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The Trump White House is attacking one of its loyal media figures after she berated Vice President JD Vance over President Donald Trump’s Iran deal.

“The problem is, that it’s an absolutely disastrous deal that has brought us to our knees, weeks before our 250th birthday,” NewsNation host Batya Ungar-Sargon said in a clip she posted to social media, which Mediaite reported.

“This is an utter humiliation of the United States, and everybody knows it,” she continued. “Everybody knows it, but especially Iran knows it. They are celebrating this. They are still calling us the enemy.”

“And while Iran celebrates this and sneers at us for totally capitulating when we had complete military superiority over them,” she said, “JD Vance is out there criticizing Israel, making up fantasies about how it is Israel’s fault, and Israel wants Iran to be a failed state. And if only Israel would lay down its arms and allow Hezbollah to keep attacking it, there would be peace in the Middle East.”

Ungar-Sargon called Vance’s remarks “disgusting,” “utterly deplorable,” and a “complete Tucker Carlsonification of the Vice President of the United States.”

She warned, “if this was a dry run for Vance 2028,” for president, “we sure learned a lot.”

On social media, Ungar-Sargon added: “VP JD Vance just brought the US to its knees with a humiliating deal weeks before our 250th birthday and he has the audacity to blame … Israel! … for the terrible situation we’re in.”

The White House’s Rapid Response team blasted Ungar-Sargon.

“The only humiliation here is Batya desperately begging for an additional brain cell because her failing TV … show is even more irrelevant than the likes of Kaitlan Collins and Fake Tapper,” the White House declared. “Only a moron of her caliber could still doubt President Trump’s leadership.”

In 2024, Ungar-Sargon wrote, “American Jews should vote for Trump because he is the candidate who stands most clearly for the things that have defined us for centuries.”

Former MAGA congressman Joe Walsh spun abruptly from President Donald Trump and his MAGA crew years ago after seeing Trump’s damage, and now he is surprised the rest of the nation hasn’t managed to catch on and throw out the Trump poison. Walsh expressed even more surprise at the nation’s failure to wise up after 10 years of Trump’s toxin, particularly after former president Obama’s eloquent speech in Chicago at the opening of his presidential library and community learning center.

“People have been telling me, ‘Oh my god, Joe, how the heck did we get from there to here,’” Walsh said on his “Social Contract” podcast with guest host former Chicago City councilman Edwin Eisendrath. “And I want to tell my lovable liberal elitist friends we're all there are a lot of reasons for that it's not just because Trump and half the country are bats—— crazy.”

“I said, ‘Obama helped,’” said Walsh. “Sure, I helped, too, and the Tea Party helped, but Edwin, you know this because when you were active politically, you were a reformer. You were a reform minded outsider. … And Obama was part of a political establishment class that did not understand the anger that middle working-class people in this country had. And there was an elite. It's not just Obama. I mean, Hillary, they all were like this, and a lot of Republicans. And that kind of dismissiveness of the elites Led to the demagogue that Trump is.”

“What a contrast, right?” Walsh complained. “And I guess before everybody hates me altogether, what I'm trying to say is … Donald Trump is in my starting five for the absolute worst human beings who's ever lived. Now, how did that guy get in the White House? And if we as a people can't honestly really reflect upon that, I mean, how did this good, great, decent country elect one of the worst human beings who's ever lived? That's a complicated answer.”

Walsh admitted Obama is an intelligent man who causes longing for a president who does not speak like a demented toddler, but he said some of the Democratic Party's lagging ideals ultimately got the nation where it is.

"How nice is it to listen to a president speak in complete sentences and all the rest, and I get it,” said Walsh. “I appreciate that, but I don't want all these good folks to go down that same f—— elitist road and not understand why this madman's in the White House. I don't want my new party … to go down this road where we think the answer, again, is to nominate some elite establishment f——. That's not what the Democratic Party needs Because most Americans, Edwin, as you know right now, cannot stand either party.”

