Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.

Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”

“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”

In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”

He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”

“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”

“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”

“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”

The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.

“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”

Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”

Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.

Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.

Columnists say President Donald Trump's focus on his own priorities, more than the country's, is widening the split with Senate Republicans — cracking a coalition once seen as airtight and pushing the president toward lame duck status. Democrats see an opening as the midterms approach.

According to pollsters Douglas E. Schoen and Carly Cooperman in an op-ed at The Hill, one year ago, the "alliance between President Trump and congressional Republicans looked airtight" — but it is now "unraveling, as Republican senators increasingly spar with a president who they see as too focused on his own priorities at the expense of their reelection prospects."

Schoen and Cooperman see this as "a tremendous gift to Democrats."

For example, Trump is underwater on numerous key issues, including the economy, where he sits at just 35 percent approval.

Republicans had hoped to use a bipartisan housing bill that went to the president's desk for his signature, but at the last moment Trump canceled the ceremony and refused to sign the legislation.

“The president wants to make it harder for you to vote rather than make it easier for you to live,” one political strategist said in a recent interview, Schoen and Cooperman noted. They added, "Holding up legislation to address affordability unless a White House ballroom is funded is hardly a winning message."

Senate Republicans now have a problem: if they distance themselves from Trump, they may appeal to independents while angering Trump's MAGA base. If they align themselves with Trump, they may lose independents.

The "tensions are expanding," Schoen and Cooperman observe. Senate Majority Leader John Thune "has been increasingly vocal with his frustration over some of Trump’s recent moves."

Not that all of this infighting hands Democrats an automatic win.

"All of this being said, whether or not Democrats can capitalize remains unknown. Their party’s favorability, at minus-20, is worse than Republicans' minus-17, and even worse than Trump’s at minus-15," Schoen and Cooperman note. "The growing power of an insurgent left wing may also complicate things for Democrats as Republicans work to portray the whole party as left-wing extremists."

But the infighting does hand Democrats an opportunity to strengthen their position with the voting public.

"Unless the president reverses course," Schoen and Cooperman warn, "which he is fully capable of doing, he will only speed up his descent into lame duck status and further undermine his own legacy."

A large panel fell seemingly dozens of feet from above onto the stage during a rehearsal for a performance at an event for President Donald Trump’s Freedom 250, according to video posted by attorney Aaron Parnas.

“The stage is falling apart at the rehearsal for Freedom 250’s July 4th celebration,” Parnas wrote.

After the panel fell, someone can be heard on the video saying, “I was waiting for something like that to happen.”

Critics blasted the administration while others issued warnings.

“This is incredibly dangerous stuff,” wrote journalist Ryan Grim. “Trump cutting safety corners with stage building is the kind of thing somebody can genuinely be prosecuted for if someone dies, which is not uncommon if you slap it together like this. This equipment is deadly when falling from those heights.”

“Literally a miracle no one was hurt here,” noted journalist Philip Lewis.

“In all seriousness, that actually looks really dangerous for the performers. It’s scary how unsafe this all seems,” observed journalist Pablo Manríquez.

“The sheer incompetence of this administration is really rather astonishing. Everything these people touch is shoddily done. This era is replete with evidence that experience and professionalism actually matter,” wrote author Jennifer Erin Valent.

“If there was ever a metaphor for how historians will look back at Trump’s presidency at this moment in time, it’s this,” wrote health care consultant and National Organization for Women vice president Melanie D’Arrigo.

“The Freedom 250 rehearsal stage falling apart is the perfect analogy for the Trump administration,” The Lincoln Project commented.

“Glad everyone’s ok — it’s also hard to imagine a better metaphor for the current state of [America] than this,” wrote the progressive media outlet The Tennessee Holler.

“Trump’s state fair is *literally* falling apart,” remarked liberal political commentator Harry Sisson.

One commenter added, “Those performers are incredibly lucky. That falling piece of debris looked heavy, sharp and came down at incredible speed.”

