CNN on Friday reported on the current status of the U.S. war in Iran, noting “Iranian lawmakers are at work on a bill that would bar vessels from the U.S., Israel and other countries Tehran considers hostile from sailing through the Strait of Hormuz.” The report also indicated that “senior U.S. officials say President [Donald] Trump is furious over reports that some U.S. munitions are being depleted in the war with Iran, and that he has privately complained that this is making the U.S. look weak in negotiations.”

Trump on Thursday ordered a leak investigation into reports about the Pentagon’s dwindling munitions stockpile, the Wall Street Journal reports. According to the Journal, “Trump made the demand after weeks of media headlines describing depleted munitions levels associated with the war, according to administration officials, despite administration assurances that the U.S. has what it needs to fight Tehran and world powers such as Russia and China.”

“The president’s frustration with the war has grown, advisers say, as he sees few good options to force Iran into dismantling its nuclear program or more broadly bringing an end to the conflict,” the report continues. The Journal describes Trump as being “roiled” by the reporting, with one administration official “saying the negative headlines drove him ‘crazy.’” The Washington Post reported Thursday that Trump got into a heated exchange with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth during a Cabinet meeting at Camp David last week. The White House has denied the report, the Journal notes.

Trump on Thursday took to Truth Social in an effort to change the narrative around the U.S. munitions stockpile.

"The U.S. has massive amounts of 'munitions,' especially of certain types," Trump wrote. "Additionally, large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the U.S. as needed. Defense companies are building the largest number of plants and factories in our country’s history."

"The 'leakers' of these treasonous statements are being hunted down," Trump pledged. "Long term jail sentences will be sought!"

CNN military analyst Col. Cedric Leighton (Ret.) on Friday called reports about dwindling munitions “a big problem,” telling host Sara Sidner the issue “should keep military planners up at night.”

“They certainly seem to be keeping up the president at night,” Leighton mused. “And when you look at all the different things that are going on in terms of the need for these kinds of munitions, it really shows the need to revamp the defense industrial base. And that, of course, is a is a very serious issue.”

Democrats in Knox County, Tennessee flipped a Republicans commission seat on Thursday with Democrat Brandon Huckaby flipping a seat previously held by Republican Gina Oster, 6 News reports.

Huckaby was up against Republican nominee Sheri Super in the Knox County Commission District 3 election. Super had previously defeated Oster “in the GOP primary by 11 votes,” according to 6 News.

Democrats in Knox County also gained control of the school board “after Brandy Jenkins flipped a reliably Republican South Knox County seat in the Aug. 6 election,” Knox News reports.

MAGA voters on Twitter fumed at the news.

Responding to a post about the school board vote, Dr. Joseph Ford Cotto, who claims he “Predicted Trump's 2024 victory to the last swing state,” called the flip “pathetic.”

“This is what happens when Republicans don't show up for local races in non-presidential election years,” Cotto wrote on X. “Knox County is the rare urban GOP stronghold. Pathetic. Dishonorable, even.”

“Knox County TN parents should prepare accordingly,” on MAGA-MAHA nurse wrote. “This is what happens when people don’t vote in important local elections.”

"I guess Knox County wants stupid kids," Vince Beck argued.

“Sad news,” said “Charlie Kirk conservative” Erik Wiatr. “[I]t starts with really bad district maps drawn in 2021 and what we saw on August 6 was Democrats across the state voting in record numbers. They picked up seats in Anderson, Hamilton, Knox, and picked up a seat in Williamson County.”

Conservative Ashley Nicole Capito called results “pretty disappointing.”

The impact of Thursday’s race was amplified by “political junkie” Russell Drew, who noted in a reply to Democrats flipping the school board that “Knox County, TN voted for Donald Trump by 20 points. Every countywide officeholder is a Republican.”

“November is going to be wild,” Project Liberal co-founder Joshua Reed Eakle mused.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, in an effort to “knock down” a Washington Post report about President Donald Trump’s heated meeting with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, appeared to accidentally verify the reporting, according to one Washington Post journalist.

The report in question claims Hegseth and Trump “clashed” during a Camp David summit last week as the president’s “frustration over the Iran war boiled over.” Trump reportedly “demanded answers from Hegseth on why he had apparently been misled on extreme munitions shortages that now threaten to limit military options with Iran.”

Reuters reported Tuesday that “the U.S. Army has used up much of its global stockpile of highly accurate long-range missiles” during the Iran war, including “the Army's surface-to-surface weapons, known as Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM).” Reuters, citing two sources, said the “the U.S. has used ‘virtually all’ of these weapons.”

Trump, during the Camp David Cabinet meeting, “vented at Hegseth that he thought the munitions issue ‘had been fixed,’” according to the Post. The defense secretary “defended himself and blamed his deputy, Stephen Feinberg, for the shortages” and for keeping Trump in the dark.

On Truth Social Thursday, Trump denied the munitions shortage, insisting "The U.S. has massive amounts of 'munitions,' especially of certain types. Additionally, large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the U.S. as needed.”

Late Wednesday night on X, Leavitt called the Post report “B.S.” and claimed the altercation “literally never happened.” Leavitt said the “story was shopped to many outlets by someone clearly out to disparage the secretary, for whatever reason. Unfortunately for them, the president loves the secretary and thinks he’s doing a tremendous job.”

Leavitt closed her statement with an all-caps “fake news!”

But, as Washington Post military affairs reporter Dan Lamothe noted, the White House denial actually verifies a major element of the report.

“The White House is trying to knock down tonight's story by my colleagues in part by highlighting that Trump ‘loves’ Secretary Hegseth,” Lamothe wrote on X. “The story never says otherwise. Instead, it reports that Hegseth got pressed by Trump on a specific, important issue.”