Eisendrath pointed out that the Democratic Party is in place of transitioning, at least, and the new blood is outpacing the establishment old guard in primaries.

“The Republicans are almost finished with their transformation to become simply the party of Trump. The Democrats are involved in a double transformation,” Eisendrath said. “There is the ‘let's make a deal party’ that worked for a long time versus the ‘get s—— done party.’ And the ‘get s—— done party’ is beating the ‘make a deal party in primaries.’

“And there's a generational change, too,” Eisendrath added. “And the younger guys are not interested in what are the limits on the power. We have to get things done. They're going to be tougher than that.”

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and other members of President Donald Trump's administration have refused to file the statement Judge Leonie M. Brinkema demanded in her judicial order last week.

AlterNet reported that last Friday, Judge Brinkema said she wanted to "avoid any further litigation in this civil action," and asked Blanche along with Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, Jr. and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent to submit a declaration they wouldn't take any further action to create Trump's slush fund.

The deadline for that was June 19.

Judge Brinkema had demanded that the filing be submitted "under the penalty of perjury."

But instead, something else was submitted, according to legal reporter Chris Geidner. The Justice Department didn't merely ignore the requirement; it submitted another filing

"The acting attorney general has testified before Congress that the Fund is 'not going forward, period,'" the DOJ filing claims. "Undersigned counsel have twice signed briefs reaffirming that 'the Fund is not going forward.' And counsel for Defendants has twice said substantially the same thing in open court. All these statements were made against the backdrop of serious penalties for falsity."

Demanding that the Cabinet officials, in particular, be burdened with signing a document for a court is simply too far, the filing argues.

According to the DOJ, these facts mean "there is no reason why declarations should affect the Court's mootness analysis." They also say that having such officials sign such a declaration is a "separation of powers." The inverse could also be argued that if so many statements have been previously made, then a declaration shouldn't be a problem.

The filing goes on to attempt to relitigate an argument already lost, Geidner commented.

"Accordingly, the Court's demands are unnecessary. And it's presumption that mootness can arise only by compelling testimony from three senior government officials 'implicate[s] separation of powers concerns.' As stated multiple times, the Fund is not moving forward. The transcript of the Acting Attorney General's equivocal testimony to Congress is attached," the DOJ says.

The filing was signed by both Woodward and Andrew Block, senior counsel to the associate attorney general.

The judge said last week, "If such a declaration is not filed by June 19, 2026, the Court will issue a Scheduling Order and require defendants to file a responsive pleading ..."

The Trump administration's defiance of Judge Brinkema's order reflects a broader pattern of executive resistance to judicial oversight.

Legal experts have noted that the DOJ's response—citing prior statements and separation of powers concerns—amounts to an end-run around the judge's explicit authority to compel sworn testimony. The administration's argument that previous congressional testimony and court statements suffice contradicts the judge's determination that a formal declaration under penalty of perjury was necessary to resolve the case and prevent further litigation.

Judge Brinkema now faces a critical decision: whether to enforce her order through contempt proceedings or accept the administration's reframing of mootness. The case underscores ongoing tensions between executive accountability and claims of constitutional separation of powers, with significant implications for judicial authority to oversee government compliance with court orders.

The "madman theory" of politics argues that when a leader comes across as unhinged and volatile, adversaries will back down — as they don't know what the person will do. That theory was applied to U.S. President Donald Trump during the Iran war, with some of his supporters arguing that he would come out on top because Iranian leaders would be genuinely afraid of him. But according to NOTUS reporters Akbar Shahid Ahmed and Jasmine Wright, Trump's ceasefire agreement with Iran underscores the fatal flaws of the "madman theory."

"President Donald Trump has handled his war on Iran with his signature brand of unpredictability, veering from threatening 'a whole civilization will die' to cheering diplomacy and Iranian freedom," Ahmed and Wright explain in a NOTUS article. "It's not clear how much he'll have to show for it. The U.S. and Iran are expected to begin talks soon toward a permanent end to the war. They have 59 days to agree on contentious issues, including Iran's nuclear program, economic sanctions and a new regional arrangement governing the Strait of Hormuz."

