A retired military officer and activist warned conservative commentator Bill Kristol on Sunday that President Donald Trump’s policies are dangerously weakening the American armed forces.

“In my retirement speech, I mentioned the fact that we were not being tossed away because we had failed in any way,” Col. Breen Fram, an American astronautical engineer and former colonel, told Bill Kristol. “It was because what we had done could not be hidden away if we remained in uniform. That we had done our job so well that we had won the respect of our friends, our colleagues, and the people that we worked for or led, that having us there continued to put to the torch the lie that they were saying about our character and our capability.”

She added, “The executive order basically said that we were dishonorable, undisciplined liars who lacked the humility required for military service. So that attack on our character on top of the attack that they made, the claim that we were undeployable because of medication that we were taking long-term. And I know we're gonna get into this, but it's pretty crazy that now we have Secretary Hegseth in his quest for a high-T Department of War saying that long-term hormone replacement therapy is a lethality enhancer for some, but is a clear readiness crisis for others. The hypocrisy behind all of this is overwhelming.”

Fram also called out Trump for purging people from the military who do not share both his views and those of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

“Not only is the science clear, but the military had embraced this—that it takes multiple perspectives,” Fram told Kristol. “Yes, there are certain situations where we know an order is important to be carried out immediately because lives are on the line, or we need a snap decision. But in most cases, we're planning for the future. We are building the force and our readiness, and we need to consider all the options. And if people are not willing to speak up, you get these hollow armies that look amazing but will collapse at the first sign of adversity.”

As one example, Fram talked about Trump’s Golden Dome proposal.

“My experience was with the Golden Dome proposal, which was originally Iron Dome, but of course, anything that Trump touches has to be gilded,” Fram said. “So it immediately turned to Golden Dome. And as this proposal came over for this worldwide missile shield, I with 23 years of service as an astronautical engineer, thought, maybe, maybe my input would be valued on this. But when I said that this was the least technologically feasible, highest cost way of accomplishing this mission, and I said, ‘Have we told the political appointees this?’ one of my bosses up the chain said, ‘We can only tell them yes.’”

She concluded, So in the end, it just, again, hits on building this hollow force—a force that looks strong, but we're weakening it out from the inside.”

Similarly, Fram described the problems with Trump’s proposed “Trump-class battleship.”

“The Trump-class battleship—this is a ship that is all about aesthetics,” Fram said. “It is about looking good. It is Trump, again, calling something his golden fleet. We retired our last battleship in the early '90s because they were obsolete. And yes, a ship that may have energy weapons and may have large storage capacity could have uses. But what we're really proposing to build is a floating target. And the Chinese, the Russians, know this. They won't be impressed by this gleaming ship on the horizon. They'll be tracking its signature from space and counting the number of missiles it takes to disarm it and to sink it. And that's what this is.”

She concluded, “It is a monument, just like the arch that's going up, uh, across the Potomac from Washington, as a monument to Trump. And a monument at sea will sink. And it will be a terrible disaster.”

Fram is far from alone in arguing that Trump is weakening the military. In July, Steve Schmidt, a former adviser to President George W. Bush, said that his abandonment of NATO hurts American foreign policy.

“NATO was built by men like Harry Truman and Dean Acheson, George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower, sustained by John Kennedy and Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton,” Schmidt said at the time. “It is the most successful military alliance in world history. It is what emerged from what Franklin Roosevelt called the United Nations — an alliance of free nations bound together by common defense, that says an attack on one is an attack on all. It is the greatest deterrent force in history, and Donald Trump despises it like he despises the values of these free nations.”

Similarly, in March, conservative foreign policy analyst Daniel DePetris said that by overthrowing the Venezuelan government, Trump has weakened the US from a geopolitical standpoint.

By successfully overthrowing the Venezuelan government, President Donald Trump believes he is flexing American strength — but, according to a right-leaning foreign policy expert, Trump may actually be “throwing it all away.”

“Unlike Russia and China, the United States has been blessed with advantageous geography and benevolent neighbors,” DePetris wrote for Reason Magazine. “Both have been sources of strength. The so-called Donroe Doctrine risks throwing it all away.”

Fram, Schmidt and DePetris were joined in their criticism in February by Joseph Bosco, who served as China country director under President George W. Bush’s Defense Department from 2005 to 2006. He called out Trump’s failure to remain loyal to American allies like Taiwan and Ukraine.

“History will brand the U.S. failure to ensure Ukraine’s victory and prevent Taiwan’s fall as the time when America fell from greatness and her ‘cunning’ but miscalculating enemies plunged the world into a new global conflict,” Bosco wrote in The Hill.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly drawn on the Civil War to bolster his presidency, whether it’s supporting Confederate statues or using statutes from that era to prosecute protesters. Now the author of an upcoming novel about the U.S. ceasing to exist, “The Breakup,” is arguing that a literal Civil War could be in the offing, and that the country is currently stuck in "a bitter, loveless marriage."

“Days after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, then-Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene reiterated her push for legally splitting up the country: ‘I want a peaceful national divorce. Our country is too far gone and too far divided, and it’s no longer safe for any of us,’” argued author Kurt Andersen for The New York Times on Sunday. “Polls since 2021 by universities, YouGov and others have consistently found that a third or more of Americans said they expected a civil war during the next decade or so.”

Andersen wrote, “A national divorce — let alone a civil war — is, for now, the stuff of fiction. But while loose talk from rabble-rousers has distracted us, the nation has sunk, almost unnoticed, into an unspectacular yet profoundly strange new arrangement. It’s not yet a divorce; it’s more like a bitter, loveless marriage in which the parties stay technically but less and less enthusiastically united because splitting up is too complicated or dreadful or expensive.”

Describing the status quo as “uncooperative federalism” and “soft secession,” Andersen pointed out that “during the past two Democratic presidencies, many red states and counties declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries, prohibiting their police forces from enforcing some federal gun regulations. (The term was a trollish play on Democratic sanctuary cities, which did the same for federal immigration policies.)”

He added, “Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas took it upon himself to override federal immigration policy, deploying the National Guard to string the banks of the Rio Grande with coils of razor wire and ordering his troops to prevent federal border agents from helping migrants who got tangled in them. More than two dozen Republican governors endorsed the show of anti-federal strength.”

Andersen also pointed out that Democratic-led states and cities are similarly soft seceding in the Trump era, such as “local police departments aren’t cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Many states passed laws to shield residents from prosecution if they are charged elsewhere with facilitating abortions, and several have stockpiled abortifacients in case federal law or regulations make them hard to get.”

He continued, “Various combinations of blue states have banded together to perform functions the federal government has abandoned or degraded: forming a climate alliance that participates in international forums the Trump administration won’t attend, creating de facto regulatory agencies for cap-and-trade carbon markets, issuing medically legitimate childhood vaccination recommendations. A coalition of a couple dozen attorneys general has sued the administration over birthright citizenship, tariffs and denial of federal funds to Democratic-controlled states.”

