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President Donald Trump's return to the White House was once hailed as a shot in the arm to the global right-wing movement, but now, a report from Politico has revealed that he is becoming a lead weight on one of his biggest European allies.

Giorgia Meloni is an Italian politician often described as far-right with past connections to neo-fascist groups, and since 2022, she has been Italy's prime minister, making her one of the most prominent right-wing leaders in the world. She is also a staunch ally of Trump and his MAGA movement, no matter how unpopular he has become all across the world, particularly in Europe.

According to a new report from Politico, however, Trump's toxicity might finally be sinking in for Meloni, as "pressure builds" on her to cut ties with the American president to save her prime ministership ahead of Italy's elections next year. Meloni's support for Trump amid the disastrous Iran war is at the heart of the issue, per the report, as she "can no longer afford" the price of loyalty to the U.S., both politically and literally.

"[The] bills from the war in Iran are now coming due, and a weakening economy poses a grave threat to her electoral prospects in 2027," Politico explained. "Many Italian voters blame Trump for their households' soaring energy costs, and there is a growing political consensus that U.S. demands for increased military spending are simply unaffordable in Rome."

The report added: "Facing up to her domestic political and economic realities, the Italian leader has already started to pivot away from Trump, publicly criticizing him and blocking U.S. jets from access to an Italian airbase."

This pivot has, predictably, drawn a venomous reaction from Trump, who said in a phone interview from April that she was "no longer the same person" he once supported, after she criticized his attacks on Pope Leo XIV.

"I thought she was brave, but I was wrong," Trump said.

"But Meloni's big strategic headache is military spending — and it threatens to be the decisive make-or-break factor looming over the U.S.-Italian relationship," Politico continued. "Italy currently spends barely 2 percent of its economic output on defense, but Trump is pressing all NATO countries to raise that to 5 percent by 2035. Meloni has signed up to the 5 percent goal, but Italy's economy is creaking, and her opponents are quick to point out that Rome has more critical spending goals than Trump's demands for NATO."

Meloni's commitment to defense spending to appease Trump while her country suffers under skyrocketing energy costs "is becoming an increasingly tough sell."

"The NATO commitment to 5 percent is completely unrealistic for Italy," Antonio Misiani, a former deputy finance minister and a senator for Italy's center-left Democratic Party, told Politico. "For a year, Giorgia Meloni told us she was the bridge to Trump, but that bridge never existed, and now the chickens are coming home to roost."

President Donald Trump’s policy in trying to contain Ebola may get Americans killed, a former Secretary of State warned on Tuesday.

“As secretary of state, one of us saw firsthand how indispensable the U.S. was in arresting the epidemic,” former Secretary of State John Kerry wrote with his daughter, public health expert Dr. Vanessa Kerry, in a Wall Street Journal editorial. He had described how the Ebola virus had spread through West Africa in September 2014 and risked becoming a global pandemic. The dangerous pathogen is highly lethal, with an average case fatality rate of 50 percent. The common symptoms include fatigue and weakness, fever, sore throat, muscle and joint pain, severe headaches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain and internal hemorrhaging.

“As a physician and global health leader, the other has spent years helping countries strengthen the systems that stop outbreaks,” the two Kerrys added. “Today, another Ebola outbreak is unfolding in Central Africa. Absent a more competent response than we have seen, the outcome could be tragic.”

They added that the World Health Organization (WHO) has already declared a recent Ebola outbreak in the Congo as a “public health emergency of international concern,” with more than 1,000 suspected cases already on the record. Because the disease has since spread into Uganda, and is present in areas marked by poverty, armed conflict and displacement, authorities have struggled to contain it through contact tracing.

“In response to the 2014 epidemic, the U.S. led a historic international public-health mobilization,” the Kerrys wrote. “President Obama treated Ebola as a humanitarian emergency and a national-security priority. The strategy wasn’t simply to keep Ebola out of the U.S. but to stop transmission at the source.”

They added, “More than 3,500 U.S. personnel were deployed across West Africa. Dozens of ministerial-level entreaties by the State Department helped deliver contributions of medical personnel from the U.K. and allies across Europe. The U.S. put boots on the ground to build treatment centers and labs, train thousands of health workers, and support safe burial teams. Congress approved $5.4 billion in emergency funding. Coordinators at the State Department ensured that the Defense Department, Health and Human Services Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, CDC and international partners all worked together. Approximately 28,600 people were infected and more than 11,000 died, but hundreds of thousands of lives were spared because the U.S. and the international community acted decisively.”

By contrast, Trump’s implementation of Project 2025 has weakened the same systems that protected Americans from Ebola at the time.

“The dismantling of USAID; cuts to U.S. foreign assistance, vaccine initiatives, global health funding; and America’s withdrawal from the WHO have left major gaps in international disease surveillance and response,” the Kerrys wrote. In addition to Trump, the world’s richest man Elon Musk and vaccine denier Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were key to implementing some of those initiatives. Instead of using the past successful containment programs, Trump is instead implementing measures the Kerrys perceive as inadequate.

