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

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ICE arrests jumped to nearly 50,000 in July, the highest monthly total of Trump’s second term

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested nearly 50,000 people in July, the highest single monthly arrest total during the second Trump administration, according to new figures.

https://apnews.com/article/border-immigration-customs-enforcement-data-statistics-f07f56a34bda225e5afa356781ac1740?

• 🇨🇦 President Trump threatened to rename Lake Ontario to "Lake America" amid Washington's ongoing fallout with Canada, similar to the administration's efforts to rebrand the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America." The lake's name comes from an Indigenous word for "great lake." Go deeper.

ps:Mr pathetic at it again!!!!!

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Embarrassing Secret About Trump’s Kennedy Center Rebrand Exposed

The president’s allies insist that adding Trump’s name to the venue was a necessary step to avoid financial ruin.

The decline in ticket sales at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was made even worse after Donald Trump’s name was added to the venue, according to a report.

The president’s controversial MAGA takeover of the center in Washington, D.C., last year drove audiences away, and performers pulled out of scheduled shows.

However, analysis from The Washington Post found that the dire situation at the Kennedy Center was exacerbated after Trump’s name was added to the building in December 2025. The rapid decline in ticket sales and fleeing donors means that the center is on course to generate around $100 million less in total revenue than it had anticipated.

This is despite those connected to the MAGA rebrand of the Kennedy Center insisting that renaming it would be crucial to stave off financial ruin, even as they knew the true extent of the declining numbers.

In June, after a judge ordered Trump’s name to be removed from the venue, a Justice Department lawyer tried to argue that renaming the center after the president was necessary because it “represented a saving of The Kennedy Center which, if this doesn’t happen, would go into financial and structural collapse.”

One official familiar with the center’s finances said that while it took a “huge hit” in the months after the president installed himself as chairman, it was an “absolute fiscal cliff” when Trump’s name was added to the building.

“Donors disappeared, ticket sales disappeared, artists disappeared—like it was doomsday,” they told the Post.

In total, officials at the center estimate that the venue’s budget target will fall short by 70 percent and contributed revenue will decline by 25 percent, leaving it with a $23 million deficit.

Trump installed himself as chair of the Kennedy Center last February after branding the arts venue too “woke.” Trump brought in MAGA loyalist Richard Grenell to lead the institution, despite his lack of experience in arts or culture, and disbanded the board, replacing members with MAGA figures such as White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and former Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Ticket sales at the Kennedy Center soon plummeted, and the venue reportedly gave away more complimentary tickets in a desperate bid to fill seats.

The board voted to add Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center in December 2025, but a federal judge ordered its removal after ruling that only Congress can change the venue’s name.

Despite the financial disaster surrounding the MAGA takeover, the center’s board of trustees voted earlier this month to again add Trump’s name to the building, as well as close it for two years of renovations.

The lengthy closure of the venue amid a period of declining revenue and reliance on ticket sales puts the entire future of the arts venue at risk.

Democratic Ohio Rep. Joyce Beatty, a Kennedy Center trustee not appointed by Trump, is challenging the attempt to return the president’s name to the building through the courts.

In a lawsuit, Beatty’s lawyers argued that closing the center for two years is an attempt to hide the “embarrassing fact” that renaming it after Trump has been a financial catastrophe.

“Such a self-interested gambit, sacrificing the Kennedy Center to save face, represents a quintessential breach of fiduciary duty,” they wrote.

A White House spokesperson told the Post: “President Trump did what Democrats wouldn’t by finally committing the resources and the leadership needed to restore the Kennedy Center and make it the finest performing arts facility in the world.”

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and the Kennedy Center for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/embarrassing-secret-about-trumps-kennedy-center-rebrand-exposed/?

ps:How pathetic??

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Trump Humiliated by Brutal Snub From His Own Candidate

A GOP hopeful scrubbed Trump’s name as he headed into the general election in a tough year for Republicans.

A Republican candidate running in a competitive House race scrubbed Donald Trump’s name and image from his campaign website as he geared up for the general election.

