Donald Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration. Here’s what he’s proposed

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It’s Getting Screwy

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The first thing you should know about the New World screwworm is that it isn’t actually a worm; it’s a fly. At the larva stage, it twists into the flesh of its host, devouring it from within. These wormlike maggots feed on all kinds of warm-blooded animals (the fly’s scientific name is Cochliomyia  hominivorax, or “man-eater”), but they pose a serious threat to livestock, and to cattle in particular.

The second thing you should know about the New World screwworm is that it’s back. Last week, 60 years after the United States was declared free of the fly, the Department of Agriculture announced that it had found larvae in a three-week-old calf in rural Zavala County, Texas, not far from the Mexican border. Four more infected animals have since been identified across Texas and New Mexico: two calves, a goat, and a dog. The U.S. cattle herd is already the smallest it’s been since 1951 (in part because of drought), and the value of cattle is soaring. As meat-packers pay more for the few animals that remain, they’re passing those costs down the supply chain to beef consumers. To meet the demand, the industry will need to invest in new calves and build up the herd. But the White House’s mixed messages on tariffs has made farmers skittish, and the resurgence of a parasite that eats their animals alive may only make things worse.

Since the 1950s, the Department of Agriculture has been warding off the screwworm with a tried-and-true strategy. Workers raise batches of the flies themselves, sterilize them with radiation, and then air-drop them over affected areas each week. Wild flies mate with the sterile ones, slowly eroding the population over time. It’s one of those quietly effective taxpayer-funded programs that’s had an enormous impact in past decades: Before the sterile-insect technique repelled screwworms from the southern U.S., the pests had been costing cattle farmers tens of millions of dollars every year.

The insect population was eventually pushed south through Mexico and past the Darién Gap, the roadless rainforest on the border between Panama and Colombia, where it was held at bay until 2022. Then it began its march northward, speeding up in 2024, perhaps thanks to illegal cattle trafficking. The U.S. first closed its border to Mexican calves in November of that year, further reducing the size of the American herd and pushing up beef prices. Sally DeNotta, a professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Florida, told me that because the flies have already made it to the U.S., they’re unlikely to be fully eliminated for “months to years.” Many hundreds of millions of sterile flies need to be dropped onto these screwworm populations each week to have an effect. The USDA began investing in production and dispersal facilities for sterile flies last year, but right now, the only place in North America capable of producing sterile flies en masse is a Panamanian facility that produces just 100 million a week.

Officials are already pointing fingers. Democrats have been blaming DOGE, which reportedly cut funding for screwworm-monitoring programs in Central America last year (although it’s not clear that the programs would have done much to stop the spread). The Trump administration is blaming the Biden administration. Texas state officials are critiquing the USDA’s response, and the USDA is critiquing state officials. USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins called Texas’s agriculture commissioner, Sid Miller, “unserious” after he suggested that he might not report an outbreak among his own livestock. If ranchers do try to manage infections on their own in an attempt to avoid costly quarantines, they could inadvertently encourage the parasite’s spread.

Despite high cattle prices, the screwworm arrives at a moment of instability for American ranchers. The decision to raise a calf is effectively a bet on its future value; each animal takes about nine months to breed and about two years to raise. Ranchers are going to invest only if they’re relatively sure what the market is going to look like—a tough ask in a policy environment that seems to shift every few months. The cattle industry rejoiced when Donald Trump announced strict tariffs on beef imports last summer (which benefited ranchers by curbing foreign competition), and it balked when he later rolled back a tariff affecting Brazilian beef. The president quadrupled the quota for Argentinian beef imports earlier this year; he was planning to sign an executive order that would have removed even more tariffs on imported beef, but he punted at the last minute. Politico reported that Rollins helped stop the order because she didn’t want to anger ranchers.

Farmers are an important constituency for this White House, and Trump has made plenty of overtures to American cattle ranchers since his return to office. But in trying to lower beef prices amid a broader affordability crisis, his administration has created a rift. The rising price of cattle has in some ways played to ranchers’ advantage, allowing them to negotiate higher prices from the feedlots where these animals are sent to fatten up before slaughter. That’s helped push the price of ground beef up 14 percent since last year. Amid rising steak prices, some barbecue restaurants have struggled to stay open.

With screwworms on the move, the industry’s supply and pricing issues have become only more urgent. Demand has yet to drop off—but most people also can’t tell the difference between an imported rib eye and a domestic one. If the administration’s push to bring back imports does end up curbing grocery-store prices, ranchers’ loss will be consumers’ gain.

Related:

• Cattle ranchers are beefing with Trump.
• Eat more deer, Yasmin Tayag argues.

