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President Donald Trump's rash decision-making caused a key bill to implode this week, and according to an ex-NSA official who spoke with The Hill, it has left the U.S. in a "pretty dangerous place" at a terrible time.

With Trump's urging, Congress has been working for months on a long-term extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which would renew the federal government's authority to conduct surveillance on foreign individuals without first obtaining a warrant.

While a deal to renew these FISA powers was reportedly close to the finish in recent weeks, it blew up in the eleventh hour when Trump announced his nomination of Bill Pulte — a thoroughly unqualified loyalist — as the new acting director of national intelligence. This prompted Democrats across the board to boycott the FISA bill, dooming its chances of passing for the time being.

In a Friday morning report, The Hill noted that this FISA breakdown comes "just as the World Cup and America 250 celebrations get underway, raising security concerns that experts say will only get more severe as the fight in Congress drags on." Glenn Gerstell, a former general counsel for the National Security Agency, spoke with the outlet about his concerns with the situations, saying that the timing — with the World Cup and the war in Iran ongoing — "could not be worse."

“You look out at the world picture and it’s a pretty dangerous place, and add to that heightened concerns over World Cup, other celebrations, etc.,” he explained. “It’s not that those two alone are so significant, but I just say the whole picture generally looks fairly dangerous, and it’s exactly when we want to have 702 in place.”

Jamil N. Jaffer, the founder and executive director of the National Security Institute at George Mason University, also spoke with The Hill about the abysmal timing of the FISA expiration.

“Of course terrorists and other threat actors are going to be focused on targeting America at a time when we’re hosting one of the world’s largest, most watched sporting events ever," Jaffer said.

Sophie McDowall, a research associate at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation, explained that any directives, including those likely put in place for the World Cup, can continue despite FISA's expiration, but warned that any new threats that arise while a renewal is worked out could present major problems.

“They’re not going to be left with nothing… but it would definitely be better to have it [authorized] sooner rather than later,” McDowall said.

President Donald Trump is not only underwater with Democrats and Independents, but now he's losing young Republicans.

CNN data analyst Harry Enten revealed that when it comes to the Iran war and foreign policy in general, Trump has lost his own base.

"Trump [has a] historically strong performance with younger voters. And here we're talking about voters under the age of 45. He beat Kamala Harris with them, or at least beat the prior Republican baselines with them," said Enten. "And you can see it right here on foreign policy. He absolutely crushed Kamala Harris, who was more trusted under the age of 45, on foreign policy."

Trump had a nine-point lead over Harris on foreign policy, but that has shifted significantly.

"He has a net approval rating now on foreign policy — 40 points underwater, a nearly 50-point switcheroo," Enten said.

"So, after putting in the strongest performance, more trusted on foreign policy, the first since George W. Bush all the way back in '04, [Trump] has completely lost that advantage way down there. He is no longer groovy. According to the young people of America," Enten said.

Those foreign policy numbers are coming from Trump's failure in the Iran war.

"Just take a look at how people under the age of 45 feel about Iran not being worth the cost," said Enten. "Look at this: four in five —81 percent said the Iran war is not worth the cost. And look at Trump's disapproval. Basically simpatico with this, 77 percent of those under the age of 45 say the Iran war, or, excuse me, say that Trump's disapproval of the Iran war is way up there, up there like a rocket at 77 percent."

The generations make it clear that it isn't worth the cost.

The older end of those under 45 are members of the Millennial Generation, who faced the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Brown University's Costs of War Project showed that the casualty and injury rate for the 19 years of war come overwhelmingly from the Millennial Generation.

The Harvard Institute of Politics showed that "young adults [18 to 29] are overwhelmingly skeptical about the current U.S. strategy in Iran."

President Donald Trump's poll numbers are so bad that Republicans are facing one of the toughest elections in years. But outside of those poll numbers, Republicans face a deeper problem than the president's coattails: a president who desperately needs public credit for every success and won’t let the party shift the conversation.

Speaking to The New Republic's Greg Sargent, Democratic strategist Christina Reynolds compared failures in 2006 at the hands of George W. Bush to Trump's 2026 election. Bush was happy to step aside and allow others to claim credit for fixing things. That didn't prove successful, as Democrats won a staggering number of seats in both the House and Senate.