After elaborating on the numerous services that America used to provide and now cannot do, they concluded, “The administration still has time to change course and mobilize America’s scientific expertise, public-health capabilities and diplomatic leadership. The costs of waiting, in dollars and lives, are vastly greater than the costs of acting now.”

The Kerrys are not alone in criticizing Trump’s Ebola response. Speaking to AlterNet earlier this month, one of the nation’s top infectious disease experts also said that the president’s inadequate measures are putting Americans at risk.

“Travel bans are generally not effective for the control of infectious diseases,” Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease doctor and professor of medicine at the University of California–San Francisco, told AlterNet. “For instance, the Omicron variant was first discovered for COVID-19 in South Africa on November 26, 2021 and was here in San Francisco two days later because air travel is so frequent and SARS-CoV-2 can spread when asymptomatic.”

President Donald Trump has created such a strong political movement, some compare it to a cult. Yet on Tuesday Rick Wilson, the head of the anti-Trump Republican group The Lincoln Project, spoke with a former Trump supporter at a group called Leaving MAGA about how to deprogram Trumpers.

"And let me just open with my usual customary apology," Leaving MAGA founder Rich Logis told Wilson. "I would like to say that I'm sorry for my past support of Trump and MAGA. When I was in MAGA, the Lincoln Project was the devil — loathed and despised. And if I had met you when I was in MAGA, I would have said that you were an existential threat to our country."

Logis continued, "My journey really started in 2015. I was very politically disillusioned. I believed that the two parties had been the same — that they failed to represent most of the country, except for the wealthy and the powerful. I was unapologetically all in. I spoke to Trump groups. I donated to them. I was a sponsor. There was probably no one who was as devout a supporter of Trump and MAGA as I was.And born from that apology and recounting of my story was our organization, Leaving MAGA, which we founded as a new community — a new destination for people who are leaving MAGA, who are having doubts."

After Wilson gave Logis credit for realizing he was wrong about Trump, adding that that is difficult for many people to do, Logis predicted that many MAGA supporters will stick with the president no matter what.

"The fact is that MAGA, unfortunately, is going to remain, which I think makes our work at Leaving MAGA even more crucial," Logis said. "I believe that we're at the vanguard of trying to create this new community for people."

Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL), who also previously supported Trump, argued in February that Trump supporters lost the right to deny they are in a cult when they continued to back Trump despite his wars against Venezuela and Iran. Trump had run for president in 2024 claiming he would end all wars.

“I thought you wanted him to end wars all over the world,” Walsh said. “You said you wanted him to end American entanglement in conflicts and wars around the world. America shouldn’t be involved in these wars, you said. That’s why you’re voting for Trump, you said.” Then, despite Trump’s actions against Denmark, Venezuela and Iran, they still support him.

He added, “And you don’t like when people call you a cult, Trump voters?What else are people to think when you voted for Trump to get us the hell out of wars around the world, and instead he gets us involved in wars around the world and starts new wars, and you still sing his praises and support him? What are we to think, MAGA, but that you are a cult?”

The former congressman then concluded, “You’ve got no argument against people calling you a cult. And if he takes us to war against Iran, and you clap and applaud and throw him flowers, Trump supporters, I will be at the front of the parade calling you a cult.”

A bloc of voters once staunchly loyal to the Republican Party is being left "frustrated" by the pains of President Donald Trump's failures, and according to The Hill, they might be reaching their breaking point in the upcoming midterms.

As the outlet laid out in its Wednesday morning report, farmers in the Midwest have been hit brutally hard by Trump's economic policies and the fallout of his war with Iran, all of which have sent the cost of agricultural supplies into the stratosphere. These farmers have long been "a key GOP voting bloc," but amid these struggles, their loyalties could prove vital for deciding which party controls Congress.

" Trump was overwhelmingly backed by farmers in 2024 — winning all but 11 of 444 farming-dependent counties, as defined by the Department of Agriculture," The Hill explained. "But the president has seen a drop in support from farmers since taking office, with the latest Farm Futures Q1 survey showing confidence in the president down 10 points from the previous survey."

It added later: "Fertilizer prices have become a major concern, with 70 percent of farmers saying in a recent poll that they cannot afford all the fertilizer they need. At the same time, farm bankruptcies reached their highest level in six years this April, raising concerns that Trump’s policies could become a political liability for Republican candidates in key Midwestern states this November. Last year, Trump’s tariffs triggered retaliatory import taxes from many of the country’s largest trading partners, contributing to a sharp decline in U.S. exports. In Canada, one of the top two U.S. trade partners, consumers boycotted some American goods, and U.S. agricultural exports fell by more than $1 billion."

The Trump administration has made some efforts to try and ease these pains, announcing this week a temporary tariff rate cut for agricultural products, set to last through the end of 2027. In doing so, it quietly admitted that tariff costs are ultimately paid by American consumers and businesses, something that Trump has long insisted against.

Timothy Hagle, a political science professor at the University of Iowa, told The Hill that while some farmers were understanding about Trump's claim that the tariffs required some short-term pains to create long-term gains, it is becoming an increasingly tough pill for them to swallow.