Ultimately, Andersen characterized this status quo as unsustainable.

“We can’t keep going this way,” Andersen wrote. “Escaping federal dysfunction and avoiding real hostilities over the long term will require some kind of radical shift. Perhaps states and regions could become much more independent. Like the regional autonomous communities in Spain, some of which collect nearly all the taxes their inhabitants pay and then forward a negotiated share to the national government. Or Switzerland, where cantons can divide or reconfigure and each one decides whether newcomers become Swiss citizens.”

He concluded, “Even that might not be enough. Someday down the line we may decide we have no choice but to call it quits. If so, I hope we could follow the lead of post-Soviet Czechoslovakia, whose 1993 breakup into two nations was so calm, it was called the Velvet Divorce, a kind of conscious national uncoupling. For our huge, heterogeneous country, it would be extremely difficult and painful. But in the long run, it might still be better for the kids.”

In July, renowned historian Timothy Snyder similarly argued that America may soon come to an end, in his case pointing to Trump’s authoritarian presidency.

“The fact that the U.S. exists and is celebrating 250 years doesn't mean that it'll exist in 5 years or 10 years or 15 years — states have a beginning and they have an end,” Snyder said. “I think that the Trump people are much more likely to wreck the U.S. as an entity than they are to succeed in generating some kind of homogeneous tyranny from the Pacific to the Atlantic.”

President Donald Trump has lost 21 out of 21 of his lawsuits to suppress voters, including in front of Republican judges. Now a legal reporter argues that as the president continues to suffer defeats, his tactics are getting “ominous.”

While reviewing Trump’s and MAGA’s voter suppression movements in Missouri and Texas, Democracy Docket's Zachary Roth reported on Sunday that “most ominously, Trump and his MAGA backers are already starting to target the Great Lakes State with their lies about illegal voting.” He quoted Trump on social media saying that his supporters should not “discount all of those fake mail-in ballots that will ‘surprisingly’ show up at the last moment. Get ready for another Rigged Election.”

Roth listed several methods Trump is using to try to rig the 2026 midterm elections in his favor, including “Trump’s order aimed at severely restricting mail voting, which the Supreme Court is now set to weigh in on; his administration’s effort to prod states into removing large numbers of voters from the rolls; and even a potential scheme by House Republicans to prevent Democrats who won their races from being seated.”

While it remains unclear whether these other efforts will work, Roth said that “still, it was another bad week for one major Trump administration anti-voting project: the Department of Justice (DOJ) crusade to obtain state voter rolls. Judges dismissed DOJ’s lawsuits against Colorado and Washington, D.C., bringing the department’s record in these cases to a frankly hilarious zero wins and 21 losses — or 22 if you count an appeals court defeat.”

Describing Trump’s repeated failures, Roth said that “one unfortunate DOJ lawyer was forced to admit this week in the lawsuit over Washington state’s rolls that nothing distinguishes that case from all the others that have been dismissed. He was reduced to arguing that all those federal courts — 20 at the time — had ‘misconstrued’ U.S law when they ruled that DOJ isn’t entitled to states’ unredacted voter rolls. Only the department, he suggested, is correctly interpreting the statute at issue.”

Speaking to AlterNet in June, Common Cause’s Senior Policy Director for Voting and Fair Representation Dan Vicuña argued that Trump’s anti-democracy measures can be traced back to the 2020 presidential election.

“What they all add up to is a desire to avoid any accountability to the voters in the midterm elections — to ensure, to preordain the outcome of a midterm that he thinks is going to go badly for him,” Vicuña told AlterNet. “We know, from the Big Lie of the 2020 election to spurring on a violent revolt to overthrow a free and fair election, that he has no respect for democratic norms, for the voice of the people. This is entirely about his own power and his own ego. He will even invest in protecting that ego and protecting his power at the expense of the needs of the public. People are suffering with high gas prices and affordability issues, and he does not care. All that matters is protecting his power, and he has no interest in whether he does that through democratic means.”

He added, “I think this all adds up to a desire to ensure that his party stays in power and his ability to do what he wants — to attack vulnerable communities — remains intact.”

After that article was published, the White House reached out to AlterNet with its own comment.

“President Trump is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections, and that includes totally accurate and up-to-date voter rolls free of errors and unlawfully registered non-citizen voters," White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said. "The Civil Rights Act, National Voting Rights Act, and Help America Vote Act all give the Department of Justice full authority to ensure states comply with federal election laws, which mandate accurate state voter rolls. This campaign pledge from the President is why millions of Americans sent him back to the White House. The President has also urged Congress to pass the SAVE America Act and other legislative proposals that would establish a uniform standard of photo ID for voting, prohibit no-excuse mail-in voting, and end the practice of ballot harvesting. Noncitizens voting is a crime. Anyone breaking the law will be held accountable.”

President Donald Trump’s tariffs are already unpopular and deemed illegal by the Supreme Court, but a man who claims to have been wrongly imprisoned for murder argues that his claim to target nations that engage in forced labor is hypocritical. By his account, America engages in literal slavery by forcing prisoners to work for the profits of large companies.

“The Trump administration’s claim that tariffs are needed to punish those 59 countries and the European Union, which it says are too permissive of forced labor” is hypocritical, wrote MS NOW's Jeremy Busby, a writer and activist incarcerated in Texas for murder (he claims it was self-defense) and founder of the nonprofit JoinJeremy, on Sunday. “I write this from Texas, a state that has kept me incarcerated for nearly three decades and is one of the country’s biggest beneficiaries of forced labor.”

Busby described that he has “seen guards attack a man for his refusal to chop grass. I have seen countless others pepper sprayed for refusing to perform work details. Some of my college classmates were expelled from religious and educational programs for failing to show up for prison-mandated work. On any given day, nearly 2 million people are behind bars in this country. More than half of them, approximately 1.2 million, are held in state or federal prisons, where work is compulsory.”

In his essay, Busby argued that prisons effectively enslave their inmates in order to provide cheap goods and services for wealthy corporations.

“Those assigned to agribusiness operations harvest some of the same crops — like cotton — that enslaved people once did,” Busby argued. “They work under an armed guard on horseback, following the ‘same marching orders as their predecessors,’ the Texas Observer reported. In 2022 alone, Texas prisons raked in $58 million from sales of industrial products — such as soap and stainless steel tables — produced through forced labor. That sum was completely separate from the reported $51 million in earnings that same year from agriculture.”

He added, “Incarcerated workers have a long history of inhumane treatment for any type of work stoppage. In 1908, Frank Pinkard received 39 lashes after refusing to continue digging a ditch in Texas. Other incarcerated workers were killed for disobeying work orders, according to historian Robert Perkinson, author of ‘Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire.’”