“Further, the Post has reported previously that despite last year's turmoil in the Pentagon, Hegseth has maintained Trump's support,” Lamothe added.

Indeed the Washington Post report included a quote from Leavitt herself, in which she denied the reporters' claims and asserted Trump's support of Hegseth.

“President Trump has the utmost confidence in Secretary Hegseth,” Leavitt told the Post, according to the Post’s own reporting.

President Donald Trump is facing a “reality check” over his promise of a new "golden age" as economists warn his “rosy” outlook may not come to fruition, Axios reports.

Michael Kratsios, assistant to the president for science and technology, laid out the president’s vision for “A New Golden Age” in a report last month. Writing to Trump, Kratsios imagined a revitalization of “America’s science and technology enterprise” and “dominance in critical and emerging technologies.”

The report also emphasized AI, which Axios notes has “buoyed” U.S. financial markers despite a “roller coaster” economy suffering from “tariff uncertainty, stubborn inflation and his Iran war.” The result, according to Axios, is a “muddled economic picture.” And, despite the president’s promise of a “golden age,” “many voters aren't buying it.”

The Wall Street Journal last month reported that “U.S. economic growth slowed in the second quarter,” decreasing from 2.1 percent in the first quarter to 1.5 percent In the second. On the same day as the GDP report was released, Fed officials voted to “hold the central bank’s benchmark interest rate steady,” according to the Journal. Discussing the move, Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh argued “the economy is showing impressive resilience.”

Still, the Fed faces pressures from Trump and members of his team to cut interest rates. As Axios reports, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in January that growth could have hit 6 percent in the first quarter if the Fed cut interest rates. Lutnick’s more modest proposal — that growth could hit 5 percent even without Fed intervention — failed to materialize. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s economic blueprint likewise “targets sustained 3 percent annual growth.”

Michael Klein, an economics professor at Tuft University's Fletcher School told Axios that Trump officials’ predictions are “just unrealistic.”

“You don't see that in an economy like the United States,” Klein said.

Klein isn't the only one scratching their heads at Trump officials' claims. Per Axios, Joseph Lavorgna, a former advisor to Bessent, noted that 3 percent is possible but said he "can't get there on the arithmetic” for 4-to-5 percent growth.

"The dynamics aren't going to allow us to grow at those growth rates, at least for the foreseeable future," Lavorgna told Axios.

David Hearn, the former Olympic canoeist who recently found himself at the center of a legal firestorm thanks to President Donald Trump, is reviewing “all options” after the Department of Justice on Friday admitted the charges brought against him were based on a false claims.

Hearn was charged on July 2 with one felony count of vandalism after U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro claimed he inflicted “widespread damage” at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Last Friday, Pirro dropped the charges against Hearn, acknowledging the damage to the Reflecting Pool was caused by “a botched installation and not vandalism.” Pirro’s motion on Friday directly contradicts Trump’s oft-repeated claim that vandals slashed the pool lining.

An attorney for Hearn told the Guardian “all options are on the table” as he seeks legal recourse for the arrest.

According to the Guardian, “Hearn ‘has a number of potential remedies’ after being prosecuted in connection with pool damage now attributed to faulty work by a contractor, attorney Steven Levin said in a statement. Levin added that those could include ‘civil suits, bar referrals for the prosecutors involved, request for sanctions and reimbursement of attorneys’ fees and expenses,’ and requests for investigations by various government entities, including Congress.”

As the Guardian reports, Hearn’s attorney have previously demanded a public apology from the Trump administration.

“The Trump administration’s case against Davey Hearn should have never been brought,” Levin and attorney Norm Eisen wrote Friday on X. “Its dismissal … does not erase the abuse of government power in arresting and charging a patriotic American who did nothing wrong.”

Pirro on Monday met with Trump hours after the president told a room of reporters in the Oval Office that his longtime friend had “choked” in the Reflecting Pool case, arguing she “made a mistake" and that “vandalism” was responsible for the pool’s peeling liner.

CBS News reported that Pirro "carted a box full of evidence to the White House" for her meeting with Trump "in a bid to prove ... that the damage to the Reflecting Pool was caused by shoddy construction and not by vandals.”

Trump on Monday refused to say if he’s reconsidering Pirro’s role, snapping at the reporter who posed the question, according to CNBC.

Per CNBC, “The White House, asked later Monday whether Trump continues to support Pirro in her current role, referred CNBC back to the president’s comments in the Oval.”

CNN legal expert Elie Honig on Tuesday delivered a harsh assessment of U.S Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro after her office last week dropped vandalism charges against former Olympic canoeist David Hearn.

Hearn was originally indicted on one count of felony destruction of property in July after he allegedly touched paint pealing from the liner of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Pirro later admitted in her motion to dismiss the charge against Hearn that “the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism.” Misdemeanor charges against at least three others accused of damaging the pool were also dropped.

Trump on Monday told reporters in the Oval Office that Pirro “choked” and “folded like an umbrella” in the Reflecting Pool case.

Honig described the Reflecting Pool saga as a “perfect exhibit” of “Trump’s view of the Justice Department … that they are there to carry out his will.”

“Donald Trump doesn't have any particular facts or insight into this case more than what prosecutors would have with respect to the claim that Jeanine Pirro ‘folded like an umbrella,’” Honig said. “The thing that she really did is ultimately, far belatedly, do the right thing.”

“The problem is she charged this case without having the evidence,” Honig explained. “She oversold what this case was. And now Jeanine Pirro is trying to say, 'Well, the Department of Interior didn't tell us certain things.' I'm sorry, that's your job as a prosecutor. You don't get to charge someone, indict another person and then say, ‘Oops, I found out something later and that undermines my case.’ Your job is to take your time, investigate fully, get it right, and then indict. And here Jeanine Pirro did that backwards.”