“At a certain point,” Hagle said. “As a farmer, you probably can’t make that trade off anymore because you’ve got other things that become more pressing just for your own personal financial stability.”

Marc Short, an aide to former Vice President Mike Pence, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed cited by The Hill that the signs are everywhere for those who look that farmers are growing more and more distant from Trump, highlighting the specific example of "Make Our Farmers Great Again" hats disappearing from his campaign rallies. This trend, he warned, should not be ignored.

"But things are different now,” Short wrote. “President Trump’s trade policies have punched farmers in the mouth, and this time there’s no global pandemic to blame... Republicans who continue to ignore this reality do so at their peril."

Spencer Gear told a judge that he is not a killer by nature, despite his disturbing threats. He’d merely caught a virus, reports The New Republic.

“The 34-year-old Nevadan was sentenced to five years in prison Monday for threatening to murder federal judges who handled cases involving Trump and January 6ers,” reports TNR. “His messages, which were mostly delivered by way of phone calls between November 2023 and July 2024, were explicit: ‘This is a death threat,’ he told one victim. ‘I’ll spill your blood,’ and ‘You can’t do s—— to Donald Trump,’ Gear warned targets.

But TNR reports the seeming MAGA fanatic changed his tune as he sat across from the judge handling his criminal case Monday, pleading for mercy as he tried to walk back his violent promises.

“I’m embarrassed that I ever talked to people in such a manner,” Gear reportedly said, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “The republic cannot survive if we continue this path of political discourse.”

Gear claimed his brain had been infected by a “mind virus” from the internet and that the alleged disease had caused him to lash out at people he believed were going to destroy the country by, reported the Reno Gazette Journal. It did not matter that the people allegedly destroying the nation were judges overseeing the legal issues of Trump and his supporters.

This isn’t the first so-called attack from an internet head virus. Christian Zionists, say MAGA influencer Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, have been 'seized by this brain virus.'"

Billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk complained repeatedly of a “woke mind virus” threatening “modern civilization,” which he said prompted him to buy the social media platform now known as X.

The jury that convicted Gear of 20 counts, including nine counts of threatening a federal official and 11 counts of transmitting threats, appeared to have made no accommodations for Gear’s “virus.” His 5-year prison sentence will be followed by three years of supervised release.

Gear threatened to assault and murder public officials over a seven-month period before he was sentenced Monday by United States District Judge Jennifer A. Dorsey.

But while Gear is packed away, social observers warn the increasingly hostile political climate is showing no signs of abating, and some political scientists were worried about what that could mean for Americans in the near future, particularly after the assassination of far-right activist Charlie Kirk inflamed political tensions across the nation.

President Donald Trump has already built a reputation for defying court orders, but now Politico reports his top Homeland Security commander, Secretary Markwayne Mullin, repeatedly confirmed to senators on Tuesday that he, too, is loath to accept court decisions that he does not like.

“If we didn’t think courts were politicized, then I would probably be able to answer that,” Mullin said. “But we see courts over and over again that use their bench for their political opinion, not just the rule of law.”

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, the top Democrat on the panel that funds DHS, pointed out to Mullin that even Republican-appointed judges have accused the department of violating almost 100 court orders this year. Murphy added that the Trump administration’s noncompliance as the main factor fueling the ongoing partisan feud over DHS funding that led to the longest funding lapse in U.S. history this year.

“This is a really important discussion for us to have, because this is — whether you want to believe it or not — at the root of our disagreement,” Murphy told him, adding, “it is very hard for us to figure out how to fund an agency that is violating the law.”

Somehow, Mullin, a former Oklahoma Republican senator, argued that DHS “will never break the Constitution, and we’re not going to break the law,” despite claiming they will not follow court orders they don’t like.

Court judges have recently handed Trump a flurry of losses. A federal judge on Monday issued a temporary restraining order against the National Park Service, ordering it to not interfere with a group that had been flying an “8647” flag in Washington, D.C. Common restaurant slang for “eighty-six” goes back nearly a century, the judge noted, saying that it meant “to throw out” or “to get rid of.” He made no reference to Trump’s politicized DOJ lobbing investigations and indictments against Trump perceived enemy former FBI head James Comey for posting pictures of the same numbers with seashells on a beach.

Anther federal judge recently dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit seeking access to Arizona’s detailed voter registration records, dealing another blow to the Trump administration’s national effort to obtain expansive voter data. And still another judge recently ordered that Trump to remove his name from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and that he could not close it for what the Trump administration said were two years of renovations.

“[If] you look at the big constitutional suits against this administration — big separation-of-powers issues, big violations of law. There are hundreds of those cases, I think north of 700 in the courts, and the administration has been losing those 2-to-1 in the lower courts,” said Trump’s ex-security expert Miles Taylor on MS NOW.

The corporate media is brimming with headlines after acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was rushed to Capitol Hill to claim that the Trump administration will not move forward with a terrorist slush fund—$1.8 billion for January 6th insurrectionists and others.

