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

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Kennedy Center Insider Reveals Why Trump Put ‘Toilets’ Guy in Charge

Matt Floca won the president over on renovations as Ric Grenell’s chaotic run forced a change.

President Donald Trump’s new Kennedy Center boss went from sorting the venue’s toilets to becoming one of its top dogs by talking construction with a president intent on remaking the arts landmark, according to a new report.

Matt Floca, a low-profile operations executive suddenly elevated to chief operating officer and executive director after Ric Grenell’s ouster, appears to have landed the job because he spoke Trump’s language—redevelopment.

Trump, 79, took a close personal interest in the center’s overhaul, toured the complex months ago, and came away impressed by the facilities man who walked him through what the place needed, CNN reported.

One former colleague put Floca’s old remit to CNN in blunt terms—he was in charge of “HVAC and toilets.”

Floca’s CV shows he is not an arts-world grandee parachuted in to woo donors and soothe stars. He is a construction manager who joined the Kennedy Center in January 2024 after years in district government facilities roles, and holds a degree in construction management from Louisiana State University, where he graduated in 2009.

That appears to have made him a natural fit for a president who has treated the Kennedy Center less like a repertory house than his own renovation pet project.

As the Daily Beast reported in December, Trump’s handpicked board voted to tack Trump’s name onto the building even though lawmakers and scholars said Congress, not the board, has the power to rename the memorial. Reuters later reported that Trump declared during the March 16 board meeting, “What I do best in life is build,” as he defended shutting the center for a fast-track overhaul after the July 4 celebrations.

Floca also had another advantage, according to CNN—he was not Ric Grenell. Grenell, 59, arrived as Trump’s political enforcer and became the public face of the center’s makeover. But his tenure brought artist withdrawals, executive exits, and a steady churn of backlash.

The Beast reported on his removal, the weak-sales angst around the renovation, and the departure of National Symphony Orchestra executive Jean Davidson as the center reeled from Trump’s takeover. Issa Rae, Béla Fleck, Louise Penny, Ben Folds, and Renée Fleming were among the art figures who pulled out.

By mid-March, Trump had decided to move on, pushing Grenell aside and installing Floca as chief operating officer and executive director just as the board approved the two-year closure.

Kennedy Center insiders told CNN that Trump bonded quickly with Floca over construction, called him often, and saw him as a trusted pair of hands for the physical rebuild. The same people also described him as a stopgap—a steady operator for the worksite, not necessarily the person to run every other part of a national arts institution.

That matters because rebuilding the structure is only half the Kennedy Center’s challenge.

The shutdown follows months of cancellations and resignations. CNN reported that board-subcommittee minutes show staffing could be cut by an estimated 75 to 175 positions from a workforce of roughly 300.

Theater companies book years ahead. Donors need to be handled while the doors are shut. Artists need convincing to come back when the scaffolding comes down. Floca may be exactly the man Trump wants to shepherd steel, stone, and systems. Whether he is the man who can rebuild the institution around them is a different question.

Trump himself all but said so at the White House board lunch last week. According to CNN, he praised Floca, said he thought he would do a good job, then added that if he did not, “Matt, you’re fired.”

White House spokeswoman Liz Huston told the Daily Beast that Trump was “committed to making the Trump-Kennedy Center the finest performing arts facility in the world.”

The Beast has also contacted the Kennedy Center for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/kennedy-center-insider-reveals-why-donald-trump-put-toilets-guy-in-charge/?

ps:Who's going to be next??

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Trump’s Bid to Kill Embarrassing Musk Lawsuit Fails Miserably

The president’s own words came back to haunt him.

A federal judge is allowing a lawsuit accusing Elon Musk of illegally exercising executive powers as the head of DOGE to move forward, despite the Trump administration’s attempts o quash it. More than a dozen state attorneys general sued Musk, the U.S. DOGE Service, and President Donald Trump last year, arguing that the billionaire was exercising power similar to a Senate-confirmed Cabinet official despite not having Senate confirmation.

The suit, which is one of a handful of legal challenges to the secretive Department of Government Efficiency that Musk spearheaded during the early months of Trump’s second term in office, was later joined with a similar complaint from several nonprofits.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan pointed to Trump’s own statements—and those of DOGE officials—as she denied the government’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

The ruling allows the plaintiffs to continue with their claims that Musk illegally wielded power under the Appointments Clause, and that DOGE terminated grants, fired federal employees, dismantled agencies, and undertook other official actions “despite lacking lawful authority.”

The Supreme Court has held that under the Appointments Clause, “principal officers” must be appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate.

“The head of DOGE is not merely an influential advisor who counsel the President and then communicates the President’s decisions to government officers,” Chutkan wrote in her opinion.

Instead, there was evidence to suggest the head of DOGE personally “makes decisions and issues directives on matters as weighty as the termination of federal grants, contracts, and workers,” she wrote.

She also smacked down the government’s argument that the allegations of DOGE acting beyond their authority were “bare assertions” based on “information and belief,” as opposed to actual evidence.

In fact, the plaintiffs successfully pointed to public statements by Trump, DOGE officials, and other administration officials supporting the claim that DOGE had seized an expansive role in the federal government, she wrote.

DOGE’s own officials publicly bragged that “DOGE just TERMINATED a $2.3 MILLION contract” and was “shutting [USAID] down,” Chutkan noted.

The judge did agree to throw out two claims arguing the agency violated the Administrative Procedure Act and violated the constitutional separation of powers, narrowing the scope of the case, but said discovery can continue on the other two claims.

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

Musk resigned from DOGE in May, when his term as a special government employee expired.

Soon after, he and the president had an explosive falling out, but Musk appears to be working his way back into Trump’s good graces by donating millions of dollars to Republican candidates during the midterm elections.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trumps-bid-to-kill-embarrassing-elon-musk-lawsuit-fails-miserably/?

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Absentee voting

President Donald Trump voted by mail in Tuesday’s special election for the Florida House even as he suggested that “mail-in voting means mail-in cheating.” He also voted by mail in the January primary. ps:What a hypocrite!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Pressure Points (David McNew / Getty)

View in browser On Friday, after almost a full month of bombing Iran, Donald Trump offered a glimpse of the end. American military operations in the country, he said, could soon be “winding down.” A day later, he swerved, giving Iran an ultimatum: Should its leaders refuse to lift their effective blockade on the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, unfreezing much of the world’s oil, he would “obliterate” the nation’s energy infrastructure. Then, yesterday morning, another swerve: Following “productive” diplomatic talks, Trump would postpone the deadline until Friday. Never mind the fact that Iran has denied that any such talks took place. The president hasn’t always been clear about what he wants from this war—or how he plans to mitigate the energy crisis it has created. At one point, he suggested that the spike in oil prices might actually be a good thing, because “we” could stand to “make a lot of money.” That’s true for oil producers, although not exactly a counter to all of the negative effects of a global energy shock. But the timing of this ultimatum and the timing of its subsequent deferral are revealing in their own way. Oil-futures markets don’t trade from Friday to Sunday evening. Because Trump’s threat to Iran arrived on a Saturday night, speculators had a short buffer—a little less than a day—to assess the potential price impact before trading resumed. And the reprieve, which lasts exactly five days, will conclude as markets head into the weekend pause. The persistent rise of U.S. Treasury yields, coupled with the news yesterday morning that Asia’s markets (which start trading before Western markets) had plummeted after the ultimatum, probably also contributed to the postponement. John Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security adviser from 2018 to 2019, told The Atlantic that during Trump’s first term, foreign-policy announcements were sometimes timed with trading hours in mind. Those calls were made both by the president himself and by Treasury officials who advised him to do so. Trump’s second term has only clarified how much power the markets seem to have over his decision making—and other countries are likely paying attention. Intentionally or not, certain military actions in Iran have aligned with weekend market pauses. And Trump has made at least one big recent decision that explicitly hinged on the market’s reaction: The initial announcement of last year’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, which resulted in the most significant equities-market shake-up of Trump’s second term, was deliberately delayed until the end of the trading day, Atlantic reporting has confirmed. The president has also enjoyed his power over the markets more broadly. My colleague Jonathan Lemire told me that, according to his reporting, Trump has in the past alerted aides when he thought an upcoming social-media post would get a reaction from Wall Street—and then watched the ticker move in real time. (“The Administration is naturally attuned to how major policy decisions affect financial markets and the economy, but any implication that the President’s decision-making—and timing—is influenced by anything other than the best interest of the American people is baseless and false,” a White House spokesperson wrote in a statement to The Atlantic.) It’s easy to get conspiratorial about how, exactly, Trump times these moves. After all, not every foreign-policy decision can be chalked up to markets alone. The United States’ and Israel’s initial strikes on Iran were planned to coincide with a meeting of top Iranian leaders. That meeting happened to be on a Saturday. The timing of the raid on Nicolás Maduro’s compound reportedly had to do with the weather in Caracas in January; unfavorable cloud conditions delayed the capture of the Venezuelan president for days. Lucky, then, that the clouds cleared up on a Saturday—energy markets had a chance to figure out what the effects of the intervention might be before they reacted. Thomas Wright, an Atlantic contributing writer and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told me that although Trump has long cared about shifts in U.S. Treasury yields (Barron’s went so far as to call them his “kryptonite”), his recent actions have underscored the importance of energy markets in his decision making. “We’ve discovered in the Iran war that he’s also very sensitive to the price of oil—which we could have gathered from what he said over many years—but I think we have some evidence to it,” he said. Yesterday, Trump appeared to acknowledge the link between oil prices and the timing of his policies; after he announced the delay of his ultimatum on Iran, the price of oil slid and the stock market bounced back. “The price of oil will drop like a rock as soon as a deal is done,” Trump told reporters. “I guess it already is today.” Iran is likely keeping tabs on Trump’s sensitivity to the markets too. When the price of oil shot up after the start of the war, the consequences set in for Americans pretty quickly: Gasoline is up; jet-fuel prices are up, compounding the ongoing chaos at American airports; and groceries and other everyday items are poised to get more expensive as well. Iran knows it has at least some leverage here. Trump’s apparent willingness to make decisions based on the markets is a liability—the more he reacts, the more easily he can be exploited. Jonathan Lemire and Vivian Salama contributed reporting. Related: Is Trump actually having “very good” talks with Tehran? What happens if oil hits $200 a barrel?