Busby listed the punishments given to prisoners who refuse to work including “long-term placement in solitary confinement, which requires confiscation of all personal property” and loss of “privileges like family visitation, telephone calls or the good-time credits needed for release can be stripped away. Commissary, entertainment and recreational access can be suspended.”

He ultimately concluded, “If tariffs are an appropriate response to countries looking away from forced labor, then other countries would be justified in placing tariffs on us.”

Speaking to AlterNet in July, economist Dr. Ed Gresser, the Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at the liberal-leaning think tank Progressive Policy Institute, characterized Trump’s tariffs as a “big-government” move despite his claim to be a small government president. Economist Dr. Robert Shapiro, who served as a top economic adviser to President Bill Clinton, argued they harm the American economy by creating “uncertainty. Every investment is based on an assessment of the likely future demand for whatever you're investing in, and how much it's going to cost to produce it.”

He added, “So there are assumptions about labor costs, material costs and other input costs — and again, about demand. If you have a set of arrangements that give you some confidence about the price of your inputs coming from Mexico or Canada, or about demand for goods in Canada — and don't forget, we have virtually no trade deficit with Canada; we have enormous trade, and it goes in both directions — so it's certainly right, and it's not just about investments based on these probabilities that the trade agreement can help reduce uncertainty about.”

President Donald Trump lost his 21st court case in his attempts to rig the midterm elections through various voter suppression methods. He has not prevailed a single time.

"A California court dealt Republicans a major defeat Thursday, rejecting their bid to soften the official description of an anti-voting measure and preserving ballot language warning that it would bar citizens from voting unless they present government-issued identification," wrote Democracy Docket's Yunior Rivas on Thursday. "The decision is a significant win for California voters seeking clear information about how the measure could prevent eligible ballots from being counted."

Rivas added, "Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Jennifer K. Rockwell denied the GOP-backed petition Thursday, ruling that Attorney General Rob Bonta’s title, summary and label accurately describe Proposition 39 and fall within his legal authority to prepare ballot materials."

Republicans attempted to rationalize their measure, Proposition 39, by arguing that it would not actually stop voters from casting ballots, but instead make sure that they had complied with voter ID requirements before that ballot could be counted. Judge Rockwell begged to differ.

“Petitioners’ contention that Proposition 39 would not prohibit “voting” because it may allow the submission of ballots that will not be counted is inconsistent with the settled understanding of what it means to ‘vote,’” Rockwell explained in her decision. “Because Proposition 39 would prohibit the counting of ballots not submitted in compliance with the identification requirements, there is nothing misleading or inaccurate about the statement that the measure ‘prohibits citizens from voting unless they present government-issued identification.’”

Trump has lost all of his voter suppression attempts in court, including those cases that appeared before other Republican judges. in lieu of prevailing in court, Trump has threatened to use the Department of Homeland Security and other federal law enforcement agencies to meddle in elections, which are constitutionally delegated to the purview of the states.

President Donald Trump is reportedly a massive golf cheat, at least according to a prominent sportswriter discussing the sport that the president has played for more than 26 percent of the days of his second term.

"He's got a pancake swing and the yips — that's when you just can't commit to the shot, and you suddenly flinch," Rick Reilly, author of "Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump," told MS NOW Ari Melber on Thursday. "He chips like Edward Scissorhands. He's just awful, especially around the green. He hits it pretty well off the tee, but when he plays his own courses, he's got a caddy who'll toss it out of the rough or out of the bunker for him. One time I saw him hit it into the lake, and suddenly he's on the fairway. I said, 'What the hell, Donald?' And he said, 'It must have hit the tee marker.'"

Reilly added, "There's no beating him at his own course, because nobody wants to get thrown out of the club. It's kind of like when you race your three-year-old in a foot race and say, 'You won"'— because nobody wants to be the one who ruins it."

Melber then asked Reilly, "We got video from last year showing a caddy dropping a ball closer to the green. But the bigger question — what did you assess years ago that this said about the man who would go on to become president of the United States?"

Reilly replied by keeping the subject about sports, not politics.

"Look, I don't know about politics, but I do know golf," Reilly told Melber. "Golf is like bicycle shorts — it reveals a lot about a man. If he's going to cheat you at golf, is he going to cheat his friends and family? He's going to cheat the country. He's going to cheat in elections. He's going to cheat on his wives and his taxes. In fact, we've asked him, 'You can't cheat me like this,' and he said, 'Well, I cheat on my wives, I cheat on my taxes — why wouldn't I cheat on my own golf course?' That's how it works."

Reilly has previously called out Trump's controversial behavior about golf. Earlier this week, Reilly posted on X that Trump has "f---" up everything, using golf as an example.

“Reflecting pool was fine," Reilly posted on X. "Now it's fenced off. Kennedy Center was fine. Now it's closed. WH was fine. Now it looks like a 99-cent Thai joint. Boats sailed thru Hormuz. Now Iran owns it. Golf was cool. Now there's a greasy orange splotch on it.”

Reilly is not alone in raising alarms about Trump's golf-related behavior. In July, it was revealed that one of Trump's golf courses has been dinged by health inspectors for various violations.

“When a Loudoun County health official visited the Trump National Golf Club Washington D.C.’s restaurant last month, the inspector spotted some invaders,” NOTUS' Dave Levinthal reported on Monday. The issues included a “large quantity of small flies” at a storage room and possible health hazards included “several food items stored at a temperature above the required 41 degrees Fahrenheit minimum. That included the blue cheese (54 degrees), sausage links (51 degrees), sausage patties (49 degrees) and pasta (49 degrees).” Additionally, the report found improperly stored “raw steak, fish and burgers above ready-to-eat foods such as tortillas and sauces.” and that the sink’s chemical sanitizer solution exceeded regulations for maximum strength level.”

In February, NOTUS also reported that Trump has been renovating Washington DC's public golf courses in ways that are making them unaffordable to all but the most affluent golfers. Trump furthered this plan by terminating the National Links Trust's lease, citing violations they dispute.

“The National Links Trust is devastated by the Trump administration’s decision to terminate our 50-year lease with the National Park Service,” the National Links Trust declared in a statement. “Since taking over stewardship of Rock Creek, East Potomac, and Langston courses five years ago, NLT has consistently complied with all lease obligations as we work to ensure the brightest possible future for public golf in DC.”

President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked judges who rule against him by accusing them of being traitors and threats to America. Perhaps as he anticipated, his supporters have taken his rhetoric as a call to intimidate those same judges, from falsely reporting that a judge killed his wife and threatening judges with violence to vowing to commit sexual assault against them and harassing their family members.

Now one of those judges is speaking out against the bullying.

