The Right Wing

There is ultimately one factor that 'decides elections,' and according to a new op-ed from The Hill, the GOP's other wins cannot save it from the ground it is losing when it comes to that factor, as Democrats prevail "where it matters most."

Michael Kapp is a veteran member of the Democratic National Committee, currently serving on its Rules and Bylaws Committee. On Wednesday, he published a piece for The Hill, tackling the emerging narrative about Republicans' massive fundraising hauls equating to a secret political weapon and a troublesome weakness for Democrats. This, he argued, ignores the key realities of "what is actually happening on the ground."

"Political media have developed a bad habit of confusing financial reporting with political strength," Kapp wrote. "Fundraising totals, cash-on-hand figures, and quarterly comparisons are useful data points, but they are increasingly being treated as a proxy for overall party performance. Today, they are being used to construct a narrative of Democratic weakness that does not reflect what is actually happening on the ground."

Kapp tackled the emerging notion that the DNC is facing a fundraising "crisis" due to the gap that currently exists between it and the RNC, arguing that these claims ignore some key context about Trump's fundraising system.

"One of the most persistent misconceptions in media coverage is that the DNC is facing a fundraising crisis or operating from a position of financial weakness. That is not accurate," Kapp explained. "In 2025, the Republican National Committee raised about 16 percent more than the DNC. This gap is often presented as evidence of structural weakness, but it is frequently reported without the broader political context in which it occurs."

He added: "Republicans currently control the White House. They have an administration openly operating with a corrupt kind of transactional politics where major donors fear their licenses, mergers and regulatory approvals may suffer if they don’t stay on President Trump’s good side. Democrats do not have that leverage, nor would we want to operate that way."

Kapp further argued that a true crisis of fundraising might lead to a situation in which Democrats are underperforming in elections. In fact, he countered, they are overperforming, either winning outright or coming much closer to Republicans in unexpected areas, giving the party a real edge in concrete electoral success.

"In Iowa, Democrats broke the Republican legislative supermajority and elected multiple firsts in state legislative history," Kapp detailed. "In Nebraska, Democrats flipped the Omaha mayor’s office after nearly two decades. In Mississippi, Democrats broke the Republican supermajority in the state Senate. In Texas, Democrats achieved a stunning 31-point swing in a district Trump had won comfortably just a year earlier. And in Florida, Democrats flipped the House District that includes Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago. These are not symbolic victories. They are measurable electoral outcomes tied directly to Martin’s and the DNC’s investments in staffing, recruitment, organizing and long-term state party capacity."

He concluded: "At its core, this is not a debate about whether Democrats should raise more or spend less. It is a debate about whether Democratic power must be rebuilt from scratch every cycle, or whether the party finally invests in the infrastructure needed to win consistently over time. And on that question, constant Democratic overperformance in elections speaks for itself. You can measure Democratic success in fundraising or you can measure it in wins, but only one of those decides elections. "

During an early May appearance on Fox News, Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche vigorously defended a grand jury indictment of former FBI Director James Comey — who, Blanche claims, threatened to kill President Donald Trump when he posted, on Instagram, a photo of seashells formed in a way that read "8647." Trump is the 47th president of the United States, and "86" means to ditch or get rid of. Many legal experts are arguing that the case has no merit, as "86" doesn't necessarily have a violent connotation — and "8647" could easily be interpreted to mean "impeach Trump," "ditch Trump" or "remove Trump from office" without encouraging any type of violence against him.

One of those Blanche critics is Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor for DOJ who is now a University of Michigan law professor and frequent legal analyst for MS NOW (formerly MSNBC).

In an op-ed published by Bloomberg News on May 6, McQuade argues that Blanche is violating longstanding DOJ rules and policies with his actions against Comey and other Trump foes.

"Responding to what Fox News described as 'widespread criticism' that the indictment (of Comey) fails to meet the legal standard of a 'true threat,'" McQuade explains, "Blanche disclosed some previously unknown information. 'This is not about a single Instagram post,' he said, adding that intent is proved with 'witnesses,' 'documents' and 'materials.' 'This is about a body of evidence that the grand jury collected over the series of about 11 months,' Blanche said."

The former DOJ prosecutor continues, "But the indictment against Comey only references the post and no other evidence. And sharing evidence beyond the four corners of an indictment violates the DOJ's policy. These 'extrajudicial' disclosures can taint the potential jury pool and thus, impede a defendant's due process rights to a fair trial. They also put the indictment at risk of dismissal by the judge. Blanche's willingness to take that chance provides further evidence that this DOJ is more about political messaging than about justice."

Blanche isn't the only Trump appointee McQuade criticizes in her Bloomberg op-ed. She also calls out former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, now a U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia — and argues that her actions against U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell violate traditional DOJ standards and policies.

"Even investigations that have not resulted in charges are being litigated in the media, contrary to DOJ norms," McQuade laments. "Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia, has made it known that her office holds leverage over Powell with its on-again, off-again criminal investigation into the finances of the central bank's new headquarters. Her statements fly in the face of DOJ policy to neither confirm nor deny even the existence of an investigation. Then, when Trump was pressuring Powell to lower interest rates, Pirro issued grand jury subpoenas, which a judge quashed as baseless. She announced the investigation was over when Trump sought Senate confirmation of Powell's successor, Kevin Warsh."

McQuade continues, "Once the Senate Banking Committee advanced the nomination, however, Pirro said that the probe could resume at any time…. In a famed 1940 speech at the Justice Department's Great Hall, then-Attorney General Robert Jackson spoke of 'the spirit of fair play and decency that should animate the federal prosecutor.' In Trump's DOJ, that spirit is dead."

Georgia is among the swing states that GOP and Democratic strategists will be paying close attention to in the 2026 midterms. Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff is up for reelection, and Republicans are hoping to unseat him. Meanwhile, conservative Republican Gov. Brian Kemp is term-limited, and GOP strategists are hoping Georgia doesn't end up with a Democratic governor.

But according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC) reporter Patricia Murphy, President Donald Trump is making life difficult for fellow Republicans in the Peach State.