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Mystery trading patterns follow Trump

Data: Yahoo Finance. Chart: Erin Davis/Axios Visuals An epidemic of suspicious trading has emerged around President Trump's most consequential decisions, Axios' Zachary Basu reports. 🛢️ On Monday, $580 million in oil futures flooded the market roughly 16 minutes before Trump announced a pause in strikes on Iranian power plants. On the Friday before the war began, more than 150 Polymarket accounts placed hundreds of bets predicting a U.S. strike on Iran by the next day, according to a New York Times analysis (gift link). On Jan. 2, a trader turned roughly $32,000 into more than $400,000 by betting on the capture of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro before it was announced the next morning. Last April, a surge of bullish stock trades appeared minutes before Trump announced a 90-day pause on his "Liberation Day" tariffs. 🤷‍♂️ Zoom in: Because these accounts are anonymous, it's unclear whether they involve insiders with advance knowledge, coordinated traders or independent speculators. White House spokesman Kush Desai told Axios: "All federal employees are subject to government ethics guidelines that prohibit the use of nonpublic information for financial benefit. However, any implication that Administration officials are engaged in such activity without evidence is baseless and irresponsible reporting." There's no evidence Trump knew about the suspicious trades or that any officials were involved. More broadly, his presidency has coincided with business and investment activity involving allies, donors and family members, some of which has been historically lucrative. For example, the Trump family's crypto venture has generated billions — with investors including a Chinese crypto mogul who later settled his SEC fraud case, and an Emirati royal lobbying Washington for AI chips. White House counsel David Warrington tells Axios: "The president has no involvement in business deals that would implicate his constitutional responsibilities." "President Trump performs his constitutional duties in an ethically sound manner and to suggest otherwise is either ill-informed or malicious."

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👨‍⚕️ Visa freeze sidelines doctors

Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios The Trump administration's suspension of some immigrants' work authorization renewals is sidelining possibly thousands of foreign-born doctors, Axios' Maya Goldman reports. 🗓️ Visa holders have a grace period to keep working after applying for a renewal. But the freeze has scrambled arrangements, forcing doctors to take unpaid absences. Many immigrant doctors now have to return home, immigrate elsewhere or stay in the U.S. without working. 🩺 An Ohio-based doctor tells Axios: "Even with us, there is [a] severe shortage." "Can you imagine any physician loss, how it will impact the society here?" Homeland Security told Axios the freeze is necessary because officials believe the Biden administration didn't properly vet affected visa holders. Go deeper.

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Trump Scrambles for an Iran Exit Plan as His Crisis Spirals

The president’s peace plan was delivered to Iran by way of Pakistan.

President Donald Trump has presented Iran with a 15-point peace plan in a frantic bid to end the war he himself started before it spirals further out of control.

According to two officials who spoke to the New York Times, the plan was delivered to Tehran via officials in Pakistan, which is trying to broker an end to the conflict.

While the Times reporters did not see a copy of the plan, the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it addressed the issue of Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs, two concerns Trump has repeatedly mentioned when asked why he chose to launch strikes on Iran on Feb. 28.In joint strikes with Israel since then, the U.S. has targeted Iran’s missiles, launchers, and production facilities, as well as the country’s nuclear program, which was initially targeted and significantly damaged in strikes last June.

The officials who spoke to the Times said that the plan also discusses maritime routes. Iran’s blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, the only shipping lane out of the Persian Gulf, has hit global supply chains and sent crude oil and natural gas prices soaring.

Trump, 79, has admitted that he did not expect Iran to launch retaliatory strikes at U.S. and allied targets in the region, nor to close the Strait of Hormuz, which winds around between the coasts of Iran and Oman.

The president has failed to persuade key Western allies to commit forces to the conflict, which has fractured his political base back home as critics in the MAGA movement question the justification for the war and could cost the Republicans control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.

On Saturday, Trump threatened to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if the country did not reopen the Strait within 48 hours, only to reverse course on Monday evening, claiming in a Truth Social post that “very good and productive conversations” with Iran prompted him to postpone the planned strikes.

Iran, for its part, denied that any talks had taken place, and warned that it would “irreversibly” destroy critical infrastructure belonging to its neighbors if Trump followed through with his threats.

On Tuesday, Iran once again denied that talks had taken place, with Lieutenant Colonel Ebrahim Zolfaghari asking the U.S., “Has the level of your internal conflicts reached the state of negotiating with yourselves?”

“Don’t call your failure an agreement,” he added, according to the Fars news agency, noting that there would be no return to normal “until our will is done.”

“This will be created when the thought of taking action against the Iranian nation is completely erased from your dirty minds,” he said. “Our first and last words from day one have been, are and will be: No one like us will get along with someone like you. Not now, not ever.”

Earlier in the day, Trump claimed that Iran had sent him “a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money” that was “oil and gas-related,” but would not go into detail or reveal what the present was, only noting that it was “significant.”

As Iranian officials insist that negotiation talks are not taking place, the White House has doubled down on its claims that diplomacy is underway, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt telling the Times, “As President Trump and his negotiators explore this newfound possibility of diplomacy, Operation Epic Fury continues unabated to achieve the military objectives laid out by the commander in chief and the Pentagon.”

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.

According to the New York Times, Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, who has close ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has been acting as the primary messenger between the U.S. and Iran, with Egypt and Turkey both encouraging Iran to engage constructively. Trump has previously described Munir as his “favorite field marshal.”

Munir has reportedly proposed that Pakistan host talks between Iran and the U.S. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif wrote on social media on Tuesday that his country “fully supports ongoing efforts to pursue dialogue to end” the conflict.

While the president’s messaging around a potential timeline for an end to the war has been mixed, he claimed on Tuesday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wanted the war, which has killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 1500 Iranians so far, to carry on.

“You know, the only two people that were quite disappointed, I don’t want to say this, but I have to,” Trump said after swearing in his new secretary of homeland security, Markwayne Mullin. “I said, ‘Pete and General Razin Caine, I think this thing is going to be settled very soon,’ and they go, ‘Oh, that’s too bad.’”

“Pete didn’t want it to be settled,” Trump laughed.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-scrambles-for-an-iran-exit-plan-as-his-crisis-spirals/?

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Trump Begs Another Country to Elect Putin’s Ally

The 79-year-old’s endorsement may not be enough to save the European leader.

Donald Trump has offered fawning praise to a far-right anti-immigration leader who is one of Vladimir Putin’s closest allies in Europe.

In a Tuesday Truth Social post, Trump threw his support behind Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, describing him as a “truly strong and powerful Leader, with a proven track record of delivering phenomenal results.”

Trump’s endorsement of Orbán comes as the authoritarian Hungarian PM faces a serious risk of losing an upcoming election, in which his strong ties to Moscow, combined with the country’s economic struggles, have become a major campaign issue.