The NOTUS reporters add, "It's a particularly delicate period, but Trump remains deeply volatile. The negotiations will test the 'madman theory' of foreign policy the president leans on: assuming adversaries will cave because they don’t know how far he will go. They will also test whether U.S. officials can reach mutually agreeable terms when their boss might shift the goalposts at any time — an especially significant task given how massive the global cost of resuming conflict with Iran has become."

Alan Eyre, a former diplomat, recalls that President Richard Nixon articulated the "madman theory" during the Vietnam War. And Eyre told NOTUS that Trump "is doing what he does because he can't do otherwise, and that's the biggest threat."

Eyre added, "He has no strategic messaging.… He's going to sabotage negotiations, not just by moving red lines, which I think he probably will do, but by saying stuff in the media that's going to have an effect."

Wendy Sherman, who helped negotiate former President Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, believes that Iranian leaders will "go into this thinking they have the upper hand." And she argues that the "madman theory" is proving "toothless" with Trump and Iran.

Sherman told NOTUS, "Initially, there was belief by some that the madman approach might work, but it has been shown to be toothless. At the end of the day. Trump has agreed to a bad deal because the war didn't turn out the way he wanted it to."

Veteran journalist Jonathan Alter has published a fictitious yet “all-too-plausible” scenario whereby President Donald Trump attempts to overturn the results of the 2026 election — especially in the Senate — which could narrowly move to Democratic control in November. He suggests that it will take two sets of citizens: the general public and former U.S. presidents, among others, to defeat what he sees as the current president’s “slow-motion rolling coup attempt,” which he says is “already underway.”

Writing at Washington Monthly, Alter acknowledges that Democratic control of the House after the November election is likely, while control of the Senate is possible but not the “big blue wave” or “tsunami” he sees in the House.

Calling him a “chaos agent,” Alter explains that Trump’s “fear of impeachment and a Senate trial are making him desperate and more dangerous.”

“It’s easy to miss that a slow-motion rolling coup attempt is already underway, staged by Stephen Miller and, of course, Trump himself,” Alter writes. “When Trump told The New York Times early this year that he regretted not seizing voting machines in 2020, that was a clear signal that he will likely try to do so after the midterms.”

Ultimately, Alter predicts in his war-gamed scenario that democracy will prevail but not before a months-long constitutional crisis.

“The resolution of the crisis came after more than two months of efforts by President Trump to overturn the results of the midterm elections with unfounded accusations of vote fraud,” Alter writes, as if it were January 2027. “His efforts sparked mass protests, which gave him a pretext to invoke emergency powers and interfere in elections that, under the U.S. Constitution, are handled by the states.”

Alter points to several critical events when Trump telegraphed his intentions.

January 6, 2026: “You gotta win the midterms, because if we don’t win the midterms, they’ll find a reason to impeach me,” Trump told Republicans on the fifth anniversary of what some have called his coup attempt.

That same month: “There is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me, and that’s very good,” Trump told The New York Times.

Also that month, he told Reuters, “When you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.”

Alter also points to two critical documents that presumably could give Trump broad emergency powers.

One, the National Presidential Security Memorandum (NPSM-7) that, Alter writes, “grants the president broad wartime powers to designate Americans as possible terrorists if the federal government considers them or their sponsors ‘anti-American,’ ‘anti-capitalist,’ ‘anti-Christian’ or ‘hostile to traditional American views on family, religion and morality.'”

The second, Presidential Emergency Action Documents (PEADs), “which were developed during the Eisenhower Administration as a single instructional book in case of a nuclear attack on Washington.”

