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'Embarrassing': Trump 'booed mercilessly' by Kennedy Center at 'Les Miserables' opening

Just before the Kennedy Center's opening night performance of the musical "Les Miserables," President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump stood to be recognized. They were met with a loud chorus of boos.

Video of the moment shows the boos mixed with some cheering, with Reuters White House correspondent Jeff Mason observing that some Trump supporters in the audience shouted "USA" chants in an attempt to drown out the booing. In addition to the First Couple, both Vice President JD Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance were also in attendance.

"In an absolutely embarrassing moment, Donald Trump was just booed mercilessly at the Kennedy Center," former Lawrence County, Tennessee commissioner Chris D. Jackson tweeted.

The president and vice president were at the Kennedy Center — which is led by Trump after he appointed himself chairman earlier this year — for the opening night performance of the musical "Les Miserables," which is about a populist rebellion against a tyrannical king. The performance is on the same night of the official arrival of approximately 700 U.S. Marines Trump deployed to Los Angeles to quell protests in the second-largest U.S. city.

Prior to Trump's arrival, New York Times White House correspondent Shawn McCreesh tweeted video of a group of drag queens entering the theater, who were met with cheers from the crowd. The drag queens told the Independent that they were there not only to see "Les Miserables," but to also protest Trump banning drag performances at the Kennedy Center after he put himself in charge (the Kennedy Center went on to schedule multiple shows featuring characters in drag, like "Mrs. Doubtfire").

"Theater is supposed to be a place of community, a place of storytelling, a place of celebration, joy, catharsis and it should be open and available to all," drag performer Vagenisis told the Independent.

Others in attendance also protested Trump's presence at the show. Former Capitol Hill staffer Jason Tufele Carl Johnson tweeted a photo of himself and his date wearing t-shirts that read "democracy has no kings" and "abolish ICE," with the caption: "When you can't change your Kennedy Center tickets cause Trump turned it into a fundraiser for his fascist friends, you make a statement out of it."

Watch the video of Trump getting booed below, or by clicking this link.

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'We are really in trouble': House GOP leader concerned about fate of under-the-radar bill

While all eyes are on H.R. 1 ("The One Big Beautiful Bill Act"), another major piece of legislation is scheduled for a vote this week. And one Republican leader isn't fully confident that it will pass despite the GOP having a majority in the House of Representatives.

Axios reported Wednesday that Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.), who is chair of the House Republican Conference, made the remark while urging her GOP counterparts in the U.S. Senate to not fundamentally alter the House version of H.R. 1 if they hoped to get it signed into law by the target date of early July. While telling Senate Republicans that she understood that the upper chamber of Congress had to get its "fingerprints" on the legislation, they should "touch very lightly" to avoid a time-consuming conference process.

"Change it 10%, but I think 30% is a lot," McClain said in response to a question about Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) suggesting that the Senate may only keep 60% to 70% of the original bill.

However, McClain then pivoted to the fate of a $9.4 billion rescissions package (a "rescission" is an act of Congress that claws back money that had already been appropriated) to codify some of the cuts that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's Department og Government Efficiency (DOGE) made earlier this year. That package would effectively defund NPR and PBS, while also stripping more than $8 billion from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the African Development Foundation.

"If we can't pass this rescission package, we are really in trouble," the Michigan Republican said.

While McClain added that she still believes "we're going to pass it," at least one Republican member of the House has voiced concerns about the bill. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) told CNN on Wednesday that "the bill has problems," and that it sets a bad precedent that the executive branch can strip the legislative branch of a key Constitutional responsibility.

“We are, at the end of the day, the Congress that holds the power of the purse. We're the ones who are supposed to be identifying where funding is going and this gives a lot of discretion to the White House to be doing that unilaterally," Malliotakis said, adding that she "Imet with a bunch of constituents who all say they want PBS to be continued to be funded. And these are Republicans. These are not left-leaning voters in my district."

Click here to read Axios' full article.

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'Make the people you hate mad': Expert reveals what's driving Trump's 'childish' actions

President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have both been spending the last few weeks renaming U.S. military property. One military expert is now offering a theory about what may be motivating them.

The New York Times recently reported that the Trump administration has aimed to re-christen military bases whose Confederate names were removed under former President Joe Biden's tenure, but choosing different namesakes. One example is making the namesake of Fort Lee in Virginia not Confederate General Robert E. Lee, but for Private Fitz Lee, who was a Black soldier in the 19th century. And while the Biden administration changed the name of Fort Bragg (named for Confederate general Braxton Bragg) to Fort Liberty, the Trump administration in February reverted it back to Bragg — but with the namesake changed to that of Private First Class Roland Bragg, who served in World War II.

During a Wednesday segment on MSNBC's "Deadline: White House," host Nicolle Wallace interviewed retired U.S. Naval War College professor and Atlantic columnist Tom Nichols about the administration's quest to rename bases and Navy vessels (like the USNS Harvey Milk) after Confederate generals. Nichols opined that Trump's use of old names with new namesakes was "juvenile."

"It would almost be more admirable if Trump and Hegseth would just come out and say, 'look, we're going to rename Fort Bragg after the Confederate general because we believe in that,'" he said. "And instead they're playing these games like, 'well, it's a different guy named Bragg.'"

The Atlantic columnist also argued that the commander-in-chief spending his time on his "inane and childish campaign" to rename military property betrayed what the 2024 election was really about. According to Nichols, "resentment" and "grievance" are at the heart of the administration's latest actions regarding the military.

"It's about people being angry and wanting to stick it to other Americans," he said. "That's partly why Trump is doing this and going to these military bases, because he's courting the military ... 'We're going to stick it to those people by renaming Fort Bragg, wink, wink.' And not because we really care about the Civil War or Confederate generals, but because it's going to make the people you hate mad."

"That is that tells you what an unserious government this is and what an unserious election we had," he added. "That wasn't really about standards of living. It's about it's about this kind of nonsense."

Watch the clip below, or by clicking this link.

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'Failure is not an option': GOP scrambling to meet key deadline to avoid economic meltdown

Republicans in Congress have a ticking time bomb that's motivating them to not stall too long in their efforts to pass President Donald Trump's so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill Act."

NBC News reported Wednesday that top Republicans in both the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate are eager to pass H.R. 1 — the 1,037-page tax and spending bill currently being debated in the Senate — before the United States is scheduled to exceed its statutory borrowing limit in mid-July. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told the network "there is no plan B" if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling in the next six weeks. Presumably, a backup plan should Republicans fail to increase the debt ceiling in a party-line bill would be to make concessions to Democrats in order to win over enough support from the opposition party to pass the legislation.

"“It’s Plan A. We have to get it done," he said. "Failure is not an option.”

“We should be set an expectation that we’re getting this done in July, and it includes the debt ceiling,” Sen. Thom Tillis, (R-N.C.) said. “I think the minute you start talking about a backup plan, you’re going to have a backup plan.”

Currently, the budget bill raises the debt ceiling by $4 trillion to $5 trillion, so the U.S. can keep borrowing and servicing its debt. However, some hardline conservatives in both the House and Senate are hesitant to increase the borrowing limit (which doesn't require any additional spending) without making additional spending cuts elsewhere. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) said in January that he would strongly oppose any effort to abolish the debt ceiling — something that both Trump and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) publicly agreed on earlier this month.

"“I am very pleased to announce that, after all of these years, I agree with Senator Elizabeth Warren on SOMETHING," Trump said in a Truth Social post. "The Debt Limit should be entirely scrapped to prevent an Economic catastrophe. It is too devastating to be put in the hands of political people that may want to use it despite the horrendous effect it could have on our Country and, indirectly, even the World."