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Trump, 79, Unravels in Jaw-Dropping ‘Allah’ Rant as His Peace Plan Implodes The president also issued an ominous threat in his unhinged outburst. Donald Trump issued a deranged threat against Iran and signed off by saying, “Praise be to Allah!” during an early morning Truth Social blitz. In a typically unhinged post, the 79-year-old president warned that Tehran will “pay the price” for not agreeing to a peace deal with the U.S. Trump followed up with a second message desperately defending how the U.S. has the upper hand in the war, adding, “Praise be to Allah!” “Iran’s Military is a complete and total mess. Much of it, like their Navy and Air Force, doesn’t even exist anymore-They have been completely defeated. Iran is all talk and no action. The Bully of the Middle East is DEAD!!!” Trump posted at 7:03 a.m. ET on Wednesday. “They’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!!!” For weeks, Trump has claimed that a deal with Iran was on the verge of being agreed upon. These boasts blew up in the president’s face as both countries exchanged fire after Iran’s military shot down a U.S. Army helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, further threatening an already shaky ceasefire arrangement. In a follow-up Truth Social post, Trump insisted the war is going well, but the “Fake News Media refuses to report how EFFECTIVE” the U.S. naval blockade is on Iran. “NOTHING GETS THROUGH unless we want it to. IT IS A STEEL WALL! Iran is doing ZERO business, not paying their military, or any of their bills, and quickly becoming a FAILED NATION,” Trump wrote at 7:32 a.m. “Lots of oil is getting out. Praise be to Allah!” Trump has previously caused confusion by writing “praise be to Allah” in his social media updates on Iran—a country with a near-total Muslim population. This includes an expletive-ridden Easter Sunday message in which the 79-year-old warned Iran to “Open the f---in’ Strait, you crazy b-----ds, or you’ll be living in Hell.” “JUST WATCH!” he added. “Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.” Separately, Trump told Fox News that he is “getting close to ordering new strikes against Iranian power plants and bridges.” He also accused Iran of “tapping the United States along when it comes to the negotiating process.” Trump’s threats arrived after the U.S. retaliated against Iran for shooting down an Apache helicopter on Tuesday by targeting Iranian air-defense systems, ground-control stations, and surveillance radar sites. In response, Iran also carried out missile and drone attacks on U.S. military bases in Jordan, Kuwait, and Bahrain. The tit-for-tat strikes are the latest indication that the deeply unpopular Middle East conflict has no real end in sight, despite Trump’s insistence. Analysis from CNN found that since just before the shaky ceasefire deal between the U.S. and Iran was agreed to on April 7, Trump has claimed on at least 38 occasions that the war with Iran will end any day now and that Tehran is close to agreeing to a peace deal. Trump even claimed that a deal could be made within “two or three days” just before the countries began exchanging fire. “We should be able to do it in one hour, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said. “We’re very close to having a very, very good, strong, powerful deal.” Tehran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei accused the U.S. of standing in the way of peace. “What happened last night demonstrated that Iran’s brave armed forces do not hesitate when it comes to defending the country,” Baghaei said. “Unfortunately, the United States is undermining this process through contradictory messages, frequent shifts in its positions and demands, and repeated violations of the ceasefire.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/seething-trump-fires-off-ominous-threat-after-humiliating-iran-deal-failure/? ps:Pathetic as usual!!

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White House’s Situation Room Meltdown Over Epstein Exposed

Donald Trump’s top advisers needed to convince the president’s supporters he cared—even though he clearly didn’t.

Donald Trump’s panicked aides met without him in the Situation Room during an emergency meeting in which they desperately sought to quell the MAGA civil war that had erupted over the administration’s failure to release the Epstein files, according to an explosive new report. Ten days after the Justice Department and FBI released a memo last July declaring there was no Jeffrey Epstein client list and that the disgraced financier had killed himself in jail, Vice President JD Vance presided over a heated debate about how to appease the president’s outraged supporters, New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan write in their new book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. Vance, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Communications Director Steven Cheung, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and FBI Director Kash Patel all joined either in person or on speakerphone, according to an adaptation of the book’s account published Wednesday in The New York Times.

There, the group hatched a plan to offer an empty gesture of transparency that would calm Trump’s base and convince them the president was sympathetic to their concerns—even though he clearly wasn’t.

Publicly, the administration was projecting confidence, but privately, the Epstein crisis was paralyzing the White House, the Times reported.

The Wall Street Journal was on the verge of publishing its bombshell report on a graphic birthday letter to Epstein allegedly signed by Trump, despite the president trying to bully the publication into killing the story.

The two men were close friends for more than a decade, though Trump has denied knowing anything about the late sex offender’s crimes and maintains he was never involved in any wrongdoing.

Epstein died in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, and members of Trump’s own administration—including Patel—have long pushed conspiracy theories that he was murdered by his powerful associates.

Vance also seemed to believe the conspiracy theories, sources told the Times.

He was alarmed by the wedge that the Epstein scandal had driven in the MAGA coalition, and thought the administration should rip the Band-Aid off and release the DOJ’s millions of investigative files.

He also floated a wild idea to ask Tucker Carlson to interview Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell in prison, where she is serving a 20-year sentence, in the hopes she would say that Trump had not been involved in Epstein’s crimes.

Other people in the room were skeptical of Vance’s maximum transparency idea, though Blanche proposed a variation on the Maxwell interview and suggested that he or another DOJ lawyer could be the one to speak to her.

Blanche also had the bright idea of petitioning the federal courts in Florida and New York to unseal the grand jury testimony in their Epstein-related cases, knowing full well that grand jury materials are generally considered sacrosanct and the request would almost certainly be denied.

In that case, though, the Trump administration could pin the lack of disclosure on the judges and make it seem as though the White House wanted the materials released, even though it knew all along it wouldn’t happen, according to the Times.

While the president’s aides were debating the details of their strategy, they received word that the Wall Street Journal story had been published.

Trump ended up posting two Truth Social posts—one denying the story and one calling for the grand jury transcripts to be released—but it did little to calm the Epstein maelstrom.

Throughout the summer, the Situation Room—a secure bunker in the West Wing typically used to respond to national security emergencies—became inseparable from the Epstein crisis, according to the Times.

Trump wanted the scandal buried and snapped at anyone who mentioned it, so his aides repeatedly convened in the Situation Room without him.

A bipartisan group of members of Congress had begun pushing for the files’ release, and Trump’s team spent hours in the bunker trying to craft a response, the Times reported.

In the meantime, his officials were fighting among themselves about who was to blame. Patel and then-deputy director Dan Bongino—a former podcaster who had also pushed Epstein-related conspiracy theories—blamed Bondi.

The former attorney general had implied in February that there was a client list sitting on her desk, and had organized a high-profile stunt in which MAGA influencers were given binders of “new” Epstein materials that turned out to be mostly recycled material.

Bongino thought it was a mistake to put out the “no client list” memo, and that it wouldn’t really kill the controversy the way other administration members hoped, according to the Times.

The day it was released, he erupted at Bondi during a daily Justice Department meeting with the FBI staff and the attorney general, according to the Times.

