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After the Trump administration upended the world’s largest foreign aid provider last year, terminating thousands of programs and firing nearly all of its staff, its plan for the agency was clear: Eliminate it entirely.

But because it is a congressionally created agency, President Donald Trump needed lawmakers’ permission to do so. So this year, Trump officials asked Congress for permission to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development and dramatically reduce federal spending on food, medicine and lifesaving work around the world.

Congress said no. Lawmakers, who hold the government’s purse strings and have oversight of federal agencies, wanted USAID to remain, even in its diminished form. They detailed precisely how much the State Department should spend on foreign aid and for what, including $9.4 billion on global health to treat and prevent maladies like HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, and more than $5 billion on emergency humanitarian aid. They also insisted on regular, detailed reports about how the administration was spending the money.

Trump signed the bill, enshrining their orders into law.

Now, eight months into the fiscal year, Trump officials are failing to follow many of those orders, ProPublica has found. Officials have delayed spending on global health, have not issued funds for some projects and have labeled money destined for humanitarian aid as “unallocated” to control how it can be spent, according to a ProPublica review of government records and interviews with legal experts, current and former government employees, and members of Congress. And when lawmakers have asked about their actions, officials often have not responded.

The White House and Congress have been battling over federal spending since Day 1 of the Trump administration, setting up a constitutional crisis — a breakdown of the division of power among the three branches of the federal government, according to several legal scholars.

Nowhere has that crisis been more visible than with foreign aid. Last year, the administration took the unprecedented step of gutting USAID, terminating thousands of aid programs and letting funding expire, all without permission from Congress. Lawmakers did little to stop it.

Now, in defying Congress on foreign aid that Trump himself agreed to spend, the administration is quietly escalating the battle.

“It is a huge grab of power from the president, taking powers away from Congress,” said David Super, a professor of law and economics at Georgetown University and a leading scholar on administrative and constitutional law.

USAID was created by Congress decades ago as a means of promoting American diplomacy and soft power around the world. As ProPublica previously reported, when Trump officials dismantled the agency last year, stopping payments on thousands of lifesaving programs that provided food, medicine and other supplies to impoverished nations, many people died, including children.

Even with USAID in shambles, Congress has made clear that it expects the administration to continue providing foreign aid — in some cases, at nearly the level it did in previous years.

“It’s proof that there is still broad, bipartisan support for America showing up in the world, helping people and working with our allies and partners on shared challenges, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it directly benefits us,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, the ranking member of the Senate committee with oversight of foreign aid funds. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the committee’s chair, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

But the administration has taken a variety of steps to thwart Congress’ directives. The Office of Management and Budget, run by Russell Vought, was instrumental in blocking the spending of aid money last year. This year, it has labeled both humanitarian aid and global health money as “unallocated,” meaning the OMB must approve how it is spent.

Legal scholars say such moves, and the delayed spending by the State Department, likely violate the law. Foreign aid is a prime example of why Congress made it illegal for administrations and agencies to slow-walk such funds, said Bobby Kogan, an OMB adviser under former President Joe Biden currently with the Center for American Progress. “If you spend no money for a year and all the clinics close, then those people die,” he said.

The State Department has made little effort to spend some foreign aid money that Congress earmarked for specific purposes, including family planning, neglected diseases and nutrition, according to government staff and budget documents.

And programs have been given fewer dollars, even when Congress has kept funding steady. That includes the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the hallmark HIV program credited with saving 26 million lives around the world.

Administration officials are also spending on foreign aid at a much slower rate than they had in recent years, according to an analysis of federal funding data shared with ProPublica by Aid on the Hill, an advocacy group created by former USAID employees, although the State Department disputes its conclusions. Another group published a similar analysis last week.

Where Trump officials have made plans to spend funds, it’s often spurred outrage. Under the new America First Global Health Strategy, Trump officials are signing bilateral deals with poor countries, asking for access to health data as a condition for receiving lifesaving medications the U.S. once donated.

Jeremy Lewin, a 29-year-old lawyer who came into government via Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency with no prior humanitarian experience, is in charge of foreign aid. He has said that this new strategy will not only save countless lives, but also reform the aid sector and reduce dependence on U.S. funding.

Since last July, Lewin has been “performing the duties” of undersecretary for foreign assistance and humanitarian affairs, a position that must be approved by Congress, though the administration has yet to nominate him or anyone else to the job.

But he rarely, if ever, meets with career staff and doesn’t share information about his plans, even with the people who are expected to carry them out, according to six current and former career officials. Lewin insists that he approve even routine payments, creating a stranglehold on funding and information.

And all the while, Trump appointees have failed to answer basic questions from Congress about what they are doing. Letters from lawmakers have gone unanswered and required reports unfiled.

To understand the administration’s compliance with congressional mandates and federal law, ProPublica reviewed administration documents, including agreements, memos, and internal communications, and spoke with dozens of current and former government officials, congressional staff, and international experts in global health and humanitarian aid. Many people spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal from the administration.

In response to a list of detailed questions about the concerns, a State Department spokesperson who declined to be named said they would continue to follow the president’s direction on foreign aid spending. “We are not withholding any funds appropriated to, or available to, State,” they said. “If additional funds are made available to State, we will work to obligate them consistent with legal requirements and Administration priorities.”

They said officials have regularly briefed Congress and that Lewin had recently spent four hours discussing foreign assistance. They also said they have “reduced by 80% the number of outstanding reports and letters” since Trump retook office.

“We are working with Congress to spend appropriated balances and find the right future-appropriated level for global health,” the spokesperson said.

