The White House scrambled this week to delete a "damning" speech from President Donald Trump that was supposed to remain hidden, according to The New Republic, with the administration accidentally sharing it online for all to see.

Trump on Wednesday delivered remarks at a White House event commemorating Easter, which was supposed to be press-free, meaning that no videos of the address were meant to circulate publicly. Instead, a video of Trump's appearance was briefly shared on the official White House website before being swiftly deleted. This did not stop reporters like Bryan Metzger of Business Insider from sharing the video around anyway.

Such a slip-up might not have otherwise been a major deal, except that the contents of Trump's remarks contained several alarming and damning asides, according to The New Republic, including instances where the president blamed the cost of the Iran war for making free childcare impossible, claiming that it must be left to the states so that military spending can be prioritized.

“We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare," Trump said. "You got to let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it too. They should pay. They’ll have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. And we could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up. It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal [level]. We have to take care of one thing: military protection."

Speaking further on his controversial war, Trump chastised Americans for not having "the patience" to wait while the military takes control of Iran's oil.

"We could just take their oil. But, you know, I’m not sure that the people in our country have the patience to do that, which is unfortunate," Trump said. "You know, they want to see it end. If we stayed there, I, you know, I’d prefer just to take the oil. We could do it so easily. I would prefer that, but people in the country sort of say, ‘Just win, you’re winning so big. Just win, come home.'"

Trump also at one point touched on his White House ballroom project, which was halted this week by a federal judge's order. The president mused about how much easier such a thing would be if he were a king instead.

“I can’t get a ballroom approved. It’s pretty amazing, right?” Trump also said in the speech. “If I was a king, we’d be doing a lot more. I’m doing a lot, but I could be doing a lot more if I was a king.”

Less than a month out from the first ouster of a Cabinet member in his second term, President Donald Trump is seemingly prepping to throw another one under the bus, according to a new analysis from The New Republic.

Early last month, Trump announced his removal of Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary, after she reportedly angered him by suggesting he approved an expensive and controversial ad campaign. This was the first high-profile firing of his second term as president, which has been marked by a much more stubborn refusal to cut major officials when compared to his first.

In a piece published Thursday, The New Republic's Edith Olmstead argued that Trump appears to be preparing to throw his "number two," Vice President JD Vance, under the bus if a ceasefire deal cannot be reached with Iran. She highlighted an exchange between the two from an Easter luncheon on Wednesday, where Trump called

“He’s working on the deal, right? How’s that moving? Is it OK? The big deal?” Trump said.

“It’s going good, sir,” Vance said from the audience.

“Do you see that happening?” Trump pressed.

“We’re gonna brief you too,” Vance said.

“So, if it doesn’t happen, I’m blaming JD Vance. If it does happen, I’m taking full credit,” Trump responded. “No, I think it’ll be uh. I think it has to happen. I think they’re desperate."

Despite Trump's suggestion, Olmstead noted that there is little indication that Iran is actually "desperate" for an end to the conflict. Citing a recent New York Times report, she wrote that the country "believes it is still in a strong position and is not currently willing to engage in substantial negotiations to end the U.S. and Israel’s military onslaught." She also noted that Trump has been contradicting his repeated claims that all military objectives have been completed in Iran, given that he also said bombing will continue for at least a few more weeks.

Numerous reports have emerged since the start of the war in Iran, suggesting that Vance, a staunch isolationist, was among the voices closest to Trump most opposed to the conflict. Trump has also reportedly been attacking his likely 2028 successor over the stance, with Zeteo reporting that he has directed "snide, annoyed comments" towards the vice president due to his "skeptical" take on the war.

Marking the one-year anniversary of President Donald Trump's "Liberation Day" tariff announcement, analysts speaking to The Guardian suggested that he would have done less damage to the U.S. economy had he "spent the last 14 months on the golf course."

Despite being elected on the promise of tackling runaway high prices, Trump forged ahead early on in his presidency with a sweeping raft of new tariffs against nearly every country in the world. While he claimed that these new import taxes would be paid by other countries and bring vast new wealth to the country, numerous economists stressed that these new costs would be passed on to the end consumers of nearly every imported product, effectively representing a massive new tax on average consumers.

As The Guardian noted in a report on the anniversary on Thursday, "Investors quickly understood that chaos was an essential tool in Trump’s armory," with foreign investors pulling out of American assets as their value began to tank. Dario Perkins, the head of global research at the consultancy firm TS Lombard, told the outlet that it would be foolish to try and spin that sort of result as a win for the U.S. economy.

“If you think that discouraging investors from buying assets in the US is a victory, then you don’t believe in a growing economy,” Perkins said. “If it was possible for Trump to have spent the last 14 months on the golf course, we would be in a better place.”

While the U.S. is still the world's biggest economy despite Trump's chaos, another expert told The Guardian that the uncertainty has given investors pause when considering whether to do business within it.

“America is still home to the world’s largest economy and its reserve currency, as well as the globe’s largest equity and bond markets, but investors continue to reassess their exposure one year on from Liberation Day," Russ Mould, the investment director for the British stockbroker AJ Bell, explained.

Bryan Riley, the director of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation’s free trade initiative, was even more blunt and derisive of Trump's tariffs, arguing that they failed to even live up to the president's own vision for them.

“One year after Liberation Day, the evidence is in," Riley said. "Tariffs failed even by the Trump administration’s own terms. They did not shrink the trade deficit, did not revitalise manufacturing and did not help farmers. It would be a mistake to replace one set of failed tariffs with another.”

The Supreme Court recently ruled that the emergency authority Trump had been using to implement his Liberation Day tariffs without congressional approval was unlawful, forcing him to use other, much more limited authorities. While the average tariff rate has since shrunk considerably, it is still roughly twice as high as it was prior to Trump's return to the White House.