“So I don't see it as her folding. I see her as her belatedly correcting an egregious mistake,” he added. “I don't think she should be forgiven for it, but it's better that she, quote, unquote folded than that she stuck with this ridiculous prosecution.”

Honig also said Hearn is a “textbook example” of someone who’s “been wronged by the federal government,” arguing the former Olympian could “absolutely” make a claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act.”

“The government has now admitted they did not have the evidence to support this,” Honig said. “He obviously has sustained reputational harm. I'm sure he has sustained attorneys fees and other damages … That’s sort of how the system is supposed to work, and not to pay off, for example, January 6th rioters.”

President Donald Trump is facing backlash from his own Republican Party over key issues including the war in Iran and inflation, CNN’s data expert Harry Enten revealed Tuesday.

In a segment about the non-MAGA wing of the Republicans Party, Enten told CNN’s Kate Bolduan there’s one word that sums up Trump’s approval among moderate Republicans: “Yikes.”

“Yikes is the word,” Enten said Tuesday before flashing the data on screen.

“This is the moderate GOP on Trump, this includes leaners,” Enten explained. “This is about 30-to-40 percent of the party, depending on how you look at it. Versus [former Vice President] Kamala Harris, Trump easily was winning amongst them by 69 points back in October of 2024 … Right now we're talking about just a plus-ten net approval rating. This is within his own party. He's just barely above water.”

“That's a 59-point drop … in the course of under two years,” Enten continued. “So moderate Republicans are abandoning Donald John Trump. And that is a big ‘uh oh.’”

Asked why Trump is struggling with Republican voters, Enten explained “It's the economy.”

On that issue, Trump has experienced a 77-point drop, according to Enten.

The CNN data analyst showed a graphic of moderate GOP voters on Trump "and the economy back in October of 2024."

"[Trump] was more trusted than Kamala Harris by 80 points,” Enten said. "Now he's just one, two, three points above water. That is, as I said, a 77-point drop on the key issue that got Donald Trump reelected to a second term.”

“Moderate Republicans have abandoned Donald Trump, and now he is just treading water with a group that overwhelmingly supported him,” Enten added.

“Inflation was the name of the game with the economy back in 2020,” the CNN data analyst explained. “For now, moderate Republicans, who make up roughly 30-to-40 percent of the party, have absolutely left Donald Trump aside. And he is underwater on the key issue of the day. If I'm a Republican running for congress in those swing districts, I need those moderate Republicans, and they are leaving Donald Trump.”

A notepad used by Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent during a Camp David Cabinet meeting on Friday revealed a “to-do list” reminding the official to “buy Japanese Yen $5-10 bil” — a flagrant display that critics revealed was likely made “on-purpose.”

As Reuters reports, the photo was “taken over Bessent's shoulder during an on-the-record portion of the meeting” and “showed no other words” besides the reminder to “buy Japanese Yen.”

According to the Bloomberg, the U.S. Treasury did indeed buy yen on Friday to support the Japanese currency.

“The U.S. joined Japan in engineering one of the most notable rebounds in the yen since the currency began its years-long slide, a decline that’s stoked inflation in the Asian nation and rippled through global markets,” Bloomberg reports.

Per Bloomberg, “The sharp gains were fueled by a combination of direct purchases of the yen, calls by officials to banks that trade the currency and jawboning from US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Japanese Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama. Bessent, who has deep knowledge of Japan’s place in global markets from his hedge fund career, indicated that he thinks the yen is too weak.”

According to Reuters, this marks “Washington's first yen-buying intervention with Tokyo in more than a decade as it languishes near 40-year lows.”
The “U.S. Treasury has not intervened to prop up the yen since 2011,” Reuters reports.

Bloomberg opinion columnist Gearoid Reidy, reacting to the photo, called Bessent “a joker.”

“This is the most on-purpose thing ever,” Reidy wrote.

Japanese Politics/International Relations expert Jeffrey J. Hall likewise noted Bessent “left [the note] out for the media to photograph.”

Corpay Chief Market Strategist Karl Schamotta called the note “the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in [financial] markets.”

“Seriously folks,” Schamotta said. “Bessent wrote himself a reminder to intervene in currency markets—complete with the amount to be purchased — as if he didn’t want to forget anything at the grocery store, and then left that note in plain sight so reporters could see it. Amazing!”

It’s not the first time Bessent has used his notepad to telegraph a message to the media. In May, the Treasury secretary wrote and underlined the word “resilience” on a notepad during a Cabinet meeting. The list on that notepad also included “Operation Economic Fury,” “Just in Time, Just in Case” in parentheses and the word “resilience” again.

Asked during a press conference why he wrote those messages on his notepad, Bessent replied, to laughs, “So people could look over my shoulder, photograph them and think they got a scoop.”

A CNN supercut on Saturday exposed the lengths the Trump administration went to bolster false claims that “vandals” sabotaged the Reflecting Pool in Washington D.C., after the Department of Justice on Friday admitted damage to the memorial was likely caused by “a rushed and botched installation by AIC, the primary contractor.”

Trump and his team for months have touted renovations at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which the president claimed in April was “decaying.” In May, the Trump administration granted a “no-bid” contract to renovate the pool as administration officials made it clear Trump wanted the color of the liner “changed for the country’s birthday party on July 4,” the New York Times reported. The president called the color “American flag blue.” At a small business summit in May, Trump described the new liner as “very strong … if you had a knife, you can’t even cut it, it’s so strong, so powerful, it’s like powerful rubber. It is beautiful. Sealed.”

“The cost to repaint the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool ... ballooned to more than $14.65 million,” ABC News reported in June.