“You f---ed this thing up from the start,” Bongino yelled. “The way you’ve been talking about this — that dumb f---ing charade with the Epstein files, the ‘They’re on my desk’ nonsense, all the promises to the folks out there.”

In another July meeting at the Situation Room complex, he unloaded on Wiles, much to the shock of the other people in the room.

“No, no, no, no, no. We didn’t get ourselves into anything. I warned you guys about this the whole time, and you ignored me,” he said. “And exactly what I said was going to happen happened. And now you’re pretending I was in on this. I was never in on this.”

He eventually resigned in December.

A month earlier, Congress defied Trump and passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, forcing the files’ release, though millions of documents have been held back by the DOJ.

Reached for comment by the Times, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson repeated Trump’s claims that he is innocent in all Epstein-related matters.

“By releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena request, signing the Epstein Files Transparency Act and calling for more investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends, President Trump has done more for Epstein’s victims than anyone before him,” she said.

The Daily Beast has also reached out to the White House for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-houses-situation-room-meltdown-over-epstein-files-exposed/?

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D Vance Makes Embarrassing Confession About Trump’s Failed War Boast

The vice president contradicts Trump’s oft-cited insistence about when the Iran conflict might end.

JD Vance suggested that the war in Iran might not end for “months,” even though Donald Trump frequently suggests it will be over any day now.

In an interview airing this week on CBS Sunday Morning, the vice president claimed that the U.S. is “very close” to reaching a deal with Tehran, then covered his back by offering a broad timeline for such an agreement.

“Right now, I feel that we are in a position to get a deal that is good for the United States economically, and that really does deal with the Iranian nuclear program—not just now, not just while Donald Trump is president—but for the long term, to where my kids can say when they’re adults, Iran is not going to have a nuclear weapon,” Vance said.

“I think we’re very close to achieving that goal, but we still got some wood to chop, and we’re going to keep doing it.”

When asked by CBS’ Robert Costa if a deal with Iran to end the deeply unpopular Middle East conflict would be reached before the midterm elections, a defiant Vance said: “Oh, absolutely.”

“I think we’re going to know a lot before the midterm elections. Look, I think that the deal could happen in the next week, but the deal could also happen months from now,” Vance added.

Vance’s suggestion that a deal with Iran could happen at any point before November’s crucial midterm elections contradicts claims made by Trump for several weeks.

Not only has Trump for three months said that the war with Iran will end imminently, but the president has also claimed dozens of times over the past two months that Tehran is close to reaching a peace deal with the U.S.

Analysis from CNN found that since just before the shaky ceasefire deal between the U.S. and Iran was agreed to on April 7, Trump has claimed on at least 38 occasions that the two countries were close to a deal.

“I think it’s close to over, yeah. I view it as very close to being over,” Trump told Fox Business on April 14.

Even before the ceasefire was put in place, Trump insisted that Iran was close to agreeing to a deal that both sides would be happy with.

“We have points, major points of agreement, I would say, almost all points of agreement,” Trump told reporters in Florida on March 23.

Trump’s claim became even more ridiculous as both countries exchanged fire after Iran’s military shot down a U.S. Army helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday.

Elsewhere during his CBS Sunday Morning interview, Vance was asked if Iran was “stringing President Trump along,” knowing that the unpopular war and the high gas prices it has caused will be politically damaging for him and the GOP in the midterms.

“No, I don’t think so. Again, I think their system takes a long time to reach consensus,” Vance said.

“I always hear people ask me, ‘Do you trust the Iranians?’ And what the president has said is, ‘I don’t trust anybody,’” he added. “What I do trust is my own ability to negotiate. I trust our administration’s ability to negotiate, and I trust the enforcement provisions that we’re going to get in place.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jd-vance-makes-embarrassing-confession-about-trumps-failed-war-boast/?

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Trump Family Scores Massive Payday as Company Falls Apart

The Trumps made a killing from a partnership with a fintech company—but investors weren’t as lucky.

Investors have seen steep losses since putting their money on a fintech firm that partnered with a Trump family-backed crypto venture—but the president’s family got the better end of the deal, according to a new report.

ALT5 Sigma, now known as AI Financial Corp., teamed up with the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial last August in a deal that the president’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, celebrated with cheery photos at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York.

But not everyone was as lucky.

Just a day before announcing its WLF partnership in August, ALT5 stock closed at $8.97. Since then, however, the company’s stock has fallen to 66 cents per share—a loss of more than 90 percent. Now, according to CNBC, AI Financial Corp faces delisting from Nasdaq in the next two weeks if it cannot raise its price. Nasdaq declined to comment to the publication.

Last April, Democracy Defenders Fund wrote a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission demanding that it “commence an independent investigation” into ALT5 “without delay,” but it never received a response.

“The question now is: What happened to all that money?” Virginia Canter, the group’s chief anti-corruption counsel, told CNBC.

The Trump Organization, led by Don Jr. and Eric, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In an emailed response to CNBC, Trump spokeswoman Kimberly Benza said, “Neither Eric nor Don have any involvement in ALT5, nor have any visibility to the company. Neither have ever been on the board, know anything about the leadership team, or have ever been involved in their operations.”

The report notes, “There is no evidence that anyone involved in ALT5 Sigma’s August stock sale, which ultimately benefited the Trump family, tried to exploit that relationship for their own benefit.”

Eric has forcefully distanced himself from ALT5.

“I have zero leadership or decision-making in the company,” he said in

The White House, meanwhile, has bucked criticism of the 79-year-old president.

“President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public—which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said. “President Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children. There are no conflicts of interest.”

AI Financial Corp., meanwhile, told CNBC, “We have no interest in participating in stories built on unfounded accusations and speculation. AiFi’s management team is laser-focused on building its business, serving its customers, and creating long-term value for shareholders.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-family-scores-massive-payday-as-company-falls-apart/?

ps:How Pathetic!!!!! The greed is just incredible!!!!!

