The National Trust for Historic Preservation is blasting the Trump administration’s claim that a foiled plot at the White House’s “open air” UFC event justifies President Donald Trump’s ballroom — noting the 4,000-person event would not have fit inside the structure, and that law enforcement had disrupted the plot four days before it took place.

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice announced “charges against five men for an alleged plot to carry out an attack to kill government officials and others attending the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Freedom 250 event held at the White House last Sunday.”

Reiterating that it “takes the President’s safety and security seriously,” an attorney for the National Trust wrote that the Trump administration “repeatedly advanced national security arguments to the District Court—including on remand from this Court, when such issues were the sole focus.”

“Last Sunday’s event, with 4,000 attendees, would not have even fit in the proposed ballroom,” attorney Thaddeus A. Heuer wrote. Heuer noted that the alleged plot had been “‘detected and disrupted’ four days” before Sunday’s UFC event at the White House.

“Nothing in the injunction halting above-ground ballroom construction limited the security options available to law enforcement for the President’s open-air UFC event,” he wrote. “Indeed, the President, the Vice-President, and Speaker Johnson all attended, with full Secret Service knowledge of the alleged plot that was ‘detected and disrupted’ four days earlier.”

Heuer added that the U.S. Supreme Court “could not have been clearer.” The Constitution, he wrote, “forbids the President from exercising powers vested solely in Congress, even when he asserts that a ‘national catastrophe’ ‘endanger[ing] the well-being and safety’ of the country and ‘immediately jeopardiz[ing]’ national defense requires it.”

The president, argued Heuer, is not permitted to “freely violate the separation of powers.”

What the president can do, said Heuer, is get congressional authorization.

He wrote, “if the President believes any particular security incident bears persuasively on the need for a White House ballroom, he has the same remedy as his predecessors: obtain authorization from Congress, the body in which the Constitution vests plenary authority over the nation’s property.”

This was not the first time the Trump administration had made similar arguments to advance its case for the need for a White House ballroom.

After the alleged assassination attempt during the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, the president argued for the need for the ballroom, The Guardian reported in April. The WHCA reportedly hosts roughly 2,600 people at its annual fundraising dinner, while Trump’s proposed ballroom is believed to be designed to seat about one thousand people

The Trump White House is attacking one of its loyal media figures after she berated Vice President JD Vance over President Donald Trump’s Iran deal.

“The problem is, that it’s an absolutely disastrous deal that has brought us to our knees, weeks before our 250th birthday,” NewsNation host Batya Ungar-Sargon said in a clip she posted to social media, which Mediaite reported.

“This is an utter humiliation of the United States, and everybody knows it,” she continued. “Everybody knows it, but especially Iran knows it. They are celebrating this. They are still calling us the enemy.”

“And while Iran celebrates this and sneers at us for totally capitulating when we had complete military superiority over them,” she said, “JD Vance is out there criticizing Israel, making up fantasies about how it is Israel’s fault, and Israel wants Iran to be a failed state. And if only Israel would lay down its arms and allow Hezbollah to keep attacking it, there would be peace in the Middle East.”

Ungar-Sargon called Vance’s remarks “disgusting,” “utterly deplorable,” and a “complete Tucker Carlsonification of the Vice President of the United States.”

She warned, “if this was a dry run for Vance 2028,” for president, “we sure learned a lot.”

On social media, Ungar-Sargon added: “VP JD Vance just brought the US to its knees with a humiliating deal weeks before our 250th birthday and he has the audacity to blame … Israel! … for the terrible situation we’re in.”

The White House’s Rapid Response team blasted Ungar-Sargon.

“The only humiliation here is Batya desperately begging for an additional brain cell because her failing TV … show is even more irrelevant than the likes of Kaitlan Collins and Fake Tapper,” the White House declared. “Only a moron of her caliber could still doubt President Trump’s leadership.”

In 2024, Ungar-Sargon wrote, “American Jews should vote for Trump because he is the candidate who stands most clearly for the things that have defined us for centuries.”

Veteran journalist Jonathan Alter has published a fictitious yet “all-too-plausible” scenario whereby President Donald Trump attempts to overturn the results of the 2026 election — especially in the Senate — which could narrowly move to Democratic control in November. He suggests that it will take two sets of citizens: the general public and former U.S. presidents, among others, to defeat what he sees as the current president’s “slow-motion rolling coup attempt,” which he says is “already underway.”

Writing at Washington Monthly, Alter acknowledges that Democratic control of the House after the November election is likely, while control of the Senate is possible but not the “big blue wave” or “tsunami” he sees in the House.

Calling him a “chaos agent,” Alter explains that Trump’s “fear of impeachment and a Senate trial are making him desperate and more dangerous.”

“It’s easy to miss that a slow-motion rolling coup attempt is already underway, staged by Stephen Miller and, of course, Trump himself,” Alter writes. “When Trump told The New York Times early this year that he regretted not seizing voting machines in 2020, that was a clear signal that he will likely try to do so after the midterms.”

Ultimately, Alter predicts in his war-gamed scenario that democracy will prevail but not before a months-long constitutional crisis.

“The resolution of the crisis came after more than two months of efforts by President Trump to overturn the results of the midterm elections with unfounded accusations of vote fraud,” Alter writes, as if it were January 2027. “His efforts sparked mass protests, which gave him a pretext to invoke emergency powers and interfere in elections that, under the U.S. Constitution, are handled by the states.”

Alter points to several critical events when Trump telegraphed his intentions.

