Nick Hilden

New Arlington sign change signals Trump's support for Confederate 'pride'

The Trump administration has removed a sign criticizing slavery at Arlington National Cemetery. The change was reported on Monday by the Washington Post, which explained that the sign had stood in place of a memorial to the Confederacy that was relocated in 2023. Experts say this is part of President Donald Trump’s effort to “sanitize” the history of slavery.

According to the Post, “The Confederate Memorial, a 32-foot bronze statue commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and unveiled in 1914, was removed from the military cemetery in 2023. Its removal followed a congressional mandate to rid U.S. military property of names and symbols honoring the Confederacy and its leaders. The decision by the bipartisan Naming Commission to remove the statue was based on criticism and backlash over the memorial’s depictions, which included an enslaved woman carrying an infant child of a white officer and an enslaved man following his owner to war.”

“A Defense Department website and a marker at the memorial’s former site included contextual language describing the sculpture as portraying a ‘nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery,’” the Post elaborates. “The website also described the two Black figures as enslaved people, including an enslaved woman depicted as a ‘Mammy,’ and it remarked on how the portrayal of the ‘faithful slave’ helped to shape American pop culture. Now, that language has been removed from the website, and the marker in the cemetery has been replaced by a new sign that omits wording critical of slavery and the Confederacy.”

The website also once featured additional context about the sculpture’s symbolism, including a Latin phrase inscribed on it. According to the now-changed website, “An inscription … construes the South’s secession as a noble ‘Lost Cause.’ This narrative of the Lost Cause, which romanticized the pre-Civil War South and denied the horrors of slavery, fueled white backlash against Reconstruction and the rights that the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments (1865-1870) had granted to African Americans.” That language and other text were removed in recent weeks.

The sign change was first brought to media attention on Sunday by Stephen West, a Catholic University historian. As West told the Post, “The language that used to be on the sign and website described the Memorial correctly. Ezekiel’s sculpture did sanitize slavery, and it did mythologize the Confederacy. And so as a historian, I’m deeply disturbed by the removal of that language and by plans to restore the statue — especially because they’re of a piece with the censoring and slanting of history at other federal sites.”

Trump has not been subtle about his desire to celebrate the Confederacy, telling Fox News in 2020, for example, “When people proudly have their Confederate flags, they’re not talking about racism. They love their flag. It represents the South; they like the South.” He has frequently criticized efforts to remove Confederate memorials.

According to the Post, “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last year that the statue would be reinstalled at Arlington National Cemetery. Last year, then-Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) had said that the statue would return next year.” Ty Seidule, a retired U.S. Army brigadier general who served as vice chair on the commission, told the Post that he finds the idea disturbing, calling it “the cruelest monument that I have ever seen,” explaining that he and his colleagues agreed that it was “the most egregious example of racism that they had seen on any public land in America. It is a pro-slavery, anti-United States monument.”

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Trump’s next move marches Republicans toward 'political suicide'

This week, the Republican Party will hold a rare midterm convention, a practice that political insiders have – based on previous experience – deemed “crazy” due to the chaos and expense it brings to an election season. But at President Donald Trump’s urging, the GOP is doing it anyway, and experts warn that it could be pushing the party toward “political suicide.”

This is according to new reporting by the Guardian, which on Monday explained that while the Republicans’ Dallas convention has been billed as a “primetime showcase” to boost morale, nationalize congressional elections, and galvanize Republican voters, “success is far from guaranteed. The made-for-TV spectacle clashes directly with the two opening games of the American football season. A Politico website survey of more than 70 Republican candidates and members found 45 who either do not plan to go to Dallas or are still thinking about it. Some cited prior commitments while others balked at the $25,000 price of attending.” What’s more, while Trump has made it clear that the show is all about him, Newsweek reports that may be a losing strategy.

“This is essentially a Trump rally that they’re calling a midterm convention,” said Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. “They’re trying to get enthusiasm among their base because that’s what they need for November. Basically, this is a Trump show.” According to the Guardian, however, "It appears the plan could backfire. Trump’s approval rating is at 33 percent, the lowest point of his political career, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll last week. Democrats seem more fired up about the midterms with 46 percent describing themselves as ‘very enthusiastic’ about voting in November, compared with 31 percent of Republicans.”

Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, argues that building a midterm convention around a failing president is tantamount to “political suicide,” saying, “It is an incredibly risky strategy for any Republican at this point to hitch his wagon to Donald Trump. On every issue that Trump was once strong on he is underwater, from the economy to immigration.” Setmayer added, “The idea that he’s going to excite people is flawed at this point, given the polling numbers in Donald Trump’s own constituency. They’re not inspired and this vanity convention is not going to change that with 60 days to go to the election. If anything, it’s going to remind people of how dissatisfied they are under Donald Trump’s second term.”

According to the Guardian, “There are further signs that the president could be more of a curse than a blessing. Some candidates are quietly scrubbing his likeness from their websites in a tactical retreat. In Texas, candidate Carlos De La Cruz replaced ‘Trump Conservative’ with ‘Proven Conservative’ on his homepage, erasing a line about being ‘ready to be President Trump’s wingman in Congress’ for a platitude about ‘servant leaders.’ In Kentucky, Ralph Alvarado pivoted to ‘Independent Leadership.’ In Nevada, Martin O’Donnell, a music composer best known for his work on the Halo video game series, no longer features his Trump endorsement photo on his website. In South Texas, Eric Flores replaced ‘Support for President Trump’s Agenda’ with ‘Lower the Cost of Living.’ In Alaska, Nick Begich edited his homepage to a simple: ‘We have delivered for Alaska.’” Trump has also received Republican pushback against his order renaming Lake Ontario and his war on Iran.

Trump has shrugged this all off. Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, told the Guardian, “He doesn’t care about any of these other candidates. He only cares about two things when it comes to the midterms: one, that he won’t be investigated and two, that he can get his appointments through the Senate. He demands loyalty for everyone else and gives loyalty to no one.” Lichtman added, “People aren’t buying what they have to say, which is things are getting better, it’s the golden age, prices are coming down, we’re winning the Iranian war, our immigration policy is great. They’re not gonna buy it just because it’s a convention. Plus, as we know, Trump always goes off script and that’s never helpful to his party.”

According to conservative commentator Charlie Sykes, the midterms will largely be determined by whether Trump’s historic unpopularity outweighs Republican accusations that Democrats are “communists,” which is sure to be a major theme at the convention. But as Sykes asks, “The big question is, who is going to be paying any attention to this? Who is going to be watching this other than the hardcore base, the already convinced? I have a very hard time imagining independent voters tuning in to see the Trumpist pageantry.” According to Skyes, “It is a Trump-a-palooza and once again Donald Trump insists on being – what was the old phrase about Teddy Roosevelt? – the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral.”

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'The very definition of waste': the Trump obsession burning money and time

Over the course of his second term, President Donald Trump has repeatedly renamed geographical features and landmarks after the United States and himself. Most recently, this included an order that Lake Ontario be changed to “Lake America” – a move that came with no small amount of diplomatic and political cost. But according to new reporting by Newsweek, the expenses tied to swapping those seven letters could mount in a more practical sense, burning great deals of time and money. As one expert put it, it is “the very definition of waste.”

While the Trump administration is moving forward with the name change, as Newsweek explains, “Past accounting on the president’s sweeping federal rebrand indicates that this could prove a costly effort for the American taxpayers to bear.” There are obvious expenses associated with the change, like updating naming on signage and mapping software, but these costs are expected to grow. According to Newsweek, “Replacing geographic nomenclature across all civilian agencies such as the U.S. Geological Survey, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) would place a major administrative cost on the departments, which are made to comply with the order.”

Newsweek spoke with Linda Bilmes, a senior lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and former chief financial officer for the Department of Commerce, who noted that such changes are "not as straightforward as one might imagine." She experienced it firsthand during her time on the National Park Service Advisory Board, and explained that these decisions are accompanied by "numerous administrative costs." Beyond the man-hours involved in updating the GNIS and other websites, she noted the need to change printed materials like maps and brochures, as well as the "physical labor hours involved in changing all the road signage, park signage, plaques, trail maps, trail markers, etc."

According to Robert Corradino, mayor of Oswego, New York, "Even a conservative estimate suggests that updating signage, maps, tourism materials, and other public references would cost several thousand dollars." For a small city of only 17,000, he said, such an expense "represents a significant and unnecessary financial burden at a time when we are focused on maintaining essential services and keeping taxes stable." Although Corradino is a Republican, he released a statement last week declaring that the city’s government does not support Trump’s executive order and sees no reason to alter the lake’s name.

Philip G. Joyce, a professor of public policy at Maryland University and former Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analyst, said that reaching a precise estimate for this aggregate expense "would be difficult or impossible," though he noted that there will likely be "a ripple effect to these things which could create costs for any organization that must adapt to the change." According to Newsweek, “A useful comparison comes from the CBO concerning the ‘Gulf of America’ change, adopted on the first day of Trump’s second term. In analysis of a bill aimed at codifying the January 20 executive order, the nonpartisan agency said that it would cost up to $500,000 over five years to update all necessary federal documents and maps. During debates in May, however, Democrats on the House Rules Committee noted that there would also be major associated outlays for the nation’s schools and municipal services.” Others have noted that the change could “disrupt decades of environmental data sets and scientific collaboration, while costing agencies and researchers millions of dollars.”

With all this in mind, said Joyce, "The important question, it seems to me, is whether there is any substantive benefit to a given name change.” He told Newsweek that any rebrand which fails to lower costs, improve government performance or offer citizens any "substantive benefit" would "represent the very definition of waste."

Since Trump reentered office, writes Newsweek, “the executive branch began renaming a number of departments and geographical landmarks as part of its wider strategy to ‘honor American greatness.’ The change from Gulf of Mexico to ‘Gulf of America’ fell within this project, as did switching Department of Defense to ‘Department of War.’ The latter, according to CBO estimates, could end up costing between $10 million for a ‘modest implementation’ and $125 million if enacted ‘broadly and rapidly throughout the department.’ Were Congress to make the change statutory through official legislation, CBO said this ‘could cost hundreds of millions of dollars’ depending on how it was carried out.”

Polling shows that Americans do not like Trump’s renaming spree, with only 14 percent supporting his Lake Ontario switch. Over the weekend, however, the president posted that "Many people suggested changing the name of New Mexico, one of the great vote cheating states of all time, to NEW AMERICA. So much more prestigious and beautiful for the people of that potentially incredible State. Wow, I Love It!!!"

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The scale of Trump’s 'damage' to US revealed: DC insider

Over the course of his second term, President Donald Trump has inflicted so much wide-ranging “damage” on the United States that it may be irreversible long into the future. This is according to former congressional senior advisor K. Ward Cummings, who took to Newsweek on Monday to lay bare the scale of Trump’s harm.