Trump’s Freedom 250 July 4th event is also besieged by a massive heat wave enveloping part of the country.

“U.S. Capitol Police have already restricted Thursday night’s rehearsal for ‘A Capitol Fourth Concert’ to essential personnel, posting on X that they came to the decision after consulting with the Capitol’s Office of the Attending Physician,” The New Republic reported.

“For safety reasons, the public will not be able to attend tonight’s rehearsal concert,” the Capitol Police’s post read. “Everyone is sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused. The National Weather Service is forecasting an extreme heat watch with temperatures exceeding 100 degrees.”

CNN data analyst Harry Enten says President Donald Trump is dragging down Republican Senate candidates in six battleground states Democrats hope to win to flip the chamber in November — and Trump will bear the blame if Democrats retake the majority. Democrats need to pick up four of the six to help turn the Senate blue.

“Donald John Trump is an anchor dragging down these Republican candidates across the board,” Enten said. “If they lose the Senate, it will be because of Donald Trump becoming so unpopular, especially on the cost of living.”

The issue of affordability will “drag those Republicans down and boost the Democrats to a Senate majority,” he added.

According to polling Enten cited, Trump is underwater in Alaska, Texas, Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina, and Maine — and on affordability, he is down by double digits in those six states.

“If Democrats are going to take back control of the United States Senate it will be in large part because of one man and one man alone,” Enten said. “And it is this man right here, Donald John Trump, because he is an anchor, he is an anchor, on Republicans running for the United States Senate.”

Enten compared Trump’s popularity in 2024 to recent polling in those six states. Just two years ago his net approval rating was plus eight points. Now, it is negative 11 points.

“In 2024, on average, he won those states by eight points,” Enten explained. “And most of them he won by double digits. But look where he is now on his net approval rating. Down down, he goes into the Ohio River. Look at this, he’s at minus 11 points. It’s a nearly 20 points switcheroo in the negative direction.”

“So Donald Trump across the board, across the board, in each of the six key Senate states is now underwater in all of them, despite winning in five of six of them.”

“Why have the people in these states so turned against the President of the United States in five of the six of these that he won? It comes down to the cost of living.”

Enten showed that Trump is underwater on affordability — voters’ number one issue — by 22 points in Alaska, 21 points in Texas, 24 points in Iowa, 26 points in Ohio, 29 points in North Carolina, and 36 points in Maine.

If affordability remains an issue in November, “it will drag those Republicans down and boost the Democrats to a Senate majority.”

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he attends the opening night of 'Chicago' at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, renamed by the Trump administration to The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 31, 2026.

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he attends the opening night of 'Chicago' at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, renamed by the Trump administration to The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 31, 2026.REUTERS/Evan Vucci

Trump White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt‘s old congressional campaign still owes creditors more than $326,000 — and they have little chance of collecting, according to a NOTUS report citing a new Federal Election Commission (FEC) filing.

The debts of the campaign, from 2022, are largely from supporters who donated more than federal law permits. The total of those excessive contributions amounts to more than $210,000. NOTUS reports that federal law requires campaigns to not spend those funds, but Leavitt’s campaign currently has no cash on hand.

Trump White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt‘s old congressional campaign still owes creditors more than $326,000 — and they have little chance of collecting, according to a NOTUS report citing a new Federal Election Commission (FEC) filing.

The debts of the campaign, from 2022, are largely from supporters who donated more than federal law permits. The total of those excessive contributions amounts to more than $210,000. NOTUS reports that federal law requires campaigns to not spend those funds, but Leavitt’s campaign currently has no cash on hand.

Leavitt, a congressional candidate from New Hampshire, lost her 2022 race to Democrat Chris Pappas. Her campaign has made no progress in raising funds to retire those debts, NOTUS notes, according to her committee’s filing.

Many political campaigns carry debt — sometimes hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars — for years after the election, NOTUS reported. “But the Leavitt campaign debt is different, since a significant portion requires refunds for contributions that exceeded the legal limit by hundreds or thousands of dollars.”

