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Allies of Ken Paxton are pushing AI-generated photos of his Democratic opponent James Talarico dressed in women's clothing.

"If you were making a list of 1,000 adjectives to describe this guy, 'masculine' would not be one of them. I mean, if a stiff breeze came by, it would blow him over like a feather," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told Fox News on Monday.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller claimed that Talarico was "transitioning into a female." Talarico is not transgender or gay or a vegan.

The New Republic's Brynn Tannehill noted that Paxton has been a scandal-plagued attorney general who narrowly avoided indictments for securities fraud and bribery. Paxton allowed a child predator to serve one day in jail and to avoid sex offender registration. Paxton has been involved in multiple cheating scandals. Despite this, Republican strategists have focused on Talarico eating a meatless breakfast wrap and his unwillingness to eradicate transgender people.

Tannehill compared the tactic to Nazi propaganda. During the 1930s and 40s, Nazis would accuse political opponents of being Jews or having "Jewish blood." Tannehill said Republicans are using similar tactics, but targeting the LGBTQ community.

Tannehill noted that Republicans have used claims that Democrats are forcing children to undergo sexual reassignment surgeries at school, despite transgender individuals representing 0.5 percent of the population.

"Republicans offer a vision of manhood that is meant to look like a parade of Aryan Übermenschen but instead comes across as a depressingly absurd circus sideshow," Tannehill wrote.

Tannehill also pointed to Trump Cabinet secretaries' exercise videos. Robert Kennedy appeared in a hot tub with Kid Rock in a workout video. Secretary Pete Hegseth has posted videos of push-ups and pull-ups, and appears to use fake plates to make it look like he's bench pressing over 300 pounds. Hegseth was forced out of the National Guard before promotion beyond the rank of major.

Tannehill said the pattern reflects what she called "performative masculinity" that relies on emotional reactivity. She pointed to Trump's angry rants on Truth Social and reports that he threw ketchup at walls during moments of rage.

The 2026 Texas Senate race has emerged as one of the nation's most contentious matchups.

Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian and first-term state representative, has built his campaign around economic populism and social justice issues, positioning himself as a progressive alternative to the incumbent Paxton. The race reflects broader national divisions over cultural issues and leadership style. Paxton, who has served as Texas attorney general since 2015, has positioned himself as a tough-on-crime conservative while facing ongoing legal scrutiny.

Political analysts have noted that the reliance on personal attacks and cultural grievances by Paxton's allies suggests an attempt to shift focus away from substantive policy debates. The use of AI-generated imagery represents an escalation in disinformation tactics during the 2026 cycle, raising concerns among election security experts about deepfakes and their potential impact on voter decision-making in crucial swing races.

President Donald Trump is continually sabotaging the GOP and his own presidency, according to this one-time biographer, due to how much his endless ego makes him blind to the fact that voters hate the decisions he is making.

Michael Wolff is a veteran author and reporter, best known for his extensive coverage of Trump's life and political career, based on access to the man himself and sources within his inner circle. In the latest episode of his Daily Beast podcast, "Inside Trump's Head," he argued that Trump's relentless campaign to "impose" his will, likeness and beliefs onto the country is backfiring on his badly as it stirs up voter hatred.

“He is doing things... which are fundamentally to his detriment," Wolff said. “What Trump has tried to do is impose himself on virtually every aspect of American life or even... world life. And the problem with that is that if this starts to go wrong, everything then begins to remind everyone that Trump is responsible for this. Everything becomes a negative for Donald Trump.”

Trump most recently experienced this public backlash when he opted to attend Game 3 of the NBA Finals at New York City's Madison Square Garden. When he was shown on the jumbotron during the national anthem, the audience booed him mercilessly, and later that night, he embarrassed himself further by appearing to fall asleep.

The Daily Beast also noted that 51 percent of Americans either strongly or somewhat disapprove of Trump's planned UFC event, which is set to take place on his birthday this weekend and has seen a gaudy 5,000-seat venue built on the grounds of the White House.