"On any given day," Murphy explains, "Georgia's politics still feel a little more red than blue. A Democrat has not won a governor's race since 1998, and Republicans have dominated statewide offices for more than two decades. Most counties outside of metro areas are Republican top-to-bottom, too, even in positions that are otherwise nonpartisan."

Trump continues to claim, without evidence, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him in Georgia. However, Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a conservative Republican, maintain that Joe Biden won the Peach State fair and square that year.

On May 5, NBC News reported that the Trump-era U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is "seeking the names and contact information of election workers in Fulton County, Georgia, who worked during the 2020 presidential election, according to legal filings." And a DOJ subpoena, according to NBC News, "marks an expanded effort by the Justice Department to investigate the 2020 election, which President Donald Trump has continued to focus on since he lost there."

But some traditional conservatives in Georgia believe that Trump's obsession with 2020 isn't helpful.

According to Murphy, Trump is making Georgia's statewide races harder for Republicans than they have to be.

Murphy reports, "Apart from the uphill race to defeat Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, the 2026 elections still seem like Republicans' to lose. But President Donald Trump isn't making it easy."

Noting a recent AJC poll in a May 6 post on X, Murphy wrote, "One last takeaway from the @ajc 's latest poll--Republicans are trying to hold on to power in Georgia. Donald Trump isn't helping."

It is an issue that can prove insurmountable for a presidential campaign, and, in fact, it was credited with sinking one of the most high-profile candidates in recent memory: unshakeable proximity to a majorly unpopular president. Now, according to a new Politico report, it appears likely to sink MAGA's heir apparent as well.

For all the commendable things Kamala Harris was able to do with her abbreviated and unprecedented 2024 campaign, experts and pundits now largely agree that she just could not get past being the vice president for Joe Biden, a president who was disliked by a vast swath of the electorate. In fact, some still point to an appearance on The View in which she failed to separate herself from her boss enough as a huge misstep for her campaign. Even without that, however, it might have been impossible for her to convince voters that she would be different from Biden, given her work in his administration.

Looking ahead, these same headwinds already seem to be buffeting Vice President JD Vance, who, despite being remarkably unpopular, is still considered the favorite for the 2028 GOP presidential nomination, making him also the de facto heir to President Donald Trump's MAGA throne.

That throne is hardly as stable as it once seemed, however, as Trump continues to reach new lows in voter approval, with a Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll published over the weekend finding that 65 percent of Americans disapprove of his handling of the economy and 76 percent disapprove of Trump’s handling of cost of living issues, two things that are dominating voter concerns heading into the midterms and 2028. Efforts by Trump and Vance to blame everything on Biden are only getting them so far, as the same poll found that 45 percent of Americans feel Trump bears some responsibility for the dire state of the economy.

"Vance’s fate is unavoidably linked to President Donald Trump’s," Politico's Tuesday report explained. "He’ll either carry the mantle of Trump’s accomplishments all the way into his own term in the White House — or be dragged down by Trump’s dismal approval ratings, which have spiraled amid an unpopular war in Iran and voters’ economic pessimism."

The Vice President made his first stop in the key presidential primary state of Iowa on Tuesday, appearing at a campaign rally for Republican Rep. Zach Nunn, who is considered to be in a battleground district. While he notably avoided any talk of 2028, the specter of Trump's agenda clouded the proceedings nevertheless.

"He credited the president repeatedly for tariffs, tax cuts and agriculture industry aid," the report added. "But his association with Trump’s agenda presents a high-risk, high-reward proposition that could make or break his political future, operatives and rallygoers said."

“That’s the risk of being part of an administration,” Iowa GOP strategist David Kochel said. “This is the Kamala Harris problem.”

This proximity issue is likely to confront many of the other names considered to be at the top of the 2028 list for the GOP, given that they are also currently working in the Trump administration. Along with Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is said to be gaining momentum within the party, with some whispers suggesting that he is preparing to exit the role soon to focus on his 2028 campaign, and to get as much distance as possible from Trump's flailing presidency.

At one point, following her turbulent exit from Fox News, Megyn Kelly attempted to fashion herself as a mainstream-friendly figure, openly critical of President Donald Trump and ready to move past politics altogether.

Fast-forward to the present, however, and she has again embraced "all standard fare for a right-wing provocateur in 2026," according to an extensive new breakdown from Slate, often praising Trump's agenda and hailing him as a "protector of women," where once she feuded with him over his overt sexist impulses. This transition, writer Christina Cauterucci argued, tells a "dark story" about the "cycle of rot" underpinning the modern Republican Party, and offers a glimpse at how much worse it might get.

"The story of Megyn Kelly isn’t just about a once promising broadcast star who chose radical partisanship over journalism," Cauterucci wrote. "It’s the story of how two American institutions, the Republican Party and the news industry, have warped and withered over the span of the last decade. Trace Kelly’s transformation, and you’ll see a new social order emerge. In a self-sustaining cycle of rot that bodes nothing positive for American democracy, certain sects of the MAGA movement reward their bards for every step they take down the rabbit hole of bigotry and truth denial. The shape of Kelly’s resurrection holds clues about how much deeper it could go."

Prior to Trump's emergence on the GOP political scene, Kelly had the "notable if not breathtaking accomplishment" of being one of the "saner, smarter" voices at Fox News, despite still espousing "all manner of odious far-right views and [seeming] fixated on the notion that the real racism was against white people." It was a temperament that perhaps contributed to her willingness to go after candidate Trump for his boorish behavior.

Leaving Fox amid this conflict with the new GOP standard-bearer and amid a reckoning at the media giant over sexual harassment, many observers thought Kelly "had the potential to thrive outside the right-wing bullpen," setting her up for success in a post-Trump world where "media outlets were looking to burnish their conservative bona fides. She ultimately landed a plum gig at NBC, including a slot on Today, but flamed out after less than two years, after a scandal in which she argued the blackface Halloween costumes were not racist, following a meager tenure at the network where it "became clear that [she] was less a journalistic powerhouse than a glutton for controversy."

Now, she has made the lucrative transition to the world of podcasts, YouTube and radio shows, which has seen her embrace increasingly more extreme rhetoric in order to stand out.