“Some experts believe that all the harm Trump has done to the country could be locked in, perhaps, for decades to come,” warns Cummings. “In fact, they think Democrats will need to win control of both houses of Congress during the midterms, and repeat the victory in 2028, while also winning the White House to reverse the damage.” According to Cummings, “This is because much of the harm is intentionally designed to be difficult to reverse. Consider the White House Ballroom. Despite court challenges, construction continues apace. Soon it’ll be complete, and there’ll be little anyone can do about it. We’re also powerless to reverse the billions in Crypto Trump and his family have already collected or the controversial pardons Trump has issued. Even his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein may never be fully known.”

Cummings argues that Trump’s reshaping of government functions will be difficult to correct, writing, “Trump cut hundreds of thousands of employees from the federal workforce, knowing Americans would never tolerate the huge expense of reinstating them. He’s neutered the government’s ability to police his actions, and to enforce regulations. To ensure that this damage endures, he’s actively replacing what he calls a liberal ‘deep state’ in the U.S. government with a very real one, composed of his acolytes.”

Trump’s goal, according to Cummings, has been to take actions that will be too financially and politically costly to overturn. The ballroom, for example, may be an endeavor that proves impossible to reverse. “But others don’t have to be,” asserts Cummings. “Especially if Americans come together to do something about it. If Democrats win the House in November as projected, they’ll undoubtedly hold hearings and conduct investigations, but that may not be enough to undo the damage Trump has already done. Even a narrow victory in the Senate may not be enough.”

The only hope of stopping Trump from inflicting further damage, says Cummings, is a Democratic victory in both chambers of Congress by a significant margin, which will require three things. First, a major turnout by Black voters. Second, ‘disgruntled’ Latino and independent voters who cast for Trump in 2024 need to be brought back into the Democratic fold. And finally, Cummings argues that “Democrat candidates need a message that is greater than mere opposition to Trump.”

After the grim politics of the past decade, writes Cummings, voters “want more than safety, or affordability, or justice — those are things they should expect from their leaders anyway. This time, they want something more: They want the America they believe they deserve. They want a country where if they work hard, and follow the rules, they will have an honest shot at the kind of life their parents and grandparents were able to build. They want to look forward to the future, and know that better days lie ahead. In a word, Americans want to feel hopeful.”

“Of all the crimes Donald Trump has committed while in office — more than the incompetence, the cruelty, the selfishness, or the greed — his worst crime may be robbing Americans of hope,” Cummings concludes. “But November is coming. We can do something about that.”

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Russian papers say Trump is 'doomed' and nearly defeated: Moscow report

On Monday, a leading Moscow correspondent provided a rundown of Russian media reports on meetings between President Donald Trump’s envoys and Vladimir Putin, and the news was not optimistic. According to the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg, the efforts of envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are already “doomed,” in part because of Trump’s “defeat” in Iran.

Rosenberg’s report follows weekend meetings in both Moscow and Kyiv, where Trump’s envoys were attempting to further negotiations to end the war that has raged since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. But based on news out of Russia, peace seems no closer. “Reading these articles, several things become clear,” explains Rosenberg. “Number one, there was no diplomatic breakthrough. Number two, there is no sign of compromise from Vladimir Putin on Ukraine. He appears to be sticking to his maximalist demands. And number three, Moscow seems to think that Donald Trump needs a quick peace deal on Ukraine more than Russia does.”

One Russian reporter characterized Kushner and Witkoff’s visit as an act of “diplomacy of the doomed.” According to Rosenberg, the paper claimed that “in Moscow, Witkoff and Kushner had a very nice, friendly and mutually sympathetic conversation with Putin. But most likely, all this cuteness has no real chance of transforming into any quick, significant progress in negotiations on the Ukraine conflict. Trump's sudden surge of interest in the military confrontation he'd largely forgotten, and which he once promised to end in a day, is logical and understandable. The US president is facing extremely important midterm elections to Congress. Therefore, the paper believes, the US president would want to demonstrate some impressive achievements.” The paper asserts that Trump wanted to make such a demonstration in Iran, but “the White House chief's Iranian adventure is one-third quagmire, one-third defeat, and the rest, an extremely unconvincing half-victory.” This prompted Trump to turn back to Ukraine.

But, argues the paper, “Putin has no reason to give Trump a gift for the midterm elections. Of course, the Kremlin chief will not offend Trump. Good relations with the head of the current U.S. administration are an important foreign policy Trump card for Russia's leader, which he intends to nourish and cherish in every possible way. But there is a huge distance between not offending Trump and appeasing him, and all the efforts of Witkoff and Kushner fall into this notorious gap, like into the hole of a donut.” According to the paper, “Witkoff and Kushner's latest mission was doomed to underachievement from the outset.”

Other Russian papers agree. As one noted, “Putin began his meeting with the US envoys by saying, today we will discuss all the components of the conflict and all its aspects, and for our part, we are also ready to inform you about our view of the situation. That's how Putin outlined the point of the meeting. Not finding a solution, no, but informing and discussing. As if he wanted to stress, the Kremlin has no illusions about quick results.” Another paper claimed that Russia’s victory is “increasingly realistic,” which will force Kyiv to accept Russian conditions via U.S. mediation. And according to Rosenberg, “There you have Russia's position in a sentence. It hasn't changed. Vladimir Putin thinks he's winning and won't be convinced otherwise. And he's in no mood for compromise, despite Russia's enormous losses on the battlefield and the economic pain being caused to Russia by long-range Ukrainian drone strikes.”

“Why is it that Trump's peace efforts go round in circles, and each round ends in disillusionment?” asked a Russian op-ed. “For both Russia and Ukraine, too much depends on the result of the confrontation for it to be resolved through one of Trump's favorite deals.”

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Air traffic controllers at 'breaking point' but fear Trump's wrath

According to hundreds of air traffic controllers across the nation, the Trump Administration's prioritization of cutting costs has come at the expense of public safety. What's more, they're afraid to raise their concerns out of fear of retribution from the government. This is according to a new bombshell report published by the Washington Examiner on Friday, which revealed "low morale" among air traffic controllers and "heightened risk" for travelers flying during the busy Labor Day weekend.

"Air traffic controllers are accusing the Department of Transportation and Federal Aviation Administration of prioritizing efficiency and cost-cutting over public safety, a shift that workers warn has driven morale to an all-time low and placed the flying public at heightened risk," wrote the Examiner. The paper spoke with over 400 air traffic controllers who "warned that the nation’s aviation system has reached a breaking point."

According to the Examiner, "These mounting problems have placed immense pressure on an exhausted, underpaid, and mentally stressed workforce expected to perform flawlessly every time they sit at the controls. The crisis has led to tragic and unprecedented outcomes: insiders note that suicides among controllers are eight times the national average, while tenured employees are increasingly walking away from the agency years before reaching mandatory retirement age." As one controller explained, “We work hard every day and take a tremendous amount of pride in what we do. Most of us are veterans. We have been completely demoralized for the past five years while trying to manage the busiest airspace in the world with more airplanes than any other time in aviation.”

Controllers assert that FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford's approach to air safety is "entirely backward, treating a federal safety agency like a corporate balance sheet by trying to squeeze out every ounce of productivity from controllers. Critics say he is running the FAA like a capitalist businessman, prioritizing cost-effectiveness as he did at his former company, regional Republic Airways, while treating public safety as a secondary concern. One controller from the New York Center who retired in August said he chose to leave after more than two decades due to the deteriorating culture. 'With the administration that’s in now, the morale in that building is at an all-time low,' he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The retired controller stated that management at his facility focused heavily on keeping controllers on shift longer, a move he says actively endangers the public."

"What upset the workforce most," writes the Examiner, "was Bedford’s admission that the FAA is withholding a 2.8 percent retroactive raise, and wrongly claiming it was a union issue and not under the FAA’s control." While Congress approved and funded the compensation package months ago, Bedford asserts that it is on hold until the agency can "unlock more productivity" from controllers by having them work five hours at the controls each shift instead of the current four. As one controller put it, "Controllers are working harder than ever, moving more traffic than ever, and are responsible for a large portion of the country’s GDP but Bedford and [Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy] are literally trying to make [the] job more difficult instead of helping us."

What's more, the government is well aware that emphasizing productivity does not result in safety. According to the Examiner, "The National Transportation Safety Board told Congress in February that 'research in a simulated air traffic control room showed that extended time on task (over 90 minutes) increased detection latency for complex events such as two aircraft at the same altitude on the same flight path.' This means every additional minute a controller is forced to work beyond that window drastically increases the likelihood of a catastrophic miscall, making sheer productivity a potentially dangerous metric for success. Additionally, air travel has surged since 1980. More than 906 million people boarded flights in the United States last year compared to 295 million in 1980, yet thousands fewer certified controllers work today than 46 years ago — about 11,000 now compared to 16,300 then."

Every controller that spoke with the paper reported "a long-term trend of getting just four days off per month. Shifts regularly span 10 hours. Instead of working a standard four-day, 40-hour week, controllers are assigned two mandatory overtime shifts per week, forcing them into six-day workweeks that often devastate family and personal life, as well as complicate mental health." They say they're "buckling" under the strain, and while they are unionized, several current and retired controllers told the Examiner their union has so far been "treading lightly with the Trump administration out of concern the government could legally decertify the union, as the Reagan administration did."

Warnings about air traffic safety come as the nation heads into Labor Day weekend, one of the busiest travel days of the year. An expected 3 million people are expected to take to the skies.

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'Smells like chaos': Republicans brace for a bloodbath as MAGA implodes

On Thursday, new reporting by the Wall Street Journal revealed that many congressional Republicans are feeling a bad case of “Trump fatigue” as “resentment and worries” about President Donald Trump’s leadership grow. According to the Journal, “While many GOP lawmakers are embracing the president, others have started to sound the alarm publicly and privately that Trump’s low approval ratings could drag the party down in November. They say resentment is building as Trump focuses more on legacy construction projects and fights with allies than on helping Republicans keep control of Congress.”

“Some of the things he’s done, it smells like chaos, it smells destructive,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R–NE), who is retiring. He singled out Trump’s recent executive order renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America,” calling it a “silly” own goal by the president, declaring, “Most people think it’s dumb.” Bacon has pushed Republicans facing tight races to distance themselves from Trump on unpopular issues like tariffs. Faced with the potential for Trump’s wrath, Bacon said he understands why “it’s hard to say, ‘I disagree and I’m going to vote that way,’” but argued, “You’ve got to do it.”

He’s not the only Republican expressing such sentiments. As the Journal explained, “Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-OK) made headlines last week when she was recorded speaking to a group of student Republicans at Oklahoma State University, warning that Republican voters could stay home or even vote for Democrats. According to the Bulwark, which obtained the recording, Bice quoted a business executive who told her that he was a longtime Republican but now has ‘Trump fatigue.’”

And according to retiring Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA.), who voted to impeach Trump in 2021, the president “certainly has a strong following, but times are tough.” He agreed that voter exhaustion with Trump is a “legitimate concern” for the GOP. “We need people to turn out,” Newhouse said. “I can see Republicans not being as motivated as Democrats this year.”

