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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watch the video below.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watch the video below.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PolitiFact rated this claim as "pants on fire."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watch the video below.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The dynamic left staff rattled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The crowd erupted in applause.

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

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

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

Watch the video below.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The reporters kept coming.

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

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

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

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

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

"They won't."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read on Substack

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watch the video below.

At long last, Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ) finally has a date for his official, in-person return to Congress after months of absence — but questions still remain about what has been going on in his life.

Kean has been missing for an extended period of time, with even GOP leaders on Capitol Hill kept in the dark. His office has claimed he is suffering from a medical issue, but would not give any details on what that medical issue is. Reporters who went to Kean's house discovered his neighbors also mystified by his disappearance.

According to Politico, Kean's spokesperson, Harrison Neely, "said the 57-year-old lawmaker plans to attend the June 30 House session." However, "Neely did not disclose any further details about Kean’s extended absence, which his team has attributed to an undisclosed health issue. In written statements throughout his absence, staff have promised he would return to work 'soon.'"

Neely insisted that Kean “plans to be fully transparent regarding the nature of his health issue and you should expect to hear from him in person June 30th.”

Kean's return comes as he is facing a tough re-election battle in a competitive House district that he first won in 2022.

Democrats nominated Rebecca Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot and officer in the Air National Guard, to challenge Kean in November.

Fox News cut away from former President Barack Obama's historic remarks at the opening of his presidential library on Thursday to go to political analyst Reince Priebus.

The abrupt switch came during Obama's dedication speech at the $850 million Obama Presidential Center in Chicago's Jackson Park, where three former presidents and a roster of A-list performers had gathered for an invitation-only ceremony.

Obama was mid-sentence when anchor Sandra Smith pulled the plug.

"Hard things are hard," Obama told the crowd. "And that's especially true in a big, raucous, diverse, argumentative democracy like the United States of America. Everybody's got an opinion. And that means getting stuff done involves reconciling the demands of a couple hundred million people."

"Alright," Smith said, cutting him off. "You've been listening live to former President Barack Obama there in Chicago at the grand opening of the Obama Presidential Center."

Co-anchor John Roberts offered a brief recap — noting that former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were in the audience and remarking that Bono "still looks pretty good" — before pivoting hard to Iran.

"JD Vance becoming a public face to the Trump administration's deal with Iran and what could be a moment that shapes a potential 2028 White House bid," Roberts said. "Reince Priebus is standing by."

Priebus, a Fox News political analyst and former Republican National Committee chairman, then held forth on the Iran memorandum of understanding, calling it "a sixty-day trial run."

"Americans care more about $5 gasoline than they do staying in a war with Iran," Priebus said. "That is an unpleasant thing for some people out there to live with, but it's true."

President Donald Trump was not invited to the ceremony. Obama Foundation CEO Valerie Jarrett said the event was reserved for those who supported Obama's journey.

The center opens to the public on Friday.

While former President Barack Obama threw shade at President Donald Trump in his speech on Thursday, Trump took to his Truth Social account to rant and rage about various things infuriating him.

First, the president lashed out at Utah's move toward a mail-in ballot system, warning that Utah could soon follow Colorado and other states down what he called a leftward political spiral. Trump said he won Utah 'handily' both times he appeared on the ballot there, making the development all the more infuriating to him personally.

"All Mail In Ballots, dishonestly handled, are a big advantage for the Dumocrats, whose only Road to Victory, because their Policies are so insane, is CHEATING," Trump fumed. "Does the Republican Party have any idea what is happening to it? Step by step, State by State, the Democrats are smiling all the way to the 'Bank.' Stop the onslaught by either immediately terminating the Filibuster and/or pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT!"

Trump did not stop there, following up with another post trashing the Senate GOP's unwillingness to eliminate the filibuster, and calling every Republican disagreeing with him on the issue a "fool".

"The Dumocrats will end it within minutes of taking office, and then rapidly proceed to destroy our Country, adding 2 Radical Left States, 4 Dumocrat Senators, many Congressmen/women, their dream of 21 Supreme Court Justices (Not just 13, an unlucky number!), an impossible to beat number of Electoral College Votes (and that’s the Ballgame!), 'Popular' Vote Landslides, and so much else," raged Trump.

"Senate Majority Leader John Thune, and the Republican Senate, must not let this 'carnage' happen," said Trump. "They will go down on the wrong side of History, as will all Republicans who just stood by and watched."

All of this comes amid rising tension between Trump and Senate Republicans over their inability to pass his agenda.

A Slate reviewer delivered a scathing verdict on Vice President JD Vance's new memoir, arguing the book accidentally revealed how much politics has "corrupted" its author.

"Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith" is Vance's first book since "Hillbilly Elegy" and was released Tuesday in what many read as a soft launch for a 2028 run. In a review published Thursday, Molly Olmstead wrote that the book is essentially two books crammed into one. For its first 177 pages, she wrote, it's a "thoughtful" meditation on trauma, fatherhood, and Vance's winding path from evangelical Christianity to atheism to Catholicism.

Then, Olmstead argued, it falls apart.

"From that point on, Communion, which came out on Tuesday, is a stiff and unimaginative political memoir. It deploys an eye-roll-worthy staff of straw men as it defends Trump’s policies," she wrote.

The break comes right after Vance nods to his "evolution from Trump critic to Trump supporter" and pivots to defending the administration.

Olmstead traced the divide to timing, noting much of the thoughtful first half appears to predate Vance's 2022 Senate run, with one passage lifted almost verbatim from a 2020 essay. She flagged a jarring later passage about Vance stockpiling ammunition over the "China virus" as the moment the tone sours. The book, she concluded, is a window into his devolution.

"The tragedy of Vance’s new book is that this split reminds you of who he used to be. It’s not only that he squandered a decent beginning, but that he revealed how far he has fallen from the thoughtful young man who once had something original to say," she wrote.

She found the ending unnerving, citing Vance's wish to return America to a "Western Christian civilization" given he "just may be our future president."

Olmstead's critique comes after The Wall Street Journal's Barton Swaim ripped the book for "egregious sloppiness," and readers buried it in one-star Goodreads reviews within hours.

She concluded the book offers a "window into just how much the thoughtful boy in Hillbilly Elegy allowed himself to be corrupted by politics."

CNN special correspondent Jamie Gangel was astounded on Thursday after former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama called out President Donald Trump during their speeches at the opening ceremony of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

Both Obamas spoke at the opening event, which was attended by politicians like former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, as well as thousands of people who supported the Obama campaigns. In her speech, Michelle Obama drew a sharp contrast between her husband and Trump, ending it with a wry smile that sent the crowd into a frenzy. Barack Obama followed up by declaring the central idea of America was that there would be "no kings," a not-so-subtle reference to Trump and the protests that have occurred during Trump's second term.

Gangel said she considered the Obamas' speeches to be a call to action for Americans.

"Let's just call it out. He never mentioned Donald Trump by name, but he didn't need to. The message was clear," she said. "President Obama talked about [how] you shouldn't be a bully. You shouldn't be divvying up spoils. And then he went on to talk about how he has faith in our country and that if you didn't, it would be a betrayal of our founding fathers. I'm paraphrasing here, 'As unsettled as we are, he doesn't believe that people are looking for anger.'"

"And then he went on ... it was really about passing the mantle," she added. "He said, 'This is not about nostalgia. It's not about Barack and Michelle doing something or that history is yet to be written by all of us,' which is really what this center is supposed to be: a call to action."

President Donald Trump joked Vice President JD Vance would bear blame if the Iran peace deal fails, but Republicans are already privately criticizing the agreement while publicly remaining silent.

Oil industry insiders and GOP lawmakers object to economic support for Iran and Trump's defense of Iran's ballistic missile rights, with one Republican calling it total surrender, reported Politico's Playbook.

"Plenty of Republican lawmakers are also uncomfortable, in private at least," Playbook wrote.

Vance's team welcomes the deal being framed as the "Vance Peace Deal," given the war's broad unpopularity, reports Dasha [Burns] on the Playbook Podcast.

White House officials view ending the conflict as politically necessary, and Vance's willingness to front the agreement reflects this. A White House insider noted that GOP attacks inadvertently inoculate Vance from the war's unpopularity while positioning him to defend Trump from criticism.

The dynamic paradoxically strengthens Vance's political standing as he defends the president against his own party's complaints.

Watch the video below.

US President Donald Trump’s war with Iran may finally be reaching a close. But consumers and businesses around the world will continue to pay the price in the months ahead as still-elevated energy costs funnel hundreds of billions of dollars to fossil fuel giants.

That’s according to a report from the environmental group 350.org released Thursday, following Trump’s signing of a memorandum of understanding with Iran this week to begin the process of formally ending a war that has sent global oil prices skyrocketing and saddled ordinary people with record fuel prices.

The group estimated that just 110 days of war resulted in the transfer of an additional $374 billion from consumers and businesses into the coffers of oil and gas companies beyond what would have been expected had the war never been launched.

And while Trump claims his agreement to end the war this week will avert an “economic catastrophe,” there will likely still be tremendous pain even if the Strait of Hormuz reopens promptly.

Using oil and gas pricing scenarios from the International Monetary Fund’s April 2026 World Economic Outlook and data on global consumption, 350.org predicted that by the end of the year, consumers and businesses will spend an additional $199.8 billion on oil and $128.1 billion on gas above a non-war scenario, making for a grand total of more than $700 billion as a result of the war.