"Today, in the podcasting world, Kelly is encountering a different incentive structure," Cauterucci explained. "To be taken seriously and stand out in a crowded field, blistering, often unhinged takes are mandatory, and journalistic norms have little relevance. You can probably guess their general thrust. In recent episodes, Kelly has declared that Rachel Maddow is 'completely smug and ignorant.' 'No Kings' protesters are 'morbidly obese' and 'leftist freaks.' Trump never called the Charlottesville neo-Nazis 'very fine people.' (He did!) Michelle Obama... is an ungrateful snob. 'Everything with her reduces to a racial grievance,' Kelly said. 'I’ve had it with this b——h.'"

She continued: "But whether Kelly is motivated by ideology, money, celebrity, or some combination of those, her transformation is a disturbing bellwether of where the GOP and the media are today, and what happens when they collide. Animated by the edgelord paradigm Trump has ushered in, today’s right-wing podcast game is an arms race of sensationalism and spite, a race to the bottom with the bottom dropping ever further out of reach."

When liberals and progressives argue that the ultra-rich have way too much power in U.S. politics, the Supreme Court case they often attack is 2010's Citizens United v. FEC. That hotly debated ruling equated campaign contributions with free speech, drawing strong criticism by then-Rep. Alan Grayson (the Florida Democrat who called it as "the worst Supreme Court decision since the Dred Scott case"), activist Ralph Nader and many others. On the right, conservative Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) said he was "disappointed" by the ruling.

But the New York Times' Danny Hakim, in an article published on May 6, examines a different High Court case that affected the amounts allowed with political campaign contributions — and it came 36 years before Citizens United.

The case was Buckley v. Valeo, decided by the Burger Court in 1976.

"For a brief moment in American history," Hakim recalls, "the rich didn't control politics. Back in 1974, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Congress passed new campaign finance restrictions that would have largely eliminated the ability of wealthy people to buy elections…. David Koch, a wealthy industrialist, was enraged. 'I have the right to spend whatever I choose to promote what I believe,' he later wrote, adding that the law 'makes my blood boil.'"

Hakim adds, "Flash forward to the 2024 presidential campaign. Six of the nation's wealthiest billionaires spent more than $100 million apiece to help get another billionaire, Donald J. Trump, elected president."

According to Hakim, Buckley v. Valeo helped pave the way for Citizens United. The Gerald Ford-era ruling, Hakim notes, "upheld many aspects of the post-Watergate campaign finance law" but "eviscerated other parts of the law, leaving the rich with their own set of rules."

"Later cases, like the better-known Citizens United decision, opened the doors even further," Hakim explains. "But it was Buckley that established the nation's modern, muddled campaign finance system, and Buckley that allowed the Koch brothers to build a right-wing political money machine that rivaled that of the Republican Party itself. The case is as relevant as ever. Since taking office, Mr. Trump has celebrated billionaire donors at a White House dinner and raised unprecedented sums for a lame-duck president."

The "Buckley" in Buckley v. Valeo wasn't the National Review's William F. Buckley, but then-Sen. James L. Buckley (a member of the Conservative Party of New York). And the "Valeo" was Francis R. Valeo (secretary of the U.S. Senate).

University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone argues that Buckley v. Valeo opened a Pandora's box, although the Burger Court justices didn't necessarily realize it at the time.

Stone told the Times, "If those justices had been aware then of what we now face, my guess is that we would have had the opposite result. They weren't imagining the current world."

After returning to the White House on January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump made a point of choosing ultra-MAGA loyalists in order to avoid the heavy turnover of his first presidency. But in 2026, Trump has fired or forced out some of his top officials, including former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and ex-U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. And according to Trump biographer Michael Wolff, Health & Human Services leader Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could be the next one on the chopping block.

Wolff, in an episode of the "Inside Trump's Head" vodcast posted by the Daily Beast on YouTube on May 5, told host Joanna Coles, "(Trump) has staffed the administration with people who everyone — everyone — thinks are jokes. And this is certainly true of RFK Jr., but also, very specifically directed at him because he has become the face of something that is deeply, deeply unpopular — which is the anti-vax position."

RFK Jr.'s disdain for vaccines, according to Wolff, "became something central to MAGA" and "something that much of the media credited with being behind Trump's 2024 victory."

"Well, it turns out, in fact, that the anti-vax position is wildly unpopular — wildly unpopular everywhere," Wolff told Coles. "That whole idea that this was part of a new movement in America is flat-out wrong. So, they are now stuck with RFK Jr. and the anti-vax face. So, what do they do?"

Wolff continued, "Now, what I'm hearing is that they're trying to get rid of him. And they are trying to get him — the way this was put to me — they're trying to get him to go."

The Trump biographer told Coles, however, that Trump and his advisors don't want to flat-out fire RFK Jr., but are hoping he will resign on his own.

"The MAHA (Make American Healthy Again) constituency, they feel, is significant to the Trump base," Wolff told Coles. "So, they want him to go away but not go away mad.... There's only so many enemies in their own base they can afford."

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President Donald Trump is facing one of the biggest tests of his grip on the GOP as he seeks revenge on red-state lawmakers, and according to a new Politico report, he is facing down the very real possibility of a "disaster" that would cement him as a "lame duck" president.

Voters in Indiana are headed to the polls for a series of GOP primaries in state Senate elections this week. While these would ordinarily be quiet, uneventful races, they were injected with a heavy dose of chaos and uncertainty after Trump endorsed new candidates to try to primary eight of the Republican state senators who voted against the gerrymandered House map he demanded in the Hoosier State. It was an upset that threw a wrench into his plot to retain the GOP House majority by corrupt means, which Politico on Tuesday called the "most embarrassing political setback since he returned to the White House."

As a result, roughly $10 million has poured into these primary races, pulling valuable resources from other competitive races to try and sate Trump's desire for revenge.

"Trump’s allies need to win a majority of the eight seats to be able to claim victory, if not sweep them," Politico explained. "Both sides would likely declare victory if they split the seats. If Trump’s side wins three seats or fewer, many will see it as a disaster and a red-state harbinger that Trump’s grip on his party is starting to slip as he heads toward lame-duck status."