“We’re not moving forward with the fund, period,” Blanche said to the House Appropriations Committee. But there are few details of how this will play out. And unlike the announcement of the so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” Blanche refused to put it in writing, nor does its demise appear on the DOJ website.

“You started it; you established it in writing, so it just makes sense to rescind it in writing,” New York Democratic Rep.Grace Meng told Blanche.

“I’m not committing to put anything in writing,” Blanche replied.

Are we really supposed to believe these people?

On top of that, Blanche confirmed that the part of the “settlement” in which Trump and his family get immunity from tax audits for dropping the $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, is staying. Let me remind you that none of the others among many wealthy people whose whose returns were leaked when Trump’s were leaked by an IRS contractor—during Trump’s first administration—got anything. Hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin sued the IRS and settled—for an apology, that’s it.

“Nothing has changed with that,” Blanche sad at the hearing regarding the Trump family’s immunity from audits for the rest of their lives, which is insane. President’s are routinely audited each year by the IRS. Trump is estimated to own $100 million under an ongoing audit. Now it disappears, even as his administration claims they’re not paying out the $1.8 billion to the domestic terrorists who attacked the Capitol and bludgeoned police officers.

It makes you wonder if that had been the plan all along. But I doubt it. Trump wanted this slush fund to create his own armed militia, looking toward the elections. And he’s going to have to find another way to do it. Don’t think he won’t try.

Still, it’s true that those of us opposed to the authoritarian regime had a big win, helping to raise the temperature enough on Trump’s terrorist slush fund to the point at which Republicans in the Senate came to see it as a liability.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he went to Trump and “made clear” that the $72 billion budget reconciliation package to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol through 2029 wasn’t going to pass unless Trump dropped the slush fund. Getting the ICE funding, even though ICE has lots of money from the big, bad bill, has been a priority, and keeping the agency shut down was hurting the regime’s efforts.

And when unnamed sources in the White House fed the media the story that Trump was dropping the slush fund, it wasn’t enough for Republicans in the Senate, knowing Democrats would still have impact in forcing the issue. So Blanche was hauled up to the House to say it publicly—even though he wouldn’t put it in writing—while Trump still hasn’t addressed it.

The Democrats executed a great strategy on the ICE funding bill. They blocked funding, forcing the GOP to try to pass the funding bill under budget reconciliation, a process that would only require 51 votes. And after Trump demanded his billion-dollar ballroom be added into the bill, the Senate parliamentarian ruled that Trump’s ballroom couldn’t be added. There weren’t enough votes for the ballroom anyway.

Democrats had planned to introduce amendments on the ballroom, but when that was dropped, they switched to the slush fund. It caused the GOP to go home for the holiday without taking the ICE funding vote, fearful of the amendments.

After two rulings by judges that dealt blows to the fund late last week, and after the blowback from the GOP, the White House began to cave. But Chuck Schumer said Democrats will still add amendments to the ICE funding bill. And they’re right to do so.

Those amendments need to say that the slush fund can never be brought back in any way, shape, or form. We can’t trust the word of this administration.

The New York Times reported before Blanche went to the hill that “some administration officials privately expressed relief” at the judicial rulings but then added, “As with all things involving Mr. Trump, he could still decide to reverse course, especially as he tracks media coverage of his decision.”

That’s an indication that Trump won’t let it be.

The Florida judge who reopened the lawsuit against the IRS that Trump claimed to have dropped, creating the “settlement” for the slush fund, will keep this in the news for a while as she seeks to determine if the administration engaged in “fraud.”

And the decision to keep the part of the deal that prevents Trump and his family from being audited is another massive disaster for the GOP heading into the midterms. Even if the courts stop it, Democrats will be able to use this against the GOP, showing that Trump is executing his power to protect himself and enrich himself, while everyday Americans are suffering.

Dispatch writer Nick Catoggio barely contains his disdain for the Republican Party’s confirmation of a slew of President Donald Trump nominees that they knew were bumbling idiots.

“Naively, lawmakers assumed that anyone nominated for a powerful position and confirmed by the Senate would necessarily have the competence and integrity to serve in another powerful position briefly, while a permanent appointee is chosen,” Catoggio complained. “That the president might nominate henchmen and that a compliant Senate might rubber-stamp them seems not to have occurred to them.”

It also didn’t seem to matter that people like law professor Jack Goldsmith warned in 2024 that Trump would “game the vacancy process” by arguing that any Senate-confirmed officer serving anywhere in the government can fill his or her position if the president desires, potentially for years.

“Confirming Bill Pulte — or Todd Blanche or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Pete Hegseth or Kash Patel — to any position effectively meant confirming them to every position, at least on a temporary basis,” spat Catoggio. “No matter: Every Senate Republican voted yes on Pulte’s nomination to the FHFA anyway.

Federal laws permits an acting director — no matter how bad — to remain in the job for up to 210 days, then for an additional 210 days if a nominee to replace him is rejected by the Senate, and then for another 210 days if a second nominee is rejected.

