death penalty for the mentally diabled

How Trump caused the downfall of House GOP’s most conservative voting bloc

During Barack Obama's presidency, the House Freedom Caucus — a group closely identified with the right-wing Tea Party movement — did a lot to shake up the Republican Party, sometimes to the frustration of then-House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). Prominent Tea Party Republicans like Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Chip Roy (R-Texas) were major players in the Freedom Caucus. But according to NOTUS reporter Paul Kane, the once-powerful group is being "hollowed out" in a big way during Donald Trump's second presidency.

Roy, who angered Trump at times, lost a Texas GOP primary battle for state attorney general on Tuesday, May 26. And before that, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) — another favorite of the Tea Party and the Freedom Caucus who Trump was angry with — was voted out of office via a Republican congressional primary.

"Roy, the group's ideological soul on many policy matters, lost by a double-digit margin Tuesday in his bid for the GOP nomination to become Texas state attorney general," Kane explains in NOTUS. "He was defeated by a state senator who claimed Roy wasn't a real MAGA supporter. Roy is not the only one. Come January, almost the entire top rung of the Freedom Caucus will leave the House — a hollowing out of one of the most influential power centers of the past decade."

The NOTUS reporter continues, "Many are running for statewide office: Reps. Andy Biggs (Arizona governor), Harriet Hageman (Wyoming senator), Barry Moore (Alabama senator), Tom Tiffany (Wisconsin governor), Ralph Norman (South Carolina governor) and Byron Donalds (Florida governor). Most are underdogs at the moment, except for Donalds, Hageman and Moore. Another former caucus chair, Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry, is in a tossup race in November against an opponent who came within a point of toppling him in 2024."

During Obama's presidency, Freedom Caucus Republicans butted heads with establishment conservatives like Boehner — who felt they were imposing right-wing purity tests that hurt the GOP agenda. But more recently, Freedom Caucus lawmakers have been clashing with Trump and the MAGA movement.

"Some HFC members have made accommodations with Trump and his loose moorings to conservative policy, staying out of his crosshairs and winning endorsements," Kane observes. "Others — like Roy — tried to put up a fight on big issues like the massive domestic policy bill that passed last July. Freedom Caucus members prompted multiple marathon votes to protest the legislation. They got no real conservative wins with their protests and only drew the ire of Trump's inner circle."

Trump admin indictment of Comey falls apart under linguistic analysis

A federal grand jury in April 2026 charged James Comey with making a threat against President Donald Trump and transmitting a crime across state lines.

The charges came after Comey, the former FBI director, posted an image of seashells on a North Carolina beach, arranged in the form of the numerals “86” and “47.” Forty-seven was an ostensible reference to Trump, the 47th U.S. president, and 86 to a colloquial expression conveying a sense of “getting rid of” or “casting aside.”

But is “86 47” really a threat? And if so, is it a criminal one amounting to a threat to assassinate the president, as prosecutors have suggested?

In contrast to crimes such as murder or arson, which can be committed without uttering – or writing – a single word, threats are inherently crimes of language. They don’t exist without the linguistic symbols used to convey them.

Linguists like me who work in the field of language and the law understand these types of crimes to be “speech acts,” utterances that perform the action they name. What is a promise if not the words “I promise” or an apology if not the words “I’m sorry”?

The law is full of speech acts. Rulings, verdicts and arrests are all speech acts. So, too, are the crimes of language: solicitation, perjury, bribery and threats.

What is a threat?

Threats are language that states or implies the intent to intimidate or create harm. As a speech act, they need not be direct but often are.

In December 1984, the White House mail room received a letter with the message, “Ronnie, Listen Chump! Resign or You’ll Get Your Brains Blown Out,” referring to President Ronald Reagan. Below these words was a drawing of a pistol with a bullet being ejected from the barrel.

The Secret Service conducted a handwriting comparison analysis of the words, which led to the arrest of David Hoffman. He stated that “he didn’t know it was against the law to threaten the President.”

But Hoffman did commit a language crime. Although he didn’t use the words “I threaten to blow your brains out if you don’t resign,” the passive construction “you’ll get your brains blown out” accompanied by a drawing of a pistol constituted a direct threat that expressed a clear intent to intimidate and harm the president.

