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

April 6

Frantic Search for Downed F-15 Airman as Iran Offers Bounty

A frantic search and rescue mission continues to try to find the second U.S. fighter jet crew member before the Iranians.

One crew member of a U.S. F-15E fighter jet shot down over Iran has reportedly been rescued by American forces.

But the race against time to find the second airman continued amid growing fears he may have been captured.

Donald Trump was being briefed on the situation on Friday as the war he claimed he had already won spun out of control.

U.S. search and rescue aircraft and helicopters scoured the area around Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz in the hope of plucking the crew to safety.

CBS News, quoting two U.S. officials, said one of the two crew had been rescued.

But Tehran was also flooding troops into the area where it claims the wreckage of the plane was found, with a state broadcaster offering local citizens a reward if they hand the Americans over to the authorities alive.

There have been unconfirmed reports online that one airman was captured by the “Sons of Haidar al-Karrar” in Iran.

Both Trump and his Defense Secretary Pete Hegeth have claimed the war of the skies over Iran was already over and insisted American planes could fly anywhere at will.

Now they face the possibility, if they are not found in time, that one U.S. service member could be paraded in front of the world’s media as a prisoner of war and held hostage in any future peace negotiations.

Pictures circulating online showed parts of what appear to be an F-15E and USAF aircraft that specialize in combat rescues flying low over south-west Iran.

Unnamed U.S. and Israeli officials told the New York Times that American officials scrambled to mount a search and rescue operation before Iran could get to any survivors.

The incident marks a dangerous new turn in the war, and comes despite Donald Trump repeatedly insisting the U.S. has already “decimated” Iran’s military capabilities.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was the first to claim that it had downed an “enemy” fighter jet over Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz.

The downing, although not the location, was then confirmed by Axios’ Barak Ravid, who has close connections at the top of the Israeli government, and in Washington D.C., who credited “a source familiar with the incident.”

U.S officials have also confirmed the incident and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the president had been briefed.

Iranian state-run media aired footage on Friday of a female anchor calling on civilians to help capture pilots of an American F-15E Strike Eagle that the regime claims was allegedly shot down over Southern Iran.

A photo also emerged of an ejection seat, but the whereabouts or status of the crew currently remains unknown. The photographs have not been independently verified.

Fars News, a semi-official Iranian news agency with close ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, reported that authorities offered a valuable reward for anyone who captures the U.S. fighter jet crew alive.

The Daily Beast has contacted the Pentagon, but they have yet to comment publicly on the report.

Central Command, which has operational control of the war, had denied a claim of a fighter being shot down almost 24 hours earlier, saying all U.S. planes were accounted for.

But that was hours before pictures of parts of an F-15E, and an apparent rescue mission, circulated.

The situation creates a military and diplomatic challenge for the U.S.

“I don’t see a way out right now for the United States that’s easy,” former Marine fighter pilot and one-time Democratic candidate Amy McGrath told CNN.

“People have to understand that Iran is the size, in landmass, of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan combined. So you’re talking a long way. If this happened somewhere in the middle of Iran, then it’s going to be very hard to sustain operations to try to find these aircrew.”

In a White House address this week, Trump said the war was “nearing completion” and that U.S. strikes had achieved most of their objectives.

But events on the ground suggest a far more volatile reality. In recent days, Trump has escalated further, vowing to bombard Iran “back to the Stone Ages.”

In an unhinged Truth Social post overnight, he also threatened to expand attacks on Iranian infrastructure—including bridges, power facilities, and other strategic targets—if Tehran does not yield.

“Our Military, the greatest and most powerful (by far!) anywhere in the World, hasn’t even started destroying what’s left in Iran,” Trump wrote overnight.

“Bridges next, then Electric Power Plants! New Regime leadership knows what has to be done, and it has to be done FAST!”

The threat is contentious because targeting civilian infrastructure is a direct violation of international humanitarian law.

Under the Geneva Conventions and their additional Protocols, parties to a conflict must strictly distinguish between military objectives and civilian objects.

Legal experts and humanitarian groups warn that if Trump were to make good on his threat, it could unleash catastrophic harm on millions of innocent civilians in Iran, who rely on energy and desalination plants for water and electricity.

Iran, for its part, has retaliated with drone and missile strikes across the Gulf, targeting energy and water facilities in neighboring countries and warning of broader regional consequences.

Three sources familiar with U.S. intelligence assessments told CNN that about half of Iran’s missile launchers are still intact and thousands of one-way attack drones remain in Iran’s arsenal.

Meanwhile, the White House on Friday released a summary of a budget proposal for the 2027 fiscal year, seeking $1.5 trillion in defense spending from Congress.

The sum is by far the largest amount in modern history. However, Trump had previously signaled such a funding boost would be “a small price to pay to stay tippy top.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/iran-shoots-down-us-f-15-fighter-in-humiliation-for-trump/?

April 6

Judge Smacks Down Trump’s Bizarre Argument Comparing Himself to Eminem

The judge corrected some glaring flaws in the president’s hypothetical.

A federal judge slapped down President Donald Trump’s argument that he wasn’t civilly liable for inciting violence at the deadly Capitol riot because his “Stop the Steal” speech was comparable to a rapper working up a crowd with divisive lyrics. The president told his followers on Jan. 6, 2021, to “fight like hell” or “you’re not going to have a country anymore” before they stormed the Capitol to try to stop congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory. He later argued in his response to a civil suit that his remarks should be interpreted as constitutionally protected speech, and not an illegal incitement to violence, because an adverse ruling would limit “public citizen speech.”

“To illustrate the point, he poses the hypothetical of a popular rapper (bearing some resemblance to Eminem) whose concert performance leads to fan violence,” U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, a Barack Obama appointee, wrote in a decision this week.

The hypothetical described a rapper known for his provocative and controversial lyrics that “describe explicit violent acts, including gun violence, rape, and a description of the rapper downing his wife.”

The rapper is aware that his song lyrics sometimes inspire young people to “act emotionally and sometimes violently” but nevertheless takes the stage in front of thousands of fans and performs his most aggressive songs.

He then stokes his audience’s passions by saying, “Fight the man! Fight Establishment! Don’t let them tell you what to do! Fight like hell!” Chaos ensues, with the fans storming the nearest establishments, stealing food from concession stands, attacking vendors, and beating security guards backstage.

According to Trump, if the court considered his “Stop the Steal” speech to be incitement, the hypothetical rapper would also be liable for his fans’ actions—an argument that Mehta flatly rejected.

“Here is what is missing from the President’s hypothetical,” he wrote.

To be an accurate comparison, the rapper would have needed to tell his fans for weeks before the concert that the “Establishment” had taken something valuable from them through fraud and deceit. He would have needed to know they were planning to act violently that very day, including bringing weapons to the show, to reclaim what was stolen from then.

The rapper also would have needed to specifically identify the offending members of the “Establishment,” and direct his fans to descend thousands strong on the exact place at the exact time the “Establishment” was working to take away that thing of value.

“Only if those facts are included does the rap concert begin to resemble January 6,” Mehta wrote. “The court would agree that, in this revised hypothetical, the rapper’s expression plausibly are words of incitement.”

He declined to dismiss the complaint on First Amendment grounds and ruled that much of Trump’s conduct that day fell outside the bounds of presidential immunity, allowing the case—which was brought by Democratic lawmakers and Capitol police officers—to move forward.

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

The ruling was handed down earlier this week but began making the rounds on social media on Thursday after Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff noticed the Eminem hypothetical buried deep in the decision.

Special Counsel Jack Smith had also secured a criminal indictment against Trump for his actions before and during the Capitol riot, but the case was dropped after Trump won re-election.Ironically, Eminem has been a vocal critic of Trump for years, using his interviews, music, and live performances to attack the president and his policies.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/judge-smacks-down-donald-trumps-bizarre-argument-comparing-himself-to-eminem/?

April 6

Trump Orders Vance to Launch Crusade Against Blue States in Morning Rage Post

The president has ordered his VP to target “CROOKED DEMOCRAT POLITICIANS.”