January 6, 2026: “You gotta win the midterms, because if we don’t win the midterms, they’ll find a reason to impeach me,” Trump told Republicans on the fifth anniversary of what some have called his coup attempt.

That same month: “There is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me, and that’s very good,” Trump told The New York Times.

Also that month, he told Reuters, “When you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.”

Alter also points to two critical documents that presumably could give Trump broad emergency powers.

One, the National Presidential Security Memorandum (NPSM-7) that, Alter writes, “grants the president broad wartime powers to designate Americans as possible terrorists if the federal government considers them or their sponsors ‘anti-American,’ ‘anti-capitalist,’ ‘anti-Christian’ or ‘hostile to traditional American views on family, religion and morality.'”

The second, Presidential Emergency Action Documents (PEADs), “which were developed during the Eisenhower Administration as a single instructional book in case of a nuclear attack on Washington.”

Alter continues his war-gamed scenario: “With Mr. Trump now running a police state, former presidents, vice presidents, and Supreme Court justices finally came off the sidelines. On December 22, a hastily-organized Committee on Election Integrity issued an open letter in support of certification of the legitimate winners and filed an amicus brief in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the president’s use of NPSM-7 and PEAD powers—intended for nuclear war—was unconstitutional in domestic politics.”

Read the entire article here.

Donald Trump’s biographer Michael Wolff offered a blunt read on how the president views the Black community, and why “racist” counts as “high praise” in MAGA world, The Daily Beast reported.

“Clearly, he has some issue with Black people,” Wolff told The Daily Beast Podcast about President Trump. “The world is a better place to him without Black people, or without having to be aware of Black people, without Black people somehow in what he considers a zero sum game with white people.”

The Daily Beast recounted several instances in which Trump has served up “incendiary rhetoric” and exhibited “actions described by his critics as racist.” Trump has denied the accusations and in January 2018 told reporters, “No, no, I’m not a racist. I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed,” according to Politico.

Shortly before those remarks, The Washington Post had reported that Trump “grew frustrated with lawmakers” when “they discussed protecting immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and African countries as part of a bipartisan immigration deal, according to several people briefed on the meeting.”

“Why are we having all these people from s—— countries come here?” Trump said.

“Trump then suggested that the United States should instead bring more people from countries such as Norway,” the Post reported at the time.

The Daily Beast added that Trump “launched his 2016 election campaign with a speech accusing Mexico of deliberately sending ‘criminals’ and ‘rapists’ across the border into the United States.”

In 2017, Trump “described participants at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, as ‘very fine people.'”

“In 1973,” The Daily Beast also noted, “the Department of Justice sued Trump and his companies for discriminating against Black renters, and under the Obama administration he was one of the most vocal proponents of the ‘birther’ conspiracy theory.”

Wolff also told The Daily Beast Podcast that Trump “certainly regards Black people as profoundly different from white people.”

And Wolff explained why the word “racist” is “high praise” among Trump’s MAGA base.

“I mean the word racist now becomes in the Trump world a kind of high praise, because it’s meant to suggest the liberal overreach and the liberals call anybody racist,” Wolff said.

Online critics are blasting U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum’s press team for politicizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool by comparing now-dead algae, which reached five-year-high levels, to the remnants of the Iranian Navy — all while taking a swipe at President Barack Obama.

According to The Washington Post on Thursday, Reflecting Pool algae has “roared back,” reaching the “highest levels in years.”

“President Donald Trump vowed in April to clean up what he called the ‘filthy’ and ‘disgusting’ water in the Reflecting Pool,” the Post reported. “He promised to resurface the basin to eliminate persistent leaking and to paint it ‘American flag blue.’ Once the pool started to be refilled, on June 4, he praised its ‘clean, beautiful water.'”

“An analysis of satellite imagery of the Lincoln Memorial shows algae levels spiked days after a $14 million renovation was completed,” the Post noted.

But not according to the Interior Department, which declared hours earlier, late Wednesday night, that the algae problem had been eliminated — just like the Iranian Navy.

“The Reflecting Pool water is crystal clear, and our National Park Service team is now vacuuming up the dead algae resting on the bottom of some parts of the Reflecting Pool—just like the destroyed Iranian Navy resting on the bottom of the Persian Gulf,” an Interior Department social media post declared.

Interior did not stop there.

“Previous administrations—most notably under Obama—failed to maintain the Reflecting Pool, and after refilling the pool, the water would quickly become murky and thick with massive clumps of algae floating on the surface,” it said, before attacking the media as well.

“As our National Park Service team noted, the Reflecting Pool is now so ‘blue’ that the Fake News Media, which has been staked out at the Reflecting Pool for weeks, has fled!”

Online critics blasted Interior’s post.

“Why the hell is my government’s interior press account making jabs at foreign affairs? FFS, yall supposed to be adults, and you’re acting like petulant children,” wrote one critic. “‘Funny’ is not something I want from my administration. I want resolutions. I want fixes. They are more obsessed with social media & making good clips than making our lives affordable, our wages higher, giving us healthcare.”

“Americans died in this war,” noted communications strategist and political analyst Melik Abdul. “Please stop disrespecting them by comparing the circumstances surrounding their deaths to vacuuming algae. Stick with what you do best and leave your military fantasies out of it. It’s lazy and childish.”

“What purpose does lying serve America?” asked another critic. “Anyone can view the live feed, and see the pool is still green and very much NOT clear. The entire pool is still green, with a couple tiny spots clear, but refilling with Algae as noted from two days ago to this morning the entire edge is refilled with green.”