The center-right Tisza party, led by Péter Magyar, a former insider in Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party, is currently leading in the polls by 9 percentage points ahead of Hungary’s April 12 election.

“He fights tirelessly for, and loves, his Great Country and People, just like I do for the United States of America. Viktor works hard to Protect Hungary, Grow the Economy, Create Jobs, Promote Trade, Stop Illegal Immigration, and Ensure LAW AND ORDER,” Trump wrote.

“I was proud to ENDORSE Viktor for Re-Election in 2022, and am honored to do so again. Election Day is April 12, 2026. Hungary: GET OUT AND VOTE FOR VIKTOR ORBÁN. He is a true friend, fighter, and WINNER, and has my Complete and Total Endorsement for Re-Election as Prime Minister of Hungary.”

Trump and Orbán have been close allies for years, with Orbán becoming the first European Union leader to back Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Orbán has visited Trump at the White House several times, most recently in November 2025.Orbán is also a longtime ally of Putin and is widely viewed as one of the Russian president’s closest supporters within NATO and the European Union amid Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Hungary depends heavily on Russian energy, and Orbán visited Trump last November to discuss potential exemptions from U.S. sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies.

On Saturday, The Washington Post reported that Russian intelligence operatives had discussed staging an assassination attempt on Orbán in order to give his re-election campaign a much-needed boost.

Trump himself survived an assassination attempt during the 2024 election campaign after a gunman opened fire at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July of that year.

The Post also reported in the same article that Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, is alleged to have frequently leaked confidential EU information to his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov. Because of this, “every single EU meeting for years has basically had Moscow behind the table,” one official told The Post.

“Based on current information, Szijjártó appears to be colluding with Russia, thereby betraying Hungarian and European interests,” Orbán’s election rival Magyar posted on X. “If confirmed, this would amount to treason, which carries a potential life sentence.”

Szijjártó dismissed the allegations as “lies” and “fake news” on social media.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-begs-another-country-to-elect-vladimir-putins-ally-viktor-orban/?

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Iran Gives Trump an Ultimatum on JD Vance

Iranian officials are refusing to talk to Trump’s top negotiators.

Iran said it is done dealing with the two emissaries President Donald Trump has tasked with leading negotiations in the Middle East.

The country, which Trump began striking over three weeks ago, is not keen on any more attempts at negotiations with Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, or Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, both of whom were leading the nuclear negotiations with Iran before the war.

Iran now says it will only engage in negotiations with Vice President JD Vance, according to a report in The Guardian.

At the time that Trump launched his deadly war in Iran, the U.S. and Iran were engaged in negotiations over the country’s nuclear program.

Since the war was launched, the Iranian regime has viewed those negotiations, headed by Witkoff and Kushner, as a front by the Trump administration to trick Iran into thinking they were negotiating in good faith, when the U.S. really just wanted to attack.

“With the previous negotiating team, there’s no chance,” one diplomatic source told the Guardian. “The Iranian side regards the request for negotiations as another round of deception for the US-Israeli regime to find out a loophole to aggravate the strikes again.”

The source noted that Iran sees Vance as a more acceptable diplomatic figure than Witkoff and Kushner, especially as Vance is, at his core, a skeptic of U.S. military action in the Middle East.

Vance, a Marine who served in public affairs during the Iraq War, has traditionally been wary of U.S. foreign intervention throughout his career in politics.

“If the negotiations are going to have any outcome, JD Vance should join,” the source told the outlet. “With Witkoff and Kushner, nothing will come out of it. We have seen that in the past.”

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is pushing for his country to “facilitate meaningful and conclusive talks” between the U.S. and Iran in Islamabad.

He has spoken to Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, where they “agreed on the urgent need for de-escalation, dialogue and diplomacy,” according to an official read-out.

“Subject to concurrence by the US and Iran, Pakistan stands ready and honored to be the host to facilitate meaningful and conclusive talks for a comprehensive settlement of the ongoing conflict,” Sharif posted on X on Tuesday.

The country has yet to be officially named as a host for any talks between the two sides. Other venues in Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar have been discussed, but the Guardian reported that Tehran’s preference was to have the talks in Islamabad.

In a statement to the Daily Beast, a White House spokesperson called the report “utterly false” and asserted, “This obvious op sourced entirely to ‘regional sources’ is clearly a coordinated foreign propaganda campaign meant to undermine the president.”

Over the weekend, Trump gave Iran an ultimatum in which he said he would “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if it did not open the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours of his Truth Social threat.

The president’s self-imposed timeline came and went, as he walked back his threat and claimed to have been in “GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS” with the Iranians.

Iran has refuted Trump’s claim and said no such talks had transpired, calling Trump’s claim “an attempt to #escape his recent threat on Iran’s power infrastructure.”

Iran’s closure of the Strait has become a headache for the White House, as gas and oil prices have skyrocketed domestically. At the same time, the Strait has become the strongest point of leverage for Iran as it fights the U.S.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/iran-gives-trump-a-negotiation-ultimatum-on-jd-vance-sidelining-steve-witkoff-and-jared-kushner/?

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Humiliation in Trump’s Backyard Could Signal Worst GOP Midterms in 100 Years

If the enormous 21-point swing against Trump in his own hometown was replicated across the country, this would be the Republicans’ worst midterms in 100 years.

A humiliating loss in President Donald Trump’s own backyard is shaping up as more than just a local embarrassment—it may be an early warning of a political bloodbath.

Trump suffered a stinging political setback on Tuesday as Democrat Emily Gregory captured the Florida State House seat that includes his Mar-a-Lago resort.

Gregory defeated Republican Jon Maples in the special election for District 87, which covers parts of West Palm Beach, including Trump’s private club, where he still spends many weekends. According to Palm Beach County election records, Trump even voted by mail in the contest, despite his repeated attacks on vote-by-mail and efforts to curtail it nationally.

The race was tight: Gregory won 51 percent to 49 percent, a margin of just over 750 votes.

While Gregory won the district by just 2 points, the result marks a dramatic 21-point swing to the Democrats in just two years of Trump being in the White House. The prior Republican incumbent, Rep. Mike Caruso, won by roughly 19 points in 2024, and Trump carried the district by 11 points the same year 2024.

If every district across the country experienced a uniform 21-point swing compared with the margins the Republican incumbent won in 2024, the Democrats could pick up 70 seats in the House on top of the 215 they currently hold, giving them a landslide majority in the chamber.

That would see Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who won her seat by a margin of 9.6 points in 2024, lose her seat. Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who won her seat by a margin of 11.6 points, would also lose her seat, among many other well-known names.

Current polling does not suggest such a huge swing, but if the results in Trump’s backyard were replicated at a national level it would be one of the worst results for Republicans in a midterm election in recent history.

Historically, the largest House losses include Democrats losing 116 seats in 1894, Republicans losing 77 in 1922, and Democrats losing 72 in 1938, with other notable losses in 1974 and 2010. By comparison, the Democrats’ 41‑seat gain in 2018—the largest in 44 years—was still well below 70.

Gregory’s victory in flipping the district is the latest in a series of special election upsets at the state level for the Republicans, including in a number of red states, since Trump returned to office last year.

In more than 20 state legislative special elections so far this year, Democrats have outpaced Trump’s 2024 performance by 10 to 14 points in areas including northern and central Virginia, New York City, east-central Minnesota, and southeastern Connecticut.

Even in solidly Republican areas, candidates are failing to match Trump’s past margins. In north-central Oklahoma, a GOP state House candidate won by 28 points—well below Trump’s 58-point margin there in 2024—while in Tarrant County, Texas, Democrat Taylor Rehmet upset a Trump-backed GOP state Senate candidate with more than 57 percent of the vote.

The results have raised concerns among Republicans that Trump’s backing may no longer guarantee victories in districts once considered safe.

“A year ago, I would have told you we were almost guaranteed to win the Senate,” one GOP operative told Axios last month. “Today, I would have to tell you it’s far less certain.”

Meanwhile, CNN pollster Harry Enten said Tuesday that the trend in Mar-a-Lago could signal a nationwide shift in the upcoming midterms.

“Historically speaking, special elections have forecasted what will happen in the midterm elections. I went all the way back, since I was in high school, back to the 2005, 2006 cycle, and every single time that a party outperformed the presidential baseline in the next midterm election, what we saw was five out of five times that party went on to win the U.S. House of Representatives,” he said.

“So what is happening right now in Mar-a-Lago is unlikely to stay in Mar-a-Lago. It is likely to expand nationwide and to expand in the midterm elections as well.”