As November's midterm election approaches, Trump faces losses on the war, the economy and the affordability crisis that he maintains is a hoax. But the larger problem is that any success won't be thanks to their work. Trump needs the public's appreciation for the win, if the country is lucky to have one.

"And I think Republicans have an even bigger problem than those numbers," said Reynolds. "They have a president who absolutely wants credit for fixing everything. He believes his own spin, certainly, but also he believes he’s taken action and should get credit for that action. And to some degree, that happens with a lot of politicians, but this president is especially guilty of that. And so he is not going to fade away into the background, which Bush did largely in 2006. He is not going to let the Republicans go out and shift the conversation."

Another problem is that all of these issues are at the top of mind for Americans, but they're not what Trump wants to talk about.

"When inflation is growing higher than your wages, voters understand that. They know it. They live it," said Reynolds. "And so you can’t convince them things are better when they’re literally not. But Trump is not just going to go out and talk about things and remind voters of that — he’s going to go out and talk about his ballroom. He’s going to go out and talk about the reflecting pool, as he did in Wisconsin when he went to one of the most vulnerable Republicans."

That is a huge problem for Republicans who are desperately trying to stay on message about the economy. It isn't just Trump's bad poll numbers, Reynolds said. "It’s what Trump’s going to do because of the polling number[s]."

Unlike Bush, Trump doesn't appear to care much about the midterms. "Trump is about what gets Trump where he needs to go. And it’s a huge problem for Republicans," explained Reynolds. "I mean, you heard it in the 'I don’t care about the midterms' comment. You hear it in everything that he does."

She said that Republicans likely want him to take a back seat, but he's doing the exact opposite.

Rather than dealing with issues that matter most to people, Trump simply can't stop himself from talking about things that are unpopular.

"He is just clinically unable to move on because of that rage and that frustration, because it didn’t go the way he assumed it would go," said Reynolds. "And so we are stuck in a war that people didn’t ask for, that we proactively started. But we are domestically stuck with higher gas prices and everything that stems from that."

Reynolds said that it's all from Trump not getting what he wants, not getting credit and not being praised by the public.

"I am a little baffled as to what he thinks he should get credit for at this point, but no one is giving him any credit. They are giving him, rightly, the blame. And he can’t handle that," she said.

President Donald Trump exploded during a recent televised interview and stormed off after being hit with tough questions, but as the reporter asking those questions revealed, he seemed to do an about-face after blowing at her.

Trump sat for an interview for NBC News's Meet the Press on Sunday, during a visit to Wisconsin. During the sit-down, reporter Kristin Welker, among other things, pressed him hard about his recent claims about elections in the U.S. being rigged, especially after recent results in California. Having grown increasingly agitated in the face of these questions, Trump eventually called the interview off early, saying that Welker was either "crooked" or "stupid."

Speaking to Vanity Fair a few days later, Welker revealed that she spoke with Trump after the incident, and said he was much more level-headed, even apologetic.

"I spoke to him the morning after the interview, and without getting into an exact verbatim of what was said, he effectively said, ‘Look, the rain was disruptive. We’re going to do this again in Washington,'" Welker explained. "I’ve covered President Trump since 2015 when he was a candidate, and it doesn’t faze me at all. It’s part of the conversation. I anticipate it to some extent."

Welker further revealed how she approaches interviews with Trump, given his penchant for volatility towards the press.

"I try to stay focused on the content of my questions and on getting answers," she said. "Because that’s my goal, particularly in a presidential interview — to have that amount of time with a president. My goal is to get answers on behalf of the American people."

Trump's visit to Wisconsin came during a period of extended rain, which can be heard during the interview, getting more intense outside of the barn where it was taking place. His claim that the rain was getting to him echoes the explanation put forward by many for his agitated behavior, including speech-language pathologist Hilary Shae. In a video posted to YouTube, she further suggested that the gloomy weather might have been disorienting for him if, as she has long suspected, he is dealing with some degree of dementia.