President Donald Trump's highly contentious White House ballroom plan hit a major roadblock when a judge ordered its construction halted this week, and according to a new report from Politico, Republicans with authority to help or hinder it are keeping their mouths shut, for now.

Trump raised significant alarms last year when he announced plans to add a massive, privately funded ballroom to the White House grounds, and went ahead with demolishing the landmark's historic East Wing to make way for it. He did so without any sort of official authorization, prompting a series of lawsuits aimed at halting the construction. On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled against the administration, stating that Trump could not move forward with the ballroom without "express authorization from Congress."

While Trump immediately raged against the ruling, according to a Thursday report from Politico, his Republican allies in Congress have so far either stayed quiet on the unpopular project or opted not to commit to any specific plans to support it. This includes "most Republicans who sit on committees with direct jurisdiction of White House and public property matters," who would be the ones responsible for putting forward "legislation to protect one of Trump’s top priorities."

"Doing so could put them in the crosshairs of Democrats, who have already made clear they think the ballroom is proof the president cares more about entertaining wealthy donors than passing policies to lower the costs of everyday goods — and who, in the Senate, have the ability to block any ballroom authorization measure from ever reaching Trump’s desk," Politico explained.

“This is a very clear test of Republican priorities,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement. “They can either bring up the Senate-passed bill to end the DHS shutdown… or they can bring up a bill to give President Trump permission to build his $350 million ballroom to host his billionaire friends.”

While some Republican lawmakers have defended Trump's ballroom plans, according to Politico, they are now "privately" suggesting that they do not need to get involved in it, "given it’s an ongoing legal battle and lawmakers already have a full plate of issues to attend to in the immediate future."

Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, the GOP chairs for the House Natural Resources Committee and the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, which "are responsible for authorizing projects on land operated by the National Park Service," ignored Politico's request for comment on Trump's ballroom. The office of Rep. Mike Simpson, an Idaho Republican and chair of the House funding panel that handles the Interior Department, told the outlet that "funding for the White House project was not in his purview."

"Spokespeople for the chairs of the House and Senate appropriations subcommittees with jurisdiction over the Executive Office of the President also did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday," the report continued. "Democrats have made prior, unsuccessful efforts to explicitly ban money from going toward ballroom construction as part of the appropriations process. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), a staunch Trump ally who has previously proposed adding Trump’s face to Mount Rushmore, said in a text message Wednesday he was unaware of moves by any of his GOP colleagues to introduce legislation that would authorize ballroom construction."

President Donald Trump and the GOP are widely expected to take some bruising losses in the 2026 midterms amid their tanking policy, but according to a new report from NOTUS, they retain one "unprecedented" advantage that is "keeping Democrats up at night."

In a report published Thursday morning, NOTUS revealed that, though voters have turned on Republicans to a major degree under Trump, the party still has a massive "cash advantage" over the Democrats, and one which is still growing. Mike Smith, president of the House Majority PAC, a committee affiliated with House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, warned that the degree to which the GOP holds this advantage has not sunk in with people yet and suggested that it could be enough to swing certain races.

“I don’t think it has broken through, the level of money that Donald Trump and Republicans are sitting on as it compares to Democrats,” Smith warned. “I don’t think there’s a comprehensive understanding of both the level of disparity and what that could mean in terms of us being able to win the House."

He added further, "It’s a real concern, and I think it could definitely swing the election. It could definitely swing House races.”

The exact amount that the GOP has in its war chest compared to the opposition is not known, but one anonymous Democratic strategist estimated that the difference might be as high as $500 million. This "unprecedented" level of fundraising has been "driven by Trump-backed super PACs, wealthy special interests and the Republican National Committee," with the RNC in particular boasting $100 million more in funding than the Democratic National Committee.

Trump's personal PAC, MAGA Inc., has also been funneling huge sums of cash into GOP races from its own $312 million in cash-on-hand. NOTUS reported that this PAC's fundraising has seen major contributions from "Artificial intelligence executives, cryptocurrency moguls and other donors who have little or no history of federal political contributions."

The exact amount that MAGA Inc. plans to spend on the midterms is being kept a secret for the time being. Democrats are said to be majorly concerned about the spending disadvantaged, especially because, as NOTUS highlighted, they held the advantage in the last midterms when Trump was in power from 2018, when they made historic gains and flipped the House majority.

“Trump’s money advantage is one of the biggest differences from 2018,” Jesse Ferguson, a veteran Democratic strategist, said. “And one of the biggest things that should be keeping Democrats up at night.”

President Donald Trump continues to face waves of boos at public appearances, but as The Daily Beast noted in a new report, the White House has been "busted using a sneaky trick" to try to hide this fact online.

Trump most recently made an appearance alongside First Lady Melania Trump for the opening night of the musical, Chicago, on Tuesday at the Kennedy Center, which he has been relentlessly trying to reshape after his own image by unofficially adding his name to it and shuttering it for two years to make way for renovations.

While some cheers could be heard as Trump waved to the crowd, The Daily Beast noted that "loud jeers punctuated the cheers as he took his seat." The report also cited a tweet from a reporter with the conservative outlet The Daily Caller, who claimed that there were "Some boos, but the crowd drowned them out with more cheers."

"However, in [reporter Reagan] Reese’s video the boos and jeering were much more evident," The Daily Beast explained. "It appears that there were two warring factions, with the cheering camp trying to drown out those who were booing."

When a clip of the moment was shared to X by the White House's official "Rapid Response 47" account, the crowd reaction "sounded much more jovial than in other clips from the evening," suggesting that the video was edited to alter the sound, removing the boos and adding more cheers.

The report highlighted another example of a Trump ally attempting to spin the crowd reaction, with "MAGA journalist" Eric Daugherty offering an even more hyperbolic take in a post to X, claiming that the audience "ABSOLUTELY ERUPTED” when Trump entered alongside the first lady.