“Comparing the algae in the reflecting pool after its $14.2 million fraud, waste, and abuse paint job to Iran’s navy isn’t the flex the Department of Interior seems to think it is,” wrote U.S. Air Force Colonel (Ret.) Moe Davis.

“This is an actual U.S. government account spewing deceptive propaganda comparing Trump’s failed Reflecting Pool renovation to his failed Iran War and Memorandum of Understanding,” wrote another critic.

Not all remarks were critical. U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) responded to the Interior Dept.’s post by writing: “This warms my heart.”

President Donald Trump will not serve out his full second term in office, argues political strategist James Carville, but rather, he will resign and “walk away.”

Carville points to two major reasons looming over Trump as to why he believes the 47th president will exit the office.

“I want to be very clear on something,” says Carville. “I’m not doing this as a crazy a—— prediction. I’m doing it because I genuinely think that he will resign next spring.”

“He’s going to walk away because the pain that is coming for him, both the emotional pain and the physical deterioration, you watch it right in front of your eyes,” said Carville. “I don’t have to be a doctor to see this guy can’t move. He can’t get out of a chair. I know what it’s like to be in the 80s. And unlike a lot of people, I know what that job is like, and it’s not compatible. You know, maybe there’s some people 80 who could do that. He’s not one.”

Acknowledging that he is not a medical doctor, Carville does note that he is close to Trump’s age: the president is 80, Carville is approaching 82.

He highlights Trump’s “rate of decline from Election Day to now,” and warns that “it’s not linear. You don’t lose a quarter of a percent a month. When it goes down, it goes quickly, and you can look at him and see just how fat and unhealthy he is.”

The other reason Carville believes Trump will exit the White House next spring: he suggests a tremendous loss in the November midterms for Trump, and explains how devastating that will be.

“I know what it’s like to lose a massive off-year election,” says Carville. “We did in 1994. It’s so monumental. It’s so massive. It hurts so deep. You just can’t imagine it. The entire world around him is going to change after November of this year.”

“People don’t pay attention to you,” says Carville. “They’re making jokes. Everybody knows you’re on a short leash. You got two years left to go. You don’t have any power. Everybody around you is being subpoenaed for everything that you can imagine. Your life is miserable.”

Carville went on to declare, “I’m doubling down on this prediction. He is just going to walk away.”

Trump, Carville predicts, will tell Vice President JD Vance — who would become president should Trump resign — that as president Vance can likely pardon himself. And while there is “some uncertainty as to whether you can do that,” there is “no uncertainty” as to whether a President Vance can pardon Trump and his family.

“So, I’m sticking with my prediction,” says Carville. “I think the son of a b—— is just going to walk away.”

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Republican National Committee leadership is staring at a “five-alarm fire bell,” conservative analyst Henry Olsen warns, as President Donald Trump’s sinking poll numbers put the GOP’s Senate majority at risk in November.

“The Republicans’ Senate fortunes,” Olsen writes at The Washington Post, “are tied to the man in the Oval Office. If the president can recover his standing even a few points, the GOP will probably retain Senate control. But all bets are off if he remains as unpopular as he is now.”

Olsen, a longtime Republican strategist and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, explains that at the start of the year the road map for Democrats looked daunting. They had to gain four Senate seats to win the majority, while holding three open seats — Minnesota, New Hampshire and Michigan — that were seen as “far from safe.”

At best, the “most politically favorable remaining states” on the Senate map — Ohio, Iowa and Alaska — “were all carried by Trump by over 10 points. Democrats have not won a Senate seat in a state that red since 2018, when Jon Tester prevailed in Montana and Joe Manchin carried West Virginia.”

The tables have turned, and now it is Republicans who are facing an uphill battle.

Democrats are “leading or statistically tied in all of the seats they need to retain,” and “also lead or are statistically tied in six GOP-held states: Alaska, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas.”

Plus, retired Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the expected Democratic nominee for Senate in Florida, is ahead of Republican U.S. Senator Ashley Moody, according to one recent poll.

Of course, as Olsen suggests, the campaigns have yet to get into full swing, there is still time, and the Democrats’ Maine nominee, Graham Platner, could be seen as a wild card.

“Perhaps Platner’s troubles will allow Collins to equal or slightly surpass her earlier result, but even then, the vast majority of her support will come from Trump approvers,” says Olsen. “If that total is under 40 percent, as it surely is right now, Collins probably won’t win.”

“But surely no one in the Republican high command thought they would be trailing or tied in 10 critical Senate races at this stage,” writes Olsen. “That sound you hear is a five-alarm fire bell at GOP HQ.”

In today’s polarized era, Olsen notes, many voters back their party rather than the candidate — and a party whose leader is underwater on most key issues weighs on every candidate on the ticket.

President Donald Trump arrived late to Wednesday’s G7 summit, crossed the room where world leaders were already seated and had started their meeting, and offered an excuse before joining the group: “I’m the boss.”

According to The Daily Beast, Trump’s colleagues “laughed awkwardly” at his “crass joke.”

President Emmanuel Macron, who is hosting the meeting in Évian-les-Bains, France, greeted President Trump by saying, “Well, hello.” Trump — who was nearly one hour late — turned and faced the table before making his declaration.

“A self-satisfied smile flashed across Trump’s face after he delivered his one-liner, as he walked around to his seat next to Macron, who greeted Trump with a more restrained handshake,” The Daily Beast reported.

“Hello! How are you?” Macron asked.

Trump also invited members of the media to stay for the meeting, although they were later ushered out of the room.

“Would you like to stay for the meeting? It’s OK with me,” Trump said.