“In other words, Bill Pulte can lawfully hold the position of director of national intelligence for the rest of this year—and then for all of next year, provided that Trump is willing to nominate two unconfirmable putzes in succession to replace him,” Catoggio said, adding that the authors of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act didn’t anticipate an autocratic executive who so adores the word “acting” in front of a job title. This, said Catoggio, leaves the nation with an acting attorney general who seems “downright eager to commit impeachable offenses to show the boss how eager he is to stay on the job indefinitely and a new director of national intelligence who will doubtless behave the same way.”

“It’s a coincidence, I’m sure, that two positions with outsized potential for abuse in harassing the president’s critics are now held by two of the biggest Trump chuds in the government, neither of whom was approved by the Senate for their current jobs,” said Catoggio. “Just as it must be a coincidence that this is an election year and the White House clearly expects both the attorney general and the director of national intelligence to play influential roles in preventing, ahem, fraud at the polls this fall. In Bill Pulte, the president now has a figure who’ll wield that influence enthusiastically.”

This is Trump’s “middle finger” to a “Duma-fied Republican” Senate that is beginning to “resist his most loathsome impulses,” Catoggio said. “ … If the Senate GOP won’t make him happy, he’ll make himself happy by filling a key vacancy with a putrid loyalist appointment whom he surely knows they disdain.”

The GOP could amend the FVRA to prevent dirty appointments, provided they can find 20 Senate Republican votes “to override the inevitable Trump veto” But don’t get your hopes up, said Catoggio.

“The caucus of disgruntled GOP lame ducks, while big and growing, ain’t that big,” said Catoggio. “If there were 20 civic-minded conservatives in the chamber, the president would have been convicted and disqualified from holding future office five years ago.”

Catoggio also doubted the Senate GOP “has the stomach” to muster just four Republicans to join Democrats to roadblock Trump’s nominations and stall conservative judicial nominees and leave their fate to a Democratic Senate next year.

“Pulte will likely serve for as long as the president wants him to serve, and not a day less,” said Catoggio.

Former Republican speechwriter Tim Miller told MS NOW that there is a reason President Donald Trump keeps delegating so many jobs to so few lackeys. He says it’s all comes down to math.

Trump recently appointed Bill Pulte to oversee the entire national security apparatus of the United States. He will serve in the job while also remaining in his current job as Federal Housing Finance Agency Director. This will add to Pulte's other job as chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

But Miller said there’s a reason Trump keeps nominating lackeys and yes-men to multiple positions.

“I think there is something interesting about the fact that he's going to have three jobs and … their ability to investigate enemies and go after enemies is limitless,” said Miller — adding, however, that his work “might be limited by having the horses to do so.”

“And, like, the fact that they can't find enough stooges to do all these jobs is the tiniest silver lining here, said Miller. “I expect that we'll start to hear more leaks out of DNI, and that there's some remaining people that are legitimate public service folks that's still work there. And so, you know, I'm a slightly skeptical about his ability to execute on all of this.”

But on the other side of that coin, warned Miller, the fact that Trump is spreading his stooges so thin means there is nobody competent working any particular problem at any particular time.

“Part of the reason that he can do the three jobs is that, again, like he's not gonna do the job of director of national intelligence — like he is only put in there to do the muckraking, to go after the political foes. Like that's why he's there. And I think that there's some areas of about that in particular that are pretty concerning.”

Do not expect, for example, National intelligence to astutely uncover plots to attack the U.S. homeland with any kind of deft. Miller says instead Pulte will be digging up research to sic DOJ prosecutors on Trump’s enemies, as he likely did with the DOJ’s failed investigation of New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) and Federal Reserve board of governors member Lisa Cook on shaky mortgage charges.

“I might not be an intelligence expert … but I'm a little bit of a MAGA-ologist. And I just think back to the 2020 election fraud stuff and think about all the fake allegations of foreign interference. There were Italian satellites, the claims of Hugo Chavez and the Venezuelans had gotten inside the Dominion voting machines. There were all the Chinese bamboo ballots in Arizona. They had all these accusations that there was foreign interference on behalf of the democrats that were all false. This falls in [Pulte’s] remit no,” said Miller. “Now, you have Kash Patel and Pulte, who can either chase down these fake investigations, fabricate them, and do what they did on the mortgage documents, come up with small pieces of evidence that Democrats or election officials were communicating with overseas people in ways that might have been totally appropriate. I think that is like the real plan.”

- YouTube youtu.be

President Donald Trump’s policies have hurt farmers so badly, Republicans are getting nervous that they could flip the state in both its Senate and gubernatorial elections.

“Well, number one, this is Iowa and the tariffs are hitting them really hard. Before the tariffs, Donald Trump had a 52 percent approval rating in the state — still not super great for Iowa — but he is currently at 42 percent,” The Bulwark’s conservative founder political expert Sarah Longwell wrote on Tuesday. “Farmers are losing money, even with the federal subsidies that are trying to offset the impact of the tariffs.”