“He’s created a set of symbols here that... are going to hurt him rather than help him,” Wolff said. “He shows up at the game in New York and gets booed. He destroys... the White House environment for his own satisfaction and grift.”

“It does feel a little bit like this is all closing in on him,” co-host Joanna Coles added. “At least in that moment when he stormed out of the interview with Kristen Welker on NBC’s Meet the Press.”

“This is literally the way he is with everyone,” Wolff continued. “The people around him — his aides, friends, family, you know, Vance, Rubio, Susie Wiles — everybody faces this: that he won’t stop talking, that you can’t disagree with him, that there really is no debate... Why is he putting the UFC on the White House lawn when that is obviously a mistake of just a political perception that you would not want. But he can’t see that.”

President Donald Trump was reportedly sent to military school when he was just 13 because his parents felt like he had a "wise guy" attitude, was a bully to other students and had impulse control issues.

“He talks about it as almost this, you know, rite of passage,” Trump biographer Timothy O’Brien, author of TrumpNation told PBS Frontline in 2020. “He said to me that when he arrived at the military academy, for the first time in his life, someone slapped him in the face when he got out of line.”

One of Trump's classmates spoke to the Daily Beast about his impressions of the would-be president when he was young. Art Davie, Trump's bunkmate, recalled Trump as playing the victim from a young age.

“He was very upset and frustrated that the school did not recognize that he should have been promoted faster,” Davie recalled in the interview.

Trump would also constantly claim that he was the best at everything.

“He was an egomaniac when he was 16,” Davie said. “He was a great flag-waver for himself. He wanted everyone to recognize he was the GOAT in everything he did out there.”

While Trump was a decent baseball player, soccer was not his game.

“I remember Trump and I getting in an argument about the fact that he’s the GOAT when it came to soccer,” Davie recalled. “I said, ‘No, in baseball, you could say you’re the GOAT.’”

But that wasn't acceptable for Trump. “He said, ‘I should have been a captain this year. I’m not a supply sergeant,’” Davie remembered.

Trump then grew fascinated with the Kennedys, Davie explained.

“Kennedy had become a media star, and Trump once said something to the effect of, ‘He doesn’t even have to boast,’ meaning that the media picked up on the fact that he [had] a star quality," Davie recalled.

Their quarters became an obsession of Trump's because if they passed periodic inspections, they'd get a silver star on their right sleeve.

Trump took it "seriously," said Davie.

Their bunk was also where the M1 rifles — minus their firing pins — were stored.

“[The lieutenant colonel] was teasing us about the fact that we had the guns, and I said, ‘Yeah, but only pop guns,’” Davie remembered. “Trump thought that was irreverent. He was furious with me. He said, ‘You were talking to them like they were on the streets in Brooklyn.”

He said it became a serious argument between the two and has always wondered if that's why they were separated when school resumed after the holiday break.

“What I do know is that they separated us, and I went down to Section 9, which was behind the main barracks, and everybody down there was kind of an oddball. We all got single-bedroom rooms," Davie told the Beast.

Davie finished school in Manhattan. But there was one detail that Davie recalled after his time at the academy: Trump's five draft deferments. He noted that Trump earned a nickname among the academy alumni: “Cadet Bonespurs.”

Trump's father managed to get him the deferments to keep him out of the Vietnam War. The mockery has followed him throughout his presidency, with even members of the U.S. Senate using the term to ridicule Trump. Eight years ago, Stephen Colbert opened his show with a new fake G.I. Joe doll called "Cadet Bone Spurs."

Davie ultimately joined the Marine Corps and was shipped off to Vietnam for just under a year.

“I think that Trump was always looking for something to glorify what he’s doing,” Davie said. “Now they’re talking about maybe making it some sort of a permanent Lincoln Memorial type of structure, which I think is crazy.”

A 2018 interview with the daughters of the podiatrist who gave Trump the diagnosis revealed that their father would recall the "favor" he did for Fred Trump to keep his son out of Vietnam.

