lindsey graham poisoned

Is Trump putting American troops in danger with his Iran policy?

Since returning to the White House one year and a half ago, Donald Trump has used to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to target his political foes — from former FBI Director James Comey to New York State Attorney General Letitia James — while pardoning allies, loyalists and supporters, including those connected to the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building. According to former Energy Department Director William S. Becker, Trump is creating a two-tiered justice system in which his allies are exempt from all "legal accountability."

"In his second term, Trump is doing more than ignoring legal and ethical constraints on his behavior," Becker argues in a Monday op-ed for The Hill. "He is helping his allies escape legal accountability, too. He has subverted equal justice to create two classes of citizens: one privileged, the other persecuted. The privileged group includes around 1500 supporters who participated in the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. As president, Trump not only released them from jail and erased most of their criminal records, but he also wants to pay them millions of taxpayer dollars in restitution for the inconvenience of facing justice for trying to overturn a lawful election."

Becker continues, "Trump has also granted pardons to people who have given him political donations and financial favors, as well as to colleagues with whom he has direct financial or political ties. This pay-to-play scheme is wildly unethical, but the Constitution does not limit the president's pardon power. At last count, Trump's pardons had not only deprived victims of justice; they also wiped out nearly $2 billion in court-ordered fines, forfeitures and restitution for victims and taxpayers."

The "privileged group," according to Becker, "apparently includes the 1835 loyalists Trump has appointed to federal jobs as well as his 22 Cabinet-level officers."

"Thus protected, members of his Cabinet have openly lied to Congress and ignored laws," Becker laments. "For example, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche refuses to comply with the bipartisan law that requires him to release all files related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The withheld files may contain additional references to Trump. They also contain the allegations against the 'Epstein class' — that is, other rich and prominent people who live lives of leisure, lack moral scruples and could have been involved in Epstein's crimes. The Justice Department has prosecuted none of them, except for Epstein's colleague, Ghislaine Maxwell."

Becker adds, "The untouchables also appear to include tens of thousands of federal immigration and border officers, including some who should be charged with civil rights violations and even killings…. It is no longer accurate to say that Trump aspires to be an autocrat, king or dictator. With his self-serving sabotage of the rule of law, he is already there."

Sounding the alarm about "unchecked power... increasingly wreaking havoc" across the U.S., a pair of Harvard legal scholars wrote in a new piece for The Hill about their surprising suggestion to save the country and begin "speaking law to power."

Alexandra Natapoff and Guy-Uriel Charles are professors at Harvard Law School, who also co-edited a recent book featuring essays from the school's faculty about the state of the country and its legal systems. In a Monday morning piece for The Hill, they warned of the seismic changes occurring under President Donald Trump, though they avoided mentioning him by name, calling out the Supreme Court as they lamented the "ordinary people" getting hurt by the current system.

"Unchecked power is increasingly wreaking havoc. As its campaign and voting rights decisions make clear, the Supreme Court is unconcerned with the unequal deployment of economic and political power," the pair wrote. "As a result, our electoral process is dominated by concentrated wealth and private influence. The fearsome power of the criminal system has always been at best tenuously restrained by law. Today, it has openly muscled its way into political waters as the executive branch flaunts its authority to prosecute and pardon. As we have both argued for years, it is ordinary people who ultimately pay the costs of such governance failures, losing their political voices, autonomy, money, safety, and even ultimately their freedom."

They continued: "The problems with unchecked power in America are on the rise across the board. From the executive branch to Congress, in finance, media, and the technology sector, concentrated power has increasingly been let off the democratic leash. Public actors ignore the interests of millions of Americans. Private interests make public-facing decisions of national import. Ordinary people are getting thrown under the political bus."

The idea of the "rule of law," they argued, means a "commitment to resolve differences and disagreements through open legal discourse and process," and not what those like Trump and his allies have treated it like, "raw assertions of power, coercion, or violence."

To reverse this course, they urged for the creation of "an inclusive, community-wide public conversation about those laws, and how we would actually like to run our polity together," and preemptively tried to counter the most likely arguments against such an idea from those who would prefer more overt action.

