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Trump Orders Federal Workers To Wear His 'Freedom 250' Promotional Merch

Trump Orders Federal Workers To Wear His 'Freedom 250' Promotional Merch

Federal workers for the U.S. Department of the Interior are being directed to wear pins promoting the president’s public-private partnership created to celebrate America’s 250th birthday — instead of the congressionally mandated group that was created to organize the events.

According to Mother Jones, National Park Service employees have been ordered to wear the pins, under threat of “professional reprimands.”

“When I asked if I would receive any disciplinary action if I chose not to wear the pin, I was told, ‘Yes,’” one person told Mother Jones. “I chose not to continue the conversation after that.”

Mother Jones reports that the “establishment of Freedom 250 has allowed Trump to more easily plan events that double as campaign rallies, to privately raise funds from corporations seeking influence with the administration, and to avoid disclosing exactly how much all this is costing US taxpayers.”

“Consequently,” says Mother Jones, “NPS employees say that wearing Freedom 250 pins amounts to a partisan declaration, akin to donning a MAGA hat, or worse.”

Democrats have called the Trump-created Freedom 250 organization a dark money group, Mother Jones noted, warning that it has no congressional oversight and has been accused of being used to buy access to the president.

Trump has announced that Freedom 250’s July 4 celebration on the National Mall would feature a “Trump rally.” Sunday’s White House UFC cage fight, which also celebrated President Trump’s 80th birthday, was organized by the president’s Freedom 250 group.

In a February statement, House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-CA) and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Democrats “called out Republicans for allowing Trump to hijack America’s 250th Birthday celebration to sell access, hide his donors, and rewrite history — turning the country’s founding anniversary into a party exclusively for billionaires and a platform for Christian Nationalism.”

NBC News reports that the bipartisan America250 “is the nonprofit supporting the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, which was established 10 years ago through an act of Congress and is led by a bipartisan group of lawmakers and private citizens,” while Freedom 250 “was established by the Trump administration as a public-private partnership by which to fund and plan events celebrating this summer’s historic anniversary.”

President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance serve as chair and vice chair for the Freedom 250 group.

America250 lists its corporate sponsors while Freedom 250 only indicates certain “strategic partners.”

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet



On Fox, Irked Laura Ingraham Notices That Iranian Strikes Prove Trump Is Lying

On Fox, Irked Laura Ingraham Notices That Iranian Strikes Prove Trump Is Lying

Fox News host Laura Ingraham is getting bummed with President Donald Trump’s mixed messaging and embarrassing fabrications, especially when they keep producing cringe moments in the U.S. invasion of Iran, reports Mediaite.

Specifically, Ingraham was aggravated that Iranians were still able to strike U.S. targets when their military was allegedly destroyed, as Trump and his cohorts keep claiming.

Ingraham was speaking with former State Department official Nathan Sales about the U.S. strikes against Iran on Tuesday in retaliation for the downing of an Apache helicopter by an Iranian drone — after Trump vowed to respond to the Iranian attack earlier on Tuesday.

But the reason for the U.S. response was really the root of Ingraham’s ire.

“We keep hearing their military is destroyed,” Ingraham told Sales. “But if their military is destroyed, how are they continuing to hit us? I mean, an Apache helicopter costs about, what, about $46 million?”

Mediaite reports the attack on the helicopter came as a bit of a surprise to Fox because of Trump’s conflicting remarks and” the 38 times the president has claimed that the two sides were close to reaching a deal.”

Also surprised, apparently, was Ingraham.

“One thing that a lot of Americans can’t really wrap their heads about here is we keep hearing that they’ve been destroyed, decimated. The word is often used ungrammatically, but nevertheless … we hear that, and we know there’s extensive damage. Yet these drones are lethal, and they’re easy to make. They’re fairly cheap, and obviously did some damage to us last night over Oman. How can we guard against that? How can we protect against that, given the stakes here, again back home, and over there?”

Sales insisted “the Iranian military threat has been substantially degraded,” but “it hasn’t gone down to zero.”

For Ingraham, that wasn’t good enough.

“Why have we left any military structure there? … [W]e seem to have hit a number of base points tonight and are still, perhaps. We knew where those were. Why did we leave any of them standing? If we wanted to just really get this done, why are they still standing at all?” Ingraham demanded.

The explosion came a handful of weeks after musician Kid Rock scored a ride at Fort Belvoir in the same kind of Apache Helicopters when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gave him a trip. Kid Rock’s trip came after an earlier controversial flyover at the artist’s Nashville home prompted the Army to suspend the aircrew involved in the stunt. Hegseth swiftly reversed the suspensions.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet


Trump Takes Cornyn's Scalp In Texas -- And Terrifies Senate Republicans

Trump Takes Cornyn's Scalp In Texas -- And Terrifies Senate Republicans

President Donald Trump’s 11th hour endorsement against incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn seems to have paid off in Texas, as Trump’s champion Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton swamped Cornyn in the Senate primary, according to CNN and MS NOW projections. Cornyn conceded the election later that evening.

Trump routinely targets Republicans he finds too independent by fielding or supporting more Trumpy candidates in primaries. Recently Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, became the latest victim of Trump's effort to back primary challengers for his perceived enemies within the GOP.