“It’s not clear why Trump was delayed,” The Daily Beast noted. “A White House source claimed to NBC that he had been ‘on some very important calls with people back in the States.'”

Leaders from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom are also in attendance for the G7.

“All have welcomed the news that an agreement has been reached between Washington, D.C., and Iran, saying in a statement that it ‘provides an historic opportunity to prevent Iran from acquiring any nuclear weapon and tackling the threats related to its regional and ballistic activities,'” The Daily Beast reported.

The G7 leaders also released a statement that said, “President Trump has delivered a deal that we support in reopening the Strait of Hormuz.”

Trump also posted a diatribe Wednesday morning attacking Democrats — whom he called “Dumocrats” — in his lengthy Truth Social statement. He declared, “for the Good of the Nation, and the People of our Country, I will not approve FISA without THE SAVE AMERICA ACT going along with it.”

President Donald Trump’s Iran war has divided his MAGA base more than any other issue since he came down the Trump Tower escalator to launch his first presidential campaign, Axios reports. Now, some of his top allies are turning against his Iran deal in a series of denunciations.

“The backlash has been particularly scathing from allies Trump spent months amplifying as validators of his Iran campaign,” Axios reports. The Iran deal has “opened an explosive second front in MAGA’s civil war, waged by hawkish allies who view U.S. concessions as an existential betrayal of Israel.”

The Hill notes that conservative “pundits and hawkish Iran experts are warning against any agreement that gives up key leverage against the Islamic Republic, or opens access to badly needed funds, without completely giving up its nuclear capacity.”

Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen wrote: “$300 billion to Iran under any circumstances is a disaster."

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro told The Wall Street Journal: “If the president signed a bad deal, many of us who cheered and stood by him and thought that his action in Iran was heroic, will be extraordinarily disappointed.”

Many, including pro-Israel conservatives who backed Trump’s war, are now demanding to see the text of the “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU) with Iran. They are frustrated with both the secrecy behind the deal — the MOU has yet to be officially released — and the reported leaked details.

Senior White House officials had said the text would be released Tuesday or Wednesday, while Trump said Friday — after it is officially signed in a ceremony in Geneva. Vice President JD Vance suggested that the text might be released before Friday, BBC News reported.

Trump’s own remarks have not quelled concern from his top allies, Axios noted.

“We’re dealing with people that I think are very rational people,” Trump said on Tuesday at the G7 summit. “They were nice to deal with.” He called them “strong people, smart people,” and added: “They’re not radicalized. They’re looking to help their country.”

“For hawks who view Iran’s government as a terrorist regime incapable of reform,” Axios reported, “the president’s language deepened their fear that the deal rewards Tehran for surviving the war.”

Vice President Vance may bear more of the ultimate backlash. He will sign the deal in Geneva, while Trump “can always pitch himself as the president who took on Iran when no one else dared.”

The Villages in Florida, the largest retirement community in the world, has been home to an extremely active MAGA movement. Roughly seven out of ten county residents voted for Trump in 2024, and its MAGA golf cart parades are legendary.

But Sunday’s parade was sparsely attended, according to a letter to the editor in The Villages News, which declares that the MAGA movement there is “dying.”

Casey Marr writes that they arrived at President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday golf cart parade, found many open parking spaces “and only a few people milling around” 30 minutes before the starting time. At 1:00 p.m., the official start time, “there was certainly no big crowd of cheering people” to welcome the parade of golf carts, which numbered only about 100 and lasted just 20 minutes.

Marr explains that there were two smaller starting places, and says that even if they had a similar number of carts, there would only have been “a pitiful 303.”

“This was advertised as a Guinness World Record challenge,” Marr says. “The record was set on Sept. 4, 2005, here in The Villages with 3,321 golf carts.”

According to Newsweek, Trump’s approval in Florida is 13 points underwater. Nationwide, Trump is 23 points underwater.

“Several states that began his term in positive territory, including Florida, Ohio and Texas, are now net negative,” Newsweek noted. “Deep-red states still form Trump’s strongest base, but many of those margins have narrowed sharply since January 2025.”

The golf cart parade fell short of the record, but Marr notes that The Villages’ “No Kings” rallies have grown “exponentially.” The “latest had two locations with attendance close to 6,000.”

“There is now a ‘Leaving MAGA’ billboard here on U.S. Hwy. 441,” Marr writes. “The ‘Trump 47’ website is down. The MAGA Club almost never holds any events. You almost never see a Trump flag flying anymore.”

Trump, Marr charges, “is using the office to line his pockets. Started a war which spiked gas prices along with everything else. Inflation and unemployment are rising. Aligned himself with murderous war criminals like Putin ... This weekend he is desecrating the White House by holding a fighting match like Caligula being entertained by gladiators. The list of horrific things being done, especially in this administration, is endless. And he’s even lost former stalwarts like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson.”

“Yes,” Marr declares, “MAGA is dying in the country and even here. Florida is purple now again and turning bluer daily.”

Republican lawmakers and staffers on Capitol Hill are expressing frustration and anger over President Donald Trump's timing of announcements that go on to undermine their legislative agenda. Some expressed that the president doesn't consider Congress when he acts, while others suggested that his announcements were intentionally disruptive, MS NOW reports.

From his announcement of the highly controversial naming of Bill Pulte as Acting Director of National Intelligence, to what critics called his proposed $1.8 billion "slush fund" for January 6 rioters, to his 11th-hour endorsement of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for the seat held by U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), Trump's announcements have had a strong impact on Republicans' efforts to pass legislation.