In response to a series of detailed questions about this story, OMB spokesperson Rachel Cauley said, “This is patently false,” adding that “USAID was a weaponized government agency.” She did not respond to a follow-up question asking what was false.

Spending Less — or Not at All

After nearly all of USAID’s employees were fired and the majority of its programs closed down last summer, the agency’s remnants were transferred to the State Department. Despite repeated promises from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that lifesaving aid would continue, the State Department began winding down many of the remaining programs earlier this year.

And staff have been working with a severely constricted budget; officials gave them just half of the available money for PEPFAR, said Dr. Mike Reid, who was the program’s chief scientific officer until he left earlier this year over concerns about how the program is being run. Of the $9.4 billion for global health spending for the State Department that Trump signed into law earlier this year, Congress earmarked about $4.6 billion for PEPFAR. But staff say it’s unclear how much of that they will be allowed to spend.

Congress also explicitly directed the State Department to spend pots of money on family planning ($524 million), nutrition ($165 million) and neglected tropical diseases ($109 million), according to the bill. According to a review of government records and two people with knowledge of the department’s activities, State Department officials have made little or no effort to spend from those pots.

In response, a State Department spokesperson said it has “continued to obligate and spend every dollar appropriated for global HIV/AIDS programs” and “we continue to implement life-saving care in global health priority areas, including HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and maternal and child health.”

They added: “The State Department has been in the process of slowly replacing old carry-over USAID grants with new State Department grants and contracts which have fresh funds, new terms and conditions, and better align with the new America First foreign assistance strategy.”

Global health programming in general is moving at a much slower rate than it did previously, according to the Aid on the Hill analysis of federal funding data. Of the more than $9 billion that Congress told the Trump administration to spend on global health last year, the administration had by the end of this March obligated just $190 million, 5% of what was spent on average in that period in the five years before Trump returned to office. Typically, officials would have obligated about half of the money by then. Another advocacy organization, Health Security Policy Academy, published an analysis last week that drew a similar conclusion.

The State Department said it “cannot and will not” verify any independent analysis, but disagreed with the figures, saying that it has “approved and implemented spending” for more than $7.5 billion to align with the bilateral agreements and disaster response. “You either have vastly outdated numbers or are simply mistaken,” it said, but would not elaborate.

The agreements signed with nations around the world, a centerpiece of the State Department’s foreign aid policy, will in many cases involve sending funds directly to those governments, some of which have been mired in corruption scandals. But the specifics of the programs are still being determined, and the funding has yet to flow.

Meanwhile, Lewin has been increasingly leaning on large international organizations to deliver aid once managed by USAID employees.

Earlier this year, Lewin funneled $3.8 billion to a small arm of the United Nations, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, quadrupling the budget of the agency.

Trump has frequently criticized the U.N. as ineffective. But after nearly all of USAID’s staff was fired, the skeleton crew at the State Department doesn’t have the capacity or expertise to manage so much humanitarian aid themselves, according to a dozen people familiar with the new system.

The agreement with OCHA, a copy of which was reviewed by ProPublica, also does not allow the U.S. to independently audit the funds, though the U.N. agreed to run a pilot project for greater internal oversight.

Eri Kaneko, OCHA’s spokesperson, said the agency has worked quickly since December to disburse funds for “the most urgent and life-threatening needs” and that U.N. entities are “fully committed to the highest standards of accountability and oversight.”

The U.S. has been the largest donor to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a multilateral organization that provides medicines and prevention measures to millions of people around the world, since its inception. Lewin recently announced an expanded partnership with the fund to provide HIV prevention across Africa. But the Trump administration last year withheld payments pledged under the Biden administration, forcing the fund to reduce the amounts it gave to nations.

So in this year’s spending bill, Congress directed the State Department to make good on its pledges, issuing specific instructions to Rubio on what to pay and when, and telling him to make those contributions “in a timely manner.”

That hasn’t happened.

A State Department spokesperson told ProPublica that “all current funding obligations have been met.” But according to a board member for the Global Fund, congressional staff and Friends of the Global Fight, an organization that advocates for the fund in the U.S., the administration should contribute another $661 million.

“The State Department is underfunding the Global Fund,” Schatz said. “It’s out of compliance with congressional appropriations.”

When the senator asked about the funding during Rubio’s recent testimony to Congress, Rubio said, “I think that will move shortly, very quickly.”

A “Fundamental Threat to the Rule of Law”

During previous administrations, once Congress passed laws to approve federal spending, the money flowed through the OMB, which in turn parceled out the funds to designated agencies, making sure they didn’t spend the funds too quickly or too slowly.

Under Trump, the OMB, led by Vought, has repeatedly blocked funds approved by Congress from going to agencies using legally dubious maneuvers, experts in federal spending and constitutional law told ProPublica.

As ProPublica has chronicled, Vought takes an expansive view of presidential power and has moved to give the executive branch dramatically greater authority to not spend legally appropriated money. Foreign aid has been a clear focus; after USAID was razed last year, Vought was made acting administrator and tasked with overseeing the closeout of the agency. Eric Ueland, a Vought deputy at the OMB, is currently performing those duties.

The OMB currently has labeled more than $500 million in global health money as “unallocated,” according to its own data, which makes it impossible for the State Department to spend without first going through the OMB. It had also labeled most of the humanitarian aid money this way, but began releasing some of those funds in May. By June 11, the OMB had released all of that money to the State Department.