"Elysa Braunstein said the implication from her father was that Mr. Trump did not have a disqualifying foot ailment," the New York Times reported.

“But did he examine him? I don’t know,” she said.

Former Sen. Bob Kerrey (R-Neb.) has called on Trump to reveal the X-rays that would prove he had bone spurs.

In the United States, presidents can be removed from office by either impeachment or the U.S. Constitution's 25th Amendment. Donald Trump is the only president in U.S. history who was impeached twice, but he was acquitted in both of his U.S. Senate trials. And the 25th Amendment hasn't been used to remove Trump from office, although law professor Kimberly Wehle believes that it should be.

Wehle, who teaches law at the University of Baltimore and was a federal prosecutor for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in the past, lays out a case for removing Trump from office via the 25th Amendment in an op-ed for The Hill.

"Unlike during Trump's first term, when the possibility of invoking the Constitution's 25th Amendment was at least openly debated, no one in Trump's close orbit will now speak truth to power," Wehle explains. "In this context, we must talk honestly about the compounding signs that the oldest-ever elected president is physically and mentally unfit for office."

The 25th Amendment, Wehle notes, "permits the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet — or another body designated by Congress — to declare that a president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office." Wehle laments, however, that the chances of that happening "now seem more remote than ever."

"During Joe Biden's presidency, debate over his fitness for office was deafening and came from both sides of the political spectrum," Wehle notes. "Voters should demand the same level of scrutiny for this president. ... Trump's apparent naps amid high-level meetings have become legendary — reportedly numbering some 13 instances, including at a December 2025 Cabinet meeting while Secretary of State Marco Rubio was speaking; during remarks at February's inaugural 'Board of Peace' meeting on Gaza negotiations; at an April Oval Office meeting; and during a Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke."

Wehle continues, "Critics have begun calling him 'Sleepy Don' — a pointed echo of his old 'Sleepy Joe' label for Biden. A February 2026 Reuters-Ipsos poll found that a majority of Americans, including 30 percent of Republicans, say Trump has become erratic with age. On April 14, House Judiciary Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) introduced legislation establishing a bipartisan, independent commission to activate the 25th Amendment process. Says Raskin, 'Public trust in Donald Trump’s ability to meet the duties of his office has dropped to unprecedented lows as he threatens to destroy entire civilizations, unleashes chaos in the Middle East…. We are at a dangerous precipice, and it is now a matter of national security for Congress to fulfill its responsibilities under the 25th Amendment.' He is not wrong."

President Donald Trump got torched online after his latest gaffe during an Oval Office event, with numerous observers arguing that he had inadvertently created the perfect midterms attack ad for the Democrats.

On Wednesday, Trump was taking part in various events in the Oval Office of the White House, including one honoring the team behind his Reflecting Pool remodeling and another to mark the signing of the $70 billion immigration enforcement funding bill. At one point during the day, he took questions from reporters and was pressed about what he thought about the latest report showing that inflation had reached major levels in the U.S.

Instead of expressing remorse or offering comfort to voters struggling with high prices, Trump shared his "love" for the development.

"No, I love it. I love the inflation," Trump said, before explaining that his optimism was based on oil barrels purportedly seized from Iran. "You know why? Because as soon as this war is over, do you know we've been taking out millions of barrels of oil? You know who doesn't know? Iran until right now."

It was the first part of that statement, however, that prominent observers on social media seized upon, suggesting that it would make perfect fodder for Democratic attack ads about his lack of care for the state of the economy.

"Yet another tailor-made ad for the Democrats this midterm season," Zeteo reporter Justin Baragona posted to BlueSky.

"Trump admits his pointless war is making your life more expensive, and he loves it," The Tennessee Holler, a popular liberal political account, posted to BlueSky.

"'Sir say something good about the economy?' 'I love the inflation,'" financial reporter Ed Zitron, a prominent AI critic, posted to BlueSky. "'Something else?' 'I have eaten fifteen dollars in coins this morning and they were very tasty.'"