The scientific process of dictionaries

This brings us to the Comey case. Can a photo of 38 seashells arranged in the numerals “86” and “47,” and broadcast over Instagram, constitute a threat against Trump?

In theory, “86 47” could be an indirect threat, but the interpretation of Comey’s message really hinges on the meaning of “86” when used as a verb.

Three men stand behind a lectern as one man speaks. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche speaks on April 28, 2026, in Washington, D.C., as charges are brought against former FBI Director James Comey. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

This is where tools of forensic linguistics, which helps solve crime and resolve matters of language and the law, can help.

The first tool is lexicography, the academic study of creating dictionaries. A classic maxim of lexicography is that dictionaries are out of date before they are printed. It’s a nod to the fact that words’ meanings change and new words enter the language quickly.

Although dictionaries are imperfect, their definitions are the result of the rigorous study of word meaning and adherence to the scientific process of lexicography, the practice of writing and editing dictionaries and other reference materials.

In the Comey case, we would expect to find “86” listed as a noun. But the inclusion of the nonstandard verb form – “to 86” – would tell us that what may seem mysterious and cryptic actually has a conventionalized and well-recognized meaning.

Of the five major dictionaries of contemporary English I consulted, all had entries for “86” as a verb. The Oxford English Dictionary, for example, includes: “to eject or debar (a person) from premises; to reject or abandon; (in earliest use) to refuse to serve (a customer).”

Oxford also offers this second entry: “In restaurants and bars, an expression indicating that the supply of an item is exhausted.” This may explain why many restaurant workers across the country have strong reactions to the Comey indictment.

The American Heritage Dictionary definition includes “to refuse to serve (an unwelcome customer) at a bar or restaurant; to throw out, eject; to throw away, discard.” Merriam-Webster provides a similar definition: “to refuse to serve (a customer); to eject or ban (a customer); broadly, to eject, dismiss or remove (someone).”

Collins Dictionary offers two entries, the first in line with the others – “ to reject from, or to refuse to serve at” – and the second: “to cut off, eject, cancel, eliminate, kill, etc.”

The dictionary evidence is therefore mixed: Most definitions convey a sense of “kicking out” or “refusing service,” but Collins does include “kill” as a secondary definition.

How ordinary speakers of English use ‘86’

More evidence is needed, so I turned to the second tool: linguistic corpora. A corpus – plural: corpora – is a collection of texts chosen to represent language as it is actually produced by speakers and writers across genres and time periods. Linguistic corpora are useful because they show us usage in context, while providing enough data to conduct quantitative analysis of word meaning.

With over 1 billion words, the Corpus of Contemporary American English is the largest corpus of spoken and written American English available today. I analyzed usage of the word “86” in the corpus and found 372 attestations in full form – “eighty-six,” not “86.”

Seashells are arranged on a beach in the form of the numerals '86' and '47.' Comey posted an image of seashells on a beach arranged in the form of the numerals ‘86’ and ‘47.’ James Comey/Instagram

The vast majority of the attestations had nothing to do with “ejecting.” But in a random sample of 100 cases of “eighty-six,” 20% were the verb form conveying the sense of “discard” or “eject.” Of those, two attestations meant “to kill,” and both came from fictional television and film. Far more common were expressions such as “Definitely 86 the coat, it sends the wrong message” and “Can we 86 the flags, please?”

When the direct object of the verb was a human subject, “86” still overwhelmingly meant “to discard” or “eject,” including this example when the subject was another sitting U.S. president: “Obama’s going to lose this election … they will blame his one term on a homophobic electorate who chose to eighty-six him because of his SSM stance,” in reference to his support for gay marriage.

In the Obama case, “86” clearly meant “vote him out.”

User-generated dictionaries are a third tool linguists use to analyze word meaning in the context of language crimes. They are less reliable than dictionaries written by professional lexicographers, but – like corpora – they give us a sense of the pulse of the language as it’s happening now.

Although they often contain factual errors, they tell us what English speakers think they know about the origins and meanings of words – a useful tool for analyzing language crimes.

I studied the entries provided by users for “86” on Urban Dictionary, where the highest-ranked definition is “to remove, end usage, or take away.” Of the 63 entries, only seven mention killing, one of those in reference to the Comey seashells. The vast majority of other entries align with the dictionary evidence: 86 means to get rid of something, or to have run out of a key ingredient.