Donald Trump has ordered his vice president to target Democrat-led states as he leads a new nationwide anti-fraud task force.

“Vice President JD Vance is now in charge of ‘FRAUD’ in the United States,” the president announced in a Truth Social blast early Friday morning. “His focus will be ‘EVERYWHERE,’ but primarily in those Blue States where CROOKED DEMOCRAT POLITICIANS, like those in California, Illinois, Minnesota (Somalia beware!), Maine, New York, and many others, have had a “free for all” in the unprecedented theft of Taxpayer Money.”

Trump himself is the only convicted felon in U.S. history to have assumed the office of president after being found guilty in 2024 of falsifying business records over hush-money payments to an adult film star. A court also found him liable in a sweeping New York civil fraud case for inflating the value of his properties and net worth over more than a decade, a finding upheld on appeal in August 2025.

Trump said in his post that “raids have already started in Los Angeles,” apparently referring to the suspension of over 200 healthcare providers and hospices in California’s largest city in an FBI-led anti-fraud blitz which included a number of arrests. Fox News reported that the operation was carried out in “coordination” with Vance’s “Task Force to Eliminate Fraud.”

Friday’s announcement now ties a bow on what Trump had teased during his State of the Union address earlier in February, when the fraudster president declared a “war on fraud, to be led by our great Vice President, JD Vance.”

MAGA’s concerns over the scourge of fraud have been directed less at the president’s known propensity for deceptive business practices than toward Minnesota’s Feeding Our Future scandal, a pandemic-era scheme involving the theft of federal child nutrition funds.

The Biden administration opened an investigation into the fraud in 2022, which resulted in 78 individuals being charged. The second Trump administration has since claimed credit for the findings of that probe and is using them as a springboard for a nationwide crackdown aimed almost exclusively at states, like Minnesota, that did not vote for Trump.

His administration has further used the Minnesota fraud cases, in which the majority of defendants are of Somali descent, as a broad pretext for targeting the state’s entire Somali community.

Trump has referred to them as “garbage,” said he doesn’t want them in the country, and called Somalia “not even a nation.” His warning in Friday’s post—“Somalia beware!“—echoed his anti-migrant crackdown in Minnesota earlier this year that resulted in the fatal shooting of two U.S. citizens.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey warned then that “if this were about fraud, then you’d see an invasion perhaps of accountants.” Trump appears to have taken that remark on board, establishing his anti-fraud task force on March 16 during a ceremony at which he made little secret of what appears to be the initiative’s partisan aim.

“It seems that it’s usually in blue states,” he said. “If it’s in a red state, we’re going there too, but it seems that it’s heavily, heavily Democrat.”

Trump had already granted the title of “fraud czar” to Colin McDonald, a veteran federal prosecutor who is now serving as the first-assistant attorney general for national fraud enforcement, a new division of the Justice Department.

Vance, who it seems will instead take on that title as he works on the anti-fraud initiative from inside the White House, is a former venture capitalist with a law degree but no background in auditing, fraud enforcement, or the administration of social insurance programs.

What he does possess, however, is access to the full machinery of the federal government—and a political mandate from his boss to point it at the president’s enemies.

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/president-donald-trump-orders-jd-vance-to-launch-crusade-against-blue-states-in-morning-rage-post/?

April 6

Desperate Trump Pleads With World to Help Him ‘Make a Fortune’ With His War

The 79-year-old president bizarrely claimed he could bring about a “gusher for the world.”

Donald Trump has fired off a wild plea for the world to help him “make a fortune” with his Iran war.

In a bizarre post on Truth Social on Friday morning, the 79-year-old president claimed the U.S. could “easily” reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global shipping route through which about a fifth of the world’s oil supplies flow.

It was shuttered by Iran following U.S.-Israeli strikes on Feb. 28, and oil prices have since soared more than 50 percent. Trump has responded to the resulting oil crisis with a flurry of conflicting claims, insisting the strait’s closure is no problem for the U.S. while at the same time threatening massive strikes if it’s not immediately opened.

“With a little more time, we can easily OPEN THE HORMUZ STRAIT, TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A FORTUNE. IT WOULD BE A ‘GUSHER’ FOR THE WORLD???” Trump wrote in his latest missive.

As recently as Wednesday, Trump said it wasn’t Washington’s job to pressure Tehran to reopen the vital oil route. In a televised address to the nation, he called on other countries to “take care” of the strait.

“They must cherish it. They must grab it and cherish it. They can do it easily,” the president said.

A day earlier, he lashed out at Washington’s allies who have so far been reluctant to support the military operation in Iran, telling them to “go get your own oil.”

“Go to the strait and just take it,” Trump said on social media. “You have to start learning how to fight for yourself. Go get your own oil.”Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has parroted Trump’s rhetoric that nations more dependent on the waterway should take responsibility for protecting it.

On Wednesday, he said the strait “is an international waterway that we use less than most, in fact dramatically less than most.”

“It’s not just our problem set, going forward, even though we have done the lion’s share of preparation to ensure that that strait will be open,” the defense secretary said.

The president has publicly vented about a lack of support from Washington’s allies, calling NATO’s stance a “very foolish mistake.”

He warned in an interview with the Financial Times that rebuffing his calls to help secure the strait “will be very bad for the future of NATO.”

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/desperate-trump-pleads-with-world-to-help-him-make-a-fortune-with-his-war/?

ps:The greed and the love of money is all this man can see!!!!!

April 6

💸 Trump's no-butter budget

Illustration of a detonator on a rolled-up bill.

Illustration: Lindsey Bailey/Axios

The White House is out today with a 2027 budget proposal that's all guns and no butter, as Axios chief economics correspondent Neil Irwin puts it.

🚀 Defense spending would skyrocket 42%.
🧨 Non-defense spending would plunge 10%.
🌹 GDP growth is assumed to be far higher than projected, and interest rates far lower.

Between the lines: It's April 3, and the 2026 budget's still not fully set.

April 6

An Island on the Brink

																(Juancho Torres / Anadolu / Getty)
															

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Will Gottsegen: What is the White House’s plan for Cuba right now?

Vivian Salama: Late last year, the administration started clamping down on Venezuela economically and militarily with the forward-looking objective of doing the same thing to Cuba. For decades, Cuba has been highly dependent on Venezuela for economic purposes, primarily oil. By cutting off Venezuela’s ability to export oil, the administration was also hoping that it would inflict intense pain on and ultimately spur dramatic change in the Cuban government.

What the White House wants to happen remains sort of opaque. It says that Venezuela’s leaders need to go, but it doesn’t explicitly talk about regime change. It’s important to put Venezuela into that context, because even though the administration forcefully removed Nicolás Maduro in January, it did so while still maintaining, for now at least, his regime. Trump is working with Maduro’s vice president in Venezuela, and would potentially do something similar in Cuba. Will we see ground incursions, or a dramatic raid like we saw in Venezuela? That is a big question mark.

Will: The Trump administration has indicated that it’s more interested in changing Cuba’s leadership than it is in toppling the current regime. Why might that be the administration’s goal, as opposed to ending communism on the island?

Vivian: The goal is to pursue commercial and economic interests for the United States. That is really what President Trump is all about. The ideological element is not a primary factor for him, as it is for many Cuban Americans. Trump will have achieved something historic and significant if he is able to put in place a Cuban government, or a Cuban leader, at least, who is more compliant with the U.S. so that the U.S. can go and invest in Cuba. Anything beyond that is sort of in the weeds for him.

Will: Why is Trump choosing this moment to act?

Vivian: Every president, Democrat and Republican, has mused over the idea of regime change in Cuba. It has just been a matter of how they would achieve that.