Alter continues his war-gamed scenario: “With Mr. Trump now running a police state, former presidents, vice presidents, and Supreme Court justices finally came off the sidelines. On December 22, a hastily-organized Committee on Election Integrity issued an open letter in support of certification of the legitimate winners and filed an amicus brief in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the president’s use of NPSM-7 and PEAD powers—intended for nuclear war—was unconstitutional in domestic politics.”

Read the entire article here.

Political commentator Jonah Goldberg issued a rhetorical body-slam about President Donald Trump's recent claim that there are "no limits" to his power.

Marc Caputo recently asked Trump, " What have you learned about not just the exercise of power, but the limits on your power as a result of the conflict?"

"There are no limits. No, not — I haven't learned that lesson yet. I know there are. But you know, there are no limits. We defeated them totally militarily," Trump said about Iran, his agreement, and what he calls "an unconditional defeat."

It comes at a time when Trump insulted Premier Giorgia Meloni, claiming Meloni "begged" him for a photo and he "felt sorry for her." That mistake prompted Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani to abruptly cancel his planned trip to the U.S. Meloni also responded with a video, making it clear that his claim was not true but that “Italy and I do not beg."

Goldberg returned to the Axios interview and merged the two stories together. While Trump was once able to bully his way into foreign policy and make demands of international leaders, the Iran War made it clear that those days are over. Meloni simply vocalized it publicly.

"Where he says, we totally defeated Iran militarily. There are no limits to my power to my power.' The fact that he's coming out of this week with this deal, saying that there are no limits to his power when he was forced to negotiate ending a blockade to open up the Strait of Hormuz, is preposterous," Goldberg said. "And why was the Strait of Hormuz such a problem? They begged to get allies to come in and help with the mine-sweeping, because our European allies have better equipment for that kind of stuff."

The reason that the Strait is closed is that Trump couldn't get Europe to come to his aid.

"Why couldn't they get them to do it? Because he threatened to take, militarily, take over Greenland, and made himself so unbelievably radioactive," Goldberg continued. "The most brilliant thing Trump did — he was already unpopular in the middle and with the left in Europe. But the Greenland thing made the nationalists hate him, too."

After that, it was implausible that any European allies would help at Trump's demand.

"The idea that all these allies were going to jump and help him out in the Strait of Hormuz. It would be political suicide for any elected leader in Europe to act to save Trump's bacon about anything," Goldberg said.

"I think his approval rating in Denmark is like 4 percent, right? So like, those are limits to his power," Goldberg explained. "We would be a much more powerful country if we had allies that were willing to get our back and help us out. Those are limits. What's disturbing is he's so delusional he can't see the limits to his power, and that's something that's going to get him into more mistakes."

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It has been a few days since President Donald Trump signed a "deal" at the Palace of Versailles to end the war with Iran, but the intelligence community is now warning him that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will likely undermine any agreement the U.S. makes.

According to diplomacy and national security reporter John Hudson at The Washington Post, "the Israeli leader faces intense political pressure to continue waging war in Lebanon."

One intelligence report that circulated over the week said that Netanyahu’s political desperation was growing as his elections quickly approach.

"Netanyahu’s political survival is linked to showing his domestic audience that he will not withdraw troops from Lebanon and that he is intent on escalating," said Hudson in a thread on X.

Lebanon is where the extremist anti-Israeli group Hezbollah is headquartered. Iran, which has funded terrorism by Hezbollah, has made Lebanon part of the deal with the United States. As of Friday afternoon, Israel agreed to a ceasefire with Hezbollah.

Speaking about it in France on Wednesday, Trump called it a "little dispute over Lebanon."

The intelligence report described frustration from Israeli officials with Trump's Iran deal. They object to the terms that they believe "undermine its broader objective of maintaining maximum pressure on Tehran."

"Trump administration officials insist that the terms do not prevent Israel from retaliating against Hezbollah if fired upon and that Netanyahu’s concerns pale in comparison to the need to complete a deal and reopen the Strait of Hormuz to stave off a global economic crisis," Hudson also wrote in his X thread.