Following the restoration, algae and liner issues plagued the pool, prompting the president to make various unsubstantiated claims that the memorial was “damaged by deranged vandals” who cut increasingly large “slashes” into the liner with a “box cutter or knife.”

In mid July, the pool was drained once again ”to fix the scars and damage that was done by the vandals,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Olympian David Hearn was among those accused by the Trump administration of sabotaging the Reflecting Pool. Hearn was “indicted July 2 on one count of felony destruction of property” after “U.S. Park Police alleged Hearn grabbed and tugged at a loose section of the pool’s coating on June 19, continuing after a National Park Service employee told him to stop,” Fox News reports.

In an interview, Hearn “acknowledged immersing his hand and touching the peeling sealant during a pause in a bike ride, but ... said that is all he did,” according to the Times.

Lawyers for Hearn called the charges “outrageous,” adding they “should be alarming to every American.”

The president and his team’s numerous false claims were rehashed on CNN This Morning Saturday as the network rolled the tape on their efforts to blame the Reflecting Pool's problems on vandals.

“Somebody went in with a knife and cut it. They cut it up good,” Trump said to reporters on June 23.

“I think 209,300 foot lit right through it, slit, right through it. Probably a box cutter or a knife of some kind,” Trump said in a separate Oval Office interview. “At the right time you’ll see it, You'll see it. You'll see it in court.”

At a June 22 press conference, Trump Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt blamed the damage on “deranged individuals, many of them longtime donors to the Democrat party, to Barack Obama."

“He damaged this pool,” U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro forcefully declared at a July 2 press conference regarding Hearn’s arrest. Asked for evidence of damage during that presser, Pirro told a reporter, “Well, when I file a charge, I'll be happy to show you a picture. All right.”

On Friday, Pirro moved to dismiss the charges against Hearn.

In a court filing, the Department of Justice said new evidence “significantly [undermines] the evidentiary basis for the indictment” and laid blame for the false allegation at the hands of the Department of Interior (DOI).

“Had DOI been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment,” Pirro wrote in a motion to dismiss the charges. “DOI’s failure to fully and accurately provide information to USAODC undermined the government’s ability to abide by these responsibilities.”

Secretary of Energy Chris Wright may have lied to Congress about the role politics played in cancelling energy grants to Democratic states, according to a CNN supercut that aired Friday.

CNN’s Victor Blackwell rolled the tape after lawyers for the Trump administration admitted in a July 15 court filing that “the inclusion of grants in the October notice was based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient state, i.e., whether the recipients location was in a blue state or a non blue state.”

“But that is not what the energy secretary said to Congress a few months ago,” Blackwell noted.

The host then played a clip of Wright speaking with the House Appropriations Committee. In that April 15 meeting, Wright insisted “our project review process did not take into account any politics in the evaluation of these projects.”

Rep. Rosa Delauro (D-CT) took immediate issue with Wright’s claim during that hearing, telling the energy secretary “the district court this January found that this violated the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law.”

Republican strategist Melik Abdul was quick to condemn the Trump administration for politicizing aid.

“This is just unacceptable,” Abdul said. “And I think the White House knows this. I was actually surprised that it's something that they owned up to. I guess maybe they didn't have a choice since it was in court, they really didn't have a choice. But this is something that no one should support at all.”

Abdul went on to shame the administration for “doing it for political reasons and admitting you're doing it for political reasons.”

“I just don't know how you can defend it,” Abdul added.

Former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams agreed, noting that while the Trump administration “had no choice” but to admit to the political nature of their grant decisions “because they were in court … they are [also] shameless about their behavior.”

“And I think you've seen the president in the White House just acting with impunity on things like this, thinking that it's politically popular with their base and that they can string things out in the courts long enough and just to make it go away,” Williams added.

The former federal prosecutor noted if Democrats take the House of Representatives in the fall, “this is precisely the kind of thing that would get congressional oversight in the form of hearings or letters or investigations or whatever else.”

“I also think just the big one that dogs the Trump administration and so many things is process,” Williams added. "Did they properly follow the process that the law lays out in canceling grants? And they can be sued over that as well. And so we have not seen the end of this story in the courts. But like so many other things, the political question, as much as it's a legal one.”

Rep. Mike Flood (R-NE) on Tuesday met with a rowdy group of voters at Nebraska Wesleyan University as he faces off against Democrat Chris Backemeyer, a former diplomat, in the 2026 midterm elections.

As KETV Omaha reported, Flood was greeted by a silent protest outside the auditorium before his town hall began. Inside, it was not as quiet as Flood was dismissive of voters' concerns and complaints.

Voters demanded answers about cuts to healthcare while costs continue to rise and Republicans passed legislation delivering a tax cut to the wealthy and corporations.

When confronted with it, Flood asked his audience, "Why do I work so hard to pay my taxes for somebody that can work but chooses not to work?"

"That’s never come out of my mouth," one voter said.

Another voter who said she was a CPA attacked Flood as telling half-truths to the people at the event. "Don't lie to these people," she said. "We’re losing democracy in this country and you don’t answer anyone's questions … you guys are cowards."

She noted that a lot of the policies that people like that came out of the GOP's "Big, Beautiful Bill" passed in 2025 sunset in two years. Tax cuts to the wealthy are permanent.

"I’m sorry you feel that way," Flood said, only to be shouted down by the room as he tried to talk over her, claiming he was "treating her with respect. Answering your questions. But you didn't have one, so we'll move on to the next one."

"Don’t cut her off!" they yelled.

Flood's excuse for the bill that has grown increasingly unpopular with voters was that it was "something that President Donald Trump wanted."

The audience booed.