According to Indiana Republican strategist Mike O’Brien, Trump is risking a face-plant in this crusade due to the same sort of aggressive intervention that soured state lawmakers on his gerrymandering push.

“In any other time, in any other place, where these DC guys come in with their own agenda, we tell them to go pound sand, and we’re Hoosiers, and we do our own thing, and we do it the right way, and we’re proud of it, and we should be,” O'Brien told Politico. ‘We’re just allowing these guys to come in and go, ‘you got it wrong,’ and believe it, and it pisses me off.”

As Politico explained, "By almost any measure, Trump and his allies should romp Tuesday," given that "The full weight and fury of the MAGA political machine has whirred to life" to take down these eight state senators. Despite all that effort, however, "it’s not at all clear the effort will work," the outlet added, noting that Indiana's MAGA-friendly lieutenant governor has already set a low bar of three flipped seats as proof of victory, and that "few, if any, of the Trump-backed challengers have made redistricting itself a focal point of their messaging."

Some are also hammering Trump and the GOP for the overt waste of electoral resources that the effort represents.

It’s political malpractice to divert that money away from what should be the focus of electing Republicans,” state Sen. Spencer Deery, one of the Trump-targeted incumbents, told Politico. “Instead, not only is that money that’s coming from out of state not being used to elect Republicans in Congress, I and my colleagues are raising money at unprecedented rates in order to be able to compete — and that is money that also cannot be directed towards maintaining Congress."

A former chair of the Republican National Committee ripped into the GOP-controlled Congress for The Hill, chastising the lawmakers for abandoning their duties and letting President Donald Trump inflict a "catastrophic disaster" on the entire world.

Marc Racicot has an extensive background in politics and beyond, having served as the attorney general and governor of Montana, in addition to his time as RNC chair in the early 2000s, all of which came after service in the U.S. Army, where he attained the rank of Captain. He has been harshly critical of Trump since the early days of Trump's political career, frequently speaking out against his agenda and endorsing Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race. The latter resulted in the Montana Republican Party voting to censure him in 2023.

Writing for The Hill on Tuesday, Racicot ripped into Congress for being asleep at the wheel as Trump and his Defense Department committed acts that amounted to "war crimes," including the launch of "without provocation, 55 military air strikes on vessels navigating the high seas, killing at least 174 civilians with four survivors and 11 missing and presumed dead." Those strikes, he wrote, have so far seen "no legitimate congressional oversight," and things only got worse when Trump opted to start a war with Iran.

"Fast forward to the invasion of and use of armed force against Iran. The same pattern is replicated," Racicot wrote. "There was no cognizable provocation or imminent threat to the U.S. No genuine oversight provided by Congress. No justification for the use of lethal force in self-defense. All amid the potential prosecution of rank-and-file service members for carrying out the orders of a commander in chief who has never been a member of the armed forces himself."

He continued later: "The truth is, Trump has incompetently and smugly led the world into economic disaster and shown indifference to the loss of innocent lives. He has fractured a world order that was decades in the making, depleted NATO, neutered Congress, soiled the office he temporarily holds and tarnished the reputation and leadership of the U.S. around the globe."

As Trump's Iran conflict has spiraled out of control and evaded peaceful de-escalation, the world economy has been pushed to the brink of catastrophe, with oil prices soaring at record rates after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. All the while, Republicans in Congress, vested by the U.S. Constitution with the power to check a president's desire to wage war, have "sat on their hands, hiding in the darkness of the moment."

"They are impotently failing as a co-equal branch of government to stop a catastrophic disaster for America and the entire planet," Racicot concluded. "When, if ever, will they live up to the promise of their oath and their constitutional duties by passing a bipartisan Iran War Powers Resolution governing Trump’s irrational wars?"

President Donald Trump loves to brag about how many cognitive tests he has taken recently and how much he has, allegedly, aced them. Now, however, one very important person has spoken out about why those are not the achievements Trump thinks they are: the doctor who designed the test.

In a report published Tuesday, Australia's 9News spoke with Canadian neurologist Ziad Nasreddine, creator of the Montreal Cognitive Test, which Trump has been taking multiple times throughout his second term. As MS NOW's Steven Benen recently observed, Trump has touted his results on these tests as if passing them means that "he’d been declared the smartest person on Earth," but in reality, the questions and the requirements are intentionally rudimentary.

"Sample questions include drawing an analog clock with the correct time, with points given for correct numbering," 9News explained. "Another question is to name as many words as they can in a minute beginning with the letter B. A failing grade would be less than 11 words. The final questions are to know the date, day of the week, their location and what city they are in."

"It wasn't designed to be a test of IQ," Nasreddine told the outlet. "It was designed to assess normal cognitive performance."

Trump's boasting about these tests seems to be accelerating, as are reports about the public's spiraling trust in his mental acuity.

"As recently as November 2024, when he won a second term, a Pew Research Center poll found that 55 percent of Americans considered the Republican to be 'mentally sharp,'" Benen wrote on Monday. "That number has now dropped to 44 percent, with slides among Democrats, independents and even GOP voters."

Nasreddine further explained that his test, which is utilized in roughly 200 countries, has an average final score of 26 out of 30. Only around 10 percent of people Trump's age, he added,

"I think he's proud that he is able to demonstrate that his cognition is fine," the doctor said. "Obviously, he likes to maybe boast about it because of his age, and people might think that at his age, you might have more difficulty with your cognition."

Other observers have pointed out that the frequency with which Trump is supposedly taking cognitive tests might be cause for alarm, as it signals a possible concern that, in his advanced age and with a notable family history of dementia, his faculties might begin to falter soon.

When Donald Trump narrowly won the 2024 election, one of the things that frustrated Democratic strategists was the inroads he made with Generation Z. Many of those Gen-Z supporters were male, including avid consumers of Manosphere content. But Trump had female Gen-Z allies as well, including Ashley St. Clair.

Now 27, St. Clair was a brand ambassador for the late Charlie Kirk's MAGA youth group Turning Point USA, and she was known her attacks on transgendered Americans.

In an article published on May 5, however, The New Republic's Virginia Heffernan details St. Clair's transition from prominent MAGA influencer to outspoken MAGA critic.