But Paxton is nothing if not a flawed candidate, according to critics. He is an adulterer who attempted to overthrow the 2020 election and who was nearly impeached by his own Republican senate. Sixteen Texas attorneys signed a 31-page complaint against Paxton, demanding he be disbarred for legal offenses.

Still, it will be Paxton, not Cornyn, who will face off against Democrat James Talarico, a state lawmaker, this November.

Both Cornyn and Paxton were found to be trailing hypothetical head-to-heads against Talarico last month in a Texas Public Opinion Research poll of 1,865 voters. That poll showed Talarico with a three-percentage point lead over Cornyn, 44-to-41 percent. But he leads Attorney General Ken Paxton by a wider, five percentage point margin, 46-to-41 percent, according to the poll.

Talarico leads Paxton with Black voters by +56, Latino voters +27 and college-educated voters +14. Nine percent of surveyed respondents remain undecided. Independents break for Talarico against Paxton 53 percent to 28 percent.

Democrats winning a major statewide election in Texas has long been seen as unlikely, but according to a new breakdown from The Atlantic, Trump's recent "casual betrayal" of an endorsement has given the party its best chance at an upset in decades.

“Trump may have cemented a set of very difficult circumstances for his party,” reported the Atlantic. “If Paxton wins on Tuesday, Democrats will probably be better positioned to win statewide in Texas than they’ve been in the past 40 years."Critics complain that Trump’s endorsement means Republican financiers will have to invest more heavily to beat Talarico, which means less money helping vulnerable Republicans in other states, when Texas should have been an easy win.

Trump's vendetta against Republicans who defy him represents a significant shift in party dynamics.

Since his return to the White House, Trump has systematically targeted GOP lawmakers deemed insufficiently loyal, orchestrating primary challenges against sitting senators and representatives. Notable victims include Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who lost his primary after voting to convict Trump during his second impeachment trial, and Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who challenged Trump on government spending and the Epstein files. Trump has also threatened Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert for supporting Massie.

These purges extend beyond symbolic gestures—Trump has mobilized campaign resources and Super PAC funding to ensure defeats, effectively establishing a loyalty test within the party that prioritizes personal allegiance over policy positions or constituent service.

Expert Warns That AI Bust Is Now Inevitable -- And Will Sink Trump's Economy

Expert Warns That AI Bust Is Now Inevitable -- And Will Sink Trump's Economy

The Wall Street Journal and other industry observers keep saying artificial intelligence investment is the one thing “saving” President Donald Trump’s stock market time and again, as Trump’s economy plateaus or tanks other stocks. However, Asad Ramzanali, director of AI and technology policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, says AI overinvestment and risky financial engineering have made an AI crash more likely.

“I started [my research] not assuming we’re in a bubble, but that if we are, we should be prepared. As I got deeper into this, I became convinced that we are in a period of overinvestment where the money going out the door in the industry, which is primarily for data centers and chips, doesn’t match the money coming in,” Ramzanali told Washington Monthly podcast senior editor Anne Kim.

Ramzanali said research shows “$2 trillion is what the annual revenue from AI will have to look like to recoup” all this investment — and that’s not what can happen in the real world. So, prep for the inevitable bust.

Companies that build data centers -- Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Oracle -- are making estimates in the 2026 capital expenditures that promise “higher percentage of GDP than the Manhattan Project, the expansion of electricity, the Apollo space program, the building of the interstate highway system, the broadband build out in the ‘90s, everything but the Louisiana Purchase. This nets out to about $700 billion of investment this year,” said Ramazanali.

In other words, curb your enthusiasm. But tech companies now make up one third of the stock market, and banks are invested in those tech companies in big ways like private credit, structured finance and endless pools of capital all funneling into similar investments.“[W]hen you’re talking about something that is this large, this high of a magnitude of our whole economy, that’s where I start to get worried about the spillover effects into the rest of the economy,” said Ramzanali.

What this means for the Trump stock market — which is practically all Trump has left to brag about — is nothing good for Trump.

The New York Times reports Trumps largely steady stock market keeps assuming it “will always be saved” by the government and that markets are “not properly pricing risk, because they really don’t have to.”

“ … [But] the new rescuer investors are counting on — artificial intelligence — is vulnerable to the exact risks markets are ignoring,” reports the Times. “This has huge consequences. … This reliance on A.I. looks like an extraordinary concentration of bets” that the Times reports is “likely straining their cash cushions.”

Nobody will want to be president when the only stable stock buttressing Trump’s economy in a time of widely-fluctuating gas and grocery prices suddenly goes wobbly. And Trump has three more years for the wobble to hit him.

Lara Trump

Lara Trump Blasted For Claiming Presidency Made 'Good-Hearted' Father-In-Law Poorer

Critics on social media were not buying Lara Trump’s pity party for President Donald Trump. They particularly did not care for her claim that Trump would have an easier time of things were he not president.

“Lara Trump was slammed for claiming her father-in-law’s life would be better if he weren't President of the United States,” reported RadarOnline.com. “Lara, 43, who is married to Donald Trump's son Eric, said in a recent interview that the business mogul has been punished financially by getting into politics – even though his net worth has climbed to $6.5billion from $2.6 billion in little over 14 months.”