“You never mentioned Iran," said another attendee, Melanie Knight. "You never mentioned homeland security. You never mentioned a ballroom. In fact, $1.6 trillion has been added to the deficit."

Flood did get applause at a few points. At one point, he told the audience that whether or not the room votes for him, "I work for you."

He touted the bipartisan affordable housing bill that was passed by the House and Senate. Trump said he wouldn't sign it, but he didn't veto it. So, it automatically became law.

“I have been focused on affordability," Flood said. "I remain focused on affordability and increasing supply, [which] brings down prices."

Trump has spent the past year claiming that Democrats "made up" the word "affordability" and that it isn't a real thing. He called it a hoax.

Many in Flood's audience left feeling unsatisfied.

“I wanted to hear for myself him explain why Congress has lost their backbone,” Lincoln resident Shirley Mora James told KETV.

She added, "I felt like he did answer the questions."

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President Donald Trump is “exasperated” by the ongoing war in Iran — and taking it out on his staff, according to an ally of the president who spoke with NBC News,

“I don’t think he believed it was going to be this difficult to get the Iranians to agree to a deal,” the ally told NBC News. “There was not a real strategy for how long or what they should do to get to the endpoint.”

“He did not intend this to be a long, drawn-out war,” the person said.

Trump, according to NBC, is “angry about his military options and frustrated that he can’t close a deal with Iran." The president's flailing foreign strategy is especially evident as the war, which he originally described as a “short-term excursion” drags “into its sixth month." Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth estimates the war has so far cost $37.5 billion. A Telegraph analysis puts the "true bill" at $151.3 billion.

“Trump erupted during a meeting last week with some of his top national security officials, yelling expletives, according to the U.S. official and another person familiar with the discussion,” NBC News reports.

“After all this time, there is no unity,” one U.S. official familiar with the discussions told NBC.

Another U.S. official, described as having “knowledge of the discussions around the war,” told reporters the military lacks “clear guidance” from the president — even as the military prepares to resume major combat operations in Iran.

“We have had a series of tactical victories, but are facing a strategic defeat without clear policy guidance or a decision about where this is going,” the official told NBC News.

According to the report, Trump “is expected to be presented this week with expanded military options that include targeting Iranian-backed proxies in the region, according to the U.S. official. There’s also a Cabinet meeting set for Camp David on Friday.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavit called reports of the president’s outburst at national security officials “false.”

“The president has a great team whom he trusts, and everyone on the team knows he’s the final decision-maker,” she told NBC News.

Former FBI director James Comey’s defense on Tuesday detailed the “bizarre aspects of the federal investigation” related to his alleged threat against President Donald Trump, Politico reports.

Comey was indicted by a federal grand jury in April over a May 2025 photo on Instagram that spelled out “86-47” in seashells.

According to Comey’s filing, one such bizarre aspect included law enforcement tracking Comey “via his cellphone” as he made the drive from “North Carolina to northern Virginia shortly after” making the Instagram post.

As Politico reports, “Such ‘exigency’ tracking, which takes place without a warrant, requires law enforcement to claim that there’s ’an imminent threat to life or limb,’ a Secret Service official wrote, according to Comey’s legal team."

According to the filing, one anonymous official said in a message that law enforcement “did not believe that anyone’s life was in immediate danger and legally it was a bad idea to ping the phone.”

Comey's attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, argued the charges against the former FBI director should be dismissed “on the grounds of vindictive and selective prosecution,” CBS News reports. The motion was also “accompanied by a 76-page-long spreadsheet listing out all of the insults Trump and Comey have hurled at each other over the last nine years.”

The motion also calls out the government’s "illegal electronic surveillance of Comey at the request of a high-level DOJ official.”

The defense attributed the details about law enforcement’s surveillance of Comey to “substantial discovery provided by the Government.”

Comey’s Tuesday filing follows a separate motion Monday that argued the Instagram post constitutes free speech and a photo depicting “86-47” can’t be considered a “true threat,” according to the report.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) has a “50-50 chance” of switching to the Republican Party “before the end of the year,” according to elections expert Chaz Nuttycombe.

Nuttycombe’s prediction comes on the heels of an NBC News report suggesting the senior senator “is growing increasingly frustrated with the Democratic Party.”

According to the report, while Fetterman insists he’s “not there” in terms of switching party affiliation, his previously-expressed concern about the Democratic Party's allegiance to Israel stands as his "red line." As NBC News reports, “two weeks ago, Fetterman opened the door to leaving the Democratic Party if it ‘officially’ becomes anti-Israel."

Fetterman also complained to NBC News that he wasn’t “even” invited to two sessions convened by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that mapped out Democratic opposition to President Donald Trump’s “election doomsday scenarios,” as MS NOW reported.

“These so-called tabletop exercises teach us is when you’re prepared in advance, you can stop a lot of bad, bad things from happening,” Schumer told MS NOW last week. “A lot of the stealing that Trump will do, but if you just wait for them to do it and then try to react that day? Not good.”

“My caucus didn’t even invite me,” Fetterman said of the meetings. “I didn’t even know they were doing some doomsday kinds of voting situation. Well, hey, I lived through that in Pennsylvania in 2020. They didn’t even tell me that’s even happening. So if the Democratic caucus doesn’t want me, they could just let me know.”

“If they don’t even include me in kinds of basic things and I have to read about it, I mean, that’s kind of strange as a committed Democrat,” he added.

As NBC News reports, while Fetterman is busy airing his grievances with the Democratic Party, Republican leaders are publicly courting the Pennsylvania senator. Last week, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) called Fetterman and other moderate Democrats “people without a home,” adding Republicans “would certainly welcome” his switch to their side.

Fetterman later told reporters he and Thune “‘haven’t had a conversation’ about a party switch.”