"For the last few months," Heffernan explains, "St. Clair has been posting to TikTok about her escape or exile from the MAGA carnies. She sums it up this way: 'I became a cringe MAGA influencer for 8 years before I found my brain.' Now, she is ready to 'talk about my experience within this machine of MAGA' and 'speak about the inside of a system that nobody else is.' Though she makes serious reference to having renounced her previous creed and making earnest amends, St. Clair is mostly conducting her multipart exposé with Catskills-style comedy."

Heffernan adds, "She's well suited to it, as she resembles a young Fran Drescher, and has something of Drescher's manner, manicures, and nasality."

St. Clair, Heffernan notes, is the mother of one Elon Musk's children but had a major falling out with the Tesla/SpaceX head. And she now "vehemently opposes" the "whole movement she once embraced," according to Heffernan.

In one of her TikTok videos, St. Clair declared, "I encourage people within MAGA to really look at what's happening in this country and what you're a part of." And she isn't shy about criticizing herself, saying, "I am speaking openly and honestly about my experiences. I understand that there's a lot of skepticism and critique, and I am open to that. And I am understanding that there are a lot of people that are still going to be angry at me. And I don't fault them for that because of my role in harm."

President Donald Trump has been hit with a "damning intel leak," according to a report from The Daily Beast, exposing the fact that his own military knows just how badly his main goal has fallen flat.

Despite repeatedly claiming a decisive victory, the reality of the war in Iran has proven much more dire for Trump, as he has failed to consistently define a strategic end goal and has been outmaneuvered by Iranian leaders during peace talks. One of the justifications he has attempted to give for the conflict has been to destroy Iran's capability of producing a nuclear weapon — something he already claimed to have accomplished with airstrikes last summer.

This week, however, a leaked memo showed the military officials suspect that Iran's timeline for a hypothetical nuclear weapon is unchanged, sinking one of Trump's biggest supposed goals. As The Daily Beast explained in a Tuesday report, officials currently believe Iran is as close to having a weapon as they were after last summer's airstrikes. Those strikes are thought to have set the Iranian nuclear program back just a year, counter to Trump's claim that the program was entirely "obliterated."

"It represents one of several motives Trump has cycled between since launching his February attacks against Iran," The Daily Beast explained. "Others have included liberating the Iranian people, affecting a change in leadership, and, more confusingly, protecting U.S. military assets in the region from retaliatory strikes in the event Iran comes under attack."

With the damage done to the Iranian nuclear program stalling out, reports indicate that the only means left for the U.S. military to do more damage would require "destroying or removing” the country's “remaining stockpile of highly enriched uranium." Experts suggest that this would need a much more substantial and prolonged military engagement that could create many more casualties.

"Andrew Weber, an Obama-era nuclear weapons adviser who helped de-nuke the former Soviet Union, told The Telegraph earlier in March that any efforts to do so without a peace deal in place would take several weeks and likely see thousands of U.S. service personnel killed," The Daily Beast continued. "It also remains unclear when any such de-nuking push might happen. A fragile ceasefire mediated by Pakistan has been in place since early April, but has so far failed to yield a deal for a lasting end to the conflict."

Many of President Donald Trump's appointees received widespread opposition from Senate Democrats, but a major exception was Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Not a single Senate Democrat voted against confirming the former U.S. senator.

Trump made a point of filling his administration with ultra-MAGA loyalists, from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Rubio, however, is known for being a traditional conservative and an establishment Republican — and Democrats who voted to confirm Rubio hoped he would be a voice of reason as secretary of state.

But Salon's Chauncey DeVega, in a biting article published on May 5, argues that Rubio has seriously "sacrificed his values" in order to survive in the second Trump Administration.

"While also attending to Trump's needs," DeVega explains, "Rubio has been busy remaking the State Department in the MAGA image — an act that is undermining democracy at home and accelerating strategic failures abroad. What the administration calls 'America First' is, in practice, white racial authoritarianism and white Christian nationalism that governs who and what is deemed to be in America's vital interests."

DeVega notes that during the Cold War, the U.S. State Department "emphasized cultural pluralism" and "inclusiveness" with its "public messaging" — as officials realized that "American diplomacy takes place around the world."

"During the Cold War," the Salon journalist recalls, "America's elites understood that racism at home made America weak abroad…. Jim and Jane Crow were an international embarrassment, giving the Soviet Union a powerful counternarrative about American hypocrisy and the color line…. The State Department, meanwhile, deployed jazz diplomacy and other cultural outreach programs to project, in a carefully curated way, an image of American diversity as a weapon against communism and authoritarian regimes. These traditions have been largely abandoned under Rubio at the behest of Trump."

According to DeVega, Trump's "America First" purity tests for State Department employees are hurting the U.S. from a foreign policy standpoint.

"Limiting the number of Black and brown diplomatic corps members at a time when China is making great inroads in Africa and other parts of the non-white world through infrastructure development, securing rare earth and other vital resources, and building military bases is a strategic blunder," DeVega writes. "The (State) Department has also overseen the systematic dismantling of America's soft power. The gutting of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and related programs that support public health have already contributed to an estimated 762,000 preventable deaths…. Since Trump's return to power, the United States has been repositioning itself as an explicitly Judeo-Christian nation — and government departments and agencies are following suit."

DeVega notes that Rubio "was a strong advocate for global democracy" during his years in the U.S. Senate but has "abandoned" that outlook to please Trump.

"He wanted America to be more confrontational with Russia and backed Ukraine in its freedom struggle," DeVega observes. "Now, while enduring the president's humiliation rituals — the public debasements Trump uses to test and bind the loyalty of those around him — Rubio has adopted his values…. Rubio sacrificed his values and the storied institutional legacy of the State Department itself to be in closer proximity to Donald Trump, a chaos agent — and America's reputation and power are collapsing."

President Donald Trump claims to be offering a big win to people saving for retirement with his plan to expand investment options, but according to one former Treasury Secretary, no one should be fooled by this "consequential mistake" that could expose hard-earned money to dangerous risk.

