensure no one breaches the heavily defended algae pond at the Lincoln Memorial. The republic endures." Advocate Melanie D'Arrigo tied it to the administration's spending habits, predicting that "next thing you know, the algae will need a $600 million ballroom."

Beneath the jokes ran a more pointed critique about resources and motive. The account Republicans Against Trump labeled the scene "your tax dollars at work," framing armed troops at a decorative basin as a waste dressed up as security. Security researcher Robert Graham connected the deployment to the broader enforcement pattern that has accompanied Trump's vandalism claims, noting that "in support of Trump's conspiracies about his failures caused by sabotage, multiple police departments and the National Guard are now issuing citations merely for touching the water."

That last point captures why the images resonate. Over the past two days a 67-year-old cyclist has been arrested and another visitor reportedly cited, both for making contact with a pool the president insists was sabotaged by chemical-wielding vandals. The simpler explanation, that a rushed and overpriced renovation bloomed green and shed its paint, requires no soldiers at all. The administration has chosen the version with troops, and the country is watching armed service members guard standing water while critics ask the question no one in the White House seems willing to answer: guard it from what?

Rest easy, America. The National Guard has been deployed to ensure no one breaches the heavily defended algae pond at the Lincoln Memorial. The republic endures. https://t.co/IJxdigtYG4
— Carolyn Barber, MD (@cbarbermd) June 20, 2026

An ex-GOP lawmaker has heard enough about phantom left-wing saboteurs at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and he is pointing at the only suspects who fit the evidence: the people Trump hired to clean it.

In a series of posts and a new video, former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger dismantled the administration's vandalism narrative by accepting one piece of it. Yes, he conceded, chemicals were used on the pool. The catch is who used them and why. "Just for those who are saying there was chemical sabotage to peel the paint in the reflective pool, you're right," Kinzinger wrote. "It's just, you guys did it to kill the algae."

His central claim cuts straight through the conspiracy theory. "The Trump administration dumped hydrogen peroxide to kill the algae and it stripped the paint," he said in the video, adding bluntly in a follow-up that "it was literally the people who painted it. They poured peroxide in it." In other words, the corrosive chemicals Trump blamed on radical leftists were the cleanup crew's own attempt to rescue a basin that had turned green within days of its multimillion-dollar makeover.

Kinzinger backed the point with a quick search result showing that highly concentrated, industrial-grade hydrogen peroxide acts as a strong oxidizer capable of breaking down the binder in paint and causing it to bubble and peel. That is the same outcome now floating across the surface of the pool, which the president has described instead as a deliberate "knife or blade" attack and a "250 foot long gash" carved into a national monument.

The contrast with how some Trump allies want to treat the matter is stark. Kinzinger was responding in part to commentator Jeff Storobinsky, who suggested that anyone "causing damage at the reflecting pool should face the same consequences of those who stormed the Capitol on 1.6." Kinzinger's reply amounts to a warning that such a standard would land on the administration itself, since by his account the damage was self-inflicted maintenance, not an assault by outsiders.

His broader frustration was with a movement he says cannot tolerate the idea that its leader made a mistake. They are "unable to see a flaw in their God king," Kinzinger wrote Saturday, choosing an elaborate sabotage story over the simpler truth that a rushed, overpriced renovation failed on its own. The peeling paint, in his telling, is not evidence of a crime. It is evidence of a cover story falling apart in real time.

I have to do another video on the reflective pool debacle. They are trying to say it was sabotaged by the left. They are unable to see a flaw in their God king. The Trump administration dumped hydrogen peroxide to kill the algae and it stripped the paint. pic.twitter.com/jGCha2yGoX
— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@AdamKinzinger) June 20, 2026

Donald Trump returned to his favorite subject Saturday evening, and his account of the great Reflecting Pool conspiracy grew more elaborate with every sentence. In a lengthy Truth Social post, the president announced that "many additional people have been arrested" over what he called "the disgraceful Vandalism of our beautiful Reflecting Pool," then offered a list of crimes that has expanded well beyond the algae and peeling paint that started the whole saga.

