cell phones and cancer

During Donald Trump's second presidency, many of his top appointees — from former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to FBI Director Kash Patel to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — have faced aggressive grilling from Democratic lawmakers in congressional hearings. Journalist Brian Beutler examined this type of grilling during an early June appearance on The New Republic's podcast, "The Daily Blast," emphasizing that lawmakers can do some valuable debunking when they ask not only tough questions, but also, the right questions.

During their conversation, guest Beutler and host Greg Sargent — a former Washington Post columnist — examined Rep. Ted Lieu's (D-California) forceful questioning of Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing. Lieu highlighted the fact that President Donald Trump has been falling asleep in meetings, and Beutler and Sargent pointed to his grilling as a prime example of the type of thing Democratic lawmakers should be doing when they have a chance to question Trump administration officials.

Beutler told Sargent, "Part of the reason he's falling asleep in Cabinet meetings is that he's this erratic person who is outraged all night, stays up all night tweeting, and then is too exhausted for the work that he actually finds boring — the work of the president that happens during mostly normal business hours. But I think that the point here is to put Rubio, or whoever happens to be testifying before Congress, in a bind and make them say ridiculous things under oath that are contradicted right there by video evidence, so that they make the rounds on social media and you and I talk about them on this podcast."

Beutler and Sargent's conversation went way beyond Lieu grilling Rubio, and they brought out the role that Democratic lawmakers can play in debunking false claims from Republicans.

Beutler told Sargent, "I mean, even before Donald Trump kind of took it to this insane level where everything he says about his opponent, you can count on to be a lie and abusive and maybe libelous — with the goal being to make them look small and easily squashed like a bug, and he's the strong person who's setting the terms of the political argument — Republicans would do this. They did this to (Democratic presidential nominee) John Kerry in 2004. He was a war hero. And so, they said, 'Nah, you faked your injuries, and you didn't deserve your purple heart.' And the idea wasn't just to convince people of the lie — it was to put Kerry in a bind, to make Kerry reveal that he didn't know how to fight back, to defend himself, and thus appear weak."

Sargent noted that Republicans, similarly, are "attacking" James Talarico, the Democratic nominee in Texas' 2026 U.S. Senate race, "as transgender, as someone with low testosterone, as a vegan — basically as a wimp."

Beutler told Sargent, "I guess the through line here is that there's a lot of political value in putting your opposition in a bind that, at least at a glance, feels impossible…. Think through what your opposition is likely to throw at you and how you’re going to respond. And so, this is why I write a lot about how Democrats can prepare to counter Republicans or set their own traps for Republicans. And what was so sharp about what Lieu did is, in a sort of more aboveboard and honest way, it required Rubio to make a choice: I either have to lie and debase myself, or tell the truth and lose my job."

The journalist continued, "And if Democrats on Capitol Hill grilling Republicans before committees can try to keep that binary in mind, then their questions are going to be a lot sharper, a lot better. And there will be people who aren't quite as adept as Rubio, and they will start to flounder."

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) is under fire again about his Florida residency as he runs for governor in Alabama. While his campaign put out new documents to prove his residency, it inadvertently exposed him to two possible crimes.

For years, Tuberville has been plagued by allegations that he actually lived in Florida while running for office in Alabama. Now he's facing off against renewed allegations from Republican primary challenger Ken McFeeters. To prove he was an Alabama resident, his team recently produced seven years of tax documentation and property tax records. Still, there are questions as to how Tuberville can prove he was a resident of Alabama.

The question from Alabama Reporter journalist Josh Moon is why it took so long for Tuberville's staff to produce documentation in his defense.

"Then again," Moon wrote, "lots of things make no sense. And like those things, there is no quick answer. I’m certain we will discover many answers down the road, but for now, the best we can do is analyze what we’ve got."

Researchers are sifting through Tuberville's documents to prove authenticity and ensure that the taxes weren't refiled and paid retroactively. If they are accurate, McFeeters would be forced to prove that Tuberville never actually lived in his house.

If McFeeters wants to probe the Tubervilles on the three-bedroom, one-bath house and "under the rules established by the Alabama Republican Party," he can. "He, or his attorneys, can subpoena up to five people and question them for up to two hours each in an under-oath deposition" about the matter.

The larger mystery is about Tuberville's voting records and whether he committed voter fraud.