This has been one of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s primary objectives since he took public office. He has long called for regime change in Cuba. He has long called for a democratic transition in Venezuela, and he was able to convince Trump that this is tied to two things: his immigration and anti-narcotics crackdown and his broader ambitions for the U.S. to reassert its dominance in the Western Hemisphere. Trump is also very much focused on his legacy. He’s a second-term president, and, barring a dramatic change to the Constitution, he will leave office. He wants to do things that other presidents talked about and didn’t do. The Iran war is among those. And so is a dramatic realignment of the Cuban government.

Will: What has the current oil blockade done to Cuba?

Vivian: Garbage is accumulating in the streets because there’s no gas for the trucks to go around and pick it up. People are reportedly dying or in very, very bad conditions because hospital generators are now failing. The city of Havana—and the country in general—has plunged into darkness multiple times because its power grid has completely failed. This is exactly the impact that the Trump administration was looking to achieve in order to bring the Cuban regime to its knees.

Cubans have gone through periods similar to this in the past. They are used to sort of hunkering down and relying on the bare minimum to function. But in this case, it’s been so bad that it seems the government has at least been forced to start negotiating with Washington.

Will: What has Russia’s role been here, as Cuba’s longtime ally? I know the Kremlin has said it’s going to continue sending aid to the island.

Vivian: After the blockade started, a Russian oil tanker set sail for Cuba. That was before the United States eased sanctions on Russian oil last month to help mitigate the Iran war’s effects on the global economy. And the tanker didn’t turn around, even when Trump later amended those sanctions to bar Russia from supplying oil to Cuba specifically. Russia’s move was seen as a sign that its relationship with Cuba remains pretty tight, but this wasn’t a purely humanitarian gesture. It was also an attempt to poke at the United States, and there were questions about whether or not there would be a confrontation.

Then Trump said on Sunday that he would allow the tanker to reach Cuba, effectively breaking his own blockade. The sense among administration officials that I talked with was that they have inflicted enough pain for the Cuban government to want to talk—they do not want the situation to reach a point where it spurs an exodus of Cubans, or leads to a pandemic of some kind on the island. There are worries that there could be an outbreak of cholera because of conditions there.

Russia always looks to benefit when there is geopolitical disarray. With the U.S. so focused on the war in Iran, Russia has stood to benefit both with regard to its own conflict in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world. Cuba is a very small example of that. The fear is that if the U.S. continues to grant permissions to Russia, or turn a blind eye to Russia, the country could rebuild, once again, to be the kind of global menace that we saw in the years leading up to its invasion of Ukraine.

Related:

April 7

Key Details Trump Accuser, 13, Told FBI Were Censored From Epstein Files

The FBI interviewed her four times in 2019.

FBI notes from an interview with a woman who accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager have not been publicly released, a report claims.

A South Carolina woman told the FBI that she was abused and trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein, and that he brought her to New York or New Jersey, where she was introduced to Trump in 1984. She was about 13 years old at the time.

The Post and Courier, which previously reported that about 30 pages of documents relevant to her claims have not been released as part of the millions of Epstein files, has now revealed that some details in the FBI notes did not appear in official summaries, known as 302s.

For instance, in the 302s, the woman showed some uncertainty about traveling with Epstein.

“He drove her and/or flew her to either New York or New Jersey,” the report said. “She was introduced to someone with money, money, money… It was Donald Trump.”

The report said the woman had “two additional interactions” with Trump, but that when agents tried asking her questions about them, she “asked that the interview move on to a different subject for the time being.”

The Post and Courier describes the FBI’s handwritten notes as “slightly less tentative about her travel with Epstein, which—if true—could constitute underage sex trafficking.“

For instance, they allege that Epstein both “drove her and flew her” to New York and New Jersey, and that he introduced her to Trump. The woman overheard them talking about business matters, including a casino, according to the notes.

The woman said that “Trump did not like her from the get-go,” and then described Trump’s alleged assault. The notetaker also wrote down that the woman claimed to have had “two more interactions” with Trump.

In March, the Department of Justice released summaries of three FBI interviews with the woman, conducted between August and October 2019.

The woman alleged that Epstein took her to a “very tall building with huge rooms.” Trump, she said, ordered everyone else out of the room, unzipped his pants, and pushed her head “down to his penis.” She then “bit the s--t out of” Trump’s penis, she said, after which he punched her in the head.

The Daily Beast has contacted the Justice Department for comment.

Earlier this week, a DOJ spokesperson rejected the notion of withheld files.

“There are no missing pages and the Department categorically rejects this media-created myth,” a DOJ spokesperson told the Daily Beast. “This production may include fake or falsely submitted images, documents or videos, as everything that was sent to the FBI by the public was included in the production that is responsive to the Act.”

The White House has also denied the woman’s story.

“The total baselessness of these accusations is also supported by the obvious fact that Joe Biden’s Department of Justice knew about them for four years and did nothing with them—because they knew President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Daily Beast.

“As we have said countless times, President Trump has been totally exonerated by the release of the Epstein Files.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/key-details-donald-trump-accuser-13-told-fbi-were-censored-from-jeffrey-epstein-files/?

April 7

Trump’s Easter Message Isn’t Just Wrong—It’s Blasphemous

“Donald Trump is no more Jesus Christ than I am an astronaut on Pluto,” Father Brian Jordan told the Daily Beast.

On hearing that President Donald Trump was compared to Jesus Christ at a White House Easter luncheon, a New York priest beloved by everybody from firefighters to refugees, from construction workers to the homeless, had much the same reaction as any true Christian.

“Donald Trump is no more Jesus Christ than I am an astronaut on Pluto,” Father Brian Jordan said from Midtown Manhattan, where he serves as pastor of The Church of St. Francis of Assisi.

Jordan also voiced his opinion on the people who stood with Trump in the East Room on Wednesday, nodding in assent as televangelist Paula White-Cain, the head of the White House Department of Faith and the president’s so-called “spiritual adviser,” made the sacrilegious comparison.

“What we call them is the champions of clever sophistry; they say they’re Christians in word, but their actions do not prove it,” Jordan said. “They don’t care about the poor, immigrants, the disabled, or people with gender orientation issues or any of that. They’re insensitive to their needs.”

He went on, “Jesus would reach out and try to bring peace, not war, to Iran. And bring peace, not war, in Ukraine. And try to help out the hungry and malnourished in South Sudan and other parts of the world that have hunger issues.”

Jordan, 70, matches his words with deeds at his church on West 31st Street, where the entrance is flanked by the flags of the FDNY and NYPD. Back in 2001, Jordan anointed the dead at Ground Zero and held regular masses amid the toxic ruins during the long recovery effort. He founded the Workers’ Chapel at St. Francis, where once a year he dons a hard hat and says a memorial mass for construction workers who died on the job. He also established an Immigration Center and does all he can for those who fled poverty and oppression.

Since 1930, the parish has operated what is now the longest continually running breadline in America, feeding as many as 500 per day, with people lining up from 7 a.m. The parishioners are multicultural, as reflected by this week’s first Holy Thursday Mass delivered in English, Spanish, and Korean.

“The music was outstanding,” Jordan reported. “Music is the universal language.”

On Good Friday, Jordan presided at a Liturgy of the Word. He told the gathering about a Marine who was a lieutenant when the two met in the days after 9/11.

“He said, ‘We’re going to war in Iraq,’” Jordan recalled. “I said, ‘That’s not a just war.’ I said it’s not a war against mass destruction; it’s a war of mass deception.”

The Marine had gone on to fight in Iraq and is now a retired colonel. Jordan spoke with him again in recent days, and he told Jordan he has a son who is a Marine lieutenant on one of the ships now gathered near Iran, waiting to hear if they will be mounting a ground invasion.

“He said, ‘It’s proven the war in Iraq was unjust, and I know for a fact this war in Iran is unjust,’” Jordan told his parishioners. “He said, ‘This is my son. I don’t want him to get killed.’”

After he had told that story and the liturgy concluded, Jordan was approached by three young Marines.

“They said, ‘You got some balls saying that,’” Jordan recalled. “‘I said, ‘Well that’s what I believe.’”

The three asked him why he had mentioned Marines.