In an interview with Axios on Thursday, Trump claimed that Iran agreed to an "unconditional surrender," which isn't consistent with the 14-point agreement that he released this week.

Meanwhile, Israel began Friday by launching more air strikes in southern Lebanon after a Hezbollah drone strike killed four Israeli soldiers, the Post report said.

Iran and the U.S. were set to meet in Switzerland on Friday, where Vice President JD Vance would officially sign an agreement. At the last minute, the trip was off and the signing postponed. The president hasn't given any reason for what may have happened in the past 48 hours.

Punch Bowl News reported Friday that it seems like every time Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) gets ahead, he is thrown back several steps by Donald Trump.

House and Senate Republicans don't see eye-to-eye on much, but they can both agree they've been waylaid by Trump just when it seems they're "turning a corner." For Thune has accelerated over the past month.

Thune "had just about the worst luck over the past couple of months, getting blindsided repeatedly by a president who sometimes seems not to care that much about the fate of his congressional majorities," the report explained.

The holiday edition of the site's morning news explained that Thune had things well in hand before being thrown into a tilt-a-whirl being run by a madman. While lawmakers were desperate to end the government shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, Trump began demanding that lawmakers help him fund $1 billion in funds for his ballroom project. Trump initially said that $200 million is all he would need and that he would fundraise to afford it. That has since changed to be $600 million and Trump was only able to raise half of it.

There was backlash from Republicans, but in the end, taxpayers must pay for half of it. In another matter, Republicans thought they'd be able to fast-track Trump's choice for the Director of National Intelligence, Bill Pulte. That was scrapped and his lack of support turned Pulte into an "acting" secretary. Trump then shut down the hearing for his real choice that was scheduled for this week.

"Thune has seen that even when he does what Trump wants, the favor is rarely, if ever, returned," wrote the Punch Bowl team.

Meanwhile, Thune is taking it in stride, managing to only flash "some anger here and there. But his relationship with Trump has clearly taken a hit.

On Thursday, Thune said he hadn't spoken to Trump since the previous weekend, so there was no interaction about Trump abruptly trying to stop Jay Clayton's confirmation hearing set for Wednesday.

“I’ve never been asked to slow a nomination down before,” Thune told Punch Bowl. “We’re just executing — or trying to execute — on what they had asked us to do. They nominated him.”

Instead of Clayton's confirmation, Pulte will take over and start making big changes. There are challenges with that, as Pulte appeared not to know the basics about the post.

It remains unknown why Clayton's nomination hearing was stopped, and Republicans were just as "perplexed that Trump was deliberately slowing down his own pick’s confirmation process."

The GOP lawmakers have also been public about their dissatisfaction with Trump's Iran deal. Thune had been asking all week for the White House to brief him, but for an unknown reason, he "was consistently stiff-armed."

Then there's the infighting in the Senate GOP itself. A closed-door meeting on Wednesday resulted in a battle after Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) began "undermining the GOP majority by continuing to push for the SAVE Act," Trump's flagship voting rights restrictions.

Thune made it clear the SAVE Act was dead unless they killed the filibuster, and that's never happening, he made clear.

“Everybody knows we’re not nuking the filibuster,” Thune told Punchbowl. “It was on the floor for two weeks. We’ve had now five votes on it, none of which have gotten 60, and SAVE America hasn’t even gotten 50. So at some point, it seems like we ought to start making this an issue with the Democrats rather than with each other. That was the gist of the [lunch] conversation, and that would be my view.”

It's a rare rebuke of one Republican by another, the report sussed.

Meanwhile, Republicans are preparing to debate a bipartisan housing bill because they want to refocus Trump on issues that Americans actually care about. That hasn't worked in the past, however.

Thune, rather than Trump, has been the one to get the blame, even if other Republicans don't think it's right

"What’s true is that Trump is never going to accept the limits of the Senate’s legislative power. Thune is always going to have to tell him 'no' when the votes aren’t there. And 'no' is a word Trump doesn’t like," the report closed.