Several people inside and outside the government told ProPublica they fear that the administration is withholding the funds because it is planning not to spend them at all. They have good reason to be concerned: That’s exactly what Trump did last year.

In 2025, the administration clawed back some $13 billion in foreign aid that Congress had passed into law, some of it by using a maneuver widely understood by legal experts to be illegal.

That maneuver, which Vought calls a “pocket rescission,” essentially asks Congress to cancel funds so late in the fiscal year that there isn’t enough time for them to be spent if Congress says no. The Government Accountability Office, Congress’ watchdog, has said pocket rescissions are illegal, and several constitutional scholars told ProPublica the move violates the Impoundment Control Act. That law, passed in 1974 in the wake of disputes with President Richard Nixon, restricts the president’s authority to withhold, or impound, funds approved by Congress.

A federal court initially blocked the maneuver as part of ongoing lawsuits related to the dismantling of USAID. But the administration appealed to the Supreme Court, which issued an emergency ruling split along ideological lines that allowed the clawback to continue, though it did not rule on the merits.

The GAO has standing to take legal action on a pocket rescission. Edda Emmanuelli Perez, GAO’s general counsel, told ProPublica that her office was continuing to review potential impoundments and monitoring ongoing litigation, and that it has not made a decision to file any lawsuits at this time.

While there are still nearly four months left in this fiscal year, career officials and legal experts say another rescission — legal or not — would further erode Congress’ power of the purse, threatening the U.S. democracy.

“If that’s going to be a regular occurrence, then we have a real fundamental threat to the rule of law,” said Cerin Lindgrensavage, a former Justice Department lawyer who works for Protect Democracy, a nonprofit that fights against authoritarianism. “Congress has said spend the money, and the president doesn’t want to. The question is, who wins? Under the law, Congress is supposed to win. Right now, the president is.”

Budget watchers say there are concerning signs that the administration plans to withhold more funds.

In April, the OMB announced to Congress that it was withholding funds earmarked for global health to pay the hefty bills for severance fees and other costs for the thousands of USAID programs Trump officials terminated last year.

OMB officials told lawmakers they were setting aside $19 billion to cover those costs, though they anticipated the total would be “substantially” less. (Internal documents reviewed by ProPublica say the figure doesn’t include the cost of the litany of lawsuits associated with the closures — or the dozens of new hires and other agency operations needed to process them.)

The bulk of that money came from unspent funds for the canceled programs and other unobligated dollars from previous years. But $3.2 billion came from funds earmarked by Congress for global health and development programs that Trump signed into law in 2025. If it’s not obligated by the end of September, that money will expire and can no longer be spent.

Democratic lawmakers were incensed by the OMB’s decision. In a letter to Trump officials, senators called it an “appalling admission of waste of U.S. taxpayer dollars” and demanded that the administration use the $3.2 billion as directed, “consistent with the law.” They asked for a response by May 8. As of June 16, lawmakers had not received one.

Asked about the funds during the recent Senate hearing, Rubio claimed they were under the purview of the OMB. Schatz pointed out that Rubio had moved all foreign aid under the State Department and had just wrestled some of that money away from the OMB to respond to an Ebola outbreak. “It also demonstrates you are perfectly capable of getting money released from those closeout funds if you wish,” he told the secretary. “Ebola is an urgent priority, but so is malaria, so is TB and so is HIV/AIDS.”

“Proposing a rescission is a Presidential authority, and we will follow President Trump’s direction as to any future rescissions,” the State Department spokesperson told ProPublica. “We are currently planning to obligate all appropriated balances, consistent with law.”

In a new episode of his "Politics War Room" vodcast, veteran Democratic strategist James Carville discussed "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump" — the new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan book. One of Carville's main takeaways is that more and more Republicans will be turning on Trump in the months ahead, and the 81-year-old Democrat argued that even people who appear to be loyalists will be working against him in the hope of saving their political careers.

"I'll give you one piece of advice, Donald Trump: everybody is out for you, even your own people," Carville argued on "Politics War Room," which he hosts with veteran journalist Al Hunt. "Be scared, be very afraid. Don't trust anybody. Everybody in the administration is s–– all over you, and they're just getting warmed up."

Carville emphasized that if the 2026 midterms go badly for Republicans, many will blame Trump — and will feel no obligation to keep supporting him.

"Come November, these people will realize that their careers are, for all intents and purposes, gone," the Democratic strategist warned Republicans. "No one's going to want to hire anybody out of the Trump administration. And the way that you get right with history is start leaking."

Realizing that they are political pariahs, Carville argued, Republicans will publicly pretend that they tried to talk Trump out of his worst political blunders.

Carville advised Republicans presently serving in the second Trump administration, "That's the only future you have: Leak like a sieve. Leak like a broken faucet. Leak everywhere. You're already leaking. Everybody's leaking on you. Everybody's leaking on everybody else. Trust no one. That's my message to anybody that works in this administration: Leak or be leaked on. That's it, you got no other choice."

"Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump," according to Carville, is not only a damning indictment of Trump himself, but also, of loyalists serving in his second administration. And in order to "save yourself," Carville warned, Republicans will have to do everything they can to distance themselves from Trump's policies.

The Democratic strategist observed, "Look at the number of people that are leaking!

They're trying to save their a––. They leak what he does in his own bedroom. They leak everything about him.... Everything that you know, every stupid thing that he says, every grotesque, horrible, nasty habit he's got — leak it."