The Comey indictment states that “a reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret” Comey’s post “as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to President Trump.”

Looking across dictionaries, linguistic corpora and user-generated dictionaries, “eighty-six” could mean to kill but probably doesn’t. A general speaker of contemporary American English would interpret Comey’s post as an expression of opinion, a desire to “eject” the president from office.The Conversation

Phillip M. Carter, Professor of Linguistics and English, Florida International University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

'Quiet part out loud': Expert says 'yapping' will get Trump chief 'in legal trouble'

President Donald Trump's administration is threatening the ABC network and ABC is gearing up for a major fight. And one legal expert warns that Trump and members of his administration tend to get into legal trouble by bragging or "yapping" in public.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) went after ABC in April, demanding that several local networks reapply for their broadcast licenses years in advance. On Thursday afternoon, ABC submitted its formal renewal application alleging political bias, censorship and violations of freedom of speech. It effectively sets up what is likely to be a legal battle between ABC and the FCC.

Speaking about it on CNN on Friday morning, legal analyst Elliot Williams explained that the FCC has always had the power to revoke broadcast licenses, but it rarely, if ever, does so, unless something egregious occurs. In this case, the Trump administration doesn't like ABC/Disney's corporate policy embracing diversity. The FCC has also turned late-night host Jimmy Kimmel into a top Trump target after the president was displeased with jokes the host made at his expense.

It "tip-toes into the realm of censoring content," Williams said.

In fact, last year, ABC corporate heads told co-hosts of "The View" to tone down their anti-Trump comments.

The main problem for the administration is that FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has bragged on conservative news about his moves.

"I don't understand why he's doing this," said Noel King, co-host of "Today Explained" on Vox. "I would think Brendan Carr needs to, if you're going to go about this, why not go about it quietly? I just — I really — and Elliot, when it comes to legal challenges, does his yapping then turn into okay, Brendan Carr said this. He said the quiet part out loud."

"Or, do you yap because you know it's not going to happen and therefore you want — the journey is the destination?" host Audi Cornish asked.

"Or if you're Disney, do you start filing lawsuits and taking actions because you know something's coming and they're getting ahead of it?" Williams said. "I think that's part of what's happening here. Look, one of the enduring sort of law and communications challenges of our era is that the president and the people around him do yap in advance of these things and actually do themselves some legal harm because of the fact that they can say, I am the people that they're suing can say I was being targeted all along."

Cornish cut in to agree that it isn't unusual for these "yapping" phrases from the administration to make their way to the actual court proceedings. She asked her conservative host why the administration would be trying to take down broadcast television when conservative media is doing so well, thanks to the administration.

Daily Signal president Rob Bluey claimed that it is over the public frustrations with traditional broadcast media. He explained that attacks on the media have always been a tactic used by Republicans. He said they "thrive" off of it.

Trump gambled and lost — and there's no going back to normal

Yesterday, the White House went to its favorite gullible reporter to once again create the false impression that the president's war of choice against Iran is going to end any minute now. "Negotiators have reached an agreement on a 60-day memorandum of understanding to extend the ceasefire and launch negotiations on Iran's nuclear program," Barak Ravid said.

Sounds fabulous, except for two premise-cancelling details: "President Trump has yet to give his final approval" and – oh, by the way – "Iran has also not confirmed its acceptance."

For those keeping track at home, this is pretty much the same story that Axios published three weeks ago, on May 6, when Ravid said "the White House believes it's getting close to an agreement with Iran on a one-page memorandum of understanding to end the war."

That story also sounded fabulous, except that Marco Rubio didn't believe the agreement was going to happen. After all, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were negotiating, not him. The details are a bit different, but the goal of each report is pretty much the same: to kick the can down the road and encourage everyone to believe everything's going back to normal soon.

There is no going back to normal. Iran has gained too much from Trump's folly. Forget nukes, the real prize is control of the Strait of Hormuz. Is Iran likely to give that up in peace talks? Never, a career intelligence analyst told me, who goes by the Bluesky handle Shipwreck. "This is the new norm. [Control of the strait is] almost a replacement for their nuclear deterrent."