It comes as polls have shown Trump tanking on the issues most important to voters ahead of the 2026 midterms: cost of living and inflation.

In a recent NBC News poll, 48 percent of voters cited inflation and cost of living as the most important issues facing the country, far outweighing any other issue.

In the same poll, 62 percent of voters said they disapprove of Trump’s handling of inflation and the cost of living.

The most recent Reuters/Ipsos poll also showed that just 29 percent approve of Trump’s handling of economic policy, the worst rating of either of his presidencies and lower than any economic approval rating recorded by former President Joe Biden.

On the cost of living, Trump fared even worse, with just 25 percent approving of his performance.

The numbers put Trump’s party in a vulnerable position ahead of the midterms, especially as many Democrats, including Gregory, have run campaigns largely on affordability, an issue the president has repeatedly decried as a hoax by Democrats.

“Mar-a-Lago just flipped red to blue, which should have Republicans sweating the midterms,” said Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) in a statement. “If Mar-a-Lago is vulnerable, imagine what’s possible this November.”

Other Democrats are also optimistic about their chances.

“If Democrats can win in Trump’s own backyard, we can win anywhere,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said last night following the result in Florida. “Trump’s own neighbors just sent a crystal clear message. They are furious and ready for change.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/humiliation-in-trumps-backyard-means-he-may-be-in-for-historic-midterm-disaster/?

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Childish Way Trump’s Officials Brief Him on War Is Leaked

Some of the president’s allies are concerned he’s not getting the full picture of the Iran war.

Donald Trump’s top war goons are briefing the president with two-minute-long highlight reels showing frontline victories in the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, U.S. officials told NBC News.

Three current U.S. officials and a former official told the news outlet that the president is being fed a daily video mash-up summarizing the most successful strikes on Iranian targets over the previous 48 hours of the military operation in the Middle East, now in its fourth week.

The footage depicts “stuff blowing up”, one official revealed, while others said Trump’s allies are concerned that the clips may not fully capture the overall situation on the ground.

A current official said Trump is shown a condensed video montage because “we can’t tell him every single thing that happens.” The official added that the videos tended to emphasize U.S. successes, as those segments typically received a better response from the president’s aides.

The revelation comes at a time when the Trump administration faces backlash for sharing bizarre video-game mashups of the Trump administration’s lethal strikes on Iran. Trump’s team has dished out countless clips that verge on the gamification of real-life combat since launching coordinated strikes with Israel on Iran on February 28.

The use of edited combat footage reflects a broader trend in modern warfare, where curated clips of battlefield victories are used to shape public perception. In the Ukraine-Russia war, both sides have circulated visually compelling videos of strikes and frontline operations to showcase battlefield success, generate clicks and social media buzz, support recruitment efforts, and project strength to adversaries.

According to Politico, one senior official bragged that the Trump administration’s videos racked up more than 3 billion impressions within four days.

One video, posted to the official White House X account earlier this month, opens with footage from the 2023 video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 before transitioning into footage of actual strikes on Iran, as an instrumental version of Childish Gambino’s 2011 song “Bonfire” plays.

Speaking to Politico, retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, former commanding general of United States Army Europe, said the Trump administration’s videos seem “detached from reality.”

Hodges added: “Our allies look at this and they wonder, what the hell is going on. It doesn’t look like we’re serious.”

Officials told NBC News that Trump also receives updates about the conflict from top military and intelligence advisers, foreign leaders, and news coverage.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back against suggestions that Trump wasn’t receiving a full assessment of the war.

“That’s an absolutely false assertion coming from someone who has not been present in the room,” Leavitt told NBC News in a statement. “Anyone who has been present for conversations with President Trump knows he actively seeks and solicits the opinions of everyone in the room and expects full-throated honesty from all of his top advisors.”

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

https://www.thedailybeast.com/childish-way-trumps-officials-brief-him-on-iran-war-is-leaked/?

ps:If this were Biden people would never hear the end of it!!!!!!!!!!

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Bondi Accused of Accidentally Revealing ‘Damning’ Evidence in Trump Case

Rep. Jamie Raskin says a DOJ memo handed to Congress undercut the Trump team’s bid to discredit Jack Smith.

Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice has been accused of giving Congress a memo containing “damning evidence” that Donald Trump kept sensitive secrets to protect business interests.In a letter sent on Tuesday to Bondi, 60, House Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin, 63, said the department’s own production to Congress appeared to bolster some of the most explosive suspicions in Jack Smith’s classified-documents case.

The Democratic lawmaker wrote that Bondi’s team, while scrambling for material to attack Smith, had “missed the fact” that some of the same records “include damning evidence about your boss’s conduct.” He also said the disclosure may have breached the protective order from U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee.

The memo Raskin cited was dated Jan. 13, 2023. According to his letter, prosecutors wrote that some of the classified records Trump, 79, retained after leaving office “would be pertinent to certain business interests” and that those files established “a motive for retaining them.”

The same memo, he said, described the material as posing “an aggravated potential harm to national security.”

Raskin said one especially sensitive record was accessible to only six people in the federal government, including the president. He also said prosecutors identified a classified map that Trump may have shown to people aboard a June 2022 flight to Bedminster, and that Susie Wiles, 68, then running Trump’s super PAC and now White House chief of staff, was on board and witnessed the episode. Raskin said the disclosures surfaced after Trump’s Justice Department sent the committee a batch of records on March 13, largely tied to the FBI’s “Arctic Frost” investigation into efforts by Trump’s campaign and allies to block certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 win.

He said that same production also included a January 2023 Smith office memo tracking progress in both the classified-documents and election-interference cases, which he argued revived questions about why Trump retained the records.

MS NOW reported that Smith’s team had examined whether records tied to Trump’s business interests could explain the retention.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told the Beast that Trump “did nothing wrong,” while dismissing Raskin and Smith.

A DOJ spokesperson told the Daily Beast that Raskin’s claims were politically motivated, argued it has acted lawfully and transparently in releasing materials, and insisted the documents reflect false allegations gathered by Smith’s team against Trump.

A senior DOJ source went further, describing Raskin’s letter as “bull-s--t,” noting that he had been in possession of the documents for two weeks, and suggesting the timing of the letter was an attempt to “shift the narrative following the brutal ‘Arctic Frost’ hearing” on Tuesday.

That was a Senate Judiciary subcommittee session led by Sen. Chuck Grassley that examined the FBI’s investigation into Trump allies’ efforts to challenge Biden’s 2020 win and aired Republican claims that Jack Smith’s team had overreached.

The source added, “It’s also amazing Rep. Raskin never focuses on the work of the DOJ to keep his constituents safe and bring criminals to justice in his district.”

The classified-documents case had already produced felony charges accusing Trump of hoarding sensitive national-security records and obstructing efforts to get them back.

Cannon threw out the case in July 2024 and, after Trump returned to office in January 2025, the Justice Department abandoned it under its longstanding position that sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted. Cannon later kept Volume II of Smith’s final report under seal.

Raskin is demanding answers by March 31 and the remaining investigative files by April 14.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/bondi-accused-by-jamie-raskin-of-accidentally-revealing-damning-evidence-in-donald-trump-jack-smith-case/?

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Melania and Barron Busted Using Voting Method That Trump Calls ‘Cheating’

Donald Trump, first lady Melania, and their son Barron engaged in what the president calls “mail-in cheating.”

President Donald Trump’s family has also been busted using mail-in voting, days after the president called it “cheating.”

The 79-year-old has spent years railing against mail-in voting as a vehicle for mass fraud. Earlier this week, state election records revealed that HE requested his mail-in ballot on March 14, just days after he insisted his voting bill, the SAVE America Act, include strict limits on the practice.

And now, it has been revealed that the president’s wife, Melania Trump and the couple’s son Barron, who turned 20 last week, also voted by mail in the same Florida state legislature special election.

The timing is particularly ironic. On Monday, during a stop in Memphis, Trump referred to voting by mail as “mail-in cheating.” Days earlier, he had requested his ballot by post.

“Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating,” Trump said in Tennessee, where he appeared to doze off at a meeting and took an impromptu visit to Elvis Presley’s Graceland. “I call it ‘mail-in cheating,’ and we’ve got to do something about it.”

The SAVE America Act—the sweeping election bill Trump has made a central condition of reopening the government and funding the beleaguered Transportation Security Administration—would ban most mail-in voting.

Trump’s act would also require voters to present proof of citizenship in person when registering. Trump has demanded Senate Republicans nuke the filibuster to pass it. According to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, the law threatens to disenfranchise 21 million Americans who lack ready access to the required documents.