Even some who say they’ll stand by Trump recognize the problem and are willing to admit they’re not always happy with him. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R–NJ) told the Journal, “I’m not that shallow. If you’re my friend and you get in a little bit of trouble, I’m not going to run away from you. I think you can at the same time say, ‘Yes, he’s done a lot of good and there’s a lot of things I’m committed to, but there are some things I absolutely disagree with.’”

Trump loyalists like House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), however, “pointed to Trump as the main reason he remains optimistic about Republicans’ midterm chances, and he has touted legislative victories including last year’s tax law and funding for securing the border.” According to Johnson, “We’ve got a strong hands-on president, and his record speaks for itself.”

Johnson is right in some regards. Trump has put himself at the center of GOP midterm messaging, saying at a recent rally, “‘Pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot.” And for a long time, Republican candidates who ran under Trump’s endorsement did tend to win. That hasn’t been the case lately, however, as over the past few months, Republicans running under the MAGA banner have been defeated repeatedly. Now Trump holds a historically low approval rating, and the GOP is forecasted to take major losses in the midterms.

For Republicans, wrote political analyst Charlie Cook, the founder of Cook Political Report, “the three most plausible outcomes are that it will be bad, really bad, or truly horrible.”

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'Distracted' Trump talks life after he's 'gone' as mail-in voting begins

On Friday, the midterms officially kicked off as North Carolina mailed out its ballots, and in the face of bad Republican polling numbers and historically low approval ratings, President Donald Trump is “distracted” with his vanity project “obsession” and musing about life after he’s “gone.” This is according to CNN Senior Political Reporter Aaron Blake, who writes that Trump has become the Nero of his time, “fiddling with his ballroom plans while the Republican Party’s midterm hopes burn.”

“What’s clear is that Trump and his administration aren’t going to course correct any time soon,” says Blake. “The last 24 hours have been a case in point. And the last couple weeks have been inauspicious for anyone who hoped Trump might suddenly focus on the political task at hand.” The first ballots are now in the mail, and “despite a bevy of polling showing Americans want Trump to focus on affordability and the economy, he appears preoccupied with anything but.”

Blake notes that on Thursday alone, there were several clear examples, writing, “We learned the Trump administration has hired a new pool contractor to clean up the mess he made of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, announced the start of construction on Trump’s 250-foot ‘triumphal arch’ and launched a series of arcade-style video games, including one that allows users to arrest undocumented immigrants. The White House is also reportedly launching a reality show-like competition for entrepreneurs, just weeks after Trump’s ‘Patriot Games’ flopped and after an actual reality show from the Department of Transportation was released… By Friday morning, two big stories — from the New Yorker and New York Magazine — detailed what can only be called Trump’s obsession with his ballroom and other construction and beautification projects in Washington, DC.”

For the New York Magazine piece, Trump even found time to give an interview and tour of the construction. According to Blake, “In perhaps the most eyebrow-raising scene, Trump actually agrees with Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff’s contention that he’s building monuments to himself because he doesn’t think others can be counted on to do it. ‘That’s true,’ Trump said. ‘Nobody will do it once I’m gone. When I leave here, nobody will.’ The fact that Trump would say this out loud is stunning. Ossoff meant this as a dig.”

The article also notes that much of Trump’s daily schedule is committed to construction planning, and “how Trump in his public appearances often seems distracted by his construction projects as he’s attending to much more serious business.” As Blake explains, “And that’s really the problem with all of this, at least if you’re a congressional Republican staring at a concerning midterm election. It’s not just that Trump is distracted; it’s that he’s focused on things that polls show Americans view as frivolous and don’t want — at the expense of things they really want him to do (i.e. lowering prices and ending the war with Iran).”

And Americans have noticed the distraction. According to Blake, “CBS News polling has recently shown 78 percent of Americans said he’s not focused enough on lowering prices, and July CNN polling shows around the same percentage (73 percent) said he hasn’t paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems.” What’s more, “The CNN poll in July contained another telling finding. Fully 66 percent of Americans said Trump did not put the good of the country above his own personal gain. That included 76 percent of independents and 30 percent of Republicans. And more than a month later, with the 2026 general election truly kicking off, it’s as if he’s bent on proving those people right.”

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'Proof' Trump 'secretly' wants Republicans to lose the midterms

With the midterms just around the corner and President Donald Trump seemingly doing everything he can to hurt the GOP’s chances, a growing number of political commentators warn that his behavior may be “proof” that “he secretly wants Republicans to lose.” As the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland writes, “Such is the US president’s narcissism that he would see a Democratic victory as proof that he’s indispensable – meanwhile, his every decision spells calamity for voters.”

The idea that Trump on some level wants to tank the GOP, writes Freedland, is “not as mad a theory as it sounds. Indeed, there are at least two reasons why Trump might either be unbothered by Republican defeat in November or even covertly desire it.” The president’s actions, argues Freedland, are “hard to explain as anything other than calculated self-sabotage.”

Trump’s “reckless, failed war of choice against Iran” has defined his second term. Despite his claims otherwise, fighting has continued to drag on as the consequences spin out with no end in sight. According to Freedland, “The impact on US voters is severe, felt most directly through rising petrol prices and grocery bills.” But he also notes that the skyrocketing cost of the national debt – which has climbed steadily since the day the war began and hit a new high this week – “translates into an expected jump in interest rates. It means that many of those casting ballots are likely to be doing so just as they start paying more on their credit card bills and mortgages. Given that Trump was elected in November 2024 on a promise to bring down inflation, it’s hard to think of a worse environment for a governing party about to face the voters’ verdict. And that’s before you consider the disenchantment of the MAGA faithful, who thought the whole point of Trump was an end to forever wars in the Middle East.”

Now he’s launched another trade war with Canada. Michigan, Ohio, Maine, Iowa, and Texas all happen to have key Senate races this year, and as Freedland notes, now “Republican candidates in those states now have to explain why a crucial and previously friendly export market – Canada takes nearly a third of Iowa’s exports, for example – has suddenly turned icy. What’s odd is that Trump’s trade wars are also wars of choice, and they are hurting especially badly what should be a reliable Republican constituency: farmers. Take Iowa: Democrats have not won a Senate seat in that farming state for nearly 20 years, yet now, thanks to Trump’s tariffs, they have a genuine shot.”

What’s more, Trump has now jumped on the data center bandwagon, which is wildly unpopular with voters across the political spectrum. But according to Trump, “The only reason that communities throughout the USA should not want data centres is if they want to end up being backwards and poor.” He not only took a much-despised position, but insulted voters at the same time. And as Freedland notes, there’s a lot more, like Trump’s unpopular vanity projects and endorsement of scandal-ridden candidates.

“Put it all together,” writes Freedland. “and these look like the actions of a man who has no fear of the blue wave that seems to be coming and who could not care less if it sweeps away the Republicans’ current majorities in Congress. That’s curious, given how useful it has been for Trump to have Capitol Hill serve as a rubber stamp that, combined with a largely pliant Supreme Court, has allowed him to rule with the scarcely fettered power of a would-be autocrat. What could explain the insouciance?”

On one hand, Trump may think that if the Democrats take Congress, they will be unable or unwilling to leverage investigations and impeachment to much effect. But according to Freedland, “That only goes so far. It explains why Trump does not fear Republican defeat in November, but not why he would actively seek it. For that, one has to look into the abyss that passes for the president’s soul. The bestselling new book Regime Change, by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, spells it out: ‘If Republicans were wiped out in the 2026 midterm elections, or in 2028, he could simply boast that they couldn’t win without him’ on the ballot paper. Such is Trump’s narcissism, he will take an epic Republican defeat in two months’ time not as a repudiation, but as a compliment. And, it seems, he is doing all he can to earn it.”

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Trump’s latest threat has MAGA saying he’s 'totally unhinged'

On Friday, President Donald Trump issued a threat against the United States’ top trading partners that has even MAGA loyalists declaring him “totally unhinged.” According to a rambling Truth Social post, Trump will “stop” trade with key partners if the Fed doesn’t give in to his demands for lower interest rates.

“Great jobs number just announced, breaking all estimates (except mine!) by double and triple — and you haven’t seen anything yet!” posted trump, referring to Friday’s positive jobs report. “Employers added 162,000 job in August. Lower the interest rates because the U.S.A. Is a much stronger credit than it was just a short time ago! A strong country means a lower interest rate — it’s a better credit... very simple! We should have the lowest rate of any country in the world, like 'the old days.' without the United States agreeing to allow them their big surpluses, and we could stop that immediately, they would no longer be considered financially elite!”

It was here trump issued his threat: “Lower the rate or I’ll stop trading with countries with which we have a deficit, which the U.S. Supreme Xourt, in its ridiculous and very costly tariff decision, strongly acknowledged ‘the president’ has an absolute right to do. It’s better than tariffs! The fed board, with its great new leader, must get smart — be patriots for a change. High interest rates put the U.S.A. At a very unfair disadvantage, and I won’t allow that to happen!”

Trump is wrong in his assertion that low interest rates translate into better credit. In fact, one of the very reasons the U.S. has high rates at the moment is because the country is struggling with its debt burden. What’s more, the strong jobs report he’s touting could actually result in an increase in rates to quell inflation in the face of low unemployment. Then there’s Trump’s threat to cut off trade. Besides the fact that he simply doesn’t appear to understand what a trade deficit actually is in the first place, as even some of his supporters have noted, cutting off trade as he’s suggested would destroy the U.S. economy.

“Trump is now threatening to stop trade with every country we run a trade deficit with, unless the Fed cuts rates,” warned Geiger Capital, a pseudonym account for a popular conservative market analyst who voted for Trump in 2024. “Absolutely unhinged.”

“This truly is unhinged,” agreed an entrepreneur who frequently posts pro-MAGA content.

According to another self-proclaimed conservative reply, Trump is “going to push us into another great depression.”

And as one MAGA poster declared, “He needs to be removed from office. Lunatic is gonna sink us.”

“Bro...” Geiger Capital posted later, “just get out of the Middle East.”

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Top Republican defects to back Democrat in key battleground district

A former chair of the Republican National Committee and two-term GOP governor has endorsed a Democratic House candidate running for a battleground seat in Montana. According to MS NOW, “Marc Racicot, who won two terms as Montana’s governor in the 1990s before leading the RNC during George W. Bush’s first term, is set to endorse Sam Forstag’s bid for the state’s 1st Congressional District, currently held by a Republican.”

“He cares about what he’s doing. He’s very well prepared. He has the right priorities in terms of character and virtues and values and belief in the Constitution,” Racicot told MS NOW. “It’s not even a close call for me to stand in Sam’s corner.”

This is an important endorsement for the Democrats with the midterms just around the corner. The party is hoping to win the majority in the House, and to do so in purple-shaded red states like Montana requires the support of independents and Republicans who have been disappointed by President Donald Trump. Racicot – a critic of Trump – has backed a number of Democrats in recent years, including Joe Biden in 2020. As MS NOW explains, “The public embrace from Racicot could go toward helping the kind of crossover appeal Forstag likely needs to do what no Montana Democrat has been able to do since the 1990s: win a U.S. House seat in the state.”