While an FEC complaint was filed in 2022, there’s been no update.

The FEC “has been unable to take enforcement action of any sort since May 1, 2025, when the campaign finance regulator entered a de facto shutdown after losing the minimum number of commissioners to perform such high level duties.” Trump has nominated two new commissioners, but they are awaiting Senate confirmation, and no hearing has been announced.

The New Hampshire Bulletin last year reported that “campaigns are required to repay donors anything over the limit, which at the time was $2,900 per election, within 60 days, per FEC regulations. Leavitt’s campaign appears to not have done that based on this disclosure.”

Last year, OpenSecrets reported that by law, “federal political candidates are not personally liable for their committees’ campaign debt,” and her campaign’s “options for making creditors whole are limited.”

Candidates like Leavitt could “personally contribute money to their campaign committee, which in turn may pay people and companies owed money. But federal records indicate that this is rare.”

One of President Donald Trump’s favorite shows, “Fox & Friends,” is pulling up stakes after just days of promoting his Great American State Fair, a 16-day event to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday.

According to The Daily Beast, the conservative morning TV show “is back in the studio” after two days, which “it spent talking up over live shots of empty grass.”

One of President Donald Trump’s favorite shows, “Fox & Friends,” is pulling up stakes after just days of promoting his Great American State Fair, a 16-day event to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday.

According to The Daily Beast, the conservative morning TV show “is back in the studio” after two days, which “it spent talking up over live shots of empty grass.”

Wednesday morning, the “Fox & Friends” studio was packed with “an audience of first responders, veterans, and their families” as the hosts returned to the indoor set, The Daily Beast noted.

“We’ve been away for 48 hours. They’ve been waiting for us to return. We appreciate it,” co-host Brian Kilmeade declared.

Trump had claimed that 45,000 people turned out for his kickoff speech, but Fox News’ cameras “blew apart the president’s boasts.”

As did photographs from Reuters, The Daily Beast reported, with them “showing nowhere near the numbers the president had touted.”

“The network’s live shots from the Mall repeatedly framed wide stretches of empty grass behind its anchors, The Daily Beast added. “On other mornings, the walkways and booths behind the set sat all but empty. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, 28, turned up on the show Monday to gush about the fair with a bare lawn.”

On Tuesday, USA Today opinion columnist Rex Huppke wrote, “I love President Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair. I love its emptiness. It’s expensive food. Its ability to confound Trump-friendly media outlets that keep pretending it’s going great.”

“I love seeing Fox News broadcasting from the fair, its hosts claiming the place is filled with excited patriots while the scenes behind them show a vast expanse of untrod-upon grass with an occasional few humans milling along the fringes.”

Huppke said it was “like watching your high school bully host a party that no one attends. It’s a daily humiliation for a wildly unpopular president who coopted what should be a unifying national celebration and turned it into repellent schlock.”

Arkansas voters haven’t elected a Democratic governor in over a decade. Same with its two U.S. senators. And with all four of its U.S. representatives. Donald Trump won the state in the 2024 presidential election with nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of the vote — even more than he took in 2020. For more than a decade, Republicans have controlled both chambers in the state legislature — now with a veto-proof supermajority. And as of the 2024 election, more than eight out of 10 Arkansans live in solid Republican counties.

So perhaps it’s surprising to see an anti-Trump letter to the editor in one of the state’s top newspapers.

“Is that patriotism?” asks Doug Barber in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the state’s paper of record.

“I recently read an article that stated Republicans are more patriotic than Democrats or independents. I question that assertion,” Barber argues.

“How can someone claim they are patriotic when they support a president who regularly ignores the U.S. Constitution?” he asks. “For example, in 2021, Donald Trump did everything in his power to prevent the duly elected president from taking office.”

“Under the Trump administration, freedom of the press and freedom of speech is only as long as you aren’t too critical of the president (CBS News is an example),” Barber continues. “How about the separation of powers? Trump tried to appoint his Cabinet without the approval of Congress. He threatens judges who decide against him with impeachment. He regularly uses executive orders to bypass Congress and impose his will.”