It is also worth noting that Trump was physically present at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida during the early in-person voting period, which ran through Sunday—meaning he could have voted in person had he chosen to.

A White House spokesperson dismissed the revelations as a “non-story” on Tuesday, pointing out that Trump lives in Washington, D.C., and that the SAVE America Act contains exceptions for mail-in ballots in cases of illness, disability, military service, or travel. The explanation did not address why the president spent the voting period at the very Florida property where he is registered to vote.

This is not a new pattern. According to NPR, Trump has cast mail-in ballots throughout his years-long crusade against the practice, going back to at least 2020. In August, he posted on Truth Social vowing to “lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS,” claiming the U.S. was “the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting” and that “ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING.”

The crusade is also running into resistance within his own party. Many red states have long relied on mail-in voting, which has weakened Republican support for the SAVE Act, the Wall Street Journal reported this week.

Florida Republicans in particular have depended on it for decades to turn out older, whiter parts of the electorate—a dynamic that began to shift during the pandemic, when Democrats in swing states started requesting mail-in ballots in greater numbers.

White House spokesperson Olivia Wales again called this a “non-story.”

“As President Trump has said, the SAVE America Act has commonsense exceptions for Americans to use mail-in ballots for illness, disability, military, or travel–but universal mail-in voting should not be allowed because it’s highly susceptible to fraud," she said.

Wales added: “As everyone knows, the President is a resident of Palm Beach and participates in Florida elections, but he obviously primarily lives at the White House in Washington, D.C. This is a non-story.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/melania-and-barron-busted-using-voting-method-that-trump-calls-cheating/?

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No One Asked for This

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A popular joke in the 1850s concerned a man who, upon being convicted for the murder of his parents, throws himself at the judge’s feet and begs for mercy on a poor orphan.

The tale came to mind recently as I read about a hearing challenging President Trump’s authority to build a new ballroom where the White House’s East Wing had stood until Trump abruptly demolished it last fall. The president had been insisting for some time that any work would not “interfere with the current building,” then razed it so quickly that no one had any time to intervene legally. In court this month, a Justice Department lawyer echoed the parricide orphan, pleading with a judge not to halt construction and arguing that it is necessary due to unspecified security concerns—even if he agreed with a suit brought by preservationists. “It does not benefit the public,” DOJ’s Yaakov Roth said, “to have this site dormant.”

Perhaps the administration should have considered this before it demolished the bustling building that used to be there. (U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon has not ruled but has said that he hopes to issue a decision by the end of this month.) The Trump team has discovered that acting fast can prevent anyone from stepping in to stop them—the “You can just do things” ethos. But the president still doesn’t understand why it might be unwise to do something, even if you can. His hasty actions keep producing crises that the administration then insists require everyone to accept further exercises of executive power.

Trump’s war—sorry, “operation”—in Iran is a perfect example. The president didn’t ask Congress to declare war, and he did not receive, or request, an authorization for use of military force. The administration briefed the “Gang of Eight” (the leaders of the House, Senate, and each body’s intelligence committees from both parties) just before the strikes but, according to The New York Times, misled them about the scope of the attack. Trump did not work to build support for war with Iran among the American people, and he did not attempt to assemble a coalition of allies other than Israel to take part.

Now that the operation has hit difficulty, though, Trump wants exactly the same people he ignored—Congress, the American people, and allies—to bail him out. The administration has asked for an astonishing $200 billion to fund a war that the president also sporadically claims is over, giving legislators an unappetizing choice between funding a quagmire or else walking away and leaving a mess behind. Administration officials have also called on citizens to make sacrifices to handle higher gas and energy prices in the service of a war they don’t support, whose aims the president can’t articulate. And Trump has alternatingly pleaded with and raged at allies who, having avoided a war they didn’t want—and having endured years of scorn from Trump—are now unwilling to put their own troops in danger to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

This logic of escalation has also appeared in domestic affairs. Having effected a hostile takeover of the Kennedy Center, Trump now finds himself insisting that the venue close for two years, reportedly in part because it has failed to book enough artists or sell enough tickets to remain open.

Or take Operation Metro Surge. In late 2025, Trump decided to send a contingent of immigration officers to Minnesota, ostensibly to respond to cases of benefit fraud among the state’s Somali population. The Justice Department was already prosecuting the matter, and it wasn’t clear what exactly Department of Homeland Security officers were going to do. Once they arrived and began patrolling neighborhoods, however, residents protested; the administration responded by expanding its deployment. Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and dispatch active-duty soldiers, though he ultimately did not. By the time the administration pulled back, agents had arrested at least 3,000 people, but only 23 of them were Somali and none was connected to the fraud allegations, according to the Star Tribune. Meanwhile, two American citizens were shot and killed by federal agents.

The Minnesota operation was not only a tactical flop; it was a political blunder. The administration sacked Greg Bovino, the Customs and Border Protection official who had become the front man for aggressive enforcement. Most agents were yanked from Minnesota. Trump’s ratings on immigration, once his signature issue, turned hard against him.

This is ironic, because the original intention was a quick political win. Trump had hoped to spotlight the benefit fraud both to bolster his case for immigration enforcement and also because of his outspoken bigotry toward Somalis. He seems to have thought the same about the Iran operation, expecting as quick a win there as he (appears to have) notched in Venezuela. Instead, he has ended up worse off as a matter of his stated goals and political interests alike.

Following protocol might have deprived Trump of the splashiness of these sudden actions, or even prevented him from doing these things—but it might also have helped him avoid the missteps that are plaguing him. Trump doesn’t recognize that although rules can limit him, they also protect him. A lawyer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which is challenging the ballroom, made the same point more pithily during the hearing last week. Thaddeus Heuer noted that the administration could have consulted with relevant authorities before demolition but had declined.

“They have forgotten the proverbial first law of holes,” he said. “When you find yourself in one, stop digging.”

Related:

• Is Trump actually having “very good” talks with Tehran?
• Why Trump keeps creating crises (From 2018)

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Claude's comeback path

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Stock: Getty Images

Here are two hard truths the Pentagon and Anthropic won't state bluntly about their feud over unfettered AI use in warfare, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a "Behind the Curtain" column: Anthropic's AI is vastly better for warfare than any other AI on the market. It could take ChatGPT, Gemini or Grok months to come close, insiders tell us. Anthropic will take a massive, long-term financial hit if it remains blacklisted by the government as a "national security supply chain risk." We're talking tens of billions of dollars in direct and indirect contracts in the coming years, the insiders say. Why it matters: Anthropic is suing the Trump administration for nixing use of Claude, the company's large language model, after the company refused to allow its AI to be used for fully autonomous warfare or mass surveillance of Americans (which the Pentagon says is already illegal). So a compromise seems undoable. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is pretty dug in. A source familiar with his thinking told us: "Unless they come back to the government and say, 'We're going to agree to any lawful use,' there isn't anything to talk about. ... The secretary's bottom line is 'all lawful uses.'" But there is a path, sources on both sides tell us. 👀 Behind the scenes: In private, some leaders inside the federal government want Anthropic AI, both for warfighting and cyber defense. These officials believe Anthropic is a big reason the U.S. is probably 6-12 months ahead of China in leveraging AI for national defense. Claude is also being used extensively for the Iran war. Also in private, lots of people at Anthropic or advising its CEO, Dario Amodei, believe they were within inches of a deal that would have and should have satisfied both sides. They're pushing Amodei and the Pentagon to revive the talks. An Anthropic court filing included a one-paragraph email from Emil Michael, the Pentagon official negotiating with the company, saying "we are very close here" to an agreement on language. The note was dated March 4, five days after Hegseth declared the company a "Supply-Chain Risk to National Security." The day after the letter, Michael tweeted: "I want to end all speculation: there is no active @DeptofWar negotiation with @AnthropicAI." Earlier, Michael said on X that Amodei "is a liar and has a God-complex." One possibility: Anthropic agrees to parameters on ensuring AI is used lawfully, and arranges to donate to Trump Accounts, and/or back other AI policies both sides support. Brad Gerstner could be a middleman. Gerstner's firm, Altimeter Capital, is an Anthropic investor, and he's an Amodei adviser. He's also an architect of Trump Accounts, which provide $1,000 to every newborn whose parents enroll, and allow parents and others to contribute until the child turns 18. Older kids can get Trump Accounts through philanthropic efforts like last year's massive gift by Michael and Susan Dell. Amodei and top Anthropic officials have said publicly they want the country, not just themselves, to be enriched by their fast-growing company. So they could conceivably fund Trump Accounts. It's also possible they strike a deal by compromising on language governing how the Pentagon will use Anthropic's Claude. There are also several Trump policies Amodei supports to help grease a deal. It's doubtful the exact language OpenAI agreed to will suffice, which remains a substantial and perhaps insurmountable obstacle. Either way, soon-to-be-released models are likely to stir government urgency to strike some kind of deal. Anthropic, in private discussions with government officials, is warning that the next big advancement will supercharge offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. That means the chances of something big, bad and very public hitting U.S. infrastructure or institutions will rise substantially. If Anthropic continues to outperform other models, the government's cyberwarriors will push to keep access to Claude. The bottom line: Any deal probably requires marriage-counselor-level mediation between Hegseth and Amodei. This is truly the territory of: Conservative defense secretaries are from Venus, and liberal Silicon Valley CEOs are from Mars. They couldn't think, talk or act more differently. In fact, take the two men out of it, and almost everyone else involved in the talks tells us we wouldn't be writing this column, because Anthropic AI would be the default AI of the U.S. military — until something superior comes along.