This is Trump's Catch-22. He can't keep the war going. Iran is burning up the American economy, thus burning up his party's prospects in the coming congressional elections. But he can't stop either. He's deathly afraid of the humiliation of losing a war he started. He keeps chasing after Iran's nuclear program, as if it symbolized victory, but he's too vain to admit he's already given Iran something far more valuable. It now has such a good thing going that other countries want a piece of the action. Oman has said it wants to charge tolls, too.

Whatever our feckless president does, the consequences of his choices will land on us. If Iran throttles the strait, we will pay. If it charges tolls, we will pay. (The cost of paying tribute to Iran, as much as $2 million for each tanker, will be passed on to consumers.) It's so bad investors believe gas prices won't fall to their prewar levels until 2032. That is not a typo.

Trump has lost. He just won't admit it. He will not take his fingers out of his hoary ears long enough to hear anyone say otherwise. His people keep going to reporters like Barak Ravid to maintain the illusion of negotiations proceeding apace. Meanwhile, Iran is said to be able to outlast the US naval blockade for months. If it can hold out until August, a "looming summer oil shock" could threaten "a 2008-style recession," according to the Times of London.

In the end, what has been accomplished? Not much, according to Shipwreck.

The president will try to claim victory, but the real consequences of this war will be "a future in which Iran preserves the ability to build a bomb, its proxies continue harassing Israel, the United States and Gulf neighbors, and another round of fighting becomes inevitable."

"This is the scenario where we see repeated cycles of conflict until the current regime is gone. The problem is that the US has no interest in removing them, so the cycle continues."

What has America gained? Nothing but higher prices on everything.

Here's my interview with Shipwreck.

Is the president believable? Is this war ending?

No, he’s certainly not believable, and the war is not ending. I’d say we’re in a tactical pause, a lull that’s likely to stretch well into the summer and possibly into the fall, marked by short bursts of kinetic action followed by brief negotiation windows.

The Iranians are well‑known for dragging out talks; the [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, aka Iran nuclear deal] negotiations alone took nearly nine months before they were finalized. I expect them to continue stretching this process for as long as possible, aiming to weaken US resolve and extract concessions along the way.

The Iranians are masters of this approach. They know how to play the long game, and they will keep at it as long as it serves their strategic interests.

Why do markets keep accepting his lies?

The markets are way too reactive and don’t spend the time to look beyond the immediate future. This is going to drag out. I also think the markets may know this and play the fluctuations to make money. All part of the game.

Will Iran give up control of the strait? It seems too valuable to give up now. What would they ask for in return for "reopening" it?

Never will. This is the new norm. It’s almost a replacement for their nuclear deterrent. The only way they give it up is if we take it by force and we clearly have no appetite for that.

If Iran won't give up its nuke program and won't give up control of the strait, what can be done? Is the naval blockade enough to force Iran to accept a deal? And what would that deal look like?

The naval blockade is impacting them. The longer it goes, the more damage will be done. They are not completely blockaded. Some stuff travels over land and through Caspian Sea, but it has limited their revenue.

Honestly, that’s the million-dollar question and explains the current stalemate. They won’t budge. Their plan is to hope the longterm economic pain softens the US and Trump bails with a bad deal. They are banking on US gas prices going up in the summer and upcoming midterms.

The deal will likely be bad. Trump wants out and will find a way to shape the deal to his constituents. We still may see another round of fighting, but the Iranians are dug in and prepared for that. This will likely drag out until one side blinks. Who that is remains to be seen.

What would the outcome of a bad deal be? Seems to me that Iran would want the price of oil to remain elevated. They would do that by squeezing the straits, charging higher tolls etc.

Likely outcome: some form of Iranian control or influence over the Strait of Hormuz, a nuclear program kept in a diluted or semi‑paused state, and no meaningful limits on proxies or missile forces.

The result is a future in which Iran preserves the ability to build a bomb, its proxies continue harassing Israel, the United States and Gulf neighbors, and another round of fighting becomes inevitable because Israel will not allow Iran to reach a nuclear weapon.

In effect, this is the scenario where we see repeated cycles of conflict until the current regime is gone. The problem is that the US has no interest in removing them, so the cycle continues. Think Gaza and Israel, but on a larger, regional scale going forward.

From the point of view of normal people the world over who are paying for gas, who are paying for things related to gas, this sounds like a future that's not sustainable, all things being equal.