“It's not an easy thing for any of us to come forward and talk about the personal threats,” Judge John J. McConnell Jr., the Chief Justice of the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island, told MS NOW’s Nicolle Wallace on Thursday. “It's also not an easy thing for us to come forward as judges, because you all work on... There is an unprecedented amount of personal attacks against judges — not just me, but all across the country. It's systematic, it's growing, it's severe. There are sustained efforts.”

He added, “There are, in my opinion, results of sustained efforts by high-level members of the executive branch who have called judges rogue, insurrectionists, radicals, haters, moneyed, lunatics, corrupt, vicious. And this constant personal attack on my fellow district judges and myself and our families is the beginning of the attack on equal justice under the law, according to the rule of law.”

He continued, “My story is not unique — it's disturbing, but it's not unique. I received six or seven credible death threats. My daughter was doxxed by Laura Loomer and by Elon Musk. I have a picture of myself on a wanted poster made by a congressman. Ethics complaints were filed against me, and some of the attacks were against my wife — certainly not a public figure. And so that level of personally attacking judges by a co-equal branch of government is detrimental to our democracy as we know it.”

He later told Wallace that this is not “a partisan issue.”

“We had Democratic members of the Senate speak inappropriately about judges, using deceptive language,” McConnell told Wallace. What we're seeing right now, out of the executive branch, appears to be an attempt to delegitimize the courts, to delegitimize judges. The Deputy Attorney General — who's potentially in line to be the Attorney General — said we're at war with the courts, and called people to action. These kinds of things are not acceptable in a democratic society when we follow the law.”

McConnell is not alone among jurists warning that Trump’s rhetoric against judges is meant to undermine the judiciary. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made a similar comment in 2025.

“The attacks are not random,” Jackson said. “They seem designed to intimidate. The threats and harassment are attacks on our democracy, on our system of government. And they ultimately risk undermining our Constitution and the rule of law.”

https://youtu.be/5KoNEZF_td0

President Donald Trump has repeatedly denied that Americans are suffering from higher prices — at least, when he isn’t tacitly admitting that his Iran War has caused those prices to skyrocket. On Thursday, however, an Ivy League economist broke down exactly why the president’s gaslighting about the state of the economy is a doomed strategy.

“What's interesting is my colleagues at the Budget Lab at Yale — we actually calculated the impact of the combination of the president's tax cut, which did result in greater refunds of around $350 for the average family,” Natasha Sarin, President of the Budget Lab at Yale, told MS NOW anchor Erielle Reshef. “And so in aggregate, what the reality is, is what you're hearing from those competitors, which is that things are getting more expensive for them, and we're actually in a situation in this economy called negative wage growth.”

She added, “The reality is that inflation is outpacing the wage gains that are happening for the average worker.”

Reshef then turned to The Daily Beast's editor-at-large Molly Jong-Fast, asking whether Trump can politically succeed in dismissing Americans’ economic concerns as a non-issue.

“Look, the president has already explained the economy,” Jong-Fast told Reshef. “That is a totally non-partisan fact — left, right, doesn't matter. But it happens to be, in this case, that under Donald Trump things got more expensive. So you actually have a direct line — and I think for him, the most problematic thing might be the war in Iran, because you can draw a direct line between the moment Donald Trump went into Iran and gas prices going up.”

She added, “Then gas prices come down a little bit, and then there's more firing in the strait, and gas prices go up again. So you can really see how much his military action has affected prices.”

Reshef then turned to a former Republican lawmaker to ask whether Trump’s economic denial is a liability for the party in the upcoming midterm elections.

“Yeah — but they have to go down with him,” former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) told Reshef. “He's the Titanic, and every single one of them has to go down with him.”

He added, “But can we just lay out the broad context here? Donald Trump lies as he breathes. I mean, every president spins the economy — Trump outright lies. He lies about everything. When he lies and says the 2020 election was stolen, a lot of people believe that lie, and it works. When he lies and says Haitian migrants were eating cats and dogs, that lie doesn't work because a lot of people can see it's false.”

Walsh concluded, “But when Donald Trump lies about the economy, those lies really don't work, because — as was just said — we all live the economy. We all know how much we're paying at the pump. We all know how much groceries cost. So Trump's lies about the economy simply do not work with most voters. And I have to be honest — I talk to a lot of voters MAGA every day, and his lies about the economy don't work with them either.”

Economists who have spoken to AlterNet explained that, by invading Iran, Trump has all but guaranteed high gas prices for the immediate future.

“Even if hostilities do not restart, the price of oil will not return to pre-Trump levels because there’s a new risk premium that they could restart at any time, increasing tanker insurance costs for example, and because oil infrastructure has been degraded, reducing supply for some time,” Dr. Robert Shapiro, a top economic adviser to President Bill Clinton, told AlterNet in April. “An Iran-controlled toll to use the Strait will produce big bucks for Iran, but its impact on world prices for oil, natural gas, helium, etc. should be minimal. Another source of economic friction will be the now-intense uncertainty about what the Trump administration will do next—in the Mideast and in scores of policies at home; and uncertainty dampens investment.”

He added, “As it is, the economy was weakening before this crisis began, and these and other factors will exacerbate those downward pressures. A resolution over the next two weeks will not stop the deterioration in economic conditions.”

The Trump administration downplayed these issues to AlterNet.

“The United States’ energy dominance status, as the world’s leading producer and a top exporter of oil and natural gas, has positioned us to not rely on the free flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz like other countries,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told AlterNet at the time. “If anything, Operation Epic Fury actually underscored the importance of producing reliable, affordable, and secure energy here at home. Many of our allies that have tried transitioning to intermittent and unreliable renewable energy sources have predictably failed to break their reliance on foreign oil that goes through the Strait."

She concluded, "Several countries from around the world are now looking to emulate the President’s energy dominance agenda and are advancing new partnerships that enhance their energy security with the United States.”

https://youtu.be/QLCA7p7qxt4

U.S. President Donald Trump reacts as he speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Michigan, U.S., July 27, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci

U.S. President Donald Trump reacts as he speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Michigan, U.S., July 27, 2026. REUTERS/Evan VucciU.S. President Donald Trump reacts as he speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Michigan, U.S., July 27, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci

President Donald Trump has recently started blaming Big Oil rather than his war against Iran for rising oil prices — and the editorial page of The Washington Post, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, is having none of it.

“Prices are set by supply and demand,” wrote The Washington Post’s Editorial Board on Wednesday. “That economic law is as fundamental as they come, but not for the first time, President Donald Trump is acting like he’s above the law.”

They added, “Trump ripped into energy giants Chevron and ExxonMobil this week for windfall profits amid the Iran war: Chevron reported a quarterly record of $12.1 billion, and ExxonMobil’s $14.5 billion nearly doubled last year’s second quarter profit.”

Referring to Trump’s comment that oil companies are “making too much money based on a shortage” and that “they ought to give some of that back to the public, and they better cut the retail price,” the Post noted that Trump’s invasion of Iran prompted that country to mostly shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which is in fact the primary factor behind rising oil prices.

