Wayne DeMario, a Florida Republican who voted for President Donald Trump, on Friday delivered a “desperate plea” to the president to return his wife, Yamile Alcantu, who’s been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for eight months.

“Please get her home,” DeMario told Local10 on Friday. “Please, she does not deserve this. She is the sweetest person, and she prayed for you.”

DeMario, a small business owner in Miami-Dade county, told Local10 he and his wife were Trump supporters prior to their ordeal.

According to DeMario, Alcantu, who Local10 reports “moved to the U.S. from Cuba 25 years ago through a Visa Lottery,” had “a minor run-in with the law during a traffic stop” back in 2008.

“They go through her purse, and then they dump the purse out, and three Xanax pills fall out,” DeMario explained.

His wife has checked in annually with ICE “for years,” Local10 reports. In June, things changed.

“They grabbed her, put her in shackles and chains,” DeMario said, likening her detention to being “kidnapped.”

“ICE held her at a detention center in Jacksonville and moved her to Louisiana,” Local10 reports.

“I really thought this was just going to be something more organized, but it’s obviously not,” DeMario told the outlet. “They just blanket everybody.”

A stunning report in the Washington Post on Saturday reveals aides for President Donald Trump are running into “logistical challenges” surrounding how the U.S. military can spend “a whopping $500 billion in their forthcoming budget.”

According to four people who spoke with the Post, after Trump “agreed to a roughly 50 percent funding boost sought by” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, White House aides and defense officials struggled with "where to put the money, because the amount is so large.” Per the Post, “The White House is more than two weeks behind its statutory deadline to send its budget proposal to Congress, in part because it is unclear how precisely to spend the additional $500 billion.”

As the Post reports, “senior Pentagon officials have consulted with former senior defense officials as they grapple with the challenge.”

Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel, said with the spending increase, “it now appears that the Pentagon budget is detached from” a previous defense strategy released by Hegseth’s team in January. That strategy “calls for the Pentagon to focus first on defense in the Western Hemisphere, with less emphasis on Europe, Africa and the Middle East,” the Post reports.

Cancian called it a “head scratcher” that the U.S. would pull back from those regions while also increasing the budget.

“If you’ve got a 50 percent budget increase, you don’t have to do any of that,” Cancian said. “You’d be talking about all the new places you’d making investments.”

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s 46-page opinion on President Donald Trump’s tariff case reveals the conservative’s trepidation over his colleague’s apparent double standard toward the current president compared with former President Joe Biden — and reminds Congress it, too, can make decisions.

While the Supreme Court largely struck down Trump’s tariffs in Friday’s ruling, conservatives “splintered,” NBC News senior Supreme Court reporter Lawrence Hurley wrote, with Chief Justice John Roberts penning the ruling, and Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett joining the majority. Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito dissented.

Hurley on Saturday detailed Gorsuch’s opinion that “took aim at his colleagues on the Supreme Court for a lack of consistency” in their handling of presidential power under the Trump administration. Hurley notes Gorsuch “chided several of his fellow justices” for “effectively applying the same Supreme Court precedent differently under Trump than they did under Biden.”

According to Hurley, under Biden, conservatives on the Supreme Court adhered to the “major questions doctrine,” or the notion that “sweeping presidential action” must be “authorized by Congress.”

In his opinion, Gorsuch argued his liberal colleagues “do not object to [the major questions doctrine’s] application in [the tariff] case" despite rejecting the theory under Biden. As for his conservative colleagues, Gorsuch called out those “who have joined major questions decisions in the past [but] dissent from today’s application of the doctrine.”

As NBC News reports, “Thomas, Kavanaugh, Barrett and liberal Justice Elena Kagan all felt the need to respond to Gorsuch in their own opinions.”

Kagan, in her concurring opinion, had “a side-battle [with Gorsuch] over the major questions doctrine,” taking aim at the conservative justice’s assertion she was somehow embracing his favored legal theory, Slate legal reporter Mark Joseph Stern wrote Friday on BlueSky.

In her note, Kagan wrote that Gorsuch "[insists] that I now must be applying the major questions doctrine, and his own version of it to boot … Given how strong his apparent desire for converts ... I almost regret to inform him that I am not one.”

Fordham University School of Law professor Robin Effron said the splintering “shows you how much internal dissension there is on the Supreme Court right now.” She also called Roberts’ majority opinion a “huge fail,” noting that it read like he’d hoped to land a unanimous decision on the ruling.