Unfortunately, I think that the prices have been so high for a period of time that the average American has accepted the new norm.

The price is elevated but somewhat stable at its current level, if it goes up dramatically more then I agree, the anger will spill over, likely into the midterms.

On a personal note, this is why I have driven an EV since 2021. The Middle East is too unstable for my liking.

MAGA lashes out as artists flee Trump’s Freedom 250 concert

President Donald Trump's MAGA allies are lashing out as musicians continue to drop out of his Freedom 250 concert event, just days after the lineup was announced, per The Daily Beast.

The free concert series, set to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the U.S., was announced on Wednesday along with an initial lineup, including Bret Michaels, The Commodores, C+C Music Factory, Flo Rida, Martina McBride, Milli Vanilli, Morris Day and The Time, Vanilla Ice and Young MC. The announcement was met with both outrage and mockery, with the artists involved being chastised for getting involved with the explicitly Trump-aligned show, and deriding the lineup as meager for a show associated with such a major event.

Just days later, however, the series is already imploding, with over half of the artists backing out amid the backlash, with some claiming that they were misled about the partisan nature of the event. On Thursday evening, McBride, a best-selling country artist, became the latest to drop the show, stating that she had been "presented with an opportunity to perform at a nonpartisan event but that turned out to be misleading."

In the wake of these departures, and particularly McBride's, various MAGA allies took to social media to lash out against them. This included Richard Grenell, who previously served as Trump's Kennedy Center acting director, and knows a thing or two about musicians ditching events tainted by the president.

"You’ve always been a woke Lefty," Grenell wrote in a post to X responding to McBride.

MAGA accounts also dug up instances of McBride performing for past Democratic presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, prompting conservative accounts to lambast her as "pathetic" and a "hypocritical fraud."

"Since you are clearing the air, how about explaining why you performed at the White House during the Obama regime? Or during Bill Clinton’s scandalous presidency?" Fox News host Todd Starnes wrote in a post to X.

Various other accounts tried to compare McBride to another country act, The Chicks, formerly known as The Dixie Chicks, whose career became overwhelmed by conservative outrage in the early 2000s after they spoke out against former President George W. Bush and his Iraq War. The backlash saw their songs removed from country radio station and, at least for a times, caused their careers to plummet.

As of Friday, Michaels, The Commodores, Milli Vanilli, Morris Day and Young MC have also ditched Freedom 250, while C+C Music Factory, Flo Rida and Vanilla Ice are still slated to perform. Members of C+C Music Factory said they were initially considering dropping out, but have committed to sticking with the show despite the outrage and asserted that they are not affiliated with any political party.

Trump’s latest 'Hail Mary' just crashed and burned

President Donald Trump's latest ploy to achieve peace in the Middle East was called a "Hail Mary" by The Hill, and according to a new report from the outlet, it has already crashed and burned in the face of reality.

On Monday, Trump demanded that more nations in the Middle East and Gulf state regions sign on to the Abraham Accords, a diplomatic agreement brokered during his first term that attempted to normalize relations between Israel and various Arab nations. Only a few of the latter nations have since signed on, however, including the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Bahrain and Sudan. The accords have been criticized by leaders in the Middle East and experts for a variety of reasons, most notably their lack of provisions to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Trump claimed in a post to Truth Social that he had spoken with leaders in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Turkey and the U.A.E. over the weekend, and asserted that, "after all the work done by the United States to try and pull this very complex puzzle together, it should be mandatory that all of these Countries, at a minimum, simultaneously, sign onto the Abraham Accords."

In a Friday update on the situation, The Hill noted that this pitch has already "run into a complicated reality" and stalled out. Most of the nations called on in Trump's post have stayed quiet, while one has outright refused.

"Pakistan, which has been mediating talks between the U.S. and Iran, outright rejected the idea of joining the Abraham Accords, while other countries have stayed notably silent," the report explained. "Experts say the demand is confusing and highly improbable given regional tensions."

Trump remains under intense pressure from certain factions in the GOP to secure a nuclear deal with Iran that can be touted as stronger than the one reached under Barack Obama in 2015. The Hill suggested that "an expansion of the Abraham Accords could theoretically blunt Iran’s threat to the region by normalizing relations with its rivals — as well as achieving one of Trump’s main foreign policy priorities heading into his second term."