"For people who have dementia, changes in weather, specifically rain, can actually be really problematic for them," she explained. "When it is raining all day long, the typical lighting of the day is very disrupted. So, it is difficult to know just by looking outside, is it daytime or is it nighttime, late afternoon, that type of thing."

She continued: "With somebody who already has sundowning behaviors, as the president demonstrates he does, that can make it even worse, because the entire morning has not had the typical sunlight, his circadian rhythm is already off due to the deterioration of the suprachiasmatic nucleus, and it is very difficult when it is just gloomy, cloudy and raining all day to have any environmental supports for that."

This Sunday, June 14, U.S. President Donald Trump will celebrate his 80th birthday by turning the White House's South Lawn into a cage-fighting arena that is being dubbed "The Claw." Critics of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event are warning that it will cost taxpayers a fortune, and former U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official Miles Taylor views the event as a tragic symbol of the United States' "decline."

Writing for the UK-based i Paper, Taylor — who served as DHS chief of staff during Trump's first presidency — laments, "You've been told the cage fight is an example of American excess. I think it's a gaudy symbol of something much worse: the potential end. The decay of America is symbolized by everything that had to be torn down to make room for a fight cage and a ballroom, from the South Lawn and the East Wing of the White House to the people and the principles that once stood between one man's impulses and the abuse of his power."

Taylor continues, "When the lights of The Claw rise over the White House grounds on Sunday and hulking fighters walk out from the Oval Office to applause, I hope you'll understand what you are really watching. A president has deluded his people into clapping for their own decline — and for his delight."

Back in September 2018, the conservative Taylor was still serving as DHS chief of staff when he anonymously wrote a New York Times op-ed headlined, "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration." Taylor's op-ed detailed efforts within the federal government to dissuade Trump from following through on his worst ideas.

During Trump's first presidency, Taylor recalls in the i Paper, there were a lot more people who were willing to tell him "no" — whereas now, he is surrounded by obedient loyalists. Those loyalists, Taylor laments, were happy to encourage Sunday's UFC event.

"If you wanted a single image to tell you where America now finds itself," the former DHS official warns, "you could not invent a more precise one. The annual extravaganza that has become the president's birthday does all the talking. We didn't previously let our presidents glorify themselves like this, as if their birth were a national holiday. Then last year, Trump arranged a first-of-its-kind military parade for himself. This year, he's building a gladiator's arena at the People's House, partly to celebrate his big day and partly for the entertainment of the masses — all of it amid unprecedented allegations of corruption and ceaseless controversies emanating from Trump's second term."

Taylor recalls that during the first Trump administration, "the people who told him 'no' held the line — America wasn't going to throw him a $92m birthday party parade to feed Trump's ego."

"Those folks are gone," Taylor warns. "I point that out a lot for a reason…. The men and women who once said 'no' have been fired, frightened off or converted into courtiers. Trump's gluttonous appetite runs free — a fitting symbol for what's happening to the American republic. Last year, he finally got his parade, a $45m affair on his 79th birthday that will be best remembered for a squeaky tank trundling past half-empty bleachers, and which, by several accounts, left him disappointed. This year, he gets gladiators."

Outside a voting center in Downtown Summerlin in Las Vegas Tuesday, Democratic voter Lenny Lither said he sees problems with both Democrats and Republicans when it comes to solving economic issues.

“The economy’s not great right now,” Lither said. “I don’t want us to go more into war with Iran than we already [are]. I want us to focus on the economy here at home, and I don’t feel we are. I don’t feel like either side has really shown me a plan…”

Lither isn’t alone. The Nevada Current spoke to voters as they cast their ballots in Tuesday’s primary election. Many said the state of the national economy is at the forefront of their minds. The rising cost of food, housing, and gas are causing anxiety among voters, and they are looking for candidates who are willing to find solutions.

As the U.S. enters four months into the ongoing war with Iran, Donald Trump has seemingly no plan to end the conflict anytime soon. After repeated promises of peace treaties, followed by continuous attacks even as a cease fire has been declared, Trump has failed to pinpoint the end of the war.