“The most common thought of most Republicans I’ve talked to is he doesn’t give a s—— about the legislative branch and he pays no attention to anything going on that we’re doing because all of the actions he has taken has done nothing but been unhelpful to us putting stuff on his desk or keeping a lot of our government agencies open,” one House Republican told MS NOW. “Everything is timed so perfectly that it’s like they sit around in the White House and think to themselves when is the worst possible time to do this — and then they do it."

“I don’t think he’s dumb,” another GOP lawmaker told MS NOW. “I think he does a lot of this stuff on purpose, and I think he’s trying to undermine our institutions, and it’s setting some really bad precedents.”

“We all know the president talks to one group of people, and it’s his base,” the lawmaker also said. “He doesn’t care about anyone else. And when he talks to them, I think a lot of the actions he’s taken is to try to undermine both the legislative branch and the judicial branch and strengthen his position of executive branch and the importance of him sticking around.”

U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) suggested that there was little thought behind Trump's announcements and their effect on Congress.

“I don’t think he thinks about the impact on us, and the timing,” Murkowski told MS NOW. “I just don’t think he thinks about it.”

She also said she does not think the president is "connecting" what lawmakers do daily with his actions.

U.S. Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) told MS NOW that “the president’s the president.”

“He can announce his initiatives whenever he wants,” he added, while acknowledging that the "terrible timing" of Trump's announcements "obviously complicates" Republicans' efforts.

Port Charlotte, Florida, is part of Charlotte County — which voted for President Donald Trump by a solid two-to-one margin in 2024. It was named one of the top ten places to retire in 2012.

Still seen as a deeply red state, Democrats are making inroads into the Sunshine State. Ahead of the August primary, in the race for governor, Republican Byron Donalds often polls ahead of Democrat David Jolly but only by single digits, according to data from The New York Times. Donald Trump won the state by 13 points in 2024.

A letter to the editor highly critical of President Donald Trump and his MAGA base in a Port Charlotte news outlet could be seen as surprising.

“MAGA crowd, Trump are all about winning,” reads the headline.

“Donald Trump and the MAGA movement have turned American politics into a fan-based team sport,” writes its author, Gayle Yarnall.

“Governing has become an us versus them rivalry regardless of the consequences. It is all about winning,” she laments.

“The 2024 election is long over. Yet, there are Trump signs, banners, and flags still posted around. It is akin to displaying the flag of your favorite teams like the Patriots or the Buckeyes. What is the purpose except to express that, ‘I’m on a winning team’?” Yarnall asks.

“No one will be persuaded to vote for Trump. The election is done and he won. Is there any memory of Reagan, Biden, Bush, Obama, or Clinton flags or signs posted months or years after the election? Of course not.”

Yarnall calls the still-flying banners and flags “visual reminders” for “those with low self-esteem, feeling left out and unheard.”

“They scream, ‘look at me, we won, I’m on a winning team,'” she says.

“Even when gas prices spike, the cost of tariffs are passed on, a war continues, inflation is rising in all sectors it matters not because my team won.”

In a last-ditch plea, Yarnall asks her neighbors, “Please remember to vote!

Right-wing journalist Ben Domenech isn’t aligned with GOP wisdom that the Republican Party should do well in the November midterm elections. In a lengthy written conversation with The New York Times, Domenech says he is “skeptical.”

“Republicans still seem to think that, thanks to redistricting and their advantages in fund-raising, they could buck historical trends and hold on, perhaps even in the House,” Domenech told the Times’ John Guida. “They’re just scared about gas prices. Personally, I’m skeptical.”

Looking specifically at Maine, which Republicans see as the “linchpin” to holding the Senate majority, according to Guida, Domenech also sends a warning. The race will be between U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) and Democratic insurgent newcomer Graham Platner, who has already faced numerous scandals.

“The interesting thing about this whole focus on Maine is that if you talk to Senate Republican staff and consultants, they’re actually less worried about it than other states,” says Domenech. “This is partially because of Platner’s shall we say unique collection of scandals and challenges, but it’s also because of enormous faith in Collins as a survivor.”

Collins, 73, is running for her sixth term after being first elected in 1996.

Guida points to a Politico report on a memo that states: “the political fundamentals in Maine remain challenging, and it is a fatal mistake to assume Platner is too damaged to win.”

“I think that’s correct,” says Domenech, “and top Republicans should actually be more concerned.”

“Platner clearly has energy behind him. He speaks to a desire on the left for a strong message, and he’s shown no signs of bowing to pressure to get out for a more centrist-coded candidate,” he adds. “Collins is absolutely capable of winning, but national assumptions are taking over based on her last election, in 2020, when she came back from what seemed like a deep hole by keeping her campaign hyperlocal.”

Domenech says that Republicans do have some concerns, specifically about three states Donald Trump won by double digits in 2024: Alaska, Iowa and Ohio.

In Ohio, former U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown is seeking to return to the Senate, and is running against “an appointee who has never won a Senate election, Jon Husted.”

In Alaska, Democrat Mary Peltola is running against Dan Sullivan, the Republican incumbent who “has the advantage there, but again, we’re talking about a unique state, and Peltola is an Alaska Native,” says Domenech. That race is now considered a “toss up” by The Center for Politics’ “Crystal Ball,” which also now rates the Ohio race as a “toss up.”

Iowa could become a difficult race for Republicans as well. Domenech warns it “could turn out to be a real test for Trump’s tariff policies, which have been a decidedly mixed bag in many of the states that backed him. The president will probably have to take that argument to the people of Iowa himself.”