“I wish people would appreciate how much easier Donald Trump’s life would’ve been if he'd never gotten involved in politics,” Lara Trump claimed on the podcast of Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s senior advisor Stephen Miller. “He's the one President to leave the White House with less money than he went into it with. He’s had zeros come off his net worth because he ran for president.”But RadarOnline and other critics fact checked Lara Trump on the spot, with RadarOnline pointing out that “Donald Trump and his family made over $4 billion since he took office.”

“You cannot be serious. Unplug your head from Trump’s a——," said one critic on X, while another called her assertion “Absurd.”"Lara, you are f—— delusional,” wailed another on X, while a third called her claim “a complete lie. Trump is using the presidency to become richer.”

“Our [lives] would be so much better, too,” said another critic on X. “ … [M]aybe he should just quit now.”

“But [Trump is] a genuinely good-hearted person," Lara Trump added, while ignoring the fact that Trump threatened to extinguish the entire civilization of Iran on Easter and destroy their energy infrastructure.Lara Trump's claims stand in stark contradiction to documented financial realities.

Beyond the $4 billion accumulated by Trump and his family since taking office, investigative reporting has revealed specific mechanisms through which the presidency has enriched the Trump organization [including her husband Eric's firm recently winning a $24 million Pentagon deal}.

Foreign leaders and wealthy donors have funneled money into Trump-branded properties, investment funds, and business ventures at unprecedented rates. The World Liberty Financial crypto fund alone secured a half-billion-dollar investment from UAE officials shortly before Trump's inauguration—a transaction that coincided with the White House granting advanced AI chip access to the Emirates.

Meanwhile, Trump has collected hundreds of millions from corporate donors and wealthy individuals for vanity projects including a proposed presidential library, ballroom renovation, and triumphal arch, with tens of millions of those funds remaining unaccounted for. The assertion that Trump sacrificed financially for public service ignores the systematic weaponization of the presidency for personal enrichment.

Additionally, Trump's threats of genocide against Iran, his illegal war that has destabilized global markets and cost American consumers billions in increased energy costs, and his various corruption scandals paint a portrait of a president whose time in office has been characterized by personal gain at the expense of national stability and democratic norms. Lara Trump's narrative of victimhood rings hollow against this documented record.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Rejecting Trump's Hypocritical Plea, Voters Approve Virginia Redistricting

Rejecting Trump's Hypocritical Plea, Voters Approve Virginia Redistricting

In one of the nation’s final redistricting battles before the November midterm elections, Virginia voters decided on Tuesday to allow Democrats to redraw the state’s House map to give their party a plus.

With the passage of the referendum, voters opted to empower Virginia’s Democratic-led legislature to create a congressional map that leaves the state with just one safe Republican district. Prior to the Tuesday vote, Virginia’s 11-member House delegation consists of six Democrats and five Republicans, but this will likely change if court decisions fail to stop it.

Virginians voted "yes" to approve the new temporary map by 51.5 percent to 48.5 percent, according to a Washington Post analysis with nearly all the ballots counted. After millions of dollars in spending by both sides, roughly 44 percent of the electorate voted -- an impressive turnout for a special election. Last November's gubernatorial election had a turnout of 55 percent.

“Unfortunately, we’ve been pushed into the position where two wrongs will make a right, and as Democrats, we simply can’t come to a boxing match when the person brings a knife,” one voter told MS NOW.

The decision followed in the aftermath of President Donald Trump demanding Texas Republicans push a mid-decade gerrymandering effort to erase Democrat districts and give Trump an advantage in the House. Trump began pushing the effort last year as polling began to reveal voters would punish Republicans in the 2026 mid-terms for Republicans’ congressional behavior.

But that effort appeared to backfire as Democrats retaliated by enacting extreme anti-Republican gerrymanders of their own in blue states.“MAGA is having a rough day. They have just entered the “find out” stage after they f—— around,” said one X user on social media.

The New York Times reports Democrats spent heavily on the Virginia election. But opinion polls said voters appeared split in the days leading up to the final vote.

Republicans like former senator John McCain’s daughter Meghan McCain demanded “If you live in Virginia, remember to vote NO on the communist takeover of elections today,” on X, although she made no reference to Republican gerrymandering efforts in red states in her post.Other MAGA X social users appeared to hit a shrill tone as Virginia marched to the polls.

“Democrats are trying to steal 4 seats in the House by redrawing Virginia's map. GET OUT AND VOTE NO!’ posted one X account, also without referencing similar GOP efforts in red states.

Reprinted with permission from Atternet

Top Pentagon Official Confronted Vatican Ambassador With Menacing 'Lecture'

Top Pentagon Official Confronted Vatican Ambassador With Menacing 'Lecture'

Pope Leo XIV chronicler Christopher Hale says he has confirmed that Trump’s Pentagon threatened to declare war on the Vatican.

“In January, behind closed doors at the Pentagon, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre — Pope Leo XIV’s then-ambassador to the United States — and delivered a lecture,” said Hale.

“America has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world,” Colby and his associates informed the cardinal. “The Catholic Church had better take its side.”

As the room temperature grew, Hale said, one U.S. official “reached for a fourteenth-century weapon and invoked the Avignon Papacy, the period when the French Crown used military force to bend the bishop of Rome to its will.”