“I said, ‘I’m very partial to Marines,’” Jordan recalled.

Jordan told them his father had been in the Navy during World War II and had recounted collecting the bodies of dead Marines after the bloody Battle of Tarawa in 1943.

“I said, ‘All our life, we had a great respect for Marines,’” Jordan said, adding that he also had many friends who were Marines. He ran six times in the Marine marathon and had taken more than a few confessions from Marines—the details of which are not for sharing.

Jordan must have convinced the trio that he was legit and not just some knee-jerk liberal, that he was saying it like it is because that is the way it is.

“And all three Marines said, ‘You were right what you said,’” Jordan later told the Daily Beast.

Jordan emphasized to the Beast that none of the Marines he has encountered are suffering a loss of will.

“These are Marines; they want to go for the right reasons,” Jordan said. “They’re noble. But if you try to put them in an unjust war, don’t think you’re going to fool them. You’re not going to fool them.”

Jordan noted that the current president, who is sending Marines into harm’s way, did everything he could to avoid the Vietnam War.

“He won’t go to war, but sends other people to a war that’s not just,” Jordan said. “That’s not Christ-like.”

Jordan was then told by the Beast of the two American jets that had been downed in Iran.

“On Good Friday,” he replied.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trumps-easter-message-isnt-just-wrongits-blasphemous/?

April 7

Trump issues fiery new threat against Iran as details of US aviator’s rescue emerge

After American forces rescued an aviator whose Iran-downed plane had fallen behind enemy lines, U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday made new, expletive-laden threats to escalate strikes on Iran and its infrastructure if it doesn’t open the Strait of Hormuz by his deadline. A defiant Iran showed no sign of backing down, striking economic and infrastructure targets in neighboring Gulf Arab countries and challenging the U.S. account of the rescue. Read more.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

April 7

As Trump orders UFO data released, a question hangs: If aliens exist, what would they think of us?

For generations, human beings have wondered: What would alien life from another planet be like? But we rarely ask the opposite: What would they think of us? The debate on whether little green men or UFOs are among us escalated in February when former President Barack Obama, responding to a podcaster’s question, said aliens are “real,” but he ”hasn’t seen them” and “they’re not being kept at Area 51.” President Donald Trump later announced on social media that he was directing release of government files because of “tremendous interest.” In a world riven by war, civil unrest, climate change and divisiveness, it’s easy to wonder what newcomers to Planet Earth might make of us and our struggle. Read more.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

April 7

Trump’s Iran war leaves Republicans adrift ahead of midterms

This is not the run-up to the midterm elections that Republicans wanted. A year and a half after winning the White House by promising to lower costs and end wars, Donald Trump is a wartime president overseeing surging energy costs and an escalating overseas conflict. Read more.

Why this matters:

Voters will cast ballots in elections that will decide control of Congress and key governorships for Trump’s final two years in office. For now, Republicans, who control all branches of government in Washington, are bracing for a painful political backlash. “You’re looking at an ugly November,” warned veteran Republican pollster Neil Newhouse. “At a point in time when we need every break possible to hold the House and Senate, our edge is being chipped away.” At this time last year, many Republican leaders believed there was a path to preserve their narrow House majority and easily hold the Senate. Now they privately concede that the House is all but lost and Democrats have a realistic shot at taking the Senate too.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

April 7

Panicked Trump, 79, Rages at Supreme Court in 1AM Meltdown

The president’s latest outburst came days after he stormed out of oral arguments about birthright citizenship.

President Donald Trump went on an unhinged 1 a.m. rant about the Supreme Court as it considers whether to allow him to scrap birthright citizenship.

The 79-year-old president suggested on Truth Social that it’s “too bad” the Supreme Court didn’t “study” Mark Levin’s Fox News show, in which the host argued that the 14th Amendment was not intended to grant birthright citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants.

“If they saw it they would never allow that money making HOAX to continue. THEY SHOULD USE THEIR POWERS OF COMMON SENSE FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY,” Trump wrote.

“They failed miserably on Tariffs, needlessly costing the USA Hundreds of Billions of Dollars in potential rebates for the benefit haters and scammers. Why??? Don’t do it again! The Country can only withstand so many bad decisions from a Court that just doesn’t seem to care.”

The nation’s highest court heard oral arguments last week on whether the U.S. should stop granting citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants, as proposed in an executive order signed by Trump.

The move has been struck down by every lower federal court that has considered the challenge. The conservative Supreme Court, including justices nominated by Trump, also appears highly skeptical about whether the president can remove the citizenship clause.

Trump took the unusual step of sitting in on the April 1 hearing to watch the justices debate his push to end automatic birthright citizenship. The president stormed out of the hearing after the SCOTUS justices shot down several arguments from the administration’s attorney, Solicitor General D. John Sauer.

One of the sharpest exchanges came from Chief Justice John Roberts, who pushed back after Sauer suggested the framers of the 14th Amendment could not have foreseen how “we’re in a new world now,” with billions of people “one plane ride away from having a child who’s a U.S. citizen.”

“It’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution,” Roberts replied.

Elsewhere, Trump appointee Justice Neil Gorsuch pressed Sauer on whether children born to Native Americans in the U.S. should be considered birthright citizens.

“Ah, I think… so,” Sauer said. “I mean, obviously they’ve been granted citizenship by statute,” he added, referring to the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.

Gorsuch noted that before the law was passed, children born to tribal Native Americans were not automatically considered birthright citizens.

During the Sunday episode of Life, Liberty and Levin, the pro-Trump Fox News host Mark Levin argued that the 14th Amendment was never intended to grant U.S. citizenship beyond freed Black slaves and their children.

“You on the court, you get to decide now on a big issue, you should leave it to the people in our elected representatives or the amendment process with a legislative process,” Levin said.

“But if you rule on this and constitutionalize this, you will be known as the most activist court in the history of the Supreme Court, and the damage is incalculable.”

Section 1 of the 14th Amendment states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Levin, 68, has a law degree from Temple University, worked in the legal department of Texas Instruments, and has never argued a case in front of the Supreme Court. His road to a slot on Sunday nights on Fox News started as a serial guest on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, then his own slot on conservative radio networks.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/panicked-donald-trump-79-rages-at-supreme-court-in-1am-meltdown-after-humiliating-hearing/?

April 7

Sleepless Trump, 79, Launches Unhinged Truth Social Tirade After Deranged Easter Post

The president’s profane Easter message was only the beginning.

President Donald Trump wrapped up his crazed Easter weekend posting spree with a bizarre video attacking Somali immigrants using a famously depressing 1980s pop song.

The 79-year-old, who is the oldest person yet to be elected U.S. president, has faced mounting concerns about his mental acuity and erratic behavior since his return to the White House last year. Those concerns took center stage over the holiday weekend as he fired off a foul-mouthed threat to commit potential war crimes in Iran.

But late Sunday, he also found time to fearmonger about immigrants, sharing a brief clip purporting to show Somali shoppers in the Mall of America in Minnesota. The footage was bizarrely accompanied by the 1982 Tears for Fears song “Mad World,” widely known for its haunting melody and themes of alienation and personal trauma.

The clip was originally uploaded by another account with the handle @iAnonPatriot and features a number of women walking about in traditional Islamic headwear with the baseless caption: “85% of these people are on welfare, btw.”

Trump later went on to post a captionless image of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France, at around 11 p.m. on Sunday, presumably a reference to his plans to create a similar monument to himself.

The supposedly Christian president had skipped out on Easter services earlier in the day to take a “ceremoniously slow” motorcade tour of the capital—including the Arlington Memorial Bridge, where he plans to build his own “Arch de Trump”—with a stop later that afternoon at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia.

He supplemented the post about his forthcoming vanity project with a clip from an interview with Special Envoy Richard Grenell praising him for “fixing the problem of Iran.”

The president then renewed his ire against the Supreme Court with a rant against the nation’s top judges, who last week savaged his attempts to end birthright citizenship.