Former state GOP senator Dr. Ralph Alvarado is running to represent Kentucky’s 6th congressional district in Congress. During the primary season, he touted his MAGA bona fides to the Republican base, but he appears to be shifting in the final stretch before November.

It comes as Trump remains deeply underwater across the country and a series of polls indicate voters prefer Democrats over Republicans ahead of this fall’s midterms.

The top of Alvarado’s website currently promotes him as “INDEPENDENT LEADERSHIP for Kentucky,” and reads, “Healthcare isn’t a talking point to me—it’s been my life’s work. In Congress, I’ll work with both parties to fight for affordable healthcare, lower costs, and practical solutions that help Kentucky families.”

But a review of his website from just before the primary shows he made a dramatic change. It previously declared him an “AMERICA FIRST FIGHTER,” and prominently stated, “President Trump needs more allies in Congress to deliver on his bold vision to Make America Great Again.”

His website changes were first spotted and reported by NBC News on Tuesday.

The top of Alvarado’s homepage wasn’t the only place where Trump’s name had been scrubbed. It appears the Republican House hopeful also removed the president from the section about him.

The “Meet Ralph” section currently shows an image of the candidate with his arms crossed on the left, along with a few paragraphs about how he’s “stepping up to bring independent leadership to Washington, lower the cost of living, strengthen Kentucky’s economy, and deliver practical solutions that put Kentucky families first.” It goes on to largely focus on his work as a physician and claims he “isn’t a career politician.”

However, an archived version of his website from earlier this year showed the “Meet Ralph” section featuring an image of Alvarado standing beside a smiling Trump as the president gives a thumbs up.

“Ralph was one of President Trump’s earliest supporters, and now he’s stepping up to fight alongside him in Washington to fire up the economy, secure our border, and stop the woke agenda,” it used to read.

The old website also promoted Alvarado as a “national leader in the America First movement and vocal supporter of President Trump from the very beginning” and highlighted how he was “honored to speak at the Republican National Convention as the only Latino in support of President Trump” back in 2016.

None of his MAGA accolades or mentions of Trump remained on the section of the website as of Tuesday.

The image of Alvarado with Trump remains the last image in the “Media” section of his website, but two videos that were previously on that page were also deleted.

Alvarado’s campaign responded to the Daily Beast’s inquiry in a statement that did not address the copy changes to his website on Tuesday but did address the one remaining image no longer featured on the homepage.

“The socialists are going to have to do a lot better than this nonsense to win this district. We’ve proudly touted the endorsement, and our website still features a photo of Ralph with President Trump,” said campaign manager Andy Westberry.

He went on to blast his opponent, Democrat Zach Dembo, as a “Biden alum” who is “desperately trying to change the conversation.”

Candidates tend to make some campaign shifts when it comes to their approach to the general election, where they need to focus on winning over more independent voters and moderates than the primary electorate.

But the scrubbing of the president’s name and America First rhetoric suggests Republicans worry that Trump’s deepening unpopularity poses a serious challenge as they look to hold the House majority, with mounting concern in a red state like Kentucky.

Polls released by both the Economist/YouGov and Reuters/Ipsos this week showed Democrats with a six-point edge in a generic congressional matchup.

The Kentucky 6th congressional district seat is open as Republican Rep. Andy Barr is the GOP nominee for the Senate to replace retiring Senator Mitch McConnell, but Barr won the House seat by 26 points less than two years ago.

Alvarado is now running for the seat in a race against Dembo, a former federal prosecutor and Navy JAG officer who has the support of Democratic Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear.

“My opponent’s at it again, claiming to be Trump’s guy when it helped him, then deleting any mention of the President from his site because the latest poll told him he should. It reeks of a career politician’s desperation,” wrote Dembo on X, pointing to NBC’s report.

The race is rated “Solid Republican” by Cook Political Report, but Democrats have been making gains by double digits even in states that once went to Republicans ahead of the midterms.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-humiliated-by-brutal-snub-from-his-own-candidate/?