"Calling for more discourse or better conversation can sound like weak medicine against abusive power," the pair wrote. "But law is one of those places where words and ideas matter. In the voting sphere, words define rights that enable ordinary people to exercise extraordinary influence. In the criminal system, we can get people out of jail by using our words, no crowbar required. It matters to people of every faith and of no faith how we construe freedom of religion under the First Amendment. The definition of the word 'citizen' affects millions of families. Coming together to talk about these matters is not weak medicine; it is figuring out how we want to handle them together."

There's a moment in every public figure's life that distills who they really are into a single, unforgettable image. For Donald Trump at the World Cup trophy ceremony, that moment came when he couldn't resist photobombing Spain's victory celebration.

Let's be clear about what happened: After presenting the trophy to Spanish captain Rodri, Trump positioned himself prominently center stage as the team prepared for their historic trophy lift. FIFA President Gianni Infantino and Rodri had to gently nudge him out of the shot. He didn't take the hint gracefully. He lingered. He loomed. And then, in what became the most fitting ending to the moment, both FIFA and Spain's official accounts cropped him completely out of the celebratory photos that were shared around the world.

Think about that for a moment. The President of the United States was digitally erased from history by the very organizations hosting the event.

An Australian broadcaster captured the perfect hot-mic summary: "They can edit him out of that." It became an instant meme, and for good reason. It's the encapsulation of the entire incident—Trump's presence was so unwelcome, so tone-deaf, so fundamentally about him rather than the athletes, that it had to be surgically removed from the official record.

The Spectacular Irony

But here's where it gets even better. Just weeks earlier, at a NATO summit, Trump had publicly labeled Spain "hopeless" and called Spanish people "bad people." Yet there he was, grasping for a piece of their glory the moment they achieved something historic on the world stage.

That's not just tone-deaf. That's not just selfish. That's the kind of cognitive dissonance that would be funny if it weren't so deeply emblematic of how this administration operates. Insult a nation, then try to photobomb their victory. Demean their people, then smile for the cameras when they win.

And the crowd knew it. Trump's arrival at MetLife Stadium was met with deafening boos and whistles. The international crowd—thousands of people from different countries united in one sentiment—made their feelings clear. This was a moment for the athletes. This was Spain's night. And Trump turned it into Trump's moment.

The Defining Character Flaw

What's really revealing about this incident isn't that Trump tried to photobomb. It's that he apparently couldn't conceive of a moment that wasn't about him. He presented the trophy—fine. That's part of the ceremonial role. But then he stayed. He positioned himself front and center. He seemed genuinely confused about why the athletes wanted space to celebrate their own achievement.

This is who Trump is. Not a man who can gracefully step back and let others have their moment. Not a leader who understands that sometimes dignity means getting out of the way. Instead, it's someone so consumed with his own image, his own presence, his own need to be seen that he can't even allow athletes to celebrate a World Cup victory without making it about himself.

The fact that he had to be edited out of official photos—that FIFA and Spain found his presence in their victory photos so inappropriate that they removed him digitally—that's the real story. Not the memes. Not the hot-mic moment. The fact that the world's most prestigious sports organizations looked at the President of the United States and decided his presence in their trophy lift photo was something that needed to be corrected in post-production.

There's a reason that moment is going to be remembered far longer than Spain's actual victory. And it has nothing to do with soccer.

President Donald Trump’s latest tirade shows a leader so consumed by grievance that he’s once again lashing out in a way that even Fox News can’t quite smooth over.

Chatting with The New Republic's Greg Sargent for his Monday morning podcast, Harvard political scientist Ryan Enos argued that Trump's latest attack on the election from six years ago was like a live-action portrait of a political meltdown.

Other than his conspiracy theories about the election itself, Trump is also escalating his attacks on news networks that refuse to play a part in his scheme. Last week, NBC, CNN, and some ABC affiliates refused to air the speech, escalating his claims.

It has set networks up for another battle with the Trump government as he tries to pull network licenses through his Federal Communications Commission. The goal is intimidation, with the hopes that the next time Trump demands time on the airwaves, the networks will be too nervous to buck him.

"And then Trump’s plot of using the news organizations to spread distrust in our elections could work," said Sargent.

Enos called it another authoritarian move and contrary to the First Amendment. But at its most basic, he said it was "essentially schoolyard extortion ... Like, it’d be really bad if you didn’t do what I want. Maybe you’ll have an accident next time you’re walking home or something like that."