“The man of the hour everywhere he goes,” he wrote.

The video he shared, however, sounded similar to Reese's, with boos drowning out any cheers that could be heard.

A report about the situation from Mediaite called it "a Rorschach test, as several clips of the entrance circulated on social media and users offered their own takes on the reaction." The outlet highlighted a post from Patriot Takes, a notable left-wing account, which observed simply, "Trump getting booed at the Kennedy Center tonight."

New polling from CNN this week signaled a "flashing red light" warning to all Republicans seeking reelection in the midterms, as Trump's approval cratered to new lows.

The economy remains the number one issue on the minds of voters for the upcoming midterm elections, with survey after survey indicating that concerns about affordability and the cost of living are still dominating their minds. Despite getting reelected in 2024 to address runaway inflation, Trump has done little to combat costs and has, in fact, done more to actively make things worse with his sweeping tariffs and war with Iran.

In a new poll released Wednesday morning, CNN found these persistent issues coming home to roost, with Trump's overall approval on the economy cratering to a "career low" of 31 percent, with the other 69 percent indicating that they believe things have gotten worse economically on his watch. The outlet described these results as "reflecting growing pessimism among Americans over the issue they consistently describe as the most important."

"Roughly two-thirds of Americans say Trump’s policies have worsened economic conditions in the US, up 10 points since January," CNN's report explained. "Just 27 percent say they approve of Trump’s handling of inflation, down from 44 percent one year ago."

In a post to X sharing these new results, CNN's chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju compared them to past polls, showing Trump's approval on the economy crashing from a high of 40 percent in July of last year.

John Bresnahan, the co-founder of Punchbowl News, chimed in with a response to Raju, predicting that these new numbers portend doom for incumbent Republicans looking to cling to their seats.

"This is a flashing red light for every GOP incumbent," Bresnahan posted.

Sarah Longwell, publisher of the anti-Trump conservative site, The Bulwark, and a Republican polling expert, also responded to Raju's post, adding that anxiety about the economy had been dominating her own focus groups with voters, and noted that the GOP is running out of time to fix the problem.

"In every focus group I conduct, most voters’ views on the economy are extremely grim," Longwell posted. "The 'let’s wait and see' we heard so much of in 2025 has evaporated."

"Absolutely horrendous numbers for Republicans on the ballot this fall to deal with," journalist Chris Cillizza added in his own post. "Have to hope this is the bottom. But no signs it is."

"Many people are saying, with tears in their eyes, that he's powerfully and beautifully unifying the country like no one has ever seen before," anti-Trump attorney and congressional candidate George Conway added in his own post, taking a more mocking tone.

The U.K. has reportedly ceased a nearly century-long agreement to share intelligence with the U.S., according to inside sources who spoke with The i Paper, citing President Donald Trump's erratic and aggressive behavior, as well as his tendency towards "screwing over allies."

In a report published Wednesday, sources indicated to the outlet that the vital security relationship shared between the U.S. and the U.K. "has been plunged into uncertainty," in the wake of "Washington’s threats to Greenland, its ambition to interfere in European politics and public outrage over Britain’s refusal to join the US war with Iran." Trump's repeated insults towards Britain's past military engagements with the U.S. and "personal insults" towards Prime Minister Kier Starmer have also driven the decision.

The joint intelligence-sharing relationship between the U.S. and the U.K. dates back to 1941, with "the exchange of information on Japanese and German ciphers" prior to the former's official entry into World War II. Since then, the partnership, known as "Two Eyes," has evolved into "a cornerstone of the Western alliance, with intelligence and military officials working together to combat all manner of threats, from direct war to clandestine operations."

According to one source in the U.K. Foreign Office, Trump's desire for an "America First" agenda has turned into a habit of "screwing over allies," with no indication that he will change course anytime soon. In the face of this behavior, the source said that the U.K. "cannot trust" its longtime ally for the time being. The i Paper further cited another recent report from the Financial Times, which revealed that American officials are being asked to leave meetings within U.K. government departments whenever "sensitive information" is being discussed.

Another British intelligence official told The i Paper that the decision was "tit for tat," arguing that it only came in response to the "similar hostilities" perpetrated by the U.S. John Foreman, the former Defense Attaché for the U.K. to Russia, added that “trust once gone is hard to restore."

"If the U.S. aren’t willing to ensure that UK secrets remain classified, then restrictions will have to be put in place," Foreman said. "But [this is] hard when intelligence sharing is so deep and wide.”

A senior official with NATO also told the outlet that Trump's rhetoric earlier in the year about annexing Greenland was "creating tensions and distrust" between the U.S. and its longtime European allies, including the U.K.

“We used to get beers together, but now it’s really strange," the source said. "I have been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan side-by-side with Americans. This is very disruptive in a way that I have never thought of before because it is so unrealistic and surprising.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's bombastic and bloodthirsty rhetoric surrounding the war in Iran is sowing the seeds of "radical change" for the U.S. military, but according to a new analysis from Bloomberg, the approach contains all the hallmarks of military "incompetence" and could lead to "disaster," citing the warnings of a famed psychologist.

Writing for the outlet on Tuesday, military affairs columnist Tobin Harshaw warned that Hegseth's rhetoric should not be written off "as mere rhetoric," given his stated ambition to "reform" the military "for generations to come."

"Count me skeptical: Revolutions in training, equipment, tactics, personnel and organization occur over the long haul," Harshaw wrote. "The force that he and President Donald Trump have unleashed on Iran was forged decades ago, beginning with the post-Vietnam war reforms of the 1970s and President Ronald Reagan’s defense buildup of the ’80s. But Hegseth may be planting the seed for a radical change in one aspect of military behavior that doesn’t get enough attention: psychology. Broadly, armed forces take on a mentality shaped by their leaders. My concern is that the wrong one can lead to disaster."