“I think at least in part this war was pitched as an effort at regional transformation,” David Schenker, senior fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs during Trump’s first term, told The Hill. “This ambitious transformational agenda has fallen short. The president is looking to make lemonade out of lemons.”

Trump DHS secretary’s 'deranged threat' sets off major economic alarms

During a late May appearance on Fox News, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin argued that if "radical left Democrats" weren't on board with President Donald Trump's immigration policies, "we shouldn't be processing international flights into their cities" — a threat that is generating anxiety among civil libertarians, law professors, the travel industry, economists and immigration rights activists all at once. Conservative journalist Andrew Egger, in The Bulwark, warned that "blocking all international flights into a particular city's airport" would be both illegal and a recipe for "economic devastation." And during an appearance on The New Republic's podcast, "The Daily Blast," Nayna Gupta (policy director for the American Immigration Council) laid out an array of reasons why Mullin's threat is so problematic.

"Daily Blast" host Greg Sargent described Mullin's "deranged threat" to "block international flights going into" Democratic cities as "incredibly absurd" and exemplary of "the ugliest aspects of" Trump's "presidency."

Guest Gupta warned that if the Trump Administration and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) actually followed through on Mullin's threat, the economic fallout would be brutal.

"Look, I mean, this is the Trump Administration, now with Mullin at the helm of DHS, once again threatening vindictive actions because they don't like growing public pushback on their policies," Gupta told Sargent on the podcast. "And it's really important to note that if the (Trump) Administration actually pulled off this outrageous threat of diverting flights out of entire major metropolitan areas, this wouldn't be about just hurting those cities or immigrants. It would be hurting very many Americans."

Sargent's guest continued, "This would be hugely disruptive to critical industries, to travelers who travel through these airports, at a moment when the economy is already facing strain and we know that voters are feeling very poorly about this administration's economic policies."

Gupta noted, however, that "we don't know still how real this threat is."

"We've seen the administration make sweeping threats and then walk those back when they face backlash or because they can't actually effectuate those threats," the American Immigration Council policy director told Sargent. "But the fact that he's even on national news networks talking about this underscores their disregard for Americans generally and their willingness again to be vindictive about policies that are totally within the rights of states and local governments."

Sargent played a clip of a Fox News host saying that "pulling CBP (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) out of airports" in Democratic cities "would effectively be the end of international travel into big airports like LAX, San Francisco, Boston Logan, JFK, Newark, Chicago, Philly, Seattle, many others."

Gupta told Sargent, "So, let's be clear about exactly how disruptive and draconian this is. Airlines cannot simply divert flights. There are landing slot limits, which means other airports couldn't take the volume. People wouldn't necessarily be flying into the specific city they enter the U.S. and maybe transiting elsewhere. And so, in reality, we can imagine mass flight cancellations, huge disruption at airports, long lines, people being stuck and stranded in cities where they have nowhere to go."

'It’s his fault': Analyst says 'totally fair' that Trump is trapped in his rotten economy

President Donald Trump is screaming behind his own eyes, and his misery over the state of his economy and voter dissatisfaction appears to be manifesting in the shrillness of his social media rants.

But one analyst with access to the numbers sees Trump’s torment and feels a sense of justice.

“There's really, like, no way out of this and it's his fault and it's totally fair,” said data analyst G. Elliot Morris on Wahajat Ali’s “Left Hook” podcast.

In fact, if there was ever a man who deserved to catch the full brunt of his terrible policies at the polls in November, it’s Trump, said Morris, considering the way in which Trump has hopeless painted himself into a corner with every move in Iran and ono economic policy since he reentered office more than a year ago.

President Biden, he said, caught much more abuse for much less, he added.

“When inflation came down from like 10 to 3 percent or maybe 9 to 3 percent, depending on what goods you’re looking at, Joe Biden didn’t get credit for that. And his party lost the 2024 election.

Meanwhile, Trump appears to have been expertly maneuvering U.S. voters into painful economic trouble on purpose — so expertly in fact, that there appears to be no way for him to recuperate.