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Trump Hit by Humiliating Poll as Trust in the U.S. Plummets

Most Europeans no longer believe the U.S. would come to their defense if attacked.

European trust in the United States has fallen to historic lows in a fresh embarrassment to President Donald Trump.

A major new survey found that only 1 in 10 people across 15 countries now considers America an ally, a collapse that researchers are linking directly to Trump’s foreign policy.

The poll, published by the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank ahead of upcoming G7 and NATO summits in France and Turkey, found majorities in every country surveyed no longer believe the U.S. would come to their aid if attacked.

Just 11 percent of respondents now view the U.S. as an ally, down from 16 percent six months ago and 22 percent in November 2024. Thirteen percent of Europeans now consider the U.S. a rival, and 12 percent a direct adversary.

The researchers attributed the freefall to Trump’s military aggression in the Middle East, his threats against Greenland, his vows to pull troops from European bases, and his open skepticism about the future of NATO.

“Across the continent, there’s clear support for reducing dependence on Washington,” said Jana Kobzová, a senior policy fellow at the think tank and co-author of the report. “Europeans are increasingly open to higher defence spending and, crucially, show a striking degree of confidence that neighbouring countries would come to their aid in a crisis.”

Co-author Paweł Zerka said the public mood had “created a window for Europe’s leaders to go further and faster” on security, with clear demand for self-reliance and a desire to hedge against U.S. defense guarantees.The survey, conducted in May across Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, found Europeans on average 4 percent more likely to support higher national defense spending than a year ago. Italy was the only country where a clear majority still opposed it.Support for collective European Union borrowing to fund defense came in at 47 percent, versus 35 percent opposed, with the strongest backing in Portugal, Denmark, and the Netherlands. In nearly every country polled, most respondents said their nation should reduce its strategic dependence on U.S. military hardware—a “buy European” sentiment strongest in Denmark, at 75 percent, followed by the Netherlands at 72 percent and Sweden at 70 percent.

Despite the anti-American mood, there was little appetite—just 29 percent support—for scrapping NATO in favor of an EU-only defense body. And in a sign that Europeans are still willing to separate Trump from America itself, majorities in most countries, including 60 percent or more in France, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden, said U.S.-European relations would “probably get better” once Trump leaves office.

There were limits to European unity on other fronts. Support for Ukraine joining the EU remained deeply divided, with opposition outpacing support even in Estonia—one of Kyiv’s most vocal backers. And while energy costs have risen sharply, 44 percent of Europeans said resuming oil and gas imports from Russia would still be a bad idea.

The White House has been contacted for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/poll-finds-european-trust-in-us-has-fallen-sharply-under-trump/?

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Trump signs bill giving nearly $70B to his immigration enforcement agenda through end of his term

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump signed a bill into law on Wednesday that gives his immigration and deportation agenda a nearly $70 billion boost for the rest of his time in the White House.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-immigration-enforcement-dhs-ice-deportation-9eef2e24fede3e4d593be462cbcf31f2?

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🌶️ Haberman-Swan book reveals Trump team's leak fears

Cover: Simon & Schuster. Photo: NurPhoto via Getty Images President Trump's top aides so feared leaks about their handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files that they held multiple damage-control meetings in the classified confines of the Situation Room, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan write in "Regime Change," their hotly awaited book about Trump's second term. In a New York Times Magazine excerpt, posted today ahead of the book's publication on June 23, the two Times reporters describe in cinematic detail how top Trump officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, gathered in the Situation Room last summer to debate how to manage the growing scandal. The White House is now abuzz over the leak about leak control. Vance had "floated to colleagues an extraordinary P.R. gambit — that the White House enlist Tucker Carlson to interview Epstein's longtime girlfriend and co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, in prison. It might help the president if Maxwell was willing to state that Trump had not been part of any wrongdoing with Epstein," Swan and Haberman report in the excerpt, "Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein Files." "Vance told the group he believed all the files should be released as soon as possible," the authors write. But Trump, they add, wanted "the whole Epstein issue buried, and he was snapping at anyone who mentioned it. His staff largely avoided the subject in their conversations with him, forced to worry among themselves." 👀 The intrigue: Joe Scarborough said on MS NOW's "Morning Joe," just after the excerpt was posted, that "Regime Change" will be "one of the most important books on the Trump presidency." Less than an hour later, Trump, known to watch "Morning Joe," posted on Truth Social: "Joe Scarborough's ever shrinking, low rated show, one of the most inaccurate detailers of truthful facts on television, is being crushed in the ratings." Scarborough promptly read the post on the air. Swan and Haberman write that "relationships at the top of the Justice Department were by now beyond dysfunctional." Dan Bongino, a top MAGA podcaster who was then Trump's deputy FBI director, seethed about the Epstein snafus: "This is going to be President Trump's Iran-contra." "The Epstein crisis," the authors write, "had exposed something that some of Trump's closest advisers spent months refusing to see. The president could break institutions, redirect the federal government against his enemies and bring the world's richest men into the Oval Office bearing tribute. But he could not, it turned out, make Jeffrey Epstein disappear." In the days before publication of a Wall Street Journal scoop about Trump and Epstein, Trump, in an "effort to quash the story, had called News Corp.'s chief executive, Robert Thomson; News Corp.'s owner, Rupert Murdoch; and The Journal's editor in chief, Emma Tucker. Practically shouting, the president told Tucker, who is British, that she must 'hate America.'" Emma Tucker tells Mike: "For the record, I LOVE America!" White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement to Axios: "Just as President Trump has said, he's been totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein. And by releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee's subpoena request, signing the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and calling for more investigations into Epstein's Democrat friends, President Trump has done more for Epstein's victims than anyone before him." Read the excerpt (gift link) ...

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Trump Humiliated as Inflation Rockets to New High

The rise represents the fastest annual pace of inflation since April 2023.

President Donald Trump has suffered a fresh economic blow after new data showed inflation surged to its highest level in more than three years.

