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

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SCOTUS Justice Slams Ruling in Scathing Dissent

Critics say the latest Supreme Court ruling will silence millions of voters.

A Supreme Court justice warned of “chaos” and “confusion” after Alabama won the right to redraw its congressional map in favor of Republicans.

In a 6-3 ruling on Monday, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority cleared the way for Alabama to use a 2023 congressional map that includes only one majority-Black district out of seven. The current House map includes a second majority-minority district in which nearly half the population is Black.

The map currently in use had been imposed by a federal court, which said the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 required the state to draw that second district, rather than use the map with only one majority-Black district.

Alabama’s congressional delegation consists of five White Republicans and two Black Democrats. GOP leaders had aimed to redraw electoral boundaries to eliminate one or both Democratic seats.

Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures was elected in 2024 under that new court-imposed map, but is now risks losing his seat.

While the conservative majority did not explain their reasoning, they stated that the lower court’s decision should be reconsidered after a ruling in the Louisiana v. Callais case last month that struck down a majority-Black House district as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, severely weakening the scope of the Voting Rights Act—which was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson at the height of the civil rights movement.The decision in Atlanta was praised by Republicans, who now receive an edge in six of the state’s seven House districts, and the possibility of gaining an additional seat in the midterm elections after the ruling. Attorney General Steve Marshall said the decision was a “major victory for the U.S. Supreme Court,” in a video statement posted to X.

“For too long, unelected federal judges have had more say over Alabama’s elections than Alabama voters. That ended today,” he added.

All of the Supreme Court’s liberal justices dissented from Monday’s order, including Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the 2023 map was the product of deliberate discrimination against Black voters.

“The Court today unceremoniously discards District Court’s meticulously documented and supported discriminatory-intent finding & careful remedial order without any sound basis for doing so and without regard for the confusion that will surely ensue,” Sotomayor said in her dissent.

Sotomayor said it was “inappropriate” for the court to alter Alabama’s district lines just days before the primary, noting it will “cause only confusion as Alabamians begin to vote in the elections scheduled for next week.”

Vacating a lower court decision “is an equitable remedy, and the Court should not lightly wield it to unleash chaos and to confuse voters,” Sotomayor added.

Under the law passed on Monday, results from next week’s May 19 primaries in House districts that are not impacted by the map change will still be counted, but those in affected districts will be ignored. Republican Gov. Kay Ivey is believed to be planning another round of primaries in those districts.

Alabama had been operating under an injunction that barred it from redrawing its current map before 2030—until Monday’s Supreme Court ruling.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the Supreme Court’s decision was “yet another hole punctured in the mirage” of fair representation in modern America.

“Week after week, the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court continues to dismantle civil rights, equal representation, and hard fought voting rights that have been around for decades,” Newsom said, via his press office account on X.

Accusing Republicans of “meddling in elections” after votes are already cast, Newsom added, “It’s simple: MAGA is silencing millions of people—it needs to be called out. It’s time we have a serious discussion in this country about court reform—from new ethics guidelines to term limits and more."

https://www.thedailybeast.com/scotus-justice-slams-redistricting-ruling-in-scathing-dissent/?

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The Iran war is hitting home as US inflation has its biggest jump in three years

U.S. consumer prices climbed sharply again last month as the 10-week war with Iran delivered higher gasoline prices and more pain for Americans. The Labor Department's consumer price index rose 3.8% from April 2025, the biggest jump in three years. Prices are rising at a time when Americans are already frustrated by the high cost of living. Affordability is likely to be a key issue when voters go to the polls in November. Read more.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

WATCH: Why is everything so expensive?  Hegseth faces bipartisan grilling about weapons drawdown during the Iran war Musk, Cook and other prominent US executives invited to join Trump on trip to China Trump FDA chief is leaving after angering pharma CEOs, vaping lobbyists and anti-abortion groups Trump's proposed 'Golden Dome' estimated to cost $1.2 trillion, far more than he initially said   85-year-old French widow caught in Trump’s immigration crackdown describes her detention The arrest last month of Marie-Thérèse Ross, a French widow of a U.S. military veteran, made international headlines. Ross spoke to The Associated Press on Monday about her 16 days in federal immigration custody after being arrested following an alleged visa overstay. She has been released and returned to France. The experience in detention, she said, changed her and her view of politics. Read more. RELATED COVERAGE ➤ WATCH: French woman recalls her experience of US ICE detention center

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Trump Exempted Some of the Nation’s Biggest Polluters From Air Quality Rules. All It Took Was an Email.

In March 2025, President Donald Trump’s administration made a tantalizing offer to coal-fired power plants, chemical manufacturing facilities and other factories: Their operations could be exempted from key provisions under the Clean Air Act, the bedrock environmental law estimated to have prevented thousands of premature deaths. All they had to do was ask.

https://www.propublica.org/article/clean-air-act-exemptions-trump-emails?

ps:So who really does this criminal care more for? Those with money or those that actually voted and put him in office once again?????

Trump so far failing in quest for power over elections as midterms approach

As President Donald Trump tries to assert power over U.S. elections, he has raged on social media, cajoled Republican lawmakers and unleashed the Department of Justice on his political enemies.

https://floridaphoenix.com/2026/05/11/repub/trump-so-far-failing-in-quest-for-power-over-elections-as-midterms-approach/?

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Trump Humiliated by New Devastating Rocketing Inflation

The president’s war in Iran sent prices soaring across the country in April.

Americans are being hit with soaring inflation due to Donald Trump’s war in Iran as prices rose 0.6 percent last month and are up 3.8 percent from a year ago.

The president and Republicans want to run on a strong economy heading into the midterm season, but the latest Consumer Price Index on Tuesday showed consumers are feeling the pain.

The higher prices have largely been driven by the skyrocketing cost of energy. Gasoline prices were up 5.4 percent in April and more than 28 percent from a year ago.

Oil was up 5.8 percent last month, a slower increase than in March, but it’s up more than 54 percent from this time last year. It’s unclear when Americans will see any relief at the pump.

The ongoing rise in costs has completely wiped out any wage gains Americans have made in the last year. Wages were up 3.6 percent.

The overall pace of inflation at 3.8 percent from a year ago was up from the annual rate set in March at 3.3 percent.

The White House responded to the latest economic data by posting about individual items where prices have come down, like for eggs.

However, last month Americans saw the overall price of food tick up 0.5 percent. The price of groceries and eating out are up more than 3 percent from a year ago. The cost of housing is also up 3.3 percent from a year ago, after inflation rose slightly by 0.6 percent last month.

As Americans struggle with higher gas prices heading into the summer vacation season, the cost of airline tickets also ticked up 2.8 percent in April, slightly more than the similar increase in March, as fuel costs soared.

On Monday, Trump had insisted gas prices would “drop like a rock” when his war ends, but he has struggled to reach any deal, blowing well past his initial timeline.

The president this week also said the ceasefire was on life support while speaking in the Oval Office to reporters after he rejected Iran’s latest offer.

With Americans feeling the pain at the pump, Trump indicated he supported temporarily suspending the 18-cent federal gas tax. But the measure would have to be passed through a deeply divided Congress.

An 18-cent cut would only provide minimal relief with the cost of gas up roughly $1.50 from a year ago. The national average for a gallon of gas is $4.50, while diesel is $5.63 a gallon, according to GasBuddy.com.

Trump insisted that the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, where shipping has come to a standstill due to the war, driving up prices, was actually “genius” on Monday. He suggested consumers were looking to the U.S. instead for oil.