“THEY SHOULD USE THEIR POWERS OF COMMON SENSE FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY,” he raged. “The Country can only withstand so many bad decisions from a Court that just doesn’t seem to care.”

He then followed up around 2 a.m. with a ringing endorsement of Steve Hilton, a former U.K. government adviser and Fox News contributor vying for the Republican nomination in California’s gubernatorial race later this year. “Gavin Newscum and the Democrats have done an absolutely horrendous job. People are fleeing, crime is increasing, and Taxes are the highest of any State in the Country, maybe the World,” he wrote. “Steve can turn it around, before it is too late, and, as President, I will help him to do so!”

Trump kicked off his posting spree on the holiest day in the Christian calendar not by calling for peace and unity in commemoration of Christ’s resurrection, but with an early-morning post threatening to escalate his war against the Iranian regime, which he also bizarrely signed off by offering up prayers to the god of the Muslim faith.

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” he posted first thing Sunday morning. “There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F---in’ Strait, you crazy b-----ds, or you’ll be living in hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

Those remarks prompted speculation among lawmakers that the aging president may have finally proved himself unfit for office.

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy and Reps. Melanie Stansbury and Yassamin Ansari were among the public figures who led calls later in the day to invoke the 25th Amendment, which would empower Trump’s officials to depose him in the event he is incapacitated or otherwise unable to fulfill his duties as leader.

“The emperor has no clothes,” Stansbury wrote. “Time for the 25th Amendment. Congress and the Cabinet must act.”

“Everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshiping the President and intervene in Trump’s madness,” former GOP lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote.

The Daily Beast contacted the White House for comment on this story. “President Trump is working tirelessly on behalf of the American people to fulfill his commonsense America First agenda that nearly 80 million people elected him for,” spokesperson Davis Ingle said.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/sleepless-donald-trump-79-launches-unhinged-truth-social-tirade-after-deranged-easter-post/?

April 7

Trump Attempts Damage Control After Wild Easter Sunday Post

The White House changed gears after the president’s early-morning tirade.

President Donald Trump has attempted to limit the fallout from his bizarre expletive-laden tirade early on Easter Sunday morning.

Just after 8 a.m., the president shared a message for Iran on Truth Social, writing, “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!”

“Open the F----n’ Strait, you crazy b-----ds, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH!” he continued, adding, “Praise be to Allah.”

He then proceeded to skip church on the holiest day in the Christian calendar, opting instead to host an Easter dinner with first lady Melania Trump and enjoy a “ceremoniously slow” presidential motorcade tour around Washington D.C.

His tour of D.C. took him around Memorial Circle, near the site of his planned presidential arch, and included a stop at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia.

He also found time to speak with Fox News. Foreign correspondent Trey Yingst told the hosts of Fox & Friends that he had a 15-minute phone call with the president about Iran.

In their phone call, the president doubled down on his earlier threat, reportedly telling Yingst, “If they don’t make a deal, and fast, I’m considering blowing everything up and taking over the oil.”

Yingst continued, “The president went on to say, ‘You’re going to see bridges and power plants dropping all over their country.’”

Perhaps realizing that ignoring the significance of Easter Sunday would not appeal to the president’s many Christian supporters, the White House then changed tack, with both the president and the White House posting a video of artist Vanessa Horabuena painting an image of Jesus Christ.

“Vanessa is AMAZING!” Trump wrote on Truth Social hours after his tirade. The White House then reposted the video, quoting him.

The president previously hosted Horabuena at Mar-a-Lago for his lavish New Year’s Eve party, where she painted a portrait of Jesus in 10 minutes on stage that was then auctioned off for $2.75 million.

She also painted the president at the Liberty Inauguration Ball in January 2025, and painted a different portrait of the president that replaced one he disliked that was on display in Denver.

The posts about Horabuena’s artwork were joined by several others from multiple government agencies celebrating Jesus’ resurrection. While presidents regularly acknowledge religious holidays, government departments doing so is unusual.

“He is risen,” read a message posted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and reposted by the State Department on X. The Department of Homeland Security posted a graphic featuring The Resurrection of Christ by Peter Paul Rubens and the text, “He is not here, but is risen,” from Luke 24:6.

The Pentagon shared a message originally posted by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that read, “The tomb is empty. The promise is fulfilled. Through His sacrifice, we are redeemed. We stand firm in faith, courage, and truth—Happy Easter.” Attached was another graphic quoting Luke 24:6.

The Justice Department wrote on X, “Today, as millions of Christians gather in their churches across the nation to celebrate the resurrection of Christ, this Department of Justice is proud to protect and defend religious liberty.”

The president, who was raised in his mother’s Presbyterian faith, began openly expressing fears about not getting into heaven last year.

“I don’t think there’s anything [that’s] going to get me in heaven. Okay?” He told reporters in October. “I think I’m not maybe heaven-bound.”

In February, he told a crowd in Georgia that he loves to joke about his chances of getting into heaven before soberly adding, “I hope to make it. But I doubt I will, to be honest with you. A lot of you will. I’m not so sure.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-attempts-damage-control-after-wild-easter-sunday-post/?

April 7

Trump’s Profanity-Filled Easter Post Blows Up in His Face

The president’s tantrum did not have the desired effect on the markets.

President Donald Trump’s early morning Easter Sunday Truth Social tirade has backfired spectacularly.

At 8 a.m. on Sunday, the president posted an expletive-laden rant featuring a warning for Iran that the country would be “living in hell” if it did not open the Strait of Hormuz.

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” Trump, 79, wrote.

“Open the F—n’ Strait, you crazy b-----ds, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH!” he continued, before ending with, “Praise be to Allah.”Trump's Truth Social post from Sunday morning. Truth Social

If the president intended for his incendiary post to calm the markets, it has had the opposite effect, instead sending oil prices even higher on Sunday, CNN reported.

The cost of Brent crude rose 1.4 percent to $110.60 while U.S. crude rose 1.8 percent to $113.60, their highest in over three years.

Gas prices are at their highest since June 2022, having risen by over 38 percent since the war began to a national average of $4.11 on Sunday.

Meanwhile, stocks fell on Sunday after markets were closed Friday, with Dow futures down 0.69 percent, S&P 500 futures down 0.76 percent, and Nasdaq futures down 0.91 percent.

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.

An Iranian official responded to Trump’s Truth Social post by asserting that the strait will remain closed until the country is “fully compensated” for the damage it has suffered during Trump’s war.

He also dismissed Trump’s threats as a sign that the U.S. has “resorted to obscenities and nonsense out of sheer desperation and anger.”

The renewed threats came less than a week after the president claimed that the U.S. did not need the Strait of Hormuz in his Wednesday address to the nation.

“The United States imports almost no oil through the Hormuz Strait and won’t be taking any in the future. We don’t need it,” Trump said.

The president has repeatedly leveled threats at Iran in an attempt to force it to reopen the strait, including threatening to strike vital infrastructure, despite warnings that such acts could constitute war crimes.

“Once again, the US president openly threatens to destroy infrastructure essential to civilian survival in Iran,” Iran’s mission to the United Nations said on Sunday.

“The international community and all states have legal obligations to prevent such atrocious acts of war crimes. They must act now. Tomorrow is too late.”

On Thursday, dozens of international law experts signed an open letter expressing “profound concern” about violations of international law made by the U.S., Israel, and Iran during the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

“International law protects from attack objects indispensable to the survival of civilians, and the attacks threatened by Trump, if implemented, could entail war crimes‚” the experts wrote in response to the president’s initial threats against Iran’s power plants.

“We are gravely concerned that the conduct and threats outlined here are causing serious harm to civilians in the Middle East,” the letter continues, “and that they also contribute to escalating the conflict, damaging the environment and the global economy, and that they risk degrading the rule of law and fundamental norms that protect every nation’s civilians.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-profanity-filled-easter-post-blows-up-in-his-face/?

April 7

‘60 Minutes’ Lets Trump’s Favorite Preacher Deliver Sermon

Pastor Franklin Graham has praised faith over FEMA.