“His approval rating does not recover as prices stop increasing as much, so even if things do get better on the gas price front … even if we do get a bunch of shipments of oil and gas out of the Strait of Hormuz if the war ended tomorrow and they just started shipping gas again — which, by the way, it's not clear they can do that because lots of those refineries are damaged or destroyed — it's still going to take nine weeks or so to ship that oil to America. It's going to take [additional] weeks to refine it, if it hasn't been refined already. And then, in theory, the Trump administration hopes voters will just give him credit for that.”

“But we know from political sciences, they won't,” Morris assured.

With all the terrible news pounding down on Trump’s head, Morris told Ali it’s a good thing Trump doesn’t claim to care.

“He said in his cabinet meeting yesterday, ‘I don't care about the midterms,’ verbatim,” said Morris. “… The natural conclusion is that he cares about himself, and the sooner Republicans wake up to the fact that he has held their party hostage for 10 years to pillage the government for his own personal good the better.”

'Weak strongman' Trump is strangling his feeble party: analysis

A political analyst argued on Thursday that President Donald Trump is acting like a strongman dictator, but in so doing he is strangling his own failing Republican Party.

“If you looked just at the percentages of last night’s Senate runoff in Starr County, you would say Trump is still dominating,” wrote MS NOW’s Chris Hayes on Thursday. “His candidate beat Cornyn there by nearly 50 points. But what’s that percentage based on? How many Republicans actually voted in that runoff? The answer: virtually none.”

Hayes continued, “Only 90 votes were cast out of more than 36,000 registered voters in the county, according to the Texas secretary of state’s office. In that same county, in a single Democratic primary for a local judge back in March, more than 13,000 Democrats turned out to vote.”

For these reasons, Hayes observed, Democrats are optimistic both about flipping the Texas Senate seat currently held by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) but currently contested by Trump-picked Republican nominee Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Democratic nominee James Talarico.

“If you look at a map of Senate races being held this November, Democrats need to hold all their seats and flip four Republican-held seats to take the chamber,” Hayes explained. “That feat looked nearly impossible before Trump endorsed Paxton, the atrociously fraught candidate Democrats hoped they would get. It’s just clearer every day that Trump’s strategy for power has a tighter and tighter hold on fewer and fewer people. You see it in the polls where the president’s approval has plunged to new lows, as Democrats widen their lead on the generic congressional ballot. You see it in the increasing sycophancy of the Republicans who have so far survived Trump’s whims, as demonstrated by the coterie of kiss-ups who dominated Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting.”

Hayes predicted that trend will culminate in the Republican Party alienating everyone except the most sycophantic elements of Trump’s base.

“It is the defining political dynamic right now in the country, and one that really can only be broken through mass mobilization and democratic election, which is why threats to upend democracy will only grow more intense as Trump’s faction of MAGA diehards keeps shrinking,” Hayes argued.

Political experts share Hayes’ view that, at the very least, Paxton is not going to be as strong a nominee against Talarico as Cornyn would have been.

"Paxton has a litany of ethical lapses for Democrats to exploit — from allegations of bribery and misuse of his office to marital infidelity, which led his wife to divorce him on ‘biblical grounds,’” Jessica Taylor, Senate and governors editor for the Cook Political Report, wrote. “Given the national environment, this is a race that certainly may have become competitive even if Cornyn had won, but Paxton’s flaws warrant an immediate move to the Lean column."

GOP lawmakers are secretly despising Trump: conservative

President Donald Trump is secretly loathed by many of the Republican lawmakers who publicly claim to support him, according to a conservative commentator.

Quoting Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-NY) from the lawmaker’s recent interview with Chataqua Today, The Bulwark’s Joe Perticone defended Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund for Trump-linked institutions and Trump supporters by saying “we have to have really tight scrutiny, a really high burden of proof as to how those monies are going to be distributed. I don’t think this should be seen as some direct slush fund for one particular event. I mean, there’s obviously a lot of arguments about people that claim to be falsely imprisoned. Just because they were pardoned, doesn’t mean that they were falsely imprisoned. They were charged and convicted of crimes—and there were juries of their peers that did that. I just think that we need far more answers, and I think that there’s many of us asking our leadership to go get to the bottom of that.”

Later in the same interview, Langworthy doubled down by echoing Trump’s argument that his supporters have been victimized.