The seat is currently held by a retiring Republican, and Forstag is running against Aaron Flint – a combat veteran and former conservative radio host who is running under Trump’s endorsement. According to MS NOW, “Forstag, who worked as a smokejumper after lobbying in Montana for the state’s American Civil Liberties Union wing, won a divided primary despite warnings from some critics that he was too liberal for the district. Since then, he’s built an unusual profile in a state where the national Democratic brand has proved corrosive. He is one of only a handful of congressional Democrats endorsed by both progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders and the centrist Blue Dog political outfit. Racicot’s support on top of that offers some Bush Republican-era nostalgia for voters as Forstag tries to cut into the state’s rightward drift.”

Polls currently indicate that the race is razor close. According to the latest survey, the two candidates are running dead even with 44 percent each. That's bad news for the Republican Party, which has been working to consolidate its hold on Montana, but is expected to take major losses in the midterms due to backlash from Trump's historic unpopularity.

“We’re in a hole that both parties have been digging for us,” Forstag said, urging support for a kind of Democrat “that could actually improve your life, and is actually going to prioritize doing so, because I know what it’s like on a day-to-day basis.”

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Trump gives cryptic answer about 'holing up' in ballroom bunker after 2028

On Friday, it was revealed that President Donald Trump offered a less-than-reassuring response when asked about a conspiracy theory involving his much-demanded White House ballroom. Some have suggested that once his term is up, he plans on locking himself away in the bunker being constructed beneath it. According to a reporter with the New York Intelligencer who toured the construction site with the president, Trump said little to alleviate such concerns.

“I asked Trump if he was building himself a bunker so he could hole up in the White House after the 2028 election,” wrote the Intelligencer’s D.C. correspondent Ben Terris. Trump’s reply was dodgy at best.

“I haven’t heard that one,” he said. “But I tell you what, it would be awfully tough to get you out. Nobody would be able to get you out.”

Speculation that Trump plans on “barricading” himself in the bunker has been raised for months. He announced the intention to build the ballroom last summer, began construction that fall, and controversy has plagued the project ever since. Initially, he said the ballroom was necessary for hosting state functions, arguing that it was something presidents had long desired. That rationale shifted, however, in an apparent effort to placate the public and the courts. Increasingly, Trump has referred to it in a military capacity, with the bunker playing a central role in that proposed use.

As Terris explains, “In recent months, in their successful effort to beat back attempts to slow down construction, Trump and his legal team have leaned into another justification for the project. It is, they say, a matter of national security. When the military first heard Trump talk about the ballroom, he says, top generals arranged a meeting. ‘They said, “Sir, we’d like to build things, it would be a dream, but there’s never been anything like this proposed,”’ Trump says. ‘“If we could build underground, we could go down five stories.”’ Now, whenever Trump talks about the ballroom, he always brings up the drone port that will be housed on the roof, the bulletproof windows and walls, and the underground military wing, which will replace the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, the bunker built beneath the East Wing during World War II. The new bunker will keep the president safe from nuclear blasts and contain a fully operational hospital.”

Trump’s reluctance to give up power and frequent taunts that he wants to run for a third term in 2028 have raised concerns that he intends to use the fortified bunker for nefarious purposes. As one commenter replied to the article, “He is telling you, he is never leaving. We are going to have to dig him out like a tick.”

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Exposed: Trump's 'secretive' scheme to pilfer medical research funds

On Thursday, Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee revealed that the Department of Defense is attempting to divert billions of dollars from the National Institutes of Health to supplement the Pentagon budget issues caused by President Donald Trump's war with Iran. This is according to a report in which ranking member Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) revealed the effort, which has been undertaken "without notifying Congress."

According to the report, "DoD has signed an interagency agreement that could give the Department access to billions of dollars that Congress provided to NIH for critical biomedical research. These funds were provided to support research to develop treatments or cures for infectious diseases such as influenza, malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, Ebola, and other dangerous pathogens." Trump-appointed officials at NIH disclosed the scheme only after being pressed for information by House Appropriations Committee Democrats.

“This secretive attempt to siphon research funds away from NIH is outrageous. The interagency agreement needs to be terminated immediately,” said DeLauro. “These funds were provided for lifesaving medical research, not as extra money for the Department of Defense. It is no secret that the Department of Defense is facing enormous financial pressure because of President Trump’s war of choice with Iran. But the Trump administration cannot make American patients, families, and scientists pay the price. Circumventing Congress to divert money intended to help Americans who are exposed to HIV, influenza, tuberculosis, and other deadly diseases — and directing those funds to the Department of Defense — is beyond the pale. DoD already has programs, funded by Congress, to research and develop medical countermeasures to chemical, biological, and nuclear threats, and does not need NIH funding to do so. The administration must provide Congress with a full accounting of how this interagency agreement was developed and exactly how much taxpayer money it is trying to transfer to DoD.”

As DeLauro suggested, it's been public knowledge that the Pentagon is running out of money for daily operations since reporting revealed the problem in July. The Defense budget has been strained by the war in Iran, which has resulted in the delay of base repairs, the reduction of training exercises, and other cuts. While Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has requested $67 billion in supplemental funds, Congress has yet to approve it, though it did just pass a stopgap bill that will fund essential security and defense programs through December 11. In the meantime, DeLauro's bombshell report suggests that the Pentagon is desperate to find money elsewhere.

According to Punchbowl News reporter Samantha Handler, "This is the kind of thing Approps Dems will surely be investigating/going after if Dems take the majority next Congress."

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Only one amendment can save US from Trump’s 'deformed psyche': conservative

Amid growing calls for President Donald Trump’s removal from office via either impeachment or the 25th Amendment, a prominent conservative has declared that only one amendment can save the U.S. from its “embarrassing and terrifying” commander-in-chief: the 22nd. This is according to Yuval Levin, director of constitutional studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who took to the National Review on Thursday to explain not only why the 22nd Amendment is the country’s only chance of getting rid of Trump “soon,” but that protections should be set in place to prevent “presidential excess” in the future.

As Levin points out, there has been a “growing chorus of voices…pointing to President Trump’s frankly unhinged tweets and saying this is what the 25th Amendment to the Constitution is for.” While Levin specifies that these calls are coming from the left, there have also been plenty of examples from the right. Former Trump allies like Alex Jones, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and more have questioned the president’s mental health and argued for the 25th since the early days of the war on Iran, suggesting that his threats that he would destroy an entire civilization disqualified him from office.

“They certainly aren’t wrong about the tweets,” Levin agrees. “Trump’s online rants are glimpses of a deeply deformed psyche, and the fact that its bearer is the president of the United States is obviously both embarrassing and terrifying. And yet, even though they’re right about the president’s character and behavior, the chorus of situational constitutionalists calling for Trump’s removal are nonetheless barking up the wrong tree now.”

As Levin explains, while the 25th Amendment provides a number of mechanisms for the president’s replacement, in the end, these are only available if the president is medically incapacitated or voted unfit for office by their cabinet. In the event of the latter, however, “keeping the vice president in power as acting president over the president’s objection would require two-thirds votes in both houses — or in other words, a higher threshold in Congress than impeachment and removal, which requires a simple majority in the House and two-thirds only in the Senate. So simply put, if there is not a sufficient majority in Congress to impeach and remove the president, then he also cannot be removed using the 25th Amendment. A president who is capable of objecting to his being sidelined by the 25th Amendment can return to power. And whatever might be said about President Trump’s assorted deficiencies, he is certainly more than capable of making such an objection.” And while impeachment is technically an option if it has the votes in Congress, “there isn’t a sufficient number now, and there almost certainly isn’t going to be.”

“So those yearning for a post-Trump era are left instead to resort to another constitutional amendment,” says Levin. “One passed with something much more like our situation in mind and steeped in a realism about the danger of executive power unmatched by any other element of the Constitution. The 22nd Amendment, ratified in the wake of Franklin Roosevelt’s shattering of the norm of two-term presidencies, restored that norm as a formal constitutional constraint. It expresses the recognition that sometimes presidents might persuade the voting public to do foolish things, and that it is vital that it be made easier to wait out such presidents and set a clear limit on their time in office.”

As Levin warns, “Trump has talked about ignoring the 22nd Amendment, and we should put nothing past him. But it does seem likely that the amendment will help rid us of him soon, and leave us once again thanking a prior generation for creating an institutional protection against our weaknesses.” Levin concludes with advice on action that should be taken once Trump is gone, writing, “As we thank those prior generations, we should also follow their example. Without expecting anyone to openly disclaim or even privately regret their part in empowering Donald Trump, we should look for potentially bipartisan ways to apply some of the lessons we are learning now, and to build some protections against presidential excess in the future tense that we have lacked in the present tense.”

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'Afraid' sailors say Trump’s leadership set them up for 'worst' experience

Now that their record-long 286 days at sea are over, sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln are speaking out about what they say is “the worst deployment that they have ever experienced.” What’s more, they told MS NOW Pentagon Correspondent Priya Sridhar – who happens to be a former officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve – they are “afraid” that such extended deployments will become the norm, and worry about the effect President Donald Trump’s decisions will have on the Navy.

Sridhar met with sailors in Thailand, where on Wednesday, 5,000 service members disembarked from the beleaguered Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier for the first time in nine months. Even before they discussed their experience, reports had emerged describing the atrocious conditions onboard the Lincoln. As Mediate explains, the situation on the ship, “which deployed from its home base of San Diego on Nov. 21, began to make headlines when families of the service members aboard spoke out about allegedly bleak conditions, including rotten food, clogged toilets, and desperate sailors who reportedly tried to jump overboard.”

Once they were finally on the dry land of Thailand, sailors spoke with Sridhar about their experience. According to Sridhar, “I also got a chance to speak to some of the crew, the regular rank-and-file sailors who are part of this 5,000-member crew that have been on this record-setting deployment, and many of them told me that this was, in fact, the worst deployment that they have ever experienced. It was incredibly hard, and many of them expressed to me that they actually wish that they hadn’t even done a port call at this point. They wanted to just go directly home.”

What’s more, some told Sridhar that “they are afraid that because of this war, these really long deployments without any port calls are going to become normalized. And they think that this is going to have a huge impact on retention in the Navy, especially for junior sailors.” This was the first deployment for many, and provided a dismal example of what life in the Navy can be like under Trump.

While there has been much joking about the trouble the sailors could get into while in Thailand, they told Sridhar that their “top priorities” were “to FaceTime their family members. Because remember, it’s not just them that have served and sacrificed. It is their families as well, their spouses who have had to single-parent their kids for an extended amount of time. Really the major priority that they told me they wanted to do while they were here on shore was to FaceTime and see their kids, see their spouses and see their parents. So they finally got a chance to do that after nine and a half months.”

The Pentagon has denied reports of the poor conditions aboard the USS Lincoln and other ships. Trump took his assessment even further, declaring that the deployment was “not nearly long enough.”