If the U.S. were to fail to raise the borrowing limit, it could end up destabilizing the global economy, as the U.S. Treasury securities that make up the vast bulk of American debt would no longer be guaranteed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. The concept of the debt ceiling dates back to 1917, when it was included in the Second Liberty Bond Act to encourage fiscally conservative policy. However, that was before the U.S. moved off of the Gold Standard under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and before the U.S. dollar was fully unlinked from gold after President Richard Nixon ended the Bretton Woods Agreement in the 1970s. Now, the U.S. money supply is fully regulated by Congress, with the Constitution stipulating that Congress has the sole ability to "coin money."

Click here to read NBC's report in full.

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'Can't accept that': GOP senators may toss out key Trump campaign promises in his big bill

The Republican-controlled U.S. Senate is preparing to make its own changes to President Donald Trump's massive domestic policy legislation, and some of those tweaks may include scrapping some of Trump's biggest 2024 campaign promises.

According to a Wednesday report in the New York Times, GOP lawmakers in the upper chamber of Congress are making new efforts to pay for the trillions of dollars in tax cuts included in the bill (which are overwhelmingly tilted in favor of the wealthiest Americans). One provision Senate Republicans may axe in order to offset those tax cuts is Trump's proposal to not tax overtime hours — something he made a hallmark of his third bid for the presidency.

“I think it all comes down to what we’ve got to pay for,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who is up for reelection next year, told the Times. “At the end of the day, we’ve got to pay for pro-growth policies.”

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) was also unsure about Trump's "no tax on tips" proposal, saying he wasn't getting concrete answers to questions like: "How many years did they go? At what level do they stop?" Even staunch conservatives in the Senate aren't shy about completely revamping the bill that the House of Representatives sent over last month. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) defended the idea of having a "markedly different" bill than what the House narrowly passed by a 215-214 margin.

"It’s the Senate, so the Senate is going to do what it damn well wants to do, and that’s a good process," Cruz said.

Despite having a 53-47 majority, Senate Republicans can only afford to lose three members of their own conference if they hope to pass it with a tie-breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance. This means objections from senators like Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) over the bill's significant size may mean the legislation has to be broken up into multiple bills — something that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has also suggested. Johnson is proposing that the "one big beautiful bill" be pared down to tax cuts and spending cuts, and moving other items to separate pieces of legislation.

"You can’t do it in one fell swoop. I don’t want to criticize what has been done; I want to support what’s been done,” Johnson said. “But I absolutely — I can’t accept that this is the new norm. We need another bite of the apple in this Congress.”

Click here to read the Times' report in full (subscription required).

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'Blood, detentions and incarcerations': Analyst says Trump isn't satisfying MAGA's demands

Despite President Donald Trump sanctioning ongoing immigration raids nationwide and deploying U.S. troops to the second-largest city in the United States, it still might not be enough to please his base, according to a recent analysis.

In a Tuesday article for anti-Trump conservative news outlet The Bulwark, journalist Will Sommer argued that there was a "vicious MAGA feedback loop" that is dictating the administration's latest actions, and that it's showing no sign of slowing down. In fact, Sommer suggested that even Trump circumventing California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) in calling up the California National Guard (the first time a president went around a governor to call National Guardsmen since 1965) and sending roughly 700 U.S. Marines to Los Angeles may still not be enough to give his MAGA supporters what they want.

"It is a thrilling way to show the Trump faithful that the administration is really doing something," Sommer wrote. "It also underscores one of the most underappreciated elements of what is currently happening in Los Angeles and elsewhere: Much of it is being driven by a feedback loop between the Trump administration and online MAGA-world, each urging the other on to more cruelty."

Sommer pointed to a recent report showing that MAGA was turning on even the most vociferously pro-Trump officials within the administration. One recent example is FBI deputy director Dan Bongino, who faced MAGA's wrath after he conceded that convicted child predator Jeffrey Epstein did indeed take his own life in prison — shooting down a conspiracy theory he himself promoted in the recent past.

"In a similar vein, Trump world figures like Noem and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller have spent years telling followers that the world around them was a horrifying hellhole — with millions of illegal immigrants terrorizing the country and threatening the very fabric of our civilization," Sommer wrote.

"But while Bongino can’t really cook up a fake Jeffrey Epstein murder plot to win back his fans, Noem and Miller definitely can ramp up deportations," he added. "And they can do so while bringing the MAGA media ecosystem along for the ride."

The Bulwark writer went on to observe that many on the far right were calling for the administration to follow through on its threat to arrest Gov. Newsom after Trump floated the idea earlier this week (Newsom has also dared Trump to arrest him). While Trump administration immigration advisor Tom Homan has said that Newsom hasn't done anything to merit arrest, Sommer posited that "law and due process seem to matter little to MAGA die-hards who want the blood, detentions, and incarcerations they were promised."

Click here to read Sommer's full article in the Bulwark.

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Only 12% of Congressional Republicans surveyed plan to attend Trump's military parade

On Saturday, President Donald Trump's 79th birthday will coincide with a parade he's hosting on Constitution Avenue in Washington D.C. However, many Republicans aren't planning to join him.

That's according to a Tuesday article in Politico, which reported that of 50 GOP lawmakers surveyed, only six confirmed to the publication that they would be there — which amounts to just 12% of those asked. Those six Republicans include MAGA stalwarts like Reps. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Lisa McClain (R-Mich.), John McGuire (R-Va.), Cory Mills (R-Fla.) and Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.)

However, the Republicans who told Politico they wouldn't be in attendance include many in positions of leadership and other Republicans who are typically among Trump's most vocal supporters. Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) told the outlet he would "be at the air show," in reference to the International Paris Air Show at Le Bourget Airport in France. House Armed Services Committee chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) is also skipping the military parade for the air show. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) reportedly gave a noncommittal answer when asked if he was planning on going to the event.

Other Republicans on Capitol Hill told Politico that they would be skipping the military parade for personal reasons. Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said that the parade falls on his anniversary and that he "choose[s] to be married." Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) are also flying home for the weekend, and Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) is back in his home state to campaign for Alabama's Republican gubernatorial nomination.

Notably, some Republicans who are military veterans are also not planning to attend the parade. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who was a reservist in the U.S. Air Force, won't be going, nor will other veterans among the Senate Republican Conference: Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.) each told Politico they won't be present.

Despite high-profile Republicans opting out of attending Trump's parade, the White House issued a statement saying that Trump was "look[ing] forward to a historic crowd at the Army Birthday Parade" to commemorate "250 years of honor, courage, and sacrifice by our United States military." But some Republicans balked at the price tag of the parade, which could be as high as $40 million.

"I’m glad that we’re honoring the Army. I think that’s really important to recognize such a significant anniversary,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said last week, with the caveat that “the cost does seem a bit steep.”

Click here to read Politico's full report.

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'Cares only for the rich': Catholic priest calls Trump's bill 'a disaster for America

One Catholic priest is arguing that H.R. 1 ("The One Big Beautiful Bill Act") would not only decimate public safety nets and lavish more money on the wealthiest Americans, but it would also subvert basic principles of Christianity.

In a Tuesday essay for Religion News Service (RNS), the Rev. Thomas Reese — who is an ordained Jesuit priest — made the case that the Republican tax and spending bill currently being debated in the U.S. Senate would be a "disaster for America" if passed and signed into law. Reese warned that the legislation would "add trillions of dollars to the federal debt, give tax breaks to the very wealthy and cut programs that help the middle class and the least advantaged," as well as betray Christian values.

"The Trump administration, like barbarians and terrorists, is capable of destroying but not building," he wrote. "It has turned on its head the gospel imperative of caring for the most vulnerable, and cares only for the rich and powerful."

Reese went on to point out that in order to pay for trillions of dollars in tax cuts that are heavily skewed in favor of the wealthy, Republicans want to cut federal funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) by hundreds of billions of dollars. And he observed that they're proposing these cuts at a time when average families are having greater financial difficulty affording groceries.