Steve Rattner is a veteran investor and financial analyst for various new organizations, who also previously served as Secretary of the Treasury under former President Barack Obama. On Tuesday, he wrote for the New York Times an extensive breakdown of Trump's pitch for retirement accounts and explained why his plan to offer a wider variety of higher-yield accounts is exposing people to "complexity, risk and illiquidity."

"Pressed by his Wall Street supporters, President Trump is moving to liberalize the types of investments Americans can make with their individual retirement accounts. Instead of betting their retirement savings on plain vanilla stocks and bonds, account holders would be allowed to move their funds into sexy sectors like private equity, private credit and cryptocurrency — no matter their complexity, risk and illiquidity," Rattner explained.

He continued: "All in all, the proposal, put forth by the Labor Department to fulfill a recent Trump executive order, is a consequential mistake. It could well exacerbate the challenges already posed by individual retirement accounts, a flawed replacement for the traditional corporate pension plans that many Americans used to enjoy."

Rattner argued that retirement accounts, as they currently exist, inundate people with complicated choices, forcing them to sift through "a dizzying array of choices for how to invest their money" to ensure returns for their retirement. He claimed to still find the prospect "daunting" himself, despite decades of high-level investing experience.

Trump's plans would dramatically worsen this problem by exploding the number of investment options available, as well as by flooding that pool of options with risky bets requiring further complicated research.

These accounts also do little to correct another problem that pension plans used to have covered.

"The other significant problem with individual retirement accounts is that they eliminate the social insurance aspect of traditional pension plans. Under the old regime, retirees didn’t have to worry about how long they might live; their pension benefit would steadily arrive in their bank accounts month after month," Rattner wrote. "Now, the elderly must make tough decisions about how to parcel out their assets. Use the money too quickly, and they might become impoverished. Spending it too slowly could mean unnecessary reductions in their standard of living."

Trump's plan, he noted, could potentially improve the ability of the current system to provide higher returns for everyday people, not just the wealthy, but again, that would require them to sift through "the many offerings, which will come with exceptionally high fees."

"According to Federal Reserve data, the average retirement account balances of Americans in median households by income have barely budged (after adjusting for inflation) since the late 1980s, while Americans in the top 10 percent have seen their retirement account more than quintuple in value," Rattner continued. "But the answer isn’t to invite Americans to dabble in private equity, private credit and cryptocurrency. Other countries have done better at protecting their retirees without such risky schemes. Australia, for instance, requires participation in national retirement funds that are managed professionally on behalf of its account holders. (Australia has socked away $3 trillion in these funds, about $110,000 per citizen.)"

Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson calls them "normie" Republican voters, and they are a crucial chunk of the GOP base that is growing more and more fed up with President Donald Trump and his MAGA antics.

Writing for the New York Times on Tuesday, Anderson said that these normie Republicans account for roughly half of the party's voting base, and fall outside of its two most talked about categories: the "MAGA die-hards and Never Trumpers." Despite getting less media attention, these more moderate voters are "the most electorally critical slice" of the base right now, and they pose a major problem for the modern GOP.

"This slice is neither Republicans in exile who voted for Kamala Harris nor is it the Trumpist faithful," Anderson explained. "It’s with this group that the G.O.P.’s most immediate political challenge really lies."

Anderson explained that her work as a pollster has consistently found that Trump's "core" contingent of MAGA supporters is sticking with him, even amid the storm of scandals engulfing his second term. The normies, however, "have displayed increasing disaffection with the direction of the country under his leadership," despite firmly viewing themselves as Republicans and previously being supportive of his actions.

Now, this "flagging enthusiasm" from these crucial moderates has become "a powerful alarm bell for Republican candidates looking to win the 2026 elections."

"But under the surface, there are signs that for some Republicans, the thrill is gone," Anderson wrote. "Since last year, the percentage of Republicans who felt very favorably toward the president has fallen by 10 points. Only 44 percent of Republicans strongly approve of his handling of the economy."

She added: "As these trends have unfolded, the number of Republicans who say they think of themselves more as supporters of the party than of Mr. Trump has risen substantially."

The data further reveals that Republicans of all stripes consider themselves highly likely to vote in the midterms, and there are few indications of defections, as "91 percent of party-first Republicans expect to vote for a Republican in the midterms." In terms of enthusiasm, however, "the gap widens enormously," as "62 percent of Trump-first Republicans describe themselves as extremely motivated," while conversely, "less than half — 49 percent — of those party-first Republicans say the same."

"This matters because Democrats are essentially telling pollsters they will walk across hot coals to get to the polls," Anderson explained. "Fox News’s most recent poll finds that more Democrats than Republicans are “extremely” motivated to vote. In my own polling, 82 percent of Democrats say it is 'extremely important' to win the midterms and stop Mr. Trump from carrying out his agenda — while only 57 percent of Republicans say that it is similarly important for their party to win. That number falls to 47 percent among party-first Republicans."

President Donald Trump is "incessant" when it comes to boasting about his allegedly perfect cognitive test result, but according to a new analysis from MS NOW, this is not having his desired effect in the slightest, as record numbers of the public begin to doubt his mental fitness for office.

Steve Benen is a longtime contributor for MS NOW and a producer for host Rachel Maddow. On Monday, he published a piece analyzing Trump's obsessive compulsion to tout cognitive tests as proof that he is not suffering cognitive decline in his advanced age.

"If his public remarks are any indication, few topics are of greater interest to Donald Trump than cognitive tests," Benen wrote. "The president has long struggled to understand the point of these tests, but that hasn’t stopped him from his obsessive boasts about being able to pass exams used to identify dementia, mental deterioration and neurodegenerative diseases."

At the end of last week, Trump once again bragged about his cognitive tests, going on "an extended riff" in front of "a supportive crowd in Florida," acting as if it is impressive to be taking such tests, and suggesting that his much-hated predecessor, Barack Obama, would fail one.

"I mean, you get a guy who gets in there, he’s got a good line of crap. He gets in and all of a sudden you’re stuck with a man who’s a moron. This is not good," Trump said.

Benen also cited an earlier piece in which he noted how much Trump appears to be misunderstanding the point of these tests in the first place. Aside from the fact that taking so many in a relatively short amount of time indicates considerable worries about his possible decline by the people around him, Trump has also repeatedly acted as if passing them means that "he’d been declared the smartest person on Earth."