Barber scorches Trump’s pardons of January 6 rioters.

“And let’s not forget how he treats protesters,” he posits. “If you violently protest for Trump, you get pardoned and possibly get financially rewarded (if Trump gets his way). If you protest against the president, you get harsh sentences (see Minnesota) or perhaps even killed.”

“If supporting this kind of president is what it takes to be patriotic,” Barber concludes, “count me out.”

A tense Oval Office meeting last week put President Donald Trump in the middle of a clash between Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s team and a top agriculture lobbyist over pesticides, farmers’ health, and the U.S. food supply.

“The confrontation, which one attendee called ‘shocking,’ exposed a sharp fault line in Trump’s coalition — the push by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA movement to reduce conventional pesticides vs. farming interests determined to preserve them,” Axios reported.

Secretary Kennedy and his MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement see pesticides as a product that is making Americans sick, while the farmers largely warn that restricting the use of pesticides would make food prices more expensive for consumers and cost farmers — who are already struggling — billions of dollars.

Trump had planned to sign an executive order later that day to promote alternatives to conventional pesticides and to study their effects, Axios reported. American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall opposed the signing of the order, expressing concern that it would send a signal that would undermine Americans’ confidence in the safety of the U.S. food supply.

Duvall represents more than 5 million farming and ranching members.

South Dakota farmer and former USDA official Jonathan Lundgren was also present at the Oval Office meeting and supported the president’s executive order.

“One of the take-home messages I really wanted [Trump] to understand is that the farmers were sick right now,” Lundgren told Axios. “We’re literally killing our farmers with these food systems.”

“It was intense in there,” Lundgren told Axios. “They were arguing. It was back and forth.”

Axios added that “Lundgren said Duvall’s decision to forcefully confront Trump was ‘shocking,’ and that the president appeared concerned and ‘wanted to understand why Zippy was so worried.'”

“Several other farmers at the meeting echoed Lundgren’s support for regenerative agriculture, a farming approach focused on improving soil health and reducing reliance on pesticides.”

Trump asked aides for their advice on signing the executive order. Ultimately, he decided to sign it. Later, Duvall agreed to support it.

“Mike Tomko, an American Farm Bureau Federation spokesperson, disputed the idea Duvall wasn’t in favor of exploring pesticide alternatives,” Axios reported. “He said Duvall’s concerns about the executive order centered on the ‘insinuation that our food supply is not safe.'”

President Donald Trump, appearing not to grasp the legal effect of the Supreme Court’s majority opinion that struck down his executive order on birthright citizenship, just hours later floated a workaround.

“The Supreme Court upheld Birthright Citizenship, which is too bad for our Country, but we can easily make it up in Congress through Legislation, with the support of the President, that has now been determined during this process,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “No long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment is necessary! Congress should start TODAY to work on ending expensive and unfair to our Country, Birthright Citizenship.”

Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney responded to the president’s message, writing, “Trump incorrectly suggests Congress can act to limit birthright citizenship without a constitutional amendment, which the majority foreclosed.”

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the 6-3 majority, said, “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community.”

“The framers of the 14th Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land,’” he added. “We keep that promise today.”

As The New York Times noted, Trump “wrongly asserted that ‘no long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment is necessary.'”

And as NBC News reported, a constitutional amendment would be required to change the law. That means a two-thirds majority in the House and the Senate — plus ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a constitutional lawyer, noted that he was “very disappointed” with the ruling, as Alternet reported. But, contrary to Trump’s take, Johnson said that it is time to amend the Constitution over birthright citizenship, which he argued has been “grossly abused in recent years.”

Noting that Trump had attended oral arguments for the birthright citizenship case, journalist Gabe Fleisher wrote that “Trump has now responded to the birthright citizenship opinion, but does not seem to have understood its holding. Trump says that birthright citizenship could still be undone by statute, without a constitutional amendment, even though a 5-justice majority said the opposite.”