This, the group said, is a conservative estimate, as it does not even take into account knock-on effects. The war will ultimately end up costing much more when factoring in inflation across the rest of the economy, resulting from higher fuel costs or fertilizer shortages caused by the strait’s closure, which has affected food prices.

It also does not take into account the resulting effects on economic output or employment as rising costs and lower consumer spending force companies to tighten their belts.

“The oil and gas industry is draining billions from people and businesses on the back of a war that has killed thousands and pushed millions toward poverty and hunger,” said Andreas Sieber, head of political Strategy at 350.org.

“Even if the Strait of Hormuz reopens tomorrow, we should expect prices to remain above pre-crisis levels,” he said. “We witness not only a massive fossil fuel crisis but a vast upward transfer of wealth built on instability of fossil fuel markets and pain.”

While the war has brought it into starker relief, previous reports from 350.org have shown that even if the US had never attacked Iran, the continued global dependence on fossil fuels was resulting in trillions of dollars of avoidable costs each year, including $9.3 trillion to mitigate climate-related damages and air pollution-related deaths each year, costs that disproportionately fall on the world’s poorest.

In order to alleviate economic strain from the war, Sieber said, “governments should tax these excess profits now and use the revenues to protect people, cut bills, and rapidly deploy renewables that make households and small businesses less vulnerable to the next fossil fuel shock.”

Estimates of inflation also do not account for how the war has heightened global instability and poverty, which will require additional resources for humanitarian relief efforts. In late April, the United Nations Development Program estimated that even if the conflict had ended then, more than 32 million people worldwide would be pushed into economic precarity.

This is not to mention the resources that will need to be expended to address the harms caused by the war itself.

In exchange for negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, a portion of the memorandum of understanding requires the US to work with “regional partners,” presumably other Persian Gulf allies, to scrounge up at least $300 billion to help Iran pay for reconstruction and economic development after the country was devastated by American and Israeli attacks on civilian infrastructure and millions were displaced.

As a report from the International Rescue Committee detailed last week, the Iran war has also had cascading effects on other conflicts and catastrophes.

“Six months ago, the IRC warned that a New World Disorder was emerging,” said David Miliband, the humanitarian group’s president and CEO. “Since then, disorder has not only grown but accelerated. A war with Iran. A million people have been forced to flee their homes in Lebanon. A brewing global food security catastrophe that risks plunging millions more people into acute hunger. An expanding Ebola outbreak. Defanged diplomacy and collapsing aid budgets.”

“The Iran war couldn’t have happened at a worse time,” Miliband said in a New Yorker article published Thursday. “It set off a chain of events that’s very damaging.”

President Donald Trump privately laughed at two top tech billionaires behind their backs as they sought to curry favor with him following the 2024 race.

According to "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump" — a new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, obtained ahead of its June 23 release by Wired — Trump spent weeks regaling associates with stories of how Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos were "kissing my a—."

"You would not believe the texts I got from these tech guys. I've got to show you," Trump told guests, according to the book.

Among the texts Trump showed off: a photo of a letter written by one of Zuckerberg's grade-school-age children, who wrote that they "looked forward to the golden age of America." When Zuckerberg visited Mar-a-Lago the night before Thanksgiving 2024, Trump welcomed him by playing the national anthem — performed by the J6 Prison Choir, a group of detained January 6 rioters.

Trump also recounted the dynamic to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. "Think of where these guys were in 2016," Trump told Musk, per the book. "They hated me. They were doing everything they could to knock me down. And look at them now."

"First-class groveling," Musk replied.

Bezos fared no better. Over dinner at Mar-a-Lago in December 2024, Bezos trashed his own newspaper to Trump, calling Washington Post staffers "terrible." "They don't listen," Bezos said, per the book. "My other companies, they listen."

Months later, in July 2025, Bezos traveled to the Oval Office to pitch Trump on steering Pentagon space contracts toward his Blue Origin company — an effort to compete with Musk's SpaceX. Trump said he would consider it but never did, instead expanding access for SpaceX.

Neither man had always been so accommodating. Zuckerberg banned Trump from Facebook and Instagram after January 6, 2021, calling the risks of keeping him on the platform "simply too great." He and his wife, Priscilla Chan, once wrote that they were "deeply shaken and disgusted" by Trump's rhetoric.

Bezos, meanwhile, called Trump's behavior "eroding our democracy" in 2016 and offered to send him to space on one of his rockets.

After Trump won in 2024, Meta and Amazon each donated $1 million to his inaugural committee, and both men attended his inauguration. Zuckerberg axed Meta's fact-checking program, ended its diversity initiatives, and hired Trump loyalists to top company posts.

White House spokesperson Kush Desai did not directly address the book's reporting. "President Trump is committed to working with every American business and business leader to cement America's innovative dominance, re-shore critical manufacturing, and accelerate economic growth," Desai said.