“You know, even with gas prices, [Nevada’s] governor was like ‘oh yeah gas prices are bad here ‘cause of Governor Newsom’,” Lither said in reference to comments Joe Lombardo has made. “Like, no, this is Nevada, gas prices were up when we interfered with Iran, it’s kind of related to that. We need solutions to the problems now…I want to see either side show me something.”

Lither, a Clark County School District parent who unsuccessfully ran for the school board in 2024, said he is also worried about education. While Lither did mention voting for Susie Lee in the primaries, he said he’s “not a big fan of her” and wishes Democrats had better messaging.

Another Nevadan voter who showed up at Downtown Summerlin’s polling center, Jose Rivera, had similar apprehensions towards both parties and has been “extremely frustrated” with Trump’s administration.

“Nothing is tangible for us working-class Americans,” Rivera said. “Whether you’re trying to pursue education, whether you’re trying to buy a home, there’s no realistic, tangible dream anymore. I would say that’s what I’m most frustrated about.”

Rivera feels Democrats will have a good year if they play their cards right.

“I think it’s pretty much their game if they do the right thing,” he said. “But… Democrats also haven’t been transparent about what they’re doing… I think somebody refreshing, that’s not left or right, needs to come out, because I feel like that’s where we all are, in between.”

Down at Desert Breeze Community Center voting center, Leslie Quinn was campaigning for her husband, Kelly Quinn, a Republican running in Nevada State Assembly District 5. (Kelly Quinn won the Republican primary and will advance to the general election against a Democratic incumbent, Assemblywoman Britteny Miller.)

“Public safety is very important, family, making sure parents have rights, making sure women stay in women’s sports,” Leslie Quinn responded when asked about the most important issues concerning her. “I mean, there’s a lot [about] the economy, just having balance, and really stopping Trump derangement syndrome because he’s our president, and people are going insane without supporting him.”

Leslie Quinn also said she’s looking for candidates who are freethinkers and align with her values.

“Let’s make America first,” she added. “Let’s make America healthy again, and let’s stop hating each other.”

While most voters the Current talked to were concerned about the economy, others were more concerned about finding candidates who support Trump and will stand behind him. Some voters also said the nation needs to be patient for things to turn around and put faith in the current administration.

One voter at Desert Breeze, Sompi Harmetz, who moved from Florida to Las Vegas, says she’s more focused on local issues going into the midterm elections.

“One of the biggest things for me right now is expansion of AI data centers,” Harmetz said. “[I] do not want them in Vegas, it’s like really upsetting seeing them popping up, and especially seeing the amount of stuff popping up in Reno right now. Just environmentally, I think it’s gross.”

Public alarm over the proliferation of data centers — the Reno City Council recently extended a moratorium on them — has become a political issue throughout the country.

Harmetz also shared how she would like to see the midterm results affect the nation’s political trajectory.

“I really hope that we swing more blue, but even more than just blue, just more progressive in general,” Harmetz said. “I hope we just swing more and more towards progressive candidates. We’ve seen how much change (Mayor Zohran) Mamdani has done in New York, and it totally has shown a model that it’s possible to not just constantly vote for the establishment Democrats every single time.”

Melissa Hortman often told me things she probably shouldn’t have.

One time when I was a Capitol reporter with the Star Tribune, she expressed displeasure with a profile I’d written about a Republican operative.

“The journalistic equivalent of a b---job,” she told me with that grin of hers, which shone through her eyes.

The late speaker was a practicing Catholic who carried in her wallet a prayer of St. Frances — “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace….” — but she was raised around a junkyard and loved a saucy joke.

Another time, after I’d written that she’d been badly underestimated, she told me, “Whew, I needed a cigarette after reading that one.”

After the remarkable 2025 legislative session — when her Democratic caucus shared power with Republicans — I was hoping for some of that candor so my Reformer colleague Michelle Griffith and I agreed to an off-the-record interview.

She was mostly satisfied with her final legislative session, which ended with a two-year budget and no government shutdown despite Republicans’ shared control of the House, thereby saving jobs and stability for government workers and the people who rely on them. She had also preserved key accomplishments from the Democrats’ 2023-24 trifecta, including a paid leave program that would give new parents a chance to bond with their babies and other Minnesotans the ability to care for their sick loved ones.