The hope is that these arguments will ultimately go to court and they'll continue protecting the First Amendment. What was unique in this situation is that even Fox News is growing nervous, because it's still fighting litigation with the voting equipment and software company Smartmatic. So, Fox has been cautious in its reporting on the 2020 election. It told the audience it wasn't in a position to evaluate Trump's claims. The network may have agreed to air Trump's speech, but it refused to run Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin's rehashing of it.

The fact that Mullin felt the need to continue the message from Trump, Sargent said, "shows Trump continued to rage over it, because that’s the only reason these guys ever say anything. It’s to minister to the audience of one."

"Trump thinks that the American people are a lot dumber than they actually are, which is sort of one of the tragedies of his whole administration: how stupid he actually thinks the American people are," Enos said. "But the American people aren’t buying this. You can see this in the polls. Like, even only about half of Republicans actually say they believe this, right? And I’m not sure even that half actually believes what they’re saying they believe."

Enos noted that frequently, civil lawsuits get a bad rap, but in this case, the Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic lawsuits have made a difference, and the judgments are high enough that it is curbing the behavior from the network and its hosts.

"The other thing I would say about it is this fact that Fox thought it was just bad politics," Enos added. "And you see a lot of Republican politicians saying this too. There’s a lot of signs that members of Congress want Trump to move on. And they all know what he’s saying is not true, but they unfortunately feel obligated—they can’t cross him on this issue, right? And what that signals is that the American people aren’t buying this."

Still, he added, Trump keeps trying to sell it.

"So, at that point you’re interfering with an election that you can’t win legitimately, and in which the American people have rejected you, in order to impose your will essentially on the country. And at that point, we’re not living in a democracy," Enos explained.

Sargent also mentioned that an additional issue for Trump is that, despite being the most powerful man in the country, he still couldn't force networks to give him the attention he demanded.

"He’s angry because he needs the media to broadcast his lies about our election system precisely in order to help him spread distrust in the outcome, right?" Sargent asked Enos, who agreed.

"And I think there’s two ways to look at his anger at the media: On the one hand, it shows the media is doing the right thing, right? They figured out what Trump’s up to," Enos said. "They know he’s going to lie. And they’re in many ways taking a stand for democracy."

The second point is that it is causing Trump to go more and more authoritarian in his anger with his attempts to use the federal government to force corporations into doing what he demands.

President Donald Trump has been promoting a variety of makeover projects in Washington, DC, including some at the White House. One of them is a statue of the United States' third president, Thomas Jefferson, which, according to the Daily Beast, was unveiled in the White House Rose Garden last week — but without any prior announcement.

The Daily Beast's Leigh Kimmins explains, "The New York Post reported earlier this month that the work, created 25 years ago by George Lundeen, arrived at the White House at the end of June and was held for examination by security experts. Lundeen, 77, also made the 7-foot, 700-pound bronze 'fight fight fight' monument to Trump that captures his raised fist immediately following a 2024 assassination attempt against him in Butler, Pennsylvania. The new work depicts Jefferson working on a draft of the Declaration of Independence. Lundeen told the Washington Post that Trump loves it so much that he sent the artist a congratulatory message. 'I just wanted to thank you. The sculpture looks really beautiful,” Trump told Lundeen."

The new work, according to Kimmins, depicts Jefferson "working on a draft of" the American Declaration of Independence.

Trump, according to Kimmins, told Lundeen, "I just wanted to thank you. The sculpture looks really beautiful."

Kimmins notes, "Trump replaced the central grass lawn with a stone patio. The Jefferson effigy is the fifth statue he has added. It joins a statue of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and a sculpture called 'Freedom's Charge,' which honors Revolutionary War soldiers."

Kimmins notes that Trump "has overseen a new outdoor statuary exhibition in downtown Washington that includes a statue of Caesar Rodney, a signer of the Declaration of Independence whose monument was removed from public view in Delaware during the 2020 protests amid criticism of his history as an enslaver."