While Kagan argued in her concurring opinion that she was not, in fact, embracing the doctrine, George Mason University law school professor Ilya Somin told NBC News that Kavanaugh actually argued the major questions theory does not apply to Trump's tariff case at all.

“It seems like they want to carve out this arbitrary exception to major questions for tariffs even though it can’t be justified,” Somin said.

Still, Gorsuch appears to believe athe Supreme Court strife related to Trump’s tariff case could have been solved by “the bygone era of legislative power,” a separate New York Times analysis explained.

“Yes, legislating can be hard and take time,” Gorsuch wrote. “And yes, it can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises. But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design. Through that process, the nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives, not just that of one faction or man.”

Times reporter Catie Edmondson noted Gorsuch’s language was “a description of governing completely at odds with what is currently underway across the street from the Supreme Court at the Capitol, where Republicans controlling the House and the Senate have ceded their power to one man — Mr. Trump — on a variety of issues.”

Edmondson detected in Gorsuch’s opinion “a note of reproach for the current dysfunctional state of affairs in Congress,” pointing out a specific phrase from his writing: “Deliberation tempers impulse, and compromise hammers disagreements into workable solutions,” the conservative justice wrote. “For some today, the weight of those virtues is apparent. For others, it may not seem so obvious.”

The Department of Justice has “suffered a string of embarrassing defeats” in court as federal government cases against people accused of “physically attacking officers or interfering with their duties … have recently been dismissed or ended in not guilty verdicts,” the Guardian reports.

After President Donald Trump surged federal agents in Minnesota, a number of cases in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region revealed a gulf between federal agent’s claims and the actual facts on the ground, often backed by video of the events.

Frederick Goetz, a lawyer for a man charged with felony assault for allegedly attacking an officer, and whose charges were later dismissed by prosecutors, told the Guardian he sees “a pattern” among similar cases in the region.

“There are unreasonable uses of force by ICE agents and border patrol,” Goetz explained. “You immediately have stories perpetuated to justify that force: ‘The officer was being attacked. This was an ambush.’ All of that spin is to cast the victims as violent perpetrators. Then the story falls apart once you get the facts.”

In Goetz's client's case, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director Todd Lyons last week acknowledged “sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements.” Lyons insisted federal authorities are investigating the officers.

As the Guardian reports, several other cases in Minnesota have “fallen apart” under the facts.

“Earlier this year, Minnesota federal prosecutors dropped assault charges against a man, who was accused of ramming his car into agents during an immigration operation,” the Guardian reports. “The DOJ presented no witnesses to establish probable cause.”

And on Tuesday, Judge Donovan Frank “dismissed with prejudice federal assault charges filed against a Minneapolis man accused of ‘tackling’ an ICE agent,” calling the “allegations ‘vague and contradictory.’”

The DOJ’s inability to secure convictions in these cases come as “the number of assistant U.S. attorneys in Minnesota has fallen from more than 40 prosecutors before Trump retook office to fewer than two dozen,” the AP reports.

Minnesota, according to the AP, “has been hit especially hard” by a slew of resignations across the United States. Because of this, “a growing number of defendants are beginning to escape accountability, as the remaining prosecutors are forced to dismiss some cases, kill others before charges are filed and seek plea agreements and delays.”

“Public safety has not been served by these rash of cases,” Goetz told the Guardian.

In one such case, 12-time convicted felon Cory Allen McKay, “with a three-decade record of violent crime that includes strangling a pregnant woman and firing a shotgun under a person’s chin … walked free after the prosecutor on his case retired,” the AP reports.

According to the report, McKay’s lawyer, Jean Brand, said the move was “completely surprising” to her. She didn’t learn that Trump appointee Daniel Rosen abruptly dropped the case until after her client’s release.

Last year, former assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Hollenhorst successfully argued that McKay “was too dangerous to be released before trial,” the AP reports.

McKay’s lawyer called Hollenhorst’s retired “a huge loss’ for the Justice Department, despite the win for her client.

What’s in a name?

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) on Sunday claimed he “could care less” about “the name of a building or infrastructure project” after the New York Times on Friday reported top White House officials pressured Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to help name multiple U.S. facilities after President Donald Trump.

But one reporter resurfaced an old Lawler tweet that shows the Republican lawmaker wasn’t always so magnanimous about infrastructure name changes.