The deal was not without cost, however: Hortman had to cast the deciding vote to end public health insurance for undocumented immigrants. It was not an easy vote, and she shed rare public tears when discussing it at a press conference. She was willing to do it, however, because like all great legislative leaders, she’d fall on the grenade for her members, and because she knew that the Trump administration would probably come at the program with knives out anyway.

(As we now know all too well, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security came to Minnesota with guns, and left with American blood on their hands.)

Parts of the Democratic base savaged her regardless. When Michelle and I informed her that our Bluesky account mentions were filled with harsh condemnations of her, she seemed oblivious, saying her feed only seemed to show images of her favorite breed of dog, golden retrievers.

(She fostered her golden Gilbert while he trained to be a service dog, but he failed, so the Hortmans got to keep him. For a time I thought the whole thing was a bit, but she was obsessed with that dog. He ended up being killed in the same political attack that took her life.)

I wrote a column defending her decision on the budget deal, and she texted me that the episode newly motivated her to get into 2024 election data and start prepping for the midterms: “There are some very significant differences in the 2025 environment, compared to the 2017 environment. A Democratic wave is not a forgone conclusion in the 2026 election and will have to be created.”

We shared an affinity for certain political truisms: You cannot do anything without winning, and self-deception is dangerous.

Which meant they’d be more focused on vetting candidates, she said. Former Rep. John Thompson, who had some previously unknown horrifying domestic violence allegations, had dragged down the Democratic caucus even before his 2020 election. Rep.-elect Curtis Johnson had cost them dearly in 2024-25 because he didn’t live in his district.

She said the era of community organizers like Barack Obama winning office had “run its course.” Democrats should find candidates who are “real people” with experience outside of politics, she said.

(Spicy, right?)

Hortman also acknowledged that Democrats’ messaging has gone stale and faced polling headwinds on many issues, including immigration and LGBTQ rights. She said that President Donald Trump’s infamous anti-trans campaign ad — “Kamala Harris is for they/them; President Trump is for you” — was successful and hurt Democrats, not because people are anti-trans, but because it cemented an already latent idea that Democrats are not in the corner of most people.

Don’t let her clear-eyed assessment of polling fool you into thinking she would have caved on Operation Metro Surge or to anti-trans bigotry.

She hated bullies, which, on my best days, is my entire reason for being.

If you went into a lab to create a politician for me to like, you’d come out with Hortman: Principled but willing to compromise; competitive while ethically grounded; a team player but not blind to her own side’s faults; smart but not showy; ambitious but not gross about it; funny and authentic and real as all get out.

Despite these affinities — and her willingness against the advice of her communications staff to text me back — I rarely used our relationship to journalistic advantage. I felt I needed to respect her time and her workload.

I’m also wary of growing too close or enamored with politicians, both because we need distance to judge them, and because they will invariably let you down.

The politicians come and go, but the work for a more just state, nation and world must be more enduring.

I know she would agree, and so we get up and do the work.

But I also know that when we come across people we respect and admire in this lonely world, we should embrace and hold on to them tightly.

One of President Donald Trump's top administration allies has been "thrown in front of the bus," according to his longtime biographer, with a bombshell new report making them look like a "dope" acting counter to the president's interests.

The New York Times this week released a major new report, culled from an upcoming book two of its reporters wrote about the second Trump administration, revealing the panicked reactions that top figures in the Trump administration had to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, once it was clear to them that the president appeared in the files related to his crimes numerous times, and in damaging ways.

Among those figures was Vice President JD Vance, who is depicted in the report as wanting to go the route of full transparency, believing that Trump would be fine with certain salacious allegations coming to light, despite how testy he had been with staffers about the subject. He also offered to do interviews about the situation, as part of an effort to be open about the files. These suggestions from Vance were largely dismissed by the rest of the administration, who strained for ways to protect Trump at all costs while feeding the MAGA base's demand for Epstein disclosure.