Despite Trump's tendency to harp on his supposed cognitive test results, he does not appear to be fooling anyone, with a new poll out from Pew Research finding widespread belief among Americans that his brain is not as "perfect" as he likes to claim.

"But just as important is the degree to which Trump’s fixation on the subject doesn’t seem to be persuading anyone," Benen wrote. "As recently as November 2024, when he won a second term, a Pew Research Center poll found that 55% of Americans considered the Republican to be 'mentally sharp.' That number has now dropped to 44%, with slides among Democrats, independents and even GOP voters."

He concluded: "If the president wants to reassure the public he’s mentally fit to serve, he’ll have to try something other than obsessing over his alleged successes on dementia tests."

President Donald Trump last week lashed out against a NATO ally, and according to a new piece from MS NOW, his latest military "tantrum" is worse than many might realize and is something that they should be paying attention to.

The situation started last week when German Chancellor Friedrich Merz offered up some "candid assessments" about Trump's spiraling conflict with Iran, arguing that the U.S. was getting "humiliated" by Iran's leaders and had "absolutely no coherent strategy whatsoever." Trump, predictably, "responded quickly in decidedly Trumpian ways" after the chancellor "hurt his feelings," lashing out against Germany as a "broken country" in a social media post and ordering 5,000 troops to be removed from the country over the next year.

In a Monday piece for MS NOW, longtime contributor and Rachel Maddow producer Steve Benen highlighted the many concerning details about this move from Trump, including reports that officials at the Pentagon were "stunned" and blindsided by the move." Benen further noted that Trump explicitly told the press that he is not ruling out similar withdrawals from Spain and Italy over critical comments from their leaders.

He also cited an op-ed from the New York Times, in which Linas Kojala, the chief executive of the Geopolitics and Security Studies Center in Lithuania, warned that Trump's rash move in Germany "risks weakening one of America’s best strategic investments: a military presence that deters Russia and keeps Europe’s old rivalries from becoming America’s problem again."

Benen wrote that this move feels "oddly familiar" from Trump, given that Trump announced "even more dramatic cuts to U.S. troop deployments in Germany" six years ago after being snubbed by then-chancellor Angela Merkel, much to the delight of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the surprise of his own Pentagon officials. Those plans were halted then, but now, Trump has the runway to do serious damage.

"The Republican president did not, however, immediately follow through on his own announced decision. And by the time the administration took steps to implement Trump’s plan, he lost his 2020 re-election bid, and Joe Biden wasted little time in scrapping his predecessor’s plan," Benen explained.

He concluded: "History is repeating itself — except this time, Trump has plenty of time remaining in his term to actually execute the vision that he and Putin prefer."

Donald Trump has always wished to be an "exceptional, unique, one of a kind" president, and according to a new piece from The i Paper, he got that wish — only in the worst way possible.

Writing for the outlet on Monday, former BBC world affairs reporter Paul Wood observed that while many journalists and pundits are keen to avoid superlatives and hyperbole around the figures they cover, there can be no denying one thing anymore: "Donald Trump is the worst president the U.S. has ever had."

"And it’s true, he is: I defy you to name a worse president," Wood added.

Far from simply proclaiming this himself, Wood cited "at least three academic surveys," which put Trump dead last among the 45 men to ever hold the office of president.

"The most recent of these reports was the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey," Wood explained. "It’s more relevant than ever as Trump’s opponents, and some of his former friends, question his sanity as well as his probity. Historians and political scientists were asked to rate each president on a scale of 0 to 100. Trump scored 10.92, coming last out of 45, with the lowest score any president has ever had in this survey."

Wood also countered potential criticism of that survey being potentially skewed by "liberal bias," noting that he was "ranked at or near the bottom by experts from across the political spectrum." That was also based solely on his first term in the White House, meaning that the endless chaos and corruption of his second term have only made his standing even worse.

"Trump is both hyperactive and impulsive, decisions made and unmade as quickly as he can post on Truth Social," Wood wrote. "Politicians often wear a mask, but with Trump, what you see is what you get. That is a kind of virtue, but Trump has no filter. This made him a great reality TV star, and a terrible leader of the world’s most powerful nation."

Trump has been compared to several notable past presidents, including several famed as among the worst, but Wood noted in each case, he lacks the redeeming quality that salvaged things for those men.

"In intellect, Trump has been compared to Ronald Reagan, who was an 'amiable dunce' in the words of a political opponent, and to that famous mangler of words, George W Bush," Wood explained. "But these two Republican presidents had people skills; in Reagan’s case, you would call it charm. And the folksy, regular guy personas were — partly — an act. Bush joked that '[William F Buckley] wrote a book at Yale; I read one.' There is so much evidence that Trump is just as stupid as he looks. He does not charm."

In terms of his corruption and contempt for efforts to restrain his abuses, Trump has also been compared to Richard Nixon and Andrew Jackson, the latter of whom he has often cited as his favorite past president. While each of them "defied the courts" in their own ways, "they both believed in the rule of law itself."

"Every other president — however corrupt, venal or incompetent — respected the constitution as defining the rules of the game," Wood added. "No other president told a crowd to 'fight like hell' and then watched on television as they stormed Congress. No other president spoke publicly of refusing to accept the results of an election. No one else mused openly about how they could just keep going, becoming president for life."

He concluded: "Donald J Trump always wanted to be exceptional, unique, one of a kind. He got his wish. He is unique. He is one of a kind. He is the worst."

President Donald Trump's Justice Department issued a rare apology to a Biden-appointed district judge after withholding key information about the charges leveled against an undocumented immigrant that she ordered to be released from detention, leading to calls for her impeachment, marking the latest flub in a growing trend of incidents from the agency.

U.S. District Court Judge Melissa Dubose was appointed to the bench in the District of Rhode Island during the final days of her term. Last week, she issued a ruling ordering that Brian Rafael Gomez be released from ICE custody, pending a bond hearing before an immigration judge, after he had been held for most of the past month after being arrested in Worcester, Massachusetts, per the Boston Herald.