But major American companies are not suddenly surging their efforts in the U.S., as they remain cautious about the president’s war.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-blow-as-rocketing-inflation-wipes-out-us-wage-gains/?

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Frantic Trump, 79, Posts Deranged Cash Fantasy in Morning Meltdown

The president’s social media spree took a desperate turn.

Donald Trump has shared a fantasy of himself appearing on a $100 bill during a deranged morning Truth Social blitz.

The 79-year-old president, who had already posted 54 times in 74 minutes on Monday night, continued his unhinged posting spree just before 8 a.m. on Tuesday.

Featured in Trump’s posting splurge of AI-generated slop was a mocked-up image of a $100 “federal victory note” with his face on one side and the words “God bless Donald Trump” on the other.

Truth Social/Donald Trump

The fake note shared by Trump did carry the helpful disclaimer that it was not legal tender.

Elsewhere, Trump’s Truth Social posting spree contained attacks on Democratic figures.

One bizarre AI-generated image showed Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Nancy Pelosi up to their necks in dirty water in the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, with the caption “Dumacrats Love Sewage.”

Another post attacked House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries by suggesting that he lives a life of luxury while his New York district resembles a rat-infested slum. Several other posts by the 79-year-old on Monday morning were images he had already shared during previous Truth Social sprees. They included a mock-up image of a U.S. battleship blasting an Iranian fighter jet, with the nonsensical caption “Lasers: Bing, Bing, GONE!!!” and an out-of-date bar chart defending the “six-week” length of the Iran war compared to other U.S.-led conflicts. The war in Iran started on Feb. 28, more than 10 weeks ago.

The president also reshared an image showing a fleet of “159 Iranian ships” during the Obama/Biden years, compared to one showing destroyed vessels at the bottom of the ocean amid Trump’s Iran war.

Trump also recycled an AI-generated image of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker surrounded by burgers, pizza, fried chicken, nachos, and milkshakes, with the caption “JB is too busy to keep Chicago safe!”

Trump’s Tuesday morning Truth Social spree began with him typing out a post to seemingly dismiss reports that Senate Republicans urged the president not to start a new military operation against the socialist Cuban regime while the Middle East conflict is still dragging on.

“No Republican has ever spoken to me about Cuba, which is a failed country and only heading in one direction - down! Cuba is asking for help, and we are going to talk!!! In the meantime, I’m off to China,” Trump wrote.

The Daily Beast has previously reported that Trump’s volley of social media postings suggests the president is barely getting any sleep at night.

Throughout April, Trump—who has a habit of nodding off during official White House events—routinely posted between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m, with analysis showing that there were only five days in April when the president could have had a full night’s sleep.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/frantic-donald-trump-79-posts-deranged-cash-fantasy-in-morning-meltdown/?

ps:How pathetic!!!!!

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Jaw-Dropping Cost of RFK Jr.’s Secret Crusade Exposed

The health and human services secretary was told by the White House to tone down his public vaccine skepticism ahead of the midterms.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is spending tens of millions of dollars on a secret research project aimed at fueling skepticism about vaccines, according to a report.

President Donald Trump’s health and human services secretary is reportedly launching a behind-the-scenes campaign within federal health agencies to try to prove his long-debunked belief that vaccines can cause a range of medical conditions and diseases, including autism.

Kennedy, one of the country’s highest-profile vaccine skeptics, is spearheading the project in secret after the White House urged him to tone down his public distrust of vaccines, fearing it could hurt Republicans in November’s midterm elections, The New York Times reported.

The cost of the vaccine project, based on work conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention alone, is estimated at between $40 million and $50 million.

As part of the project, Kennedy is asking government scientists to re-examine claims of a link between vaccines and children later developing autism—a disputed theory the health and human services secretary has promoted for decades.

Kennedy also hopes to further scrutinize thimerosal and question how harmful it may be.

The mercury-based ingredient has already been removed from almost all vaccines in the U.S. following an order from Kennedy last year, although it is still used in some flu shots.

There is no scientific consensus suggesting that thimerosal is dangerous or linked to autism, but it has long been a target of anti-vaccine campaigns and sentiment.Kennedy also wants the project to examine the health outcomes of vaccinated children compared with those who have never been vaccinated.However, as noted by the Times, such comparisons could lead to skewed outcomes and misinterpreted data. Vaccinated children are more likely to receive regular medical care than unvaccinated children, and therefore may also be more likely to receive diagnoses that could then be incorrectly attributed to vaccines.

Daniel Jernigan, who oversaw vaccine safety at the CDC until resigning in August, told the paper that he fears Kennedy may be spending millions of dollars trying to validate his own views on vaccines rather than relying on existing scientific research.

“It just demonstrates that no matter what the general tone is about vaccines, whether we talk about them or not, the secretary is going to continue to try and look at the data and analyze it in a way that will help support the conclusions that he’s already made,” Jernigan told the Times. “And that, to me, is a real problem.”

The Daily Beast has contacted the Department of Health and Human Services for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jaw-dropping-cost-of-rfk-jrs-secret-crusade-exposed/?

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Trump's 5-alarm economy

Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

President Trump flew to Beijing today under some of the darkest economic clouds of his political career, departing a country reeling from the cost of everyday life, Axios' Zachary Basu writes. Why it matters: The bottom is falling out on Trump's economic credibility — the central promise of his return to power. The inflation crisis that doomed his predecessor suggests he may not recover. A new CNN poll found that 70% of Americans disapprove of Trump's handling of the economy — a benchmark that never crossed 50% in his first term, even during the pandemic. 77% of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, say Trump's policies have driven up the cost of living in their own community. For now, Trump appears unconcerned, convinced that renewed inflation is temporary and that gas prices will plummet once he ends the Iran war. Asked before departing for China whether Americans' financial struggles were motivating his push for a deal with Iran, Trump replied: "Not even a little bit." "The only thing that matters when I'm talking about Iran is they can't have a nuclear weapon," he added. "I don't think about Americans' financial situation." Data: The Silver Bulletin. Chart: Noah Bressner/Axios 🖼️ The big picture: The affordability crisis that fueled Trump's return to power has become a five-alarm threat to his presidency — even as GDP growth, largely thanks to the AI boom, remains strong on paper. 1. Prices are surging: Inflation spiked to 3.8% in April as the Iran war pushed the national average price of gas above $4.50 a gallon. Economists fear the energy shock is beginning to ripple through the broader economy, pushing up the cost of groceries, airfare and electricity. 2. Paychecks are shrinking: Yesterday's inflation report showed that prices are outpacing wages for the first time in three years, erasing gains in real purchasing power. American households have absorbed a nearly 30% rise in consumer prices since the pandemic — a cumulative wound that has never fully healed, Axios' Courtenay Brown reports. 3. Debt is mounting: Americans are increasingly leaning on credit cards and loans to absorb rising costs, with consumer borrowing posting its biggest monthly jump in March since late 2022. The personal savings rate fell to 3.6% in March, its lowest level since 2022, as lower-income households burn through savings to cover essentials. 4. Confidence is collapsing: Consumer sentiment has cratered to record lows as Americans grow pessimistic about the economy and their own financial futures. A new YouGov/Economist poll found 59% say the economy is getting worse, while just 15% say it's improving. More than two-thirds of Americans say the country feels "out of control." 5. Main Street is souring: The National Federation of Independent Business says optimism around future business conditions and expansion plans has fallen to its lowest level since before Trump's reelection. Small businesses are often treated as an economic early-warning system because they're especially vulnerable to rising fuel costs, tighter credit and weakening consumer demand.