According to the Times, citing four people familiar with the conversations, top Trump administration officials in recent weeks have told Schumer the president would release "billions of dollars he has frozen for a rail tunnel under the Hudson River” if the Democratic leader agreed to name “New York’s Penn Station and Washington Dulles International Airport after” Trump.

As the report notes, “The Trump administration began withholding funds for the new tunnel connecting New York City and New Jersey, a $16 billion project, in October.”

Lawler, who earlier this week offered a tepid critique of Trump after the president’s official Truth Social account posted a racist AI video depicting former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama as apes, was asked about Trump’s naming demand on ABC This Week.

“We learned that President Trump told Chuck Schumer, the Senate leader, that he would be willing to unfreeze $16 billion in funding for a major infrastructure project in New York and new Jersey if Schumer were willing to endorse the idea of renaming Penn Station, and by the way, Dulles Airport, after Donald Trump," ABC News’ Jonathan Karl explained Sunday. "How is that OK?”

Lawler replied that the Hudson River Tunnel Project is a "critical infrastructure project” and “critical for my district" before blaming Schumer for the frozen funds.

"Schumer decided to shut the government down for 43 days and as a result, this critical infrastructure was frozen during that shut down," Lawler alleged, describing the discussions as a "negotiation between" Trump and Schumer.

The Republican lawmaker the recalled former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo "negotiated the renaming of the Tappan Zee Bridge after his father [former New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo] and the renaming of the Triborough Bridge after his former father-in-law [Robert F. Kennedy]."

“This is not new," Lawler claimed. "Renaming critical infrastructure projects is not a new concept.”

“Okay, I mean, he’s holding the money hostage for having these things named after him," Karl replied. "This isn't like, 'Let's honor somebody.' Trump wants it named after himself. And he saying he'll unfreeze the money if they do it."

“At the end of the day, I could care less what the name of a building is, or a critical infrastructure project is," Lawler insisted. "I care that it gets done."

WNYC reporter Jon Campbell on Sunday noted Lawler “brought up the Cuomo Bridge" during the ABC interview "as a prior example of government officials naming infrastructure after family.” But, as Campbell noted, Lawler failed to mention his former critique of Mario Cuomo’s name on the Tappan Zee bridge.

In March 2021, then-assemblyman Lawyer introduced a bill to change the name of the Gov. Mario Cuomo Bridge back to the Tappan Zee Bridge, arguing the legislation as essential because it "bears the same last name" as Andrew Cuomo, who patch.com reported at the time was “mired in controversies over inappropriate behavior with women and the state's rules about nursing homes at the start of the pandemic.”

The following year, Lawler found renewed interest in his anti-Cuomo crusade, telling CBS News in March 2022 "the time for compromise on this has passed, with respect to adding the Tappan Zee name back.”

"The governor didn't want [compromise] at the time,” Lawler said in 2022. “He wanted the Cuomo family name. He, through his own actions — not mine, not anybody else's, through his own actions — has disgraced that name and it needs to come off the bridge.”

In 2024, while running for reelection in his competitive district, Lawler even sold t-shirts about the bridge bearing the Cuomo family name.

It appears Lawler’s specific position on renaming infrastructure projects is he “could care less” about appeasing Trump. But when it comes to a bridge bearing the name of the father of his political foe, well, that’s a bridge too far.

Former KGB officer Alnur Mussayev, who once headed Kazakhstan’s security services, said both Kazakhstan and the Kremlin are in possession of an incriminating video of U.S. President Donald Trump, among other “compromising material,” Ukraine’s Kyiv Post reports.

Mussayev on Friday spoke with Ukraine’s Espreso TV program “Studia Zakhid,” where the Kyiv Post reports he “reiterated a claim he has expressed publicly for years – namely, that there is a Kremlin file with compromising video material from Trump’s stay at Moscow’s Ritz-Carlton hotel in 2013” for the Miss Universe pageant. According to Mussayev, Kazakhstan is also “in possession of that same kompromat.”

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee (KNB) both have a copy of the file, “including possession of film footage, presumable of a sexual nature,” according to the report.

Mussayev told Ukraine’s “Studia Zakhid” the files “were used by former chairman of the National Security Committee Karim Masimov during a meeting with Secretary of State [Rex] Tillerson in the United States.” Tillerson met with Masimov at the U.S. State Department in October 2017, according to Tillerson's public schedule. Trump fired Tillerson in March 2018.