Hale said the report confirms that the Vatican had reason to decline the Trump-Vance White House’s invitation to host Pope Leo XIV for America’s 250th anniversary in 2026 two weeks after the confrontation.

Citing a Free Press report, the writer obtained accounts from Vatican and U.S. officials briefed on the Pentagon meeting. According to his sources, Colby’s team picked apart the pope’s January state-of-the-world address line by line and read it as a hostile message aimed directly at President Donald Trump. Hale said what “enraged them most” was Leo’s declaration that “a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force.”

“The Pentagon read that sentence as a frontal challenge to the so-called ‘Donroe Doctrine’ — Trump’s update of Monroe, asserting unchallenged American dominion over the Western Hemisphere,” said Hale.

Hale said the cardinal sat through the lecture in silence, but added that “The Holy See has not, since that day, given an inch.”

The Trump administration's contentious relationship with the Catholic Church represents a significant departure from traditional Republican-Church alliances. While Trump secured substantial Catholic voter support in 2016 and 2024 by championing conservative social issues like abortion restrictions, his foreign policy approach and rhetoric have increasingly alienated Church leadership.

Pope Leo XIV has positioned himself as a moral counterweight to Trump's geopolitical aggression, consistently advocating for dialogue-based diplomacy over military intervention. This philosophical clash intensified during Trump's second term, particularly as his administration pursued more hawkish positions on Iran, trade relations, and immigration — issues where Church teaching emphasizes compassion, dialogue, and respect for human dignity.

The Vatican's traditionally neutral stance on secular governance has been tested by Trump's unilateral foreign policy decisions and inflammatory rhetoric. Church leaders have publicly questioned whether American military interventions align with Catholic doctrine on just war theory and the sanctity of human life. Additionally, Trump's administration's hardline immigration policies directly contradict papal messaging that emphasizes welcoming migrants and refugees.

The Pentagon's January confrontation with Cardinal Pierre signals an unprecedented willingness by Trump officials to pressure religious institutions into alignment with administration goals. This represents a potential inflection point: where diplomatic courtesy once governed state-Church relations, coercion may now be replacing negotiation. The Vatican's refusal to participate in the 250th anniversary celebration underscores that even America's most prominent religious institution will not compromise its moral authority for political expediency.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

MAGA Dread As Democrat Flips Mar-A-Lago District In Special Election

MAGA Dread As Democrat Flips Mar-A-Lago District In Special Election

The MAGA world went deep into panic mode as soon as the official results of a Florida special election landed.

On Tuesday, Democrat candidate Emily Gregory won a Florida state house special election against Republican John Maples — in a district that President Donald Trump won by 11 percent of the vote roughly one year ago.

As an additional kick, the district happens to house Trump’s own Mar-a-Lago Club, putting the district, as one CNN analyst described it, right ‘in Trump’s backyard.”

Conservative writer Eric Daugherty tried to play down the win, arguing on X that the legislative session in Florida has already ended and that Republicans are “hoping for powerful comeback later this year to cancel it all out.” But the victory set off alarms throughout the rest of MAGAsphere, with one X commenter posting “I don't like how this ‘trend’ is going.”

“How in hell do we get 30 percent turnout in today’s politically charged environment,” demanded another. “Do we have that many lazy, unengaged Republicans who ignore special elections and maybe even (God heal us) the midterms?”

While some MAGA X users shrilly shouted: “Don’t run Blacks” as Republican candidates (losing GOP candidate John Maples is African-American), others argued for Republicans to “work on our ground game.”

“These special elections are a sign we aren’t paying attention,” said the X user. “Download ActiVote, fill out your info, and you’ll know when all races in your district are. This is bare minimum civic duty sh——, guys.”

Still another frustrated Republican posted: “Floridians, I’m starting to see a trend that shouldn’t be happening,” while a casual observer wagered “Midterms are going to be brutal for the GOP.”

CNN Analyst Harry Enten compounded Republicans’ frustration, saying the GOP loss in Mar-a-Lago “is unlikely to stay at Mar-a-Lago.” Nationwide discontent with Trump appears to be making many voters hostile and driving Republican voters into disinterest.

“Historically speaking, special elections have forecasted what will happen in the midterm elections,” said Enten. “… [E]very single time a party outperformed the presidential baseline in the next midterm election, what we saw — five out of five times — that party went on to win the U.S. House of Representatives.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Ed Martin, Weaponized Prosecutor For Trump Justice, May Soon Face Disbarment

Ed Martin, Weaponized Prosecutor For Trump Justice, May Soon Face Disbarment

Ed Martin, former interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, had to look hard, but somehow managed to find the “dumbest possible rake” to step on, as Mark Joseph Stern tells Slate. Now the former Trump appointee is in even more trouble than he was.

“On Tuesday, the disciplinary counsel for the D.C. bar announced a formal complaint against Martin for professional misconduct,” said Stern. “The charges accuse him of violating his oath to the Constitution, then interfering with the investigation into his alleged malfeasance. If found culpable, he could be suspended from the practice of law or disbarred in D.C.”

Martin’s alleged unconstitutional behavior is already a matter of public record, said Stern. But it’s what he did after receiving notice of the complaint that sets Martin’s arrogance apart from all others. Upon receiving the initial complaint, Stern said Martin “launched a pressure campaign against the D.C. Court of Appeals … to suspend the lead investigator on his case.”