Much of Harshaw's argument hinged on the writings of Norman F. Dixon, a British military veteran and psychologist, famed for his 1976 study titled. “On the Psychology of Military Incompetence." According to Harshaw, Dixon's writings ultimately warned that "military incompetence" emerged from two key failings: the belief that power trumps intelligence, and that education and intellectual rigor were "bad form."

It is that latter point about anti-intellectualism that Harshaw argued was prevalent within Hegseth's approach to reforming the U.S. military.

"For the second, there is Dixon’s warning about a 'cult of anti-intellectualism' — which brings us back to Hegseth’s most recent cultural jihad," he wrote. "For decades, the Pentagon has sent promising junior officers to elite universities to obtain graduate degrees, a practice the secretary banned last month on the grounds that they returned with 'heads full of globalist and radical ideologies that do not improve our fighting ranks.'"

Harshaw further highlighted several traits which Dixon linked to the spread of military incompetence, all of which, he argued, Hegseth "checks all the boxes" for: An equation of war with sport; resentment toward the inquisitiveness of war correspondents and the public about naval or military affairs; a cult of “anti-effeminacy”; “love of the frontal assault” and “natural distaste for defensive responses”; an obsession with “muscular Christianity”; and, an imperviousness to loss of life.

"Warfare has at its heart the paradox of waging both war and peace," Harshaw concluded. "This is why Dixon suggests that 'a tight rein on aggression is mandatory in a profession whose stock in trade and solution to most problems is physical violence.' Hegseth’s military will have no problem with aggression. The question is, will anybody be holding the reins?"

The New York Times editorial board on Tuesday tore into President Donald Trump for his corrupt and rapid-fire use of pardons, breaking down the "crime spree" that his recipients have gone on and the "mayhem" they have created as a result.

In the past, despite some questionable instances, presidents have generally strained to be careful about their use of pardons, fearing the "backlash" that could occur if a pardoned individual reoffended. For that reason and others, they have generally waited until the end of their time in office to issue pardons, to mitigate their exposure to any blowback. All of these principles, however, have gone out the window under Trump.

"President Trump has abandoned this approach. His self-serving pardons are so numerous that public attention cannot keep up with them," the NYT board explained. "It is a version of the strategy that his former adviser Steve Bannon has described as 'flood the zone': Do so much so fast that people cannot follow the consequences. He has created a veritable pardon industry, in which people with White House connections accept payments from wealthy convicts. Among those on whom he has bestowed freedom are dozens of people convicted of fraud."

Worst among this onslaught of pardons, the board argued, was Trump's blanket pardons for everyone who took part in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the results of which "have been disastrous."

"At least 12 of the pardoned rioters have since been charged with other serious crimes, including child molestation, assault, harassment, murder plots and charges related to a vicious dog attack," the board explained. "The outcome was predictable. Critics, including this board, had warned that Mr. Trump’s pardons would embolden the rioters by signaling that crime has no consequences. One does not have to be a criminologist to predict that people who commit a violent act and are absolved of any punishment might become repeat offenders."

The board broke down the crimes committed by each newly charged recipients of a Trump pardon, singling out four in particular who were already in prison or jail at the time the pardons came down.

Andrew Paul Johnson of Florida, for example, was sentenced to life in prison after molesting two 12-year-old children, reportedly offering them part of a potential Jan. 6 restitution payment in exchange for their silence. Jake Lang, meanwhile, was charged after destroying an ice sculpture outside the Minnesota state capitol and organizing an anti-Muslim rally in New York City "that turned violent," both within the last two months. Zachary Alam, "among the first to enter the Capitol building from its west lawn" during the Jan. 6 attack, was arrested and charged after allegedly breaking into a Virginina home to steal a diamond necklace and tablet computer.

Finally, Enrique Tario, founder of the far-right group, The Proud Boys, "scuffled with protesters at a news conference and was briefly detained on assault charges, a month after Mr. Trump freed him from a 22-year prison sentence." Tario's was among the harshest sentences connected to Jan. 6, given the part he played in organizing it.

The NYT concluded with a plea for Trump and the GOP to be held accountable for these pardons in the upcoming midterms.

"The Jan. 6 pardons undermined the law, and they undermined public order," the board wrote. "They were an affront to police officers everywhere. Mr. Trump has a constitutional right to pardon whom he chooses. The rest of us have a right to hold him and his enablers responsible for their actions."

An unflattering photo of Trump Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was pulled from circulation this week, per a report from Status, after the White House made its displeasure known.

While the report about its removal first emerged on Tuesday, the photo itself dates back to a press briefing in late November, just before Thanksgiving. During the meeting with reporters and photographers, Leavitt entered the room holding her young son, Nicholas, and introduced a turkey named Waddle, who would be taking part in the traditional turkey pardoning ceremony with President Donald Trump. This prompted a playful round of questioning — “Waddle, why are you getting a pardon? What did you do wrong?” — and flurry of photographs.

"Among those many pictures of the Thanksgiving spectacle was one in particular that incensed the White House — setting off a remarkable chain of events, with the image ultimately being pulled from the AFP and Getty Images wire photo libraries..." Status explained in its report.

The photo in question, taken by AFP photographer Andrew Caballero-Reynolds, was shot from a low angle and features Leavitt smiling as she holds her son. Waddle the turkey can be seen, slightly blurry in the foreground. Available reports on the situation have not clarified what about the photo prompted Leavitt and the White House to lash out against it as "unflattering."

Whatever motivated the displeasure, the White House eventually reached out to AFP, which confirmed to Status that it was "made aware" that the administration was unhappy with the photo and removed it from circulation. This also resulted in it automatically being removed from Getty Images.