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🤖 Infighting stalls Trump action on AI

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

Disagreement among administration officials and a time crunch with President Trump's China summit stalled efforts to launch a federal response to the next frontier of AI, Axios' Ashley Gold writes. Why it matters: Weeks after Anthropic's most advanced model, Mythos, threw Washington for a loop, there's still no new federal AI regulation. 🔬 Zoom in: Early talk of federal safety reviews has slowed as administration officials made clear they aren't on the same page. A tech industry source told Axios the administration may wait for the outcome of the China summit before making any final decisions on AI. There's a tug-of-war over where advanced AI testing should happen — in the more "civilian" space of the Department of Commerce or in the national security side of the government, another tech industry source told Axios. Keep reading.

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Price of war

The Iran war has cost the US $29 billion so far — an estimate that's higher than the $25 billion figure the Pentagon provided to Congress just two weeks ago. However, one war budgeting expert told CNN that the conflict will ultimately cost US taxpayers at least $1 trillion. Read more.   Trump-Xi meeting President Trump will begin a multi-day state visit to China today that carries global consequences. Trade, Taiwan and the war in Iran are all top items on the agenda when he meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Read more. ALSO: The elaborate preparations for Trump's visit   ICE rebrand President Trump thinks Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, needs a rebrand — starting with a new name: National Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or NICE. He's teased the idea repeatedly on social media and in interviews, leaning into a softer acronym for one of the administration's hardest-edged agencies. Read more. ps:ICE is not what needs a rebrand? They're only doing what you're asking them to do!!!!!!!!!!

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Tax cuts collide with inflation as voters weigh Trump’s economy in the midterms President Donald Trump’s signature legislation, what he called “the one big beautiful bill” that cuts taxes but also reduces funding for public programs like Medicaid, has been a dividing line for voters in the upcoming midterm elections. Although Trump has tried to put more money in middle-class pockets with tax cuts, the benefits are being eroded as prices keep rising, especially during the war with Iran. Read more.

Why this matters: The latest numbers, released Tuesday, showed the rate of inflation continued to climb. Economic issues have been center stage in the battleground state of North Carolina and its U.S. Senate race, a microcosm of the national fight. Michael Whatley, the Republican nominee and former national party chairman, is championing Trump’s tax overhaul. Roy Cooper, the Democratic candidate and a former governor, is panning Trump’s management of the U.S. economy.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ US grocery prices rose in April, but gas spikes weren’t the only reason   What a US gas tax suspension could mean for drivers   Democratic primary for Nebraska’s ‘blue dot’ US House seat is too early to call   Election results from Tuesday’s races   West Virginia voters navigate new law requiring photo IDs at polling places in primary election   Brad Raffensperger became famous by defying Trump. Now he wants Georgia Republicans to forget that   Obama meets with Talarico, aiming to boost Democrat’s bid for US Senate in Texas

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Young Woman Fueling Trump’s Wild Midnight Sprees Is Exposed

Trump is often not alone during his sleepless nights.

Members of President Donald Trump’s inner circle are secretly fed up with the aide who is enabling his unhinged late-night Truth Social rampages. Most nights, the president fires off dozens of posts attacking his political enemies, amplifying conspiracy theories, spreading AI-slop videos and images, and boosting offensive content from obscure MAGA accounts on X and his own Truth Social platform.But despite the odd hours, Trump isn’t doing it all alone, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal.

His executive assistant Natalie Harp is the driving force behind some of his most incendiary content, including a racist video that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, and an AI-generated image of Trump as Jesus Christ, both of which Trump later took down.

Harp, who is in her mid-30s, brings the president stacks of printed-out drafts of social media posts—many of them recycling content from other accounts—for Trump to approve, sources told the Journal.

She then logs onto the president’s account and posts batches of Trump-approved messages. The president also posts some messages himself, and at a minimum he personally approves everything that goes on his account, according to the Journal.

The process has frustrated some White House officials because Harp doesn’t share her proposed posts with the chief of staff’s office, communications aides, or national-security officials, sources told the Journal.

Instead, she says she works for Trump and only listens to him.

In a statement to the Journal, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said, “We don’t discuss internal deliberations of how the process works, but no other social-media tool has been more effective than Truth.”

The platform allows Trump to “offer” his unfiltered and direct thoughts to the American people, without the biased media taking him out of context,” he added.

The Daily Beast has also reached out for comment.

An analysis by the Journal found that Trump has posted a staggering 8,800 times since returning to office.

The 79-year-old president, who has a habit of falling asleep during official White House events, has also gone on Truth Social blitzes involving at least a dozen posts shared between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. EST a total of 44 times since last January.

Earlier this month, the Daily Beast found that given the president’s volume of Truth Social posts published between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m., there were only five days in April when Trump could have gotten a full night’s sleep.

On Monday, Trump continued the trend by posting 54 times between 10:14 p.m. and 1:12 a.m., including resharing posts that called Obama a “traitor” and demanded the former president’s arrest.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/natalie-harp-young-woman-fueling-trumps-wild-midnight-sprees-is-exposed/?

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Trump’s MAGA Makeover Project Hit by Embarrassing New Leaks

The president’s controversial renovation has hit a humiliating hurdle.

Donald Trump’s massively over-budget makeover of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has reportedly hit a humiliating hurdle, with documents suggesting the project is behind schedule and plagued by repair issues.

The fresh revelations come shortly after the president erupted into a furious 400-word rant defending the controversial renovation project, following reports showing the cost had ballooned far beyond what he had initially promised.

According to internal Interior Department documents obtained by The New York Times, staff members raised concerns about the quality and pace of work being carried out on the iconic Washington pool by Virginia contractor Atlantic Industrial Coatings.

The documents reportedly showed that bubbles and small holes had appeared in one of the waterproofing layers being sprayed onto the pool, raising concerns that the material was not adhering properly. Officials also flagged problems with uneven application of the pool’s newly selected “American flag blue” paint shade, leaving parts of the reflecting pool “mottled” in different shades of blue.

The issues were reportedly being addressed, but the documents cast doubt on whether the project would meet its May 22 completion deadline.

That timing matters because the Trump administration bypassed standard federal bidding competition rules by arguing there was an urgent need to complete the repairs ahead of America’s 250th anniversary celebrations.

White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told the Daily Beast in a statement: “The restoration effort will be completed ahead of America’s 250th celebrations and for a fraction of the cost that the former Presidents Obama and Biden squandered only to worsen its condition.”

The Interior Department awarded Atlantic Industrial Coatings a lucrative no-bid contract in April after invoking emergency procurement powers typically reserved for situations where delays could cause “serious injury” to the government.

Trump himself publicly praised the company at the time, telling reporters: “I have a guy who’s unbelievable at doing swimming pools.” The firm is reported to have worked on pools at Trump’s club in Sterling, Virginia.

But on Tuesday, Trump abruptly distanced himself from the contractor, following reporting about the project’s spiralling costs.

“Also, I didn’t give out the contract, ‘Interior’ did, to a contractor I did not know, and have never used before,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

Although the contract was awarded on April 3, government records reviewed by the Times reportedly showed that as of Sunday, just 35 percent of the pool’s surface had been fully coated. Another major repair task of replacing leak-prone joints between slabs reportedly hadn’t yet started, with less than two weeks remaining before the deadline.

Trump initially claimed the work would cost just $1.8 million. In his furious Truth Social tirade Tuesday, he revised that figure upward to “5 or 6” million dollars.