The DOJ later revealed in a press release that Gomez was wanted for murder in the Dominican Republic, leading some to call for DuBose to be impeached and removed from her role. The issue with that outrage quickly came to light, as DuBose said that the DOJ had not shared this information with her, and demanded answers.

"Dubose ordered the release of Gomez, despite the murder charges he faces in his home country and an April 4 arrest in Worcester on assault and battery charges," the Herald's report explained. "When the murder charges came to light in a DHS press release later that day, Dubose scheduled a show-cause hearing for Monday for attorneys to explain why she was left in the dark, threatening to hold prosecutors in contempt of court."

"Before the response was filed, I had been informed by ICE about the Petitioner’s pending arrest warrant issued on January 24, 2023, from a court in the Dominican Republic and that I could not disclose that information," Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Bolan told DuBose. "I was not aware that ICE had previously disclosed that same information on April 16, 2026."

Bolan continued: “In failing to disclose the information regarding Petitioner’s criminal history, I relied on ICE’s representation that I was not permitted to disclose that information and understood that a legitimate law enforcement reason prevented disclosure. Judge DuBose, therefore, lacked that information about the Petitioner’s criminal background when she granted the petition. I sincerely apologize to Judge DuBose, personally, and to the entire Court for the consequences of this lack of disclosure."

DuBose further chastised the attorneys, explaining that "failing to provide this Court with relevant and material facts threatens public safety and erodes trust in the rule of law."

"People called for this judge's impeachment because she ordered someone to be released who had an arrest warrant for murder. Except it turns out the DOJ just didn't tell her that," immigration attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote in a post about the situation on X.

A district judge on Monday "put the brakes" on President Donald Trump's effort to take over a Washington D.C., public golf course, giving the most stern warning yet of "serious consequences" if the administration refuses to comply.

Trump's broader obsession with remaking the nation's capital in his own image has crossed over with his golf obsession, as his administration has been attempting a federal takeover of the East Potomac Golf Course, a "popular public course," according to WUSA9 News, raising major alarms about a rumored "championship-style" makeover that local golfers fear would make the course too expensive for the working class.

On Monday, the National Links Trust, "a nonprofit that operates all three of D.C.'s public golf courses," expressed "shock" after word came that East Potomac would be shuttered ahead of the rumored changes." On Sunday, the D.C. Preservation League, a watchdog-style group, filed an emergency motion to halt the Trump administration from conducting any major work on the course aside from routine maintenance, which District Judge Ana Reyes granted in an emergency hearing the following morning.

According to WUSA9, Reyes "ordered the National Park Service to get court approval before cutting down more than 10 trees on the course," and further threatened "serious consequences" should her order be flouted in the administration's typical style.

“Given some issues around the District recently, I would have a particular concern that things not happen — that we not have a person ask forgiveness later. That’s not going to be acceptable,” Reyes said.

Speaking with the New York Times about the planned redesign of East Potomac, local golfers expressed sadness over the potential loss of a much-needed affordable option in an area that already has plenty of high-end options.

“It’ll be a real loss for a lot of people in the city,” Bryan King, a 68-year-old Virginia mural painter, told the outlet in a report published in February.

“There’s plenty of very expensive country clubs in this area already. This has always been kind of, like, the people’s course,” his son, Eamon King, added.

The GOP's once sure-fire odds to retain their Senate majority in the midterms are looking bleaker every day, but according to a new report from Politico, some in the party are plotting a "coup" that could save them from a complete wipeout: flipping John Fetterman, the increasingly ostracized Democratic senator.

Fetterman was first elected to the Senate from Pennsylvania in 2022, besting the Trump-backed Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz and helping Democrats defy the odds and grow their majority in the chamber. Initially styling himself as a working-class progressive champion, he has since made a major shift away from his own party, voicing support for various initiatives and nominees from President Donald Trump and breaking the Democratic minority on several key votes.

Now regularly polling as one of the least popular lawmakers with the Democratic base, Fetterman's days in Congress are considered numbered. That is, unless Republicans can pull off their gamble of trying to convince him to become one of them, as laid out on Monday by Politico.

"It’s a few days after the election this November, and the results have become clear: Democrats have netted the four seats they need to claim a Senate majority," Politico's report read. "But then there’s a disturbance in the force: Senate Republicans and President Donald Trump persuade Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) to switch parties or at least become an independent to ensure Republicans retain power in the chamber. It’s a scenario that’s becoming less fantastical by the day."

Fetterman himself has repeatedly dismissed the notion that he might swap parties, noting his record of voting along Democratic lines 93 percent of the time and admitting that he would make for a "sh——y Republican." Despite that, he has also frequently lamented about feeling poorly treated by his Democratic colleagues, and polls show that he has grown increasingly popular with Republican voters.

According to Politico, Trump has pledged complete support for the Pennsylvania senator if he makes the switch to the GOP, offering a full-throated endorsement and substantial monetary resources from the party's warchest.

"A handful of Senate Republicans are also gently feeling out Fetterman and responding to his concerns over the prospect of defecting from the Democratic Party, multiple high-level GOP officials tell me," Politico's Jonathan Martin explained. "If Fetterman does flip, according to officials who were given anonymity to talk about sensitive matters, it will be thanks in large part to his deepening friendship with a pair of senators and their high-profile spouses: Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.), and his wife Dina, and Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), and her husband, Wesley."

Despite his public protestation, Martin claimed that Fetterman is less hostile towards the idea in private.

"When one senior Republican recently brought up the idea of becoming an independent to Fetterman, he absorbed the suggestion and didn’t embrace or reject the overture, according to a GOP official familiar with the conversation," Martin added.

Aside from the fact that he still sincerely holds many liberal values, Fetterman is reportedly also hesitant about the prospect due to Trump's caustic treatment of Republicans who break with him on key issues, something the senator is likely to do often.

"If Republicans can’t tolerate even Tillis, Fetterman suggested, how would they accept somebody who supports abortion rights, gay rights, legalizing marijuana and is pro-labor? (He flies the pride flag outside his Senate office.) Senate Republicans have reminded the Pennsylvanian that there are members of their conference who are more moderate on each of those issues," Martin wrote.