As the shock to global energy supplies from the Iran war continued to push prices higher, new figures show that the Consumer Price Index rose 4.2 percent in May compared to a year earlier.

The figure is the third consecutive monthly acceleration and represents the fastest annual pace of inflation since April 2023.

With only months until the midterm elections, the data is damning for the GOP, given Trump returned to office promising to quickly bring down costs for American consumers.

Instead, households are facing renewed pressure from higher prices, while businesses continue to grapple with uncertainty stemming from geopolitical tensions.

Those tensions are unlikely to ease in the short term, after the president issued a new threat on Wednesday to escalate the war with Iran.

“Iran’s Military is a complete and total mess. Much of it, like their Navy and Air Force, doesn’t even exist anymore-They have been completely defeated. Iran is all talk and no action. The Bully of the Middle East is DEAD!!!” Trump posted at 7:03 a.m. ET on Wednesday.

“They’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!!!”

The latest figures are also likely to complicate the Federal Reserve’s plans for interest rates, despite Trump’s handpicked chairman Kevin Warsh now leading the central bank.

Federal officials have repeatedly signaled that they need greater confidence inflation is moving sustainably toward their 2 percent target before cutting rates.

But Wednesday’s data makes that outcome increasingly unlikely in the near term.

The Labor Department’s inflation data showed prices climbed 0.5 percent during May alone, a sharp increase that economists largely attributed to rising energy costs tied to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

Inflation had been running at 2.4 percent annually before Trump’s intervention in February, but months of instability and fears over global oil supplies have pushed prices steadily higher.

Higher energy prices again accounted for much of the monthly gain, thanks largely to the standoff in the Strait of Hormuz, which accounts for about 20 per cent of the world’s oil.

Core inflation, which excludes food and energy, was 2.9 per cent -- the highest since September.

Despite this, Trump continues to talk up his economic credentials and has vowed that gas prices will plummet once the war is over.

“We’re the strongest, we’re the hottest, and we’re the most respected country anywhere in the world,” he told struggling farmers in Wisconsin on Friday before immediately veering into a wild rant about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC.

He also once again claimed cost-of-living pressures were part of a hoax made up by Democrats.

“I inherited all these high prices. They came in and they said, ‘affordability’. They made up the word, because that’s the only thing they’re good at,” Trump said.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-humiliated-as-inflation-rockets-to-new-high/?

ps:Pathetic

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A Common Goal (Illustration by Alisa Gao / The Atlantic. Source: Andrew Mordzynski / Icon Sportswire / Getty.)

View in browser Eight years ago, when FIFA selected the United States, Mexico, and Canada to host the 2026 World Cup, the organization imagined a sprawling tournament that would reflect a strong partnership and solidarity among the countries. Three nations would co-host the matches for the first time in the tournament’s history, and millions of fans would travel across borders to watch. That vision of unity has not aged well. The games are set to start tomorrow, but immigration restrictions, trade disputes, security concerns, and a new wave of U.S. nationalism under President Trump have resulted in an unusual geopolitical experiment: a World Cup that will test how divided North America has become. “Few things can connect societies like a joint World Cup bid,” Arturo Sarukhán, a former ambassador of Mexico to the U.S., told me. He had advocated for this joint tournament bid, and had understood it as a chance to show the “optimism” and “shared prosperity” of the continent. The tri-host tournament was proposed in 2017, in a document titled the “United Bid”—a name that seems quaint today. Jules Boykoff, a political scientist at Pacific University, in Oregon, and the author of a book about the 2026 World Cup, told me that in private conversations around the time of the bid, there was a sense that Trump wouldn’t be around by the time the World Cup commenced. When that assumption didn’t pan out, the tournament faced a litany of new challenges. Since taking office again, Trump has disregarded long-standing continental alliances. The three countries, in some ways, were once closely tied: The now-defunct North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) knit their economies together for a quarter-century. They share borders, and the U.S. is home to the world’s largest Mexican expatriate community. “Even if some politicians would like to press ‘Control-Alt-Delete,’ you can’t erase one country next to the other,” Sarukhán said. Trump has repeatedly suggested that Canada should become the 51st state, posting on Truth Social a doctored map that showed our northern neighbor absorbed into the United States. He threatened Mexico with military strikes in January and declared a national emergency at America’s southern border last year to stop immigration. His mass tariff campaign also poses a danger to Canada’s and Mexico’s economies—all of which makes the timing of the World Cup even more uncomfortable. In the middle of the tournament, on July 1, the three countries are set to renegotiate the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement—the free-trade pact that replaced NAFTA in 2020 and that forms the legal scaffolding of the North American economy. In December, Trump threatened to abandon USMCA entirely. If it collapses or is gutted, the supply chains, investment flows, and labor arrangements that connect the three signatories could unravel, right as the countries are supposed to be working together to pull off the games. Co-hosting the World Cup has happened once before: In 2002, despite some minor diplomatic disagreements, South Korea and Japan successfully co-hosted the games, and FIFA has doubled down on the model since (the 2030 World Cup will span Spain, Portugal, and Morocco). Still, this year is “the most politically combustible World Cup we’ve seen,” Boykoff said. Since returning to power, Trump has ramped up immigration enforcement in ways that have already affected the tournament. Iraq’s star striker was held for seven hours by U.S. immigration officials on arrival; the team’s photographer was denied entry outright, as was a FIFA referee from Somalia. South Africa’s national team was forced to delay its trip over what the country’s sports minister called “embarrassing and grossly unfair” visa issues. At least 15 Iranian-team officials and staff were denied visas, according to the Iranian media, and the squad is training in Tijuana because players will be able to enter the U.S. only one day before each of their matches. The pattern is hard to miss: Many of these countries are ones that Trump has openly disparaged or gone to war with. No World Cup has ever been entirely isolated from politics, but this one has become unusually entangled with a single figure. Trump has embraced the tournament as a showcase of American strength, and FIFA has been eager to oblige. The organization’s president, Gianni Infantino, has cultivated a close relationship with Trump. In a surreal demonstration of flattery, FIFA awarded Trump its newly created peace prize in December, months after he threw a public tantrum over not winning the Nobel Peace Prize. That an international tournament would become, in his hands, primarily a vehicle for U.S. triumphalism is not surprising. Amid widespread deportation fears, the fans stand to lose the most. Even though the Department of Homeland Security insists that there will not be any large-scale ICE raids at World Cup matches, immigrants (or anybody worried about being racially profiled) have little reason to take the Trump administration at its word. The administration has not ruled out arresting people near stadiums, and any fear over ICE encounters may serve as a deterrent. There are also the logistical complexities that come with a tournament of this size. As my colleague Nick Miroff reported, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin compared the World Cup’s security operation to what it would take to protect “78 Super Bowls.” TSA officers are being deployed to stadium entrances and will be diverted from airports expected to be flooded with arriving fans. Prices for tickets, hotels, and transportation have drawn criticism over alleged price gouging. Even Trump reportedly said that if he had to pay those ticket costs, he wouldn’t go either. “No one seems all that excited,” my colleague Jonathan Lemire wrote. But that could change—there are plenty of reasons fans’ enthusiasm could spike once the tournament starts. More nations are competing than ever before, including 10 African countries—the biggest showing for that continent yet. This is also almost certainly the last World Cup for some of the greatest players that soccer has ever seen. There is a version of the tournament that works: The games happen, the teams play, and the politics fade into the background. Sporting events have a way of asserting their own temporary reality. But the fact remains that this World Cup started as an alliance between three countries, and is now a reminder of how fractured that bond has become. ps:So pathetic as usual!!!!! Related: The World Cup of ugh The absurd World Cup