Mussayev said Kazakhstan obtained the video because a Kazakh oligarch named Bulat Temuratov owned, and still owns, the Ritz Hotel. According to Mussayev, Temuratov is “close to [Kazakh] President [Nursultan] Nazarbayev.”

“Whatever was filmed at the Ritz Hotel belonged to Kazakhs,” Mussayev explained.

“Russian special services used camera surveillance in the rooms. In addition to the Russians, it got through to the National Security Committee of Kazakhstan via Bulat Temuratov,” Mussayev added.

Mussayev has long claimed Trump was “groomed in 1987 as a potential Soviet asset,” according to the Kyiv Post.

In Feb. 2018, Mussayev wrote on Facebook Trump is in the category of “ideally recruitable people."

"I have no doubt that Russia has kompromat on the U.S. president, that over the course of many years the Kremlin has been promoting Trump to the post of president of the main world power," Mussayev wrote.

Journalist Jonah Goldberg on Sunday explained the negative impact of President Donald Trump’s “garbage” Truth Social posts on his own White House agenda, noting the president is “constantly screwing up" the administration's messaging with his “irresponsible” social media habit.

Speaking on Air Force One Friday, Trump tried to shift the blame for an AI video depicting former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama as apes. The post appeared overnight Thursday on the tail end of a video pushing conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election.

As even Republican supporters of Trump expressed outrage over the post, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared to defend the image of the Obamas as “an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King.”

“Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public,” Leavitt said of Trump's post, despite there being no ape characters in the Lion King.

Several hours after Leavitt’s remark, Trump’s Truth Social account finally removed the video, and a White House official claimed the post was “erroneously made” by a staffer.

Trump on Friday told reporters he never saw the end of the video.

"I guess during the end of it, there was some kind of picture people don't like,” Trump said. “I wouldn't like it either, but I didn't see it. I just, I looked at the first part, and it was really about voter fraud.”

“It was really about voter fraud and the machines – how crooked it is, how disgusting it is,” Trump continued. “Then I gave it to the people, generally they’d look at the whole thing but I guess somebody didn’t and they posted it. And then we deleted it.”

Asked about his Republican defenders urging him to apologize for the clip, Trump argued he “didn’t make a mistake.”

“I look at a lot of, thousands of, things, and I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine,” Trump said.

Goldberg on Sunday said the incident is indicative of the White House’s messaging struggle frequently brought on by the president himself.

“I take Trump at his word on this,"Goldberg explained. “... Trump's explanation is entirely plausible to me. He was stupid, lazy and irresponsible and forwarded a video only after watching it for 10 seconds. Doesn’t mean he wouldn't have still sent it if he watched the whole thing.”

“My point is, he posts irresponsible stuff all the time,” Goldberg continued. “And that's the thing I thought was most interesting about the Karoline Leavitt response is when they were in full defensive mode, she said, ‘Why don't quit with the fake outrage? Why don't you guys report about something the American people care about?’ And the problem is that Donald Trump is constantly screwing up their messaging by posting garbage like this, which is not what the American people care about. And then the media covers it.”

Goldberg went on to note the “reason you got blowback from a lot of Republicans is now we're in 2026, we are in full midterm mode, and anything that distracts from the messaging that they want, they are more inclined to criticize going into the midterms, including stuff like this.”

President Donald Trump on Sunday said he spoke with Russian leader Vladimir Putin ahead of a scheduled meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Bloomberg reports.

Trump will meet face-to-face with Zelensky Sunday afternoon in Florida. Sunday morning, according to Trump, he had a “good and very productive” phone call with the Russian leader. “Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the Trump-Putin call, according to the Interfax news service,” Bloomberg reports.

“Trump has ramped up pressure on Ukraine to make concessions and dangled promises of economic cooperation at Russia,” according to Bloomberg. “While Zelensky has repeatedly declared his readiness for a ceasefire to allow space for peace negotiations, Putin has refused Trump’s calls for a truce without first having reached agreement on a deal.”

NewsNation editor Kevin Bohn reports “after Trump and Zelensky finish their one on one meeting, both leaders will call European leaders to brief them.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Sunday called Europe “the main obstacle to peace," Bloomberg reports. Meanwhile, "Russia spent the weekend bombarding Ukraine, pounding Kyiv with hundreds of drones and missiles."

Former Rep. Joe Walsh, who served as a Republican representative from Illinois from 2011 to 2013, on Sunday slammed a former colleague’s lackluster defense of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy.