Donald Trump‘s favorite preacher has delivered a sermon to the masses on TV just hours after the president dropped an F-bomb, as well as threats of actual bombs, on the holiest day of the year for Christians.

Evangelist Franklin Graham was tapped to deliver a religious message to the nation on Easter Sunday’s episode of 60 Minutes.

Graham, a longtime Trump ally, told CBS viewers that “faith in God” was the value that most shaped America.

He said religious faith in the past during disasters was stronger than reliance on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), whose funding has been slashed by the Trump administration.

“It’s people of faith who have been the bedrock, the driving force behind our nation and in years past, where did people turn after a disaster, not FEMA, not to the government, it was the church that took them and fed them and gave them shelter, clothed them,” Graham, 73, said.

“I see faith as the most important defining value in our nation, and in every single life.”

The platforming of Graham, who has faced criticism for anti-LGBTQ views and calling Islam “a very evil and wicked religion” led to a blowback online.

“To give this man prime airtime only shows how low CBS has fallen since being taken over by David Ellison and Bari Weiss,” one X user wrote.

Another claimed it was a "death knell” for CBS.

The Daily Beast has reached out to CBS for comment.

Weiss, the network’s anti-woke editor-in-chief, has already indicated she is ready to overhaul 60 Minutes, including culling staff and influencing editorial choices.

“Bari wants to make the show harder,” a source told the New York Post last week. “No one is talking about 60 Minutes on Monday morning.”

MAGA-coded Weiss has already pulled one 60 Minutes episode off-air hours before it was due to go live over a lack of input from the Trump administration, while shelving another segment reportedly led to the show’s most high-profile correspondent, Anderson Cooper, not renewing his contract with the flagship show.

“She wants to put her stamp on 60 Minutes and how you do that is you either get rid of the top producer or the top correspondent,” the source added to the Post.

Graham’s holy words on 60 Minutes followed Trump threatening a war crime in a profanity-laden rant, including the Arabic word for God, on his Truth Social account on Easter Sunday.

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F--kin’ Strait, you crazy b-----ds, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP,” the 79-year-old posted.

The unhinged post led to calls for the 25th Amendment to be invoked against Trump, including from his former communications director, Anthony Scaramucci.Trump, who has questioned whether he will make it to heaven, also skipped Easter service. Graham was present for an Easter Prayer Service at the White House on April 16 last year. He also delivered an invocation during Trump’s inauguration ceremony in January 2025.

Just last month, the pastor was forced to withdraw comments he made at the Conservative Political Action Committee Convention (CPAC) in Dallas, Texas where he called for a third term for Trump.

“God loves you. He loves his country. And I love Donald Trump!,” Graham said.

“We’ll only have one chance at this. We’ll never get another president like Donald Trump! Never! And that’s why it’s important that we do everything that we can to try to get him reelected!”

The pastor later said he “misspoke” when he made the comment.

And last Sunday, to mark the Christian holy day, Palm Sunday, Trump shared a letter from Graham originally sent last October that assured him he was bound for heaven.

It seemed to reference Trump saying at that time “I mean, you know, I’m being a little cute. I don’t think there’s anything [that’s] going to get me in heaven. Okay? I think I’m not maybe heaven-bound.”

The preacher called Trump a peacemaker and noted the president had “commented to the media that you might not be heaven bound.”

“Maybe you responded in jest, but it is an important issue to know for certain that your soul is secure and will spend eternity in the presence of God,” Franklin said. “The only One who can save us from Hell is Jesus Christ. You can’t save yourself; I can’t save myself. Good works, prominence, success — none of these get us to Heaven. The only way to Heaven is through the shed blood of Jesus Christ.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/60-minutes-lets-trumps-favorite-preacher-franklin-graham-deliver-sermon/?

April 8

Trump administration terminates agreements to protect transgender students in several schools

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Education Department said Monday it has terminated agreements with five school districts and a college aimed at upholding protections for transgender students, backing away from requirements negotiated by previous administrations that took a different interpretation of civil rights.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-education-transgender-student-d4f00994daa64a68f557de5f98ec7d94?

ps:??????????

April 8

MAGA Rep Humiliated by Another Sordid Sex Scandal

The Donald Trump-endorsed congressman was caught sexting a second subordinate.

Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales has been accused of pressuring yet another staffer for nude photos.

Years before Gonzales, 45, was exposed for his affair with a former subordinate who later died by suicide, the Trump-endorsed politician had relentlessly pursued his former campaign director, the San Antonio Express-News reported Monday.

The Texas congressman, who has six children with his wife, Angel, went so far as to ask the staffer for nudes a dozen times over the course of three days.

“I know what I want and won’t stop until I get it,” he wrote in a text to the staffer in June 2020, according to screenshots shared with the Express-News.

The campaign worker, who asked to remain anonymous, said Gonzales’s behavior began two months after she joined his campaign in April 2020.

While she did engage in explicit conversations with Gonzales, the staffer rebuffed his repeated propositions for sex. Congressional ethics rules prohibit sexual relationships between lawmakers and their staffers.

On June 13, 2020, for example, Gonzales asked to come over to her house “without doing anything,” according to the Express-News. She agreed. After he left around 11 p.m., he wrote in several text messages: “Okay you have two options… I left (as I did) and we continue the mystery////I stayed and we f---ed like rabbits… Which one would you choose?”

His subordinate responded: “Leave. And let the mystery build.”

That same night, he asked if he could come back to her home. “If I come over though your panties are coming off,” he wrote.

The staffer said she came forward after learning of Gonzales’s affair with his one-time regional district director, Regina Ann Santos-Aviles, 35, a then-married mother of an eight-year-old boy. Santos-Aviles set herself on fire outside her home in September, a year after her husband learned of the affair.

“[Tony] obviously pursued, pursued, pursued her like he did with me,” the former staffer, who is a decade older than Gonzales, told the outlet. “I never took him serious… It wasn’t until this poor girl died that I thought, ‘No, this guy is pure evil.’”

The staffer added: “This behavior needs to stop.”

Gonzales, whose office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has repeatedly dismissed his affair with Santos-Aviles as “blackmail” and “coordinated political attacks” aimed at removing him from office.

In March, he finally admitted the affair, describing it as a “mistake” and a “lapse in judgment,” adding that God had forgiven him.

On March 5, he announced he would not seek re-election after Congress opened an ethics inquiry into his relationship with Santos-Aviles. He will serve the remainder of his term, which ends in January.

A text thread shared with the San Antonio Express-News shows that Gonzales texted Santos-Aviles just after midnight on May 9, 2024: “Send me a sexy pic.”

Santos-Aviles responded that she was having a rough week and “you don’t really want a hot picture of me.”

That did not dissuade Gonzales, who wrote back, “Yes I do,” and “Hurry.”

The congressman continued to press Santos-Aviles to sext him, the Express-News reports. He asked her what her favorite sexual position was, described one he wanted to try with her, and, even after her initial refusal and warning that “this is going too far boss,” still asked, “What do you like?”

Santos-Aviles did not have a college degree and began working for Gonzales in 2021. A former aide to Gonzales alleged that the politician did “nothing” when he was informed of Santos-Aviles’ declining mental state.

If you or a loved one are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please reach out to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing or texting 988.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-rep-tony-gonzales-humiliated-by-another-sordid-sex-scandal/?

April 8

Poll Reveals Trump Bleeding Support in Grave Midterm Warning

There are many signs the GOP is heading for an electoral wipeout in November.

A significant number of President Donald Trump’s 2024 voters say they will not support a Republican candidate in the midterms, a damning poll has found.The survey by Jared Abbott, director of the Center for Working-Class Politics, and scholar Joan C. Williams found that 20 percent of disgruntled Trump voters have decided to abandon the GOP in November’s midterm elections.The survey of 1,940 Trump voters also found that potentially 57 percent of key swing voters who previously supported Joe Biden but backed the Republican president in 2024 are also considering not voting GOP in the midterms.