This, it turns out, was a much more egregious violation of court process than what the D.C. bar was initially investigating him for. The initial complaint was all about Martin’s harassment of Georgetown University Law Center, when he sent a letter to then-Dean William Treanor warning the school to remove all traces of DEI or the Trump administration would not hire Georgetown Law grads. He even threatened that the school might lose federal funding.

But while Martin’s letter was “absurd and malicious,” Stern said it might not constitute a violation of his oath. There was even a chance that the Board on Professional Responsibility or the D.C. Court of Appeals would agree.

But instead of contesting the claim against him through the proper legal channels, Martin allegedly tried to quash the complaint by committing “a far more clear-cut ethical breach,” said Stern. “According to the charges, Martin refused to respond to the complaint, and instead wrote directly to the chief judge and senior judges of the D.C. Court of Appeals. In his letter, he requested a “face-to-face meeting with all of you to discuss this matter and find a way forward.”

The chief judge, Anna Blackburne-Rigsby, told Martin to go pound sand and follow standard procedure. But rather than take her advice, Martin reportedly told the disciplinary counsel that he was essentially “calling their manager” — and he copied Blackburne-Rigsby on the email.

Furious, the disciplinary counsel demanded Martin turn over his letter to the judges. But rather than comply, he wrote to the chief judge again, insisting “that you not only suspend Mr. Fox immediately to investigate his conduct, but also to dismiss the case against me because of his prejudicial conduct.”

“Unfortunately for Martin, the D.C. Rules of Professional Conduct expressly forbid lawyers from communicating with a judge ‘unless authorized to do so by law or court order,’ which he was not,” said Stern. “There appears to be no serious dispute that Martin communicated with Blackburne-Rigsby ex parte not once, not twice, but three separate times, all in an effort to evade discipline against him.”

If proven, Stern said this behavior “is a textbook example of misconduct sanctionable by the bar. So, of course the D.C. bar’s disciplinary counsel charged Martin with violating that rule, as well as another prohibiting conduct that ‘seriously interferes with the administration of justice.’”

“The erstwhile interim U.S. attorney, then, is in a pickle of his own making,” said Stern. “Had he simply fought Fox’s complaint the right way, he may well have defeated the charges in short order. But because he allegedly tried to obstruct the investigation, he faces a separate set of charges on much firmer legal ground.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Trump Demands Passage Of Partisan Election Bill To 'Guarantee The Midterms'

Trump Demands Passage Of Partisan Election Bill To 'Guarantee The Midterms'

Politico reports President Donald Trump ordered House Republicans Monday to pass his huge partisan elections bill a third time with even more provisions, targeting mail-in voters and vulnerable minorities.

“It will guarantee the midterms,” Trump told lawmakers, according to Politico. “If you don’t get it, big trouble, my opinion.”

Provisions that Trump wants added include targeting transgender rights in addition to curbing mail voting, even though Trump himself has voted by mail. And Trump warned the GOP to pursue passage of the law even it means abandoning the rest of their legislative agenda before the November elections.

“It’s actually a matter in a serious way of national survival. We can’t have these elections going on like this anymore,” Trump said.

Trump also endorsed a push by House Republican hard-liners to attach a must-pass spy powers extension to the SAVE America legislation in a bid to pass both together. But there is a reason Trump is asking the House to pass the bill a third time: Politico reports this would create “a nightmare for House GOP leaders who already face obstacles passing either bill.

The House has already two passed versions of what is now called the “SAVE America Act,” which would create onerous new citizenship and photo ID requirements for voting. Still, Politico reports Trump is framing the voting and transgender provisions as “proven political winners” that Democrats will not easily be able to oppose.

“That should be the easiest thing to get passed that you’ve ever had,” Trump told the Republicans. “Those are best of Trump. This is the No. 1 priority, it should be, for the House.”

But Democrats have opposed the bill in unison every time Republicans tried to get it to the president’s desk, and even Republican leaders have been loath to change Senate rules to make the bill easier to pass.

Reprinted with permisson from Alternet


Florida Republicans Vow To Oust Student Leader Over 'Nazi Heaven' Group Chat

Florida Republicans Vow To Oust Student Leader Over 'Nazi Heaven' Group Chat

The Miami New Times reports that a local affiliate of the Florida Republican Party is begging the state party for permission to eject a secretary who created a racist group chat named “Nazi Heaven.”

Participants included some of the campus’ top conservative leaders: the county GOP secretary, Florida International University’s Turning Point USA chapter President Ian Valdes, and the former College Republicans recruitment chair. The school later told the Herald that the chat logs are now part of a criminal investigation.

“’Total N---- Death!’ wrote Dariel Gonzalez, a former board member of FIU’s College Republicans,” according to Miami New Times.

“In a different text, while discussing a Black student who reportedly left FIU’s College Republicans after being subjected to racial slurs, Gonzalez wrote that another member of the group ‘called her a n—— so she left,’” the Miami New Times reported.

The Miami Herald reported that “Miami-Dade County GOP secretary Abel Alexander Carvajal started the group chat primarily for conservative students last fall — and within three weeks it was filled with racist slurs. … In WhatsApp conversations leaked to the Miami Herald, participants used variations of the n-word more than 400 times, regularly described women as ‘whores,’ used slurs to talk about Jewish and gay people and mused about Hitler’s politics.”