“The Strait of Hormuz, which accounts for 20 percent of the world’s oil trade, remains largely shut down, driving up the global price,” the Post wrote. “The president might have considered this obvious consequence before he attacked Iran in February and failed to quickly establish American control over the strait.”

The Post continued, “Prices at the pump being roughly $1 higher today per gallon than they were a year ago is the result of decisions made in Washington, not by the oil majors.”

After adding that Trump’s tariffs have also contributed to rising prices, the Post concluded that Trump should direct whatever blame he assigns for the problem back at himself.

“A vital lesson from the war in Iran is that America needs an abundant supply of every form of energy the market can produce,” the Post wrote. “Gas prices would be much higher right now, for example, if progressives had managed to ban fracking a few years ago.”

They concluded, “If the president really wants to bring down prices, he should focus on expanding the supply of oil at home and abroad.”

Ironically, Trump implicitly admitted earlier on Wednesday that his war is in fact the main cause of rising gas prices.

“When oil goes down, and it's going to go down very rapidly and is already happening, we may have to send it up again, we may have to -- you know what happens when we send it up,” Trump told an audience at a Las Vegas rally. “But we don't have to. But when that oil and gasoline go down, everything else follows. But we have done a great job at reducing prices and we have done an unbelievable job in making our country really, really respected and successful again.”

Speaking to AlterNet in June, Dr. Robert Shapiro — a top economic adviser to President Bill Clinton — confirmed that Trump’s war against Iran has caused oil prices to rise. He added that it is unlikely the problem will be solved even if the war ends quickly.

“Even if hostilities do not restart, the price of oil will not return to pre-Trump levels because there’s a new risk premium that they could restart at any time, increasing tanker insurance costs for example, and because oil infrastructure has been degraded, reducing supply for some time,” Shapiro explained to AlterNet. “An Iran-controlled toll to use the Strait will produce big bucks for Iran, but its impact on world prices for oil, natural gas, helium, etc. should be minimal. Another source of economic friction will be the now-intense uncertainty about what the Trump administration will do next—in the Mideast and in scores of policies at home; and uncertainty dampens investment.”

He concluded, “As it is, the economy was weakening before this crisis began, and these and other factors will exacerbate those downward pressures. A resolution over the next two weeks will not stop the deterioration in economic conditions.”

White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers replied to these criticisms at the time by telling AlterNet that “the United States’ energy dominance status, as the world’s leading producer and a top exporter of oil and natural gas, has positioned us to not rely on the free flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz like other countries. If anything, Operation Epic Fury actually underscored the importance of producing reliable, affordable, and secure energy here at home. Many of our allies that have tried transitioning to intermittent and unreliable renewable energy sources have predictably failed to break their reliance on foreign oil that goes through the Strait."

She added, "Several countries from around the world are now looking to emulate the President’s energy dominance agenda and are advancing new partnerships that enhance their energy security with the United States.”

President Donald Trump has struggled to pass his legislative agenda in the Senate due to his insistence that Republican leaders there pass his SAVE America Act, a voter suppression bill he hopes will help him in the 2026 midterm elections. Yet according to the Senate Majority leader, Trump’s actions have held up legislation to an unacceptable degree — and he had a two-word insult to sum up his sentiments.

“The Senate is making some progress toward breaking its pre-recess logjam,” USA Today's Zachary Schermele reported on Wednesday. “Between confirming Todd Blanche, passing a government funding stopgap, advancing a college athletics bill and more, there remains much on the agenda. This morning, amid GOP disagreements about a number of things stalling the legislative sprint, Thune was sounding less than optimistic.”

Schermele then quoted Thune.

“It's a bit of a train wreck, isn't it?” Thune said according to Schermele. The South Dakotan later described his comparison as "probably a little extreme," adding that "it's just a series of things that are sort of piled up.”

This is not the first time that Thune has vented his frustration with Trump. The lawmaker has repeatedly said that there simply are not enough votes in the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act and that Trump’s demands are therefore politically unrealistic. Trump in turn has claimed that by not passing the SAVE America Act, Thune is making it possible for Democrats to retake that legislative body in the upcoming midterm elections. Until Thune passes the SAVE America Act, Trump has opposed allowing other legislative priorities to be addressed.

In July, when Trump called for Thune to be replaced as Senate Majority Leader because of his inability to push through the SAVE America Act, Thune had a clapback for the president.

"Alright,” Thune said. “Well, that’s nice of him. I GUESS. I don’t know what do you say on that. That’s a decision that’s made by my colleagues!"

Roll Call's Savannah Behrmann recently explained the dilemma facing Thune.

“For Majority Leader John Thune, the equation is not new: The math isn’t mathing, and there has never been enough support in his conference to establish a new precedent and lower the 60-vote hurdle most bills must clear to advance to a simple majority threshold,” Behrmann wrote. “Those numbers are hardly a secret, but some are reluctant to take a public stance when it means defying the party’s president. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) told Politico this summer that more Republicans oppose the so-called nuclear option than are willing to say so. ‘I regret that the other 25 or 30 people who oppose blowing up the filibuster don’t say it out loud like I do, because it leaves the impression that there are only four or five of us, just enough so that he doesn’t have 51,’ Cramer said.”

President Donald Trump has long attempted to deny the sour state of America’s economy, even as rampant inflation causes millions of people to struggle to make ends meet. Yet on Wednesday, during a rally in Las Vegas, the president doubled down on his claim that the economy is improving — even as he acknowledged that things may get worse due to his ongoing war against Iran.

“Remember, we inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country,” Trump said. “We took over -- what a mess it was, and we were bringing down prices and we brought down prices and nobody can believe what is going on.”

At that point, Trump admitted that oil prices remain high, a condition significantly exacerbated by Iran taking control of the Strait of Hormuz.

“When oil goes down, and it's going to go down very rapidly and is already happening, we may have to send it up again, we may have to -- you know what happens when we send it up,” Trump said. “But we don't have to. But when that oil and gasoline go down, everything else follows. But we have done a great job at reducing prices and we have done an unbelievable job in making our country really, really respected and successful again.”

He also proceeded to brag about bringing drug prices down, making unsubstantiated claims that during his administration “we are delivering the largest prescription drug price cuts in the history of our country with price differences of- 400 percent, 500 percent and 600 percent.”

Speaking with AlterNet in April, Dr. Ed Gresser, Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at the Progressive Policy Institute, explained that Trump’s war against Iran will not cause gas prices to drop, despite claims like the one he made on Wednesday.

“I would guess that yes, destruction of Iranian (and some other) energy facilities in the Persian Gulf area will have at least a medium-term effect keeping prices for crude oil and chemical fertilizer high, and that in turn means gasoline prices may come down only slowly,” Gresser told AlterNet. “Same for other petroleum-based products such as plastics, skin creams, and so on. The high potential of conflict also adds risk premiums to shipping and other costs.”