Referring to the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall, Minnesota governor Tim Walz commented on X: “Found an imaginary problem, said only they could fix it, didn’t listen to experts, hired buddies who grifted millions, failed miserably, bragged how great it went. The entire Trump presidency in a nutshell.” (Walz could have added: “blamed others for his failure, conjured up a conspiracy, then prosecuted them.”)

One remarkable aspect of Trump’s horrendous reign is how many crises and problems he’s brought on himself — created them out of thin air. Then he brags about how well he’s handled them. And when they go wrong — as they inevitably do — he casts blame on others or on his political opponents.

Four examples from the last few days:

I. The Return of Operation Metro Surge

U.S. prosecutors in Minnesota on Tuesday announced charges against 15 people they say conspired to “violently oppose immigration law enforcement.”

But when repeatedly questioned by the press, U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen failed to describe a single example of injuries to federal agents.

Rosen has a dubious track record with this kind of prosecution. In the months after “Operation Metro Surge,” launched by the Trump regime last December, federal prosecutors charged three dozen Minnesotans in a first wave of cases allegedly involving assaulting or impeding federal immigration agents. Most were dismissed or downgraded.

So why is Minnesota’s U.S. attorney announcing new charges? Rosen’s predecessor as U.S. attorney, Joseph Thompson, said he doesn’t understand it. “I think most people, on both of the sides of the political aisle, viewed [Metro Surge] as a disaster for the administration,” Thompson told The Wall Street Journal. “Why you would want to go back and re-litigate this is beyond me.”

One clue lies in the timing of the new charges — coming just two weeks after the John F. Kennedy Library awarded its 2026 Profiles in Courage Award to the people of the Twin Cities for their resistance to Operation Metro Surge.

A bipartisan committee praised the community for defending constitutional rights and demonstrating civic courage:

“Tens of thousands took to the streets to peacefully protest federal overreach and threats to immigrant families and constitutional protections, while others documented enforcement activity and alerted neighbors to federal agents’ presence. Faith leaders organized demonstrations, community groups built rapid-response networks, labor leaders and small business defended workers, and volunteers provided critical support and resources. Across religious, racial, and political lines, a broad coalition of residents of the Twin Cities and surrounding suburbs united in peaceful resistance despite violent confrontation and real personal risk, defending their neighbors’ rights and strengthening the national movement to protect American democracy.”

Trump is presumed to have a grudge against the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage Award because last year’s award went to his former vice president, Mike Pence, for explicitly resisting Trump's demands to overturn the 2020 election results on January 6, 2021.

II. Trump’s Unedning War in Iran

On Sunday, negotiators for Iran and the United States met in Switzerland for a little over an hour. No progress was made. Iranian negotiators insisted on an end to the war between Israel (a U.S. ally) and Hezbollah (an Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon) as a condition for further talks, according to Iranian state media.

The talks were also strained by Trump’s renewed threats against Iran. Fox News reports that Trump, in an interview, said he had spoken with Iranian officials Saturday night and warned them not to close the Strait of Hormuz. “You close it, and you won’t have a country,” Fox said, quoting Trump. “You won’t even make it back to your f—--- country.”

The Iranian delegation in Switzerland decided to suspend the talks due to Trump’s threats, according to Nour News, which is affiliated with Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. IRIB, Iran’s state broadcaster, said it was unclear if the talks will resume.

Iran’s lead negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said on social media that the United States should be careful about issuing threats, adding that Iranian armed forces were prepared to respond. “No matter how much they talk, it is we who act,” he wrote.

Iran says the strait is once again closed. World oil prices are again rising.

One Republican senator described the war in Iran and the sputtering peace talks as “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”

Trump continues to look for a way out, at least for himself. “If it works out, I’m going to take the credit,” Trump said of the peace agreement, only half in jest. “If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD.”

III. Prices Continue to Rise

On Sunday, Trump celebrated Father’s Day with a social media post touting that the U.S. has the “BEST ECONOMY EVER.”

“Happy Father’s Day!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Our Country is doing GREAT. Record Jobs Numbers and Stock Market, BEST ECONOMY EVER! Greatest Military in the World, by far. We are WINNING on all fronts, WINNING LIKE NEVER BEFORE. GOD BLESS YOU ALL!!!”

Inflation in May increased to 4.2 percent, its highest point in three years, with the food index seeing a 3.1 percent increase over the past year and a nearly 4 percent bump in energy prices. Wages are not rising as fast, which means most Americans are becoming poorer.

The latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll released last week shows that only 33 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, his lowest point in both of his terms and 3 points lower than former president Biden at his all-time low.

Trump has long dismissed “affordability” as an issue Americans are concerned about, saying last week that affordability is a “fake word, made up by the Democrats.”

IV. The Reflecting Pool Worsens

All of which brings us back to the Reflecting Pool. Two weeks ago, Trump declared that his decision to repaint the Pool “American Flag blue” was not simply a “paint job” but “highly sophisticated material, industrial strength, that could last for 100 years.” The dark blue paint that Trump insisted on is now peeling, and green algae are returning.

But the blue paint is now peeling and the algae are back.

On Friday night, Trump blamed “Radical Left Lunatics, most likely Dumocats [sic], who have spent their lives trying to ruin our Country” for “some real problems with Vandalism at the beautiful Reflecting Pool” and linked it to the etching of “8647” into the grass on the National Mall days earlier, adding that law enforcement is investigating.

Then on Saturday, Trump doubled down, claiming that “multiple individuals” had taken “some form of knife or blade, and put a 250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade of what took so much work, competence, and money to build and complete. These are very serious crimes having to do with the destruction of National Monuments. Years in jail! Work will begin immediately on its repair.”