Overall, says Domenech, Republicans’ confidence “comes from a belief that Democratic radicalism, particularly the various examples of what they view as a renewed cultural leftism in opposition to Trump during his first term, will play in their favor.”

Prominent conservative talk radio host Erick Erickson has a new label for President Donald Trump: “clown.”

On his Substack newsletter, Erickson slams the president over his approach to the Iran war, for which, he notes, Trump has at least 39 times in the last 65 days “declared the United States and Iran were close to a deal only to have the Iranians openly mock him and deny it.”

He notes too that Trump on Thursday morning told “Fox & Friends” that the bombing of Iran would resume. That changed quickly.

“By the afternoon, he declared bombings would cease because a deal was close,” Erickson writes. “He claimed buy-in from the Egyptians, the Emirates, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Israelis, the Iranians, and more.”

Both Egypt and Israel said they had no knowledge of a deal.

“The President, the other days, said Iran was playing us,” says Erickson. “The only one being played is President Trump. A state of war exists between Iran and its neighbors. The ceasefire is a farce. The President has turned into a clown.”

Erickson is no moderate — he was once the editor-in-chief of the right-wing website RedState and was a Fox News contributor. His bio on Spotify says his podcast “cuts through the chaos with bold clarity and biblical conviction.”

Erickson goes on to call it “Obamaesque” to think that any negotiation with a “terrorist regime that is premised on bringing about the apocalypse” is possible.

He says Trump chose to “engage” Iran and criticizes him for dealing “a serious blow” but not a “knockout” one. And he criticizes Trump for ordering Israel “to pull its punches.”

“We have now harmed our relationships with our Middle Eastern allies who depend on us for protection,” writes Erickson. “The situation is now more unstable than before the war began and it is all because of a single person who swears he’ll get a deal any day now.”

“The President should be embarrassed,” Erickson charges. “Instead, he’ll be mad at everyone except the man in his mirror.”

Emergency workers swarmed the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday to investigate massive numbers etched into the grass that appeared to spell out an “86 47” message.

U.S. Park Police, the Washington, D.C. Fire Department, and the National Guard responded to the appearance of the numbers, which could only be read from a distant height, such as the top of the Washington Monument, according to The Washington Post. A large “8” can distinctly be seen from an Earth Cam atop the structure.

“The numerals 8, 6 and 7 were visible, but the 4 wasn’t clearly etched into the grass,” the Post reported. “It remains unclear how the markings were made. The term ’86’ is restaurant industry slang that generally refers to the unavailability of an item or a customer’s removal. Trump allies have argued it can also mean to kill someone.”

Trump is the 47th president.

In its indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, the Trump Justice Department suggested that the term “86 47” could be interpreted as intent to harm President Trump.

On the ground, the numbers only appeared as brownish patches in the grass, possibly made with weed-killer or physical damage.

“Multiple emergency vehicles could be seen encircling the grass around 1 p.m. A team of officers stood over brown patches in the grass, wearing gloves, and appeared to be testing the grass with materials from a yellow case,” the Post reported. “Pedestrians were not permitted to walk on the grass, and a Park Service helicopter circled overhead.”

A White House spokesperson in an email to the Post said, “Anyone who engages in or endorses political violence or assassination culture must be condemned in the harshest terms possible.”

They added: “They should also immediately seek psychiatric help to treat their severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has warped their brains and made them sick in the head.

CBS News reported that an Interior Department spokesperson called it “deranged vandalism” that “will not be tolerated.”

“Any threat against the President is taken very seriously by the Department, and our U.S. Park Police will investigate this incident and hold those responsible accountable,” they added.

CNN fact checker Daniel Dale is scorching President Donald Trump for employing a “time-tested conspiracist tactic,” namely, altering his conspiracy theory when the facts disprove it.

Dale reminds readers that when then-President Barack Obama in 2011 had to publish his long-form birth certificate, which proved decisively that he was, in fact, born in the U.S., Trump didn’t cease and desist — instead, he changed tactics and suggested that the birth certificate itself was fake.

“It’s a time-tested conspiracist tactic,” Dale writes. “And he’s now using it again when trying to explain why Steve Hilton succeeded in the California primary elections Trump had baselessly declared were a fraud and were being rigged against Hilton.”

“If you’re pushing the baseless conspiracy theory that the results of last week’s California primary elections were rigged against Republicans like gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, it would seem highly inconvenient that Hilton has succeeded in qualifying for the November runoffs,” Dale argues. “But if you’re a seasoned conspiracy theorist, as President Donald Trump is, you don’t just stop telling a fantastical tale when it is contradicted by new facts. Rather, you simply adjust the conspiracy theory so that the new facts now fit within it.”

Trump is now alleging that “he had jawboned the riggers into submission,” says Dale, “but only in Hilton’s case, not the case of unsuccessful Republican Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt.”

For his part, Hilton hasn’t alleged any fraud, and, in fact, “he has said he has ‘seen nothing’ to justify any legal intervention.”

But Trump warned that California authorities had “approved” of Hilton advancing to the top tier for November.

“And then I hit them hard on that (Pratt’s defeat), but I started talking about Steve Hilton, who’s a fantastic guy,” Trump said, as Dale noted. “And I saw them say it was going to be two weeks before they knew, and I started hitting them. ‘It’s going to happen to Steve Hilton, too.’ It’s – ‘Watch, you gotta watch’ – and they approved Steve Hilton very quickly. They didn’t want, there was too much heat on them. The only reason he got approved – he had all the votes he needed, probably to be first place – but the only reason they approved Steve Hilton, it was going to be two weeks, they said, and then they approved him that night. Because the heat was on them, because they’re cheatin’ dogs.”