But the New York Times revealed that the Interior Department plans to pay $13.1 million to Atlantic Industrial Coatings.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-maga-makeover-project-hit-by-embarrassing-new-leaks/?

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Trump’s ICE Goons Targeted Pregnant Women and Cancer Patients

New government data reveals exactly who the president’s “worst of the worst” push really came for.

President Donald Trump’s ICE detained a record number of pregnant women, cancer patients, and disabled people during the first seven months of his second term, new government data reveals.

The figures—analyzed by PunchUp, the Daily Beast’s investigations Substack publication—are drawn from 505,000 ICE I-213 arrest forms released by The Guardian last Friday following litigation by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Trump, 79, had repeatedly promised his second-term immigration crackdown would target “the worst of the worst.” Instead, PunchUp‘s analysis shows agents hauled in 21 cancer patients, seven organ transplant recipients, at least 24 disabled people—including the blind, deaf, and paralyzed—and 130 pregnant women between January and July last year.

Last week, PunchUp revealed that the same dataset showed ICE doubled its daily arrest rate the second Trump took the oath of office. Now PunchUp can show how that surge in arrests led to vulnerable groups being targeted.

Among the most damning findings is the detention of so many pregnant women, some heavily so. Trump’s ICE arrested an average of 17 expectant mothers a month in 2025—nearly six times Biden’s 2024 monthly rate, the outlet found. Of the 130 pregnant women arrested, 85 had no criminal charges, nearly three times as many pregnant women with no criminal records as Biden arrested in his entire final year.

One of the most tragic entries uncovered by PunchUp belongs to a 17-year-old Honduran teen listed on her I-213 as a student, picked up by ICE in Orleans Parish, Louisiana. She was 32 weeks pregnant—eight months. She had no criminal charges. Her only listed immigration violation was entering the United States without admission. ICE processed her for a final removal order anyway.

Other verbatim notes from the forms detailed by the outlet include a 25-year-old Venezuelan woman described as “complaining of abdominal pain” while 32 weeks pregnant, and one woman described as “approximately 10 months pregnant”—meaning full-term.

The form filed about a 29-year-old Guatemalan mother of two U.S. citizens records one further chilling detail. She told her transport officer she might be pregnant; the form notes the officer “used only handcuffs for restraints.” The word “only” suggests that the default restraint is worse, amid previous concerns about the use of shackles and full-body restraints.

The detention of the seven organ transplant recipients—who depend on daily drugs to stop their bodies destroying the donor organ—is also shocking. Across Biden’s entire term, that number was zero.

In Atlanta, a 37-year-old man was arrested while taking transplant-rejection medication and, in the ICE agent’s own words, “going to regularly scheduled follow ups with Emory Hospital,” one of America’s top kidney-transplant centers. In Yakima, Washington, a 59-year-old kidney transplant patient brought a letter from his transplant medical director to his ICE check-in, but agents still took him away.

At least 22 of those arrested in 2025 had cancer. One was a 44-year-old Honduran mechanic—and father of six American children—picked up at the Hinds County, Mississippi jail just 19 days after Trump took office. The form filed about him states he had been in treatment for throat cancer, but had not taken his medication since being in jail.

ICE offered him a phone call to his brother, asking him to bring the medication to the field office. The brother was at work and could not come. The man was processed for removal regardless.

Disabled detainees included nine amputees, seven blind people, seven deaf people, and two paralyzed individuals. HIV-positive arrests jumped nearly fivefold under Trump, while tuberculosis cases also rose.

The White House referred a request for comment from the Daily Beast to DHS, which did not respond.

*Read the full PunchUp investigation here

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trumps-ice-goons-targeted-pregnant-women-and-cancer-patients/?

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How Musk Got Back in With Trump by Sinking Even Lower

Elon Musk peddled “standard white supremacy” talking points as he was re-welcomed back into Trump’s orbit.

President Trump has welcomed Elon Musk back into his inner circle despite the world’s richest man embracing white supremacist talking points.

The Musk-Trump story is a drama in three parts. Act one saw the Tesla CEO shielded by the new-look White House after he made a gesture at a Trump rally in January last year that historians said looked a lot like a Nazi salute.

That didn’t get him nixed; in fact, after Trump gained control of the Executive Branch, Musk was brought on to run the Department of Government Efficiency, an ultimately ill-fated effort to slash wasteful government spending.

Act two began with an extraordinary falling-out between the two men. It started when Musk unleashed a broadside against Trump’s signature budget bill, leading to a nasty war of words which culminated in the billionaire declaring that the president was all over the Epstein files. “@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public,” he said in June.

“Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.” He later deleted the post and walked back, but the relationship looked dead.

“Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore,” Trump said of the man who spent $277 million supporting the president and allied Republicans.

The divorce got so bad that Musk even threatened to start his own political party, the America Party, before relenting.

But somehow Musk, who has since funded pro-Trump PACs again, finds himself at the top table again. On Wednesday morning, he revealed that he was one of only two ultra-wealthy tech tycoons traveling to China on Air Force One with Trump. He emerged from the plane at around 8 p.m. local time, lurking behind the president.

The reconciliation is all the more striking given that he has appeared to deviate into the murky world of white supremacy. Last month, a Washington Post analysis of nearly 66,000 of Musk’s X posts found that six percent of his output over the past seven months—roughly 850 posts—concerned race, nearly triple his previous rate, with the overwhelming majority focused on perceived threats to white people. He posted on the subject on 166 out of 197 days.

This came after frequent Musk rants about non-existent “white genocide” in his native South Africa, a topic that his chatbot Grok would even spew at random after unrelated prompts from confused users.

Musk’s tangent coincides with Trump’s attacks on immigrant populations. Take Somalis, for example. The president’s tone towards the ethnic group has intensified of late. In December, he labeled Somali immigrants “garbage,” saying the East African country “stinks” and is “no good for a reason.”

He has also peddled tropes about Mexicans and even tried to terminate the Temporary Protected Status of about 350,000 Haitian immigrants last year. This new atmosphere has created fertile ground for the type of concerning race rhetoric that Musk appears to have embraced.

In January, Musk wrote on X that “Whites are a rapidly dying minority,” a post that has since accumulated more than 17 million views. In February, he declared that “there has been unrelenting hate and poisonous propaganda in the West against anyone White, straight or male over the past decade or more,” adding, “No more guilt trips. ENOUGH.”

In September last year, he replied “Yes” to a post suggesting White people faced a choice between being “conquered, enslaved, raped and genocided while being called ‘racist’” or reclaiming “our nations and our

dignity.”

In a more recent post, he appeared to suggest white people should be considered Indigenous to the United States. Asked how long one’s ancestors must have been somewhere to qualify, he replied: “250 years sounds like plenty to me.”

Researchers who study extremism are unambiguous about what this amounts to. “As far as I can tell, Musk at this point agrees with standard talking points of white supremacy,” Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told The Post last month. “You just don’t get more white supremacist than the stuff Musk is signing onto or pushing.”

Ashley Jardina, associate professor of public policy and politics at the University of Virginia and author of “White Identity Politics,: called it “standard white supremacy,” adding that the absence of public sanction matters. “You don’t see a lot of that directed at Musk,” she said.

The pattern predates the Post’s analysis and his fallout with the president. At a rally celebrating Trump’s inauguration, Musk thrust his right arm straight out into the air—twice—prompting immediate comparisons to a Nazi salute.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian of fascism at New York University, said it was “a Nazi salute and a very belligerent one too.”