The Floridian reported on Wednesday that the chat also included a message in which a participant allegedly enumerated “dozens of violent methods of killing Black people — including crucifixion, dissection, and beheading.

But now, following outcry, the Republican Party of Miami-Dade County has voted to request the 23-year-old’s resignation and remove him from his role.

In a statement posted to X on Thursday, Kevin J. Cooper, chairman of the Miami-Dade Republican Party, wrote: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms Abel Alexander Carvajal’s racist group chat. His words and actions are reprehensible and are completely inconsistent with the values of the Republican Party of Miami-Dade County. The words and actions of this individual does not speak for our Party.”

"The majority of our Party’s Board voted to request Carvajal’s resignation,” the post added. “We have commenced removal proceedings and look forward to resolution from the Republican Party of Florida.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Is Trump 'Bringing Back Religion Strongly' As He Promised Last Year? No

Is Trump 'Bringing Back Religion Strongly' As He Promised Last Year? No

Religion News Service writer Yonat Shimron recalls President Donald Trump actively courting Christian evangelicals during his 2024 campaign and as president in 2025.

“We’re bringing back religion in our country, and we’re bringing it back quickly and strongly,” Shimron cites Trump saying at a National Day of Prayer event last year.

Since then, “many federal departments have held prayer services or Bible studies. Trump created a task force to eradicate anti-Christian bias, and his Supreme Court appointees continue to deliver for Christian conservatives and their allies,” said Shimron.

Despite all this, a new Gallup Poll, reveals no significant change in the importance of religion to Americans. Plus, church attendance continues to plummet. The percentage of Americans who classify religion as “very important” in their lives is still flat since its 2021 report, at 47 percent.

Religious service attendance, however, reveals churches are still very much in trouble, with 57 percent of U.S. residents saying they rarely or never attend religious services. Shiron said that number was only 42 percent in 1992.

“There’s nothing here that would represent any sort of major reversal or significant change in the trajectory of religion in America,” said Ryan Burge, a political scientist who is professor of the practice at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis.

Most polled groups continue to experience declines in the percentage who considers religion “very important” in their lives. Among the biggest declines, according to surveys, was the percentage of Black Americans who fell from 85 percent to 63 percent since 2005. Democrats fell from 60 percent to 37 percent over the past two decades.

“Republicans experienced virtually no decline with 66 percent claiming religion was still very important to them — but Burge reported an important caveat to that info: Republicans’ self-reported church attendance dropped.

“They like the idea of religion — that hasn’t changed — but they don’t actually go as much. So it’s sort of like a symbolic religion,” Burge told Religion News Service.

Women’s growing indifference appears to be matching that of men. And with American youth rejecting religious service by 61 percent, Gallup predicted generational replacement leading to a “long-term trajectory of decline.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Candace Owens' Conspiracy Claims About Erika Kirk Are Tearing MAGA Apart

Candace Owens' Conspiracy Claims About Erika Kirk Are Tearing MAGA Apart

Bulwark editor and MAGA-world monitor Will Sommer says the slightly less crazy wing of far-right influencers are losing their fight against the craziest one of all.

“It’s clear that Ben Shapiro and his ilk have lost … control of the MAGA audience,” said Sommer. “They are powerless to stop [MAGA influencer Candace] Owens from terrorizing their friend’s widow, from pushing antisemitism, and generally from acting as a thorn in the movement ahead of the midterms. After more than a decade of conspiracy theories, and voting for the country’s arch conspiracy-theorist to be president, the audience will really believe in anything.”

For weeks, Ownens — who is famous (and sued) for spreading some of the most raucous conspiracy theories peppering the MAGA community — has been claiming that Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, had something to do with her husband’s assassination last year. Owens has been promising a new series tackling Erika Kirk’s alleged connection. And her audience, said Sommer, has been eating it up, despite Owens’ conspiracy-slinging influencer rivals warning viewers away from her.

Most recently, Sommer says Owens laid out an underwhelming array of “her most damning evidence,” which includes one of Erika Kirk’s relatives being arrested for working in an illegal numbers racket nearly 100 years ago, and Kirk being born in a civilian hospital that was originally a military hospital during the Civil War.

Additionally, Erika Kirk once dressed as a “bee” in a photo taken of her back when she worked in daycare.

“It was nonsense,” said Sommer, but the conspiracy-loving MAGA audience adores it all, no matter how hard the rest of MAGA frenzies.

“I think it’s safe to say [Charlie] would rather take a dozen bullets to the neck than watch his wife go through this, face a living assassination,” podcaster Liz Wheeler said Wednesday, reports Sommer.

“F—— you, motherf—— !” said former FBI director Dan Bongino to Owens and her followers Tuesday. “You deserve to feel the little licks and the flames of hell on every inch of your body. F—— you!”

But the MAGA universe, which is famous for fearlessly saying anything without evidence, appears to be powerless against a MAGA queen who is willing to invite a million-dollar lawsuit from an international leader.

In fact, Owens' MAGA competition has “already started to waffle,” according to Sommer. Owens critic Ian Miles Cheong has already admitted that his rival has won the audience.