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Trump Targets U.S Soldier’s Wife With Heartbreaking Deportation

An active-duty sergeant’s wife was deported to Honduras after missing one meeting she didn’t receive notice for.

President Donald Trump’s administration has targeted another military family in its latest crackdown on immigration. The wife of an active-duty Army sergeant sat in a Texas detention facility until her deportation on Monday. Cristy Maryori Villafranca-Trejo is now on her way to her native Honduras. She entered the U.S. at the age of 18 and does not have a criminal record, something the Trump administration vehemently claims to be targeting. She was issued an order of removal after missing an immigration hearing in 2017. But she and her husband, Sgt. Hedar Leonel Turcios Juarez, claimed they never received proper notice of the meeting and weren’t even aware of the removal request until they got married in 2022. She legally sought a military-family green card and waited for about four years before being detained. “We were following the rules—we did everything we could on our side to fix this problem,” Turcios Juarez told the AP. This comes after about 50 other family members of military soldiers and personnel were taken into custody after Trump rolled back protections for family members.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-targets-us-soldiers-wife-cristy-maryori-villafranca-trejo-in-texas-with-shocking-deportation/?

ps:What a peace of work!!!!!

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💰 Rubio: Sanctions, not strikes, on Iran

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has told several foreign counterparts that "for the time being" the U.S. isn't expected to initiate new strikes against Iran, a U.S. official and a second source with knowledge of the matter tell Axios' Barak Ravid.

• Instead, he's said the focus is on other pressure, including sanctions announced this week.

Why it matters: Rubio's message to allied foreign ministers comes as the U.S. believes it's suffocating Iran with the naval blockade — while moving growing amounts of oil out of the Strait of Hormuz.

• It's another sign President Trump is exasperated with the war and wants it to be over, at least for now.

The U.S. official said Rubio made clear the U.S. isn't planning a return to major combat operations but didn't rule out strikes if Iran attacks first.

• Another U.S. official said the U.S. Navy's clearing of mines from the Strait of Hormuz is a watershed moment in the war, largely neutralizing one of Iran's main sources of leverage.

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Trump Reveals Secret Weapon to Save GOP From Midterm Wipeout

The president unveiled the plan in an Oval Office meeting.

Donald Trump’s plan to avoid an electoral wipeout for the GOP in the midterms is to turn November’s elections into a referendum on himself, according to a report.

The president is hoping to use the $400 million war chest from his MAGA Inc. super PAC on a series of television ads highlighting the apparent achievements of his second term to give Republican candidates a much-needed boost.

Trump detailed his plans to fully insert himself into the GOP’s midterm campaigns during an Oval Office meeting earlier this month, sources revealed to The Atlantic. However, some Republican strategists are concerned about whether it is a good idea, given that Trump has been recording dire approval ratings, especially on key voter issues such as the economy.

“When the issues that you typically campaign on don’t move voters—or voters are p---ed off at you about those issues—the question becomes: What do you campaign on?” one person familiar with the Oval Office meeting told the outlet.

The GOP is widely expected to lose control of the House in the midterms because of the backlash to Trump’s second term and the razor-thin majority it currently holds in the lower chamber.

The cost-of-living crisis felt by tens of millions of Americans—exacerbated by Trump’s tariffs and the deeply unpopular war in Iran—means that the Senate could also be in play for Democrats in November.

Trump’s plans to pay for a series of television advertisements highlighting an improving economy, a decline in fentanyl deaths, and hardline immigration policies come as the president has long felt frustrated that his apparent achievements are not being reflected in polls or recognized by voters.

The president even instructed those at the Oval Office meeting to find videos of him hyping himself up as examples of what to promote in the ads.

“Go look at the clips,” the president said, a source told The Atlantic. “I cite accomplishments all the time.”

One major issue for Trump is that if he tells voters the economy is improving while pointing to stock-market highs, Americans will not necessarily feel it at the grocery store or gas pumps.

This is a similar problem former President Joe Biden faced, whose term was marked by decades-high inflation and soaring gas prices, as well as what Barack Obama faced during his first term after the 2008 financial crash.