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'I feel really duped': GOP in trouble as Trump 'regretters' bail

On Thursday, a new poll revealed trouble for President Donald Trump and the GOP as a large segment of 2024 Trump backers now say they regret their vote. What’s more, a sizeable portion of these “Trump regretters” are “less likely” to vote Republican in the future, fracturing the coalition the party is counting on with the midterms just around the corner.

According to Navigator Research, “One-in-five Americans who voted for President Trump in 2024 now regret their choice.” These Trump regretters fall into a few different camps. The majority are those who voted for Trump thinking he’d be better for the economy than Democrats. Younger voters are fleeing the president, with 30 percent of Trump voters between the ages of 18-34 expressing regret, which is nearly triple that of Trump voters over 55 and well above Trump voters ages 35-54. About a third of Black and Latino Trump voters are regretful, which is double the rate of white Trump supporters. A quarter of independents and non-MAGA Republicans who voted Trump fall in the regret camp, including 37 percent of independent men, as do 22 percent of Trump-voting moms.

What’s more, Trump regretters are more likely to have a negative view of the economy versus Americans overall. As Navigator explains, “Americans across the board are souring on the economy and current administration, but this sentiment is especially shared by those who now feel remorse for their 2024 vote. Four-in-five (81 percent) Trump regretters rate the economy negatively, eight points higher than Americans overall (73 percent). Additionally, Trump regretters are feeling more down about their personal financial situations, with nearly seven-in-10 (69 percent) feeling uneasy, six points higher than Americans overall (63 percent).”

“All our prices have gone sky-high for necessities,” said a white woman from Arizona who voted Trump. “Our utilities have raised, our mortgage, the interest rates, the food in the grocery store. Everything has gone up except my wages, and it’s making it harder and harder to make ends meet.”

Generally speaking, notes Navigator, “Trump regretters are deeply dissatisfied with President Trump’s second term so far. Three quarters (74 percent) of Trump regretters disapprove of President Trump’s job performance, compared to 60 percent of Americans overall. Nearly four-in-five (77 percent) also disapprove of his handling of the economy, compared to 63 percent of Americans overall.” Regretters are also deeply negative on a number of specific economic issues. According to Navigator, “83 percent disapprove of President Trump’s handling of gas prices, eight points higher than Americans overall. 77 percent disapprove of President Trump’s handling of healthcare, 15 points higher than Americans overall. 74 percent disapprove of President Trump’s handling of foreign policy, 14 points higher than Americans overall. 83 percent disapprove of President Trump’s handling of grocery prices, nine points higher than Americans overall.”

As Navigator explains, “Like Americans more broadly, Trump regretters want the president and Congress to focus on inflation and the cost of living, jobs and the economy, and healthcare. Instead, they see President Trump and Republicans in Congress prioritizing foreign conflicts and immigration, rather than helping Americans make ends meet.”

“The main [disappointment] to me would be the focus and the promise on getting rid of inflation,” said one Georgia Turmp Regretter. “That’s very disappointing because we’re all still struggling.” As another from Nevada said, “[Trump] stated you’ll see prices go down in the grocery store because inflation’s under control … No. If anything, things have become more expensive.”

There are several key reasons regretters say they’re disappointed in Trump. 30 percent say it’s because of his broken promises, 27 percent don’t like the war, 25 percent noted cost of living, and others said that he is a bad person who “only cares about himself,” and that he “has made things worse generally.” According to Navigator, “Nearly half (45 percent) cite the war with Iran as a main reason for regret, as well as prices and the cost of living (43 percent), healthcare cuts (38 percent), and focusing on the wrong priorities like the White House ballroom (36 percent).”

“I feel really duped,” said one Trump voter from North Carolina. “I voted for him because I was expecting him not to go to war. And then he’s going to war everywhere and in America.”

All of this is bad news for Republicans who are already panicking about their chances in the midterms. According to Navigator, “Nearly one-in-10 (8 percent) Trump voters say they no longer support President Trump and would change their vote if they could. This includes 26 percent of Democratic or Independent Trump voters and 12 percent of non-MAGA Republican Trump voters who would now change their vote.”

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Leak-obsessed Trump just made 'urgent' military planning harder

On Wednesday, reporting from the Washington Post revealed that the Pentagon has removed decades of classified documents from a secret computer system used by defense officials and U.S. troops, a change insiders warn could “constrain urgent planning.” The move is part of an effort to address President Donald Trump’s obsession with plugging up leaks in his administration, and came after the Post published a story that revealed senior military officers’ concerns about the war with Iran.

According to the Post, “Documents associated with the Secretary of Defense Orders Book (SDOB) were removed from an internal web portal on the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet), three people familiar with the matter said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the classified system. It was not immediately clear if the documents remain otherwise available to U.S. personnel or how the reduction in access could complicate military planning. SIPRNet holds information that is labeled ‘secret,’ while top-secret information is held on more highly classified networks, where fewer people have access.”

The SDOB is an important tool for planning and communication. According to the Post, it “details the location and availability of U.S. warships, military units, weapons systems and other resources, and provides top generals and admirals a forum in which they can disagree with President Donald Trump and Hegseth while still carrying out their orders. They do so by ‘non-concurring,’ a process by which they explain reservations they may have or the detrimental effects of orders on other military plans. The SDOB, published twice per month, became the focus of intense discussion after The Post reported Sunday that several top generals and admirals cautioned Hegseth that prolonging large-scale operations against Iran is unsustainable and risks weakening their ability to confront threats elsewhere. They did so by non-concurring in the SDOB.”

Military leaders who declared “non-concur” included General Alexus Grynkewich, the head of European Command; General Francis Donovan, the head of Southern Command; Admiral Samuel Paparo, the head of Pacific Command; and Admiral Daryl Caudle, the chief of naval operations. Generals Kenneth S. Wilsbach, the chief of staff of the Air Force, and Christopher LaNeve, the acting chief of staff of the Army, agreed with Hegseth’s plan to extend the time of some of their units’ deployments, but they also emphasized that it would come with significant risk.

As the Post elaborates, “For months, senior U.S. officials have increasingly raised concerns about the long-term impact of the war with Iran, which has stretched into its seventh month after Trump initially said it would take only a few weeks. The concerns include the massive expenditure of increasingly scarce munitions, such as Patriot missile interceptors and Tomahawk cruise missiles, and the strain placed on the Navy’s fleet as it enforces a sea blockade that the Trump administration has imposed on Iran.”

Purging the SDOB or moving it to systems with higher levels of classification will “dramatically reduce the number of people who have direct access to it,” which can "constrain urgent planning," said a former defense official who routinely reviewed those documents and spoke with the Post. According to the former official, commanders and their staffers depend on access to the SDOB to make time-sensitive decisions and notifications. Restricting access to that information will make it slower and harder to perform the logistical work and equipment rerouting necessary to perform vital actions, like sending aircraft and weapons from one command to another. The change, said the former official, does not make it impossible for those personnel to access strategic and operational documents, but it is now “certainly more difficult.”

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Unending Trump 'doom loop' as vital industry flashes red

President Donald Trump’s war with Iran has created an economic “doom loop” that experts warn has “no end” in sight. Now, according to new reporting from CNN, “yellow lights are flashing in the most important market on the planet: The US bond market.” As the bond yields skyrocket, investors are selling fast, wreaking chaos across the economy.

As CNN explains, the situation is being driven by a number of contributing factors, at the core of which is the war with Iran, which is “driving up US defense spending and the cost of oil, gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. That energy spike is reinforcing inflation worries in a bond market already nervous about America’s $40 trillion mountain of debt. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury, which is a measure of how much the US government pays to borrow more money, climbed on Wednesday to the highest level in nearly three years. The bond market stress will make it more expensive for consumers to get a mortgage, for businesses to borrow and for Washington to pay the bills.”

According to CNN, this situation has fueled growing concern that the economy has entered a “doom loop, where the more the war intensifies, the more it will spook the bond market and slow the economy and stocks.” As Hardika Singh, economic strategist at Fundstrat Capital, put it, “It feels like there is no end to the inflation problem, the war or the deficit in the near term.”

The war has caused bond yields to rise for two main reasons: because the U.S. has been forced to borrow more to cover defense spending, and the inflation it’s caused in general. And the longer the war goes on, the worse the problem will get. As Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth Management, told CNN, “This becomes a circular argument unless and until there is a credible way to get out of this war.” David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan Funds, agreed, saying, “Sadly, it looks like the world has entered a new set of forever wars – and that’s very expensive.”

To make matters worse, notes CNN, “Higher bond yields typically slow the economy by raising the cost of capital. Corporations have to pay more in interest for every factory they want to open. Small businesses are facing higher loan costs when they’re considering expansion. Washington itself is hurt by higher interest on the national debt, which last month hit $40 trillion for the first time ever. The United States has spent $931 billion on net interest so far this fiscal year alone, well ahead of the $804 billion spent on the national defense, according to Treasury.” Over the next decade, net interest on debt is projected to exceed $16 trillion, and analysts say that is a conservative estimate that could increase if rates continue to climb.

Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent attempted to slow the bleeding by announcing a surprising and controversial intervention. “His plan – promising to at least double Treasury buybacks – worked, but only for a few hours,” explains CNN. “The bond sell-off quickly resumed, with rates surpassing pre-intervention levels.” According to Fundstrat’s Singh, “It massively flopped. If anything, this may have made the problem worse. Bessent showed his hand. To investors, it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, he’s worried. We should be too.'"

JPMorgan’s Kelly told CNN that Bessent’s intervention failed because it did nothing to change the structural problem of sky-high deficits. “It’s just moving around a bunch of borrowed money. That’s not going to move the needle,” said Kelly. “Unless they can find a way to truly change the trajectory on our debt, the government is powerless to stop this. We’ve maxed out the credit cards.” According to Kelly, even if oil prices do come down, it may not be enough and may be too late to stave off total disaster. “The only foolproof way to get a major bond market rally is to have a massive recession,” he said. “That would do it.”

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Internal memo reveals GOP panic as its greatest weapon backfires

While the Republican Party has made redistricting a key part of its political strategy — particularly after President Donald Trump demanded the gerrymandering of Texas last August — a new internal memo reveals that the GOP is worried that it will lose the upcoming round of redistricting battles in 2028, warning that the resulting map could deliver a “permanent Democratic House majority.” This is according to the conservative outlet the Washington Examiner, which on Wednesday reported on a memo entitled “Battle Beneath the Ballot,” in which the Republican State Leadership Committee argued that the party’s failure to invest in down-ballot state legislative elections could mean the decision to launch a redistricting war was a huge mistake.

As the Examiner explains, the memo revealed that “Democrats’ four largest groups involved in state legislative elections will outspend the RSLC’s commitment of more than $50 million by almost three-to-one. Republicans have a huge fundraising lead nationally, with the likes of MAGA Inc., the Trump-aligned super PAC, holding a $400 million war chest. But all the signs are that it will be spent on congressional and gubernatorial races, rather than less glamorous down-ballot fights.” The Democrats, meanwhile, have a robust state-level plan. According to the Examiner, “This year four major Democratic organizations have publicly announced significant spending plans: the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee at $50 million, Forward Majority at $30 million, LCV Victory Fund at more than $50 million, and the National Democratic Redistricting Committee at $4 million. In all, they are committed to spending more than $134 million.”