He continued, “Longer-term, lots of open questions. One is whether the administration will really concede that Iran has a right to close the Strait of Hormuz and assess tolls on shipping passing through it. That would make the smaller Gulf monarchies and to some extent Iraq reliant on Iranian good will for all of their exports. Likewise, Asian countries are the main buyers of Persian Gulf energy, and their supplies would be much less secure.”

Gresser’s view was reinforced by Dr. Robert Shapiro, who served as a top economic adviser to President Bill Clinton.

“Even if hostilities do not restart, the price of oil will not return to pre-Trump levels because there’s a new risk premium that they could restart at any time, increasing tanker insurance costs for example, and because oil infrastructure has been degraded, reducing supply for some time,” Shapiro told AlterNet. “An Iran-controlled toll to use the Strait will produce big bucks for Iran, but its impact on world prices for oil, natural gas, helium, etc. should be minimal. Another source of economic friction will be the now-intense uncertainty about what the Trump administration will do next—in the Mideast and in scores of policies at home; and uncertainty dampens investment.”

He added, “As it is, the economy was weakening before this crisis began, and these and other factors will exacerbate those downward pressures. A resolution over the next two weeks will not stop the deterioration in economic conditions.”

In response to these criticisms, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told AlterNet that “the United States’ energy dominance status, as the world’s leading producer and a top exporter of oil and natural gas, has positioned us to not rely on the free flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz like other countries. If anything, Operation Epic Fury actually underscored the importance of producing reliable, affordable, and secure energy here at home. Many of our allies that have tried transitioning to intermittent and unreliable renewable energy sources have predictably failed to break their reliance on foreign oil that goes through the Strait."

She concluded, "Several countries from around the world are now looking to emulate the President’s energy dominance agenda and are advancing new partnerships that enhance their energy security with the United States.”

- YouTube youtu.be

Polls can reveal a lot about American’s political views, from their perceptions on President Donald Trump and his political movement to their distrust of the Supreme Court. Yet a new study reveals something surprising about Americans’ political and judicial philosophies — namely, that they often do not really understand the ideas they ostensibly follow.

“A recent study published in Political Research Quarterly suggests that although many Americans express preferences for specific judicial philosophies, most struggle to apply these principles consistently to legal issues,” reported PsyPost's Eric W. Dolan on Wednesday. “The research indicates that for the general public, judicial philosophy acts more as a symbolic label than a structured framework for evaluating the law. This disconnect provides evidence that the complex legal standards often debated during Supreme Court nominations may hold little practical meaning for the average voter.”

Dolan added, “During televised Supreme Court confirmation hearings, politicians frequently debate how nominees will interpret the United States Constitution. Two highly discussed approaches are originalism and living constitutionalism. Originalism suggests that judges should interpret the Constitution based on its meaning at the time it was written. Living constitutionalism indicates that constitutional interpretation should adapt to reflect modern views and societal sensibilities.”

In their study, researchers analyzed two samples of Americans, one consisting of 1,000 adults that demographically reflect the entire population based on the 2022 Cooperative Election Study and the other based on 483 legal professionals from 2025. While the authors expected ordinary Americans to profess a deep knowledge of the law when they advocated “originalism” (the philosophy associated with conservatives) or a “living” Constitution (the philosophy associated with liberals), they ultimately found that this was not the case.

“The results suggest a broad disconnect among the general public regarding judicial philosophy,” Dolan wrote. “When asked to pick a preferred legal philosophy, 44.5 percent of the mass public chose ‘not sure,’ while only 23.7 percent of legal professionals selected the unsure option. Only about 30 percent of the general public provided consistent answers across the three basic philosophy questions.”

Quoting one of the co-authors, Miles T. Armaly, an associate professor of political science at the University of Mississippi, PsyPost reported that the researchers “were a bit surprised by the number of respondents who simply declined to express a preference when given a ‘not sure’ option. Nearly half of the mass public did not identify with either originalism or living constitutionalism when that option was available. This suggests that earlier research, which didn’t always offer a ‘not sure’ response, may have overstated how many Americans truly have meaningful preferences over judicial philosophy.”

PsyPost added, “When looking at horizontal constraint, the mass public showed very little consistency in their responses to the specific legal cases. Legal professionals exhibited about 32 percent more consistency across the varying scenarios than the general public. Even with helpful hints provided in the question text, average citizens struggled to pick outcomes that followed a single, cohesive legal framework.” Similarly, “legal professionals achieved a consistency score of about 0.54, meaning they matched their case outcomes to their stated philosophy 54 percent of the time. The mass public scored approximately 0.38, meaning their case outcomes matched their stated philosophy only 38 percent of the time.”

Armaly concluded that this means ordinary Americans are not sufficiently well-informed about the law to vote in a constructive way based on legal issues.

“Those are sizeable differences, suggesting that judicial philosophy functions as an organizing framework for legal professionals, but only weakly for members of the public,” Armaly told PsyPost.

His statement to the publication was echoed by what he told PsyPost.

“Our findings suggest that judicial philosophy functions as an organizing framework for only a small subset of individuals, primarily those with higher levels of political sophistication or legal training,” the study’s abstract explained. “There is a disconnect between philosophy-based support and coherence in one’s understanding of that philosophy.”

President Donald Trump has fired much of the military’s top personnel and replaced them with loyalists, as well as engaged in controversial practices like encouraging personnel to receive testosterone supplements.

“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s pick for Army chief of staff is in jeopardy because of objections from Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst and other Republican senators, according to U.S. officials and congressional sources,” reported The Wall Street Journal's Lara Seligman on Tuesday. “Hegseth has been pushing to nominate Gen. Christopher LaNeve, who has served as acting Army chief of staff since Hegseth in April fired the former Army top officer, retired Gen. Randy George, according to U.S. officials. But without unanimous Republican support, a LaNeve nomination won’t advance out of the Senate Armed Services Committee.”

Seligman added, “The administration was poised in May to put forward LaNeve for the role, but has held off because the committee chairman, Sen. Roger Wicker (R., Miss.), communicated that he didn’t have the votes to secure approval for LaNeve’s nomination, according to U.S. officials and congressional sources. LaNeve, who commanded the 82nd Airborne Division, has faced criticism from lawmakers and experts who note he has been a four-star general for only six months. Most chiefs serve at least 18 months in a four-star role before assuming the top position.”

Like many of the military personnel preferred by Trump, LaNeve has benefited from his perceived political support for the Republican leader.

“LaNeve’s reputation for discipline and a chance encounter with President Trump vaulted him into a senior position at the Pentagon last year,” Seligman wrote. “While commanding the Eighth Army in South Korea in January 2025, LaNeve appeared in a video call for an inaugural ball. ‘Welcome back, Mr. President,’ said the square-jawed general, reciting a script that had been vetted before the event, WSJ reported.”