Tuberville included his 2018 tax filings in the tax records, which aren't required, since he only has to prove seven years of residency, not eight. The problem is that Tuberville voted in Florida in Nov. 2018 while claiming to be a resident of Alabama, AL.com reported.

"According to records from the Walton County, Florida, registrar’s office, Tuberville registered to vote in Florida on May 24, 2017, and voted by mail in the 2018 general election," Moon reported. "The earliest he could have received a mail-in ballot was October 2, 2018, according to the Division of Elections at the Florida Department of State."

Tuberville's wife and son also voted in Florida that year. Suzanne declared a homestead exemption for the Alabama house in October 2018. To get the exemption, you have to claim the house as your primary residence. Tuberville has been fighting over the issue because the homestead exemption wasn't on the Alabama House until 2024.

"That means there is now both a homestead exemption and a tax filing that shows the Tubervilles were Alabama residents when they voted in Florida, after swearing a year earlier that they were Florida residents," Moon wrote. "That seems … not good."

Tuberville has argued in favor of severe voter restrictions, alleging there is rampant voter fraud across the country.

It's not the only legal problem, however.

The Lagniappe Daily reported on Tuesday that McFeeter has questions about Tuberville's "reimbursements from his Senate office account and his various political action committees for food, transportation and flights to the Florida coast."

Tuberville's attorney called them "vacation escapes." The problem with that claim is that it's illegal to accept reimbursement from his official taxpayer-funded account for vacation travel. Rules for political action committees (PACs) are not as restrictive, but they still have to be tied to campaign purposes and using donations to fund his "vacation escapes" wouldn't be legal either.

McFeeters filed an ethics complaint about the matters already.

With the 2026 midterms only five months away, many GOP strategists are sounding the alarm about President Donald Trump's low approval ratings in poll after poll. Outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) fears that his party, in November, could suffer the "inverse of 2010" — meaning a midterms wipeout not unlike the one Democrats experienced during Barack Obama's first presidency. But Never Trump conservative Bill Kristol, in The Bulwark, warned that Trump's unpopularity won't discourage his "power grabs."

Kristol predicted that Trump, rather than feeling discouraged, is "intensifying" and ramping up his "power-grabbing efforts."

"Just yesterday," the journalist explains in the conservative Bulwark, "Trump signed an executive order converting some 8000 career, non-partisan civil service positions into political appointments, making those employees hirable and fireable at will. We all should be 'really, really freaked out.' Because it's clear that Trump's power grab over the executive branch is not just proceeding apace, but is intensifying. Yes, Trump is less popular than he used to be, and he has less of an absolute sway over Republican members of Congress than he once did. But this seems to be causing not hesitation on Trump’s part, but an intensification of his power-grabbing efforts."

Kristol continues, "He seems no longer to care much about political backlash, or electoral consequences. As he said last week, 'I don't care about the midterms.' It's almost as if he doesn't expect elections to matter because he's not going to do everything he can to allow them not to matter."

Trump's "power-grabbing," according to Kristol, is asserting itself with recent appointments — including Todd Blanche as acting U.S. attorney general and Bill Pulte as acting national intelligence director.

"Trump has been a fantastically successful demagogue, a master flatterer of the people," Kristol argues. "But at some point in an authoritarian takeover, one has to explain why one is taking over power despite or against the wishes of the people. What we are seeing is a president who is going full steam ahead on his centralization of power in a way that should make one doubt he intends to give it up — whether over the next two years, whatever a Democratic Congress tries to do, or in 2028, whatever the people try to do at the polls."

Trump, the Never Trump conservative observes, is claiming that he's trying to protect the U.S. from "communists."

"Over the past century, in many nations, fascist movements and authoritarian coups have sought justification in the need to save their respective countries from the communists," Kristol notes. "One hopes and trusts that American exceptionalism will win out, and that we will not go down in history as merely another chapter in this sad story. We're in no way destined to succumb to such a fate."

President Donald Trump is reportedly set to announce an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars for a dying industry, after he already paid out billions to try and kill off one of its biggest competitors, prompting online observers from across the political spectrum to rake his questionable "art of the deal" over the coals.