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How Pulte tried to fire Gabbard

Via Truth Social

Tulsi Gabbard, the outgoing director of national intelligence, got an unexpected call Tuesday from her controversial successor, Bill Pulte. "Today is your last day," he said. Gabbard was surprised. She had announced she was leaving at month's end, not Tuesday. "I need to hear it from the president or the White House," Gabbard told Pulte, two officials briefed on the discussion told Axios. Why it matters: The call, unreported until now, was the latest flashpoint in the intelligence wars that erupted last week in D.C. after President Trump picked Pulte as Gabbard's temporary replacement. 📱 After the conversation with Pulte, Gabbard reached Trump, who didn't request her immediate resignation. "What day works best for you?" the president asked, according to one of the sources. Gabbard said June 19, and Trump then posted on Truth Social her new exit date. Keep reading. ps:What a pathetic bunch of people in this administration!!!!!

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🎁 Trump gifts Dems ready-made ads

President Trump has been on a roll of rhetorical missteps that could come back to bite Republicans in the midterms, Axios' Mike Zapler writes.

• Why it matters: Trump has served a platter of ready-made campaign ads to Democrats.

Trump delivered three eye-popping quotes in the past month:

1. "I don't think about Americans' financial situation," he said on May 12.
2. Two weeks later, on May 27, Trump said, "I don't care about the midterms."
3. And when Trump was asked yesterday about the latest inflation numbers showing a 4.2% rise in prices, he responded, "I love the inflation."

More on the quotes.ps:Obviously he's not concerned about his missteps or anything else, because of all the gerryrmandering that he's hoping will bail him out!!!!!

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Trump has a new, surprising take on the higher cost of living: ‘I love the inflation’ When asked about the new report that the consumer price index in May had jumped 4.2% over the last year, the president took a surprisingly optimistic tack with the challenging news. Read more.

Why this matters: His optimistic take was unexpected given that voters ahead of the November midterm elections have ranked the economy as a top concern — and have given President Donald Trump low marks on that issue. Within minutes of his on-camera comment, Democrats quickly rushed to promote it on social media.   Trump had pledged in his 2024 campaign to quickly vanquish inflation, but his argument now is that higher prices are solely a function of the Iran war raising energy costs. On Wednesday, he claimed that relief is already on its way because of a secret military operation that had ferried what he said was 100 million barrels of oil through the Strait of Hormuz.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ WATCH: Trump says ‘I love the inflation’   US households, businesses stung by higher energy prices that have pushed inflation above 4%    FACT FOCUS: Is inflation a red state vs. blue state issue? It’s increasing no matter how you cut it    US launches a second day of strikes on Iran and Iran fires back at the Gulf states and Jordan   Judge rejects watchdog’s bid to block Trump administration’s $1.8B ‘anti-weaponization’ fund    Trump signs bill giving nearly $70B to his immigration enforcement agenda through end of his term   Trump sticks with Pulte for intel job as risk grows of lapse in spy powers   Solar power hits new milestones in the US even as Trump boosts coal over clean energy    FBI seizes 13 websites that officials say were used by China to target and recruit US workers   Florida court allows use of new US House districts drawn by Republicans for midterm elections    Nevada GOP voters choose Trump-backed US House candidate in one of state’s high-profile races   Trump accuses Democrats of hypocrisy on Platner, despite questions about his own conduct   Nancy Mace’s unpredictable career is up in the air after finishing last in South Carolina primary   Administration plans intensive, year-round construction schedule for Trump’s triumphal arch   $60M and 7 federal agencies required to stage Trump’s UFC fight at White House

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Trump, 79, Sets Alarming Medical Record as Health Concerns Mount

A top doctor called the revelation “extraordinary.”

Records-obsessed Donald Trump has a new one to add to the list, but it’s not so flattering.

The president, who turns 80 on Sunday, spent three hours at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, on May 26. He emerged after being pricked and prodded by some 22 specialists, an apparent record.

A Washington Post analysis of public statements by the president’s personal medical team found that was nearly double the number of physicians involved in his last physical. Last year’s check-up saw him examined by a comparatively meager 14 doctors.

The figure of 22 is also the highest number of specialists present at a single examination of a president, the Post reported. Another record for Trump.