"The display is part of a broader effort by Trump to elevate historical figures whose monuments became flashpoints during the racial justice protests, including Confederate symbols he sought to protect during his first term through executive action aimed at preserving federal monuments," Kimmins reports. "In March, he also installed a replica of a Christopher Columbus statue that had been torn down in Baltimore during the 2020 unrest on the White House grounds. Two people familiar with private conversations said Trump — who has himself been the target of repeated protests — has at times privately expressed sympathy with figures such as Columbus, who was celebrated for centuries as an explorer before becoming a flashpoint because of his role in colonization and enslavement."

If you wanted to save some money by learning how to check your home for air leaks, poor insulation, and power-hungry lightbulbs, the Department of Energy’s website was ready to help. And if you needed an expert, the site guided you to another page for help lining up a professional energy assessment, a well-established first step to cut utility bills and curb pollution at the same time.

That is, until this summer, when both of those resources vanished from the agency’s site, each now redirecting to “Page not found.” They were taken down by July 3, around the same time that the Department of Energy deleted more than 1,600 pages from the Energy Saver section of its site, gutting a resource for people looking to conserve energy and lower bills.

“I can’t remember another time that, with DOE specifically, we’ve seen an entire domain go down the way that [it] has been reported on now,” said Izzy Pacenza, who monitors government websites for the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative. Over a 30-day span this summer, as swaths of the country suffered under heat waves, more than 300 of the webpages had received 160,000 page views, according to an analysis from The Guardian.

The news coverage of the missing websites has focused on the disappearance of one recommendation in particular. Ahead of a heat wave that roasted New York City with 100-degree temperatures earlier this month, Mayor Zohran Mamdani asked businesses and residents to set their AC to 78 degrees to conserve energy, drawing the ire of Republicans who mocked the restrictions as “socialism.” Internet sleuths were quick to notice that similar guidance had vanished from the Department of Energy’s website, which used to direct people to keep their thermostat between 75 and 78 degrees. The timing suggested that the agency might have removed the pages as a rebuke to Mamdani’s advice.

The purge looked suspiciously timed for another reason: On July 2, the Energy Department announced a proposed rule to make it harder for future administrations to approve energy efficiency standards for household appliances, saying it would “permanently end Green New Scam appliance mandates.” The move was part of the Trump administration’s broader attack on energy efficiency requirements.

The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative has argued that Trump’s federal agencies tend to remove information from their websites related to regulatory changes they just announced, which limits access to information people could use to oppose agency proposals during the legally required public comment period. But the facts that would be most relevant here — the agency’s information about its Appliance and Equipment Standards Program — remain on the site, pointed out Andrew deLaski, the executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project. “I haven’t seen things come down that are directly related to the appliance standards program,” he said.

The Department of Energy did not respond to questions about why it removed the webpages. But the purge could be understood as part of a broader pattern of removing the most accessible, actionable public information about climate change from federal government websites. Last summer brought an abrupt end to the government website that hosted the National Climate Assessment, a series of congressionally mandated reports that broke down how climate change affects the regions where people live. Around the same time, Climate.gov, the widely used site that translated the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s research into easy-to-understand resources, vanished too.

Energy Saver provided a similar service, distilling technical knowledge about conserving energy into advice for ordinary people: shopping for efficient appliances, installing “cool roofs,” and do-it-yourself guides to saving energy and money.

“These things are seen as authoritative resources and tools given to us by the government for us to think about how climate change interacts with our daily lives,” Pacenza said. “And now that interaction, and that relationship, is being broken or interrupted.”

This kind of consumer advice on how to save energy clashes with President Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” framing. The administration has promoted a narrative that energy use, powered by fossil fuels, “is a tenet of American values and of our identity,” Pacenza said. Telling people to be aware of their energy use is in tension with this narrative. Even if the DOE’s website purge wasn’t driven by Mamdani’s statements about conserving energy, a similar impulse may lie behind the decision.

The debate over asking Americans to adjust their thermostats to save energy is actually decades old: During a fuel shortage in the summer of 1979, President Jimmy Carter required retail stores, restaurants, and other public and commercial buildings to keep the thermostat no warmer than 65 degrees in winter and no cooler than 78 degrees in summer (sound familiar?). President Ronald Reagan reversed those restrictions in 1981, calling them “an excessive regulatory burden.”