Still, political observers see stark signs that Fetterman is no longer strategically aligned with the Democratic Party.

Reporter Sahil Kapur, who co-authored the NBC News report, wrote on X Monday that “a lot of IFs” remain about Fetterman’s plans, but noted a switch could hand Senate control back to Republicans if Democrats are successful in the midterms. “Fetterman’s term expires in January 2029,” Kapur wrote. “Non-zero chance Dems pull off an upset this fall and flip four seats to win a 51-49 majority. A Fetterman defection could hand control of the Senate right back to Republicans.”

“The ugly truth is that Dems really need to win 52 Senate seats in November to have a real majority,” one data analyst wrote on X. “Fetterman cannot be trusted. This probably requires flipping Texas, Alaska, Maine, North Carolina, and Ohio. Very high bar.”

President Donald Trump’s massive overnight social media spree — promoting dozens of posts in a 12-hour period — has been called out in the media and by critics, but one CNN fact-checker is labeling it “detached from reality.”

“It’s hard to explain just how detached from reality President Trump’s conspiracy-theory-filled social media posting spree last night and this morning was,” wrote CNN’s Daniel Dale.

“One easy example: The president shared a completely made-up and frankly nonsensical ‘quote’ about former president Obama the post attributed to GOP Sen. John Kennedy,” Dale said. “The fake quote originated with a ‘satire’ website, basically a fakery factory, that invents stories to be shared by online conservatives.”

Dale noted that “versions of this particular fake quote have been wrongly attributed to everyone from Kash Patel to Madonna.”

The posting spree came just hours before Trump is set to board Air Force One to head to China, a critical trip for foreign relations, the war in Iran, and the U.S. economy.

“Amid the flurry of conspiracy-minded messages he reposted from followers were baseless accusations that Obama had been involved in a ‘coup plot’ by ordering the intelligence community to spy on him during his 2016 presidential run,” The Independent reported, “that he ordered his Department of Justice not to prosecute Hillary Clinton after her emails were leaked, and that he had profited illegally from the Affordable Care Act.”

Dale also said that Trump made a “false and quite bewildering claim” on Truth Social: “No Republican has ever spoken to me about Cuba.”

He reported that there are “lots of examples of Republicans describing having spoken to Trump about Cuba, and obviously Republicans within his administration talk to him about Cuba.”

Dale also pointed to remarks Trump made in 2019 about then-U.S. Senator Marco Rubio talking with him about Cuba.

An anonymous U.S. defense official revealed the branches of the U.S. military learned of President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany “in real time,” without prior knowledge of the intended move, the AP reported Saturday.

Trump on Wednesday announced via a Truth Social post that his administration was “studying and reviewing the possible reduction of Troops in Germany.”

The announcement followed an assessment by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz last week that insisted the U.S. is “being humiliated” by the war in Iran.

A Pentagon spokesman on Friday confirmed to Breaking Defense that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth “has ordered the withdrawal of roughly 5,000 US troops from Germany over the next year.”

Two Republicans who chair the congressional Armed Services Committees, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) and Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), on Saturday questioned the Pentagon’s decision, telling Punchbowl news“any significant change to the U.S. force posture in Europe warrants a deliberate review process and close coordination with Congress and our allies.”

But the AP’s report suggests the Trump administration isn’t even in close coordination with its own military branches. According to the AP, “A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said the branches of the U.S. military didn’t have prior knowledge of the decision to draw down the 5,000 troops and learned about it ‘in real time.’”

Responding to the official’s claim, acting Pentagon press secretary Joel Valdez insisted the move followed “a comprehensive, multilayered process that incorporates perspectives from key leaders in EUCOM [U.S. European Command] and across the chain of command.”

According to Tom Malinowski, who served as assistant secretary of state under former President Barack Obama, Trump can’t actually withdraw troops from Europe without EUCOM commander Gen. Alexus Grynkewich independently certifying to Congress that such a move “won't hurt deterrence against Russia or U.S. [operations] in the Middle East [and] that allies have been consulted.”

“General officers also have a unique legal obligation to answer questions from Congress honestly,” Malinowski wrote on X. “So this will be interesting if Congress does its oversight."

Right-wing media darling Tucker Carlson recently spoke with the New York Times in a far-reaching interview that touched, in part, on his sharp criticisms of President Donald Trump — including his suggestion that the president might, in fact, be the Antichrist.

Speaking with reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Carlson argued he has “not” mused on his show about whether Trump is the Antichrist, a claim the New York Times reporter immediately fact-checked.

Garcia-Navarro was asking Carlson about a monologue he delivered in response to Trump’s profane Easter post on Truth Social. In that post, the president threatened Iran, demanded the opening of the Strait of Hormuz and capped his message with “Praise be to Allah.”

Carlson called the post “vile on every level.”

“How dare you speak that way on Easter morning to the country,” Carlson said in response. “Who do you think you are? You’re tweeting out the f-word on Easter morning.”

“In that monologue responding to Trump’s Easter post, you said that Trump’s comments were ‘evil,’” Garcia-Navarro said to Carlson. “And I just want to understand that a little bit better. Do you think only his comments are evil, or does the evil extend to Trump himself? Is he evil?”

Carlson replied that “there’s a lot of evil in me and in every person,” but called Trump’s mocking of other people’s gods “worse than the war with Iran.”

“I ask because you’ve been talking on your show about whether Trump is the Antichrist,” Garcia-Navarro explained.

“I have not said that,” Carlson replied.

Garcia-Navarro then directly quoted Carlson’s own words from his show, noting Carlson said “Maybe [Trump] didn’t put his hand on the Bible because he affirmatively rejects what’s inside that book.”