“It is an extraordinary number,” said Jonathan Reiner, who served as cardiologist for Dick Cheney, the late vice president, and keeps a watchful eye on Trump’s health on CNN. “What specialties do they represent? Why so many?”

The White House replied to the Post’s findings by declaring, “The involvement of multiple specialists reflects a comprehensive, multidisciplinary evaluation consistent with best practices for executive-level medical care.”

“We have nothing to hide,” a White House official added. But it was Reiner who sounded the alarm before the check-up at Walter Reed, Trump’s fourth medical evaluation of his second term.

“This White House just doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge any physical ailment, but older people develop medical issues, and the president is almost 80 years old,” he told The Washington Post the day before the visit. “There just seems to be a lack of candor from the White House.”

Indeed, after the check-up, Trump crowed that he was in “perfect” health. “Just finished my 6 month physical at Walter Reed Military Medical Center,” Trump wrote on Truth Social that afternoon. “Everything checked out PERFECTLY. Thank you to the great Doctors and Staff! Heading back to the White House.”

His personal physician, U.S. Navy Captain Sean Barbabella, said Trump “remains in excellent health, demonstrating strong cardiac, pulmonary, neurological, and overall physical function.”

Notably, Trump called the trip his “6 month physical,” while Barbarella described it on official documents as his “annual physical examination.”

The optics don’t match the brags. Trump has a seemingly permanent bruise on the back of his right hand. The White House blamed it on excessive hand-shaking, then one emerged on his other hand. He has a litany of other issues, too.

He often displays a wonky walk, skin issues, leg-dragging, cankles, a propensity for anger, and impromptu naps, and his freewheeling, often seemingly nonsensical rants don’t paint a picture of the “perfect” health that he and the White House claim.

An April poll conducted by Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos found that fewer than half of U.S. adults believe Trump has the mental sharpness or physical health to serve effectively as president.

“I think concern for the president’s physical health is probably at an all-time high, and I think advanced physical age is the No. 1 concern,” said Dr. Jeffrey Kuhlman, who served as a White House physician for more than a decade under Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

The White House insisted to the Daily Beast that the aging president remains in “excellent health.”

“President Trump’s sharpness, unmatched energy, and historic accessibility stand in stark contrast to what we saw during the last administration when Democrats and the legacy media intentionally covered up Joe Biden’s serious mental and physical decline from the American people,” spokesman Davis Ingle said.

“President Trump is the sharpest and most accessible president in American history who is working nonstop to solve problems and deliver on his promises, and he remains in excellent health.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-79-sets-alarming-medical-record-as-health-concerns-mount/?

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Trump Hit With Blistering Filing in Epstein Lawsuit

The Wall Street Journal has responded to the president’s latest attempt to sue the publication over his Epstein birthday letter.

The Wall Street Journal asked a judge to dismiss Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the paper “once and for all” in a blistering court filing accusing the president of attempting to “subvert” the First Amendment with his Epstein-related suit. The Journal published a bombshell report in July 2025 alleging that Trump had sent a graphic 50th birthday letter to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that was included in a book compiled by Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003. Trump denied writing the letter and sued the Journal and its Rupert Murdoch-controlled parent company for $10 billion for defamation, only to have the case thrown out in April for coming “nowhere close” to pleading actual malice, the standard required for a public figure to bring a successful suit.

The court, however, left the door open for Trump to file an amended complaint, which the Journal has now responded to in a scathing motion to dismiss.

The filing argues that the new complaint “does not remedy any of the defects identified in the Court’s dismissal order” and in fact “compounds them” by recycling allegations already rejected by the court.

“This Court held once that Plaintiff failed to state a defamation claim against Defendants. The [amended complaint] only bolsters the conclusion that he can never do so,” it adds.

To show actual malice, Trump’s must prove the Journal knowingly published a false statement that harmed his reputation, or published the statement with a reckless disregard for the truth.

The article never said that Trump personally crafted the letter to Epstein—just that a bawdy letter “bearing Trump’s name” appeared in the birthday book, a fact that was confirmed when Congress released a letter from the Epstein estate that was identical to the one published by the Journal, the filing argues.

The letter shows an imagined conversation between Trump and Epstein framed by a doodle of a nude woman or girl, with Trump’s infamous Sharpie signature appearing where the pubic hair would be.

The filing also notes that the article reported on Trump’s “well-documented relationship with Epstein” and the fact that the two men were socializing around the time the book was compiled, as evidenced by Trump’s own 2002 interview with New York magazine in which he said he’d known Epstein for 15 years and considered him a “terrific guy.”

And the amended complaint “re-packages” allegations previously rejected by the court that the Journal did not investigate the story before publishing, and that its article included “glaring omissions”—even though most of the information that was supposedly omitted does in fact appear in the piece, along with evidence of the journalists’ investigative efforts, the filing argues.

The filing stresses that the article included the president’s insistence that he later had a falling-out with Epstein and banned him from his Mar-a-Lago club prior to the disgraced financier’s 2008 guilty plea for soliciting prostitution from minors.

Epstein died in 2019 in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, with law enforcement ruling the death a suicide.

Trump’s complaints argued that the Journal had failed to reach out to Maxwell, the only living person besides Trump who could verify the article’s details, or had interviewed her and “intentionally failed” to report on her comments.

In fact, the article explicitly states that Maxwell—who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role in Epstein’s crimes—didn’t respond to a letter requesting an interview. Her attorney provided a published statement saying she was focused on her appeal.

After the article appeared, Maxwell told then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche that she did not remember Trump submitting a letter for Epstein’s 50th birthday book.

The amended complaint claimed those comments should have been included in the article—even though they were made a week after its publication.

The amended complaint also claims the Journal failed to include “any denial from President Trump as to whether he signed the letter,” despite the article dedicating three paragraphs to Trump’s insistence that the letter was a “fake thing” and that, “This is not me.”