According to Trump, the vandals did not merely tamper with the water. They "took some form of knife or blade" and carved a "250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade," and they "poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the Pool." He framed the alleged sabotage as an insult to history, writing that the damage was "a true affront to both Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and should be dealt with accordingly." He added that he met with contractors and may be "forced to release and drain much of the water" to complete repairs.

The president also delivered a characteristic burst of self-praise wrapped around a shaky history lesson. He claimed the pool "hasn't looked or worked like this since 1922, when it was originally built," insisted his version "worked perfectly, including the mirror like finish," and declared it had never been "so beautiful as it was just one week ago." That timeline quietly undercuts itself, since a structure that worked perfectly a week ago would most likely not need to be drained and repaired now.

What Trump did not provide, once again, was evidence. The only confirmed arrest so far is David Hearn, a 67-year-old cyclist and former Olympian charged with a misdemeanor after he touched a piece of paint that had already come loose, an accusation he denies. A second man was reportedly cited for putting his hand in the water. Neither episode resembles a knife-wielding chemical attack on a national monument.

Larry Sabato is not questioning whether Donald Trump still owns the Republican Party. He thinks the party should just go ahead and put the president's name on the door.

Speaking with Alex Witt on MS NOW Saturday, the University of Virginia political scientist and Crystal Ball editor said Trump remains firmly in control of the GOP, which Sabato suggested be "renamed the Trump party." He tied that grip directly to the movement around the president, calling it "part and parcel of the cult, the MAGA cult." Trump does not win every primary fight, Sabato allowed, but his endorsed candidates stay competitive and he can often shove them over the line.

Then came the part Republicans should worry about.

A MAGA base, Sabato argued, tops out at roughly 35 percent of the electorate, and no one wins a general election on that alone, no matter how fired up the turnout. "That's where Tump has really been falling short," he said. The president is unpopular with Democrats, which surprises no one, but Sabato zeroed in on a group that actually decides elections: independents. They usually break close to evenly, he noted, around 55-45 at most. Trump, in some surveys, is carrying an unfavorable or poor job-approval rating of 65 to 70 percent with that group. "That's where it's going to hurt republicans this fall," he said.

The conversation turned to Georgia, where Rep. Mike Collins won the Republican Senate runoff with a late push from Trump and will now face Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff. Sabato pointed to a Politico framing that Democrats had landed the opponent they wanted, and he did not hedge on it. Ossoff is "clearly the favorite," he said, and the race is "not a toss up."

Sabato did not pretend the outcome is sealed. Things can go sideways, he acknowledged. But he described an Ossoff who is making an impression well beyond Georgia, recounting a recent non-political gathering where people kept telling him they were impressed and wanted to see Ossoff run for president. He paired that with the senator's campaign war chest, then turned to Collins, who he said was the weaker choice and has "some rough edges, and that's putting it kindly." Suburban Republicans, in his read, are not exactly thrilled to vote for the man.

The bigger picture is what should keep GOP strategists up at night. Asked where Senate control is heading, Sabato reached back a year, when almost no Democrat and zero Republicans believed the chamber would even be in play. Now, he said, it is genuinely competitive. Democrats still need a lot to break their way, with Alaska, Ohio, Iowa, Texas, and possibly other states all in the mix, but he insisted the path is real and visible in a way it simply was not twelve months ago.

His parting warning was aimed at Democrats as much as Republicans. To matter in the Senate, where every state gets two seats regardless of size, the party cannot keep itself penned into blue enclaves. The opening Sabato sees is wide enough to run through this fall. Whether Democrats are built to do it, this cycle and beyond, is the question he left hanging Saturday.

Anthony Scaramucci wants people to revisit a single answer Donald Trump once gave a journalist, because in his telling it explains the entire playbook the president has run ever since.