"About 40% of SNAP recipients are children, and that program will be cut by nearly $300 billion at a time when food prices have gone up," Reese wrote. "... Rather than a preferential option for the poor, the Trump administration has a preferential option for the rich. Rather than honoring humble love, it glorifies arrogant power."

The Jesuit priest also blasted both Trump and Republicans for the bill's proposed cuts to the President's Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which he credited with saving hundreds of thousands of lives in underdeveloped countries. He additionally lamented that cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) would likely result in many more preventable deaths of the world's most vulnerable populations.

"We used to think of the White House as a bully pulpit, but now it is simply occupied by a bully," he wrote.

Click here to read Reese's full essay in Religion News Service.

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'As cowardly as it gets': ABC News blasted for firing reporter who criticized Trump

On Tuesday, ABC News officially fired journalist Terry Moran, who conducted the network's exclusive Oval Office interview with President Donald Trump less than two months ago.

CNN reported that Moran's firing came on the heels of his viral now-deleted tweet in which he called both Trump and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller "world class hater[s]." His post went on to posit that Miller's "bile" was his "spiritual nourishment" and that hate was his primary motivation, whereas Trump was motivated by "his own glorification." Notably, Moran was fired roughly 48 hours after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called on the network to punish Moran in response to the tweet.

According to CNN, the firing of Moran coincided with the end of his contract, which was due to expire at the end of this week, prompting some observers to suggest that the former ABC reporter's post was a strategic move to launch the next step of his career. SiriusXM political analyst Ameshia Cross opined that Moran "had nothing to lose" and may have wanted to end his tenure with ABC by "mic dropping on his way out."

In a Bluesky post, University of Maine communications and journalism professor Michael Socolow made a similar observation, writing: "Here's what we know: 1) Terry Moran recently angered & frustrated Trump in an interview on his first 100 days just about a month ago. 2) His contract was close to expiration when he published a *very* uncharacteristic tweet. 3) ABC has proven craven in face of Trump threats."

Others on social media tore into the network for firing Moran. Comedian Frank Conniff wrote that Moran now "might consider working in a field that's a change of pace from ABC News, like journalism." Retired U.S. Army interrogator Alex Timmons lamented ABC's "cowardice" in response to Trump's attacks on the media and his political opponents.

"This is what the legacy of of media will be. The cowardice they showed in the face of fascism from someone who wants to destroy legacy media," Timmons wrote. "ABC just going along with Trump & firing Terry Moran is as cowardly as it gets."

"Terry Moran was fired for telling the truth," author Edward Winkleman posted. "It’s not partisan to call out hatred when it’s so extremely obvious. It’s journalism. Not sure what it is ABC thinks they’re doing."

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'May be hard to fit in': Ardent pro-Trump senator doubts 'one big beautiful bill' strategy

Even one of President Donald Trump's biggest supporters in the U.S. Senate isn't sure the president cramming his entire agenda into "one big beautiful bill" is a smart play.

Semafor reported that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is now pushing for multiple tax and spending bills, arguing that it may be necessary to break up some elements of H.R. 1 ("The One Big Beautiful Bill Act") in order to get something to Trump's desk. Graham suggested splitting H.R. 1 into as many as three separate pieces of legislation that would be debated by the House and Senate.

"There’s some things that the president wants, like no tax on tips and overtime. All this may be hard to fit in completely. So let’s have as big a bill as the market will bear, but realize that more is coming," Graham told Semafor.

"Let’s try to reach a compromise on this bill. And we got two more to do," he added.

Graham's suggestion to break up H.R. 1 hearkens back to a debate within Trumpworld earlier this year in which Vice President JD Vance, White house deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought all backed a multi-bill approach to pass Trump's domestic policy agenda, whereas House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) preferred one. However, Trump went with the House approach, using his Truth Social account to proclaim his desire for "one big, beautiful bill," which Republicans ended up pursuing while using the president's preferred name for the legislation.

According to Semafor, Graham's proposal to get the bill broken up into multiple pieces of legislation is likely a maneuver to appease senators like Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who have both called for additional spending cuts to offset the cost of extending Trump's 2017 tax cuts. That tax cut extension is projected to increase the federal deficit by trillions of dollars over the next decade.

“It just becomes: How much can you put into the bill before you lose the votes?” Graham said. “We’re not going to get the bill through the Senate without more spending cuts. I think if you do too much, you’re going to lose the House, so there will be round two.”

Click here to read Semafor's full report.

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'Preaches humility while flying private': Analyst exposes Steve Bannon's 'shameless act'

Since being ousted from his position in President Donald Trump's first administration, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has carved out a new lane casting himself as a populist outsider advocating for the American working class. But one analyst is arguing that Bannon's new image is simply an elaborate ruse.

In a Tuesday essay for the Hill, writer and researcher John Mac Ghlionn pointed out the numerous ways in which Bannon has "conned" his target audience. He accused the "War Room" podcast host of "LARPing as a coal-dusted crusader for the common man" despite having a net worth in excess of $20 million and a cushy career on Wall Street before launching his political career.

"Steve Bannon was something far less revolutionary: a banker. And not just any banker — he was a high-powered executive at Goldman Sachs, the very temple of global finance he now pretends to rage against," Ghlionn wrote. "He didn’t walk picket lines. He walked into boardrooms, advised mergers and helped move capital around like puzzle pieces in the portfolios of the powerful. He got in on the deals most Americans would never even hear about, let alone benefit from."

Ghlionn expanded on calling Bannon someone who "talks like a patriot but lives like a prince," pointing out that he was a "Hollywood financier" who acquired a stake in Castle Rock Entertainment — which produced the hit 1990s sitcom "Seinfeld." The analyst observed that every time Americans laughed at "Seinfeld" character Cosmo Kramer's over-the-top entrance, Bannon literally "got richer" thanks to the royalties he got from the show.

"While working-class Americans were juggling bills and wondering if they could afford another tank of gas, Bannon was cashing passive income from a sitcom about nothing," he wrote.

The essayist reminded readers that Bannon was also the brainchild behind a crowdfunding campaign that successfully convinced Americans to donate millions of dollars to build a wall along the Southern border. The former Breitbart leader ultimately pleaded guilty to fraud in order to avoid jail time (Bannon still went to federal prison in 2024 after defying a Congressional subpoena). Ghlionn contrasted Bannon's everyman branding as a facade to hide his true identity as a "salesman in battle gear, with a podcast mic and a passport full of donor meetings."

"The flannel, the Catholic mysticism, the bunker aesthetic — it’s all part of the shameless act," he wrote. "Underneath is a Machiavellian tactician who understands power not as something to dismantle, but to inhabit. Part P.T. Barnum, part Pat Buchanan, this is a man who preaches humility while flying private."

Click here to read Ghlionn's full essay in the Hill.

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'Cannot change': 38 House Republicans send ultimatum to Senate GOP

A significant number of House Republicans are now sending a stern warning to their counterparts in the U.S. Senate to not fundamentally alter H.R. 1 ("The One Big Beautiful Bill Act").

Politico reported Tuesday that the group of 38 Republican members of the House of Representatives — led by Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.), who is vice chair of the House Budget Committee — sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) urging him and the Senate Republican Conference to stay away from "budget gimmicks" as they make changes to the megabill. In the letter, Smucker and his colleagues said "any additional tax cuts" should be accompanied "dollar for dollar by real, enforceable spending reductions" if the Senate hopes to have enough House GOP support to get the legislation to President Donald Trump's desk.

“We recognize the Senate will have its own say to make changes to the bill, and we welcome amendments that increase verifiable savings and make the overall package even more sustainable,” the letter read. “Additional spending reduction strengthens the bill and the nation alike. What cannot change is the architecture established by the House framework.”

Smucker's letter was joined by several powerful House Republicans, including Reps. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), who chairs the House Budget Committee, Andy Harris (R-Md.), who chairs the far-right House Freedom Caucus and Blake Moore (R-Utah), who is the vice chair of the House Republican Conference. This suggests that the signatories of the letter may hold enough sway over their fellow Republicans to sink the legislation should it fail to satisfy their desire for deep budget cuts across the entirety of the federal government.