“And then on a recent show, you went further, saying: ‘Here’s a leader who’s mocking the gods of his ancestors, mocking the God of gods and exalting himself above them. Could this be the Antichrist?’” Garcia-Navarro quoted Carlson saying.

Carlson claimed he did not say “Could this be the Antichrist?”

He did, the reporter noted.

“I don’t know where that comes from, but I know that those words never left my lips because I’m not sure I fully understand what the Antichrist is, if there’s just one,” Carlson continued. “I actually tried to understand it. I may have said some are asking that. I am not weighing in on that because I don’t understand it, just to be totally clear.”

After some back and forth, Carlson continued: “If I thought Trump was the Antichrist, I would just say so. If I understood what the Antichrist is, I’d say so, and I don’t really.”

“I just want to make the point that you did say, ‘Could this be the Antichrist?’ And then you said, ‘Well, who knows?’ You did use those words,” the reporter later said.

“Man, then my apologies to you, if there’s a video of me saying that,” Carlson replied. “I guess what I’m expressing to you is it doesn’t reflect exactly how I feel. It suggests a precision that I haven’t arrived at, that Trump is the Antichrist. You’d have to define Antichrist, and I know that I can’t define it, and it’s not clearly defined in the New Testament or Old Testament.”

Carlson went on to tell Garcia-Navarro that Trump is a “false prophet.”

An aide to President Donald Trump has revealed the current mood among White House insiders, telling MS NOW that administration officials are privately acknowledging the Republican Party is “already cooked” in the 2026 midterm elections.

“The vibe right now is we know we are already cooked in the midterms,” the anonymous White House official told MS NOW, according to a report published Saturday morning.

The source of the dismay is multi-faceted, including soaring gas prices, creeping inflation and an unpopular war in Iran.

“The numbers help explain the gloom,” MS NOW reports. “For the first time since 2010, voters say they trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle the economy, 52 percent to 48 percent, according to a recent Fox News poll."

The report also details “bubbling frustration among Republican strategists working House and Senate races,” who warn Trump “and his team have been slow to focus on” the 2026 midterms. Still, two White House officials told MS NOW there’s a plan in place to “kitchen-table issues and flood battleground states with Trump and Cabinet surrogates in the coming months.”

“Republicans, these officials insisted, have a record to run on, including a cut in taxes via the One Big Beautiful Bill efforts to reduce drug prices and beefed-up border security,” MS NOW reports.

Trump, meanwhile, “has been consumed by the war in Iran and by the construction of a $400 million White House ballroom that has become an unlikely political liability — a gilded symbol, his critics argue, of a president more focused on monuments to himself than on voters squeezed by more everyday concerns,” the report notes.

According to the report, the President’s antics — including his “inflammatory Easter morning social media posts, his attacks on the pope and his habit of naming things after himself” — have also “made life harder for Republican incumbents.”

Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) told reporters he's "very concerned" about the current state of the Republican caucus ahead of the 2026 midterms.

If you aren’t concerned, you’d be kind of foolish," Van Drew said. "… We are either going to win the majority by a little, lose the majority by a little, or lose it by a lot.”

But it’s not all doom and gloom at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. As one White House official told MS NOW, “certainly there’s still a lot of work to be done, and that’s not a secret to anyone … But there’s still a lot of time left.”

Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, on Saturday appeared to threaten the licenses of broadcasters reporting on President Donald Trump’s war in Iran after the president crafted a lengthy Truth Social post against the “Fake News Media.”

Trump, in a post on Saturday, took exception to an “intentionally misleading headline by the Fake News Media about” five tanker planes that were hit in an Iranian strike on Saudi Arabia.

The Wall Street Journal reported the story Saturday, citing two U.S. officials.

“The tankers were hit during an Iranian missile strike on the Saudi base in recent days, the officials said,” the Journal reports. “U.S. Central Command declined to comment. The tankers were damaged but not fully destroyed and are being repaired, one of the officials said. No one was killed in the strikes.”

Trump, in his post, argued “the planes were not ‘struck or ‘destroyed,’” and called out “The Wall Street Journal (in particular)” who he claims “actually want use to lose the war.”

The Journal's report included Trump’s Saturday Truth Social post.

In response to the president’s rant, Carr issued a lengthy post on X accusing broadcasters of “running hoaxes and news distortions — also known as the fake news.”

“The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not,” Carr wrote, arguing it was “in their own business interests” to “correct course” on their reporting.

“The American people have subsidized broadcasters to the tune of billions of dollars by providing free access to the nation’s airwaves,” Carr claimed. “It is very important to bring trust back into media, which has earned itself the label of fake news.”

Journalists and media observers noted Carr's post seemed to threaten news organizations that report stories the White House would rather not be reported.

“The state doesn't like the war coverage, threatens the license of the broadcasters,” the Bulwark’s Sam Stein noted.

“The Trump administration is now threatening the licenses of broadcasters whose news coverage — apparently about the war — it deems to be ‘fake,’” CNN’s Aaron Blake wrote.

It wasn’t the only media criticism Trump engaged in on Saturday. In a separate Truth Social post, the president shared an image of how he’s “reshaping the media” including a section of media companies and individual people who are now “gone.”

One of the people mentioned in that Trump post, former CNN host Jim Acosta, said he’s “honored to be included” in the graphic.

“But seriously what’s wrong with this guy?” Acosta asked. “This is some goofy stuff.”

President Donald Trump keeps calling the U.S. operation in Iran “a little excursion,” that will keep the United States out of war. But one Marine Corps veteran says it’s clear Trump has no strategy beyond his chaotic messaging as the war in Iran enters its third week.

As the Guardian reported Saturday, the Iran war’s “timelines and goals are also continually shifting.”