In general, though, energy efficiency measures used to be in the realm of bipartisan agreement. Reagan went on to sign the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act of 1987 into law, establishing minimum efficiency standards for refrigerators, freezers, and other household equipment. But recent years have seen air conditioners, laundry machines, shower heads, and other items get roped into the culture wars. Republicans have argued that government efficiency standards interfere with “consumer choice” and have been undoing regulations passed by Democratic administrations.

“This administration isn’t doing anything to improve efficiency standards — they’re only trying to go backwards,” deLaski said.

Republican leaders in Congress are hoping to pull off a desperate, last-minute spending bill, and according to a new breakdown from MS NOW, the largely war-focused funding makes the party's "priorities horribly clear."

Earlier this week, the budget framework, totalling around $95 billion, emerged from committee to a divided reaction among House and Senate Republicans, with some taking issue with its lack of spending cuts to offset the $73 billion it sets aside for military spending, most of which would be for the Iran war. This uncertainty prompted what MS NOW's Hayes Brown called a "scolding" from House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican.

"When did you ever pay for a war? A lot of this is military expenses aimed at that war,” Cole said. “The point is that play’s been called. It’s time to put up or shut up.”

This take from Cole, Brown argued, was telling of the "problematic message" the GOP is contending with heading into the 2026 midterms.

"There’s a lot to unpack in Cole’s admonition," Brown wrote. "First and foremost, his finger-wagging underscores the problematic message Republicans are sending ahead of the midterms: The country can’t afford to help the poor and needy — but there’s always more money for war, even pointless wars of choice such as the one President Donald Trump has waged against Tehran."

He continued: "Look at what the GOP prioritized in the first two reconciliation bills. The most recent one funded immigration enforcement, making sure there was enough funding to break up communities, detain people with no criminal record and kick them out of the country as quickly as possible. The White House has framed this crackdown on immigration as part of a supposed 'war' on the Southern border, and GOP lawmakers made damn sure to fund it."

The other big Republican reconciliation bill, Brown explained, was 2025's Big Beautiful Bill, which was largely focused on "taking from the poor to give to the rich," with tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans funded by further cuts to things like Medicaid and food assistance programs.

"Pass or fail, this reconciliation bill is what the GOP has decided is its priority before the party asks voters to keep them in power in November," Brown concluded. "A bill that pays for a deeply unpopular war, sets aside money to help the farmers that have been hurt by this war and Trump’s tariffs and, if Trump has his way, makes it harder for Americans to vote. It will do nothing for Republican lawmakers facing questions about affordability, nothing about the real problems that their constituents face and nothing that shows any regard for their lives."

President Donald Trump’s no-bid contract spree is turning Washington into a pay-to-play playground, and taxpayers are the ones getting stuck with the bill.

According to the New Republic's Timothy Noah, there's everything from secret sweetheart deals to wildly inflated project costs, and the administration’s contracting habits are now drawing serious ethical concerns and watchdog outrage.

Writing on Monday, Noah recalled one of Trump's books, ghostwritten by Breitbart News contributors, the builder claimed, "When I build a building, I let various builders and architects compete for the contract. Why? Because it sharpens their game, makes them bid competitively on price, and encourages them to give me the best quality product possible."

That's not happening now that he's in the White House and spending taxpayer dollars on his projects.

"That’s because when the money to buy goods or services doesn’t come out of the buyer’s pocket, it creates what economists call moral hazard," Noah explained. "Competitive bids help overcome moral hazard by making the contracting process more objective and transparent."

One estimate he cited claimed that 97 percent of government contracts are "open bid," meaning any company, anywhere, can submit a proposal to handle the project. They compete with others and the government decides on the right bid.

In Trump's case, there's no bidding. In some cases, companies that Trump's administration has approved are simply handed the contract and paid significantly higher sums for the project. In the 3 percent of cases in which that's happened before, it's typically because "extremely rare expertise ... required," the report said.

Noah thinks that, unlike in Trump's personal business, he "lacks the necessary patience," perhaps because he has a four-year span of time that he can conduct the projects he wants.

"But mostly," Noah continued, "it’s because he lacks the necessary honesty. The man never met a moral hazard he didn’t like."