"A reconciliation bill that relaxes fiscal discipline reflected in the House-passed bill would invite higher borrowing costs and undermine the economic growth that Americans need to maximize opportunity," they wrote.

In the House-passed version of the bill, Smucker successfully pushed for $1.5 trillion in spending cuts — the vast bulk of which comes from federal support for Medicaid (the program that provides health insurance for low-income and disabled Americans). However, the cuts are largely offset by a 10-year extension of Trump's 2017 tax cuts, which were overwhelmingly skewed in favor of the richest Americans.

The bill's fate in the Senate remains uncertain, as even reliably conservative senators like Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) have railed against the bill's ballooning of the federal deficit by trillions of dollars. Despite the Senate being under Republican control, the GOP can only afford three defections if it hopes to pass the bill back to the House, assuming unified Democratic opposition.

Click here to read Politico's full report.

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'You're dangerous': Trump allies turn on each other

President Donald Trump's public falling out with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is now prompting additional infighting in MAGA circles between some of Trump's most high-profile supporters.

Semafor reported Monday that "War Room" podcast host Steve Bannon – who was White House chief strategist in the first Trump administration – is now setting his sights on venture capitalist and second Trump administration AI czar David Sacks (who is close to Musk and co-hosts the popular "All In" podcast). The MAGA pundit mentioned Sacks on a recent episode of his podcast, and accused him of exploiting his relationship to Trump to further his own goals.

"You’re dangerous," Bannon said of Sacks and his co-hosts. "It’s all about you, not the country."

However, Trump administration spokesperson Harrison Fields said that Sacks was "deeply committed to advancing the president's vision" on cryptocurrency and AI issues, and credited the billionaire Trump donor with being "a trusted ally and early supporter of President Trump."

While the White House defended Sacks himself, an unnamed source told Semafor that the administration was indeed having ongoing conversations "regarding the future of some of these big names that came to the federal government in that wave of Elon [Musk] coming here." The source also teased the possibility of some of Musk's hires being let go, calling it a "mutual separation" between the tech billionaire's team and the administration.

Whether Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — which has spent the first several months of 2025 slashing the federal workforce across multiple agencies – remains in place is also an open question. Some DOGE staffers reportedly have been texting each other wondering if their own jobs will be next on the chopping block. Semafor's source also said that while the work itself of reducing the federal workforce may continue, Trump may rebrand it.

“Maybe we don’t call it DOGE,” the source said. “The mission is what we want to stay focused on.”

Click here to read Semafor's full report.

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'Stick to football bro': Newsom buries top Republicans after they criticize CA crime rate

As protests over President Donald Trump's immigration raids in Los Angeles are increasing in number and intensity, so are Republican attacks on California. And Governor Gavin Newsom (D) is taking time to personally address some of his most high-profile GOP critics.

Alabama news site AL.com reported Monday that Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) — who used to be the head coach of Auburn University's football team – recently called California a "third-world country," saying that "anarchists are in charge, law enforcement is being attacked and the rule of law is nonexistent." Newsom didn't let the comment slide, and pointed out that Tuberville's state actually has a much higher violent crime rate than the Golden State.

"Alabama has 3X the homicide rate of California. Its murder rate is ranked third in the entire country," Newsom tweeted. "Stick to football, bro."

The governor isn't wrong: AL.com reported that in 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the homicide rate in California was 5.9 per 100,000 residents, while Alabama's was at 14.9 per 100,000. Newsom also fired back when House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) defended Trump's decision to circumvent Newsom in deploying the California National Guard — the first time a U.S. president has called in the National Guard in defiance of a governor since 1965.

"President Trump did exactly what he needed to do to restore order and protect our law enforcement officers and our communities," Johnson tweeted.

"Using this logic, the Guard should have been deployed to @SpeakerJohnson’s District years ago — Louisiana has the second highest murder rate in the nation and was ranked 'the most dangerous state in America,'" Newsom responded in a quote tweet mentioning the speaker's official X account. "Are you saying Trump should send the Guard there next??"

Newsom's claim appears to stem from a 2024 report in the Shreveport Times (which is the largest newspaper in Johnson's district) on WalletHub ranking the Bayou State as the most dangerous in the U.S. when considering violent crime rates, vehicular deaths and climate disasters per capita. WalletHub ranked Louisiana 50th out of 50 states in murders per capita and 46th out of 50 in assaults per capita.

The California governor has also responded to a tweet from Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) saying "we fly the American flag in America" by posting photos from the January 6, 2021 insurrection in which people storming the U.S. Capitol were seen using the American flag as a weapon against law enforcement officers.

"Like this?" Newsom wrote.

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LAPD chief says Trump sending troops is 'significant' obstacle to 'safeguarding this city'

On Monday, President Donald Trump announced he was deploying 700 U.S. Marines to Los Angeles to quell protests that have erupted in California's largest city. Now, the city's police chief is calling the deployment unnecessary.

ABC News reported Monday evening that Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Chief Jim McDonnell issued a statement responding to the deployment of the U.S. military in his jurisdiction, in which he criticized – albeit delicately – the president's decision. He also insinuated that he was not consulted about the deployment prior to hearing about it secondhand.

"The LAPD has not received any formal notification that the Marines will be arriving in Los Angeles. However, the possible arrival of federal military forces in Los Angeles — absent clear coordination — presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us charged with safeguarding this city," McDonnell stated. "The Los Angeles Police Department, alongside our mutual aid partners, have decades of experience managing large-scale public demonstrations, and we remain confident in our ability to do so professionally and effectively."

"That said, our top priority is the safety of both the public and the officers on the ground," he continued. "We are urging open and continuous lines of communication between all agencies to prevent confusion, avoid escalation, and ensure a coordinated, lawful, and orderly response during this critical time."

McDonnell's statement comes on the heels of a former federal law enforcement official also criticizing the administration's response to the protests. On Monday, Jason Houser, who was the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) chief of staff during former President Joe Biden's administration, argued Trump's "racist policies" were needlessly diverting federal agents from necessary investigations in order to achieve higher arrest quotas.

""They're prioritizing those arrests over carrying out not only ICE operations that protect us from national security and public safety threats, but ... dismantling investigations, and the joint terrorism task forces, and drug interdiction agencies and collaboration of law enforcement from state and local law enforcement with the federal agencies," Houser told MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace. "We are less safe when we have these sort of activities."

According to the Los Angeles Times, the protests escalated after the LAPD fired tear gas and non-lethal rounds at largely peaceful protesters in the wake of several ICE immigration raids in the city. Trump then deployed California National Guard troops despite Governor Gavin Newsom (D) not officially requesting federal intervention — the first time since 1965 a president has circumvented a governor in deploying the National Guard.

Click here to read ABC's full report.

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'Get them so afraid': Dems applying pressure to 16 GOP senators to weaken Trump's big bill

The version of H.R. 1 ("The One Big Beautiful Bill Act) that passed the House of Representatives by one vote is highly unlikely to pass the Senate in its current form, and now the top Senate Democrat is hoping to get a critical number of Republicans to strip the legislation of its teeth before the chamber votes on its passage.

That's according to a Monday article in Punchbowl News, which reported that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (R-N.Y.) is targeting 16 of his Republican counterparts who represent states that could be disproportionately impacted by the worst parts of the legislation. Those senators have not yet been publicly named, but Schumer said he's focusing on calling attention to three major provisions of the bill that he believes could scare Republicans into voting no.

"“We get them so afraid — and this is happening already — that they go to [Senate Majority Leader John] Thune and say we have to modify Medicaid, we have to modify SNAP, we have to modify the clean-energy provisions,” the New York Democrat told Punchbowl. “The more we show Americans what’s in this bill, the more they have to change it.”