On Thursday, CBS senior White House reporter Jennifer Jacobs took to X to report, based on sources close to the matter, that Trump was set to announce a $700 million investment "for 13 current coal plants plus two new ones," continuing his obsession with propping up the long-suffering American coal industry. Despite coal making up an increasingly minuscule portion of energy production and consumption in the U.S., Trump has spent significant political capital on propping up the industry, possibly on account of the support he gets from its workers and business leaders.

To that end, earlier this year, it was announced that his administration had nearly a billion dollars to get the French energy conglomerate, TotalEnergies, to halt the production of new wind farms off the coasts of New York and North Carolina, in order to promote further investments in fossil fuels and coal. This particular move also fit with Trump's longstanding hatred of wind turbines, an animosity that seems to relate, at least in part, to when a wind farm went up off the coast of his golf course in Scotland.

In response to Jacobs' scoop, users across X were unsparing in their derision, ripping Trump for continuing to waste precious tax dollars to keep the U.S. from joining the rest of the world in pursuing green energies.

"Trump cancelled less expensive, less pollution from clean energy. Now Trump is forcing tax dollars into more expensive, toxic coal plants instead," Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson posted about the news. "You pay more AND you get more toxins. Art of the deal."

"The art of the deal: pay billions of dollars to take offshore wind farms offline," reporter Sam Stein wrote in a post. "Then pay hundreds of millions of more to prop up coal plants."

"Stupidity breeds more stupidity," Arizona politician Dennis Kavanaugh wrote in response to Stein.

"The whole entire world is moving to green energy," Joanne Carducci, a popular left-wing online commentator, wrote in response to Jacobs' original post. "We’re so f——."

Liberal and left-wing users were far from the only ones taking issue with the news, as Marc Short, the former chief of staff for Vice President Mike Pence, ripped Trump for making yet another move in defiance of free-market principles.

"Just another step toward a managed economy and away from a free economy," Short posted.

Federal funding for President Donald Trump's massive ballroom was on the line before Congress on Wednesday, but the chief of the project was readying for an annual Russian economic conference, which some are calling "Putin's Davos." This is the first time the U.S. has attended since Russia attacked Ukraine.

Rodney Mims Cook told the Russian press that Trump and the State Department permitted him to travel to Russia for the economic forum in St Petersburg. BBC News Moscow reporter posted on X that Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was "unaware" that Cook was attending the forum.

Cook was nominated by Trump to take over the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. All of the members of the board were fired in 2025 and Trump appointed their replacements. They then voted to approve the ballroom project and Trump immediately bulldozed the East Wing of the White House during 2025's government shutdown.

According to his conversation with Russian media, Cook said that his presence at the forum had nothing to do with his position in the Trump government; rather, he was there as a Christian to help restore churches in Russia, Reuters reported.

Yet, according to Max Seddon, Moscow Bureau chief for the Financial Times, Cook brought graphics showing off the ballroom.

"Cook, it turns out, is an ardent Russophile. He has been involved [in] restoring medieval Russian churches for decades. His own house in Georgia is designed in the Russian style. He says he is friends with many senior Russian elite figures. He seems absolutely thrilled to be there," added Seddon.

He was also photographed with Russian religious leaders.

Others who attended the forum include Andrew Tate and his brother, along with far-right streamer Candace Owens. Tate is facing criminal charges in Romania for sexual assault, human trafficking and establishing an organized crime group to exploit women.

President Donald Trump's former National Security Advisor John Bolton intends to plead guilty to Justice Department charges related to classified information cited in his book, CNN reported.

Bolton, a loud opponent of Trump's, was charged in 2025 with 18 felony counts for mishandling classified information. At the end of Trump's first administration, Bolton published a book that Trump claimed wasn't authorized and likely contained classified information in it.

CNN crime and justice reporter Katelyn Polantz said explained, "This is a man that Trump very much hates and very much wanted to see prosecuted."

Bolton was also accused of sending more than 1,000 pages of diary-like emails and encrypted app messages to his wife and daughter that contained top secret or "SCI level" classifications.

While he was charged with 18 counts, Bolton will plead guilty to one count of illegal retention of sensitive national security documents and pay a more than $2 million fine, sources told CNN.

The docket shows that Bolton's hearing is scheduled for June 26.

CNN law enforcement analyst John Miller explained that Bolton was always "caught between a rock and a hard place."

"This guilty plea is John Bolton saying, 'Let's get a recommendation from prosecutors on a sentence. Let's get a deal with the government. Let's boil this down to one count and try to get out of it,'" said Miller.

CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said that it's different from other cases in which Trump has gone after his foes in that the ones against New York Attorney General Letitia James and FBI Director James Comey are part of a political agenda.

"I think the Bolton case is entirely separate for a couple of main reasons. One, as Katelyn Polantz just told us, the reporting is that this investigation goes back to the Biden administration and predates the current Trump administration. And two, the conduct that John Bolton has been charged with and now apparently will be pleading to some of it is quite serious. It's quite straightforward."

He agreed with Miller's assessment, saying that it "is not some manufactured crime."

"John Bolton took the highest level sensitive and classified information, which he got in his capacity as a key White House adviser, and he disseminated it to others," Honig said. "That is a straightforward crime. And so I do not categorize the Bolton case along with those other cases. I think it's fundamentally different."

Asawin Suebsaeng's Thursday morning newsletter for Zeteo looks at all of the ways that President Donald Trump is using the government to attack his enemies.

"Trump and his White House are coaxing with a very simple message: the boss will be monumentally livid at you if you don’t get very serious – very soon – about jailing his political enemies," said Suebsaeng.

Suebsaeng explained Trump fired former Attorney General Pam Bondi because she could not weaponize the Justice Department more effectively against the president's foes. "She wasn’t corrupt or zealously authoritarian enough for his liking," Suebsaeng described.

Now that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is gunning to be Bondi's replacement, there are high expectations that he will ensure heads roll.

An advisor told Zeteo that Trump told Blanche, “You cannot f—— up like Pam."

Thus far, the source continued, Trump has been happy with Blanche's efforts. That faith in Blanche can likely disappear if the crusade stalls. Thus far, the Justice Department has indicted former FBI Director James Comey, Trump's former National Security Advisor and a slew of Democratic foes.

Those who spoke to Zeteo said that "enormous pressure" is being placed on Blanche, with one aide calling it the "maximum amount." The president also questions aides about where "Todd" is on investigations.

Trump has a list of grievances about Bondi's work, including her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein documents scandal and previous failed efforts to indict former New York Attorney General Letitia James, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), E. Jean Carroll, the Southern Poverty Law Center and a second go at Comey.

While Bondi was in the office for more than a year, Blanche has managed to announce more long-shot cases in short order.

One aide told Zeteo, "Todd is a great man who knows what he’s doing."

At a time when voters are ready to hand Republicans a midterm revolt over the economy, Politico reported this week that top executives warned President Donald Trump that prices are about to get much worse if he does not solve the war in Iran.

Trump remains embroiled in negotiations for a lasting ceasefire and resolution to the war, which he started, with Iran's new hardline leadership refusing his demands. As that situation continues to spiral, the Strait of Hormuz remains either closed off or dangerous, depending on the day, sending global oil prices surging as a result.

According to a Thursday report from Politico, oil executives have warned Trump and his administration that, as bad as things are now, they are about to get much worse if the Strait is not reopened in a matter of weeks, citing sources close to the discussions. Without the oil that gets shipped through the body of water, global oil reserves will start to dwindle to a dangerous degree, sending prices to new heights.

"Industry executives have flagged the issue to senior White House officials and Cabinet members in recent weeks as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing dialogue with the U.S. energy industry, the people said," the report detailed. "The warnings came as recently as late last month as data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and other sources began showing that fuel makers were increasingly relying on oil and fuel from their storage tanks to replace products no longer arriving from the Middle East."

It added later: "Some of the conversations have been general warnings while others have focused on tight inventories of specific fuel types in particular locations, such as jet fuel on the West Coast, a second person involved in the conversations said."

In response to Politico's query about the supposed warnings, the White House gave only a terse response blasting the outlet for citing anonymous sources.

“We’re at dangerously low levels already,” one of those sources, an anonymous industry executive, told Politico. “We have shared those concerns at the highest levels of government about what’s coming in mid-to-late June. … I hope they are paying attention to inventories right now. You’re hitting tank bottom.”

Exxon executive Neil Chapman recently told investors that crude barrels could reach $150-160 in two or three weeks. Another anonymous executive told Politico that the White House has already been made aware of that and warned of the crunch coming for consumers during the big holiday travel rush.

“Don’t think that an open strait is going to mean your July 4 gasoline bill isn’t going to be higher than what it is today," they said. "It’s going to be.”