Dale calls Trump’s allegations “complete hogwash” and a “new round of foolishness.”

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was quick to defend President Donald Trump’s widely reported remarks following Wednesday’s sharp spike in inflation, which is now at a three-year high.

“I knew somebody was going to ask me that,” Johnson told CNN’s Manu Raju as he stepped into range of Raju's microphone. “It was totally out of context, you know what he was talking about.”

When pressed whether Trump’s remarks were what voters want to hear right now, Johnson insisted that the president “is laser-focused on the domestic economic situation.”

“He is working to bring down prices, he is going to get the Strait of Hormuz reopened,” Johnson insisted. “We have passed legislation, he has used executive orders to get the cost of living down. Everybody got their highest tax refunds they’ve had in their whole lives, they’re getting great paychecks, there’s all sorts of great economic indicators, but there’s still challenges — gas prices among them.”

“So, what he was saying is, it’s going to be great having that number and compare it to what comes next when we get these situations resolved — that’ll be a fun thing to consider and compare — that was the context,” said the Speaker.

Speaking about the inflation report, as CNBC reported, Trump had told reporters: “No, I love it, the numbers were great.”

“You know what I really love? I love the inflation. You know why?”

“Because as soon as this war is over, you know I can say it now … you know we’ve been taking out millions of barrels of oil.”

“Nobody knows it. You know who doesn’t know about it? Iran, until right now,” Trump said.

CNBC noted that Trump, “speaking with reporters in the Oval Office, also predicted that inflation is ‘going to come down like a rock’ after the United States’ war against Iran is over.”

Critics blasted Speaker Johnson online.

Trump: "I don't care about you, I just want your vote!" MAGA: "Taken out of context." Trump: "I don't think about Americans' financial situation." MAGA: "Taken out of context." Trump: "I love the inflation." MAGA: "Taken out of context," spat one heckler on X.

“Trump meant what he said and if people are taking things outta context maybe Trump should speak English,” said one social media user.

Others called Johnson a “Trump apologist.”

"No, no they were NOT taken out of context and Mike Johnson is a little b—— !" howled one critic.

Another remarked, “Aaaand, right on cue, here’s Mike Johnson, denying Trump said and meant what we all heard him say.”

Political strategist Steve Schmidt, a Republican turned Democrat, is blasting President Donald Trump as “despised,” “decrepit,” “bitter,” “angry,” “old,” “lonely,” and “hated” — while warning that “this week of desecration is only going to get worse from here.”

The co-founder of The Lincoln Project, Schmidt declared Trump’s White House — complete with a UFC cage match “Octagon” constructed to celebrate his 80th birthday and the start of the nation’s 250th birthday celebrations — a “symbol for the destruction of this era.”

That destruction, Schmidt says, includes “red hot” inflation and a lost Iran war.

Trump “isn’t just mistrusted. And disliked,” says Schmidt, “Donald Trump is genuinely despised. He’s hated.”

“He has earned this hatred, well and fully,” Schmidt declares, before calling Trump a “decrepit man” who is “the leader of a cult in America.”

“Consider his decrepitude,” Schmidt urges. “He cannot walk in a straight line.”

Offering examples, Schmidt points to Trump’s ankles, his sleeping in meetings, his “slurring of words.” Trump “is physically and mentally incontinent,” says Schmidt, in words similar to those he used on Monday when he declared the president “psychologically incontinent.”

“And yet, the cynical men, the vandals, who have assaulted the Republic, lit the Constitution on fire, and have curated this fascism from day one, insist, by the time we get to 2028, Trump will just be getting started,” he warned, before playing video of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon declaring he believes Trump will run for president again in 2028, despite the current constitutional ban.

“Donald Trump is the worst president in American history,” Schmidt continued. “He is a human malignancy. A pancreatic cancer on the American Republic, a lethal terminal cancer,” a “MAGA cancer” that “must be excised, fully from our politics.”

“Despite what men like Steve Bannon and Donald Trump promise and threaten,” Schmidt observes, “and then abuse and break, we will always have a vote. And the American people will vote these people out of office with an extreme prejudice come November. We will vote them out from coast to coast. From the top of the ballot to the bottom of the ballot.”

“Donald Trump,” Schmidt continues, “is unfit, physically. Emotionally. In every conceivable way. But especially morally. And because of that, all of us, the American people, all the people of the world are in danger. Make no mistake about that.”

Senate Republican Majority Leader John Thune was noticeably absent from Wednesday’s Oval Office bill signing ceremony — but top House and Senate leaders — including Speaker Mike Johnson — were present, cheering on the president. Thune did take time to talk with reporters, where he tied Wednesday’s surging inflation numbers to Trump’s Iran war.

The Washington Examiner’s David Sivak asked Thune directly why he wasn’t present at the president’s signing of the $70 billion reconciliation bill to fund ICE and the Border Patrol, or to talk about FISA legislation with Trump.

Thune noted that Speaker Johnson is “down there anyway” and that he and Johnson “talk regularly,” Sivak reported.

Thune appeared to suggest that there might not have been an invitation, adding, “I don’t know that we got asked, but I’ve got stuff going on here, as you know.”

Thune spelled out the inflation connection to reporters, as Punchbowl News’ Andrew Desiderio reported.

“The sooner we get the situation in Iran stabilized, the Strait [of Hormuz] opened up, those [inflation] numbers will trend in a better direction,” he said. “But obviously right now there are important national security objectives we’re trying to achieve.”