Forbes’ Mark Joyella responded to Trump’s claim, writing, “Ya gotta love how little Trump understands how this country works.”

Journalist Michael McGough asked, “Did he even consult with a lawyer before coming out with this?”

President Donald Trump, without prior congressional approval, has demolished the East Wing of the White House to construct a multimillion-dollar ballroom, remade the Rose Garden (twice), constructed an ultimate fighting cage, installed a Presidential Walk of Fame mocking his Democratic predecessors, changed the walkway to granite, refurbished the Oval Office with gold decorations, renovated the Lincoln bathroom, and now is constructing a helipad on the White House South Lawn.

The president has often boasted that his renovations will cost the taxpayers nothing — while their true cost, such as the security enhancements of his ballroom project, will reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and possibly $1 billion.

His latest project, the “unannounced” helipad, is being funded in part by a $5 million donation from top defense contractor Lockheed Martin, according to a report by The Washington Post. It is “intended to resolve a years-long problem with the new Marine One helicopters: They run the risk of scorching the White House’s grass.”

The total cost of the project was not disclosed, nor was the construction before it began.

“Construction crews worked into the night Monday on the White House’s South Lawn, with the project blocked off by a large fence,” the Post reported. “The helipad will be located near the South Portico, the traditional landing site for Marine One, the call sign for whichever helicopter is transporting the president, the people said.”

Retired Marine Corps Colonel Ray L’Heureux “said it appears the installation of the White House helipad was determined to be operationally necessary.”

“The new [Marine One] program is a costly one and not using the capability is bad optics all around for many reasons,” he added.

He hopes that altering the aesthetics of the White House grounds can be mitigated by painting the helipad green.

The Daily Beast reported that Trump was “secretly breaking ground on the latest desecration at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

Trump’s many construction and renovation projects have drawn a loud, unrelenting backlash.

“Conservationists, lawmakers, government watchdogs, transparency advocates, and much of the public at large have balked as he charges ahead with building a glitzy new ballroom at the site where the building’s historic East Wing once stood,” The Daily Beast added.

The U.S. Supreme Court has “declared war” on American democracy, on “modern society,” and on “everything it takes to function in the 21st century,” warns Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, after the court expanded presidential powers once again. Six of the court’s members, presumably the conservative wing, “are fundamentally hostile to democracy, fundamentally hostile to the modern world and determined to put the catastrophically bad leader that we currently have sitting in the White House in charge of everything, which is a nightmare scenario on every level.”

Krugman scorches the court for ruling that presidents can fire, without cause, the heads of independent federal agencies (except the Federal Reserve). In doing so, the court overturned a 91-year-old precedent.

He explains that in a modern society, “the agencies that operate the U.S. government and basically run our society are supposed to be professional. They’re supposed to be following their legal mandate. They’re not supposed to be personal tools of a dictator in the White House.”

Krugman says that the court has now given “essentially dictatorial powers to the occupant of the White House,” while also making it extremely difficult for the economy and for society to function.

He explains that in today’s complicated world, ground rules are necessary. Offering the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as an example, Krugman says that producers need to know that their products will be approved based on merit, and not on “spurious grounds.”

“And what would cause those decisions to happen?” he asks. “Well, how about the fact that some businesses are better at the business of bribing the president and his family than others. And if you think that this is outlandish — you know, a few years ago you might have said this was outlandish, things like that wouldn’t really happen — well, as we speak, these things are happening all the time.”

Ultimately, Krugman says, America cannot continue on this path — and he calls for some form of restructuring or constraining of the Supreme Court.

“This is a clear argument that says we have to one way or another disempower the Supreme Court. I don’t know enough to tell you what is the best route to do that but court packing or something else is going to have to happen.”

Professor of law Barb McQuade, commenting on the court’s opinion, wrote, “Today’s decision in Slaughter will destroy the independence of the Merit Systems Protection Board, which will have a cascading effect on all federal employees, who have been free from political interference for 150 years. The spoils system is back, baby!”

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.”

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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.”