So far, five people have been arrested for vandalizing the Reflecting Pool, according to Trump officials. But the evidence against them is weak at best. For example, former Olympic canoe racer David Hearn, 67, was arrested after he touched a flap of blue material partially detached from the bottom of the pool. Hearn, who says he has a background in material science, told CNN he checked out the pool after reading reports of algae in the water and paint or sealant peeling off the bottom. “I didn’t vandalize anything,” Hearn told The Washington Post. “I didn’t destroy or break or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs.”

Yet the Reflecting Pool’s new blue surface isn’t plastic like a typical pool lining, which can be cut. It’s a coarse coat of dark blue paint. It’s peeling because the paint job — done by a Trump donor who had been given the no-bid contract — was obviously done badly, as well as being way over budget. And the algae have returned not because of vandalism but because the dark blue paint has trapped more heat, rapidly creating a friendly habitat for the algae.

As Tim Walz says, it’s the entire Trump presidency in a nutshell.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

President Donald Trump's niece, Dr. Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist by profession, is sounding the alarm that her elderly uncle is spiraling.

In a conversation with reporter Steven Beschloss for her Sunday newsletter, Dr. Trump explained, “He may still have moments when he appears more coherent, but psychically he’s in a downward spiral. He’s experiencing constant narcissistic injuries, and nothing terrifies Donald more than humiliation.”

Beschloss questioned whether she felt that the 80-year-old president looked “unusually diminished” as of late.

Dr. Trump cautioned, “I think this is simply the direction things are heading.”

"He’s experiencing constant narcissistic injuries, and nothing terrifies Donald more than humiliation," she continued. "The problem for him is that nobody humiliates Donald more effectively than Donald humiliates himself. The G7 came immediately after the sixty-million-dollar taxpayer-funded spectacle at the People’s House. Everything he’s doing now exists in service of protecting his fragile ego and trying to fill what I’ve long described as the black hole of need within him."

She explained that once Trump awakened the next morning, it became clear to him that "once again, ... none of it helped."

"He’s still an empty, unloved man, and maintaining that illusion has become psychologically exhausting," Dr. Trump continued. "Combined with his cognitive, emotional, physical and psychological decline, it’s becoming impossible to hide."

Last week, Trump got into a public feud with the Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni. After the G7, Trump claimed she was desperate for a photo with him and begged him for it. The PM released a video calling the comment a lie.

Dr. Trump thinks that her uncle is "projecting," particularly when he claimed that he "felt sorry" for Meloni.

"He also claimed he felt sorry for her when, in reality, many of those leaders probably felt sorry for him because he cuts such a pathetic figure," the psychologist said. "I’m certainly not defending Giorgia Meloni. She’s a fascist. However, when somebody politically aligned with Donald publicly contradicts him, it carries more weight than criticism from Emmanuel Macron or Keir Starmer. He simply cannot help himself. His declining impulse control guarantees moments like these will become increasingly common."

Beschloss also noted that at the G7 summit, the leaders appeared to "have stopped pretending"

"Capitulating to Donald has always been the wrong strategy," Dr. Trump said. "Now they’re finding ways to manage him instead. Inviting him to Versailles, surrounded by gold and grandeur, to sign what amounts to a surrender document was an extraordinarily clever move by Emmanuel Macron."

Beschloss commented on the historical aspect of the signing, noting that it was the site of the humiliating surrender by Germany that ended World War I.

"Emmanuel Macron understands history," Mary Trump explained. "Donald does not."

When President Donald Trump claimed that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington D.C. was the target of vandals, he got some pushback from author Stephen King. And the King of Horror's criticism of Trump is infuriating MAGA Republicans on social media.

Trump's Reflecting Pool renovation is not going well. A $14 million paint job is peeling off in chunks, and it remains to be seen whether algae can be fully removed.

In a Saturday, June 20 post on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote, "The United States Park Police have arrested multiple individuals for vandalizing our Nations magnificent Reflecting Pool. Who would do such a thing? These are very serious crimes having to do with the destruction of National Monuments. Years in jail! Work will begin immediately on its repair. President DJT."

That Truth Social post was followed by another later in the day, with Trump writing, "Many additional people have been arrested having to do with the disgraceful Vandalism of our beautiful Reflecting Pool. It hasn't looked or worked like this since 1922, when it was originally built, but even then, it leaked badly, and didn’t work. Ours worked perfectly, including the mirror like finish, perfectly reflecting the two Great Monuments, which it never had before! What these terrible Vandals have done is a true affront to both Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and should be dealt with accordingly. We met with contractors today, will probably be forced to release and drain much of the water in order to do the necessary repairs, but will have them done as quickly as possible."

The 78-year-old King, famous for horror stories that include "Carrie," "The Shining" and "Misery," didn't believe Trump's vandalism claims.

On X, formerly Twitter, King posted, "Nobody is vandalizing the Reflecting Pool, and Trump knows it. This is a visible example of his corruption — a no-bid contract to some crony followed by sky-high cost overruns, and shoddy construction to boot. Classic Trump: I didn't f–– up, it was my enemies."

Trump's defenders didn't like that tweet at all.

X user Fred Almeida posted, "You let Trump live in your mind. You should focus on your writing. these kind of posts from you are too low brow and annoyingly boring. Especially from the man that wrote Gunslinger."

Another X user, Jane Marie, wrote, "Okay. I'm sure you think the Vandalism occurred as a result of something Trump said or did. Everything negative thing that happens, Libs blame on Trump. It’s just a tired narrative. There will soon come a day when Trump won’t be your political scape goat! Then what Mr. King? Who will the Democrat-Socialists blame?"