Musk brushed the controversy aside. “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks,” he posted on X. “The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”

Where this spiral might have seen other CEOs face ruin, Musk appears to have thrived. The White House and representatives for Musk have been contacted for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-musk-got-back-in-with-trump-by-sinking-even-lower/?

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Keystone Kash Humiliated With Embarrassing TV Reel

The FBI director previously alluded to being a morning drinker and publicly boasted about “slamming” Negronis in Italy.

FBI Director Kash Patel has been hit with a brutal TV reel that shows him repeatedly bragging about his affinity for drinking.

MS NOW’s The Briefing with Jen Psaki stitched together clips of Patel—who denies consuming alcohol in excess since joining the FBI—once speaking of early-morning drinking, having a “beer or three,” and of “slamming Negronis.”

“Sundays are for God, hockey, and beer,” Patel said in one of the clips, from 2023. “I will resurface back on very early Monday morning.”

In another, in 2022, Patel said, “It turned into flannel Fridays because I was having this beer and I was wearing a flannel shirt, and now it’s this massive thing online.”

Those remarks were made before President Donald Trump tapped Patel to lead the bureau—but multiple insiders alleged to The Atlantic that the 46-year-old has continued drinking regularly as FBI director, occasionally so heavily that he has been unreachable behind locked doors.

Reached for reaction to the MS NOW segment, the FBI referred the Daily Beast to Patel’s previous denials of drinking in excess on the job and shared a statement from Assistant FBI Director Ben Williamson.

“While some in the media continue these pathetic attempts at smears, Director Patel and the FBI will be solely focused on continuing the most prolific year of crime reduction in United States history,” he said.

There was no shortage of boozy boasts from Patel before he took his all-important job in the Trump administration.

In another clip aired by MS NOW, Patel said in 2023, “Everybody should have a beer or three.”

In a fourth, from 2022, he said, “We ended up in northern Italy, and we were slamming Negronis at our, like, last night, and I was like, I need a subpoena.”

Patel even suggested that he drinks early in the morning in another clip aired by MS NOW.

“I went to Devin, and I told him that in the morning, he goes, ‘Dude, if you’re gonna start drinking at 9 a.m., get out of my office,” he said in September 2024.

Psaki also featured a clip in which Patel predicted that, should he ever be appointed to a position in the Trump administration, he would be accused of being an alcoholic.

“Can I be the first one to say that if I ever go before Senate confirmation, they’re gonna call me an alcoholic?” he said on the Fourth of July in 2022 while cracking open a beer and wearing a bright-red MAGA hat.

Psaki was left stunned by Patel’s admission.

“His words, not my words,” she said. “I mean, the guy had enough foresight to joke that he might one day face questions about his drinking, but now that he is actually in a big, important government job, he’s very clearly outraged by those very questions from the Senate.”

Patel clashed with Democratic senators in a hearing on Tuesday, particularly Sen. Chris Van Hollen. The FBI director said under oath that he “unequivocally and categorically” refuted the allegations made by The Atlantic and agreed to take an “audit” test to prove his drinking denial.

The FBI director cannot say he has never consumed alcohol since becoming FBI director. Videos of him chugging a beer with the U.S. Men’s Hockey team went viral in February, showing Patel celebrating rowdier than anyone else in the locker room after the team won a gold medal. Trump, a teetotaler, was reportedly angered by the clips, but kept his frustrations private.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/keystone-kash-humiliated-with-embarrassing-tv-reel/?

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Supreme Court Justice Issues Dire Warning After Trump’s Attacks

The president has been demanding loyalty from his appointees.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson appealed to the American public to defend the judicial system’s independence amid an onslaught of personal attacks and demands for personal fealty from President Donald Trump. Speaking to hundreds of students Tuesday at Southern Methodist University, the liberal justice did not name Trump or members of his administration. She did, however, encourage Americans to “stand up” for judicial independence, just one day after Trump blasted his Supreme Court appointees for not being sufficiently loyal.

“Equal justice under law is a key tenet to freedom in our society, and in order to have that, you have to have an independent judiciary — one that is not beholden to the political branches or beholden to people,” Jackson said, as reported by Politico.

“I just wish that people really focused on that and, therefore, stood up in some ways for the judiciary, when people — judges are being attacked and undermined, that is really an attack on our society,” she added.

The comments came more than a year after Jackson received a standing ovation when she appeared to become the first Supreme Court Justice to denounce the Trump administration’s “relentless attacks” on the federal judiciary.

“Across the nation, judges are facing increased threats of not only physical violence, but also professional retaliation just for doing our jobs,” Jackson told a conference of judges in Puerto Rico. “And the attacks are not random. They seem designed to intimidate those of us who serve in this critical capacity.”

Weeks earlier, Trump had branded Judge James Boasberg, who ruled the administration had illegally deported Venezuelan migrants to a mega prison in El Salvador, a “Radical Left Lunatic,” while his deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller railed against a cabal of “Communist” judges determined to keep “terrorists” in the country.

Since then, Trump’s attacks have only escalated in response to a rare rebuke from the Supreme Court’s conservative justices.

In February, the court struck down import duties that Trump had imposed on products from dozens of U.S. trading partners, with Trump appointees Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch joining the 6-3 ruling that the tariffs exceeded the president’s authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

In April, Barrett and Gorsuch also appeared skeptical of the government’s arguments in favor of the president’s effort to overturn birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution.

After the tariff ruling, Trump raged that the two were a “disgrace to our nation,” “fools and lapdogs,” and “an embarrassment to their families.”

Months later, he was still spiraling over the tariffs decision—and panicking over the court’s upcoming birthright citizenship ruling—as he accused his appointees of being “so bad, and hurtful to our Country.”

The justices “have to do the right thing, but it’s really OK for them to be loyal to the person that appointed them to ‘almost’ the highest position in the land, that is, a Justice of the United States Supreme Court,” he ranted on Truth Social this week.

With Tuesday’s remarks, Jackson took a step beyond buoying legal insiders and appealed to the public to protect the rule of law, Politico noted.

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

https://www.thedailybeast.com/supreme-court-justice-ketanji-brown-jackson-issues-dire-warning-after-trumps-attacks/?

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Miller and Homan Pull Rank on ICE Cowboy with Humiliating Top Goon Pick

Markwayne Mullin has been outmuscled over the choice of a new ICE director.

The former Oklahoma senator picked by Donald Trump to head the Department of Homeland Security has lost his first major battle in the job.

Markwayne Mullin, who took over from the ousted Kristi Noem in March, had been pushing to get his hometown sheriff, Vic Regalado, appointed as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

He has been outmuscled, however, by Trump henchmen Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, who wanted their own man in charge at the agency as it leads an anti-migrant crackdown.

DHS has confirmed to the Daily Beast that private prison veteran David Venturella, a former senior executive at GEO Group, will take over from outgoing director Todd Lyons on June 1.

The appointment is a stinging defeat for Mullin, who wanted Tulsa Sheriff Regalado to land the role.

But it is a major triumph for border czar Homan, who personally recruited Venturella back into government in February 2025 and had been lobbying hard for the promotion. It is also a vindication for Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff Miller who has continued to direct immigration policy from behind the scenes despite his apparent sidelining at DHS, as the Beast’s sister Substack outlet PunchUp reported on Tuesday.