"If you're a reporter who's going to ask Republicans about Trump's latest blunder, be sure to have the audio with you ready to play," author and commentator Kevin M. Kruse posted to BlueSky. "Ask them how they feel about Trump saying, 'I love the inflation,' then play the clip, then ask them again. Just get the phrase spoken on film repeatedly."

"WOW: Trump says ‘I love the inflation’ after consumer price index hits 3-year high," radio host Dean Obeidallah posted to BlueSky. "Trump reminds us he doesn't care about working class Americans. And the flip side is his oligarchs are making record profits. The entire GOP MUST pay the price for this in November."

"If that’s not an ad for the midterms I don’t know what is," popular liberal political creator Joanne Carducci posted to X.

"If we had a media that worked, Trump saying 'I love the inflation' would be in every headline and news broadcast," writer and reality TV star Hemant Mehta posted to X.

"People can't afford to feed their families," Democratic Illinois Governor and 2028 contender J.B. Pritzker posted to X. "Your struggle is a joke to him."

Senate Republican Majority Leader John Thune was noticeably absent from Wednesday’s Oval Office bill signing ceremony — but top House and Senate leaders — including Speaker Mike Johnson — were present, cheering on the president. Thune did take time to talk with reporters, where he tied Wednesday’s surging inflation numbers to Trump’s Iran war.

The Washington Examiner’s David Sivak asked Thune directly why he wasn’t present at the president’s signing of the $70 billion reconciliation bill to fund ICE and the Border Patrol, or to talk about FISA legislation with Trump.

Thune noted that Speaker Johnson is “down there anyway” and that he and Johnson “talk regularly,” Sivak reported.

Thune appeared to suggest that there might not have been an invitation, adding, “I don’t know that we got asked, but I’ve got stuff going on here, as you know.”

Thune spelled out the inflation connection to reporters, as Punchbowl News’ Andrew Desiderio reported.

“The sooner we get the situation in Iran stabilized, the Strait [of Hormuz] opened up, those [inflation] numbers will trend in a better direction,” he said. “But obviously right now there are important national security objectives we’re trying to achieve.”

“The American people realize that if we’re heading in the right direction and the trendlines are good and the confidence is good long-term — which I [think] it will be because of all the other things we’ve done on the economy — then obviously people will start to see improvement,” he also said. “It may not happen overnight, but it will. But at least for now, we’ve got to do everything we can to keep the pressure on [in] getting the situation in the Middle East resolved.”

Getting the situation in Iran resolved was not how President Trump appeared to approach Iran on Wednesday.

“Iran’s Military is a complete and total mess,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Much of it, like their Navy and Air Force, doesn’t even exist anymore – They have been completely defeated. Iran is all talk and no action. The Bully of the Middle East is dead!!! They’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!!!”

In that Oval Office meeting, Trump also slammed Iran, saying that the U.S. would hit Iran hard again on Wednesday, and insisted the Iranian government is “playing us for suckers.”

Thune has distanced himself from the president over time, refusing his repeated demands to pass the controversial SAVE America Act — legislation some call voter suppression — to kill the filibuster, and to fire the Senate parliamentarian. He has also opposed Trump’s intelligence nominee. Thune tried to persuade Trump to back Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), but the president endorsed Ken Paxton instead — and Paxton went on to defeat Cornyn in the May primary runoff.

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) unleashed on Republicans and President Donald Trump on Wednesday after new inflation numbers showed that it spiked to 4.2 percent in May. In April, it was 3.8 percent. To put that in context, inflation sat at 3 percent when Trump took office in January 2025.

"Unbelievable!!" Green raged on X. "Here is exactly what Trump’s war on Iran, costing billions everyday (sic), is doing to Americans. MAGA used to call this Biden inflation and scream from the rooftops over this garbage. Not what we campaigned for. Not what people voted for."

Greene then shared a video of Trump speaking in Waco, Texas, in March 2023 to a crowd of about 15,000 people.

“Either the deep state destroys America, or we destroy the deep state," Trump said in the clip. The woman who first posted it remarked, "I still watch these Trump campaign videos and ask myself: What happened? At what point did Trump turn on us?"