“You can’t go in playing ‘It’s Christmas Time’ when that’s the last holiday they can afford,” Rahm Emanuel, a former Chicago mayor who worked in both the Obama and Biden administrations, told The Atlantic of Trump’s midterm plans. “They’re going to put you on mute.”

While any midterm election is going to be considered a referendum on the ruling party to some extent, Trump made it explicit how much he wants November’s races to reflect on him during a campaign rally for South Carolina Sen. Darline Graham on Friday.

“What I really want you to do is pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot. Just come and vote. It’s so important,” Trump told the crowd. “Just say that I’m on the ballot one more time.”

In a statement, White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said Trump is “cleaning up Joe Biden’s mess” with his midterm strategy.

“There is a great story to tell because the United States of America has never been stronger than under his leadership,” Wales said.

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and MAGA Inc. for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-secret-oval-office-midterm-election-plot-exposed/?

ps:His real secret weapon is his gerrymandering, his scotus to stop mail-in voting, etc.!!!!!

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Trump’s Secret Scramble Leaks After His Canada Move Backfires

The president is fuming over Canada’s counter-tariffs.

Donald Trump is scrambling to figure out new ways to punish Canada after his crushing import tariffs sparked a spiraling trade war with America’s second-largest trading partner. After long-running trade talks broke down on Friday, the U.S. imposed a 50-percent tariff on about $20 billion in Canadian goods under a never-before-used provision of the Depression-era Tariff Act of 1930. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney retaliated on Tuesday by doubling existing counter-tariffs on U.S. steel and aluminum—and by imposing new duties on American-produced milk, furniture, clothing, and electronics—resulting in 50-percent levies on about $20 billion in annual U.S. exports.

In response, the Trump administration is discussing additional trade penalties against Canada, Bloomberg reported.

Those penalties could take the form of even higher tariffs or other trade actions, a White House official told the outlet.

The president has already promised to double tariffs on Canadian auto parts to 50 percent, but additional countermeasures are expected, the official told Bloomberg. The Daily Beast has also reached out for comment.

The duties are a type of import tax paid by American companies, which must either eat the additional costs or pass them on to consumers.

Canada’s counter-tariffs appear to target products made in hotly contested Republican-held congressional districts that will help determine which party controls Congress after November’s midterm elections, the Wall Street Journal reported.

For example, the duties target nearly 200 seafood products from Maine, where Republican Sen. Susan Collins faces a tough re-election campaign against progressive Troy Jackson.

The opinion editors of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Journal warned Monday that a trade war with Canada makes “no economic or political sense,” and called the Canadian duties Trump’s “dumbest” tariff plan to date.

The levies—which are deeply unpopular among voters—could further exacerbate a cost-of-living crisis that has already hit tens of millions of Americans.

After Canada announced its “dollar-for-dollar” counter-tariffs, Trump, 80, fired off a series of social media threats.

“The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to be doing much business with Ontario any longer,” he wrote first thing Tuesday morning.

He then accused Canada of “ripping off” the U.S. for decades, and complained that, “I deal with many countries, and Canada is easily the most difficult and unreasonable. They feel entitled, but they are not a State, and will be entitled no longer!”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-secret-scramble-leaks-after-his-canada-tariff-move-backfires/?

ps:I guess he believes only he can do anything and others have no recourse but to bow to him!!!!!

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Judge removes one hurdle for Trump mail voting order as states file new challenge before midterms

A federal judge on Wednesday lifted a major obstacle to President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting mail voting, even as Democratic state officials filed a new court challenge with the midterm elections fast approaching.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-voting-mail-ballots-midterms-executive-order-7ed54dda90705ff169d0a022f6a1dde9?

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Money, Money, Money (Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Brian Hagiwara / Getty; Nieudacza / Getty; Passakorn_14 / Getty.)