Venturella, who is around 60, spent more than 12 years as an executive at GEO Group, the for-profit prison giant headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida. He left the company in 2023 but remained a paid GEO consultant through Jan. 31, 2025, the Washington Post reported, before joining ICE as a senior adviser less than two weeks later. The Trump administration granted him an ethics waiver allowing him to work on matters involving his former employer.

Under his watch as senior adviser, ICE has awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in fresh contracts to GEO Group, the Post reported, as it has reopened mothballed prisons and pitched temporary tent camps to absorb a surge in detention numbers.

GEO Group, which records show holds more than $1 billion in current ICE business, is among the agency’s largest contractors and owns the only firm with a federal deal to track immigrants via GPS ankle monitors.

Mullin had been pushing for Regalado—a MAGA lawman who has shared a stage with QAnon conspiracy theorists and admitted paying his superior officer to be fast-tracked for promotion in the Tulsa Police Department, as PunchUp revealed.

Venturella inherits an agency reeling from a string of crises, including January’s fatal shootings of Americans Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both 37, by federal agents in Minneapolis.

ICE agent Jonathan Ross, 43, killed Good on Jan. 7 and has since been quietly relocated to a fresh state posting while an FBI probe stalls, PunchUp reported last month, sparking anger on Capitol Hill. ICE arrests have plunged to roughly 1,200 a day, Mullin has acknowledged—well short of Miller’s stated goal of 3,000 detentions a day.

The pick has drawn criticism from Democrats. Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois, 42, wrote on X on Tuesday night: “Let’s be clear: his appointment is to ensure Trump’s corporate bosses continue profiting from our communities’ pain.”

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/stephen-miller-and-tom-homan-pull-rank-on-ice-cowboy-markwayne-mullin-with-humiliating-david-venturella-pick/?

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Judges Humiliate Trump by Ruling Against ICE 10,000 Times

Even judges nominated to the bench by the president are pushing back.

Judges across the country are overwhelmingly rejecting President Donald Trump’s hopes to indefinitely detain immigrants as part of his mass deportation plans.

Analysis from Politico found that there have been more than 10,000 examples of federal judges ruling against ICE’s controversial mandatory detention policy, compared with just 1,200 cases in which they sided with the Trump administration.

Judges are also routinely voicing their frustrations with the Trump administration for continuing to detain people suspected of living in the country illegally without the possibility of release on bond or an opportunity to plead their case, even after being repeatedly rebuffed in court.

The aggressive tactics of ICE agents during immigration raids have also come under strong condemnation from judges ruling against the mass-detention policy.

“Across the interior of the United States, agents of the federal government—masked, anonymous, armed with military weapons, operating from unmarked vehicles, acting without warrants of any kind—are seizing persons for civil immigration violations and imprisoning them without any semblance of due process,” West Virginia Judge Joseph Goodwin wrote in a February ruling.

“It is an assault on the constitutional order. It is what the Fourth Amendment was written to prevent.”

In total, more than 425 federal judges across the country have at one stage ruled against the administration’s detention plans, including a majority of those nominated to the bench by Trump.

One such Trump appointee, New York-based Judge Gary Brown, blasted ICE’s repeated attempts to detain immigrants without bond, as well as its efforts to find new ways to defy court orders.

These tactics include moving detainees from state to state to prevent them from filing lawsuits seeking release, or dumping them hundreds of miles from home without their possessions after courts ordered their release.

“This isn’t how things are supposed to work in America,” Brown wrote in the case of a man whose lawful status was revoked after ICE attempted “baseless” removal proceedings against him.

“Unquestionably, the laws of human decency condemn such villainy.”

One judge who ruled against the administration 90 times cited Greek mythology and likened the administration’s attempts to continue detaining migrants without just cause to Hercules’ effort to slay “a serpent whose heads regenerated twofold for each head that was lopped off.”

Another judge compared the Trump administration to Sisyphus endlessly rolling a boulder uphill in a December ruling.

Elsewhere, U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III condemned ICE for the time and effort it is wasting while continuing to carry out its mass-detention mandate.

“Despite hundreds of similar rulings in this and other courts resoundingly in favor of the ICE-detainee petitioners, ICE continues to act contrary to law, to spend taxpayer money needlessly, and to waste the scarce resources of the judiciary,” Bartle wrote in February.

“While some judicial activists seek to thwart much-needed changes like this, DHS has been vindicated by the Supreme Court again and again,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told the Daily Beast.

“DHS has the law and the facts on its side and will be vindicated on this issue too. Despite a historic number of injunctions, DHS is working rapidly and overtime to remove these aliens from detention centers to their final destination—home.”

In a statement, Justice Department spokesperson Natalie Baldassare suggested judges ruling against the administration more than 10,000 times was “great.”

“Now the American people can see how judges are putting personal policy preferences ahead of proper interpretations of the law,” Baldassare told Politico.

“The law clearly requires detention of aliens pending their removal from the United States,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson added. “We are confident the Trump administration’s view of the law will be vindicated on appeal in the Supreme Court.”

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and Justice Department for further comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/judges-humiliate-donald-trump-by-ruling-against-ice-10000-times/?

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FDA chief’s resignation widens a leadership gap at the nation’s health department

Dr. Marty Makary's Tuesday departure from his post atop the Food and Drug Administration leaves the agency with only an acting commissioner. Meanwhile, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also has an acting director. And there's no Senate-confirmed surgeon general a year and a half into President Donald Trump's second term. Read more.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

Trump administration freezes new Medicare enrollments for hospice and home health agencies US and China seek to repair damage from tariff war that sent trade into a freefall Photos of Trump in China for talks with Xi Jinping Former private prison executive David Venturella will become ICE's acting leader Fani Willis vows to sue over new Georgia law that removes party labels in Atlanta-area elections   Bizarre behavior Outlandish social posts, meandering speeches, dozing off: President Donald Trump’s odd behavior often gets a pass, but CNN’s Aaron Blake says that’s starting to change. ➕ Taiwan anxiously eyes Trump’s summit in China.

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Dejected Trump Reacts to China Meeting With 9-Word Response

The president met with his Chinese counterpart for over two hours on Thursday.

President Donald Trump was uncharacteristically tight-lipped following a warning from Beijing about Taiwan.

After meeting in private in the Chinese capital on Thursday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that China’s Xi Jinping used the talks to warn Trump that the “Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-U.S. relations” and gave an ominous warning that the issue could result in “conflicts.”

“If it is handled properly, the bilateral relationship will enjoy overall stability,” the spokesperson said. “Otherwise, the two countries will have clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy.”

Trump and his delegation, including top administration officials and Silicon Valley CEOs, flew into the Chinese capital on Wednesday night ahead of meetings with President Xi Jinping on Thursday and Friday.

Trump was greeted on Thursday by an elaborate display including a red carpet, a cannon salute, an honor guard, and children waving flags, with Xi himself welcoming the president outside the Great Hall of the People before the first round of talks.

In their introductory remarks, the leaders exchanged pleasantries, with Xi noting that “the whole world is watching our meeting” and asking if the U.S. and China can “meet global challenges together and provide more stability for the world.”

Trump, for his part, heaped praise on his Chinese counterpart, telling Xi, “You’re a great leader, I say it to everybody, you’re a great leader.”

“Sometimes people don’t like me saying it, but I say it anyway because it’s true. I only say the truth.”

The 79-year-old Trump struck a markedly different tone when speaking to reporters after the first round of talks had concluded after roughly two hours and 15 minutes.