But King wasn't the only one who criticized Trump's vandalism claims.

The real culprit with the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, conservative MS NOW Joe Scarborough argued on his show "Morning Joe," was shoddy work resulting from a "no-bid contract."

Two top officials in President Donald Trump's administration are teasing "evidence" they have that will vindicate one of the biggest presidential scandals in history.

Last month, President Donald Trump's officials promised that they had evidence of rampant fraud in the 2020 Georgia and Arizona elections. On Sunday, however, the same officials proclaimed that former President Richard Nixon was innocent and that the Watergate scandal was a "deep state hoax."

According to pardon attorney Ed Martin, "We should mark the 54th anniversary of the Watergate break-in (a few days ago) by remembering this: it is the OG hoax with the pre-FISA CIA running wiretaps on domestic politicians. And then blaming the Nixon campaign. And Washington Post leading (not reporting)."

Even the Encyclopedia Britannica makes it clear that there was no CIA involvement in the Watergate break-in. Rather, "Four of them formerly had been active in Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) activities against Fidel Castro in Cuba."

Trump's chief of protocol and ambassador Monica Crowley shared Martin's post, adding, "President Nixon was the target of a Deep State hoax. He will be vindicated!"

Crowley was the same official who promised last month that they would "soon" have proof that would prove 2020 election fraud.

“He did win in a landslide, and we will soon be able to give evidence about that,” she said, according to May 8 reporting from the conservative Washington Examiner.

Members of the Nixon administration and his own allies testified against him about the scandal. There were also taped conversations and a paper trail showing the Watergate connections. Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, hatched a scheme to have the CIA falsely declare that the FBI's involvement in the Watergate break-in investigation could compromise national security, and that there should be other investigators. Nixon's Oval Office taping system recorded the conversation, and he fought to keep the tapes secret up until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against him in a unanimous decision.

The conservative New York Post reported on John W. Dean, Nixon's former White House Counsel, who said in his book The Nixon Defense that the infamous missing 18 minutes in the tapes “contained some general comment that revealed [Nixon’s] involvement in the [Watergate] cover-up.”

“There’s other talk that week that would have been equally as damaging,” Dean also explained in the book. “It’s just those tapes weren’t subpoenaed.”

Trump has spent years claiming at one point or another that all of his biggest scandals were a "deep state hoax," including Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the 2020 election results and the investigation around his theft of classified documents.

In the past, U.S. President Donald Trump wasn't shy about voicing his total disdain for Camp David — making it clear that he found the presidential retreat in Frederick County, Maryland extremely boring. But Trump headed to Camp David over the weekend, and former GOP strategist Rick Wilson laid out some possible motivations in a "Fast Politics" video with liberal Molly Jong-Fast.

Wilson told Jong-Fast, "Everyone is surprised that Donald Trump is at Camp David because the exact quote, before, was, 'I get f–– bored there in 30 minutes.' Trump does not like Camp David…. I think he's been there, in this administration, never. And I think he went once or twice in the previous (administration). So, this is either the second or third time that I can recall."

The Never Trump conservative added, "What's curious about the whole thing, Molly…. There is a degree to which I am very curious."

Wilson laid out some possible reasons why Trump ventured to Camp David when he would much rather go to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

Wilson told Jong-Fast, "If you were looking for somewhere very private where you wanted, say — I don't know, I'm going to speculate; this is just speculation — if you wanted to have doctors come and attend to you, not at the White House. Or not have to go to Walter Reed (Medical Center). You might go to Camp David. You might want to get away."

The former GOP strategist emphasized that Camp David is very private, which might explain Trump's reasons for visiting a place he was openly disdainful of in the past.

"It is way up in the Catoctin Mountains in Maryland," Wilson told Jong-Fast. "You go down a long, long set of pretty much backroads. And there will be more checkpoints than the law allows. Nobody sneaks up on Camp David. Nobody creeps through the woods to get to Camp David unless they want to die. Nobody flies a drone over Camp David unless they want the drone shot down."

Wilson, known for his work with The Lincoln Project, speculated that at Camp David, Trump can temporarily escape questions about his "stupid war" with Iran or his health.

The Never Trumper told Jong-Fast, "It is a restricted airspace, restricted facility…. Every president has traditionally loved Camp David, in its modern iteration, because no one is around. The pressure is absolutely off."

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President Donald Trump has dishonored America through the actions of his top armed forces cabinet officer, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who is openly denigrating Black soldiers.

“Black Americans fought to destroy a white supremacist regime overseas, while living under legalized segregation at home,” wrote Steve Schmidt, who served as an adviser to President George W. Bush, on Sunday. “Their courage exposed America’s contradiction. So did the Japanese American soldiers of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Their families lived behind barbed wire while they fought and died beneath the American flag.”

Yet under Hegseth, the Trump administration has worked to scrub military history of references to heroic individuals like General Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. and is denying promotions to qualified Black officers, thereby "dishonoring" the military, Schmidt argued. Hegseth has even fired people for seemingly no other reason than that they were Black, and has repeatedly implied that when Black officers only received these types of honors by denying them from more qualified white officers.

“The road from Normandy leads to Selma,” Schmidt argued. “The road from Monte Cassino leads to the Voting Rights Act. The road from the skies over Berlin leads directly to an American military where command would increasingly be earned through merit rather than inherited through race.”