View in browser America’s national debt hit $40 trillion last week. That number certainly feels like something worth panicking over—the mind balks at all the zeros. But although the debt has been in the trillions for decades, not everyone has considered it a problem. One camp of economists has been warning about the perils of high debt for years: Budget hawks predicted that if the country kept spending and didn’t raise taxes enough to keep pace, the resulting fiscal crisis could be devastating. But others—the doves—have brushed it off. Their perspective was that as long as the U.S. GDP was growing faster than the interest rate it was paying on its debt, the Treasury would be able to keep rolling over its bonds without too much of a problem. For much of the 2010s, this was essentially the status quo, and debt panic was muted. We’re nowhere near a complete failure of the Treasury market, and yet, over the past couple of years, some economists who were once more dovish have switched teams. Martha Gimbel, the executive director of the Budget Lab at Yale and the author of a recent Atlantic story on this issue, told me that part of the reason these economists are pivoting is that they’re starting to realize that interest rates are “probably going to be elevated for quite some time.” The average interest rate on U.S. debt—that second variable the doves look at—has been relatively high for several years now, and it’s only growing. It was hovering around 1.5 percent in 2021, and it’s now roughly 3.4 percent. The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond has more than doubled since 2021. “I was not a deficit hawk, and that reflected the dynamics” of the 2010s, when rates were lower, Gimbel told me. Now, she said, “the environment has changed.” Why are rates rising? The Fed’s reaction to inflation is one reason. It may also have something to do with the extreme investments being made in AI, and these companies’ demand for credit. And it’s likely connected to the deficit panic—concern about the expansion of the national debt and the government’s ability to sustain it. Investors are starting to think of long-term Treasurys as riskier than they once did, and they’re demanding more money in exchange for taking on America’s debt. At the same time, the federal government has shown no real appetite to pull its two main levers for reducing the debt: cutting spending and raising taxes. Jared Bernstein, the former head of Joe Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in The Atlantic a few months ago that he’d “flipped from dove to hawk”—and told me this week that it was partly the government’s complacency on this issue that spurred this change. “Neither side seems particularly motivated to do much of anything about this,” he said. Rather than attending to the debt problem, politicians of both parties have instituted major tax cuts and increased spending over the past 25 years. The U.S. had its credit downgraded by a major ratings agency last spring, in part because of rising debt. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act will add an estimated $4.7 trillion to the deficit through 2035, and Donald Trump’s efforts to decrease immigration will add another half a trillion to that number over the same period, per the Congressional Budget Office.   Despite some recent attempts at short-term stabilization, his administration hasn’t done much to assure the country’s creditors that everything’s fine; they now appear to be seeking greater yields as a result. When longer-term bond yields rise, as they have been, everyday forms of borrowing such as mortgage rates and student loans tend to become more expensive as well. That’s why yields are ultimately “a kitchen-table issue in the same way that inflation is,” Ernie Tedeschi, a former chief economist for the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, told me. Last week, in an apparent attempt to depress yields, the Treasury Department announced that it would be more than doubling the size of its longer-term-bond buybacks. It worked briefly—yields fell—but about 24 hours later, they climbed higher than where they were before. In a scathing (and AI-written) Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, the investor and longtime deficit hawk Stanley Druckenmiller, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s former mentor, stressed that the increased buybacks were a distraction from the real problem: the government’s spending. This political inertia likely stems from the fact that the two most important levers for reducing the debt—raising taxes and cutting spending—remain unpopular among lawmakers and voters alike. Bessent suggested last week that he’s interested in a third option: stimulating the economy enough that it once again outpaces interest rates. But without a concrete plan in place, this sounds like wishful thinking, especially when the more obvious solutions to fix the deficit remain untapped. “This is the era of ‘No tax on blank’ in our politics right now,” Tedeschi said. On the campaign trail, Trump promised to remove taxes on tips, overtime pay, and Social Security payments; he accomplished the first and second, and took steps toward the third. That’s “exactly the opposite mentality we need to have if we want to stabilize our debt going forward,” Tedeschi said. Likelier than a true collapse of the Treasury market, he told me, is that both the debt and interest rates keep rising over time, and that “the days of the 2 or low 3 percent mortgage of a few years ago are just gone.” With affordability concerns playing a major role in the midterms, politicians aren’t exactly clamoring to raise taxes on their constituents. But affordability is exactly what’s at stake if Washington doesn’t at least attempt to chip away at the debt problem. Related: Americans are already paying dearly for the national debt. The national debt’s unforgiving math

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Insiders Reveal Alarming Reason Behind CIA Chief’s Trip to Russia

John Ratcliffe flew into Moscow on a U.S. military transport aircraft.