Standing with Xi outside Beijing’s Temple of Heaven, Trump was asked how the talks went. Without cracking a smile, or showing any emotion at all, he replied: “It’s great—a great place. Incredible. China is beautiful."

Xi remained silent, and Trump said nothing further. The pair then thanked reporters before heading inside the temple, as one reporter attempted to ask one final question about Taiwan.

The official White House-affiliated @RapidResponse47 account later shared a clip of the moment on X, cut before the reporter can be heard asking about Taiwan.

CNN White House reporter Betsy Klein noted how “uncharacteristically restrained” the president appeared during the photo opp, adding that he “usually would have something to say on that subject, and many others, and we’ve seen him be quite freewheeling in his public appearances, even in the last week, going off-script regularly.”

“But really, in that situation, making clear that he understands he is Xi’s guest here, or just not wanting to talk about it,” Klein added.

While the talks were expected to touch on everything from trade and technology to geopolitical issues like Iran and Taiwan, the Associated Press reported after the meeting, citing Chinese state media, that Xi warned Trump that differences over Taiwan could lead the U.S. and China into conflict.

Of particular concern is a stalled sale of U.S. arms to Taiwan worth $14 billion. While it has been approved by Congress, Trump has yet to formally move ahead with the deal, although prior to Thursday’s talks he had explicitly stated that he would discuss future arms sales to Taiwan with Xi.

The issue threatens to bring to an end a longstanding policy, initiated by President Ronald Reagan, that the U.S. does not consult Beijing on arms sales to Taiwan.

In a letter addressed to the president ahead of his departure for China, a bipartisan group of senators urged Trump and his team to “make clear that America’s support for Taiwan is inviolable.”

“You can make clear to Beijing that as you seek to level the economic playing field, American support for Taiwan is not up for negotiation,” the letter, signed by six Democratic senators and two Republicans, read.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/dejected-donald-trump-reacts-to-china-meeting-with-9-word-response/?

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Florida Voters Torch ‘Pompous Idiot’ Trump After His Wild Admission

Trump is facing fierce backlash even from the home state of his Mar-a-Lago refuge.

President Donald Trump is facing fierce backlash from Florida voters after dismissing concerns about the economic toll of the Iran war.

As the conflict with Iran drives up energy costs, Americans are increasingly feeling the impact at the pump, with the national average price for regular gas climbing above $4.50 a gallon, according to AAA.

Despite the rising costs, President Trump said Tuesday that Americans’ financial struggles are not a factor in how he approaches negotiations with Iran.

When asked if the rising cost of living factors into his push for a deal, the president dismissed the idea, replying: “Not even a little bit.”

“The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran, they can’t have a nuclear weapon,” he continued.

“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situations. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” he added.

Voters in Trump’s home state reacted to his remarks on Wednesday, with one voter describing him as a “pompous idiot” in an interview with MS NOW.

Another accused him of being disconnected from ordinary Americans and of being motivated by “pride and ego” rather than by people’s economic struggles.

“He doesn’t care about our situation. He doesn’t. He’s just here for pride and ego,” the voter said.

Another voter added: “He’s not lying. And he proves it. Not only that, but also like food stamps and other stuff. He does not care about our financial situation.”

Another voter said: “That’s ridiculous.”

A fifth voter criticized the president’s wealthy upbringing, telling him: “You were born with a silver spoon in your mouth,” and arguing that “Americans’ pockets don’t mean anything to you.”

A Trump adviser admitted to Axios that “the president could have chosen different words, but this is what he thinks.”

The voters’ concerns reflect polling, which has shown many Americans are losing confidence in his handling of the economy as the war rages on.

The latest CNN/SSRS poll found that Trump’s net approval rating on the economy has plunged to -40, the worst level recorded for him on the issue.

The survey marks a dramatic reversal from May 2018, when his economic approval stood at +10 points.

Meanwhile, a Gallup survey found that 55 percent of respondents feel worse off financially, up from 53 percent last year and 47 percent the year before—the highest level recorded since the survey began in 2001, exceeding peaks during the pandemic and global financial crisis.

And there is little indication that Americans’ economic hardships will ease anytime soon, with negotiations between the U.S. and Iran to end the war stalling and the Strait of Hormuz remaining closed.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Sunday rejected President Trump’s latest proposal to end the war, insisting Tehran would “never bow” to U.S. demands to halt uranium enrichment and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump blasted Iran’s response as “TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE” on Truth Social as negotiations continued to stall over Tehran’s demands for an end to the U.S. naval blockade, guarantees against future attacks, compensation for war damage, and recognition of Iranian control over the Strait.

According to CNN, the deadlock has fueled growing skepticism inside the administration about whether Iran is negotiating in good faith, while Trump has increasingly threatened renewed military escalation, warning earlier this month that “the bombing starts” if no deal is reached.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/florida-voters-torch-pompous-idiot-trump-after-his-wild-admission/?

ps:Well what did they expect? Only 4 years prior, he showed them the kind of person he is!!!!!

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I Know DOJ Is Covering for Trump on Epstein: Congressman

The DOJ’s handling of the Epstein files suggests a “cover-up” is underway, according to Rep. Dan Goldman.

A congressman who viewed Jeffrey Epstein files that are still redacted for the public says the Department of Justice is “covering up for Donald Trump.”

Nearly half a year after the president signed the law forcing the DOJ to release its files on the convicted sex trafficker, roughly 2.5 million documents remain sealed from public view, and many of the unsealed documents remain heavily redacted.

New York Rep. Dan Goldman argued on The Daily Beast Podcast that the DOJ’s handling of the release of the files—a cause backed by a majority of Americans—suggests a larger cover-up is underway.“Based on the way that they released, and poorly and ... illegally redacted, as well as what they covered up, even within those documents, it is clear that the Department of Justice is covering up for Donald Trump,” Goldman, a Democrat, told host Sarah Ewall-Wice.

Goldman continued, “I want to know what’s in those 2.5 million pages, because I am almost certain right now that there is a lot more material that would implicate Donald Trump in some aspect of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking conspiracy—and I don’t mean necessarily that Donald Trump is guilty of being a co-conspirator—but he was involved in some way, and perhaps in more ways than we even know about and that is being covered up.”

“There’s no reason for them to cover up two and a half million pages,” he added.

Earlier this year, Goldman, 50, visited the DOJ to inspect unredacted versions of the released Epstein files, which only members of Congress have been allowed to see.

There he saw a document with “nothing in there that should have been redacted,” he told Ewall-Wice.

Goldman appeared to be referring to a bombshell email that he exposed on the House floor in March as an example of the DOJ’s questionable redactions.

A 2009 email from Epstein’s attorney, Jack Goldberger, was nearly fully blacked out by the DOJ when it was released as part of its Epstein files dump, but Goldman said he viewed the unredacted version and brought a large poster board to the House floor displaying what he described as the full email.

In the email, Goldberger appears to have summarized a “20-minute phone conference” with Trump, Trump’s attorney Alan Garten, and a person named “Brad,” presumably Brad Edwards, who has represented Epstein’s victims.

According to the email, Garten allegedly said that Epstein was “never asked to leave” Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, and Trump allegedly said he “may have been” on Epstein’s plane, as well as at Epstein’s house.

The DOJ redacted that entire portion with a large black block.

Trump, who appears thousands of times in the Epstein files, has said that he wasn’t “friendly” with Epstein and was “never” on his plane.

Goldman told Ewall-Wice that the DOJ “made up some bogus explanation of attorney-client privilege” for the redactions to the document.