In his analysis of the poll results, Abbott suggested it is “not hard to see why” so many people are turning on Trump during his erratic second term, especially those who believed the 79-year-old would help end their financial hardships.

Trump has been recording dire approval ratings on the economy as he tries to suggest there is no cost-of-living crisis under his watch.

The president’s tariff plans and deeply unpopular war in Iran, which have sparked a global oil crisis and caused gas prices to soar in the U.S., have only further exacerbated the financial situation for tens of millions of struggling Americans.

“These working-class voters (many of them self-identified moderates, former Democrats, and even some self-described liberals) took a gamble on Trump, hoping he would deliver them from an economic squeeze and restore some sense of social peace,” Abbott wrote in The Guardian.

“One year on, he has not done so, and worse than that, he’s introduced a lot more chaos.”

The GOP, which has a razor-thin majority in the House, is already predicted to lose control over the lower chamber in November. Backlash against Trump’s erratic second term could also put the Senate in play for Democrats.

Fears of an expected “blue wave” in the midterm elections have already led to a record-breaking 36 Republican incumbents announcing they will not seek re-election this year.

In 2018, during Trump’s first term, when 34 Republicans said they would not run again in that year’s midterms, Democrats flipped the House in a 40-seat wave.

There was another alarming sign of just how bad the midterms could be for the GOP last month, when Democrat Emily Gregory pulled off a shock victory in a Florida special election for a district that includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach.

Gregory’s predecessor, Republican Rep. Mike Caruso, had won by roughly 19 points in the 2024 election in the Palm Beach district, with Trump carrying it by 11 points in the last presidential race.

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

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/poll-reveals-donald-trump-bleeding-support-in-grave-midterm-warning/?

April 8

Judge Jeanine Melts Down When Cornered on Humiliating Trial Record

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., has “lost the jury,” according to legal insiders.

President Donald Trump’s hand-picked top attorney in Washington, D.C., lashed out at CNN for pointing out that her office’s conviction rate has been far below the Justice Department’s usual average for federal criminal trials. Over the past three years, about 90 percent of juries nationwide voted to convict criminal defendants, with the remaining 10 percent voting to acquit, CNN reported.

But under Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia has won just half of its first eight criminal trials this year. The low conviction rate stems from several issues, including a jury pool that is skeptical of the DOJ under Trump, sources told CNN.

Asked by the outlet about her office’s federal criminal trial record, Pirro insisted she was “very proud” of the conviction rate and claimed that acquittals and hung juries were not “indicative of what’s going on in the system.”

She also responded to multiple questions by declaring, “Hogwash!”

One former prosecutor who now works in the private sector told CNN that the DOJ has “lost the jury pool” in D.C. by renouncing its previous independence from the White House.

It doesn’t help that large banners of Trump’s face now hang from the Justice Department’s headquarters building downtown and from the Labor Department, which is next to a federal courthouse, the former prosecutor told CNN.

Grand juries have pushed back as the DOJ moved to aggressively prosecute Trump’s political enemies, and gone after protesters who opposed the administration’s federal crackdown of the city.

Multiple grand juries refused to indict a lawyer who threw a footlong Subway sandwich at a federal immigration officer last summer, and Pirro has similarly failed to secure indictments against Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly and five other former military and intelligence officers serving in Congress.

Those rejections were rare in previous administrations but have become a trend in D.C. since Pirro took over and began pushing through problematic cases, sources told CNN.

In cases that did make it to trial, jurors have refused to convict on principle to send a message to the DOJ.

The jury refusals could begin hurting law enforcement’s ability to bring legitimate cases against defendants who are serious public safety threats, according to CNN.

Pirro, however, claims the administration’s political vendettas have not affected her office’s results.

“If a jury feels that we haven’t met our burden, then so be it,” she told CNN.

A DOJ spokesperson also told CNN that “far-left activists” might be trying to “undermine” Pirro’s office.

The Daily Beast has also reached out for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/judge-jeanine-pirro-melts-down-when-cornered-on-humiliating-trial-record/?

ps:Well when you put people in positions only to do your bidding, that's what you get, people that actually have no business working in government jobs!!!!!

April 8

MTG Calls BS on Trump’s Faith After Easter No-Show

The former MAGA loyalist questioned the president’s piety and urged his inner circle “intervene in Trump’s madness.”

Former Trump devotee Marjorie Taylor Green has declared “Our President is not a Christian” after Donald Trump began the holiest day on the Christian calendar with a profanity-filled tirade and skipped Easter service.

“Everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshipping the President and intervene in Trump’s madness,” Greene wrote on X Sunday.

The 51-year-old former Trump loyalist added, “Our President is not a Christian and his words and actions should not be supported by Christians.”

Trump, who considers himself a non-denominational Christian, kicked off Easter Sunday with a wild threat to hit Iranian civilian infrastructure, which can be considered a war crime under international law.

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F--kin’ Strait, you crazy b-----ds, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP,” the 79-year-old commander-in-chief posted.

Greene, who resigned from Congress in January amid her growing rift with Trump, tore the president’s post apart, saying the Strait of Hormuz is closed “because the US and Israel started the unprovoked war against Iran,” and pointing to the contradiction in Trump claiming to be liberating the Iranian people while threatening civilian infrastructure.

“Trump threatening to bomb power plants and bridges hurts the Iranian people, the very people Trump claimed he was freeing,” she wrote. “On Easter, of all days, we as Christians should be reminded that the son of God died and rose from the grave so that we can be forgiven once and for all of our sins. Jesus commanded us to love one another and forgive one another. Even our enemies.”

Greene said Christians in the Trump administration should be “urging the President to make peace,” rather than “escalating war that is hurting people.”

“I know all of you and him and he has gone insane, and all of you are complicit,” the former Trump loyalist said.

She called out the president for abandoning his campaign promise to end foreign wars, saying, “This NOT what we promised the American people when they overwhelmingly voted in 2024, I know, I was there more than most. This is not making America great again, this is evil.”

Greene, who has labeled herself a Christian Nationalist and built her political brand on making frequent incendiary comments, faced intense backlash last year after she appeared to celebrate the passing of Pope Francis.

In 2022, the then-Georgia lawmaker said that she was raised Catholic, but left the church when she became a mother and realized she “could not trust the church leadership to protect my children from pedophiles.”

Trump was brought up by a Presbyterian mother but declared in his first presidency that he is now a non-denominational Christian.

While he has frequently mused about whether or not he’ll get into heaven, Trump has rarely attended church in any form in both of his presidencies, including on Easter Sunday, when he skipped Easter service and instead went on a bizarre presidential motorcade tour of Washington, D.C.

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

https://www.thedailybeast.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-calls-bs-on-trumps-faith-after-easter-no-show/?

April 8

Trump warns Iran "can be taken out in one night"

President Trump said in the White House press room this afternoon that he's "not at all" concerned about war crime implications if he goes through with his threat to bomb bridges and power plants in Iran.

Trump added: "I hope I don't have to do it."

Trump has set a deadline of 8 p.m. ET tomorrow for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face attacks against critical infrastructure.

Trump said today: "We have a plan, because of the power of our military, where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o'clock tomorrow night."
He added that Iranian power plants would be left "burning, exploding and never to be used again."
"The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night," he said.

The president wouldn't say if any civilian targets, like schools, would be off-limits.

Attacking civilian infrastructure is banned under international law, the office of U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned today.

Go deeper ... How U.S. pilots were rescued.

ps:So why didn't he do it to begin with????????

April 8

Feeling the Pressure

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In an earlier, somewhat more innocent era of Donald Trump’s social-media posting, one could still chuckle darkly at his 2017 declaration that his approach “is not Presidential - it’s MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL.” But as the war in Iran bogs down, his communication has far surpassed the merely bizarre and become entirely unhinged. When Trump feels cornered, I have written, he lashes out most fiercely—which might explain the wild statements and actions emanating from the White House over the past few days.