AFP’s director of brand and communications, Grégoire Lemarchand, stressed that the decision to remove the photo was "an internal editorial one, based on our standard quality and selection criteria," and that there was no pressure from the White House to do so, despite its unhappiness over the snapshot of Leavitt.

“During high-volume events like White House briefings, our desk often receives a large influx of photos directly from the photographer’s camera, which are moved quickly by the editor on duty to ensure timely delivery,” Lemarchand told Status.

This marks the second recent incident in which a prominent member of the Trump administration reportedly lashed out at an unflattering photo. Earlier this month, photographers were barred from attending Pentagon press briefings, allegedly as a reaction to photos of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that he was unhappy with.

Republicans in the House and Senate are taking shots at each other as a new civil war erupts with the party over a new funding bill, per The Hill, with lawmakers descending into "bitterness" and "bickering" with no deal in sight.

In a report from Tuesday morning, The Hill detailed how the two GOP-controlled chambers of Congress are stuck "in a battle over how to move forward with funding the Department of Homeland Security" amid a contentious ongoing shutdown, with each chamber taking "diametrically opposed paths" to solve the problem.

The department has been enduring a shutdown after Democrats refused to pass a new funding bill without major reforms to rein in ICE and CBP agents. As airports became choked by massive security lines due to TSA agents not getting paid, pressure mounted to find a funding solution, with Republicans blocking multiple attempts by Democrats to fund just non-immigration portions of DHS.

Last week, however, Republicans in the Senate finally backed a partial DHS funding bill along those parameters, pledging to pursue ICE and CBP funding via an eventual reconciliation bill. In response, the House GOP revolted, rejecting the new bill "outright," according to The Hill. Speaking with the outlet, Brian Darling, a GOP strategist and former Senate aide, accused the chamber of “trying to bully the House into passing something they don’t want to pass.”

“It was a last-minute [bill] that they passed in three in the morning through [unanimous consent] and threw it over to the House, expecting that the House would have no choice but to pass the bill and the House said no,” Darling said.

The House, in response to that new bill, passed their own effort, an eight-week stopgap bill that funds all of DHS, but The Hill noted that this will be "dead on arrival with Senate Democrats."

“The Republicans are not going to be part of any effort to reopen our borders or to stop immigration enforcement,” House Speaker Mike Johnson raged at a press conference Friday. “The Senate Democrats have foisted upon this appropriations practice their radical and crazy agenda. They want to reopen the borders and they want to stop the deportation of dangerous criminal illegal aliens.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, meanwhile, shot down the possibility of using reconciliation to fund all of DHS by a simple majority, something he said would become complicated and eat up valuable time.

"One of the reasons I think it was important to get these other agencies funded here is if you try to do it all in reconciliation it implicates a lot of committees of jurisdiction and any time you draw more committees in it gets a lot more complicated," he explained.

Darling explained that the breakdown between the House and Senate is being driven in part by their hugely different expectations for the midterms.

“Thune and Johnson are definitely on different pages,” Darling said. “The House is in grave danger of flipping to the Democrats. The Senate is not as much. It’s very hard for Democrats to take the Senate. It’s possible but it’s much harder. It’s an uphill battle for Democrats to do that."

Because of those expectations, he noted that GOP senators "are taking a more cautious and pragmatic approach to the Homeland Security funding fight while House Republicans, with their majority in grave peril, are digging in and fighting."

Brenda Carr, head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under President Donald Trump, "said the quiet part out loud" during a recent discussion of the MAGA takeover of mass media at CPAC, per a new analysis from MS NOW.

Writing in a piece published Tuesday, MS NOW senior editor Anthony L. Fisher said that Carr "may be the most try-hard" out of all the "sycophants" in Trump's orbit, something he lived down to while speaking at last week's CPAC in Texas, where he "unwittingly admitted that the administration’s goal is the Orbanization of America, and that he takes pride in trying to make that happen." Fisher made reference to the far-right Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, whose consolidation of power was infamously helped along by wealthy allies acquiring media outlets and squashing negative coverage.

Carr brought up various examples of longstanding news outlets either getting their funding slashed or coming under the control of Trump's conservative allies, with Fisher noting that "because Carr is arguably the most eager-to-please attack poodle in Trump’s kennel, he couldn’t help but reveal what MAGA considers 'winning.'"

“Look at the results so far. PBS defunded. NPR defunded,” Carr said. “[Stephen] Colbert is leaving. CBS is under new ownership. And soon enough, CNN is going to have new ownership as well.”

"It’s obvious why Carr, a hyperpartisan culture warrior, would consider these 'wins,'" Fisher wrote. "And his assessment matches the zero-sum Trump worldview: Somebody wins, somebody loses. Still, a more savvy player would have hidden the ball a little better. The defunding of PBS and NPR were done for nakedly political purposes (Trump’s executive order was literally called 'Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media'), but in crediting Trump for the upheaval at CBS and CNN, Carr blew off the flimsy facade that the changes were strictly made for business and journalistic reasons."

By way of acquisitions of their parent companies, Paramount and Warner Bros., both CBS News and, in the near future, CNN, have come under the control of Skydance's David Ellison, the son of ultra-wealthy Trump donor Larry Ellison. While Ellison has insisted that CNN will remain independent under his ownership, evidence strongly suggests the opposite. Editorial control of CBS News was handed off to right-wing commentator Bari Weiss after its Ellison takeover, with the ensuing changes pushing the network in a more MAGA-friendly direction — and sending ratings into a freefall.

In addition to Carr, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has also recently suggested that CNN will be forced into a more Trump-friendly direction under its impending new ownership as well.

Homeland Security staffers are not done attacking their disgraced ex-boss, Kristi Noem. Speaking with The Daily Beast for a new report, "top officials" revealed that they were driven "to extremes" to try and hide their conversations from the former secretary, revealing that an overtly "toxic" environment led many to fear they were being watched.