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Rejected Trump Explodes in 6AM Social Media Rant

The 79-year-old woke up early to fire off a flurry of unrelated and unhinged posts.

President Donald Trump unleashed a furious Truth Social tirade against NATO early Thursday for doing “absolutely nothing” to help him with his Iran war mess.

Calling Iran a “lunatic nation” that is nevertheless now “militarily decimated,” Trump appeared to be still hurting over NATO nations rejecting his call for them to send ships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

“THE U.S.A. NEEDS NOTHING FROM NATO, BUT ‘NEVER FORGET’ THIS VERY IMPORTANT POINT IN TIME!” he shouted in all-caps at 6.16 a.m. on the East Coast.

Around 20 minutes later, he explicitly warned Iran to “get serious soon.”

Appearing to renege slightly on claims that Iran was playing ball with his peace proposal, he called negotiators “very different and strange.”

“They are ‘begging’ us to make a deal, which they should be doing since they have been militarily obliterated, with zero chance of a comeback, and yet they publicly state that they are only ‘looking at our proposal.’ WRONG!!!” he ranted.

He then delivered a threat, writing: “They better get serious soon, before it is too late, because once that happens, there is NO TURNING BACK, and it won’t be pretty! President DJT”

It comes after the Trump administration presented Iran with a 15-point peace plan. According to two officials who spoke to the New York Times, the plan was delivered via officials in Pakistan, which is trying to broker an end to the conflict.

On Saturday, Trump threatened to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if it did not reopen the Strait of Hormuza within 48 hours, only to reverse course by Monday evening.

He said “very good and productive conversations” with Iran prompted him to postpone the planned strikes. However, Iran contradicted Trump with several officials claiming no such talks had taken place.

“Has the level of your internal conflicts reached the state of negotiating with yourselves?” Lieutenant Colonel Ebrahim Zolfaghari mocked on Tuesday.

“Don’t call your failure an agreement,” he added, according to the Fars news agency.

On Tuesday, Trump even claimed that the regime had furnished him with “a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money.”

He said that was “oil and gas-related,” but would not go into detail or reveal what the present was, only noting that it was “significant.”

His customary mini-meltdown continued with posts taking jabs at his predecessor, Joe Biden, and the Democrats over the partial government shutdown. He fired off eight posts in just 45 minutes.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/rejected-trump-explodes-in-6am-social-media-rant/?

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Trump Makes Frantic Excuse After Iran’s Humiliating Reveal

The president has made a bold claim about Iran.

Donald Trump has claimed Iran is negotiating with the U.S. to end the current war but is “afraid” to admit it.

The 79-year-old president made the remark at the National Republican Congressional Committee’s annual fundraising dinner on Wednesday evening.

“They are negotiating, by the way,” Trump claimed of Iran. “They want to make a deal so badly but they are afraid to say it. Because they figure they will be killed by their own people. They are also afraid they will be killed by us.”

His comments directly contradict Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, who said the country was not in negotiations with the U.S. over a resolution to the war and had “no intention” to have any such conversations.

Speaking on Iran’s state TV news channel, he said the U.S. had been “sending various messages through different intermediaries” for several days.

Araghchi clarified that the messages were “conveyed via friendly countries” and said the fact Iran was responding by stating their “positions and issuing warnings” is “neither dialogue nor negotiation, nor anything of the sort.”

He confirmed that Iran’s policy was to continue “defending” itself and said they had “no intention of negotiating for now”.

“This is Israel’s war and people of the region and people of the U.S. are paying the price for it,” he said.

Araghchi’s comments came as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt asserted that Trump had been negotiating with Iran this week.

Leavitt claimed Wednesday that the U.S. has been “engaged over the last three days in productive conversations,” which had seen Trump postpone planned strikes on Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure.

“There does not need to be any more death and destruction,” Leavitt said. “But if Iran fails to accept the reality of the current moment, if they fail to understand that they have been defeated militarily and will continue to be, President Trump will ensure they are hit harder than they have ever been hit before.”

She added, “President Trump does not bluff and he is prepared to unleash hell. Iran should not miscalculate again.”

Trump pushed forward with his dismissal of Iran in his speech, even joking about the country. “There’s never been a head of a country that wanted that job less than being the head of Iran.” He added, “They say, ‘I don’t want it.’ We’ll make you the next supreme leader, ‘No thank you, I don’t want it.’”

Trump even said he was avoiding using the word “war” to discuss the current situation with Iran, which began on Feb. 28 after U.S. and Israeli air strikes on the country.

“I won’t use the word war because they say if you use the word war, that’s maybe not a good thing to do,” Trump said.

“They don’t like the word war because you are supposed to get approval. So I will use the word ‘military operation.’ Which is really what it is. It’s called a military decimation.” A “military operation” is a term, however, not a word.

Trump’s speech on Wednesday also saw him contradict himself.

In the White House on Tuesday, Trump told reporters that Iran had “shot 100 missiles at one of our aircraft carriers, one of the biggest ships in the world, actually.” Iran’s state media released footage it claims showed cruise missiles fired in the direction of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier.

Speaking during Wednesday’s NRCC dinner, Trump backtracked on his original reveal of the target of the attack.

“You know, we had an attack, 100 missiles were shot by Iran at a very important thing that we had—I won’t tell you what it was, for certain reasons—100 missiles going 2,000 miles an hour were coming at this element of importance. Tremendous power and importance.”

The Daily Beast has contacted U.S. Central Command for comment.

Trump’s confusing comments about negotiating with Iran will fuel concerns about the war, which shows no sign of ending.

Sources told CNN the delay was being caused by the gap between the demands of the U.S. and Iran. “The very basics must be agreed on before the two sides board and take off for negotiations,” one source said.

It follows the U.S. using Pakistan to convey a 15-point list of demands to Iran, including having no nuclear weapons. Iran’s counterproposal included recognition of the nation’s sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-makes-frantic-excuse-after-irans-humiliating-reveal/?

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Trump’s Approval Hits New Low in Devastating Fox News Poll as Even Republicans Bail

The brutal poll shows Trump’s approval rating hitting a second term low.

President Donald Trump’s approval rating has fallen to a new low in a devastating Fox News poll, with even parts of his own party beginning to drift away.

The poll, conducted March 20-23 among 1,001 registered voters, shows that just 41 percent of registered voters approve of Trump’s job performance, while 59 percent said they disapprove—the highest disapproval rating of either of his two terms. Nearly half of voters, 47 percent, said they strongly disapprove.

The slide marks a sharp deterioration from a year ago, when Trump’s standing was nearly even at 49 percent approval to 51 percent disapproval.

What makes the latest results especially striking is the erosion inside the GOP. Trump’s approval among Republicans dropped to 84 percent, his lowest level of the second term, down from 92 percent last March. The softening appears to be driven largely by non-MAGA Republicans, whose approval of Trump fell 11 points over the past year, from 70 percent to 59 percent.

By contrast, Trump’s support among his most loyal backers remains nearly intact. Among MAGA Republicans, approval barely budged, slipping just 1 point from 98 percent to 97 percent.

That is largely in line with other polls, which have shown his approval standing firm with MAGA Republicans. Analysis from CNN pollster Harry Enten this week showed that Trump’s support among MAGA Republicans remains at 100 percent.

Elsewhere, the numbers are grim. Among Democrats, 95 percent now disapprove of Trump, tying one of the highest levels of Democratic opposition of his presidency. Among independents, just 25 percent approve of his performance, while 75 percent disapprove.