"Listen to this video," Greene said.

The clip was 2:28 minutes of promises, with a musical score in the background.

"We will banish the warmongers from our government," Trump pledged. "We will drive out the globalists, and we will cast out the Communists and Marxists. We will throw off the corrupt political class. We will beat the Democrats. We will route the fake news media. We will stand up to the RINOs (Republicans In Name Only). We will defeat Joe Biden and every single Democrat."

He went on to pledge to "abolish tyranny" and "rescue freedom and liberty." Trump claimed he would make America "wealthy again" and "powerful again."

"All these promises, he told us exactly what we wanted to hear," Greene lamented. "And then he turned around and broke them all. He protected the elites, built a fortress around the swamp, endorsed all the RINOs, and became a warmonger waging wars. Trump is the very snake he warned us all about."

Trump is known to read one of his favorite poems by Oscar Brown Jr., about an injured, dying snake that a woman takes in to nurse back to health. Eventually, while the woman is clutching the snake to her heart, the snake bites her.

“'Oh shut up, silly woman,' said the reptile with a grin,
'You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in,'" the poem reads.

Six years ago, the New York Times Opinion account produced a video claiming, "Trump's snake poem is really about him."

Although President Donald Trump has plenty of scathing critics in hip-hop — from Ice-T to Jay-Z to Public Enemy's Chuck D — he has an enthusiastic supporter in pop-rapper Nicki Minaj. And according to the Irish Star, Trump allies are hoping that Minaj can "save a crumbling MAGA festival."

The troubled event is the Great American State Fair, where Trump will be the headliner.

"Freedom 250's Great American State Fair was surrounded by controversy just hours after the lineup was announced, with the majority of artists pulling out of the Washington, D.C. event," reporter Scarlett O'Toole explains in the Irish Star. "President Trump then threatened to cancel the festival before completely changing the event. The Great American State Fair has now been changed to a rally, featuring the 79-year-old president as headliner. PR expert Kieran Elsby believes Trump could still try and get some popular musicians to perform at the event, including Nicki Minaj, who has expressed her support for the president on a number of occasions."

Liberals and progressives often mock Republicans for the type of entertainers they attract, pointing out that while Democratic candidates attract Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Robert De Niro and Taylor Swift, Republicans attract Kid Rock.

But MAGA Republicans, according to Elsby, might view Minaj as the Great American State Fair's salvation.

Elsby told the Irish Star, "I actually think there's a real possibility Trump tries to pull Nicki Minaj in at the last minute because, bluntly, the current Freedom 250 lineup feels safe, predictable and nowhere near as culturally explosive as Trump would've wanted. The problem for Trump is that he's now so divisive that many genuine modern superstars simply don't want to touch anything linked to him publicly. Artists like Bad Bunny have helped create a music industry where openly backing Trump can seriously damage your credibility with younger audiences."

Elsby added, "For Gen Z artists especially, being associated with MAGA politics can become career poison overnight."

O'Toole notes that the initial Great American State Fair lineup included Bret Michaels of Poison fame, The Commodores, Martina McBride and Vanilla Ice — and Ice is the only one who didn't drop out. The current lineup also includes country singer Lee Greenwood.

Elsby told the Irish Star, "Trump's team probably knows there's a difference between stars people respect and stars that genuinely run pop culture in 2026, and a lot of those bigger names likely want absolutely no part in the controversy. And if they reject Trump, they will plaster it all over social media to their benefit."

Experts tore into President Donald Trump while discussing his botched handling of Iran peace talks with The Hill, with one lambasting him as "one of the worst negotiators in the world."

In a Wednesday morning report, The Hill said that Trump's much-hyped brand as a "master negotiator" and "dealmaker-in-chief" is imperiled, as the Iran war plods along after recently hitting the 100-day mark and peace talks continue to sputter. While Trump and his allies claim that a meaningful deal to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz is right around the corner, one never materializes, with new hostilities appearing to set things back regularly. Most recently, the U.S. carried out a new round of strikes against Iran on Tuesday after it was reported that Iranian forces had shot down an American Apache helicopter.