The former White House communications director, who lasted around 11 days in Trump's first administration before becoming one of his more relentless critics, resurfaced an exchange between Trump and "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl. As Scaramucci recounted it, Stahl asked Trump why he kept branding the press as fake news, and the answer was unusually candid. "I do it because I need to discredit you," Scaramucci quoted Trump as saying, "so that when you say negative things about me, nobody believes you."

For Scaramucci, that is not an offhand remark but a confession of strategy. "That is EXACTLY what he's done," he wrote, arguing that Trump figured out long ago that he "can bully his way through any rule" and that if he keeps pushing harder, people eventually relent. The deeper problem, Scaramucci suggested, is one of character rather than politics. "Most of us grew up with values, ethics, and integrity," he wrote. "That is not Donald Trump."

The post lands with particular weight because of who is making it. Scaramucci once defended Trump on national television and inside his West Wing, which makes his portrait of a man who governs by exhausting his opponents read less like partisan sniping and more like an insider describing a method he watched up close.

His closing line framed the anecdote as a warning rather than a grievance. For most of Trump's life, Scaramucci wrote, the strategy of relentless pressure worked because people gave in, and the only way to break the cycle is to refuse to play along. "We must stand up against it," he wrote.

It is a familiar argument from Trump's critics, but rarely is it grounded in a quote the president reportedly volunteered himself.

A man was cited by authorities merely for touching Trump's Reflecting Pool, according to a journalist's published video.

The Trump administration's defense of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has reached the point where reaching into the water can apparently earn you a ticket. Breaking-news reporter Oliya Scootercaster posted footage Saturday afternoon, licensed through FreedomNews.tv, showing a man seated on the grass at the pool's edge as a U.S. Park Police officer writes him up while a mounted colleague looms nearby. According to Scootercaster, the man said his citation was for putting his hand in the water.

The clip, which racked up more than 30,000 views within hours, captures the absurd security posture that has descended on a decorative basin. Officers on horseback now patrol the perimeter, and the cleanup crews share the space with a law enforcement presence better suited to a crime scene than a tourist landmark. All of it stems from a renovation the president ordered, a project that ran past $14 million and was supposed to leave the pool painted "American flag blue" in time for the country's 250th anniversary, only for the water to bloom green and the new surface to peel apart almost immediately.

This is at very least the second known enforcement action in recent days. Also recently, Park Police arrested David Hearn, a 67-year-old cyclist and former Olympian, on a misdemeanor charge after he touched a piece of paint that had already detached from the bottom. Hearn insisted he destroyed nothing. Now another visitor has reportedly been penalized for the crime of dipping a hand into a public pool.

Trump has spent the week insisting vandals and "radical left lunatics" are responsible for the mess, promising arrests and "years in jail." What the cameras keep documenting instead are federal officers apparently guarding green water as though it were a national treasure.

A journalist went down to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to see Donald Trump's renovation up close, and the most damning review came from the wildlife. The reflecting pool is "worse than you think" it is, ex-lawyer Aaron Parnas says in a video posted this weekend that drew nearly 40,000 views. "The ducks won't swim in it at all."

What the camera captured does not flatter a project the administration sold as a centerpiece for the country's 250th anniversary. Parnas pans across water that should be a crisp "American flag blue" and finds it a swampy green instead, with debris drifting on the surface and sheets of paint peeling away from the bottom. "This pool is blue, by the way. It's supposed to be blue," he says dryly, dipping a gloved hand into the murk. "I'm going to go sanitize my hands now, because that was gross."

The footage also shows what taxpayers are now funding to undo the damage. National Park Service crews in protective gear work the edges with aeration pumps and vacuums, scooping algae out of a basin that turned within days of being refilled. Parnas notes that ducklings perched on the side of the pool won't even get in the water.

The science is not mysterious, whatever the White House would prefer. Shallow, sunny, stagnant pools bloom fast in summer heat, especially when nutrients from runoff and wildlife feed the growth. None of that has stopped Trump from blaming vandals, "radical left lunatics," and a reporter for the mess.

Parnas skipped the conspiracy theories and let the pool speak for itself.

"Just gross," he then added.