It is not the first time a Fox News poll has given Trump brutal approval numbers. The pollsters, who have garnered praise for their lack of political bias, have consistently shown Trump polling below his predecessors at the same points in their second terms.

Such results have prompted Trump to rage against Fox News. In April 2025, he called the organization a “Trump Hating, Fake Pollster” that has gotten him and MAGA “wrong for years.”

Meanwhile, in June 2025, he wrote on Truth Social: “The Crooked Fox News Polls got the Election WRONG, I won by much more than they said I would, and have been biased against me for years.

“They are always wrong and negative. It’s why MAGA HATES FoxNews, even though their anchors are GREAT. This has gone on for years, but they never change the incompetent polling company that does their work.”

In August 2019, Trump told reporters: “My worst polls have always been from Fox. There’s something going on at Fox, and I tell you I’m not happy with it.”

The new numbers leave him in politically dangerous territory heading into the midterms, with voters increasingly turning against his presidency.

It comes as polls have shown grim results for the president in recent weeks after he started a war with Iran.

The war has seen at least 13 U.S. service members killed, and oil and gas prices soar for an electorate already squeezed by affordability concerns.

There has also been lingering questions about what Trump hopes to achieve in Iran, with the president offering conflicting explanations of his motivations for the air strikes, and failing to clarify how long the war will last.

Early on, Trump said the fighting could continue for “four weeks or so.” Not long after, though, he claimed the campaign was “very complete, pretty much,” before later walking that back and saying the war would not be over that week, though it would end “very soon.”

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has asked Congress for another $200 billion for the Iran conflict, undercutting Trump’s repeated claims that the war is nearly over. The administration is also reportedly weighing more air and naval deployments to protect oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz

As a result, polls have largely shown the public is opposed to Trump’s actions in Iran.

And the Fox News poll is no exception. The survey shows that voters are increasingly sour on Trump’s handling of Iran, with 64 percent now disapproving—up sharply from 57 percent in January.

Support for the current U.S. military campaign remains underwater, with just 42 percent backing the action and 58 percent opposed, including a sizable share who say they are strongly against it.

Many Americans also appear unconvinced the conflict will make the country safer. More voters say the war is likely to leave the United States less safe than safer, by 44 percent to 33 percent.

And despite Trump’s promises of a quick resolution, few seem to believe it. Just 13 percent expect the conflict to end within weeks, while the vast majority think it will drag on much longer—including 37 percent who say it will last months, 15 percent who expect it to stretch to a year, and 35 percent who think it could continue for more than a year.

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-approval-hits-new-low-in-devastating-fox-news-poll-as-even-republicans-bail/?

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Trump Privately Panicking Over His Own War Mess

Despite his public posturing, the president is reportedly wary of a protracted conflict.

President Donald Trump is privately eager to end his war with Iran despite his public boasting that things are “going very well.” Trump thought his Iran strikes would follow a similar playbook to his invasion of Venezuela, and expected to overthrow the Iranian regime in a matter of weeks or even days. Instead, he has unwittingly launched a broader regional conflict that has spiraled beyond his control, sending gas prices soaring and sparking a political backlash that threatens Republican prospects in the midterm elections.

The president on Monday vowed to “keep bombing our little hearts out” if talks with Iran didn’t work out, but privately, he has told associates and advisers he wants to end the war in the next couple of weeks to avoid a protracted conflict, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Trump told one associate that the war was distracting from his other priorities, the person told the Journal, while another said the president appears ready to move onto his next big challenge, though it’s not clear what that would be.

The president is also worried about additional U.S. casualties, the Journal reported. So far, 13 Americans have been killed and nearly 300 have been wounded in the war.

The White House expects the war to be over by mid-May at the latest, though Trump would prefer to stick to his original four-to-six-week timeline, sources told the Journal.

In a statement to the newspaper, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump was “extraordinarily skilled at multi-tasking” and is working on multiple challenges at the same time.

“The President is laser focused on fully achieving the military objectives against the terrorist Iranian regime,” she said. “The president’s sole focus is always victory.”

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

Trump appeared to realize last week that his own war was spiraling beyond his control after he greenlit an Israeli strike on the South Pars gas field, part of the world’s largest natural gas reserve, triggering retaliatory strikes from Iran on oil and gas infrastructure in Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

The South Pars attack marked a major escalation in the war and threatened to deepen an energy crisis that was already hurting Republicans’ chances of keeping their majorities in Congress in November.

The president has been desperate to de-escalate the situation.

On Saturday, the president declared in a Truth Social post that Iran had 48 hours to reopen to the Strait of Hormuz, or else the U.S. would “hit and obliterate” the country’s power plants.

But then on Monday, with the strait still closed, he said he was pausing strikes on energy infrastructure for five days due to “constructive conversations” over the weekend between the U.S. and Iran.

Iran’s foreign minister, however, said the country was not negotiating directly with the U.S. over a war resolution and had “no intention” of doing so.

Instead, the U.S. has been sending messages through intermediaries, Abbas Araghchi told Iran’s state TV news.

The regime is reportedly refusing to engage with Trump’s chosen emissaries to the Middle East, real estate developer Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, over concerns that the negotiations would not be in good faith and would just be a pretext for further attacks.

Iran prefers to engage with Vice President JD Vance, who has been wary of U.S. foreign intervention.

Despite his diplomatic overtures, Trump has told the Pentagon to keep the pressure on Tehran, a senior U.S. official told the Journal.

He has ordered the deployment of thousands of ground troops to the Middle East, and has not ruled out a land invasion.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-privately-panicking-over-his-own-war-mess/?

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Billionaire Trump Says He Couldn’t Care Less About High Costs During War

The 79-year-old thinks his unpopular conflict is worth Americans’ “short-term” financial hardships.

President Trump has casually admitted he knew the oil crisis caused by his war in Iran would affect millions of Americans already suffering through a cost-of-living crisis—but didn’t care.

Speaking to House Republicans at the National Republican Congressional Committee fundraising dinner in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, the president—who has an estimated net worth of more than $6 billion—defended the higher prices the Middle East conflict has caused.

“I thought it was going to be much worse. I thought that the energy prices, oil prices, would go up higher. I thought the stock market would go somewhat lower,” Trump said. “But it didn’t matter to me. It’s short-term.”

“What we had to do is get rid of the cancer. We had to cut out the cancer. The cancer was Iran with a nuclear weapon, and we’ve cut it out. Now we’re going to finish it off.”

During his speech, the 79-year-old also claimed that “numerous” other U.S. presidents from the past 47 years “wished” they had started a war with Iran but “didn’t have the guts to do it.”

This is despite every former president still alive today—Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden—denying Trump’s previous claim that one of them secretly confided in him that they supported his war in Iran.

Trump’s multibillion-dollar conflict in the Middle East has lasted nearly a month and shows no clear sign of ending soon, despite the president’s repeated insistence that it will.

The war has also sparked a worldwide oil crisis as Iran has closed off the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow shipping route through which around one-fifth of the world’s oil passes, in retaliation for the U.S. and Israel’s attacks.

As a result, gas prices are rising in the U.S., with crude oil repeatedly topping $100 a barrel. Economists have warned that if oil prices continue to skyrocket amid Trump’s war, the U.S. could fall into a recession.

Trump, who spent months telling tens of millions of Americans there was no cost-of-living crisis and that complaints about affordability were a “hoax,” was already recording dire polling numbers on the economy during his second term before he launched his deeply unpopular Iran war.

Those numbers have only worsened due to the fuel crisis stemming from the Middle East conflict, which could spell further trouble for the GOP in November’s midterm elections.

On Tuesday, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Trump with a second-term low approval rating of 36 percent, while his approval rating on the economy fell to an all-time low of 29 percent.

That figure is also lower than anything Biden recorded during his term in office, which was plagued by decades-high inflation and skyrocketing gas prices in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

An Associated Press/NORC survey released Wednesday also found that 45 percent of Americans said they were “extremely” or “very” concerned about being able to afford gas in the coming months.

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/billionaire-donald-trump-says-he-couldnt-care-less-about-high-costs-during-war/?

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Did Republican Sen. John Kennedy say Trump thwarted deal with Democrats to end DHS shutdown?

The revelation came during the second month of a partial government shutdown that saw major delays at airports.

Claim:

Republican U.S. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana claimed he and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, had a deal with the Democrats that would have ended a partial government shutdown in 2026, but U.S. President Donald Trump vetoed it: "We could have had TSA paid by the end of the week. But the president said no deal."