“This flood of national liberal dollars into state legislative races should concern everyone who does not want to see a permanent Democratic House majority,” warns the memo. While the RSLC asserts that more money should be spent at a state level “to ensure the best possible House battlefield in 2028, it also points to the 2030 census, in which all 50 states will redraw their voting maps. “If we are serious about preventing a permanent Democratic House majority,” the memo reiterates, “we must recognize that the fight for Congress begins in state legislative districts, not in congressional campaigns,” explaining that a handful of seats will have a major impact on key districts. The Republican Party, says the memo, should focus its efforts on state legislatures in Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, as state senate wins would allow them to shape up to 12 House districts, potentially delivering a major boost to the GOP on a federal level.

The report comes as polling shows Republicans face major headwinds going into the midterms, in which the party is projected to lose its majority in the House and possibly the Senate. Surveys have found that on a generic ballot, Democrats have their strongest lead in polling history.

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Leaker sounds alarm: Trump is saddling up his 'Trojan Horse'

On Wednesday, a former member of President Donald Trump’s national security team claimed that the White House has a “Trojan Horse” for obscuring its “scheme” to meddle in the midterms. This is according to Miles Taylor, who served as Deputy Chief of Staff in Homeland Security during Trump’s first term, at the time famously leaking the existence of a resistance group within the administration. Trump, says Taylor, is not only trying to steal the election, but is handing a “gift” to U.S. adversaries who seek to hack the voting system.

Taylor was referring to bombshell reporting from Tuesday, in which a whistleblower from within USPS revealed that the Trump administration has the U.S. Postal Service developing a massive, questionable new system for verifying mail-in ballots. The system, it is alleged, has prompted alarm from agency officials and IT experts who worry that its creation and implementation have been rushed, and that it will ultimately fail. It was also suggested that Trump mandated that the new USPS procedures be concealed from the public, and that those procedures will make an already complicated and risky plan even more vulnerable to potential mass disenfranchisement. All of this follows Trump’s executive order that gave USPS an “unprecedented” role in overseeing states’ mail ballot programs.

As CNN explains, these allegations come “as multiple courts are considering the legality of the proposal, which would require that states submit to USPS lists of their mail-in voters. The agency will not deliver ballots for states if there are any discrepancies between the voter information in the USPS system and what’s picked up by agency scanners on the envelopes of the ballots.” According to the whistleblower’s report, “USPS leadership, it appears, has discarded all best practices as they speed the project to be ready for a September 1 implementation — raising questions about whether catastrophic failure would be a feature rather than a bug.”

“When I was at DHS, we would’ve called Trump’s election scheme a ‘Trojan Horse,’" posted Taylor. “By tracking ballots in the mail, he could hypothetically cancel out votes. It’s also a gift to foreign bad guys, since it creates a central node for them to attack.”

Taylor also appeared on CNN on Tuesday night, where he revealed his conversations with the USPS whistleblower’s legal team, which informed him that the individual felt leaking was their only option as there was no “safe place” within the government to report their concerns. According to Taylor, this is important to note because it suggests that “the inspector generals and the channels normally we would expect someone to blow the whistle on lawlessness are not trusted anymore by individuals who think they’ve witnessed criminal conduct.”

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Trump warned he’ll 'pay political price' over aggressive 'legal loopholes'

Last October, President Donald Trump told a crowd of donors that he was surprised when his aides told him he could build his White House ballroom without seeking approval. At the time, Trump explained, “They said, ‘Sir, this is the White House, you’re the president of the United States. You can do anything you want.’” He’s spent the past year testing that claim, and according to the Washington Post, Trump has been able to achieve many of his vanity projects due to “legal loopholes” and because his political allies look the other way.

The ballroom is perhaps the most discussed of Trump’s D.C. vanity projects, and he’s made numerous other changes to the grounds. As the Post explains, “Nearly every corner of the White House’s campus has been eyed for potential renovations or new construction, including a new helipad, which workers are racing to complete this month. Trump has already paved over the mansion’s Rose Garden, added gilding throughout the building and fenced off the neighboring public park for a months-long renovation project. The president has said he hopes to complete the ballroom and other projects during his term, which ends in January 2029. He and his deputies have insisted that they are beautifying Washington, even as many longtime residents and civic leaders beg him to stop.”

To accomplish such projects, explains the Post, “Trump has subverted norms that guided past presidents, ignored outraged Democrats in Congress, remade expert panels and outraced the courts. As a federal judge deliberated this spring over whether to halt Trump’s rushed renovations to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the administration completed its rapid six-week project before the judge could rule. (The pool has since been drained again for another batch of changes.) It is unclear whether anyone can legally stop some of Trump’s most audacious projects, such as the ballroom, despite its widespread unpopularity with the public.”

The Justice Department has claimed that only Congress can stop projects like the ballroom, with administration officials claiming lawmakers already authorized the construction by earmarking money for annual White House “improvements.” Stopping it would therefore require new legislation, and the Republicans who currently hold the majority have made it clear that they don’t intend to take such action. That forced Trump’s opponents to turn to the courts, but as the Post explains, the Supreme Court has just added another hurdle, ruling that a member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation who had challenged the ballroom probably lacked legal standing to sue. This cleared the way for the ballroom’s construction, and raises questions about whether preservationists will be able to stop future federal projects.

“If the National Trust — which was chartered by Congress in 1949 and expressly granted the power to sue — can’t use litigation to vindicate the public’s interests to historic preservation, who can?” wondered Sara Bronin, a George Washington University law professor and former chair of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.

According to the Post, “Republican leaders have shown little appetite for stopping Trump’s construction projects through enacting new legislative restrictions, opening investigations or taking other steps that could force the administration to pause.” And while theoretically, commissions of experts should provide a check as they review plans and proposals, Trump has largely packed them with hand-picked loyalists, resulting in a rapid approval of projects that one former appointee to the Commission of Fine Arts said is “unprecedented in recent history.” The administration also uses opposing logic to push different projects, arguing in the case of the ballroom that construction is too far along to stop, but with the 250-foot arch claiming that construction can’t be halted because it hasn’t started yet.

While courts and lawmakers have done little to stop him, according to the Post, “Trump may well pay a political price for his actions. A Washington Post-Ipsos poll in July found that 32 percent of the public was ‘enthusiastic’ or ‘satisfied’ about Trump’s construction projects, while 65 percent was ‘dissatisfied’ or ‘upset.’ The president’s focus on his construction projects may have contributed to his historic low standing with voters, which is endangering his party’s chances in this fall’s midterm elections. Democrats have vowed to launch investigations into Trump’s projects and other priorities if they retake Congress.”

As Martha Joynt Kumar, a longtime presidential historian and a political science professor emeritus at Towson University, explained, “He’s been talking about his ballroom at a time when Republicans in Congress would prefer that he talk about pocketbook issues of affordability, the price of groceries, gasoline.”

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First Trump cut Medicaid — now hospitals brace for more 'harm' coming

When President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act slashed hundreds of billions from Medicaid, hospitals thought the situation was already bad. But according to new reporting by Politico, hospitals are now bracing for new regulations from the administration that will cut even deeper, and experts warn it could cause widespread “harm” to patients.

Last year, when Republicans passed the OBBB Act, it began a process that will extract roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade. Now, as Politico explains, “Two recently proposed rules from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services would cost hospitals hundreds of billions of dollars more.” The rules target taxes states use to get more federal Medicaid dollars and which yield higher payments to hospitals. According to hospitals, if the proposed rules are finalized, they lose hundreds of billions of dollars more, forcing them to “reduce services, lay off workers, consolidate operations or shutter entirely.” Many report that they’re already cutting staff and reducing hospital beds in preparation for predicted losses.

“Our core message to CMS is to stick to the statute. Congress cut enough,” said Robert Nelb, director of policy at America’s Essential Hospitals, which represents hospitals serving large Medicaid populations. “There’s no need to cut any more out of the Medicaid system at a time when the safety net is really struggling.”

As Politico explains, “States fund Medicaid by putting in some of their own money, which the federal government then matches. Congress cracked down on a practice in which states boost their federal matching funds by taxing hospitals to inflate the state portion of the Medicaid budget and then kick the money back to the hospitals in the form of higher payments. Congress also restricted how states directed payments to certain providers, such as boosting payments for those in rural areas. Hospitals say CMS’ rules restricting state taxes and payments go further than what Congress intended. Hospitals expected to lose $340 billion through 2034 after Congress passed the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act last year. If the rules are finalized as proposed, they would generate $756 billion in savings to the federal government and $265 billion in savings to states through 2035. Or as hospitals see it, they’re losing $681 billion more than they expected.”

It is not known when the new rules will go into effect, and for now Politico notes that the potential “harm” to patients is hyopthentical, but “hospitals say they’re already making changes that could affect patient care.” For example, the hospital system Providence has begun cutting staff and supply contracts to make room for a predicted $1.3 billion hole in its budget. And Golden Valley Memorial Health Care, a hospital system in rural Missouri, has been forced to cut maternal beds in half. As that system’s CEO explained, “This is the most challenging economic time I’ve ever seen.”

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'How could he?' GOP senator says red state voters being are 'hurt' by Trump

On Tuesday, a Republican senator revealed that one of President Donald Trump’s latest moves has “let down” and “hurt” MAGA voters. This is according to Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD), who said the president’s decision to import beef has “pulled the rug” out from under South Dakota Trump voters.

"In South Dakota, these folks — they love the president,” Rounds told reporters. “He's like a relative to them, and they just feel like as a relative he just pulled the rug right from underneath them. They're hurt. I mean, they feel like they've been let down. Like, how could our friend, this guy that's as close to us as they've ever been to a president, how could he do this to them?"

Rounds’ statement was in response to Trump recent executive order allowing 300,000 metric tons of beef to be imported tariff-free. These imports must be sold at “25 percent below the market price,” which American beef producers fear will undercut their already suffering business. With this in mind, Rounds spoke about the issue multiple times on Tuesday, in the morning telling reporters, "It feels like the administration pulled the rug right out from underneath a lot of our farmers and ranchers, and this is not going to help. The best way to help is to allow that American cow herd to grow, and the way you do that is you offer more grass.”

While Trump is ostensibly importing beef to lower skyrocketing meat prices at the grocery store, experts say it is unlikely to have a major impact. As Glynn Tonsor, an agricultural economist at Kansas State University who studies meat pricing, told CNN, “I think it’s easily overstated how much it might help." He explained that the cost reductions will be limited because 300,000 metric tons of beef is only equivalent to around 2 percent of domestic beef consumption. What’s more, explains CNN, “the tariff exemptions only apply to beef trimmings, which are blended with other cuts to make ground beef. That means exempting only beef trimmings will limit any overall price cut for consumers, said Tonsor. On top of that, the impact will also depend on whether the imports add to the supply of beef or simply replace beef that processors would have otherwise bought from US suppliers.”