Seligman added, “Trump appeared impressed. ‘Is this man central casting, or what?’ he asked the ballroom’s crowd.”

Trump’s management of the Defense Department has drawn considerable criticism for being more motivated by politics than merit. In July Margaret Donovan, a lawyer and Army JAG veteran, broke down the flaws of the Pentagon under Trump by analyzing how they got America into a war with Iran.

“You know, you get somebody like Secretary Hegseth in charge of the Department of Defense, and that's what you get,” Donovan told The Bulwark’s William Kristol on Thursday, describing how Trump got roughly 120 Iranian schoolgirls killed in a botched air strike.

“You get this harebrained operation, and the very first strike, something that, nearly every former military lawyer, probably current military lawyers, if they could speak freely would consider a war crime, or otherwise unauthorized under the law of armed conflict,” Donovan continued. “You have that, and lest you thought that was a fluke, that sort of rushing into an operation ill-prepared and not fully thought out in terms of your legal basis. We have February 28th, and so that's the opening of the Iran War.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) shocked the political world on Tuesday by announcing she would vote against confirming President Donald Trump’s acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, to hold that job in an official capacity.

“I have carefully reviewed Todd Blanche’s qualifications to be Attorney General,” Collins posted on X. “This includes his record and responses to questions from Senators at the Department of Justice Appropriations hearing, his confirmation hearing, and in the weeks that followed.”

She added, “While I believe Mr. Blanche is a capable lawyer, the Department of Justice has become increasingly political. Mr. Blanche has taken several actions that have further eroded the Department’s independence, and that is the basis for my vote to oppose his confirmation: Mr. Blanche approved an order to shield the President, his sons, and the family business from IRS audits, protections unavailable to other American taxpayers. He approved the creation of a $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund. He promised an anti-abortion organization that he would seek to prohibit the mailing of abortion medication to women nationwide.”

Collins concluded, “Under his leadership, the Department attempted to indict Senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin over their ill-advised, but constitutionally protected, videos encouraging resistance to unlawful orders. More than 1,200 former Department of Justice employees have opposed his nomination, arguing that he has undermined the institution. For these reasons, I will vote against this nomination.”

Social media quickly blew up with reactions to Collins’ decision, particularly on X. Many of them focused on how her decision will make it harder for Blanche to get confirmed,

“BREAKING - Sen. Susan Collins is a no on President Trump’s attorney General nominee Todd Blanche,” wrote NewsNation's Hannah Brandt on Tuesday. “This makes the math very tough for Blanche, who can only afford to lose one more Republican vote and still get confirmed.”

“Big: Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) says she's voting NO on Todd Blanche's nomination to serve as attorney general,” wrote MS NOW's Mychael Schnell on Tuesday. “With McConnell absent, Republicans can only afford to lose two GOP votes and still confirm Blanche. Murkowski and Cassidy haven't said how they'll vote.”

Gregg Nunziata, a right-wing lawyer and executive director of Society for the Rule of Law, praised Collins through a conservative framework, namely that she was correct in both opposing Blanche and supporting Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

“Susan Collins, correct on Kavanaugh, correct on Blanche,” Nunziata wrote.

“With Susan Collins a NO on Todd Blanche, his nomination as AG hangs by a thread,” wrote CNN's Manu Raju on Tuesday.

Raju added, “Lisa Murkowski just pointedly declined to comment to me just now when asked if she’d vote for Blanche. Bill Cassidy earlier today wouldn’t comment to me either. Blanche can only afford to lose two GOP votes with McConnell out.”

Fox News' Chad Pergram posted on Tuesday that “it’s about the math. The Senate is effectively operating at 52 Republicans and 47 senators who caucus with the Democrats with the absence of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY). So with Collins’ opposition, and presuming that all Democrats are nays, that gets you to 51-48.”

He added, “What we don’t know is if the decisions by Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and John Cornyn (R-TX) to support Blanche provides cover for other possible GOPers who may have reservations with Blanche. That includes Sens. John Curtis (R-UT) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). If Blanche loses the support of one more (presuming everything is equal) the vote is 50-49. Remember, Vice President JD Vance CAN ONLY vote if it’s a tie. So the nomination can only lose one more vote. An additional no vote from a GOPer blocks the nomination.”

Pergram concluded, “Keep in mind that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has been rather cryptic about the rest of the schedule this week.”

By contrast, CBS News' Caitlin Huey-Burns wrote that “Blanche can still get confirmed without her, but notable in election year.”

Meanwhile NBC News' Sahil Kapur posted on Bluesky that “Susan Collins is a NO on Todd Blanche for AG: ‘While I believe Mr. Blanche is a capable lawyer, the Department of Justice has become increasingly political.’ Unlikely to change the outcome; he can lose two Rs and get confirmed. Collins voted YES on Blanche as Deputy AG last year.”

The Oath Keepers are a far right group who played a key role in President Donald Trump's attempt to overthrow the government during the January 6th insurrection. Although some of the Oath Keepers have since then turned on the Trump-run state, from opposing snitches to the president's war in Iran, Trump remains loyal to them — and now a judge appointed by President Barack Obama is letting them off the hook.

As first reported by All Rise News, Trump's Justice Department moved to dismiss charges against the Oath Keepers for their violent actions on January 6th, and Judge Amit P. Mehta "reluctantly" went along with it.

Judge Mehta, who was appointed by Obama, expressed his dismay in his ruling.

"After securing vacatur of the convictions of eight Defendants in this case—all members of a group known as the Oath Keepers—the United States now moves pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 48(a) to dismiss the indictment," Mehta wrote. "Reluctantly, the court grants the motion."

He proceeded to point out that the guilt of the accused seems beyond reasonable doubt. At the same time, he felt he did not have the authority to force the Justice Department to proceed with a prosecution it wished to dismiss, regardless of their seemingly partisan reasons for doing so.

"This is the last of the prosecutions seeking to hold accountable those responsible for the events of January 6. That book is now closed," Mehta wrote. "Today’s epilogue diminishes the gravity of that day, denigrates the work of the prosecutors and law enforcement officers who secured these convictions, and excuses criminal acts that caused a centuries-long pillar of our democracy—the peaceful transfer of presidential power—to buckle."

He concluded, "The court cannot write a different ending."

The Oath Keepers are a far-right, anti-government militia founded in 2009 by Stewart Rhodes, a former U.S. Army paratrooper and disbarred attorney. The group primarily recruits current and former military personnel, law enforcement officers, and first responders, capitalizing on their specialized training. Members pledge to fulfill the organization's core mission: disobeying orders they deem unconstitutional, a philosophy that frequently manifested in heavily armed deployments at volatile civil standoffs, including the 2014 Bundy Ranch dispute.