Washington has turned into a massive construction zone. At a time when jobs are being cut across the area and the post-pandemic realization that people can work from home, the D.C. economy shrank by 8.3 percent, the Washington Post reported. Yet, construction projects are exploding. Noah said that under all of those projects lies a no-bid contract.

The most famous example broadcast over the past several months is the company hired to "fix" the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on the National Mall.

"The Interior Department awarded one $1.7 million no-bid contract to Green Water Solutions to clean up the water in the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall and a second $14.7 million no-bid contract to Atlantic Industrial Coatings to attach blue waterproofing to the Reflecting Pool’s concrete bottom," cited Noah.

There's another no-bid contract that was given to Barnard Construction Company to build 112.5 miles of a “secondary” border wall in New Mexico. So, behind the first wall Trump built, he's building another wall.

Then there are the migrant facilities. One no-bid contract went to Core Civic, a company that took over the shuttered Leavenworth, Kansas, prison to turn it into a facility to house immigrants the administration seeks to deport. They get $4.2 million per month for the project. It was ultimately replaced with a $60 million annual contract, which is nearly $10 million more than what they were paying monthly, reported the Kansas Reflector and the Lawrence Times.

Then there was the $220 million no-bid contract former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem paid to craft a public relations operation that filmed her on a horse, in a cowboy hat, wearing chaps and talking about immigration. The company was run by her husband, a ProPublic report found.

Most of these companies are in some way connected to Trump or to his administration. Either they're political donors, longtime friends, Mar-a-Lago members or MAGA loyalists.

This barely scratches the surface of the laundry list of no-bid contracts in Noah's collection that the administration is paying out. Democrats in Congress are already looking into the Reflecting Pool disaster, but if they officially take back the House and Senate in November, there will likely be even deeper examinations into how the bids were decided and their connections to the administration across the whole of the federal government.

Arizona was once a deep-red state known for the conservative GOP politics of Sen. Barry Goldwater and his successor, John McCain. But these days, Arizona is a swing state that has a Democratic governor (Katie Hobbs) and two Democratic U.S. senators (Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego) yet went to Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. According to New York Times reporters Reis Thebault and Kellen Browning, Arizona Republicans are having a heated debate over two competing visions for their party — one that finds far-right MAGA culture warriors up against the type of traditional conservatives who dominated Arizona politics for decades.

"The bombastic, culture-war brand of politics embraced by Mr. Trump's most vocal allies in Arizona has proved a poor fit with the moderate Arizona voters who often decide statewide contests," Thebault and Browning report in the Times. "They have repeatedly passed over Republican firebrands, including Kari Lake and Blake Masters, in favor of Democrats they see as less extreme. Some Republicans fear the party is poised to repeat its mistake this year by nominating (Rep. Andy) Biggs in Tuesday's GOP primary to face Gov. Katie Hobbs, a vulnerable Democratic incumbent, in November. Seeking to alleviate those concerns, Mr. Biggs has spent much of his campaign attempting to persuade voters that he is more electable than Ms. Lake, whose polarizing comments and baseless claims of election fraud alienated independents and even some Republicans during her unsuccessful bids for governor and Senate."

Biggs, who formerly chaired the House Freedom Caucus, is known for being a far-right Trump ally. But according to Thebault and Browning, he is trying to appear more moderate as he competes for Arizona's 2026 GOP gubernatorial nomination.

"On the debate stage last month in Arizona," the Times reporters note, "Rep. Andy Biggs, the leading candidate in the state's Republican primary for governor, did not try to convince voters that he was the most conservative candidate in the race. He did not tout his Freedom Caucus bona fides, nor his push to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Instead, he styled himself as a bipartisan dealmaker who has worked with Democrats, including Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona. 'Here's the bottom line: I know how to reach across the aisle,' Mr. Biggs said during the debate."

Arizona Republicans, according to Thebault and Browning, "have been at war with one another up and down the ballot, from the governor's contest to lower-profile races." Turning Point USA, the right-wing group founded by the late Charlie Kirk, has been heavily involved in Arizona GOP primaries — and the Times reporters note that the group's "heavy hand has begun to draw backlash."

Veteran GOP strategist/pollster Paul Bentz told the Times, "The dominant force in the primary at this point is the MAGA wing. It's a contest to see who can be the most MAGA."