"The war, which Trump said would last between four to five weeks, hit its 100th day over the weekend," The Hill explained. "The president said Tuesday that a peace deal could be reached with Iran within the week, but Americans have heard similar comments dozens of times since the start of the operation."

Experts in foreign policy and diplomacy spoke with the outlet for its report, tearing into the Trump administration's woeful handling of the peace talks.

"Donald Trump is one of the worst negotiators in the world, and the public image of him is built completely on self-promotion of the idea that he knows how to make a deal,” Joe Cirincione, vice chair for the Center for International Policy’s board of directors, told The Hill. “What he does know is how to use power and intimidation to compel people to follow his will... I am hard pressed to think of any agreement where Trump has actually negotiated that has had a lasting impact."

"The real trick is to get something that is good enough to satisfy enough people that you can call it a success, in a sense, and I think that’s extraordinarily difficult,” Michael Singh, managing director and senior fellow at the Washington Institute, added in his own statement to the outlet, noting that Trump is "setting expectations too high for what he can accomplish in a short amount of time."

He continued: “I don’t think President Trump’s sort of self-described status as a master negotiator actually makes one whit of difference, I think that this is just objectively quite difficult, and it’s not really about negotiation skill, it’s about how you balance all those interests of parties who frankly aren’t even at the table negotiating."

When Donald Trump spoke at the 2024 Libertarian Party National Convention during his fourth presidential campaign, it was clear that LP members had a variety of views on the MAGA movement. The Libertarians who booed Trump loudly were obviously anti-MAGA, rejecting the MAGA-friendly views of a faction within their party that were being dubbed the "blood-and-soil Libertarians."

As MAGA opponents in the Libertarian Party see it, Trumpism is diametrically opposed to many of the things the party has been preaching since its formation back in 1971.

Political science professor/author Bernard Tamas, writing for the conservative website The Bulwark, details efforts to purge the Libertarian Party of MAGA influence and the far-right Mises Caucus.

In May, Tamas notes, the Libertarian Party's New Hampshire chapter was expelled from the national Libertarian Party — which, in 2024, created a "public relations nightmare for the wider libertarian movement" when New Hampshire Chairman Jeremy Kauffman posted, "Anyone who murders Kamala Harris would be an American hero" and describing Black colleges as "chimp factories." While the national Libertarian Party gave Chase Oliver its presidential nomination, the New Hampshire chapter endorsed Trump.

But Tamas emphasizes that "the story here is bigger than a racist, right-wing group being removed from a party apparatus" and underscores the Libertarian Party's wider debate over MAGA.

In 2017, the political scientist points outs, a MAGA-friendly faction known as the Mises Caucus emerged within the LP. Mises, sometimes described as the "blood-and-soil Libertarians," promoted hyper-nationalist, MAGA-influenced, and anti-gay views that Tamas describes as "anathema" to traditional libertarianism.

"Once empowered, the Mises Caucus flexed its culture-war muscles, removing parts of the party platform it considered 'woke,' including an explicit condemnation of bigotry that had stood for fifty years," Tamas explains in his Bulwark piece. "The Mises gang also jettisoned the party's neutrality on the question of abortion, asserting instead that a fetus is a person with property rights. But the Caucus' most controversial move was inviting Trump to speak at the Libertarian Party National Convention in 2024, even though Trump was the nominee of another party and a rival of the Libertarian Party…. But, as with cranks everywhere, the Mises Caucus overplayed its hand.…. The Mises Caucus crisis should have been a lesson."

Tamas adds, "After the disaster Pat Buchanan inflicted on the Reform Party a quarter of a century ago, the Libertarian Party could have shored up its membership requirements and voting procedures to defend against similar potential threats — and they still can. If they're capable of making those changes now that their party has survived a near implosion, they might just be the party we need — even if a majority of Americans will not vote for them."