Michael Wolff, a longtime reporter and author who had extensive access to Trump and his inner circle throughout his political career, said during the latest episode of his Daily Beast podcast, "Inside Trump's Head," that Vance was obviously being set up as some sort of scapegoat, given how poorly he came off in the report.

“More interesting, probably than what it says about Epstein, is JD Vance, who is really dumped... thrown in front of the bus here,” Wolff told co-host Joanna Coles. “I mean, he looks like a dope. He’s described as panicking. Every adjective connected to him makes him seem like... he is, A,... not on the president’s side, and B, that he has no idea what he’s doing.”

Coles countered that the report seemed to make Vance look better, like he "understood the enormity of the Epstein files,” and that he was “trying to get the Epstein files out there to pretend that the government was transparent.” Wolff further argued that the insiders who talked with reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan were more so attempting to make the vice president look out of step with Trump's plans.

“JD Vance was not on Donald Trump’s side here,” Wolff said, adding that “this is all an audience-of-one thing.”

He continued: “And remember, Donald Trump’s side is very clearly, ‘There is nothing her ... Why is anyone talking about Epstein? I don’t want to hear it. If you’re talking about it, you’re my enemy, not my friend. So the White House is throwing JD Vance over the side, that’s what’s going on here.”

Democratic former Gov. Roy Cooper is now considered the favorite by top election forecasters to win North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race, a result that would make him the first Democrat to represent the state in the Senate in more than a decade.

Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan election forecast by the University of Virginia Center for Politics, changed North Carolina’s Senate race from “Toss-up” status to “Leans Democratic” Thursday. In April, Cook Political Report, another widely cited forecaster, also removed the state from its toss-up list and put Cooper in the lead.

Republican Michael Whatley, the former NCGOP and RNC chairman, has struggled to break 40% support in recent polls, while Cooper has often led him by double digits, garnering around 50% support.

The forecast changes reflect a growing sense that Whatley has thus far been unable to define himself to voters, many of whom still report having no opinion about him.

“We expect the race to tighten as Election Day draws nearer. Whatley is simply less familiar to voters, so it’s easy to see conservatives ‘coming home’ to some degree,” wrote Crystal Ball analysts Kyle Kondik and J. Miles Coleman. “This may end up as a razor-thin race by Election Day. But it also doesn’t have to become that, and Cooper may just ride out the race and win by a clearer margin.”

Lack of name recognition has proven particularly challenging for Whatley’s campaign in the face of President Donald Trump’s unpopularity due to the war in Iran and rising cost of living, especially pitted against the well-funded, well-known and well-liked two-term governor.

The president, said Catawba College history and politics professor Michael Bitzer, has become an “anchor” that is dragging GOP candidates down.

“We know that midterm elections tend to be referendums on the president, and especially when the president’s party controls Congress,” Bitzer said. “I think the unhappiness, shall we say, of the American electorate at this point really sends a very clear signal: Republicans are going to have some substantial headwinds come the fall.”

Kondik and Coleman made a similar observation, noting that while GOP candidates in close races have increasingly distanced themselves from the president’s more controversial stances, Whatley has declined to break with the president.

While Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) derided Trump’s unpopular “anti-weaponization” fund as a “payout pot for punks,” Whatley gave the measure his full support, they wrote.

“In fact, the three Republican incumbents we now list in Toss-up — Susan Collins of Maine, Jon Husted of Ohio, and Dan Sullivan of Alaska — joined with Democrats on an ultimately unsuccessful vote to block the fund,” Kondik and Coleman noted.

Western Carolina University political scientist Chris Cooper said Whatley is a “steady Eddie candidate” who generates few headlines, an approach that works well when voters lean toward the GOP, but may not be enough when voters are upset with the party.

“It’s not so much that Whatley’s making mistakes,” he said. “It’s just that this is a good environment for the Democrats nationally, and Whatley isn’t doing a lot to combat that.”

A spokesman for Whatley did not respond to a request for comment on the change in rating.

Roy Cooper campaign manager Jeff Allen said he still sees a long road ahead.

“This race will be very close, which is why we are building a campaign to earn every vote and make sure North Carolinians know that Roy Cooper will fight for them in the Senate,” he said in a statement.