As Schumer mentioned, the most controversial portion of the bill may be its language cutting federal support for Medicaid by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 10 years. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va) has publicly expressed concern over how the Medicaid cuts would impact rural hospitals in West Virginia, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)is warning that he won't vote for any bill that cuts Medicaid benefits.

Additionally, Schumer may be reaching out to Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), who announced in late May that he was running in next year's Republican gubernatorial primary in the Yellowhammer State. The Alabama senator has already indicated he's hesitant about voting for the bill due to a section in which states would be required to fund part of the cost of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for the first time in history.

Other Republicans could stand to see clean energy development projects – which were made possible by former President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) — get axed should the current bill become law, which may result in thousands of their constituents losing good-paying jobs. However, if the Senate even changes one word of the legislation, it would need to be reconsidered in the House of Representatives. And many House Republicans have already said they wouldn't back the bill if it included any IRA-funded clean energy subsidies or if it failed to cut enough from Medicaid and SNAP.

T"here’s such a vulnerability — the impacts are so deep and devastating — and that’s one of the reasons I’m pushing it," Schumer said of the IRA subsidies.

Click here to read Punchbowl's full report.

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'We are less safe': Former DHS official blasts Trump's 'racist policies' on MSNBC

President Donald Trump's promise to make American communities safer by deploying Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to round up and detain immigrants may be doing the opposite, according to one former ICE leader.

During a Monday segment on MSNBC's "Deadline: White House," Jason Houser – who served as ICE's chief of staff during former President Joe Biden's administration — said Trump's "racist policies" are only making public safety worse. Houser expanded on a New York Times op-ed he wrote in April, in which he said that ICE under the second Trump administration was "burning thousands of federal law enforcement hours on operations that privilege political objectives over public safety."

"We have a situation here where the White House is choosing quotas of arrests of non-criminal migrants — sometimes grandmothers, vulnerable populations, children — those that can't even possibly be removed by ICE," he said. "They're prioritizing those arrests over carrying out not only ICE operations that protect us from national security and public safety threats, but ... dismantling investigations, and the joint terrorism task forces, and drug interdiction agencies and collaboration of law enforcement from state and local law enforcement with the federal agencies. We are less safe when we have these sort of activities.

Houser also expressed alarm at the news that the Trump administration was deploying 700 U.S. Marines to Los Angeles to quell the protests, saying it "raises so many questions of how they'll be able to carry that out in collaboration with ICE" along with determining rules of engagement and command structure. He also questioned whether the Marines had been properly trained in crowd control and doubted that they could be trusted to de-escalate tensions between police and protesters.

"These are extremely dangerous times. And clearly the individuals in the White House do not take these issues seriously," he said. "ICE has an important national security mission. There are people that want to take advantage of our immigration system. Our immigration system is broken. But this White House is continuously choosing divisiveness over the safety of migrants, but also the safety of ICE officers."

In response to Houser's comments, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace pointed out that 87% of Americans polled by the New York Times and Siena College were in support of deporting "adjudicated violent criminals." However, she then observed that the level of support drops significantly to less than 15% when respondents are asked whether they support deporting people who have no criminal records, who are married to Americans and who have children in the United States. Houser countered that he believed the Trump administration was hoping to inflame tensions in order to justify a harsh response.

"You can clearly foresee how this administration has has wanted to get to this point," Houser said. "They've talked about this for months. they wanted to use the military as the tip of the spear to carry out these non-criminal arrests. You're going to see potentially the military used for detention, support services, security services ... and that is just going to amplify the divisiveness. It is not making us more safe."

Watch the segment below, or by clicking this link.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

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Tom Cotton gives up the game, saying he hopes LA protests fuel support for 'Big Beautiful Bill'

The 1,037-page Republican budget bill appears to be on life support in the U.S. Senate after multiple Senate Republicans have spoken out against it. But one Republican senator thinks the ongoing protests in Los Angeles could help resuscitate it.

Axios reported Monday that Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who is chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, believes the L.A. protests may have breathed new life into the GOP's efforts to revive H.R. 1 (also known as "The One Big Beautiful Bill Act"). The nation's second-largest city has seen massive demonstrations over the weekend in response to several Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, and Cotton believes the legislation's provisions regarding immigration could help win over GOP holdouts.

"This gives us an opportunity to remind Americans how extreme the Democratic party is on immigration," Cotton wrote in an email to GOP communications staffers. "Americans have a choice between Republicans' law & order vs. the Democrats' car-burning, illegal alien rioters."

"So far, every Senate Democrat who has spoken out has backed the rioters," the email continued.

Cotton's belief that the protests are an "opportunity" to shift the conversation about the budget bill from being about costly tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy to one about increased immigration enforcement. The Arkansas Republican is also hoping to cast California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) as the chief antagonist of the L.A. protests.

"What kind of governor blames police officers and the National Guard for 'inciting' this violence," Cotton tweeted.

The Senate Republican Conference is still attempting to unite all of its members in support of H.R. 1 despite loud criticism from Trump-supporting senators like Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.). Punchbowl News reported Monday that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has identified as many as 16 senators whose states could be negatively impacted by the policies in the bill, namely its cuts to Medicaid funding by hundreds of billions of dollars.

Click here to read Axios' full report.

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Revealed: Trump's 'Big Bill' will actually make the military 'weaker'

While President Donald Trump has spoken often about enhancing "military excellence and readiness," his first major domestic policy bill may actually undermine the U.S. military, according to one expert.

As part of a collection of analyses on H.R. 1 ("The One Big Beautiful Bill Act"), the New York Times on Monday published a breakdown of the legislation's impact on the Pentagon by Kori Schake, who is the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Schake pointed out that despite a $150 billion increase in military spending and the administration boasting that this would mark the first trillion-dollar defense budget in history, the bill may actually end up harming military readiness in the long run.

[T]he $150 billion in the measure is a one-time increase rather than a permanent change and one that the submitted budget wouldn’t sustain," Schake explained. "... When you strip away the financial gimmicks, Mr. Trump’s claimed trillion-dollar defense budget would actually be a $31.5 billion reduction from the last one under President Joe Biden. That’s roughly the annual cost of 10 Army brigades."

"'Weaker than Biden' is a charge that neither Republicans in Congress nor the American people should countenance," she continued. "The Defense Department is severely underfunded, having lost $50 billion to $70 billion in buying power in just the past two years because of Congress’s failure to pass budgets on time."

Schake noted that Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) has called for military spending to constitute roughly 5% of the United States' GDP each year, which Schake calculated to come out to approximately $353 billion more per year. The AEI scholar also observed that this is the same metric Trump has arbitrarily set for NATO member nations.

"To repair that damage and to confront the convergence of challenges that China, Russia, North Korea and Iran now pose, the U.S. military needs lasting investment," she wrote. "Mr. Trump has demanded NATO allies meet the 5 percent military spending standard to merit continued U.S. support. His administration should meet that standard itself."

Other analyses of the bill the Times included break down how the legislation would harm healthcare affordability by cutting Medicaid by more than $600 billion, in addition to weakening the U.S. healthcare system overall. Other writers called attention to language stripping the courts of the ability to hold Trump administration officials in contempt, and examined provisions that would expand the carceral state to detain more immigrants across the country.

Click here to read the Times' full article (subscription required).

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Pastor explains how 'powerful' Pope Leo 'directly threatens' fearful MAGA Christians

The ascendancy of Cardinal Robert Prevost — now Pope Leo XIV – to become the global head of the Catholic Church is an inherent threat to the worldview of the American religious right, according to one Christian pastor.

In a recent essay for Religion News Service (RNS), the Rev. Jennifer Butler — who is the senior pastor at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Corvallis, Oregon — argued that the far right is railing against Leo XIV specifically because of the dilemma he presents to their belief system. Butler wrote that the MAGA faithful is not opposed to the new pontiff because he's a liberal like his predecessor Pope Francis, but because he's a traditional conservative Catholic who nonetheless holds radically different views than Christian nationalists.