“The American people realize that if we’re heading in the right direction and the trendlines are good and the confidence is good long-term — which I [think] it will be because of all the other things we’ve done on the economy — then obviously people will start to see improvement,” he also said. “It may not happen overnight, but it will. But at least for now, we’ve got to do everything we can to keep the pressure on [in] getting the situation in the Middle East resolved.”

Getting the situation in Iran resolved was not how President Trump appeared to approach Iran on Wednesday.

“Iran’s Military is a complete and total mess,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Much of it, like their Navy and Air Force, doesn’t even exist anymore – They have been completely defeated. Iran is all talk and no action. The Bully of the Middle East is dead!!! They’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!!!”

In that Oval Office meeting, Trump also slammed Iran, saying that the U.S. would hit Iran hard again on Wednesday, and insisted the Iranian government is “playing us for suckers.”

Thune has distanced himself from the president over time, refusing his repeated demands to pass the controversial SAVE America Act — legislation some call voter suppression — to kill the filibuster, and to fire the Senate parliamentarian. He has also opposed Trump’s intelligence nominee. Thune tried to persuade Trump to back Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), but the president endorsed Ken Paxton instead — and Paxton went on to defeat Cornyn in the May primary runoff.

President Donald Trump has “destroyed” the 77-year-old NATO alliance, “without tearing up the treaty or even firing a shot,” argues former Trump Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor at Defiance.News.

At the heart of NATO sits Article 5: the principle that an attack on one member is an attack on all, and the commitment that every member will come to the attacked nation’s defense.

Taylor, who served in the first Trump administration, points to a survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations that finds majorities in every country polled doubt the United States would come to their aid if they were attacked.

“That’s a stake in the heart of the NATO alliance,” writes Taylor. That core Article 5 promise is “no longer believed by the very people it was written to protect. You can’t deter an adversary with a ‘guarantee’ your allies now think is hollow.”

“Even if Trump doesn’t care about this or is too inept to understand these numbers, Vladimir Putin is paying close attention,” warns Taylor.

“Alliances aren’t built on paper,” he explains. “Like a marriage, that’s just where they get documented. America’s most important alliances are built around shared belief, i.e. a conviction that when the worst comes, your friends will come for you. The genius of the postwar order that American diplomats Dean Acheson and George Marshall built was that it made that belief credible enough to deter the Soviet Union for forty years without a shot fired across the Fulda Gap.”

“Deterrence,” he notes, “lived in the minds of our enemies. And it’s in the mind that Trump has done his damage.”

Taylor also points to another “truly terrible” part of that poll he says found that “just 11 percent of Europeans across fifteen countries now regard the United States as an ally. That’s a record low.”

He calls it a “gut punch” that Trump will be headed to France to attend a G7 meeting in mid-June, and later to Turkey for a NATO summit in early July.

“Trump will go into those meetings as the most diminished American president in the history of the transatlantic alliance,” Taylor observes.

Europeans are now doing “what frightened nations have always done”: arming themselves because they don’t believe friendship with America is something they can rely on.

Taylor notes that European nations used to buy American-made weapons in part because they believed they would at some point be fighting alongside America. Now they are buying weapons from other countries because they fear at some point they may not.

He offers one note of optimism: that poll also found that in every nation polled but one, “majorities of Europeans believe relations will improve the moment Trump leaves office.”

Hard-right groups have expanded their influence inside the Trump administration, a new report on hate and extremism by the Southern Poverty Law Center finds, according to The Guardian. A federal grand jury indicted the SPLC, a civil rights organization, on federal fraud charges earlier this year — months before the report’s publication.

“2025 was a turbulent year marked by injustice, social upheaval and stark new threats from a hard-right movement rapidly establishing its power across institutions,” reads the director’s note to the SPLC’s “2025 Year in Hate and Extremism” series. “The hard right effectively seized the power of government as a messenger for extremist rhetoric and a tool to dictate policies affecting the everyday lives of millions of people.”

The Trump administration “radically” shifted policy to favor hard-right and extremists, claims the report titled “Empowering Extremists,” which was published Tuesday as part of the series.

The report found that the Trump administration has “shifted the focus of federal law enforcement away from violent crime investigations to sweeping immigration raids through American communities, targeting undocumented people as well as Black and Brown people — often regardless of immigration status and absent any suspicion of a violent offense.”

It states that on Sept. 22, 2025, “Trump issued an overly broad, vague executive order designating ‘antifa’ — a term often applied to people and community-based organizations opposing white supremacy, racism and the far right more generally — as a domestic terrorist organization.”

The Guardian noted that the SPLC report “pointed to conservative influencer Andy Ngo, who told Trump during a roundtable in October that ‘perhaps the state department should designate Antifa … a foreign terrorist organization.'”

“Would you like to see it done?” Trump replied. “You think it would help? I’d be glad to do it. I think it’s the kind of thing I’d like to do. Does everybody agree? If you agree, I agree. Let’s get it done.”

Trump “kept his promise,” the SPLC noted. “In November 2025, the State Department named four left-wing militant groups as foreign terrorist organizations.”

The report stated that the Trump administration’s “law enforcement shifts make Americans less safe,” and its actions increase the “threat posed by far-right extremism.”

“The administration gutted efforts to tackle hard-right extremism and downplayed — and even defended — the threat of right-wing extremist violence,” the report alleges. For example, the DOJ “removed a June 2024 peer-reviewed study from its website that concluded that far-right attacks continue ‘to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.'”