The group reached national prominence following its heavily coordinated role in the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. Moving in military-style "stack" formations, members breached the building in a deliberate attempt to halt the certification of the 2020 presidential election. The subsequent federal investigation culminated in late 2022 and 2023 with the high-profile convictions of Rhodes and several top deputies for seditious conspiracy—a rare, Civil War-era charge. Rhodes was ultimately sentenced to 18 years in federal prison. However, the political landscape shifted dramatically when the executive branch returned to Donald Trump, who used his presidential authority to orchestrate a sweeping reversal of January 6 prosecutions through pardons, commutations, and directed Department of Justice dismissals.

Maggie Haberman, a journalist for The New York Times whose book “Regime Change” offered a detailed insider account of President Donald Trump’s administration, has previously profiled Trump’s hostility to expertise and obsession with remaking Washington D.C. in his image. Now, during an interview on The Media Confidential podcast, she explained how Trump has created a press environment in which many of the journalists who interrogate him are sycophants.

“It used to be that when it was groups of reporters covering the president, they would be able to have each other’s back,” Haberman said during the appearance. ”If somebody asked a tough question, you would know that the person next to you is going to follow it up or ask a version of it.”

Haberman added, “Now it’s you ask a tough question, a rigorous question, and the president filibusters for four minutes and then the next question is, ‘Sir, how are you so handsome?’ from one of these influencers, or ‘Sir, is it hard that the media is so unfair to you?’”

She concluded that this was “very much by this White House’s design.” As a result of their decision to stock their press pool with sympathetic far right journalists, they have created a “massive challenge” for everyone who could be considered a real journalist — that is, willing to ask tough questions of powerful people.

“It’s to everybody’s detriment, because many people rely on us for this coverage and he’s doing very real sit-down interviews and press conferences,” Haberman argued.

Haberman’s reporting here is similar to when she pointed out that Trump’s tendency to take advice from whoever is around him has caused him to become very erratic from a policymaking standpoint. He prefers people who praise him, and can then be manipulated by them — but this depends on proximity to the president, who rarely leaves the seeming sanctuary of the White House and the reporters who frequently go there.

"[Secretary of State] Rubio did tell people that he felt the need to be around Trump because, as you say, this is a very tiny group of people making decisions and you could be at the top level of a major Cabinet agency and have no idea what is happening if you are not in the room with him," Haberman said. "So, that is how Rubio has functioned. I don't know whether Trump will sour on him."

President Donald Trump’s determination to blame the botched Reflecting Pool renovation on anyone but himself has fallen apart, with his US Attorney Jeanine Pirro dropping cases earlier this week against the wrongfully accused, including former Olympic canoeist David Hearn.

Now a new report reveals that Trump’s “fury” over Pirro’s dismissals of the cases reveals that his obsession with weaponizing the Justice Department against foes.

“Jeanine Pirro has pushed a slew of flimsy, short-lived, Trump-endorsed prosecutions — but Trump's fury over her failure to prosecute Reflecting Pool vandalism is a sign of his second-term obsession and desire to use [Department of Justice] to fulfill it,” Politico reporter Kyle Cheney posted on X on Tuesday.

In his Politico report, Cheney and fellow Politico journalist Josh Gerstein broke down the fallout of Pirro’s failure to blame others for the Reflecting Pool renovation blunders.

“Jeanine Pirro’s focus on murders and other major crimes in Washington has helped President Donald Trump deliver on his pledge to go after violent offenders in the nation’s capital — work he often touts publicly,” Cheney and Gerstein wrote. “But her moves to advance Trump’s personal and political grievances have flopped — drawing Trump’s public frustration and potentially putting her job at risk.”

They also pointed out that “Pirro’s decision to concede in court that vandals didn’t cause high-profile damage to the Reflecting Pool — and Trump’s fury over that decision — is just the latest in a string of cases in which Pirro, the U.S. attorney for D.C., has given up on a long-shot prosecution demanded by Trump.”

Even though “Pirro enthusiastically supported Trump’s dubious claims that vandals were responsible for widespread damage to a liner in the Reflecting Pool,” she eventually determined the cases were unwinnable because of “extensive evidence of pre-existing damage to the pool’s coating.” Trump responded to her decision in a Monday press conference by saying Pirro “choked” and he was “really disappointed” in the former Fox News host and judge.

“Trump’s response to Pirro’s decision to drop the case — after prosecutors revealed they didn’t have the goods on the man they hit with a felony charge — was palpably more intense than his reaction after other failed prosecutions,” Gerstein and Cheney wrote.

They continued, “Because U.S. attorneys have some autonomy about when to bring cases and how to handle them, it’s difficult to know how much involvement other DOJ officials — such as acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — had in the Reflecting Pool cases or other politically sensitive inquiries Pirro has overseen.”

President Donald Trump’s massive government cuts have already aroused controversy, from a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee allegedly planning on selling sensitive Social Security data to a private company, to impacting how small towns could celebrate America's 250th anniversary.

Now a new report reveals that Trump’s cuts have led to thousands upon thousands of layoffs — more than 377,000 federal employees in total — that impact his own voters.

For 10 states “most of which voted for Trump in 2024 and half with sizable rural populations, the federal workforce was slashed by 25 percent or more,” reported NBC News' Ashley Mowreader on Tuesday.

Mowreader added, “Across all departments, close to half of federal job cuts from June 2025 to January 2026 impacted more staff in states with a larger-than-average share of rural residents.”

Pointing to how the world’s richest man, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, took charge of DOGE and began cutting government programs, Mowreader reported that “the Small Business Administration’s head count from 2024 to 2026 declined by 2,500, and USAID shed all but 200 of its nearly 3,300 employees, according to employment data from the OPM. The OPM’s figures show total change in employment and do not specify layoffs and hirings, while the GAO’s report does.”

While the greatest share of laid off employees came from Hawaii, a blue state, a lot of red states were heavily impacted including Alabama and Utah.

“Reductions elsewhere, including the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Interior and Treasury departments, also added up,” Mowreader wrote. “Utah, for example, saw a net loss of 18 [percent] of Treasury staff from 2024 to this year, accounting for about 1,500 personnel, many of whom worked for the Internal Revenue Service.”

For a large percentage of the people laid off, it has been very difficult for them to find new work.

“Many federal workers have struggled to find new work after being laid off, in part due to a difficult job market, but also because of the often unique set of skills and work that their roles required,” Rowreader said.

The issue began when Trump signed an executive order in February 2025 that allowed DOGE to restructure the entire federal workforce.

“By eliminating waste, bloat, and insularity, my administration will empower American families, workers, taxpayers, and our system of government itself,” Trump declared in the relevant executive order.

Speaking with AlterNet last month, a USAID employee laid off by DOGE pointed out that millions of people are dying because that program provided free medicine to the world’s poorest communities. DOGE has since refused to provide an analysis of the impact of their cuts.