“It is not anything approximating attorney-client privilege,” he argued. “And instead, it’s using these privileges, using the various different mechanisms that they are falsely using, to cover up.”

The DOJ has claimed that documents still being withheld are “privileged,” “duplicates,” or related to ongoing federal investigations. But Goldman countered, “If they’re duplicates, turn them over.”

After an investigation by NPR into “dozens” of withheld pages, the DOJ released further documents, including files relating to allegations that Trump had sexually abused a minor. Trump has denied the allegations.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who replaced Pam Bondi after her unceremonious firing, declared last month that the DOJ has to move on from the Epstein files, saying, “to the extent the Epstein files was a part of the past year of this Justice Department, it should not be a part of anything going forward.”

When reached for comment, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told the Daily Beast in a statement: “Anything said on the Daily Beast podcast is equivalent to screaming into the void. No one listens to this Trump Derangement Syndrome therapy session. And just as President Trump has said, he’s been totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein. By releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena request, signing the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and calling for more investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends, President Trump has done more for Epstein’s victims than anyone before him. Meanwhile, Democrats like Hakeem Jeffries and Stacey Plaskett have yet to explain why they were soliciting money and meetings from Epstein after he was a convicted sex offender.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/i-know-doj-is-covering-for-donald-trump-on-jeffrey-epstein-rep-dan-goldman/?

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Chinese Block Secret Service Agent in Tense Trump Showdown

The confrontation was witnessed by journalists traveling with the president.

Chinese security officials refused to allow a U.S. Secret Service agent into an historic Beijing temple compound because he was carrying a gun.

The incident, on the first full day of Donald Trump’s state visit to China, led to an “intense” half-hour standoff between rival security officials, according to a reporter traveling with the president.

Accompanied by Cabinet secretaries and leading tech CEOs, Trump is in China for talks with President Xi Jinping expected to address major trade disputes, tensions over Taiwan, and the Iran war.

The U.S. president was uncharacteristically tight-lipped as he emerged from the first round of talks for a tour of the 15th-century Temple of Heaven with Xi.

It was from there that members of the press pack accompanying Trump reported on the security incident.According to the White House Press Pool Reports account on X, a Secret Service agent accompanying the pool reporters was refused entrance to the Temple of Heaven compound because he was armed.“The pool’s entry to the temple complex was delayed by nearly half an hour by a lengthy and increasingly intense discussion between US and Chinese officials, after Chinese security refused to allow a Secret Service agent accompanying the pool to enter the temple compound with his weapon,” AFP correspondent Danny Kemp reported.“A compromise was eventually found,” he added, without explanation.

As Trump arrived at the temple with Xi, a reporter asked how the the talks had gone.

“It’s great—a great place. Incredible. China is beautiful," Trump replied tersely and without enthusiasm.

Kemp later posted, at 1:25 p.m. China time that the press pool were “now holding” at the temple complex, “while U.S. and Chinese officials who are keeping us in a side room have a spirited debate about whether we can move.”

A follow-up post at 1:41 p.m said Trump was leaving the Temple of Heaven, while the pool endured “after another brief delay while U.S. staff and reporters had an even more spirited discussion with Chinese officials, who several times tried to stop them from leaving and joining the (presidential) motorcade.”

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.

Major security initiatives have been rolled out for Trump’s time in Beijing, with major roads and public parks closed.

Around 30 flights in and out of Beijing Capital International Airport were canceled on Wednesday evening, according to The New York Times. The flights were canceled between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m, with Trump landing at 7:50 p.m. local time.

Following the recent attempt on Trump’s life during the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, all the staff at the Four Seasons Hotel where the U.S. president is staying have registered their identities with authorities.

As well as deploying armed police officers, screening tents and security barricades at Trump’s hotel, the Times reports that hotels near the U.S. embassy, including the Four Seasons, have no rooms available on their website during Trump’s visit.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/chinese-block-secret-service-agent-in-tense-trump-showdown-in-beijing/?

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Trump’s Trip Hit by Humiliating Intel Leak

The confidential report details how Beijing is hoping to take advantage of the president’s deeply unpopular war.

A damning leaked intelligence report has revealed the extent to which China is using Donald Trump’s war in Iran to try to diminish the U.S.’s standing on the world stage.

The confidential Pentagon report, which two U.S. officials relayed to The Washington Post, reveals how Beijing is exploiting the deeply unpopular Middle East conflict to its advantage on key issues such as diplomacy, its economy, and plotting potential future military endeavors.

This includes portraying the U.S. as an increasingly weakened global power, forming stronger ties with other countries affected by the Strait of Hormuz crisis, and planning how the war may impact China’s own future military operations.

The leaked intel arrives at a particularly sensitive time, with Trump meeting for crunch talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, where hot-button issues such as Iran, trade, and Taiwan are taking center stage.

Jacob Stokes, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told the Post that the report indicated how Trump’s war in Iran is “massively improving China’s geopolitical position” at the expense of the U.S.

“China has an opening to portray the United States as an aggressive, unilateralist power in decline because Washington cannot stop itself from getting embroiled in bloody and costly Middle East wars,” Stokes said.

The confidential U.S. intelligence analysis, produced for Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine by the Joint Staff Intelligence Directorate, notes that China has been condemning the war in Iran in its public messaging. This includes describing the now 10-week war, which was not authorized by U.S. Congress, as “illegal.”

The report highlights that China could take advantage of how the war is draining U.S. stockpiles of weapons and munitions at an alarming rate. This depletion could influence whether China follows through with its threat of invading Taiwan, the democratically governed island that Beijing claims as its own, knowing the U.S. could be hindered in its response.

Beijing has also used the conflict in Iran as an opportunity to study how the U.S. fights wars and prepare for its own potential military operations.

Elsewhere, the report states that China has been selling weapons to Gulf countries that have come under retaliatory attack from Iran since the war began on Feb. 28.

China has also been helping countries around the world affected by the global oil and energy crisis resulting from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. As well as helping with energy needs, China has offered U.S. allies such as Thailand, Australia, and the Philippines long-term solutions, including Chinese-produced green energy technology.

“This is not altruism,” Hass told the Post. “It is Beijing seizing on an opportunity to drive wedges between America and its traditional partners.”

At the same time, China has not been overtly affected by the closure of the narrow shipping route because it has invested heavily in renewable energy and has its own vast oil resources.

In a statement to the Post, Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell said that assertions that the “global balance of power has shifted towards any nation other than the United States of America are fundamentally false.”

White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said: “The United States military is the greatest fighting force on the globe, with unmatched power on display for the entire world to see.”

Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu added that Beijing is committed to “promoting peace, and working to de-escalate the situation,” and that its “pressing priority now is to prevent by all means a relapse in fighting, rather than exploit the situation to throw mud at other countries.”

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House, Pentagon, and Chinese Embassy for further comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trumps-china-trip-hit-by-humiliating-intel-leak/?

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New Mexico politicians grapple with oil windfall from Iran war

The global oil bottleneck in the Strait of Hormuz has generated a financial windfall on the other side of the world in New Mexico, a rare Democratic-dominated state where fossil fuels are a bedrock of progressive social services. New Mexico produces more oil than any other state besides Texas, and the state's revenue from taxes, royalties and lease sales helps cover the cost of college tuition, all school meals, health insurance and a new initiative for free universal child care. Now that oil prices are surging from the conflict with Iran, money is flooding into the state treasury and creating an uncomfortable situation for Democrats who oppose the war and would rather reduce their reliance on fossil fuels. Read more.

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