According to "one experienced staffer," Noem and her informal lieutenant, Corey Lewandowski, created the "most toxic" work environment they had ever experienced at DHS's headquarters in Washington, D.C., riddled with "distrust, abuse, and corruption." Because of this, sources revealed how "top ICE bosses" took extreme measures "to mask their private discussions, amid fears they were being monitored."

These measures involved the use of a high-tech "sound machine" gadget, which the outlet likened to a piece of espionage out of a James Bond film.

"The contraptions create certain noises that protect sensitive conversations by preventing eavesdropping or recording," the Daily Beast explained in its report.

This tactic was particularly prevalent during the early days of Noem's tenure with the agency, when the fears about surveillance were high.

The Daily Beast noted that these revelations from their sources match up with a Washington Examiner report from last week, which revealed that CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott resorted to using special "Faraday bags," which use metal linings to block electromagnetic signals, to shield his electronics from surveillance. Scott was reported to be targeted by Noem and Lewandowski, who wanted him gone, leaving him in a highly "paranoid" state of mind.

“I had never seen that outside of the intel community, where somebody’s putting their phones in a bag so they’re not emanating and can’t be monitored,” an anonymous source told the Examiner. “I went ahead and put my phone in the bag, and that’s when we had the conversation.”

"As the Daily Beast has reported, insiders said the 'knives were out' for Noem and Lewandowski after their ousting, with questions swirling around the contracting scandal that helped topple them and has sparked a civil war between DHS and the White House," the report added. "Lewandowski has been accused of directing massive DHS contracts to companies owned by his allies and making requests for firms to pay him as a consultant in order to secure them. Lewandowski denies the claims."

President Donald Trump's signs of mental and physical decline are becoming more pronounced as time goes on, and according to a new analysis published by The Guardian, his same level of degradation might lead a family to "take away his car keys" if he were a normal person and not the leader of the free world.

Trump will be the oldest person to ever hold the office by the time his second term wraps up, and while voters ultimately preferred him to the slightly older Joe Biden in 2024, they are now starting to express the same concerns about his advanced age as his behaviors become more erratic and his stamina seems to flag. Writing for The Guardian on Monday, columnist Gaby Hinsliff noted his worsening tendency to get sidetracked while talking, including his recent interruption of a cabinet meeting to talk about Sharpies and his baffling decision to make a Pearl Harbor joke while meeting with the prime minister of Japan.

Concerns about his physical health are also growing, given how often he has been caught falling asleep during televised meetings and the frequency with which he seems to be getting neurological exams. Hinsliff cited findings from a Reuters-Ipsos poll showing that the American people are concerned about his state, with "61 percent of Americans... [thinking] their president has become more erratic with age and... 56 percent... don't think he has the mental sharpness now to deal with challenges."

"It’s strange that this has become a subject seemingly too delicate to discuss in public, given what is at stake," Hinsliff wrote. "Though the US has checks and balances to stop a president veering off piste, none seem iron-clad. The ultimate backstop is the requirement to seek Congress’s approval before declaring war, which could yet end this conflict and prevent others in future, perhaps over Greenland or Cuba."

The main levers in place to keep a president from making erratic decisions or from succumbing to the realities of age, Hinsliff suggested, are not likely to do much good against Trump. The GOP-led Congress has largely given up any pretense of blocking Trump's whims in any meaningful way, while the 25th Amendment — a tool that could allow Trump's cabinet to remove him for being unfit to carry out his responsibilities — is also a pipe dream, given how little it has ever been used with the president's consent.

Some of this unwillingness to respond to Trump's decline could be down to fear of retaliation from him or his allies. However, Hinsliff also argued that it could be driven by "the ferocious loyalty and protectiveness, even love, that longtime service in political trenches breeds," likening the situation to what adults go through when their parents show signs of fading health.

"If you are reading this as the son or daughter of elderly parents whose memories have begun to falter, you will know how long it often takes from the first uneasy gut feeling that something has changed to what might ultimately lead to a conclusive medical diagnosis – and how many sleepless nights lie in between," Hinsliff wrote. "Should they really be driving still, or have they become a danger to everyone on the road? Is it safe for them to manage their own money, or is it time to have an awkward conversation about powers of attorney? The fear of barging in too early, causing a hurt and outraged octogenarian to dig their heels in, clashes with the guilt of knowing that it will be your fault if they run someone over while you’re still agonising over taking away the car keys."

She concluded: "But it’s precisely to override such emotional dilemmas that, in the case of political leaders, constitutional safeguards exist. For without them, we’re all potentially just passengers in some superpower’s speeding truck: watching helplessly from the back seat as the driver weaves all over the road, and wondering just how close we have to get to crashing before someone speaks up."

President Donald Trump has made a habit of belittling the deaths of his perceived enemies, reaching a new low after the passing of Robert Mueller, and according to a new analysis published by the New York Times, this ugly habit formed because he "needs desperately to feel superior," while also helping drive his overall war against "decency."

Writing for the Times on Monday, veteran reporter and columnist Frank Bruni highlighted Trump's reaction over the years to the deaths of Mueller, Sen. John McCain and former Secretary of State Colin Powell. In these particular reactions, beyond their opposition to Trump in life, he argued that a key throughline exists in each man's history of military service, for which they each received Purple Hearts for their injuries. This service and sacrifice, Bruni explained, is something that Trump is both unable to truly understand and desperate to "feel superior" against.