Rounds raised more issues with the Trump administration on Tuesday. When asked about Army Secretary Dan Driscoll’s decision to quit over his disagreements with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Rounds said, “I'm hearing the same rumors everybody else is, that he was frustrated with some of his top generals being released, and that's not the first time I've heard that." According to Rounds, “That points to questions that we're going to be asking when we get back [in session] in terms of: where is the leadership at? We've had some very good generals that are no longer there that we respected, and that had a huge amount of foundational knowledge in terms of moving us forward as far as the change in capabilities that we need to incorporate into the overall fighting force.”

He also noted that he was “frustrated” that Democrats had been excluded from defense discussions. “It needs to be both Republicans and Democrats at the table,” said Rounds. “I think the administration needs to change its focus, and needs to bring this back to a bipartisan effort with regard to the defense of our country.”

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'High on your own supply': Entrepreneur unloads on Trump team 'incompetents'

On Tuesday, in the wake of news that prediction markets project a Democratic sweep of Congress, a leading venture capitalist took to social media to lambast the leadership of President Donald Trump. According to famed entrepreneur and investor Jason Calacanis, the president is “high” on his own supply and surrounded by “loyal incompetents.”

“Presidential Rule number one: don't start a never-ending war in the Middle East. Americans have PTSD from them,” posted Calacanis. “Presidential Rule number two: it's the economy, always has been. Leadership rule number one: Surround yourself with competent people who tell you uncomfortable truths – not sycophants or loyal incompetents. The sycophants will do you in every time. Never get high on your own supply.”

He made these comments over a Polymarket prediction declaring that “Democrats are now projected to sweep the 2026 midterms, taking both the Senate [and] House.” According to the company, there is a 51 percent chance Democrats flip Congress, while there is only a 36 percent chance that Republicans will retain it. Trump’s second term has been characterized by catastrophes that have dragged down the GOP in the polls, which show not only that the president is historically unpopular, but that Democrats hold historic leads on a generic ballot. According to a recent survey by Politico, a “solid majority” of Americans say that Trump’s war on Iran has made the affordability crisis worse, and Republicans are expected to pay politically in November.

According to Calacanis, it didn’t have to turn out this way. In his estimation, “If President Trump hadn’t started this war, and had been reasonably disciplined with the economy, he would have gone down as Regan — over the course of time. So many lessons… and hey, maybe DJT pulls another rabbit out of his magic hat of rabbits. Maybe the war magically stops, the tariffs settle down and become predictable revenue streams (instead of performance art), we win the AI revolution, abundance follows, and growth wins the day.” But Calacanis doesn’t think the likelihood is high, noting, “He’s got a puncher's chance.”

Calacanis — who used to praise Trump’s economic policies while criticizing his personal behavior — wasn’t alone in commenting on the prediction odds. “Hey [Majority Speaker John Thune], did you see this?” asked the pro-Trump account Libs of TikTok. “Republicans need to get out and give the people a reason to vote for them before it’s too late,” said far-right influencer Benny Johnson. And according to Savannah Hernandez of Turning Point USA, “If this happens, it’ll be impeachment and investigation season all over again.”

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Fast-approaching shortage caused by Trump a 'sleeper issue' for rural voters

On Tuesday, Politico warned of a “sleeper issue” caused by President Donald Trump’s war on Iran that is going largely under-discussed but has the potential to cause major “economic pain.” As the outlet explained, “the rise in the cost of the fuel used for trucking, agriculture and winter heating is worse than the jump in gasoline,” and it’s a looming problem for the country that could blow up Republican midterm chances once and for all.

“Republicans have been facing a problem with voters over high gasoline prices for months — but the economic pain from near-record diesel fuel prices looks set to hit at the worst possible time for them,” wrote Politico. “The war in Iran, disruptions in Russian production and refining bottlenecks have sent the price of diesel fuel rising faster than that of gasoline or crude oil, and it’s now grinding toward an all-time record just two months ahead of the midterms. That matters for Republicans in particular because diesel prices hit first — and hardest — in rural areas and affect blue-collar businesses like farming and trucking before spreading to suburban dinner tables and the rest of the economy.”

As of Monday, the average price of diesel was $5.60 per gallon, an increase of about $1 from early July and almost $2 higher than a year ago. The all-time U.S. record $5.816 set in June 2022 is approaching fast, “and with U.S. inventories at their lowest-ever levels going into the peak diesel demand season, little relief is likely.”

“That shortage will be acutely felt by the farmers during the harvest, and so the inflationary consequences can be greater at harvest time,” said Kevin Book, managing director at consulting firm ClearView Energy Partners. And as Politico explains, “At the same time, products will be on trucks headed to stores for the holidays, and many voters in places like Maine and Alaska will be preparing for winter by buying heating oil, which, like jet fuel, is similar to diesel.” According to Book, “There is a very strong history of caring about heating oil ahead of elections.”

And when you factor in the shortage of truck drivers, said Dean Croke, principal analyst at DAT Freight & Analytics, the cost of diesel becomes the “sleeper issue” of the economic problems rocking the Republican midterms. “We’ve never seen this,” Croke explained. “What you’re seeing is a real squeeze going on right now.” As Politico noted, “That squeeze suggests the affordability issue is going to get worse for Trump and congressional Republicans as they face inflation-weary voters in midterm elections. A POLITICO poll conducted earlier this month found a solid majority of Americans believe the Iran war, launched by Trump six months ago, has made things more expensive for their families.”

According to Politico, American refineries “are running at full tilt to make up the balance. Refineries operated at 97.4 percent of their operable capacity last week. API said U.S. refiners produced more diesel this July than in any July on record. Now, some refineries are even delaying regular seasonal maintenance, raising the chances of an accident that could deliver an outsize price shock. And a strong hurricane churning toward the Gulf Coast could trigger the shutdown of numerous facilities in the world’s largest refining hub.”

In the face of these and other uncertainties, “the prospect of fuel shortages is growing by the day. And the Trump administration doesn’t have many more tools at its disposal, having ruled out limits on petroleum exports.” But as Politico noted, there is one solution that may be approaching, but that no one wants. “The fastest road to a lower price," warned Book, "could be a recession.”

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Economic civil war erupts in Trump administration as 'showdown' nears

On Friday, the newly appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve delivered a speech that revealed a growing civil war within the administration and may have put him on a “collision course” with President Donald Trump. This is according to the American Conservative, which explained on Tuesday how the fight over economic policy is headed toward a “showdown.”

“Kevin Warsh gave his first major speech as chairman of the Federal Reserve on August 28 at this year’s Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium,” writes the American Conservative. There Warsh offered “clues about the Fed’s future direction — as much as he might prefer not to — and perhaps even set himself on a collision course with President Trump.” As the magazine elaborates, Warsh has gone to “war” against the concept of “forward guidance,” which is “Fed slang for broadcasting monetary policy moves well in advance” and has been regular practice over the past two decades. While Warsh explained that it was “intended to maintain calm in the markets during economically tumultuous periods,” he “believes it has overstayed its welcome, as markets have become too reliant on this information, locking the central bank into whatever policy it foreshadowed regardless of subsequent changes in circumstances.”

“As he noted at Jackson Hole last week, forward guidance can in fact lead markets, businesses, and households astray, obstructing the ability of policymakers to make rate decisions based on hard data,” writes the Conservative. “Emphasizing the need to find the proper relationship between financial markets and the Fed, Warsh added that: ‘The Fed needs clear market signals, as unfiltered as possible from market internals: the level and change in asset prices across sectors, the prices and trading volumes of Treasury securities, the foreign exchange value of the dollar, the cost and availability of credit, and the price of a broad set of commoditie.’”

The Conservative notes that “In the reference to Treasury securities, one cannot help but see a jab at Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s recent maneuvers. In August, the national debt rose to exceed $40 trillion, while 30-year Treasury yields jumped to almost two-decade highs. The increasing burden of the debt on government financing has pushed up interest rates, as buyers price in the risk of non-payment. By buying back some of these long-term bonds, Bessent hopes to bring down yields on the long end of the yield curve (the normally upward sloping curve showing the difference between short- and long-term bond yields) and thus lower borrowing costs for the government.”

That effort failed, and Warsh is now making it clear that he is “against distorting such an important signal as the Treasury yield.” According to the Conservative, “Warsh has continued to highlight the central bank’s focus on price stability over the employment side of the dual mandate. In his Jackson Hole address, he characterized the labor market as ‘stable,’ and spent considerable time digging into the various inflation indicators that remain concerning. He reiterated that ‘the responsibility for 65 months of sustained, elevated inflation sits squarely with the central bank. And that is where it belongs.’”

Financial experts interpreted this as a sign that rate hikes are on the way, which is exactly the opposite of what Trump wanted when he appointed Warsh to the Fed. According to the National Conservative, the president has pushed for rate cuts despite high inflation. So far he has blamed the “very political” Fed board for resisting his demands, saying that “Kevin is fantastic,” but if Warsh raises interest rates as expected, it would “place him directly in the president’s crosshairs.” At the same time, however, “posturing as an advocate for rate maintenance or cuts will likely undermine his credibility with markets.”

“To maintain his inflation hawk credentials,” the magazine concludes, “Warsh may have to upset his president.”

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John Roberts stuns with dissent as Supreme Court rules for Trump’s ballroom

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that President Donald Trump can move forward with the construction of his much-demanded White House ballroom. The opinion was split 5-4, with conservative Chief Justice John Roberts siding with his liberal counterparts in opposing the ballroom. According to Roberts, "The President ordered the demolition of the East Wing of the White House to make way for a new, privately funded state ballroom in its place. Construction of the ballroom has proceeded apace for the better part of a year. That construction is likely unlawful."

As NBC News explains, "The court, divided 5-4, granted an emergency request filed by the Trump administration, blocking lower court rulings that would have put the aboveground portion of the project on hold. This followed an interim decision along similar lines issued by Chief Justice John Roberts on Aug. 21. The legal challenge was brought by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which argued that the president did not have unilateral authority to proceed with construction. In the unsigned ruling, the court said that the trust likely does not have legal standing to bring the underlying lawsuit. The court did not reach any conclusion on whether Trump has authority to carry out construction without congressional approval."

“Today, we do not pass upon the legality of the government’s East Wing project. We conclude only that, based on the submissions before us, the government is likely to prevail in showing that the Trust lacks ... standing to challenge the project in federal court,” the court declared.

This technicality emerged from the unusual nature of the original lawsuit. According to NBC, "The trust’s claim for standing hinges on a declaration made by member Alison Hoagland, a preservationist who lives in Washington and serves on the organization’s board of trustees. Hoagland regularly walks by the White House, adding that she would 'suffer both professional and personal injuries, including to my aesthetic, cultural and historical interests, if a ballroom of the proposed form and scale were constructed.' The Supreme Court majority concluded the court had never found legal standing in such a situation before."