"Leo has become a MAGA flashpoint not due to any dramatic break from Catholic doctrine, but because his worldview directly threatens the Christian nationalist engine behind the rising authoritarianism of our time," Butler wrote. "He threatens to become a transnational counterweight to a rapidly expanding authoritarian religious network."

Not long after Prevost was elected to the papacy, Vice President JD Vance traveled to the Holy See to meet the first American pope in history. But Butler pointed out that Leo XIV and Vance are in direct contradiction with one another when it comes to Christian nationalism. While Vance has argued that Americans should put their country first before the rest of the world, Leo XIV — who was a longtime priest in Peru — has said that "Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others."

"This was no minor theological dustup over the proper 'order of love' Christians should obey," Butler observed. "It was a direct rebuttal to the ideological foundation of Christian nationalism: that faith should serve state nativist power and preserve national sovereignty at the expense of human rights."

The United Church of Christ pastor called the Christian right a "transnational" movement that has also found footing in authoritarian regimes like Vladimir Putin's Russia and Viktor Orbán's Hungary. And she characterized its goal as one in which its proponents impose a "rigid moral order" on the rest of the world that serves to "polarize the public and erode democratic institutions." However, she said Pope Leo XIV's tenure could be one in which the Christian right's use of religion "to justify authoritarian consolidation and frame dissent as sacrilege" is upended.

"The election of Leo XIV signals that not all global religious institutions are capitulating," she wrote. "... MAGA influencers understand that when Leo speaks, people listen — not just Catholics, but others looking for spiritual leadership grounded in clarity. His critics know how powerful that can be."

Click here to read Butler's full essay in RNS.

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'Big cringe moment': How Trump's meetings with world leaders are a 'queasy experience'

During his second term, President Donald Trump has frequently made headlines for his showy Oval Office meetings with world leaders. One veteran entertainment journalist is now pointing out something they all have in common.

In a Sunday essay for the New York Times, Lisa Schwarzbaum — who was a longtime film critic for Entertainment Weekly — observed that many Americans have likened Trump's meetings with foreign heads of state to reality TV. But she cautioned that world leaders may end up avoiding the White House altogether to avoid being caught up in the media spectacle that typically ensues after each meeting.

"For many of us, watching these affairs offers the same queasy experience as the most car-crash-reminiscent reality shows, but with geopolitical consequences," Schwarzbaum wrote. "We brace ourselves for the inevitable moments of skirmish and bluster, of braying rudeness and the possible surprise reveal straight out of 'Punk’d' or 'Jerry Springer.' We grimace in preparation for the next big cringe moment before the show goes to commercial."

But the entertainment writer posited that rather than reality TV, Trump's Oval Office summits with various heads of state may be better characterized as nature documentaries narrated by Sir David Attenborough. She pointed to Trump's most recent meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz as one example.

"The Trump-Merz meeting was certainly no reality TV show brouhaha — Mr. Merz was too artful for that," she wrote. "Instead, it played out like an encounter between a cool, intelligent outsider, sizing up the powers and weaknesses of a formidable fellow mammal who must see himself as an apex predator."

"Merz seemed to heed well the famous words of his predecessor, Angela Merkel, who said of meeting with Mr. Trump during his first term, 'Every meeting is a competition.' Mr. Merz handled it well," Schwarzbaum continued. "In Sir David’s imagined words: Observe that Mr. Merz’s color palette is muted, unthreatening. Observe that he lets his host talk and talk and talk and talk — talk himself into a feces-flinging contest with Mr. Musk, in fact — while Mr. Merz saves his words for things that matter."

According to Schwarzbaum, what separated the Merz meeting from more contentious Oval Office visits by other leaders — like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa — was that he simply refused to engage in "furious, bruising bouts of warfare" with Trump and handled the encounter with "cool cunning." And she noted that other world leaders could follow Merz's example as he "outflank[ed] the presumptive alpha mammal."

Read Schwarzbaum's full op-ed in the Timesby clicking here (subscription required).

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'Anti-American': WH press sec blasted over demand to punish reporter who criticized Trump

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is now being raked over the coals in response to her call for ABC to censor a journalist who criticized President Donald Trump and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.

In a Sunday tweet, Keavitt posted a screenshot of a now-deleted post by ABC News' Terry Moran — who interviewed Trump earlier this year — and called on his employer to punish him over his "unhinged and unacceptable" critique of the administration. Moran opined in the post that Miller was not "the brains behind Trumpism" but a "world-class hater" whose "bile" is his "spiritual nourishment." He then said that Trump was also a "world-class hater" whose own "spiritual nourishment" was "his own glorification."

"We have reached out to @ABC to inquire about how they plan to hold Terry accountable," Leavitt tweeted, while mentioning the network's official handle on X.

Leavitt's tweet was quickly met with widespread condemnation, prompting Daily Beast columnist Julia Davis to ask: "What happened to the First Amendment?" Cybersecurity expert Robert Graham opined that Leavitt's call for ABC to "censor" Moran reflected that Trump's second term was "not the 'free speech presidency,' but quite the opposite." And Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) First Amendment litigator J.T. Morris observed that criticizing people in power is "as American as apple pie – and vital for freedom."

"That's why the First Amendment protects it from thin-skinned officials who would shut it down," he added. "Hopefully, ABC responds with 'get bent.'"

"[Moran] shouldn't have taken the post down," tweeted Never Trump conservative attorney George Conway. "He's a reporter. And he was reporting facts."

Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann also weighed in, saying that Trump and Miller were "everything Moran described." Calling Leavitt "anti-democracy" and "anti-American," Olbermann added that Leavitt "needs to stick to her lane," which he characterized as "covering up the emergence of a dictatorship."

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'Not going to buckle': Republican warns Senate he'll tank Trump's bill over this provision

As the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate mulls changes to President Donald Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," one House Republican is warning his Senate counterparts against tweaking one particular section.

During a Sunday interview with CNN congressional correspondent Manu Raju, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) cautioned Senate Republicans against making any changes to the state and local tax (SALT) deduction he and others negotiated with House Republican leadership. The SALT deduction cap is currently at $10,000, but House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) agreed to raise the cap to $40,000 in order to convince House's SALT caucus to support the legislation.

"This is an issue that not just impacts blue states, it impacts nearly every state in the country," Lawler said. "29 states blew through the $10,000 cap over the last seven years. And so lifting the cap on SALT is critically important. It provides middle-class tax relief. And that's exactly what we did here."

"I've been very clear with leadership all this past week that if the Senate changes the SALT deduction in any way, I will be a no," he continued. "And I'm not going to buckle on that. And I've spoken to my other colleagues, they will be a no as well."

Lawler's remarks come as Senate Republicans have spoken openly about slashing the SALT deduction, which they say is overwhelmingly beneficial to Americans in blue states (which typically have higher state and local tax rates). Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, said last week that senators are likely to nix the SALT deal in the package they intend to send back to the House of Representatives.

"There’s not a single [Republican] senator from New York or New Jersey or California, and so there’s not a strong mood in the Senate Republican caucus right now to do $353 billion for states that basically the other states subsidize," Crapo said on Wednesday.

The House only narrowly passed the massive 1,037-page budget bill by a 215-214 margin in May, and only did so with the help of the SALT caucus, which includes representatives like Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), Young Kim (R-Calif.) and Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), as well as Lawler. Should they withhold their support from a final bill that cuts the SALT deduction, the legislation would likely fail to pass.

Watch the segment below, or by clicking this link.

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'Destroyed their credibility': MAGA turns on Trump officials unable to prove conspiracies

Several senior officials in President Donald Trump's administration are now finding themselves in the crosshairs of Trump's MAGA base, who are upset with their inability to follow through on promises to get to the bottom of unproven conspiracy theories.