"Is Trump shamed by their examples? He’s surely baffled by their choices," Bruni wrote. "Trump wouldn’t risk a paper cut unless there were a multimillion-dollar payoff on the far side of the nick. And he has privately referred to Americans killed in wars as 'suckers' for having put their lives on the line, according to reports — which he has called 'fake news' — by several news organizations. It’s as if he needs desperately to feel superior to those soldiers, to cast their strength as weakness, their courage as folly, lest his own cowardice be exposed. And so he disparaged McCain, Powell and Mueller, talking smack about them even (especially?) when they could no longer talk back."

Bruni argued further that Trump's tendency to speak ill of his enemies in death is part of a broader scheme to make the American public "inured to his offenses," which would, in turn, allow him to more effectively avoid consequences for his abhorrent words and actions.

"He wants to degrade us — he wants to degrade everything — because he’s a more fitting ruler with freer rein if his kingdom has been leached of all decency," Bruni suggested.

He further accused Trump of being a "hypocrite," given how intensely his administration and supporters went after "any stray whisper of the uglier parts of [far-right activist] Charlie Kirk’s legacy" after his death, while also keeping quiet about the president's own "sadism."

"All of that they recast as boldness. Or they claim that it’s harmless: It’s just Trump being Trump," Bruni concluded. "It’s a presidential perk, like winged swag from Qatar, a tacky ballroom and incompetent underlings. No. It’s more than that, and it’s worse than that. It’s a retreat from empathy, generosity, kindness. And it’s telling. The way we respond to death says everything about who we are. If we can’t extend the dead a bit of grace, it’s because we’re graceless."

The GOP-led Congress has entered a spring recess, and in a new piece for The Bulwark, prominent anti-Trump conservative William Kristol tore into the party for dodging responsibility to rein in the president's spiraling war in Iran, accusing them of abandoning the country "precisely when Congress most needs to step up."

President Donald Trump and Israel's joint military campaign against Iran is reaching the start of its second month, having so far failed to unseat the hardline regime leading the Iranian government and prompting a historically massive energy supply crisis due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Despite Trump's insistence that the war has essentially been won, the conflict shows no signs of stopping, with the Pentagon reportedly deploying more and more troops to the region and planning to request $200 billion in additional funding.

As Kristol explained in his piece from Monday, the Constitution allotted Congress the authority to declare wars, which it has not done in the case of Iran, despite the administration's claim that it is not actually a proper "war." Instead of weighing in on the conflict one way or the other, GOP leadership in the House and Senate has consistently avoided the issue, with each chamber now entering a weeks-long spring recess.

"Congress is in recess. Until mid-April," Kristol explained. "Why not? So far, the Republican majority that controls Congress has blocked it from exercising its authority over matters of war and peace. We’re a month into the war and we haven’t even had public hearings, with testimony and questioning of administration officials. Democrats’ attempts to invoke congressional power and their pleas for congressional oversight have been waved aside."

Writing further, Kristol tore into Congress for avoiding making a key vote on authorizing or blocking Trump's war powers, failing even to hold hearings on the matter that might better inform the public about the ongoing conflict. He argued that a time when the president and his executive branch are "eager to ignore Congress is precisely when Congress most needs to step up."

"Democratic members of Congress — even if joined by a few constitutional Republicans — may not be able to stop Trump," Kirstol concluded. "They may not even be able to get Congress to reconvene urgently. But they may be able to raise enough of an outcry to deter Trump from deploying ground troops, which would itself be a service to the nation. In any case, our elected officials have an obligation not to sit by while a wannabe King plunges us deeper into an unwise and unconstitutional war."

A newly released memo this week revealed suspicions that President Donald Trump illegally retained classified documents in order to profit from them, but according to new sources who spoke to MS NOW, the reason might have actually been something simpler, and more childish: his own ego.

MS NOW previously reported on the memo from Special Counsel Jack Smith's team suggesting Trump had a profit motive for retaining those documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort after leaving the White House the first time. The memo contained a progress report on the ongoing federal investigation against Trump from Jan. 2023 and did not divulge which specific business interests were involved in the supposed motive.

On Friday, MS NOW published a follow-up report on Friday, noting that despite those initial suspicions, "Smith and his team later concluded they could not prove this was his motive." As of a few months after that progress report, evidence was quietly being presented to a Florida grand jury, and "Smith and his prosecutors determined their clearest conclusion was that Trump kept the records out of an egotistical belief that he should be allowed to keep them," two people familiar with the case told the outlet, also adding that Trump was particularly fixated on the classified materials because he thought they were "cool."

"But after copious work by Smith’s team, the people said, prosecutors increasingly believed the most they could prove was that Trump erroneously believed he should be allowed to keep any record he wanted and some of the documents were simply 'cool,'" MS NOW's report explained. "For example, investigators were surprised to learn Trump asked his briefers if he could keep the leather-bound covers of some of his classified briefings that carried the embossed title, 'The President,' according to one person familiar with the finding."

As MS NOW noted in its report, Smith and his team did not necessarily need to establish any motive in order to convict Trump and his associates of mishandling classified documents. Nevertheless, the team was said to be "laser-focused" on establishing it anyway, so that it could be presented to a jury at trial.

The memo that the outlet previously reported on gained significant attention this week after it was cited by Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin in a letter to Pam Bondi, arguing that it "reveals a President of the United States who may have sold out our national security to enrich himself."

"The memo was written in Smith’s early days in office to prepare Smith to brief then-Attorney General Merrick Garland on the investigation’s progress. The memo said the briefing was scheduled for Jan. 13, 2023," MS NOW explained further. "Smith’s team planned to update the attorney general on investigative steps they took, meetings they had with FBI supervisors in the Washington field office and the priority investigative tasks they later gave the investigators."

Though it's unclear if Florida can once again become a swing state, Republicans have "a lot of nervousness," while Democrats are feeling newly energized after the results of another election in President Donald Trump's own backyard, per a new report from The Hill.