Rating:

Correct Attribution

In March 2026, as the U.S. government faced a second month of a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, a purported quote from a Republican U.S. senator spread online. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana appeared to blame the extension of the shutdown on President Donald Trump, saying, "We could've had TSA paid by the end of the week. But the president said no deal." 

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/gop-senator-trump-dhs-shutdown/?

ps:Can you believe that? Well if you remember a while back Trump told the GOP not to make a deal with the democrats on immigration!!!!! Not just once but twice, the first time was in his first term!!!!! Pretty sad!!

 

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Pam Bondi’s DOJ Admits Jaw-Dropping ‘Error’ Used to Justify Arrests

The Justice Department admitted it misled a federal court for over a year about memo it used to justify courthouse immigration arrests.

President Donald Trump’s Justice Department has confessed it spent nearly a year misleading a federal court about its justification for the mass arrest of immigrants at their own hearings.

The Trump administration launched its courthouse arrest practice following the president’s return to the White House, with federal agents regularly seizing migrants in hallways outside immigration courtrooms, sometimes within minutes of those migrants appearing before a judge to plead their cases.

Legal advocates said the tactic turned the immigration court system into an enforcement trap, punishing people for doing what the law required of them.

Now the Justice Department has acknowledged that the legal foundation the administration built its case on was never there.

The admission came in a letter filed Tuesday with Judge P. Kevin Castel by Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

The case—African Communities Together v. Lyons—was brought last year by civil rights groups challenging the administration’s practice of detaining migrants inside immigration courthouses, a policy that shocked attorneys and advocates, as people who had arrived to participate in their own legal hearings found themselves in handcuffs.At the center of the blunder is a May 27, 2025, ICE memorandum titled Civil Immigration Enforcement Actions in or Near Courthouses, which the government had repeatedly leaned on in its defense.

Clayton told Judge Castel, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, that ICE counsel informed the Justice Department on the morning the letter was filed that the guidance “does not and has never applied to civil immigration enforcement actions” at immigration courts—which, critically, fall under the Justice Department’s own jurisdiction, not ICE’s.

The government is now withdrawing the relevant portions of multiple court briefs and statements made at a Sept. 2, 2025, oral argument that relied on the guidance.

Clayton acknowledged the full cascading nature of the error—that his attorneys had been specifically told by ICE that the guidance did apply to immigration courthouse arrests, obtained ICE approval before filing every brief in the case, and received that assurance throughout the litigation. The error, he wrote, “appears to have occurred because of agency attorney error.”

Immigration advocates were scathing. “ICE has claimed that a 2025 memorandum authorized and justified their devastating policy of conducting mass arrests at immigration courts,” Amy Belsher, director of immigrant rights litigation at the New York Civil Liberties Union, wrote in a letter to Judge Castel.

“The government is now admitting that this document—which the court relied on to deny our clients relief—does not and never has authorized these courthouse arrests. It is another example of ICE’s brazen disregard for the lives of immigrants in this country.”

The NYCLU and American Civil Liberties Union said in a separate letter to Castel that “the implications of this development are far-reaching,” noting that migrants had continued to be arrested at immigration court appearances throughout the litigation—often held in far-flung facilities, sometimes across multiple state lines from where they were arrested.

The Daily Beast has contacted the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pam-bondis-doj-admits-jaw-dropping-error-used-to-justify-ice-arrests/?

ps:Does that really shock anyone?

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Trump’s ICE Brag Immediately Blown Up by Scathing Poll

Donald Trump claimed that Americans think ICE officers are “nice guys,” but polls tell a different story.

Just one in three Americans now view Immigration and Customs Enforcement favorably, according to a new poll—undercutting President Donald Trump’s claim that the agency has suddenly become popular.

The latest Public Religion Research Institute poll, conducted between February 10–18 among 5,479 adults, shows that only 33 percent of Americans hold favorable views of ICE.

That is down six points from September 2025, when 39 percent of Americans said they approve of ICE.

The number of Republicans who approve of the agency has also declined since September, from 78 to 73 percent. The poll had a 1.5 percent margin of error.

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.

ICE has been under fire since the killing of two people in Minneapolis. Renée Good and Alex Pretti were killed within weeks of each other after Trump deployed hundreds of immigration enforcement officers to the city as part of a crackdown.

Both were killed by immigration enforcement officers. The state of Minnesota has sued federal authorities for evidence after lawmakers say the government blocked access to crucial information about the shootings.

Since then, lawmakers have also been at odds over whether federal immigration officers should wear masks. Both Good and Pretti were killed by officers wearing face coverings.

Democratic lawmakers say that federal immigration agents should stop wearing masks. However, Trump and his Republican allies initially refused to budge.

But this week, Trump begged ICE agents to lower their masks after he deployed them to airports across the country to assist TSA agents amid the government shutdown.

Trump claimed on Wednesday that since he issued his plea, ICE agents are now experiencing a wave of popularity.

“They were wearing masks. I said, do you mind taking off your masks in the airport? And they took them off. And people said wow, these are nice guys. People are starting to say, ICE, you are nice guys,” he said during a rambling speech at the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) annual fundraising dinner in Washington, D.C.

But polls suggest otherwise. Earlier this month, a Fox News poll found that a record-high 58 percent of Americans disapprove of the job ICE is doing.

Polls also show that Americans disapprove of Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement strategy, including some Republicans.

The Public Religion Research Institute poll showed that just 35 percent of Americans rate Trump’s handling of immigration favorably—down from 48 percent in March 2025.

Favorable views of Trump’s handling of immigration have dropped across all parties, with significant declines among Republicans, from 90 percent to 78 percent.

That is a red flag for Trump and his party ahead of the 2026 midterms. Immigration has historically been a winning issue for the Republicans.

But recent polls have raised concerns among Republicans that Trump’s backing may no longer guarantee victories in districts once considered safe.

“A year ago, I would have told you we were almost guaranteed to win the Senate,” one GOP operative told Axios last month. “Today, I would have to tell you it’s far less certain.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-ice-brag-immediately-blown-up-by-scathing-poll/?

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Live updates: Trump insists Iran is ‘begging to make a deal’ after Tehran dismisses ceasefire plan

A day after Tehran dismissed Trump’s 15-point ceasefire plan, the American leader claimed that Iran was “begging to make a deal,” and that he wasn’t the one pushing for negotiations. Earlier Thursday, Trump told Tehran to “get serious soon” on negotiating a deal to end the war. Israel also said that  it killed Commodore Alireza Tangsiri, the head of Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s navy. Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said Tangsiri had been killed along with other senior naval commanders in a strike overnight. The secretary-general of a bloc of Gulf Arab countries said that Iran is charging fees for ships to safely transit the Strait of Hormuz. Read more.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

Most Republicans are loyal to Trump. A prolonged war in Iran could test that, an AP-NORC poll shows US eases Belarus sanctions as Trump says he’ll help US farmers impacted by Iran war WATCH: Iran's stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz: AP explains Iran war’s environmental toll could leave damage and health risks for decades, experts say

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Louisiana’s crawfish industry feels the pinch of limits on foreign workers

Spring is peak season in Louisiana for crawfish, the hard-shelled star of outdoor parties. But a shortage of foreign workers is dampening the mood. Deep in Louisiana’s bayous, where crawfish production is a $300 million industry that is a key ingredient for backyard boils and buttery etouffees served in New Orleans’ French Quarter, operators are fuming over labor struggles and pointing fingers at the  administration over what they say has been a failure to authorize enough guest foreign workers. The shortages add to a list of industries in the U.S. that rely on seasonal foreign labor, including landscaping and construction, whose struggle to fill jobs has been exacerbated during the Republican  administration’s wider clampdown on legal avenues for immigration. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The Department of Labor said it respects the crawfish industry and importance to the U.S. economy, and that the agency “has been actively engaging with industry stakeholders to help address workforce needs and identify workable solutions.” Read more.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

Inside Montana’s conflict with its capital city over immigration enforcement As border dynamics change, priest keeps ministering to migrants and deportees WATCH: Video shows Minnesota dad and boy were moved to ICE detention center on commercial flight Growth rate slowed in US metro areas in 2025, with steepest drops along the southern border Live updates: Pressure to fund DHS mounts in Congress ahead of spring recess Florida congresswoman faces a rare public hearing on ethics charges. Threat of expulsion vote looms FEMA will resume major grant program after yearlong hiatus, following a court order USPS seeks a temporary 8% charge on Priority Mail and other products to offset transportation costs Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez push bill to impose AI data center moratorium EU lawmakers approve trade deal with US but add safeguards Bill Maher will win the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain humor prize following White House denial