According to a Sunday report in the New York Times, Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino have all experienced MAGA's wrath on multiple occasions since they were confirmed to their positions. Bondi was lambasted for giving far-right, pro-Trump activists binders full of material that was teased as new revelations about the late convicted child predator Jeffrey Epstein, only to disappoint them once it was found that there was no new information contained in those binders.

Similarly, Bongino acknowledged that Epstein did indeed take his own life in a prison cell while awaiting trial in 2019 (though a DOJ Office of the Inspector General report issued in 2023 found that there were numerous failures by staff to prevent his death by suicide). This deflated conspiracy theorists who had argued — as Trump himself has insinuated — that Epstein was murdered by someone connected to his client base of rich and powerful people.

As for Patel, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones accused him of "gaslighting" the American public for failing to deliver promised results about the Epstein case during a recent interview with podcaster Joe Rogan. Jones asserted that the FBI director was "committing political suicide" by maintaining that Epstein alone was responsible for his own death.

The Times reported that the MAGA faithful have been more vocal in their condemnations of Bondi, Bongino and Patel in response to their handling of the Epstein case. Trump supporter Suzzanne Monk – who has repeatedly bemoaned the treatment of participants in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol — said that Trump's base is divided between "Camp Be Patient" and "Camp Demand Results," and that she is firmly on the side of the latter.

Patel and Bongino have since announced new investigations into three high-profile cases: The discovery of cocaine at the White House in 2023, the leaking of the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization Supreme Court opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade and the discovery of pipe bombs left outside of the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee buildings on January 6. But former Newsmax White House correspondent Emerald Robinson criticized those new investigations as a distraction.

"Dan Bongino & Kash Patel know they destroyed their credibility by claiming that ‘Jeffrey Epstein killed himself’ so now they’re trying to offer up three investigations you don’t care about to misdirect you from the Epstein files you do care about," Robinson wrote. "Sad!"

Click here to read the Times' full report (subscription required).

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'Don't have a violin small enough': Critics mock DOGE staff worried about losing jobs

Since President Donald Trump and Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk began their public feud, staffers at Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are now wondering whether they themselves will still have jobs in the Trump administration.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that DOGE staffers across multiple federal agencies — whose jobs have mostly consisted of singling out probationary federal workers for mass layoffs — are now in fear of losing their own employment given their ties to Musk. According to the Journal, the White House is defending DOGE's mass firings, though one former staffer who previously worked for Musk's quasi-agency expressed fear that DOGE itself may soon crumble.

"I worry with Elon gone, no one will join, and it will just slowly fade away," software engineer Sahil Lavinigia told the Journal, adding that his work "felt like pushing a boulder up a mountain."

After the Trump-Musk spat reached a fever pitch on Thursday — with Musk calling on Congress to "KILL the BILL" (in reference to the massive budget bill currently being debated in the Senate) — DOGE staffers were reportedly texting each other frantically wondering whether their jobs would be next on the chopping block. That news prompted Amazon Web Services senior software development engineer Alex Wood to post to Bluesky: "It’s a shame that they cut research funding because even with recent advances we still don’t have a violin small enough for this."

"As a #firedfed, I wish a very sincere F--- You to all the worried DOGE staff, and warm Hope The Door Slams Your D--- Off On The Way Out," environmental toxicologist and former federal employee J.C. Rallo wrote on the platform.

Users of Musk's X social media platform also found joy in the thought of Musk's disciples within the federal government fretting about losing their jobs. Massachusetts legislative aide Rob Cohen acknowledged the "potentially incredible irony" of people who fired government workers en masse now being the ones worried about their own potential firings. Former NFL executive Upton Bell tweeted that he hoped "those leeches are fired" in response to the Journal's report. Puck News' Julia Ioffe wondered: "When has the revolution ever not eaten its own?"

"Alex, I'll take people who I hope have terrible lives for $100," author Angel Luis Colón wrote on Bluesky.

Click here to read the Journal's report in its entirety (subscription required).

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Republican rep. warns the GOP is following Trump 'off a cliff' — and he won't go with them

One moderate Republican member of the House of Representatives is arguing that the GOP needs to stake out its own identity outside of being a rubber stamp for President Donald Trump.

In a recent interview with the New York Times, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) defended his more frequent public opposition to Trump's agenda as simply "being on the right side" of history. A retired brigadier general in the Air Force, Bacon is likely to decide soon whether to run for a sixth term in Congress or retire when his current term expires.

"I’d like to fight for the soul of our party," Bacon told the Times. "I don’t want to be the guy who follows the flute player off the cliff. I think that’s what’s going on right now."

Bacon has a mixed record of backing GOP priorities during Trump's second term. While he voted in favor of the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" that cuts Medicaid by hundreds of billions of dollars while extending tax cuts that primarily benefit the richest Americans, the Nebraska Republican has opposed the bill renaming the Gulf of Mexico to Trump's preferred name for the body of water. And he's publicly called on Trump to fire Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for sharing highly sensitive information on an unsecured text messaging app. And he's also criticized the administration for preventing Afghans who helped U.S. forces in its war with Taliban, saying it was not a "morally right decision."

While some Republicans like former Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinziner (R-Ill.) have sacrificed their political careers to vociferously oppose Trump, Bacon said he's choosing a slightly different route. He noted that he still supports some of Trump's policies, and that he prefers "fixing things" to "voting no."

“You can’t be anti-everything,” Bacon said. “I like what the president has done on the border, so I have no problem with that.”

According to the Times, House Republican leadership has repeatedly asked Bacon to — as he put it — "stop kicking President Trump in the nuts." The Omaha-area representative said he'll "only do it when I think it's needed."

Click here to read the Times' full report (subscription required).

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'Like a king': China brutally mocks Trump in new opera

A new stage production recently debuted in China that skewers President Donald Trump and his relationships with various world leaders.

NBC News reported Sunday that the Cantonese opera "Trump, the Twins President," just concluded a three-day run in Hong Kong's Xiqu Centre, with each showing playing to a sold-out audience. While the opera parodies multiple world leaders, the star is Trump, who is played by actor Lung Koon-tin in a garish blond wig and oversized eyebrows.

Playwright Li Kui-ming initially wrote the show in 2019, during Trump's first administration, but the newest version is updated with multiple references to Trump's second term. This includes the U.S. president referring to Canada as "the 51st state," his administration's attacks on Harvard University and even his very recent public dispute with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

The opera begins with an actor portraying Trump's eldest daughter, Ivanka, having a dream in which her father has a twin brother in China named Chuan Pu (which roughly translates to "Trump" in Chinese). The show begins by chronicling the United States' initial foray with China in the 1970s, in which then-President Richard Nixon met with Chinese Premier Zhao Enlai — with a young Chuan Pu becoming disillusioned with China and moving to the U.S.

Notably, the opera also dramatizes Trump's 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Prior to the rally, the Ivanka character asked Chuan Pu to stand in for her father, who had been abducted by Martian aliens. Chuan Pu does not survive the assassination attempt, which sets off other events throughout the production. The show ends with Trump getting into a fist fight with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, with the two taking turns knocking each other down.

Li, who is a former journalist, told NBC he aimed to draw parallels between Trump and former Chinese leader Mao Zedong, as they both sought to shape the world around them "like a king." However, he insisted that Trump would "love my drama," and emphasized that the show's plot is "only a dream" and that it's not meant to be taken "very seriously."

"Trump, the Twins President" debuted as the United States prepares to enter into a new round of trade negotiations with Chinese officials in hopes of ending Trump's trade war with the Asian superpower. Trump's tariffs on the United States' top trade partner has effectively paralyzed commerce between the two nations, and the dearth of Chinese imports entering the U.S. may lead to stores having rows of empty shelves this summer.

Click here to read NBC's full report.