He continued, “That transformation didn’t weaken the United States. It made America stronger — not because diversity became a slogan — but because excellence became the standard. The greatest military in the history of mankind became greater when it finally began drawing upon the talents of the entire American people.”

Hegseth’s actions, Schmidt claimed, put this heritage “at risk.”

“When accomplished Black officers are removed, marginalized or publicly disparaged under circumstances that create the appearance that race has become a defining factor, the damage extends far beyond individual careers,” Schmidt said. “Memory is wounded. History is distorted. The sacrifices of generations of Americans are diminished. That isn’t conservatism. It’s historical vandalism.”

He continued, “The United States military has never been great because it belonged to one race. It’s been great because it belonged to the Constitution.”

In addition to being a fierce critic of Trump’s administration, Schmidt has also often set his sights on Trump himself, in particular by pointing out his physical and mental decline in his 80th year of life.

“Vice President Harry Truman was an honest man, but he deceived the country after he had his one and only visit with the 32nd President of the United States Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” Schmidt told his podcast on Wednesday. “He knew that Roosevelt was a dying man and he did die on April the 12th, 1945. He was inaugurated for the fourth and final time on January 20th. This matters because Franklin Roosevelt wasn't seen in public every day quite like Donald Trump is. The images of Roosevelt at Yalta are shocking. The war etched onto his face, old before his time, falling apart. The burden of command weighing heavily.”

He also compared Trump to the Roman emperor Nero.

“Look at his decomposition physically,” Schmidt argued. “He can barely get out of a chair. He's lost with the European leaders who are redirecting him back into the photo. Does it remind you of anyone? A previous president off-derided by Donald Trump for getting lost in similar photo ops?”

He added, “Look at Trump's hands. Look at his ankles. The swelling is obviously attributed to a coronary condition. His words slur. He falls asleep. He is poked and prodded by 22 different medical specialists like he's ET at Walter Reed Army Hospital. All of this is to say, J.D. Vance, his fascist understudy, puppet to Peter Thiel, general weirdo and lover of the couch, may soon be commander in chief. We should talk about this more.”

President Donald Trump and his supporters are trying to claim the “Sesame Street” puppet Elmo as one of their own — but online commenters are not allowing them to get away with it.

“The GOP has been faced with their anti-Elmo history after trying to welcome him into the MAGA fold,” reported The Daily Beast's Katie Francis on Sunday. The story began with Elmo declaring, regarding the ongoing World Cup soccer event, that “Elmo loves you, and Elmo loves you, and Elmo loves you, and Team USA, and everybody who’s playing." Yet Elmo then concluded, “Elmo just wants to set the record straight... GO TEAM USA!”

He also clarified, “Just to be clear, Elmo wants Team USA to win, okay? But Elmo loves everybody!”

Notably, the Muppet predicted that his preference for Team USA might be exploited when he asked viewers to not “make this a thing.” Yet despite this warning, House Republicans quickly posted the video with the comment that "Elmo is a certified PATRIOT!”

They then added, “Meanwhile, Democrats are rooting for foreigners...”

What the House Republicans neglected to acknowledge was that Trump and his supporters have fiercely criticized “Sesame Street” and the TV station PBS for its supposedly “woke” culture. Social media users on X quickly reminded them of these facts.

“You clowns literally defunded elmo,” one person posted.

“You a-----es voted to defund PBS and called Sesame Street woke,” another wrote. “You couldn’t be more hypocritical, loud, wrong, or clueless.”

Trump’s vendetta against “Sesame Street” may be personal as well as ideological. Last year The Daily Beast reported that after the president signed an executive order to immediately halt all federal funding to PBS, “almost immediately, people began to suspect that Trump’s vendetta against the network wasn’t because of its 'woke programming.' Instead, it’s all to do with a certain puppet show that has been trolling the man since the ’80s.”

Ronald Grump was a periodic but long-running spoof of the then-hotel magnate that began in the 1980s, as The Daily Beast reported. With song lyrics like “he’s got so much trash it spills out of his can,” locations like “Grump Tower” and occupations like “famous Grouch builder,” Ronald Grump was an undisputed antagonist who tried to do nefarious things like force Oscar the Grouch to give up his garbage can (where he lives) and pave over all of “Sesame Street” so he can turn it into “Grump World.”

After Trump became a reality TV star, the spoofing continued. In a later episode, “Sesame Street” mocked Trump’s NBC reality show “The Apprentice.”

President Donald Trump is literally isolated, according to a Trump biographer, in large part because he is on distant terms with both First Lady Melania Trump and his daughter Ivanka Trump.

“An old-time monarch could only dream of the total absolute isolation on display inside the gilded fortress of the executive mansion,” explained The Daily Beast’s Michael Wolff on Sunday. “Now at eighty years old, Donald Trump sits utterly alone.”

On an immediate political level, Trump is isolated from much of the government he purportedly runs, from avoiding important meetings and spending long periods of time away from senior staff to weakening relationships with key US allies.

"Melania remains vacant, Ivanka Trump has distanced herself, and the remaining children function more like his elite corporate employees," Wolff said. "The daily court is populated solely by professional sycophants, retainers, and parasites whose closeness is strictly transactional."

He added that Trump’s children behave more like employees at a corporation than like kids interacting with a parent. Specifically he said that the adult children who remain close to Trump, including Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, act “more like his elite corporate employees” who depend on the president for transactional rather than emotional reasons.

The author added that sometimes Trump has even weaponized family estrangements to his advantage. He alleges that, when Trump decided to divorce his first wife Ivana, he kept that development in the news in order to make sure he would not lose fame he had acquired as a tabloid celebrity. Wolff has not independently corroborated that claim.