Despite having “every opportunity” to plead a defamation case against the Journal, the case “remains groundless,” the filing argued.

It asked for the suit to be dismissed without prejudice, meaning it can’t be amended, and to be awarded attorneys’ fees and costs under Florida’s anti-SLAPP laws protecting against frivolous lawsuits aimed at suppressing constitutional free speech on a public issue.

A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team told the Daily Beast in a statement: “President Trump has filed a powerhouse lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and all of the other Defendants. The President will continue to hold those who mislead the American People with Fake News and smears accountable for their actions.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-hit-with-blistering-filing-in-wall-street-journal-epstein-birthday-card-lawsuit/?

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Trump’s ‘Secret Mission’ Story Gets Humiliating Reality Check

The president claimed a covert nighttime operation was keeping oil flowing past Iran—but it was already public knowledge.

Donald Trump’s dramatic Oval Office boast about a covert nighttime operation sneaking oil out from under Iran’s nose turned out to be anything but secret.

The president made the claim Wednesday morning, telling reporters he had been quietly steering oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz—and that Iran was only finding out about it at that very moment.

“I can say it now. Something you didn’t know,” Trump, 79, boasted. “Do you know we’ve been taking out millions of barrels of oil? Nobody knows it. You know who doesn’t know about it? Iran — until right now.”

That may well have been the case, but only if the Iranians don’t read The New York Times, which had reported on the exact same operation nearly 11 days earlier, on May 31.

According to a senior U.S. military official, who spoke to the Times on condition of anonymity, Trump was describing an American effort to guide commercial vessels through the narrow waterway. While the ships have been switching off their transponders to avoid detection, the operation was far from secret—U.S. Central Command had already shepherded around 70 commercial ships through the strait before the Times first reported it. That number has since climbed to more than 200.

Trump also described the maneuver in overly dramatic terms. “We took out, the other night, 22 ships, late at night, with no lights, because they don’t have any radar, because we blasted the crap out of it,” he said. Later that day, on social media, he claimed the operation had put more than 100 million barrels of oil onto the open market—a figure that could not be independently verified.

U.S. officials have declined to specify what types of vessels made the crossings or the exact routes taken, though one official indicated at least some traffic avoided the Iranian coastline. Shipping analysts say the guided crossings appear to follow routes closer to Oman. Before the war, around 3,000 ships passed through the Strait of Hormuz each month.

The episode comes as the conflict with Iran spirals. As the Daily Beast reported Wednesday, Trump issued an ominous threat against Tehran on Truth Social the same day—warning Iran would “pay the price” for failing to agree to a peace deal—after both countries exchanged fire following Iran’s shooting down of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter near the strait on Monday.

Trump also told Fox News reporter Trey Yingst he is “getting close to ordering new strikes against Iranian power plants and bridges.” CNN analysis found Trump has claimed on at least 38 occasions since the April 7 ceasefire that the war would end any day now.

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-iran-war-secret-mission-story-gets-humiliating-reality-check/?

ps:Pathetic!!!!!

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Judge Gives Stark Warning to Trump’s DOJ Over His Slush Fund

The judge responded to concerns that the DOJ could say one thing and then do another.

A judge issued a stern warning to Donald Trump’s Department of Justice not to go back on its word that the president’s Jan. 6 slush fund was dead on arrival. The DOJ last month announced the creation of a $1.776 billion fund that would make secret payments to Capitol rioters and other Trump allies who say they were wrongly prosecuted by the Biden administration, without any legal or congressional oversight.The fund was created as part of a dubious “settlement agreement” arising from a $10 billion lawsuit Trump brought against the Internal Revenue Service over tax returns leaked to the press by an independent contractor.

But Trump and his DOJ said they were abandoning the scheme after the fund was temporarily blocked by the courts—and after congressional Republicans staged a mutiny, refusing to pass Trump’s other priorities until the fund was axed.

During a hearing in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, a federal judge warned the DOJ not to try to revive the moribund fund, The Washington Post reported.

“Don’t play possum with this court,” Judge Richard Leon said.

The DOJ’s so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund” was the subject of at least five federal lawsuits, including one brought by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

On Wednesday, Leon denied CREW’s request for a temporary restraining order against the fund, saying the case appeared moot because acting attorney general Todd Blanche had testified before Congress last week that the fund had been abandoned, which DOJ officials have since repeated in court filings, according to the Post.

CREW’s attorneys, however, argued that the DOJ still hadn’t rescinded Blanche’s May 18 memo establishing the fund, and Trump himself had refused to back Blanche’s congressional testimony that the fund had been scrapped.

The plaintiffs in a separate case in Virginia made a similar argument on Wednesday, urging the court not to take the DOJ at its word because the department’s position could be temporary or unreliable.

Leon said he would rule at a later date on CREW’s request for a preliminary injunction against the fund.

In the meantime, he pointed out that while Trump can make statements about the fund for political benefit, DOJ lawyers could face sanctions for making misrepresentations in court filings.

The DOJ’s lawyers assured the court, “Our briefs are assurances in writing. And those submissions are in court documents,” the Post reported.

Separately, the judge in the Virginia case, Leonie Brinkema, ordered the government not to proceed with the fund until at least Friday, when she’s scheduled to hold a hearing.

Judge Kathleen Williams, the judge overseeing the original IRS suit, also reopened the suit and ordered an investigation into whether the fund was “premised on deception.”

Williams had questioned whether there was a valid dispute between Trump and the IRS, given that the president oversees the Treasury Department, and asked the parties to submit briefs on whether a real case or controversy existed.

Rather than answer the court’s questions, Trump dropped the suit and—without informing the court of a settlement—struck a deal with his own DOJ.

The move came after Trump himself said at a rally in December that he was in a “strange position” suing his own IRS, NPR reported.

“I’ve gotta make a deal. I negotiate with myself,” he said.

The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/judge-gives-stark-warning-to-trumps-doj-over-his-anti-weaponization-slush-fund/?