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'We knew': Analyst who predicted worst Trump abuses says they're 'all coming to pass'

One Washington Post columnist predicted in 2024 that should he win election to a second term, Trump would launch an unprecedented attack on his political opponents and democracy itself. Now, he's chastising Americans for not doing more when they had the chance.

In a Friday essay, the Post's Colbert I. King wrote that "Trump's own record, his musings on the campaign trail and the words of his inner circle" should have been all Americans needed in order to forecast everything the 47th president of the United States would do during his first months back in the White House. King recalled his July 3, 2024 column, in which he warned that a term-limited Trump would run roughshod on the Constitution with little to no interference from the other two branches of government.

"Prosecutions will warp into persecutions. Political foes, real and imagined, in the press and online and in the politicians’ suites, will be subjected to Trump’s whims and power," he wrote last July. "Pardons and clemency will rain down like manna on Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionists. Russian President Vladimir Putin will once again have a friend in the White House and an ally against NATO and the West. Immigrants and people from Muslim-majority countries will face an aggressively hostile federal government. Civil rights and LGBTQ+ progress will grind to a halt. The economy will function on behalf of the haves, to the detriment of the have-nots and the left-out."

"I take no pleasure in recalling those thoughts," King wrote in his latest column. "In fact, they are painful, because it’s all coming to pass."

King then went point-by-point to remind readers that Trump has indeed pardoned January 6 insurrectionists, used the power of the presidency to pursue his political enemies, taken a friendly position with Vladimir Putin in the midst of the Ukraine war, imposed yet another travel ban from predominantly Black, Brown and Muslim countries, threatened LGBTQ+ rights across the country and is actively pushing for legislation that would gut safety net programs lower-income Americans rely on to extend tax cuts that are overwhelmingly skewed in favor of the rich. The Post columnist also didn't mince words for Democrats, calling them "congenitally disorganized" in the face of an administration they had plenty of time to prepare for and who so far remain powerless to stop.

"The problem is, we knew all that last year," King wrote. "And we see it, obediently endorsed and implemented by his political sycophants, at work today."

"Are people still not paying attention?" He added.

Click here to read King's latest column in full (subscription required).

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'Time to cut that off': Newsom suggests withholding federal taxes from Trump admin

California – the largest U.S. state by population and the world's fourth-largest economy by itself — is the largest payer of federal taxes of all the states. Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom is now entertaining the idea of depriving President Donald Trump's administration of that revenue.

Politico reported Friday that Newsom tweeted the suggestion in response to Trump floating the idea of terminating all federal. grants to California's state universities. The two-term Democrat pointed out that his state pays roughly $83 billion more in federal taxes than it gets back, according to a Rockefeller Institute analysis.

"Californians pay the bills for the federal government," Newsom said. "Maybe it’s time to cut that off."

Should Newsom follow through on that threat, it would cut off approximately 12.3% of the $4.67 trillion federal tax revenue the federal government received in 2023, according to data from the nonprofit USAFacts (founded by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer). That means the Golden State alone put more than $574 billion in federal coffers that year.

When asked to comment on Newsom's threat, White House spokesperson Kush Desai would only say the administration "is committed to ending this nightmare and restoring the California Dream."

"“No final decisions, however, on any potential future action by the Administration have been made, and any discussion suggesting otherwise should be considered pure speculation," Desai said.

To date, no state has ever withheld taxes from the federal government, aside from the four years in which the Confederate States of America seceded from the union during the Civil War. The logistics of doing so would likely require an individual state passing legislation diverting all federal taxes withheld in the payroll process to state coffers instead of the IRS, and such a law would almost certainly be challenged in court by the administration on 16th Amendment grounds.

Click here to read Politico's report in full.

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Nicolle Wallace reveals 'political stink bomb' Trump may set off with his military parade

President Donald Trump's planned military parade is just a week away, and MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace is pointing out that there's still not much information about whether one particular group of veterans will be featured.

On the Friday episode of her show "Deadline: White House," Wallace interviewed Iraq War veteran Paul Rieckhoff about the parade, who viewed the entire concept as "an attack on our values" and "un-American." He pointed out that military parades are typically seen in totalitarian countries like North Korea, and opined that Trump was inappropriately making U.S. troops take part in a "political stunt."

"He's continuing to thrust our veterans and our military into the most divisive issues of our time. Whether it's the parade, it's the border, it's gay rights," he said. "But there are actually troops involved. So 19 and 20 year-olds are going to have to march in this thing on his birthday, you know, next week in Washington. and I think they're going to have a problem with how it feels in their hearts. It's not what they signed up for. And that's what I think should be most outrageous to all Americans."

Wallace then brought up the fact that during Trump's first term, when he first floated the concept of a military parade after visiting France for Bastille Day festivities, he made sure to tell aides that he didn't want to include disabled veterans in a potential parade. And she wondered if the president's mind had changed since his first presidency, calling it "a big political stink bomb for Donald Trump."

"It came out that he didn't want any wounded veterans marching with him. He didn't want any amputees or anyone who had been wounded in service of their country. And that is the vein of reporting that the Atlantic pursued that ultimately culminates in, 'suckers and losers,'" Wallace said, underscoring to viewers that the president reportedly said "the only people that die for their country are suckers and losers."

"It continues to be a political prop that he wants to use," Rieckhoff said. "I mean, that's how he uses [Pete] Hegseth. That's how he uses Tulsi Gabbard. It's how he uses a lot of people in uniform. And when they push back like [Mark] Milley did, he goes in in a different direction."

Trump's military parade will take place on June 14 on Constitution Avenue in Washington D.C., and is estimated to cost as much as $40 million. Some Senate Republicans have reportedly balked at the cost, with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) saying he "won't go" to the parade out of protest for the money spent on the event.

Watch the segment below, or by clicking this link.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

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13 House Republicans beg Senate to kill provision in Trump's bill — despite voting for it

Scrutiny of the massive 1,037-page "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" is now intensifying, with more than a dozen House Republicans who voted for its passage now urging their counterparts in the Senate to strip specific language from the legislation.

NBC News' Sahil Kapur reported Friday that 13 Republicans who voted for the bill in May have sent a letter to Senate Republican leadership asking them to remove a provision in the legislation pertaining to clean energy projects in their districts. The letter, which was chiefly written by Reps. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), said signatories were "deeply concerned" about provisions that would "abruptly terminate several credits" that had only recently been enacted. Other Republicans that signed the letter include Reps. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), Don Bacon (R-Neb.), Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.), Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.), Gabe Evans (R-Colo.), Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), Thomas Kean (R-N.J.), Young Kim (R-Calif.), Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), Michael Lawler (R-N.Y.) and David Valadao (R-Calif.)

Kiggans' letter specifically complained about "highly restrictive" language preventing projects from moving forward due to concern about companies making clean energy investments in the U.S. having a supply chain that involves China. She also said the phasing out of certain clean energy credits would cause "significant disruption to projects under development."

The group of Republicans behind the letter also asked senators to address the bill's language halting the transferability of energy tax credits, saying that it "ensures affordable electricity for American families and provides certainty for developers." The letter pointed to ongoing projects in the "nuclear, manufacturing, biofuels and critical minerals" fields that signatories hoped could continue.

"Our position has always been that the energy tax code should be modernized in a way that promotes fiscal responsibility and business certainty," the letter read. "Fully realizing that balance requires improvements to the House-passed version of H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act."

Those Republicans may have a difficult road ahead should the bill pass the Senate and make it back to their own chamber for review. According to Kapur, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who is a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, has said that if any clean energy credits from former President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act are put back into the bill, he would oppose it.

"Those God-forsaken subsidies are killing our energy, killing our grid, making us weaker, destroying our landscape, undermining our freedom. I'm not going to have it," Roy said. "So you do what you want to do in the Senate, House of Lords, have your fun. But if you mess up the Inflation Reduction Act, Green New Scam subsidies, I ain't voting for that bill."

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