Walsh was responding to a clip of Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) during which the current congressman insisted Trump is “on the side of peace” in the Russia-Ukraine war.

Turner was speaking on the Russia-Ukraine war on ABC's "This Week."

“[Ukriane is] on the side of democracy, liberty, and Russia is on the side of authoritarianism and aggression,” Turner said.

“Which side is Trump on?” ABC’s Jonathan Karl asked.

Turner stammered in his response to Karl’s question.

“I-I, you know, clearly, uhm, you know, Trump is on the side of, of, peace. And he’s trying to balance these two forces which is very, very difficult,” Turner said.

Walsh, in a tweet, called that claim “bulls——.”

“I served in Congress with Mike Turner,” Walsh wrote. “He knows what side Trump is on. He knows Trump is on Putin’s side. He just doesn’t have the guts to say that publicly.”

Karl later pressed Turner on Trump's past statements appearing to blame Ukraine for the war — comments the Republican struggled to explain away.

“Trump has repeatedly said Ukraine never should have started this war, or words to that effect,” Karl noted. “... Ukraine didn’t start this war, they were invaded. So how does that affect his effort to try to broker a peace deal?”

“Clearly a war of aggression is started by Russia and it has been started by Russia,” Turner replied, before arguing the administration is “getting closer” to brokering a peace deal between the two countries.

Companies are “looking to stay lean into 2026” as a new “corporate playbook” reveals hiring freezes in major industries, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“You’re going to see a lot of wait and see,” chief executive of staffing company Kelly Services Chris Layden told the Journal. “Some of the looming uncertainty will mean that we’re going to continue to see an investment in capital over people.”

According to the report, “66 percent of leaders surveyed” at a recent gathering in Midtown Manhattan “said they planned to either fire workers or maintain the size of their existing teams next year. Only a third indicated they planned to hire.” This comes as the “unemployment rate those to 4.6 percent in November, its highest in four years.”

“We’re close to zero job growth. That’s not a healthy labor market,” Federal Reserve governor Christopher Waller said at the gathering. “When I go around and talk to CEOs around the country, everybody’s telling me, ‘Look, we’re not hiring because we’re waiting to try to figure out what happens with AI. What jobs can we replace? What jobs do we don’t?’”

“Everybody’s afraid for their jobs. I’m dead serious,” said Waller.

Per the Journal, “some of the weakest industries for new job openings include those in well-paid fields such as data analytics, software development, marketing and entertainment, she said. Job postings are stronger in industries such as healthcare and construction.”

President Donald Trump on Friday touted a graph showing plummeting federal employment as “Big News for the USA!”

“The post cited jobs numbers from earlier this month showing federal employment at its lowest in more than a decade, down 271,000 jobs since he took office,” MS Now reports. “The Trump administration casts those numbers in a wholly positive light, as indicative of a strong private sector, even as the labor market stalls."

Read the full report at the Wall Street Journal.

Veteran Republican strategist Karl Rove on Saturday delivered a stark warning for President Donald Trump and the GOP as the 2026 midterm elections loom.

“The president will end this year at the lowest approval rating in modern times for a president … in the first year after his inauguration," Rove told Fox News. "He has got to get those numbers up."

“I am convinced a large part of it is going to be patiently explaining what it is he has done, explaining what is he wants to do particularly with regards to health care in a way that the American people can put their hand around it,” he added.

Rove urged the president to “lower the expectations, and over-deliver” in his messaging to the American public.

“Under-promise and over-deliver ought to be the goal of the next year,” Rove said.

“Americans are not feeling the economy is great. For him to stand up and say — as he did first in Pennsylvania, then in North Carolina — that ‘everything is great,’ it does not resonate with the felt experience of ordinary American families,” Rove told Fox News.

“Second-term midterms are never happy ones for the president except in 1998’s for Bill Clinton when the Republicans overplayed their hand. And the first term for George W. Bush, but those have been a rare moment midterm election has worked to the advantage of the party in power,” he noted.

Employees at the U.S. Department of State are hesitant “to give advice that the political appointees might not want to hear” as officials "become guarded about what they say" under President Donald Trump, multiple former State Department lawyers told HuffPost.

In an article published Saturday, HuffPost reports “a severe and unusual fear of being punished for doing their jobs has spread among staff at the State Department’s legal office, bolstering concerns about how the Trump administration is crafting foreign policy.”