"Barring another lawsuit," noted Washington Post White House reporter Dan Diamond, "Trump poised to get his ballroom."

According to the Hill, "In recent days, the Trump administration has insisted the ballroom is now too far along to stop construction. The Justice Department indicated in its Supreme Court filings that the project is 65 percent complete, with a concrete-and-steel structure already stretching five stories deep and 70 feet high." A report by the Washington Post released on Friday, however, suggested that the White House may be dramatically inflating that number.

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One Trump 'obsession' could cost the GOP must-win battleground states

With the midterms just around the corner, one of President Donald Trump’s most touted policies is not only dragging the GOP down, but may have already cost them battleground states that needed to prevent the Democrats from flipping Congress. This is according to a column published in the Hill on Monday, which argues that “Republicans will pay for Trump’s tariffs in the midterms.”

Following months of bad news on the economy. It seemed for a moment like Republicans were getting something of a break. As the Hill explains. “After a year in which the war with Iran sent gas prices soaring and pushed inflation to multi-year highs, both June and July’s Consumer Price Index came in tame. Even grocery prices slipped for the first time in months. But then President Trump returned to his longtime obsession: tariffs.”

When trade negotiations with Canada fell apart, Trump slapped the country with 50 percent tariffs on billions of dollars worth of Canadian goods, reviving what the Wall Street Journal called “the Dumbest Trade War in History.” According to the Hill, “The timing could hardly be worse for Republicans, who had spent months straining to soothe voters’ concerns over the cost of living and attempting to build a midterm message around affordability. Now, tariffs and trade chaos are back in the news, and Republicans are likely going to pay the price.”

As the Wall Street Journal noted, “Republicans are already getting pounded on the campaign trail over [Trump’s] tariffs and inflation.” And as polling confirms, the majority of Americans, 56 percent, ranked cost of living concerns among the top issues facing the country. Even among Trump voters, a plurality of 33 percent cite rising prices as “among the biggest failures of Trump’s second term.” And voters have long expressed a dislike of tariffs. One poll in March revealed that 72 percent of Americans — including 60 percent of Republicans — believe Trump’s tariffs have a negative impact.

But the number that means the most now, with the midterms just around the corner, is that 54 percent of voters in battleground states disapprove of tariffs. That includes Alaska, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas — states that have toss-up midterms that would hand Democrats power over the House and maybe even the Senate. What’s more, writes the Hill, “compounding Republican concerns is that the states most affected by these new Canada tariffs are vital to Republicans’ hopes of holding onto the Senate. Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, Alaska and Ohio are all extremely vulnerable to Canada’s retaliatory tariffs, and all have hotly contested races this fall.” Overall, writes the Hill, “voters now prefer Democrats’ approach to affordability over the Republicans’ approach by an 8-point margin (36 percent to 28 percent). Moreover, Democrats’ lead in the generic congressional ballot now sits slightly above 6 points, the widest margin of the cycle,” and Trump’s approval is at historic lows.

Republicans are well aware that the tariffs are a problem for them. As the Hill explains, “Republican Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) warned that the tariffs are causing ‘tension’ and that ‘the party that owns that tension…will probably suffer the consequences in November.’” And “aware that tariffs are deeply unpopular and hoping to defend a key Senate seat, Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) called the Canada tariffs a ‘mistake’ before skipping an event with Vice President JD Vance in the state last week, where he defended the duties.” Former Sen. John Sununu (R-NH), who is trying to win back his old seat in New Hampshire, piled on, saying, “It makes no sense to start a trade war with our closest neighbor.”

The Hill concludes with a warning for Republicans, writing, “Trump may not care about the midterms since he is not on the ballot, but he is seemingly intent on speeding up the date he will become a lame duck. And, in doing so, drastically increasing the chances of the 'all-out oversight' investigations into himself and his family that Democrats are already preparing. Ultimately, the 2026 midterms were always going to be an uphill battle for Republicans, as they always are for the party in power. In order to keep both the House and Senate — or at least one — the GOP needed a coherent affordability agenda and policies which lowered costs and strengthened the economy. Instead, Republicans got renewed tariffs, for which they will likely pay the price in November.”

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Trump resorts to 'nonsense' as telling pattern reveals desperation

While President Donald Trump shares a prolific amount of fake, often AI-generated content on social media, there is a pattern to what he does and doesn’t post that reveals something important about the problems created under his administration. To that end, on Monday, USA Today columnist Rex Huppke raised a question about Trump’s posting habits: what is he not bragging about?

As Huppke notes, when Trump reentered office, he and his allies made many “promises to lower food and gas prices and usher in an economic Golden Age, along with a guarantee that Trump was ‘not going to start a war.’” It has since become clear that the “promises Trump and Republican lawmakers made haven’t panned out. At all. So now they have nothing to share with the American public beyond the grout and the growling and whatever fake content Trump posts on his Truth Social account.” In recent weeks, Trump has posted a steady stream of AI slop, asserts Huppke, for an important reason: “Trump posts AI nonsense because he's done nothing worth bragging about[.] Trump brags more than anyone, and all we’re getting from him is garbage and insipid distractions.”

Huppke offers a string of recent examples, from Trump’s post of an AI-generated video that showed him replacing a "Lake Ontario" sign with a "Lake America" sign, to posts about his D.C. vanity projects, to “an AI-generated image of him arm in arm with the late Dolly Parton. Totally fake. Never happened. And absolutely useless to any American worried about kitchen-table issues, or the war with Iran that Trump started, or the myriad food recalls occurring under this administration.”

What are Trump and the Republicans “not doing?” asked Huppke. “They’re not bragging about all they’ve accomplished in the nearly two years they’ve been in complete control of our government[.] You don’t see Trump ginning up AI videos of people celebrating the low cost of pantry staples. You don’t see Republican lawmakers on news shows bragging about how successfully they’ve driven down our grocery bills. Trump isn’t on Truth Social crowing about keeping America out of dumb, endless wars, because we’re stuck right in the middle of one with Iran, thanks to Trump. You don’t see Republicans gathering around the president to promote how much they’ve helped American farmers. That’s because Trump’s tariffs and now his new trade war with Canada have added dramatically to U.S. farmers’ economic woes. There are no AI-generated images of a winged Trump descending over a heartland farm and being greeted like he was heaven-sent.”

Instead, Trump posts fake AI slop and attacks polls that reveal his historic unpopularity. According to Huppke, “Trump's attack on polls shows he's desperate – and wounded. On Aug. 30, clearly upset by his pitiful polling numbers, Trump posted: ‘THE FAKE POLLS USED BY OUR CROOKED MEDIA ARE OUT OF CONTROL.’” But as Huppke notes, “Trump’s AI slop is fake. The polls are not.”

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Key voting group thinks Trump has 'gone too far' with his obsession

Over the course of his second term, President Donald Trump has spent huge amounts of time and tax dollars on his Washington D.C. vanity projects, and voters are sick of it. As the New York Times explained on Monday, one group that was vital to his reelection now thinks he’s “gone too far,” and “his obsession with remaking Washington might hurt his party politically.”

According to the Times, as the war has dragged on and the economy has soured, Trump has spent “the bulk of his working hours” fixated on projects like 250-foot-tall triumphal arch, the White House ballroom, the disastrous Reflecting Pool renovation, “assorted gilded gewgaws,” and the Kennedy Center, which he now says he will have destroyed if he doesn’t get his name added to the building. And as the Times notes, “These capital projects could cost well over a billion dollars, at significant taxpayer expense, despite White House claims to the contrary.”

And voters are not happy about it. According to the Times, in a recent poll, voters were asked “whether they thought Trump had gone too far, not far enough, or had been about right when it came to making changes to cultural institutions like the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian. Perhaps predictably.” 84 percent of Democrats said he had gone too far, while only 28 percent of Republicans agreed, which is to be expected. But tellingly, among independents, who were essential to Trump’s victory and will play a decisive role in the midterms, 63 percent said Trump had “gone too far.”

What’s more, “Asked whether Trump had gone too far when it came to pursuing his personal business interests while serving as president, 71 percent of independents agreed, as did 91 percent of Democrats and nearly a quarter of Republicans.” Fewer than one-quarter of independents agreed that Trump had placed the good of the country above his personal gain; 82 percent of independents said he hadn’t paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems.

“He was re-elected to do four things: bring down inflation, juice the economy, stop illegal immigration and get away from woke culture,” Whit Ayres, a Republican strategist, told the Times. Voters are giving him “very poor marks thus far on the first two,” he added. The message: “Voters care a lot more about what happens in their lives than what happens in his life.”

Since reentering office, Trump “has squandered what was always his superpower — people had more trust in him on the economy than they had in him as a person,” Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist, told the Times. In the midterms, he said, Democrats’ core indictment of Republican decision-making is that the party is ignoring voters’ concerns, as exemplified by a president “who knows the price of marble but doesn’t know the price of milk.”

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'Worst case scenario': Fox News warns of looming Trump disaster

On Monday, Fox News revealed that the GOP is becoming “nervous” at the prospect of a major Democratic victory in the midterms. Should the Democrats flip one or both chambers of Congress, warned host Stuart Varney, President Donald Trump’s agenda would be halted — and he may even be impeached.

“With just over two months to the midterms, the Republicans are getting nervous,” said Varney. “What if the Democrats win back control of Congress? Worst case: if the left takes the House and the Senate, no wonder the Republicans are nervous. A complete takeover would bring serious trouble to the president’s agenda.”

According to Varney, “A Democrat Congress would end the president’s ability to create new legislation. And he loses the power of the purse, so his policies would be undermined because Congress would refuse to fund his priorities. His foreign policy would also be challenged. Congress controls military spending and arms sales. Israel would likely be cut off. And the Pentagon would have no chance of a budget that meets its current needs. And what do you think the Democrats would do with the committees that they would now chair? They would set the agenda in every area of policy, from taxes to education to immigration. That is the worst case scenario: a full-scale political reversal.”

In Varney’s estimation, the blow to Republicans would be eased somewhat if they “just” lost control of the House. He argues that Trump could still push policy via executive action and negotiation, and that he could still rely on a Republican Senate. But the situation would still be bad for the GOP as “the House would still control the money, and they would be in a position to open a series of investigations designed to embarrass the administration, and hold it up. That could even mean firing up an impeachment.”

Varney’s warning to Republicans comes as a wave of polls suggest the Democrats will make major gains in the midterms as anger toward Trump’s spiraling war with Iran, disastrous economy, and corruption grows. Recent polls show Democrats with historically high leads, with surveys revealing that voters believe the party is better for the economy. At the same time, specific groups that were essential to Trump’s winning coalition in 2024 have been breaking away. For example, a new poll found that Gen Z voters — who were key to his election — hold the lowest support for Trump of any age group, with 31 percent who voted for him saying they regret their vote.

Facing numbers like these, Varney warns Republicans that the party has "got to be honest, and that means facing up to the consequences of losing.” If the Democrats flip Congress, says Varney, “Trump’s presidency will be stuck in lame-duck land. He will have taken Trumpism about as far as it can go under his leadership.”

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