She added that “soybean farmers are losing about $75 an acre. Trump's one big, beautiful bill kicked nearly 100,000 Iowans off their health insurance. And [Republican Gov. Kim] Reynolds is one of the most unpopular governors Iowa has seen in a while.” In addition to complaining that the school vouchers program requires students to go down to four days a week of schooling, many voters also believe that “the six-week abortion ban they enacted there in Iowa, which people think is too extreme. And then there's this issue of cancer water, which I had not heard about until I started focus grouping in Iowa — but essentially you've got a lot of chemicals going into the water, and a lot of people in Iowa say that they're experiencing incredibly high cancer rates.”

As a result of all these issues, “Cook Political Report currently rates this race as a toss-up. So that's interesting for Iowa — they've got a toss-up for governor. Democrats looking strong.” Reynolds is not running for reelection, but Democratic nominee State Auditor Rob Sand has focused on her unpopular record and is expected to tie his eventual Republican opponent to Reynolds’ governorship.

“Now let's move to the Senate,” Longwell wrote. “We also have an open Senate seat because [Sen.] Joni Ernst has decided not to run again. There's no Republican primary because Ashley Hinson, who is a sitting member of Congress — she's been there for three terms, she's a former state rep, and she was also a news anchor in the state — is the de facto Republican nominee. But the Democrats have kind of an interesting primary. There are two of them: Josh Turek, who I think is likely to win, and Zach Walls.”

She added, “Now, Josh Turek — if you don't know who he is or you haven't seen him — he's in a wheelchair. He has spina bifida, and his dad had exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. He's knocking on doors by pulling himself up step by step. He's also a four-time Paralympian and a two-time gold medalist.”

In April, The Economist/YouGov conducted a poll which found that farmers are overwhelmingly opposed to Trump’s tariffs and Iran war, as both policies have raised prices on farmers on important products like fertilizer and gasoline. Despite these concerns, farmers remain one of the most staunchly pro-Trump groups and refuse to abandon their support, instead hoping that he will provide them with economic relief.

“A recent Economist/YouGov poll suggests such troubles are now commonplace,” wrote The Economist on Monday, referring to farmers who struggle to make ends meet thanks to Trump’s policies. “27 percent of rural respondents said it would be ‘impossible’ to cover an unexpected $1,000 bill. It would be easy to blame Mr Trump for the downturn. After all, he campaigned on promises to bring down prices and revive the heartland. But rural America does not.”

The article continued, “The president’s favourability rating is higher among rural voters than among any other group in our survey. Most still think he is doing a good job. In interview after interview with The Economist, farmers said they trust the administration—but that they need help to recoup the losses its foreign policy is causing them.”

Well, the much-ballyhooed autopsy on the 2024 election has arrived from Democratic National Committee’s headquarters, and it is a shame it didn’t stay buried in a trashcan in one of their offices deep inside the Beltway, and as far away from real people as possible.

Before moving on just as quickly as I can, from this unmitigated mess of typos, redactions, double-talking and sniping — and better yet, the leadership who allowed it — I want to underline some finer points, and hard-earned lessons we can take from it, and the disastrous 2024 campaign season.

First, given all the unprofessionalism, money-wasting, bickering, and out and out dysfunction in the party, it’s a wonder Kamala Harris didn’t lose by 25 points. It is clear that because of a series of self-inflicted wounds, the Democrats were not ready to do battle during the most important election in U.S. history.

That is tragic.

The report, and the way Democratic leadership comported itself, is truly embarrassing. Anybody who was a part of it, needs to be banished, and never allowed near a campaign again.

They’ve helped elect enough Republicans.

In the wake of of the report’s release Thursday I typed this in a huff on social media:

1) The dysfunctional DNC is a major problem for the party, not an answer.
2) Navel-gazing, self-doubt and sniping like this are what damaged the party in the first place.
3) The autopsy itself is a joke and illustrates how out of touch the Inside the Beltway party “hierarchy” is with voters. There is no mention of Biden’s advanced age, going back on his promise not to run again, Israel, Gaza, the pick of Walz for VP, or the shitshow that resulted in Harris getting all of 100 days to run. All factored heavily in the terrible outcome.
4) Read No. 1 again.

I stand behind all of that now.

But there is a sliver of good news here ...

Maybe the people who have been claiming the election was somehow stolen will finally go quiet, and use their considerable energy to start focusing on the myriad problems within the party that so severely mucked up that crucial election.

Look, if it helped you to believe Trump stole the election in its gory aftermath, I won’t judge, I really won’t. Those were some very hard times emotionally, and our sensibilities had just taken a severe pounding by a lewd racist and his soulless cult who have no standards, and an unlimited capacity to always go lower.

That has to stop now. Too much is on the line.

If after everything we’ve learned from Democratic leadership itself, you are still repeating this hogwash, I want to tell you gently that you sound a lot like the people on the Right who are still hollering about the 2020 election being stolen from Trump.

That just isn’t a good look, and I am doing you a favor telling you this.

By implying the 2024 election was swiped away from Democrats you are also implying that the party, starting with Kamala Harris, had evidence it somehow was, and decided for some bizarre reason not to pursue it, and to just forget the whole thing.