According to the report, lawyers at the Office of the Legal Adviser at State (“L”), fear repercussions “if they suggest the administration’s plans could break domestic or international law.”

The president’s “drastic” international moves — including “strikes on accused drug boats in the waters around South America” — have drawn particular concern among former State Department employees, according to the report.

“It’s really difficult to imagine how any State Department lawyer could sign off on these strikes,” former “L” employee Charlie Trumbull told HuffPost. “That leads me to believe that the normal vetting process for vetting these things is not functioning as it did.”

Trumbull added there’s “much more hesitancy to give advice that the political appointees might not want to hear.”

“We’ve always had a culture where we speak frankly, challenge things and really push ideas to ensure they’re solidly supported,” a former lawyer told HuffPost.

“There’s an underlying fear of … providing advice that wasn’t well-received and then being cut out of a subject, being further and further removed from the job that you spent your career trying to do,” that lawyer added.

According to the report, “L” has experienced “a drastic and uncommon loss of staff since Trump’s second term began.”

Read the full report at HuffPost.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was not "fully looped in until late” on a “controversial 28-point plan dropped suddenly by the Trump administration to Ukraine,” Bloomberg reports.

According to the report, the “take-it-or-leave it proposition … was mostly the result of several weeks of negotiations behind the scenes between Steve Witkoff and his Russian counterpart Kirill Dmitriev that excluded not only Ukraine and its allies but even some key US officials.”

Bloomberg spoke with “several people familiar with the deliberations who spoke on condition of anonymity” to “reconstruct” the plan's origination. The framework has since been delivered as an “ultimatum” to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Per Bloomberg, Vice President JD Vance’s “close friend” US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, triggered the “alarm” for European officials after he “told their ambassadors and Ukraine officials in an urgent tone that U.S. President Donald Trump had run out of patience.”

“Before European leaders and Zelenskiy jumped into action, they needed to try and understand who was most responsible for the framework,” Bloomberg reports. “They had been entirely shut out and it wasn’t clear who had the most influence with Trump on the issue.”

As it turns out, “Witkoff and Dmitriev forged the plan during an October meeting in Miami that included Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law,” according to Bloomberg.

“Rubio hadn’t been fully looped in until late,” Bloomberg reports. “Trump also found out about it at the last minute, but he blessed it once he was briefed.”

Despite this, the U.S. State Department on Saturday pushed back on claims from U.S. senators that the plan originated with Russia.

After a phone call with the secretary of state, Senate Armed Services Committee member Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) said Saturday the framework was “not our peace plan.”

Sen. Angus King (I-ME), who also sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters the plan is "essentially the wish list of the Russians.”

State Department Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott, in response, called King’s comment “blatantly false,” and Rubio has since insisted "the peace proposal was authored by the U.S.”

Still, no one has walked back Rounds’ assertion that Rubio told him and fellow senators the peace plan “is not our recommendation. It is not our peace plan.”

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, on Saturday lashed out the administration’s shifting position on the deal.

"Some people better get fired on Monday for the gross buffoonery we just witnessed over the last four days," he wrote on X.

Republicans in North Carolina fear voters will be left with a “real sour aftertaste” as President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown roils the state.
“Is the price of doing this worth it?” asked P Edwin Peacock III, a moderate Republican in Charlotte. “I don’t see this cloud moving away [from] what will be in the voters’ minds.”

As Politico reports, “Some North Carolina Republicans are worried President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown in the battleground state could backfire."

After focusing his immigration raids largely in blue states, the Trump administration recently turned to the Charlotte, NC area as “the first test for whether the White House’s strategy can hold up in a purple state,” Politico reports. And with next year’s North Carolina Senate race heating up, Republicans will likely face a key “tension at the center of the president’s immigration agenda.”

“The White House’s message, since January, has tied illegal immigration to violent crime in U.S. cities,” Politico reports. “But immigration officials are simultaneously under sustained pressure from the White House to increase arrests and deportation numbers, an effort that requires targeting immigrants well beyond violent criminal offenders — potentially treacherous territory for swing-state Republicans.”

Former Republican Gov. Pat McCrory fears the optics of recent raids in Charlotte “may hurt the GOP on an issue it has long dominated,” according to Politico.

“Republicans had the upper hand on immigration, as long as they were going after the criminals and the gangs, but I think they’re losing the upper hand on that issue because of the apparent disjointed implementation of arrest,” McCrory said. “From a PR and political standpoint, for the first time, immigration is maybe having a negative impact on my party.”

North Carolina-based GOP pollster Patrick Sebastian warned the “narrative” of U.S. officials deporting working immigrants who are not breaking other laws "has gotten more play over the past week, and that could be a problem for Republicans.”

As Politico reports, “One GOP strategist working on races in North Carolina, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, said there’s a risk that the picture of a citizen being separated from their family, rather than the arrests of unauthorized immigrants with criminal records, will stick.”

“You don’t know what the enduring image is going to be in voters’ minds,” the anonymous pollster said.

CNN is out with a new report Sunday detailing President Donald Trump’s hand in extensive makeovers throughout the White House complex, including the president’s input on small elements of the redesign including “the type of flagpoles on the North and South lawns.”

CNN’s Betsy Kline reports Trump “has been remarkably hands-on when it comes to remaking Washington's spending hours,” noting the president Saturday met with “golf legend turned golf course developer Jack Nicklaus.”

The pair took “aerial tours at Joint Base Andrews,” according to Kline.

“But the president is also paying very close attention to that White House ballroom renovation,” Kline said on CNN. “He leads weekly meetings at the white White House, where they discuss details as small as the size of windows to the placement of bathrooms to interior finishes.”

“And he's also been quizzing visiting foreign leaders and members of Congress on their opinions on design choices,” she explained. “We also know that the president has personally selected the limestone for the White House rose garden. He’s chosen new chandeliers for the palm room. He's chosen the type of flagpoles on the North and South lawns. And the president has really moved at remarkable speed to impose his style and tastes on the White House.”

Trump, Kine reports, “is hopeful that this will be complete by the end of his second term in office.”

- YouTube youtu.be

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Saturday handed out fake “checks” Saturday during a press conference at Harry Reid International Airport, the Daily Beast reports.

Noem was purportedly giving $10,000 bonuses to 29 TSA agents who worked without pay during the government shutdown. As the Beast reports, the TSA bonuses, “like the bonuses given to air traffic controllers … were only offered to certain employees.”

“Let’s hand out some checks, should we?” Noem asked before immediately clarifying she wasn’t handing out real checks.

“Now, I will say, this is a document that verifies it will be direct deposited into your accounts, OK?” She added.

“Noem also announced that the department will be giving bonus checks to many [transportation security officers] across the country for ‘doing their job with excellence,’ by not just showing up for their shifts during the government shutdown, but also taking extra shifts and extra responsibilities, as well as going above and beyond to serve those in their communities and help fellow employees,” CBS News reports.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, on Saturday demanded "some people ... get fired" over the fallout from a proposed peace plan to end the war in Ukraine.

Bacon was specifically referring to a statement from State Department Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott, who on Saturday refuted claims made by U.S. senators at a press conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

According to Sens. Angus King (I-ME) and Mike Rounds (R-SD), Secretary of State Marco Rubio distanced the United States from the proposed plan, telling senators the leaked 28-point plan "is not of the administration's position."

The senators cited a phone call from Rubio which "came at their request," Politico reports.

"Rubio, they said, agreed to walk them through the situation and gave the lawmakers permission to describe what he told them," according to Politico.

In a statement on X, King described the plan as "essentially the wish list of the Russians."

"This is blatantly false," Pigott wrote Saturday on X in response to King's tweet. "As Secretary Rubio and the entire administration has consistently maintained, this plan was authored by the United States, with input from both the Russians and Ukrainians."

Responding to Pigott's statement, Bacon called the peace plan fallout "gross buffoonery" and demanded accountability for the saga.

"Some people better get fired on Monday for the gross buffoonery we just witnessed over the last four days," he wrote on X.

"This hurt our country and undermined our alliances, and encouraged our adversaries," Bacon added.

Bacon had previously spoken out against the leaked plan, which Politico reports sparked alarm among lawmakers as "global leaders railed] against it."

"President Trump’s plan to force Ukraine to give up more territory, to cut its Army by more than half, to never join NATO nor let foreign troops in its territory is an abomination," Bacon wrote Friday on X. "Freedom loving Americans must tell the President that we reject the worst appeasement seen since 1938. ... What makes President [Donald] Trump think we can now trust [Russian President Vladimir] Putin? This agreement weakens Ukraine and leaves them vulnerable to new Russian invasions in the years to come."