“That could be because any attempts to attack Owens only makes her stronger,” Sommer said. “Fellow Daily Wire host Michael Knowles made that very point this week when he complained that the real problem is conservative hosts bringing more attention to Owens in their attempts to defend Erika Kirk.”

And Sommer said Owens’s supporters are just as nutty and retaliatory as Owens, having “seized on an apparently fraudulent memo that purported to show figures like Laura Loomer and Bongino coordinating on a message that Owens was ‘Satanic’ and ‘evil.’”

“Loomer, for one, has threatened to sue another X user for promoting the bogus document,” said Sommer.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet


Karl Rove

Karl Rove's Warning: Trump Has Set Up Republicans For 'A Shellacking'

Veteran Republican strategist Karl Rove knows how to win elections. He says he also knows what losing them looks like, and he says Trump is on his way to losing big.

Strangely, the Republican Party’s master of partisan politics claims Trump is being too partisan, as indicated by the direction he took at his State of The Union speech.

“Almost everything the president said energized his MAGA hard core. But they aren’t enough to stave off a shellacking this fall,” Rove told the Wall Street Journal.

“Mr. Trump should have fixated more on those of his 2024 voters who have since become disenchanted: Those represented by his approval rating’s almost 8-point slide in the RealClearPolitics average since re-entering office,” said Rove. “That isn’t a large slice of the electorate, but those swing voters will decide which party controls Congress for Mr. Trump’s final two years in the White House.”

Trump’s speech, like Trump himself, was “angry, pugnacious, and hence less effective,” said Rove. And the information he delivered — and has been delivering for months — is simply not making a convincing case to the centrist voters Trump and his Republican Party need to nab a November victory.

“For them, the president’s speech almost certainly didn’t sound based in reality,” said Rove. “Many Americans, especially swing voters, are pessimistic about the economy. At the end of 2025, 12-month inflation was at 2.7 percent, near its 2.9 percent level the December before Mr. Trump took office.”

Comparatively, the economy that former president Joe Biden handed Trump “started off gangbusters in 2025” with 3.8 percent growth in the second quarter and 4.4 percent in the third.

“But [it] slowed to a crawl with 1.4 percent in the fourth,” Rove said. “The congressional Joint Economic Committee says the U.S. lost 108,000 manufacturing jobs last year. And all this took place amid growing public concern over the effect of artificial intelligence on jobs, utility bills, kids and the future.

“Yet the president claimed ‘prices are plummeting downwards,’ They generally aren’t,” assured Rove. “His tariffs, he opined, will ‘substantially replace the . . . income tax,’ and ending fraud in federal spending will produce ‘a balanced budget overnight.’ They won’t. Here, Mr. Trump sounded as out of touch as Joe Biden did when he kept proclaiming ‘Bidenomics is working.’”

Rove said Republicans must instead offer “more substance” and “display more empathy,” as well as properly focus on the economy” if they hope to pull through in November.

“They better get cracking,” warned Rove. “Time’s a-wasting.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

'National Review' Demands That Trump Explain Why He Protects Epstein Cronies

'National Review' Demands That Trump Explain Why He Protects Epstein Cronies

National Review writer Noah Rothman admits Democrats are tearing President Donald Trump to shreds for clinging to friends and confidants of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Rothman pointed to a recent X post by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) — which accused Trump of protecting child abusers and claiming that in her home country of Somalia, child predators are executed — to argue that Trump is carrying the kind of baggage that could bring down an entire administration.

“The president and his allies have not been able to leverage reckless remarks like these, render them liabilities and impose a political price on their expostulators,” Rothman wrote. “They don’t even seem to be trying. It’s not at all clear why.”

Trump’s “onetime aide and federal convict, Steve Bannon,” was “chummy with Epstein long after the child abuser was convicted of his crimes,” reports Rothman. “Indeed, even on the eve of Epstein’s final arrest, Bannon was committed to making a documentary about the former financier explicitly designed to rehabilitate his image.”

So why on earth, demands Rothman, would Trump’s solicitor general, D. John Sauer be lobbying an appeals court to drop charges against Bannon to erase his conviction for obstructing the House's January 6 investigation?

“Behavior like this is the augur in which conspiracy theories bloom,” warned Rothman.

Similarly, Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick “maintained surreptitious relations with Epstein long after he repeatedly claimed (once, under oath) that he cut the pervert off, (after 2005),” according to what Rothman told CNBC.

But the so-called ‘Epstein Files’ made Lutnick out to be a liar by revealing that in December 2012, Epstein invited Lutnick to lunch on his private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The two also had business dealings as recently as 2014, according to CBS News.

Any retaliation the Trump administration makes against Democrats’ Epstein accusations, said Rothman, “will be limited by the administration’s efforts to shield those in Trump’s orbit with deeper ties to Epstein from accountability.”