That would be absolutely catastrophic, of course, and leaves me wondering why you would support a party that is incapable of defending itself from the greatest heist in world history. Your issue should be with the party, not the boogeymen who allegedly somehow stole the election.

Even I, a steady critic of recent DNC leadership, don’t believe this happened in a million years. They ran an inept campaign, have admitted it in so many millions of jumbled words, and are even now still bashing away at each other, and pointing fingers.

The party is a mess, and most Americans know this. Thankfully, they aren’t real hot on the Republican Party right now, either.

Frankly, my real ire here is not directed at those who believe in these conspiracy theories, but the hucksters who are still lining their pockets by preying on people’s hurt and anguish by spreading all this manure. They know who they are and should be ashamed of themselves. Unfortunately, they won’t be, because they have proven to be no better than the troublemaking trolls on the Right who do the same thing.

Thankfully, most of this is contained to the spurious realm of social media, and in the dark corners of Substack, and other content-providers, where too many facts go to die, and people deal in impulse and emotion, not reason.

By implementing MAGA’s playbook to complete their grift, these phonies are preventing people from doing the truly important work of processing what really happened, and demanding better from the leadership of a party that clearly has no sense of itself.

The DNC is a complete wreck, and if that surprises you, then it really is time for you to start paying attention, and stop with all the stupid conspiracy theories.

Now some truly good news:

Despite all this madness, Democratic candidates have been winning one election after another since the 2024 nightmare, because America under Trump has been an unmitigated disaster area, and roughly 65 percent of the American electorate knows it.

While voters are still cool on Democrats, they have seen about enough of Trump II: The Disaster Area.

So before I get out of here, a quick question:

Is the DNC even needed?

As a new resident to the state of North Carolina, I plan to attend my first meeting with Democrats down here this week. I will be interested to see what party long-timers here are saying about this autopsy and the state of the so-called party leadership — if it is even addressed at all.

(NOTE: If it isn’t, I plan to make sure it is. I will not work with a party that refuses to work on itself, and position itself properly for the November election and beyond. Too much is at stake.)

Democrats need to do a better job of framing their message, and shouting out all the good things they stand for instead of re-litigating the 2024 election, claiming it was stolen, and punching themselves in the face. Trump’s Republicans should be easy to beat in November because they have nothing to run on.

The asinine release of this mess of an autopsy when Democrats have actually been getting some momentum, is proof Democratic leadership STILL hasn’t learned.

They are ineffective, useless, and hurting a helluva lot more than they are helping.

Can’t we all at least agree we deserve better than this?

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

President Donald Trump's nominee to oversee the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies may not be a legal option, one analyst believes.

Co-editor of "Just Security," Ryan Goodman, cited 50 U.S. Code § 3023, which established the position of Director of National Intelligence and requires it be held by someone with considerable intelligence experience.

The post was created after Sept. 11, 2001, when a report found there was intelligence ahead of time that an attack was imminent, but various intelligence agencies were unable to connect the dots.

Under the first section, the law outlines, "(1) There is a Director of National Intelligence who shall be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. Any individual nominated for appointment as Director of National Intelligence shall have extensive national security expertise."

Trump nominated Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte to the post via a Truth Social post. Pulte has never worked in national security or intelligence.

Pulte is also the chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The law also says that Pulte couldn't serve in any other role, but it's limited to being in an intelligence capacity.

"For those confused: 'Shall have' is not an anointment. It’s a job requirement," one person commented to Goodman.

At least three U.S. senators necessary for approval have indicated they're not supportive of Pulte for the post.

“He doesn’t seem very qualified,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) told Huffington Post reporter Sahil Kapur.

“I see no evidence of any qualifications for that job," Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said. He later added that he was willing to listen to arguments in favor of Pulte.

“We don’t need a weaponized DNI, we need professionals there,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) also told reporters on Tuesday. “If he’s somebody we want in that position permanently, he’s got a lengthy road ahead of him.”

Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, "I probably would’ve considered at least first a lot of talented people that are very supportive of the president that would be a good fit. But congratulations to Mr. Pulte."

Dr. Mehmet Oz, who oversees the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told reporters at the Tuesday press briefing that Trump is a "quick study" in understanding people's "emotional abilities and their ability to persevere in the face of hardship."

Ned Price, a former top State Department advisor and former intelligence analyst for the CIA, wrote on X, "The biggest news isn't that Trump is appointing someone without a national security background to a position that, by law, requires 'extensive' experience. It's that Pulte earned Trump's trust by using mortgage records to pursue perceived political enemies. Now this top henchman will have access to some of our most sensitive intelligence and exquisite capabilities. That's why this is so noteworthy — and concerning."

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said in a statement, “The concern is not only that Mr. Pulte lacks the ‘extensive national security experience’ required by statute for the job … It is that he appears to have been selected precisely because the White House believes he will provide the narrative it wants, not the intelligence we need.”

If it seems like President Donald Trump is only getting more and more addicted to posting on social media as his second term rots away, that would be right on the money, as an extensive breakdown from the Daily Beast found his habit is officially spiraling into "mania."

Trump has long appeared to be outright addicted to posting online, dating back to his Twitter attacks against Barack Obama, and lasting all the way through his first term in the White House, when he would seem to direct official policies via personal tweets. Now, after temporarily getting banned from the platform after the Jan. 6 attacks, he does the vast majority of his posting on his own site, Truth Social, and his worst tendencies have only gotten worse during his second term.

Amidst all of that, the Daily Beast has been tracking Trump's usage of Truth Social on a month-by-month basis, and in a new report from Tuesday, revealed that his habit "exploded to an unprecedented level in May," dwarfing his own posting record from past months by a considerable margin, marking his "most prolific month" on social media since the start of his second term, when one would assume he had better things to be doing.

"We calculated that his average posts per day spiked to 27, or the equivalent of just over once every hour of every day," reporter Josh Fiallo detailed in the report. "Our analysis found that Trump posted on Truth Social an astounding 861 times last month, sharing everything from truly deranged AI-generated memes to meltdowns and even an image of him lounging shirtless in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool with a bikini-clad woman."

He continued later: "Trump’s posting frequency was a sharp increase over April, when the Daily Beast calculated that Trump posted an average of 18 times a day. That month he could have received a full night’s sleep on only five nights given his late-night and early-morning posting. The Beast’s new analysis found that May was Trump’s most prolific month on Truth Social since he returned to the White House, eclipsing his previous high of 782 posts and reposts in January."

The report further compared Trump's current habits to his first term, noting that in May 2018, he posted on Twitter a total of 238 times, which would have been "widely viewed as a significant amount at the time." Even more damning, the report found that such an amount would actually represent the "quietest" month of Trump's second term if it happened now, and by a massive margin. The slowest month on Truth Social of his second term, September of last year, saw 430 posts in total.

Much of Trump's posting now is helped along by executive assistant Natalie Harp, who reportedly "brings Trump stacks of printed-out drafts of social media posts — many of them recycling content from other accounts—for him to approve."

"Sources tell the [Wall Street] Journal that Trump posts some messages himself while Harp presses publish on others without approval from Chief of Staff Susie Wiles or communications staff — something that has angered some in the president’s inner circle," the report noted. "At a minimum, Trump views every post before it goes public, the paper reported."

President Donald Trump appointed Bill Pulte to serve as acting director of national intelligence, tapping him to manage the entire national security apparatus of the United States. The "unorthodox" pick reportedly came from longtime GOP operative Roger Stone, Semafor reports.

According to Semafor, MAGA forces joined together to convince Trump that, despite his lack of intel experience, Pulte could still manage the 17 intelligence agencies that the post oversees.

Pulte will serve in the job while also remaining in his current job as Federal Housing Finance Agency Director. This adds to Pulte's other job, chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

What Stone, Trump and other MAGA allies believe is that Pulte can use his "attack-dog mentality" in "waging an internal war to ramp up the declassification of sensitive information," according to the Tuesday report.

“He’s like a bulldozer,” said a source familiar with Pulte when speaking to Semafor about Pulte. “Bulldoze the bureaucracy and accelerate document releases and declassifications.”

Stone is best known for his ongoing loyalty to former Republican President Richard Nixon, whom Stone has tattooed on his back. The self-described "dirty trickster" has remained a close confidant and informal adviser to Trump since the 1970s and became a key part of the 2020 "Stop the Steal" movement. He was later convicted on seven counts of lying to Congress and obstruction of justice relating to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Trump commuted his sentence before Stone served a day in prison. He was later pardoned. He's also known for his conspiracy theories and spreading unfounded rumors about Trump's critics.

CNN reporter Kevin Liptak commented after the announcement that Pulte has used his post as the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency to target some of Trump's foes.

"This, I think, suggests that the president will put in this position someone who has gone after this retribution campaign, who has advanced some ideas of vindication against some of his enemies," the reporter said.

Semafor noted that the biggest barrier to Pulte will be the U.S. Senate. For him to take on the job, Trump needs the votes and right now it doesn't appear he has them.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said, “I don’t see any evidence of his qualifications for that job, but I’m willing to listen.”

“We don’t need a weaponized DNI, we need professionals there,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) also told reporters on Tuesday. “If he’s somebody we want in that position permanently, he’s got a lengthy road ahead of him.”

Stone wouldn't comment on the record about his involvement in picking Pulte, Semafor reported.

The one positive of the nomination, a banking lobbyist told Semafor, is that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Pulte don't get along. With Pulte otherwise engaged, Bessent will be able to focus on housing issues.

“If I was Bessent, my wheels are turning right now, like: ‘What can I accomplish in the housing space while I have this open field?’” the banking lobbyist said.

Democrats appear ready for a fight.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released a statement about Pulte on Tuesday, saying, “Today, President Trump is rewarding his lackey — who has no national security experience — with a perch atop our nation’s intelligence community. What could go wrong?”