Others have pointed out Trump’s unusual family relationships. Ex-Republican presidential adviser Steve Schmidt wrote in April that First Lady Melania Trump — despite being notoriously cold toward her husband — decided to defy the First Amendment by calling for a comedian who criticized the president to be fired.

“Melania Trump’s demand to fire Jimmy Kimmel seems unsurprising from the first third wife to become an American First Lady in our 250-year history,” Schmidt said on Tuesday. “Severe, unsmiling and brutally indifferent Melania is a perfect match for her husband, who recently declared that he isn’t a rapist or pedophile on ‘60 Minutes.’”

The First Lady demanded Kimmel’s firing after he joked about their marriage and the president’s age in a comment made prior to, and which had no relationship with, an assassination attempt on the president. Schmidt’s “rapist or pedophile” comment involves Trump’s longstanding friendship with the late child sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein.

“Melania Trump’s demand is un-American,” Schmidt wrote. “The former model, who was reared in a Slovenian backwater under a communist government, seems ill-acquainted with the First Amendment to the Constitution.”

According to a former pro-Trump lawmaker, President Donald Trump’s greatest legacy is being a sore loser — and by spreading that mindset to most Republicans, he has eroded American democracy in the process.

“I've said repeatedly — ad nauseam — that Donald Trump's greatest legacy is the destruction of truth,” former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) said in a podcast posted on Tuesday. “Not a surprise, right, when this good, great, decent country puts into the White House twice somebody who lies every time he opens his mouth.

Walsh continued that Trump’s “greatest legacy is not winning twice and not getting to the White House twice. His greatest legacy — you want to understand Donald Trump's greatest legacy?

Here it is: Sixty — depending on the poll you look at — 60, 70, 80, 90 percent of one of our two major political parties believes right now that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. That right there is Trump's legacy. That right there is Trump's greatest legacy.”

Walsh pointed out that it imperils democracy for a “vast majority” of one of America’s two major parties to believe that whenever their candidate loses, it means the other candidate was cheating.

“When you look at what's happening in California since their primary election last week, it just reaffirms this point,” Walsh explained. “It expands Trump's legacy. Not only is Donald Trump's greatest legacy — and none of this is good — his greatest legacy is the destruction of truth. His greatest legacy is that he has turned the Republican Party into a party of sore losers, into a party of election deniers, into a party of democracy haters. Trump's greatest legacy is convincing Republicans not to accept the results of elections where their candidate loses. His greatest legacy is convincing Republicans that every time their side loses, it was rigged, it was stolen. Trump did that. Trump turned the Republican Party into that. A party that, when they lose now, never lost — it was stolen.”

While he added that “this is so easy to make fun of,” Walsh finds it difficult to do so “because I can think of nothing more destructive that Trump has done than convincing one of our two political parties not to accept election losses. I can't think of anything more destructive to our democracy that Trump has done than that.”

Prior to Trump, every president who lost an election peacefully relinquished power, tracing all the way back to President John Adams in 1800. Speaking with this journalist for Salon in 2019, Harvard law professor and Trump impeachment defense attorney Alan Dershowitz cited this precedent in denying that Trump would try to overturn the 2020 election if he lost.

“No president will refuse to step down if his opponent is elected in his place,” Dershowitz told Salon at the time. “It just will not happen, and the American public would never tolerate it.”

Despite Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen, conservative commentator and former presidential adviser George F. Will broke down in February how Trump’s claims have been thoroughly debunked, including by many Republicans such as his own attorney general, Bill Barr, and his own vice president, Mike Pence.

“Someone should read to him ‘Lost, Not Stolen,’ a 2022 report by eight conservatives (two former Republican senators, three former federal appellate judges, a former Republican solicitor general, and two Republican election law specialists),” Will explained. “They examined all 187 counts in the 64 court challenges filed in multiple states by Trump and his supporters. Twenty cases were dismissed before hearings on their merits, 14 were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before hearings. Of the 30 that reached hearings on the merits, Trump’s side prevailed in only one, Pennsylvania, involving far too few votes to change the state’s result.”

Will continued, “Trump’s batting average? .016. In Arizona, the most exhaustively scrutinized state, a private firm selected by Trump’s advocates confirmed Trump’s loss, finding 99 additional Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump votes.” Therefore he wrote of Trump, “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”

In May, discussing Trump’s being a sore loser, Walsh said that he believed the president became unforgivable “the very first time in American history, a sitting American president lost an election and refused to accept the result. I still believe to this day the American people, all of us, no matter anyone's politics, should have turned their backs on him — all of us — and told him to just get the hell out of our lives. We're done with you. That's the one thing. Because it's the thread by which this representative democracy hangs together, keeps it together.”

Walsh added, “Six years later, what still saddens me more than anything else is that the American people did not make him pay for that. The American people did not hold him accountable for that. The American people did not stand up and say: ‘oh my f — — God, this doesn't happen in America. You're running for Congress, you're running for the Senate, you're running for mayor, you're running for dog catcher, you're running for president — man, woman, whoever you are, you accept the result. You lose, you accept the result.’ Get out of here!”

He concluded, “That the American people did not say — of everything Trump's done, that with that one, not accepting an election result, that the American people, no matter our political divide, did not stand up and say: ‘Get lost. How dare you. How dare you attack this representative democracy?’ It's a — I don't mind saying it, and if it offends people, I don't care — it will be the one thing that I will never forgive the American people for.”