The worrying reason CIA Director John Ratcliffe took a secret trip to Russia has been revealed.

Speculation has run rampant after a U.S. military transport aircraft unexpectedly landed at a Moscow airport. It was later revealed that Ratcliffe was traveling aboard the Boeing C-17A Globemaster III in what was the CIA chief’s first publicly known visit to the Russian capital.

Insiders have now told The Wall Street Journal that Ratcliffe’s trip on Tuesday was to warn Russia not to launch an unprovoked attack on NATO countries.

There have been fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has faced multiple humiliations as Ukraine continues to resist Russia’s invasion, could lash out by carrying out an attack ranging from a cyberattack to an incursion into a neighboring country in order to test NATO’s resolve in the coming years.

Any scenario in which Putin attacks a member of the military alliance could have devastating consequences around the world.

Under NATO’s Article 5, an attack against one NATO country is considered an attack against all 32 allied members.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed to reporters on Wednesday that Ratcliffe held talks with Russian intelligence officials during his visit, but said the CIA director did not meet with Putin.

“All I can ⁠tell you is that there have been contacts via the security services. I can tell you that there have been no meetings with the Russian president. Naturally, President Putin is kept informed of everything without delay,” Peskov said.

U.S. officials previously told the Journal that it had long been assumed Putin would not provoke NATO while he was still fighting Ukraine—a conflict that has now dragged into its fifth year.

However, this assessment changed earlier this year when Kyiv began fighting back with wave after wave of drone attacks that put Moscow on the back foot.

This includes targeting Russia’s major oil refineries, which play a key role in funding the invasion, as well as warehouses and facilities used by Wildberries, Russia’s largest online retailer, to cripple Moscow’s economy.

It is also believed that the U.S.’s dwindling stockpiles of munitions amid Trump’s war in Iran could influence whether Putin decides to attack a NATO country. The U.S. has also been a major supplier of weapons and munitions to Ukraine as it supports its bid to fight off the Russian invasion.

It remains to be seen how successful Ratcliffe’s trip to the Russian capital will prove to be.

William Burns, who led the CIA under former President Joe Biden, was the last known intelligence agency head to visit Moscow, heading there in November 2021. Burns’ trip was to warn Putin not to attack Ukraine, which the Russian president did three months later.

Heather Conley, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said Putin would be hoping to fracture the NATO alliance with an aggressive move against one of its member states.

“The question mark is how the United States would respond in that case,” Conley told the Journal. “It has always been a goal [of Russia’s] to challenge the credibility of NATO and to separate the United States from its allies.”

Kremlin spokesperson Peskov tried to frame Ratcliffe’s visit as positive, saying talks between U.S. and Russian intelligence agencies could help repair the poor diplomatic relations between the two countries.

“These ⁠contacts often continue even during the most difficult periods in bilateral relations. Our president, incidentally, has spoken about this. However, it is still too early to say to what extent this ⁠will, overall, help to steer our bilateral relations out of the profound crisis in which they currently find themselves,” he said.

President Donald Trump downplayed the significance of Ratcliffe’s Moscow visit during an interview on Glenn Beck’s radio show Wednesday.

“He’s there on, you know, very sort of semi-routine. I hate to disappoint people,” Trump said. “John Ratcliffe is a fantastic guy. He’s the head of the CIA, and he is not in there for any of the things that you said. Now something may come out, you know, out of it. We’re working very hard to get that war ended.”

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and the CIA for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/insiders-reveal-alarming-reason-behind-cia-chief-john-ratcliffes-trip-to-russia/?