On Tuesday, Democrat Emily Gregory won a state legislative district in Florida, besting the Trump-endorsed Republican Jon Maples and flipping the seat in the process. The Democratic Party had put considerable effort into the race, given that the district encompasses the part of Palm Beach County where Trump's Mar-a-Lago is located. While the area is more politically purple than many parts of Florida, it was still a district previously held by a Republican, and which Trump won handily in 2024.

This race represents the latest in a growing string of elections wherein Democrats have pulled off major victories or come much closer to winning than anyone could have anticipated. Party leaders say this trend is a sign that voters are fed up with Trump's leadership and the GOP overall, and that the midterms will see serious gains in the upcoming midterms.

Gregory's win has also given Democrats a much-needed dose of optimism about the future chances to be competitive in Florida again. While it was once viewed as a swing state, ever since 2016, Florida's major statewide election results have consistently favored Republicans. Speaking with The Hill Friday, some in the party stressed that the state is not becoming purple again anytime soon, but the latest Democratic win has emphasized their "nervousness."

“There’s a lot of nervousness among Republicans with the fact that he’s so underwater with only seven months to go for the midterms because they’re on the ballot,” an anonymous former Trump campaign adviser told the outlet. “He’s not.”

They added: “There’s no real chance of losing the state, let’s say at the governor level. Florida is such a red state right now, has gone that way in the last 10 years that it’s hard to see Florida… even turning purple again.”

Despite that prediction, the former adviser admitted that Gregory's win was "a sign of unpopularity" for Trump and the GOP.

Fernand Amandi is a Democratic strategist currently working on the Florida gubernatorial campaign of David Jolly, a former Republican congressman now running as a Democrat. He told The Hill that Gregory's win left some "indisputable" takeaways.

"The reason is that we are now seeing in Florida what is happening everywhere else across the country, which is a double-digit Democratic over-performance in every single election since Donald Trump has retaken the presidency," Amandi said. "It doesn’t mean that Florida is now a purple state or a blue state, but it does mean for the first time, I think since 2018, you can start to now say that Florida is back in play."

Tensions are flaring and major divisions are forming within the White House over President Donald Trump's comments about how the war in Iran has already been won, according to a new report from MS NOW, with insider sources revealing that he is "getting a little bored with" the war he started.

Speaking with MS NOW for a report published Friday morning, sources within the White House expressed frustration over the contradictions in Trump's handling of the Iran conflict, with him both declaring victory early and ordering the deployment of thousands of new troops to the Middle East, all while the Pentagon plans to request billions in funding. The insiders described the president's communications as "confusing, internally inconsistent and increasingly detached from battlefield reality."

"It’s part [of Trump] just wanting to declare victory and move on," one senior White House official told MS NOW, adding that the president's claims about the war being won are "mostly hyperbole."

The official continued: "[Trump] is getting a little bored with Iran. Not that he regrets it or something — he’s just bored and wants to move on."

Another White House official said that Trump is eager to "move on" from the conflict he started with Israel and focus on domestic issues like the economy, which are certain to determine the outcome of the midterm elections in November. The war has resulted in a historically massive disruption in the global oil supply, sending gas prices into the stratosphere and tanking one of the only affordability messages he might have been able to make.

Another source, a former Trump official, told MS NOW that the president is betting on his ability to convince the American people of his own lies. While that has worked for some issues in the past, the former official expressed doubt that he will be able to manage it again without real results.

"He has learned he can tell the American people his feeling, and — with enough time — the American people will accept his lie,” the former White House official explained. “Just telling us the war is won isn’t good enough. We need to see it; we need to feel it.”

Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican widely suspected of having aims on the 2028 presidential nomination, has continued to cause frustration among his congressional colleagues due to his obsession with an issue many of them see as repellent to voters, according to NOTUS.

Despite President Donald Trump's appointees being credited with overturning Roe v. Wade, he and many other members of the GOP have tried to avoid anti-abortion issues since the party drastically underperformed in the 2022 midterms, which was widely attributed to its abortion stances. While Trump has since returned to the White House and Republicans control both chambers of Congress, they have opted not to pursue much in the way of high-profile anti-abortion legislation in spite of their advantages, fearing more voter revolt.

One Republican lawmaker who has consistently bucked that trend is Hawley, who has made numerous moves in the past year to try and put a national spotlight on anti-abortion causes. Most recently, he put forward a bill that would ban Mifepristone, the drug used for medication abortions, at the federal level, with NOTUS reporting that the move has renewed frustrations from his conservative colleagues by reviving their "least favorite campaign issue."

"Not talking about abortion, they may think that’s a feature. I think that’s a bug,” Hawley told the outlet. “I’m pro-life. I want to do what I can to advance the pro-life cause.”

According to NOTUS's Thursday report, Democratic opposition means the bill is dead-on-arrival in the Senate, but even in the House, where Republicans still hold a razor-thin majority, some in the party have spoken out against Hawley for dredging up anti-abortion policies beyond the state level. Rep. Max Miller, an Ohio Republican in a district considered vulnerable in the upcoming midterms, spoke with the outlet about his view that abortion issues should remain a matter for the states.

“It’s my opinion that each and every Republican has to run their own race,” Miller said. “The state of Missouri is very much different from the state of Ohio... I respect his opinion. I am extremely pro-life and I’ve never been anything but pro-life. But I’m going to go ahead and stick with President Trump on this one and not the senator."

Rep. David Valadao of California, another Republican in the Democrats' midterm crosshairs, also expressed frustration about Hawley's priorities.

“I think what we should be focusing on right now is funding the government, get DHS back open, pass the farm bill, getting permitting reform done and working on things that actually make our economy better and make our country stronger,” Valadao said.

When pressed about whether or not the GOP should focus on abortion issues ahead of the midterms, Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, another lawmaker considered vulnerable to Democrats, said only, "No," with NOTUS noting that he smiled while giving the answer.