“People’s lives and livelihoods have been ruined by lawfare and, you know, excessive aggression by the government,” Langworthy said. “But, you know, the way that this came together with a settlement, I think we have a little ways to go.”

As Perticone pointed out, though, Langworthy expressed a very different view in a letter to a constituent this week.

“While I strongly condemn the unlawful disclosure of President Trump’s tax returns and the weaponization of the federal government under President Biden, I do not believe American taxpayers should bear the financial cost for this weaponization,” Langworthy told the constituent.

Other GOP lawmakers are attempting more subtle methods of flip-flopping.Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL) wrote that “this is a rapidly evolving issue currently being addressed primarily in the Senate, and it remains unclear whether the House will consider related legislation or oversight measures.” House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) instead told constituents in a letter that Trump “and his sons and family business” had filed the $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS for the leaking of tax return information and added that the president “moved to voluntarily drop the $10 billion lawsuit as part of a settlement agreement.” Although he promised to prioritize “safeguarding taxpayer information,” he refused to speak about the controversies surrounding the fund, including that it might pay Jan. 6th insurrectionists, line the president’s pockets, involved self-dealing (Trump controls both the IRS that he sued and the Justice Department assigned to represent that agency) and was rushed to avoid judicial oversight.

Perticone only identified one Republican who was willing to stay “consistent,” the outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC).

“In both public remarks and in letters to constituents, Tillis has fiercely opposed the fund,” Perticone wrote. “Much of his opposition has centered on the character of the people standing back and standing by for a share of the money.”

He added, “‘These people don’t deserve restitution. Many of them deserve to be in prison,’ Tillis said Thursday. ‘But this is just stupid on stilts.’ In a constituent letter the same week, Tillis wrote, ‘I am opposed to this decision. Allegations of political bias within our justice system are serious matters, and I believe the DOJ must operate independently, impartially, and in accordance with the rule of law, regardless of who occupies the White House.’”

Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund is controlled by five individuals to be selected by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. In addition to dispensing $1.8 billion without any oversight, the settlement bars the IRS from ever investigating either Trump or his family members for past tax issues.

Stunned CNN anchor takes Republican to task over Trump’s blatant hypocrisy

CNN anchor Jake Tapper could not abide U.S. Rep. Mike Flood (R-Neb.) looking past President Donald Trump’s duplicity fueling his controversial $1.8M slush fund.

What set Tapper off wre the examples of government’s “weaponization” that Flood used to defend the existence of the unpopular fund.

“Donald Trump has been under assault from actors in the federal government for a long time. But so have pro-lifers. So has Turning Point USA. So have school board members that were questioning our school board — people who cared about what the school board was doing. Parents, they were under assault in this lawfare world under Joe Biden,” said Flood.

But Tapper called out Trump’s own politicized DOJ targeting his perceived enemies with bogus investigations and indictments — many of which were too flimsy and contrived to survive a grand jury summary.

Tapper warned that “there are probably people that would disagree with you” on whether or not it was “inappropriate lawfare” on some of his examples, before going on the attack.

“What about President Trump telling Attorney General [Pam] Bondi to go after [Sen.] Adam Schiff and [state prosecutor] Letitia James and [former FBI head] James Comey?” demanded Tapper. “What about the investigation into Cassidy Hutchinson? What about the investigation into E. Jean Carroll, allegedly for perjury?”

“Do you not see that other people can look at what's going on right now and say, 'that's also lawfare, except it's against the president's critics?'” Tapper added.

But Flood refused to acknowledge the hypocrisy.

“Well, in those situations that you just talked about, it takes a grand jury in the federal system, probable cause before they indict. Same thing with Trump. As we have seen several times throughout this current president's term, his second term they have attempted to get grand jury indictments and grand juries have said ‘no.’”

Flood also insisted that Comey “was a government actor” with “government resources” and “arguably did things that were out of bounds.” He then defended Trump’s DOJ investigating Trump’s sexual assault victim Carroll, claiming it “was proven in some sense that she, in fact, did have her efforts underwritten by a donor,” which he claimed qualifies “as perjury.”

But Flood refused to acknowledge Trump’s own misbehavior in abusing DOJ resources to target his people on his political hit list, as other critics have claimed, saying only “if it's happening under President Trump, then those individuals should receive compensation from a fund like this.”

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