Trump Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth “has said it is up to the president ‘whether it’s the beginning, the middle or the end’ of the war,” the Guardian notes. “But Trump has been all over the map on this question.”

Marine Corps veteran and Vet Voice Foundation leader Janessa Goldbeck told the Guardian Trump is directly contradicting his Pentagon with his shifting messaging on the war, and waned that “contradiction sends dangerous signals to adversaries about US resolve."

“When the president says the war is basically over and his Pentagon says it’s just the beginning, that tells the world the strategy is not under control,” the Marine Corps veteran added.

For Goldbeck, Trump seems motivated by “fear” as he tries “to find an exit strategy without comprehending the reality of what he has launched the United States into illegally and without congressional authorization.”

“President Trump launched a war without defining the mission and the goals of this war have changed multiple times,” she explained. “He seems to have expected regime change on the cheap but we’re clearly seeing an escalation with no end in sight and his own Pentagon is contradicting him in real time. It is a real mess.”

She’s far from the only military vet criticizing the president. Matthew Hot, an Iraq war combat veteran, told the Guardian Trump is leaving allies “confused by it but also likely frightened by it.”

“We can be glib and we can say, well, maybe there’s a genius in that because if you don’t set any clear goals no one can hold you to them,” he noted. But allies are still scrambling to make sense of the president's moves.

Jonathan Alter, a presidential historian, acknowledged Trump is “a chaos agent,” arguing, “that’s what he specializes in.”

“[Trump] doesn’t think any further ahead than the next news cycle and so you get an on-again off-again zigzag foreign policy,” Alter said.

“He lies as easily as he breathes so to believe anything out of his mouth like, ‘we demand unconditional surrender’ – well, two days later, he won’t be demanding it anymore and he’ll pretend he never said it,” Alter explained. “His words are at some level meaningless except, because they’re backed by so much weaponry, they take on enormous importance.”

Senate Republicans are “anxious about the midterms," and “the mood is shifting” among GOP leaders who once assumed they could coast to victory in November, Politico reports.

Politico spoke with 10 Republican senators and aides, many of whom "are now openly predicting a tough battle to hold onto control,” thanks in large part to President Donald Trump’s policies.

Their party is struggling “to keep the focus on affordability policies that lawmakers want to make the centerpiece of their midterm campaign,” Politico explains, as Trump wages an unpopular war in the Middle East that comes with rising oil prices and potential downstream impacts to the U.S. economy. “The Senate passed a major housing bill this week but it faces an uncertain future in the House. Trump himself told Republican lawmakers Monday that housing is not a top concern for voters,” the report adds.

Trump ally Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) told Politico he’s “glad he’s not on the ballot” as “Republican senators [warn] that the party writ large needs to hammer home cost-of-living measures.”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), another Trump supporter, acknowledged “prices are high,” and told Politico he hopes Republicans will “take some votes to lower the costs.”

Trump, meanwhile, has set his sights on passing the SAVE America Act, an effort to overhaul U.S. elections and "institute tough new citizenship and photo ID requirements in order to cast a ballot,” Politico reports. But Senate Majority Leader John Thune is locked in conversations with the White House, and Thune has warned the president his chamber does not have the votes to pass the bill.

The president has even demanded Republicans nuke the filibuster to ensure passage of the SAVE America Act — but just last week, Thune had to deliver some “not so good news” to Trump on his demand.

“The votes aren't there to nuke the filibuster,” Thune explained. “It's just a reality. … The math doesn't add up.”

“Voting on the SAVE America Act is something we will do, but passage is not guaranteed,” he added. “I just wouldn't assume that that's going to happen.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has no idea he’s President Donald Trump’s “future victim,” British-American journalist Sarah Baxter writes in i Paper.

“We are beginning to see in real time what happens when a vain, looksmaxxing US secretary of war encounters death and destruction, and it isn’t pretty,” Baxter wrote Saturday. Looksmaxxing, as the New Yorker puts it, is “the practice of intensively optimizing one's appearance.” And for Baxter, who calls Hegseth a “cartoonish Johnny Bravo lookalike," the Pentagon chief is certainly a follower of the practice.

“With his ability to do 100 push-ups and 50 pull-ups in just over five minutes, he regards himself as the epitome of masculinity and bravery,” Baxter writes. “Instead of steeling the US public for the grit and sacrifice military action entails, the Pentagon chief has proffered a wham-bam caricature of the invincibility of untrammeled power[.]”

Listing numerous pitfalls that have emerged in the administration's ongoing war in Iran, Baxter argues “the war is playing out in an eerily similar way to events in Minneapolis, where masked agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol killed two American citizens, Renée Good and Alex Pretti.” Kristi Noem, outgoing Department of Homeland Security secretary who oversees the agencies responsible for those deaths, has already been fired by the Trump administration, the reporter notes. And she believes Hegseth could be next.

Noting that last September, Hegseth spoke with a number of top generals who were summoned to Quantico, VA, Baxter explains the defense chief promised no “endless nation building” under his leadership. Still, as Baxter writes, the United States’ wars in Afghanistan and Iraq revealed “the reason for nation-building”: “New threats would arise and gains would be lost unless enemy nations became allies.”

But, she warns, “Hegseth is too foolish to realize this.” And the president, “seeking someone to blame, may have found his future victim.”

Indeed, the Hill reports Saturday that Hegseth and Trump “face perilous options” in Iran as they face “a difficult set of options in attempting to reopen” the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping route currently slowed to a crawl as Iran carries out attacks on tankers in the strait.

Hegseth on Friday “downplayed concerns of Iranian attacks,” the Hill reports. The defense secretary insists the Pentagon “has been dealing with it.”

But as the Trump administration confronts a problem of its own creation, Baxter warns it could be knives out for Hegseth.