The nadir (for now) was an Easter-morning Truth Social missive in which Trump threatened that “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

Trump reiterated the threat during a press conference this afternoon, saying, “The entire country could be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night.” Targeting civilian infrastructure such as power plants and bridges is likely illegal. Trump would not be the first U.S. president to flout international law, but he would be the first to advertise it ahead of time on a social-media site he owns. The threat is also strategically dubious. Installing a more pro-American regime in Tehran would require the existence of some authority that is both able to govern and willing to work with Washington; these sorts of strikes, or even threats, make that less likely. (Trump insisted that he’s heard pleas from inside Iran to continue bombing.) And using the threat of martyrdom to scare the religious zealots currently in charge seems possibly counterproductive.

Topping that post will be hard, but this morning the president tried. In a vague and threatening new post, he shared a short clip of a crowd of shoppers—most of whom were people of color, some of whom wore hijab. They were minding their own business and indulging in the quintessentially modern, capitalist American pastime of hanging out at what appears to be Minnesota’s Mall of America, soundtracked with Gary Jules’s rendition of “Mad World” from the Donnie Darko soundtrack.

These outbursts come as the administration finds that military might alone is not enough to win a war. Trump is now threatening to attack civilian infrastructure, because nothing else has forced the Iranian government to buckle. At the start of the war, he seemed to be feeling smug, emboldened by his quick success in Venezuela, but any sense of joy has evaporated fast. Last week, the president delivered a White House address in which he could have attempted to either deescalate the war or else define what victory would look like. Instead, as my colleague Tom Nichols wrote, Trump did neither.

American wars in the Middle East have backfired before, but the negative effects of this one have become apparent at record speed. American and Israeli strikes have killed many top Iranian figures, but the regime remains ensconced—and its control of the Strait of Hormuz suggests that Iran may actually be in a strategically stronger position than at the start of the war. (Iranian leaders today rejected a proposal for a cease-fire.) The U.S. military is burning through ammunition reserves. The likely next step, Thomas Wright argued in The Atlantic last week, is a ground war.

A frantic search for an airman shot down in an F-15E inside Iran ended happily yesterday, with a rescue. But the operation resulted in the destruction of two MC-130J transport planes and some MH-6 helicopters, in addition to an A-10 shot down separately—an expensive tab, especially given that the Trump administration claimed to have destroyed Iran’s air defenses.

These setbacks might have instilled humility in other presidents, but they have instead led Trump to lash out. His frustration may even be leading him to imagine things. Last month, he claimed that a former president had privately expressed regret about not striking Iran. This seems unlikely. Trump said the predecessor was not George W. Bush, and the other three living presidents—the Democrats Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden—have all had public acrimony with Trump; The New York Times reported that people close to all three denied they had spoken with him recently. This makes Trump’s claim reminiscent of a different former president: Richard Nixon, who had paranoid conversations with portraits on the White House walls as his presidency collapsed.

The frenzy is seeping into other areas of the administration too. Embattled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired the Army chief of staff and top chaplain (among others) in the midst of an active war. Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi last week, just after attending a Supreme Court argument in which justices whom he appointed expressed skepticism about the outré claims that Bondi’s Justice Department lawyers were forced to make in defense of Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship.

The president’s behavior usually calms down slightly when he no longer feels cornered. Predicting when that might happen is challenging. Trump has shown he has no good answer for exiting the conflict with Iran, and even if he does, he may find—with apologies to Trotsky—that although he may no longer be interested in war, war remains interested in him. The American and global economies appear shaky. Each week brings new polling that suggests a poor result for Republicans in the midterm elections. Trump may be in for a long stretch in the corner, which means a rough ride for everyone else.

Related:

April 8

⏰ Trump's tipping point

Photo illustration of President Donald Trump in a collage featuring a mural of Iran's slain supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supporters of the Houthi movement brandishing their weapons, the Strait of Hormuz, and radar and clock elements

Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photos: Getty Images

President Trump faces a momentous decision on a tight timeline: Carry out his threat to obliterate Iran's infrastructure beginning tonight at 8 p.m. ET, or push his deadline again to give negotiations a chance, Axios' Barak Ravid writes.

Why it matters: Trump has threatened to destroy every bridge and power plant in Iran, among other options that would have devastating consequences for ordinary Iranians and spark retaliation across the region.

Mediators from Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey are working to avert that outcome by brokering a deal — or at least putting time back on the clock.

"If the president sees a deal is coming together, he'll probably hold off. But only he and he alone makes that decision," a senior administration official told Axios. A defense official said they were "skeptical" there would be any extension this time around.
This account is based on interviews with six officials and sources with direct knowledge of the ongoing diplomacy or Trump's thinking.

🔎 Behind the scenes: Trump might be the most hawkish person in the top echelons of his administration on Iran, according to a U.S. source who spoke to him several times in recent days.

"The president is the most bloodthirsty, like a mad dog," another U.S. official said, downplaying stories that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or Secretary of State Marco Rubio were egging him on. "Those guys sound like the doves compared to the president."
Trump has started sounding out advisers and confidants about the plan to strike power plants and bridges by asking them: "What do you think of Infrastructure Day?"

Breaking it down: Trump's negotiating team — Vice President JD Vance, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — thinks he should try to get a deal now if possible.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and political allies like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) are urging Trump not to agree to a ceasefire unless Iran makes concessions that currently appear unlikely, like reopening the Strait of Hormuz or relinquishing all highly enriched uranium.

The other side: Iran gave a 10-point response to the current peace proposals yesterday.

A U.S. official described it as "maximalist," but the White House saw it as a negotiating gambit, not a rejection.

The mediators told the White House they're working with the Iranians on amendments and redrafting. They also cautioned that Iranian decision-making is very slow, so an extension of the deadline might be needed.

Trump's advisers told the mediators the president needs to see positive indications from the Iranians to consider an extension.

🎤 Trump laid out a dire vision of Iran's near future during his press conference, while adding that a deal was still possible.

"The entire country could be taken out in one night, and it might be tomorrow night," Trump said.
"We have a plan where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o'clock tomorrow night. Where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding and never to be used again. I mean complete demolition by 12 o'clock, and it will happen over a period of four hours if we wanted to," Trump said. "We don't want that to happen."

On the other hand, Trump said negotiations were "going fine" and stressed the U.S. has "an active, willing participant on the other side" that is "negotiating in good faith."

April 8

🥊 MAGA's global test

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Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto welcomes Vice President JD Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance to Budapest, Hungary, today. Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

🇭🇺 Breaking: BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Vice President JD Vance arrived in Hungary's capital today in a bid to turn the tide of the Sunday election. Long-serving Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a close ally of President Trump, is trailing in the polls.

Vice President Vance today plunges into Europe's most volatile election in years — a Hungarian campaign engulfed by spy scandals, sabotage and unprecedented peril for MAGA's favorite foreign ally, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

Why it matters: Viktor Orbán is the cornerstone of President Trump's vision for Europe. The pro-Kremlin, anti-EU strongman has spent 16 years building a template for Christian nationalist rule now embraced by the American right.

Trump's national security strategy openly calls for "cultivating resistance" in Europe by empowering nationalist forces like Orbán's. His defeat would shatter that model at its source.

Vance arrives in Budapest with a clear mission: Boost Orbán as an indispensable U.S. ally in the fight against migration and the liberal European order.

Orbán has led Hungary since 2010, systematically reshaping its courts, media and electoral maps to entrench his party's power — a playbook the European Parliament has called "electoral autocracy."
His challenger, former ally Péter Magyar, has channeled voter anger over corruption and a struggling economy into the most serious threat to Orbán's rule in years.

🌐 The big picture: Sunday's election in Hungary is exposing a rare geopolitical convergence. The U.S. and Russia are both intervening to try to keep Orbán in power, while the EU and Ukraine are eager to see him gone.

💡 Into that maelstrom walks the vice president of the United States, staking MAGA's global credibility on the survival of Europe's most controversial strongman.

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