“Certainly, figures like Bannon and Lutnick, who are guilty not of mere association but of misleading law enforcement, lawmakers, or the public, complicate the White House’s efforts to indemnify the president,” said Rothman. “It’s not at all clear why these two replaceable components in the MAGA machine are worth the effort."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Grand Jury Squashes Trump-Ordered Indictment Of Democrats, Including Kelly

Grand Jury Squashes Trump-Ordered Indictment Of Democrats, Including Kelly

A Washington D.C. grand jury has again refused to acquiesce in President Donald Trump’s quest to prosecute his political foes, with the paper calling the rejection “a remarkable rebuke” from ordinary citizens, The New York Times reports

The Times reports: “Federal prosecutors in Washington sought and failed on Tuesday to secure an indictment against six Democratic lawmakers who posted a video last fall that enraged President Trump by reminding active-duty members of the military and intelligence community that they were obligated to refuse illegal orders, four people familiar with the matter said.”

The Times additionally reports it was already remarkable that the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington — led by Trump ally Jeanine Pirro — even authorized prosecutors to approach a grand jury with an indictment of the six members of Congress, all of whom had served in the military or the nation’s spy agencies.

It is rare for grand jurors to snub prosecutors’ indictment requests, considering prosecutors get to dominate the jury with one-sided arguments leading up to their decision. However, the Times reports it has happened with increased frequency with Trump’s Justice Department “as his appointees push ahead with questionable cases.”

It is doubly surprising considering the president of the United States accused Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and the other legislators of seditious conspiracy and said they could potentially be put to death. The U.S. Department of Defense later announced that it was launching an investigation into Kelly for participating in the video warning active-duty troops to not follow illegal orders from Trump and also threatened to court martial the NASA astronaut.

But the jury apparently disagreed on all counts and refused to indict any of the legislators incriminated by Trump.

Trump’s targets also Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and four colleagues in the House: Jason Crow (D-CO) Maggie Goodlander, (D-NH), Chrissy Houlahan (D-P) and Chris Deluzio (D-PA).

Kelly is already suing the Pentagon over its attempts to punish him.

JD Vance

'No Rizz': Young MAGA Voters Are Repelled By JD Vance As Trump Fades

Bulwark Publisher Sarah Longwell and the site's “False Flag” editor Will Sommer have been analyzing the critical youth MAGA vote that helped put President Donald Trump over the finish line a little more than a year ago, and they report their enthusiasm is waning for Trump’s preferred replacement.

Polls suggest Trump is deep in cold water and that his lame-duck chapter may already be underway, even before the 2026 mid-terms — primarily because of the expectation that his Republican Party will be trounced and his GOP Congressional majority evaporated.

Youth helped put Trump in the White House a second time, but Bulwark surveys of young voters who swung from Biden to Trump last time feel less enthusiasm for electable Republicans and more passion for unelectable boors and white nationalist firebrands — if, indeed, they feel anything at all.

“Like, he doesn't give you all the heebie-jeebies at all?” demanded one female respondent, speaking of Vice-President JD Vance, who has already announced his intent to run for president in Trump’s absence at the next national election.

“I shouldn't judge a book by its … cover or whatever. But I just kind of like — it’s one of those, like, feelings like — eeyuck — I don't know,” said another.

“They're just creeped out by Vance or find him boring, weird, and like no rizz, no rizz,” said Longwell.

No rizz is modern slang used to describe someone who lacks charisma, charm, or appeal — particularly in romantic or social contexts. The term suggests that a person is unable to attract others or lacks the magnetism needed to impress or seduce someone.

Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio got middling to slight enthusiasm from young Biden-to-Trump voters, which looks bad for Vance. However, young MAGA men appeared to be throwing their attention to even more controversial candidates like Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback, who coddles white nationalism and Holocaust denialism while demanding a “ho-tax” from Only Fans users.

“I don't know if you've heard of Fishback. He's trying to run for governor of Florida. I really like what he's doing. He's young. He's very articulate in terms of what he says. And he's focusing on the people of Florida in particular,” said one survey respondent, who had not been asked about Fishback in the survey.

Other respondents echoed his enthusiasm, to the surprise of survey organizers who had not had Fishback on their radar. This, said Longwell, is unfortunate for the Republican Party because critics consider Fishback the kiss of death for centrist-minded Independent voters.

“Fishback is sending a clear message to white nationalist groups: “I’m your guy,’” Political Research Associates senior research analyst Ben Lorber told the Miami Herald.

Longwell pointed out that Fishback is “polling in the low single digits — in actual Florida, like with actual Floridians — he is not doing that well, but he's clearly getting a lot of attention online.”

“This is a guy who, in terms of actual accomplishments in life, is just about at nothing,” said Sommer, who also described Fishback as “insanely racist”. “And he has this kind of insane, twisted backstory. He was at a hedge fund. He got fired from the hedge fund because he was focusing too much on his anti-woke high school debate startup. And basically, he engaged in all this subterfuge where he had people posing as reporters or angry investors at the hedge fund. And as a result, he's ended up with what I think is going to be ... $2 million plus debt to the hedge fund over legal fees.”

“He's getting his car seized by U.S. Marshals. He's spending on all these luxury goods and he bought a Cartier watch, wore it to a deposition and the hedge fund said, ‘well, wait a minute, you know, we got to seize that.’ So … this guy is at like the very low level of success in life. And I should say also, there are these allegations in court that he had a relationship with a 17-year-old at his high school debate star.”

“It’s definitely a bad sign for where the MAGA movement is headed,” concluded Sommer.

“Yeah, it's a really bad sign,” Longwell agreed.

Watch the Bulwark podcast at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet