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

Sunday at 01:16 AM

Wards of the Court

The Supreme Court’s recent Louisiana v. Callais decision, effectively demolishing a key part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, is a “five-alarm fire,” former Representative G. K. Butterfield Jr. told me this week. As southern states rush to draw new boundaries eliminating majority-minority districts, as much as a third of the Congressional Black Caucus could lose their seats. Butterfield, a former CBC chair, knows that risk well. But he also knows the less visible yet still enormous effects that Callais could have at a local level in silencing the voices of Black voters.

In 1928, George K. Butterfield Sr., a Bermuda-born dentist, moved to the eastern–North Carolina tobacco town of Wilson. Although roughly 48 percent of Wilson’s 19,000 citizens were Black, only about 40 Black people were registered to vote—but local authorities, pleased to have Butterfield in town, allowed him to register.

Less to their pleasure, Butterfield founded the local NAACP chapter, and in 1953, he decided to run for town commission. By now, Wilson had more than 500 Black registered voters, although most of them were gerrymandered into a ward with many white voters in order to dilute their power. But when the votes were counted, Butterfield and a white candidate were tied, 382–382. A blindfolded child drew a name out of a hat, and Butterfield became the first Black elected official in eastern North Carolina since Reconstruction. Two years later, he won reelection after striking a deal with a mayor to support a new recreation center in exchange for his backing, then became the council’s finance chair. (Some of the details in this account are based on the younger Butterfield’s recollections.)

The city’s white power structure had seen enough. When the Butterfield family went on vacation, the council called an emergency meeting and changed the election system from wards to at-large seats—in other words, every voter in the city would now cast a vote for every seat, not just the seats in their ward. That diluted Black votes because now Butterfield had to run not against one opponent but against a whole slate. The new rules also mandated that voters had to vote for every seat that was on the ballot—meaning that Black voters couldn’t try to work as a bloc by voting only for a Black candidate or two and leaving other slots blank. It worked: Butterfield lost his 1957 reelection bid.

If Wilson’s ploy had occurred with the Voting Rights Act in full force, it would likely have been struck down under both Section 2, which bars discriminatory voting systems, and Section 5, which required some jurisdictions to “pre-clear” any changes with the U.S. Department of Justice. But the VRA was still several years away. When a Butterfield ally challenged the system in 1961, the Supreme Court of North Carolina ruled against him; the following year, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

These events made a deep impression on Butterfield’s son and namesake. “I was 10 years old, and I quickly realized that the rules can really determine the outcome of an election,” he told me. Butterfield Jr. participated in voting drives in college, attended law school, and then returned home. “I came back home with the intention to file some type of voting-rights litigation against the city, kind of to avenge what had happened to my father,” he said. Working with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, he successfully challenged at-large districts in Wilson County. That was the start of a political career that culminated in more than 18 years in the U.S. House.

Much of the reaction to Callais so far has focused on how it might affect the U.S. House and state legislative districts. This is understandable because these bodies are powerful, and the immediate effects will be more measurable. But the possibility of local and county bodies deciding not to draw new lines but to eliminate lines altogether will also have sweeping negative effects across the South.

When the Voting Rights Act was passed, Martin Luther King Jr. said he hoped the law would lead to not just Black state representatives but also Black “county commissioners, sheriffs, city councilmen, police chiefs and even mayors.” This dream has come true. One study calculated that in 1964, the year before the law passed, only 56 Black people held local elected office in the South. By 1980, 2,265 did. The results were not only symbolic: These offices control things such as schools, parks, roads, and sanitation—services that have a direct, daily effect on lives, especially those of poor people. As a new paper finds, increases in representation produced significant material improvements in the lives of Black citizens, and in many cases white ones as well. (Butterfield Jr. emphasized to me that the VRA didn’t create a right to elect Black officials; it creates an opportunity for Black voters to elect their preferred candidate, regardless of that person’s race.)

Those leaps depended on the elimination of at-large districts, which had long been common throughout the South. This was slow work, but the VRA and subsequent court rulings made it effective. Data gathered by J. Morgan Kousser, a historian at Caltech, record more than 1,000 successful challenges to at-large voting systems across the South from 1965 to 2024. The Brennan Center for Justice says challenges to at-large systems still account for most vote-dilution cases.

Now that progress could be rolled back. Although the Justice Department has vowed to bring lawsuits against districts drawn under the VRA pre-Callais, Kousser told me that he expects initial efforts to focus on federal and state elections. “I don’t think the Justice Department will get to the localities during the Trump administration,” he said. Nonetheless, he predicted that this was just a matter of time. “I think that the Justice Department is going to go after every minority Democratic officeholder.”

Some local officials may not wait for Washington. On April 22, a week before Callais, two GOP state representatives filed a bill to switch the city-council elections in Jacksonville, another city in eastern North Carolina, from a mix of wards and at-large seats to fully at-large elections. The ward system has been in place since 1990, when a lawsuit successfully challenged the at-large system as discriminatory against Black voters. Wyatt Gable, one of the representatives who introduced the bill, explained it as a way to guarantee “fairness and equal voice in local government”—an entirely Orwellian justification. (Neither Gable nor Phil Shepard, the other sponsor, replied to interview requests.)

Whether the bill will become law is unclear, but in the past, the effort to bring back at-large districts would have been very vulnerable to a legal challenge. In Callais, the Harvard Law professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos argues, “the Court changed the framework for Section 2 racial vote dilution claims in ways that make these suits effectively impossible to win.” At the very least, they will be harder, because plaintiffs will have to prove intentional racial discrimination to succeed. And if Congress does not pass new legislation to defend voting rights, efforts like this could succeed across the South. The result could be a hollowing out of Black political representation and influence, not only in Washington and in state capitals but also in towns and counties—a step back toward the days when George K. Butterfield Sr. was a rare and vulnerable exception.

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Sunday at 01:48 AM

Trump weighs Taiwan arms package after summit aimed at steadying US-China ties

BEIJING (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that he has not made a decision on whether to move forward with a major arms package for Taiwan after hearing concerns about it from Chinese President Xi Jinping.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-xi-taiwan-iran-trade-e7a3cdf161c608de152ac1c6e5755452?

Sunday at 01:38 PM

Fox News Corners Trump on Siding With China in MAGA Betrayal

The president’s own MAGA pal at the network busted him.

Donald Trump has suddenly announced a complete one-eighty on his campaign pledge to American farmers that he’d stop Chinese nationals buying up land in the U.S.

Fox News host Sean Hannity pressed him on why he had abandoned his promise to intervene on Thursday during his trip to China.

“It’s not that I love it,” Trump said, as he conceded that his promise has been withdrawn.

Hannity said “thousands and thousands of acres of farmland, ranchland, and land near military installations” are being purchased by Chinese buyers.

Farm-dependent counties in the U.S. voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2024; 78 percent of them backed Trump, which was up even from the strong support for his first term.

In Beijing, Trump was suddenly arguing that it would hurt farmers if he went ahead with his pledge. He said pulling out the external investment would force down land prices.

“You want to see farm prices drop, you wanna see farmers lose a lot of money? Just take that out of the market,” the president said.

On the campaign trail in September 2024, Trump was pledging the opposite. “We’re gonna protect it by saying you can’t come,” he said back then, in response to a reporter’s queries about Chinese-owned land at an event in Pennsylvania.

He added: “You can’t do it, we don’t want you buying our land, we don’t want you taking the land, and basically taking it off the market. We don’t want you doing it, and they’re buying it at levels nobody has seen before, we don’t want you buying it, that’s a very easy thing to do, but it’s causing a lot of disruption, and that’s what they want to do, so we could do that very easily.”

The actual scale of the problem is up for debate. Latest data from the Farm Service Agency, a subdivision of the Department of Agriculture, puts Chinese ownership at 0.52 percent of foreign-held acres in the U.S. That’s roughly 0.02 percent of total agricultural land across the country.

Those figures haven’t prevented the Trump administration from turning the China land question into a political flashpoint during his second term.

The president threw his weight behind a “National Farm Security Action Plan,” rolled out in July 2025, that aimed to ban new Chinese farmland purchases and force existing owners to divest within a year, or face fines and prison terms of up to five years. His comments to Fox have now thrown that initiative into question.

Trump obviously blaming the Democratic Party for the perceived threat of Chinese land ownership in the U.S.

“They’ve had a lot of land for a lot of time,” he told Hannity Thursday. “Obama did nothing about it. They bought a lot of it during the Obama administration. He did nothing about it.”

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

https://www.thedailybeast.com/president-donald-trump-makes-stunning-u-turn-on-china-buying-us-farmland-after-visit-to-beijing/?

ps:Betraying MAGA? Who's running the country?? Maybe betraying the country is a better statement!!!!!

Sunday at 01:41 PM

Trump Thirsts After Xi’s Ballroom in Gushing Suck-Up Post

The president posted about his obsession while flying back from China.

A jealous Donald Trump praised Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ballroom in a suck-up post following the Beijing summit.

While flying back from China, the 79-year-old president whined that “China has a Ballroom, and so should the U.S.A”—while suggesting a deadline for his own $400 million vanity project at the White House.

“It’s under construction, ahead of schedule, and will be the finest facility of its kind anywhere in the U.S.A. Thank you for all the support I have been given in getting this project going. Scheduled opening will be around September of 2028,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

Trump’s post featured a photo of him alongside Xi, adding: “The man I am walking with is President Xi, of China, one of the World’s Great Leaders!”

Trump’s final day of his trip to Beijing included a visit to the Zhongnanhai, a highly secretive walled-off compound used by China’s ruling Communist Party.

As noted by CNN, after walking through the site’s gardens, Trump and Xi posed in a room that was once used for ballroom dancing when China’s rulers first used the compound.

After a brief respite during the crunch talks with Xi, Trump resumed obsessing over his ballroom project, which he demolished the East Wing of the White House to make room for.

Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported that Trump likes to unwind in the evening by calling a division president from D.C.-based construction firm Clark Construction, who works out of a trailer on the White House grounds, into the Oval Office to provide updates.

“His version of a bourbon is construction,” a person familiar with Trump’s relaxation routine told the Post.

Trump’s infatuation with getting his ballroom built intensified in the wake of the assassination attempt against him at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on April 25.

Just hours after the attack was foiled, the president held a press conference to suggest that the 90,000-square-foot ballroom is necessary to provide security for future high-profile events and galas.

While Trump says private donors would fund the $400 million ballroom, Senate Republicans are also seeking a mammoth $1 billion taxpayer-funded reconciliation package to pay for “above-ground and below-ground” security for the project.In a previous unhinged Truth Social post, the president also tried to justify the ballooning costs of the ballroom, which doubled from the original $200 million estimate.

“The original price was 200 Million Dollars, the double sized, highest quality completed project will be something less than 400 Million Dollars. It will be magnificent, safe, and secure!” Trump posted on May 6.

“This was a necessary change, it was done long ago, but the Fake News failed to report it, trying to make it look like there was a cost overrun. Actually, it is coming in ahead of schedule, and under budget!”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-thirsts-after-xi-jinpings-ballroom-in-gushing-suck-up-post/?

Sunday at 01:43 PM

MAGA Rep Panics When Confronted With His Own Words on Gas Prices

Jim Jordan had to be reminded of the remarks he made just seconds prior during a CNN interview.

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan got into a tailspin after he was confronted about his dismissive words regarding Donald Trump’s failure to lower gas prices.

During an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, the top Trump ally was pressed on how the president’s war in Iran has prevented him from delivering on his 2024 campaign promise to get gas prices under $2 a gallon.

“Well, gas prices were coming down until we had to deal with this situation,” Jordan said. “But that’s life, that’s dealing with the world and the world we live in.”

Jordan went on to suggest that making sure “Iran doesn’t get a nuclear weapon” is more important than Americans’ financial hardships, before forgetting what he said just seconds earlier.

“But if someone’s listening to you and they were paying $2.98 a gallon for gas before the war started and now they’re paying $4.53, I mean, saying ‘that’s life’ might not make them feel better,” Collins said.

“Those are your words, those are your words, not mine,” Jordan replied, prompting Collins to remind the MAGA representative, “you said ‘that’s life’ just now.”

Jordan continued to defend Trump’s unpopular war by suggesting that “we all want gas prices low—who doesn’t, for goodness’ sake?—but we also don’t want Iran to get a nuclear weapon.”

When Collins pressed Jordan once more to point out that he had responded, “that’s life,” when asked about rising gas prices under Trump, Jordan tried to defend his remarks.

“No, I’m not saying ‘that’s life’ like ... I’m saying life sometimes throws things at you that you didn’t anticipate and you have to deal with it, and you want a commander-in-chief who will deal with it and deal with it in a way that is focused on the safety of the people he was elected to serve and protect,” he said.

Trump has been recording dire approval ratings on his handling of the economy and inflation throughout his second term, and his numbers are plummeting further amid the Middle East conflict.

Earlier this week, the 79-year-old president said that he does not care about the financial hardships of tens of millions of Americans who are suffering because of the war.

When asked on Tuesday whether people’s financial difficulties were “motivating” him to make a deal with Iran, the billionaire president replied, “Not even a little bit.”

“The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran, they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody,” Trump added.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-rep-jim-jordan-panics-when-confronted-with-his-own-words-on-gas-prices/?

Sunday at 01:48 PM

Trump Gives Embarrassingly Vague Answer About Xi Meeting

The president struggled to explain what his Chinese counterpart had committed to.

Donald Trump struggled to explain what Chinese leader Xi Jinping had committed to following bilateral meetings, offering vague descriptions of their discussions while touting an unconfirmed Boeing jet deal.

“We’ve settled a lot of different problems that other people wouldn’t have been able to settle, and the relationship is a very strong one,” Trump, 79, said at the start of bilateral discussions in Beijing on Friday, without specifying what issues had been resolved.

Pressed by Fox News’ Sean Hannity about what Xi wanted from the U.S., Trump appeared unable to provide specifics.

“A lot of things,” Trump told the host with a shrug. “We talked about a lot of things. Too many things to discuss. We had a very good meeting.”

Trump claimed Xi had agreed to order 200 jets from American jet manufacturer Boeing.

“One thing he agreed to today, he’s going to order 200 jets, that’s a big thing,” Trump told Hannity. “Boeings, 200 big ones. That’s a lot of jobs. It’s a lot.”

“Boeing wanted 150, we got 200,” the president added.

But Trump then appeared to cast doubt on whether any concrete agreement actually existed.

“I think it was a commitment, sort of like a statement, but I think it was a commitment,” he said.

China had not publicly confirmed the proposed order as of Friday afternoon, and key details, including the terms of their agreement, delivery schedules, and aircraft models, remain undisclosed.

The uncertainty appeared to spook investors. Boeing shares fell 4.1 percent during market trading after Trump announced the apparent agreement, Reuters reported.

The purported 200-plane deal also fell far short of the roughly 500-aircraft package Reuters reported had been under discussion ahead of Thursday’s meeting between Trump and Xi. Citing sources familiar with the discussions, Reuters said negotiators had explored a sale involving 500 Boeing 737 MAX jets as well as potentially dozens of widebody jets.

Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, who accompanied Trump during the trip as part of the business delegation, had previously hinted at a substantial agreement between Washington and Beijing.

“I’m not going to give you the number of airplanes, but it’s a big number,” Ortberg told analysts before Trump’s Beijing visit.

The last major Boeing agreement between the two countries came during Trump’s November 2017 visit to Beijing, when China agreed to purchase 300 jets. Relations later deteriorated sharply, and Boeing has reportedly received just 51 Chinese orders since then, most of them for freighters, according to Reuters.

Trump also appeared unable to offer a definitive answer about whether Xi agreed with the U.S. position that Iran should never obtain a nuclear weapon.

“I said you don’t need them having a nuclear weapon,” Trump said during the Fox News interview.

Asked whether he believed Xi agreed, Trump told Hannity: “I think he did.”

Trump departed without any clear public indication from Beijing that China was prepared to pressure Tehran to meet U.S. demands.

“He’s not going to respond too much—he’s a pretty cool guy. He’s not going to say, ‘That’s a good point,’” Trump told Hannity of Xi.

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

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-gives-embarrassingly-vague-answer-about-xi-meeting/?

ps:Of course everything is going to be vague, because he got nothing! Just like the last time!!

Sunday at 05:00 PM

Trump Lines Up Giant New MAGA Grift

The fund is part of a proposed deal that would see him drop his lawsuit against the IRS.

Donald Trump is set to shelve his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS—and instead create a $1.7 billion taxpayer-funded pool to pay allies who claim persecution by the Biden administration.

Trump, 79, began his second term by issuing mass pardons to Jan. 6 rioters, and last year said in an interview that setting up a compensation fund for them was a possibility. Now, a big step is set to be taken for their benefit.

The five-member commission charged with overseeing the distribution of funds would be given considerable liberties under the potential settlement agreement, ABC News reported, though the terms of it could change.

Trump could remove members without cause. Beyond a majority vote, the process for determining payment could be kept private, along with the identities of recipients.

The proposed settlement also states that the IRS would apologize to Trump, who sued over a leak of his tax returns during his first term. Trump also claimed $230 million in damages from the FBI’s 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago and the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and any ties to the Trump campaign.

Trump himself, under the settlement, would not be allowed to directly receive payments connected with those claims. But entities tied to him could, sources told ABC.

Payments would be made from the Treasury Department’s Judgment Fund. The fund, sources said, would be part victim compensation fund and part truth-and-reconciliation-style commission.

The Daily Beast has contacted the IRS, the Treasury Department, the Justice Department, the White House, and Trump’s personal lawyer, Alejandro Brito, for comment.

A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team told ABC News: “The IRS wrongly allowed a rogue, politically-motivated employee to leak private and confidential information about President Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization to the New York Times, ProPublica and other left-wing news outlets, which was then illegally released to millions of people. President Trump continues to hold those who wrong America and Americans accountable.”

News of the proposed deal came a few weeks after a federal judge questioned the legality of the president suing agencies he oversees.

Trump’s “named adversaries are entities whose decisions are subject to his direction,” Judge Kathleen Williams of the Southern District of Florida wrote in an order, explaining that no one is truly arguing on behalf of the public.

“Moreover, although President Trump avers that he is bringing this lawsuit in his personal capacity, he is the sitting president and his named adversaries are entities whose decisions are subject to his direction. Indeed, President Trump’s own remarks about this matter acknowledge the unique dynamic of this litigation,” she wrote.

Trump, his sons Don Jr. and Eric, and the Trump Organization sued the IRS and the Treasury Department over an IRS contractor leaking Trump’s tax information to the press in 2019 and 2020.

Trump, the New York Times then reported, had paid a mere $750 in federal income tax in 2016 and in 2017. In 10 of the previous 15 years, he paid no income taxes.

The Times first reported Thursday that the DOJ officials may settle Trump’s lawsuit.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-lines-up-giant-new-maga-grift/?

ps:Of course they're going to settle, it's his DOJ and they're going to help him milk the system!!

Sunday at 05:11 PM

How Trump’s Night School Lawyer Became America’s Most Dangerous Man

Friends have been hoping there was a line he would not cross.

Next to his ultimate boss, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is proving at age 51 to be ever willing to subvert justice to his advantage.

Colleagues who spoke to The Daily Beast have trouble making sense of it.

They recall the Colorado native of earlier years as affable, hardworking, and level-headed during a two-decade ascent from night student at Brooklyn Law School to federal prosecutor in Manhattan. Blanche’s rise then seemed to dip and it plateaued until he became Donald Trump’s personal lawyer between the president’s two terms. He has essentially continued in that capacity, representing the re-elected Trump rather than the American people, first as deputy attorney general and now as acting head of the U.S. Department of Justice.

At his first press briefing after Attorney General Pam Bondi was fired, Blanche downplayed any desire to permanently take her place.

“I did not ask for this job,” he said. “I love working for President Trump. It’s the greatest honor of a lifetime, and if President Trump chooses to keep me as acting, that’s an honor. If he chooses to nominate me, that’s an honor. If he chooses to nominate somebody else and I go back to being the [Deputy Attorney General], that’s an honor.”

He added a declaration of fealty such as Trump often recounts receiving in apocryphal-sounding tales.

“If he chooses to nominate somebody else and asks me to go do something else, I will say, ‘Thank you very much, I love you, sir.’”

In fact, Blanche seems ready to do almost anything to formally secure the top spot. One of his recent court filings suggests he is as much under Trump’s spell as another famous Brooklyn Law School grad, the late Bruce Cutler, was with the gangster John Gotti. And Blanche’s onetime admirers now can only wonder if he will reach a moral and ethical limit.

“I kept hoping there was a red line he wouldn’t cross,” a longtime friend told the Daily Beast.

What should have been a prohibitive hurdle for Blanche came earlier this month after President Trump reportedly pushed a stack of news clippings across the Resolute Desk towards him. The hoarder-in-chief of grievances and grudges had affixed atop the papers a yellow sticky note bearing a single word scrawled in Sharpie.

“TREASON”

Blanche himself turned actual traitor to the U.S. Constitution he had sworn to defend against all enemies. He announced with a post on X his intention to essentially ignore the First Amendment.

“Prosecuting leakers who share our nation’s secrets with reporters, in turn risking our national security and the lives of our soldiers, is a priority for this administration,” he wrote. “Any witness, whether a reporter or otherwise, who has information about these criminals should not be surprised if they receive a subpoena about the illegal leaking of classified material.”

A DOJ spokesperson defended the move in a statement to the Daily Beast, saying: “In all circumstances, the Department of Justice follows the facts and applies the law to identify those committing crimes against the United States. These subpoenas are not targeting reporters, but rather the sharing of classified material that jeopardizes national security and the safety of American soldiers.”

Given the widespread dislike of reporters, some of Blanche’s erstwhile admirers took the move to be just what might be expected for Blanche to get along in MAGA world. What really surprised them was the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey for supposedly threatening the president by posting on Instagram a photo of seashells on a beach configured into “86 47.”

As the 45th president, Trump had voiced no concern when his supporters distributed “86 46” bumper stickers during his 2024 campaign against Joe Biden, the 46th president. Nobody was heard to suggest at the time that the term constituted any threat at all. The expression to “86” somebody has long been used to describe refusing service to a customer or kicking a disruptive visitor out of a bar. It is widely thought to have started during Prohibition at Chumley’s, a bar at 86 Bedford Street in New York, where unruly patrons who were ejected were said to be “86’d.”

The term was not deemed a threat until Trump, as the 47th president, contended that “86” is a “mob term” meaning, “Kill him.” And it just so happened that the person supposedly making this imaginary threat was Comey, a man Trump has continued to despise as a supposed instigator of the “Russia hoax” investigation into possible Kremlin interference in the 2016 election.

Last year, acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsay Halligan sought to indict Comey for the supposed seashell threat, but a federal judge ruled that she had been unlawfully appointed to the position. Attorney General Pam Bondi might still have a job if she had immediately revived the case. But perhaps she suffered from a sudden case of scruples.

Blanche was not about to make the same mistake. A North Carolina grand jury handed down the result of his efforts on April 28:

“On or about May 15, 2025, in the Eastern District of North Carolina, the defendant, JAMES BRIEN COMEY JR, did knowingly and willfully make a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, the President of the United States, in that he publicly posted a photograph on the internet social media site Instagram which depicted seashells arranged in a pattern making out ’86 47′, which a reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the President of the United States.“

On learning of the indictment brought against Comey, a former fellow Manhattan prosecutor noted that the Blanche of earlier years would have just laughed at it.

“How did he go from laughing to bringing?” the former prosecutor asked.

The question is echoed by people in the legal world who once counted Blanche as one of the very good guys.

“What the hell happened to Todd?”

The three former colleagues, all asking not to be named, used the same word to describe their current feelings regarding Blanche.

“Disappointed.”

Blanche seems to have been universally well-liked and respected as he worked his way through Brooklyn Law School. He was seemingly tireless as he took courses at night and worked a day job at the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan and in Brooklyn while raising a young family.

“Word got out about how good he was, and everybody else wanted to use him in their trials,” a former federal prosecutor recalls. “He was impressive…a relentlessly good-natured guy.”

As a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, Blanche was known for his sound judgment and quick wit. He is the son of a Canadian hockey coach and was scrappier than the Ivy League types. He had become head of the violent crimes unit when he departed for private practice after eight years, in 2014.

Blanche seemed set when he signed on with one of the country’s top law firms, WilmerHale. He seems to have been just as well-liked and held in equal esteem as he was as a prosecutor. But for reasons the Daily Beast has been unable to determine, he does not appear to have made partner.

“It’s obviously a career jolt,” a New York legal eminence of broad experience told the Daily Beast. “He was on a really upward trajectory.”

Most such negative decisions involving prospective partners who are well-liked and skilled generally involve money-making potential. But the firm might not have been so quick to let him go if he were a Harvard or Yale man rather than a night school guy. Class is a bigger factor in American life than we often acknowledge.

“The obvious question is what’s next?” the eminence said.

Blanche took half a step down as he joined slightly less prominent Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. He could have ended up as just another white-shoe lawyer prospering in cushy obscurity.

Then came the kind of big case that is irresistible for a lawyer, be he out of night school or the Ivy League: representing a former president.

Only the former president was Trump. And the case involved hush money paid to a porn star.

Blanche’s firm asked him to either drop his new client or resign. He stuck with Trump, and three fellow attorneys who know him later expressed their concern to the Daily Beast.

“The danger is that [Trump] can convince you to go against your better judgment,” one lawyer said.

A former Trump attorney said of his one-time client, “He thinks everyone loves him and he makes everybody miserable.”

The lawyer added simply, “He cares for nobody but himself…He’s a bad guy.”

Blanche went all in with Trump, moving his family to Florida.

As it happened, Blanche was joined on the defense team by Emil Bove, a former Southern District prosecutor who was as widely disliked as Blanche was liked.

“Universally despised and universally beloved,” a former prosecutor told the Daily Beast.

As they stood with their client in a Manhattan courtroom, Blanche and Bove seemed as different as light and darkness. But they appeared to bond as they both demonstrated the loyalty to Trump that he demands, even though he is himself loyal to nobody.

Trump did not seem to blame them when the hush money case ended in a conviction. Their gender might have been a factor. Trump had taunted and mocked the woman who represented him when New York State Attorney General Leticia James brought a civil fraud case against him.

“Hey, loser. Loser,” Trump is said to have called out to the extremely able Yale Law graduate Susan Necheles after he was hit with a $464 million judgement.

Blanche also represented Trump in two other big cases: one for allegedly retaining classified documents, the other for allegedly seeking to interfere with the 2020 election. The cases were dropped after Trump won a second term. The Supreme Court had placed a sitting president beyond the reach of prosecutors.

Bove became all the more despised after he helped the vindictive Trump Justice Department identify FBI agents who had investigated those who participated in the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. Never mind that Bove had himself supervised some of those very same cases.

“He signed my search warrants,” a former FBI agent told the Daily Beast.

Bove has since been named a circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals. He has been mentioned as a possibility for the Supreme Court if a seat becomes open while Trump is in office.

Blanche continued his ascent as Trump’s deputy attorney general. He told a former New York colleague that although he was technically under then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, he largely ran the DOJ’s day-to-day operations.

But Bondi had complicated things when she told the press that she had an Epstein client list on her desk. Newly appointed FBI Director Kash Patel then announced that there was no client list. Congress ultimately passed legislation requiring the release of the Epstein files.

Blanche was tasked with complying as much as was required, or maybe a little less. One thing that came to light was a book that Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, had assembled for his 50th birthday. A racy page appeared to have been submitted by Trump.

Maxwell was being held in a Florida medium security federal prison, having been convicted by a jury of sex trafficking and sentenced to 20 years. Blanche flew there to interview Maxwell for nine hours over two days in a nearby federal prosecutor’s office. He began the first session by saying that her attorney had reached out to him “and said that you wanted to speak with somebody from the government about, not only your case, but about everything that’s been in the media.”

Maxwell replied that she had indeed told her lawyers “that I would be very keen to talk to anyone, because no one from the government at any time, since the inception of the case, dating back to the early 2000s, has ever spoken to me.”

Blanche let this go unchallenged, even though Maxwell had sought to hide in the house when FBI agents tracked her to New Hampshire in July of 2020 and had declined numerous opportunities to offer her side. She had chosen not to testify on her own behalf during her trial.

Blanche also did not challenge Maxwell when she now told him she had never known any women of any age to have endured anything “inappropriate” at Epstein’s hands.

“I never saw a tear,” Maxwell told Blanche. “I never saw any of that.”

Afterwards, the still unrepentant Maxwell was transferred to a minimum security prison camp in Bryan, Texas, despite a longstanding DOJ policy barring sex offenders from such relatively lax facilities. Former Bryan nurse Noella Turnage told the Daily Beast that she was fired after she complained that Maxwell was receiving preferential treatment.

After Bondi was fired, Blanche just kept doing what might be expected of a guy who served under Trump and did not want to follow her out the door.

Then came the Comey indictment.

“Todd could make a choice,” a longtime fellow prosecutor told the Daily Beast. “‘No, we can’t f---ing prosecute Comey. This would be the most ridiculous indictment in the history of the world.’ Or ‘Yes, that’s what you want, President. I’m your attorney general. I do whatever the f--- you want.’“

Blanche managed to make it even more ridiculous by telling the press that the indictment was the result of an 11-month investigation.

“Of course, the seashells are part of that case,” Blanche allowed. “[But] you prove intent with witnesses; you prove intent with document…a body of evidence.”

Blanche has also launched a forward-to-the-past investigation into the “deep state” of Trump foes going back decades. He swore in the Reagan-era District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Joe DiGenova to run that improbable probe. DiGenova is a longtime election denier and a Trump favorite. A prime target is former CIA Director John Brennan, who is near the top of Trump’s enemies list.

But what should disturb anybody who retains any respect for the law is a court filing that Blanche submitted after the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Trump argued that the attack at the Washington Hilton never would have happened if the event had been held in a more secure facility such as the new 90,000-square foot ballroom he is desperate to build at the White House.

The project had been put on hold after the National Trust for Historic Preservation went to court, contending that Trump had torn down the East Wing without bothering to secure the required congressional approval. Blanche replied with a court filing that reads remarkably like one of Trump’s more unhinged posts on Truth Social.“If any other President had the ability, foresight, or talents necessary to build this ballroom, which will be one of the greatest, safest, and most secure structures of its kind anywhere in the World, there would never have been a lawsuit,” it read in part. “But, because it is DONALD J. TRUMP, a highly successful real estate developer, who has abilities that others don’t, especially those who assume the Office of President, this frivolous and meritless lawsuit was filed…It’s called TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”

The filing was dated April 27, 2026 and signed by the most dangerous man in America, who needs only to lose a single qualifying adjective to formally become number one at what seems to be the cost of his soul.

“Respectfully submitted,

TODD BLANCHE

Acting Attorney General.”

Meanwhile, Blanche is reportedly angling for a way to settle a $10 billion lawsuit brought by Trump, his sons, and the family business against the Internal Revenue Service for allegedly leaking their tax returns.

The result could be a truly HUGE windfall.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-trumps-night-school-lawyer-todd-blanche-became-americas-most-dangerous-man/?

Sunday at 05:15 PM

RFK Jr’s Mad ‘MAHA’ Agenda Sees Mumps Mount a Comeback

Forgotten diseases are making a comeback—and the experts are being shown the door.

On a recent visit to my doctor’s office, I was asked the routine questions about whether I had any flu symptoms or had traveled out of the country. Then there was this: Had I noticed any swelling in my face or jaw? That was new, and when I asked in turn what it was about, the receptionist replied succinctly: “Mumps.”

Yes, mumps is apparently making a comeback, taking its place alongside measles as an old-but-new-again risk to the American populace. It’s a regressive and unnecessary outcome that is largely the result of the anti-vax attitude and policies filtering out of RFK Jr’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Measles and mumps are highly contagious, yet the current CDC largely leaves infection tracking to the states. It’s odd that the very real threat stemming from these childhood diseases invokes less panic than we’ve seen around the hantavirus outbreak on a far-flung cruise ship. While it causes serious illness and can be deadly, hantavirus does not spread easily among humans; still, the delayed response by the Trump administration to this cluster of infections—and yes, the echoes of COVID-19’s early days prowling the high seas—has put the spotlight on a fractured early warning system weakened by firings, infighting and cost-cutting.

The sprawling HHS, which oversees the CDC, the NIH and the FDA, is a shadow of its former self. Its workforce has been demoralized, deprioritized and slashed by as much as 25 percent. Hardest hit were career staff and vaccine experts—some were fired, some pushed out, and others who just had enough of the chaos and uncertainty. “It’s an enormous brain drain and just a lack of bodies to do the work,” said Julie Rovner with Kaiser Health News and host of its podcast, “What the Health.”

The latest blow arrived with the forced resignation of FDA administrator Marty Makary. It wasn’t pretty. Makary was left twisting in the wind over the weekend while Trump loyalists battled among themselves over whether his firing would be justified. “Internal dysfunction” was the favorite theme, and it was triggered by Makary in opposition to Trump on the pivotal issue of, wait for it, flavored vapes. Trump has vowed to protect the vaping industry as a valuable tool to help adults stop smoking nicotine; Makary was on the other side, prioritizing the threat to kids if the FDA approved fruit-flavored e-cigarettes. He was overruled.

Makary had also crossed swords with anti-abortion groups over his failure to take action to ban the anti-abortion drug mifepristone, which faces an imminent Supreme Court ruling on its future. (Whichever way SCOTUS goes, the implications are huge for women, and for politics.) An acclaimed oncologist and surgeon at Johns Hopkins who pioneered the transplant of pancreatic islets, Makary was an unlikely candidate for the FDA to begin with, and ill-equipped to handle partisan cross-currents.

His abrupt departure is only the latest in a series of unfilled positions that reflect the administration’s chaos. Take the surgeon general Trump originally wanted: wellness guru Casey Means, who isn’t a licensed doctor, couldn’t get enough Republican votes in the Senate, and had her nomination pulled. A new nominee, Dr. Nicole Saphier, a radiologist and former Fox News contributor, is now awaiting confirmation and already sparking controversy. She’s largely on board with RFK’s MAHA agenda on healthy eating and avoiding food additives, but she’s no anti-vaxxer, pitting her against many kooks RFK has put in place throughout HHS.The same leader, Jay Bhattacharya, currently heads both the NIH and the CDC, the frontline agency for combating health threats and emergencies. Doing double duty like this is not the norm, and Bhattacharya is an unusual pick for either job. He is a Stanford-trained doctor but has never practiced medicine. Rather, he was a professor of medicine, economics and health policy research when he was chosen to lead the NIH. He came to Trump’s notice during the COVID pandemic when he was a vocal opponent of shutdowns. He said the disease should be allowed to spread to develop herd immunity. His belated assurances that there is no threat from hantavirus are being questioned by a public that remembers all the lies and flat-out absurdities peddled by the first Trump administration in 2020.

“Nobody trusts anything that anybody says anymore. It’s scary,” Rovner told the Daily Beast. Addressing any/all potential issues that the hantavirus-stricken MV Hondius—and its American passengers, now in some kind of quarantine—may pose should be the CDC’s business, she noted. “But there’s no CDC director… They haven’t even scheduled a confirmation hearing for the next CDC director, or the next Surgeon General.”

The approval for nominees to fill these positions passes through the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, currently led by Republican Senator Bill Cassidy. Cassidy, a physician himself, cast the deciding vote in committee to advance RFK’s nomination after pressing him—unsuccessfully, it turned out—on vaccines. Cassidy has since been assailed for this vote, and the broader ‘compromises’ he’s made in the face of the administration’s attacks on medical expertise. Even after all the ground he has given, it’s not enough—he faces a Trump-backed challenger in a primary election this weekend. “If he loses,” said Rovner, “I wonder whether that will free him—or not—to be more discerning about filling these jobs.”

Of course RFK said what was needed to win confirmation, or at least didn’t spout the quackery that would have cost him. But his behavior quickly belied his words. He shrugged off outbreaks of measles first in Texas and now in South Carolina; under his leadership, the schedule for childhood and adolescent vaccines has been scaled back, with more “parental choice” encouraged. Polls show most Americans retain confidence in vaccines they’ve grown up with, prompting the White House to rein him in at least somewhat. But as the New York Times reported this week, costly, agency-wide efforts at HHS remain focused on collecting data to validate RFK’s belief that vaccines are the culprit behind the increasing number of children diagnosed with autism. He’s also trying to roll back the usage of anti-depressants among adults, arguing that they are as hard to get off as heroin, and he should know, he says, having been a heroin user.

In other words, hantavirus might not be spreading widely, but RFK’s positions are—and they have already proven to be fatal.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/rfk-jrs-mad-maha-agenda-sees-mumps-measles-mount-a-comeback/?

Sunday at 06:38 PM

How Two Words From China’s President Finally Silenced Trump

The bellicose president has been quietened by his counterpart’s sober warning.

Donald Trump will leave China a chastened man.

If he didn’t know what Xi Jinping meant by raising the specter of the Thucydides Trap when he arrived in Beijing, you can be sure that he does now.

Because it was a warning issued by a leader who is very much Trump’s equal in power and way more experienced at using it.

Amid the pomp of Trump’s arrival on Thursday, Xi invoked a classical Greek reference suggesting that war is often inevitable when a rising power challenges a hegemon.

It’s a relatively modern concept based around the historian Thucydides’s quote about the second Peloponnesian War (431 B.C. to 404 B.C.): “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.”

The Western view has Sparta as the United States and China as the upstart Athens. Xi may see it differently.

While the People’s Republic of China was officially founded on October 1, 1949, its cultural roots extend 3,500 to 3,700 years back to the Shang Dynasty (ca. 1600 BCE). At 250 years old, the U.S. is just a baby.

Trump is consumed with manipulating the markets on Fox News. Xi sees power in terms of centuries rather than news cycles.

Up to now, China has treated Trump with kid gloves. But as a sophisticated anathema to the fast-talking, knee-jerk Trump, Xi has taken off the gloves this week, hinting at the power at his fingertips.

And Trump looks shaken.

He left Washington on Tuesday in a bombastic mood, insulting a female reporter on the way to his Marine One helicopter and insisting he doesn’t give a thought to Americans struggling with their finances.

Before that, for nights on end, he spewed Truth Social posts lambasting everyone from Barack Obama to his own appointed Supreme Court Justices, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett.

But since that shaded welcome and two hours of talks behind closed doors with his “friend” Xi, Trump has been muted. He looks serious and thoughtful...and old.

Inside the Great Hall of the People, Xi told Trump that “the Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-U.S. relations.

“If it is handled properly, the bilateral relationship will enjoy overall stability. Otherwise, the two countries will have clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy,” he added, according to Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning.

But it is the Thucydides Trap quandary that is haunting Trump.

Professor Graham Allison, the Director of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, who coined the phrase for his 2014 book, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides Trap, visited Xi in China recently. No doubt the trap concept seemed relevant to the Chinese leader, although he had used it before.

Xi framed it as a warning, and further analysis shows that it is not inevitable under the model. Harvard Thucydides’s Trap Project identified 16 cases in the last 500 years in which a major rising power has threatened to displace a major ruling power. Four of those 16 cases did not result in war.

Taiwan worried before the state visit that Trump could sell them out in his haste to make nice with China. They will be even more concerned now that the U.S. president has been confronted with the possibility that America and China could be on the verge of becoming case number 17.

No wonder the teetotal Trump was raising a glass of wine at the state dinner.

The truth is that neither side needs a war right now, but history has shown that what nations need and what they get aren’t always the same.

For now, at least, it’s just a gentle warning from a leader demanding respect. He will do what is necessary to Make China Great Again.

On his flight home on Air Force One on Friday, Trump might want to read up on another trap he is in great danger of dropping his country into.

Charles Kindleberger, an architect of the Marshall Plan, argued that the U.S. failed to accept its superpower responsibilities after supplanting Great Britain in the 1930s. As a result, he claimed the global order collapsed into depression, genocide, and World War Two.

After decades at the head of the table, the U.S. under Trump has withdrawn from 66 international organizations and environmental treaties, including the World Health Organization, the Paris Climate Agreement, and major United Nations climate bodies.

Trump has effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz to the world’s oil because of his ill-conceived war. The Kindleberger Trap would suggest that America’s abrogation of its global superpower responsibilities has left a vacuum that only China could fill.

America First could quickly become America Last.

Xi will know all the traps, as will Trump’s other “friend,” Vladimir Putin.

No wonder the American president looks so glum. The world is so much more real when you are not simply posting hatred from your bedroom.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-two-words-thucydides-trap-from-chinas-president-xi-jinping-finally-silenced-trump/?

Sunday at 11:32 PM

Trump Unravels in Jaw-Dropping ‘Treason’ Rant on Air Force One

The president’s trip to China appears to have left him especially cranky.

Donald Trump accused the media of “treason” in a furious rant about negative coverage aboard Air Force One on Friday.

“You’re a fake guy, and guys like you write about it incorrectly,” the president, en route back to the U.S. after his state visit to China this week, raged to New York Times journalist David Sanger over questions about Trump’s war with Iran.

“We’ve had a total victory, except from people like you, who don’t write the truth,” he went on, after listing all the reasons he believes the conflict, which remains subject to a shaky temporary ceasefire, has been a “complete” success.

“You should write the truth. I actually think it’s kind of treasonous, what you write,” the president said, becoming visibly more irate. “You and the New York Times, and CNN, I would say, are the worst. You should know better, you know better, you’re a professional. Your editors tell you what to write, and you write it. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”

Another reporter then interjected with another question, but Trump refused to let it go. “I actually think it’s treason,” he fumed. “You write like, ‘they’re doing well militarily,’ and they’ve no navy, no air force, no anti-anything!”

Trump then further reeled off a list of all the things he says he can still do to hurt the Islamic regime. “In two days, we could knock out the whole thing,” he said. “And then I read the New York Times, and they act like they’re doing well. Everybody knows that’s why your subscribers are way down!”

“Way down!” he then barked at the reporter, before pivoting to take questions from a BBC journalist, who asked about the alleged U.S. missile strike that hit an Iranian school on the first day of Trump’s campaign.

“Who are you with?!” the president demanded to know. “Fake BBC! You mean the one who put AI in my mouth? The ones that had me saying a statement that they now admit was not true? The ones that put terrible words in my mouth, and then had to admit that it was fake?”

“You’re with BBC? They’re another fake outfit!” he added.

The BBC did not “put AI” in Trump’s mouth. He is currently suing the British broadcaster after it spliced together two sections of his speech ahead of the January 6 attack on the Capitol, pulled from nearly an hour apart, in a way that gave the impression he had directly urged supporters to storm the building.

The edit in question, which was included in a 2024 documentaery that never aired in the U.S., featured Trump saying “walk down to the Capitol” and “fight like hell.” He made both of those comments, just not one after the other, and had earlier issued a call to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

The BBC has since apologized for what it called an “error of judgment” over the show, which was commissioned from an external production company. Two of its senior executives resigned over the fallout, and the broadcaster has now vowed to fight Trump’s $10 billion defamation suit in court.

Trump’s mid-air meltdown comes after a China trip ridden with snubs, gaffes, blunders, and embarrassing U-turns.

These have included Chinese President Xi Jinping skipping the tarmac welcome, and Chinese state censors allowing a wave of social media posts mocking the U.S. as a “paper tiger” to go viral.

U.S. pundits have meanwhile blasted Elon Musk, who accompanied the president on the trip, for pulling bizarre faces at a state banquet held in Trump’s honor.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/president-donald-trump-unravels-in-jaw-dropping-treason-rant-on-air-force-one/?

Sunday at 11:36 PM

Trump’s China Trip Exposed as So Empty That All He Got Was Seeds

President Trump failed to secure deals on trade, the Iran war, Taiwan, or anything really.

Self-professed master negotiator Donald Trump has left China with not much more than the promise of a bag of seeds.

After a tour of Beijing’s sacred Zhongnanhai temple on Friday, where Chinese leader Xi Jinping vowed to send Trump the seeds of flowers the 79-year-old had admired at the compound, the president described his three-day trip as “incredible.”

But, in reality, Trump has left with zero tangible progress or diplomatic achievements. He failed to stand up to China on Taiwan or rare earth minerals, sold out American farmers, and secured only one deal, which fell short of expectations and tanked Boeing’s stock price.

The trip was designed to broker agreements on everything from tech to tariff relief to peace in the Middle East. Trump did not deliver.

The president told Fox News host Sean Hannity in an interview aired hours before the Zhongnanhai stroll that Xi had pledged not to provide Iran with military weapons. However, it appears that no tangible agreement has been signed on that front, and Trump even caveated this comment. “But at the same time, he said they buy a lot of their oil there, and they’d like to keep doing that,” he added. “He’d like to see Hormuz Strait open.”

The Strait of Hormuz remains blocked, choking the oil supply reaching China and the rest of the world. China has skin in the game, since it is Iran’s biggest customer when it comes to oil, and it is Tehran’s largest trade partner.

Trump left the U.S. earlier this week with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Nvidia boss Jensen Huang on Air Force One with him. Other tech industry leaders, like outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook, joined him in China. He said the corporate cabal was in toe to “make deals” and “bring back jobs.”

However, the trip appeared more symbolic, as no major trade deals or structural agreements were struck. In December, Huang, who was born and raised in Taiwan, found himself at the center of a critical stand-off between Washington, D.C., and Beijing.

Trump authorized his company, Nvidia, the world’s dominant chipmaker, to sell its high-powered H200 AI chip to China. But even after this week’s visit, Beijing has yet to approve any purchases, and no H200 chips have been sold since then, with the Chinese government favoring homegrown products from makers like Huawei.

However, in the pre-recorded Fox News interview, Trump did say that Beijing had pledged to buy 200 Boeing planes. “One thing he agreed to today, he’s going to order 200 jets... 200 big ones,” he said of Xi. “Boeing wanted 150, we got 200,” the president added. China, however, has not publicly confirmed the proposed order as of Friday afternoon local time.

The quantity was also lower than expected, and Boeing’s share price tumbled by 4.1 percent as a result. Sources told Reuters in the lead-up to Thursday’s summit that the purchase of 500 jets was on the table. Beijing has also held negotiations for a similar-sized deal with European corporation Airbus, Reuters reported.

Aviation sales to China have flopped in recent years, owing to increased political tensions.

Trump also left Beijing without securing a clear win on one of the most important economic issues in U.S.-China relations: Beijing’s control over rare earth minerals.

Rare earths are crucial for making electric vehicles, military hardware, semiconductors, magnets, batteries, and advanced electronics, but China dominates global production and processing, which gives Beijing leverage in trade disputes.

However, there was no announced agreement, no rollback of Chinese export controls, and no public commitment from China to avoid tightening restrictions. China may also twist the knife further by moving ahead with planned tougher export restrictions in November.

Jamieson Greer, the president’s trade representative, told Bloomberg News in an interview on Friday that there had been some progress on this front in recent months, but did not sound convinced by his own spin. “I would give them a passing grade on this—we’ve certainly seen the rare earths come back up to better levels. Sometimes it’s slow,” he said.

Greer also announced that the countries planned to establish a “board of trade” to oversee tariff cuts on around $30 billion of goods. He also talked up an as-yet unsigned trade deal in the “double-digit billions” concerning agricultural products.

Treasury secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday that the two nations would also discuss AI safety, but details were scant. “The two AI superpowers are going to start talking,” Bessent said.

Trump, meanwhile, struggled to spin the lack of tangible success from the trip. “We’ve settled a lot of different problems that other people wouldn’t have been able to settle, and the relationship is a very strong one,” he said at the start of bilateral discussions in Beijing on Friday, without specifying what issues had been resolved.

He was then pressed by Hannity about what Xi wanted from the U.S. Trump appeared unable to provide specifics. “A lot of things,” he eventually spluttered. “We talked about a lot of things. Too many things to discuss. We had a very good meeting.”

The Hannity interview was telling in other regards, too. Trump also appeared unable to offer a definitive answer about whether his Chinese counterpart agreed with the U.S. position that Iran should never obtain a nuclear weapon.

“I said you don’t need them having a nuclear weapon,” he said. Asked whether he believed Xi agreed, Trump told Hannity: “I think he did.”

Xi was much more forthright on the issue of Taiwan, the democratically governed island that Beijing claims as part of China. Xi said in a statement in a stunning opening salvo on Thursday that the “Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-U.S. relations” and that any disagreements on the thorny issue could result in war. “If it is handled properly, the bilateral relationship will enjoy overall stability. Otherwise, the two countries will have clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy,” Xi said.

Trump said on Air Force One on the way home that Xi had asked him whether he would defend Taiwan, and Trump said he had declined to answer.

For decades, the U.S. has supported Taiwan’s defense without establishing formal diplomatic ties, as part of efforts to deter Beijing from invading the island. China, on the other hand, asserts that the island has been part of Chinese territory since ancient times.

Beijing also exerts control over Hong Kong, where pro-democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai is jailed. Human rights activists, lawmakers, and family members had called on Trump to secure his release, but Beijing’s stance appears to remain the same. After one of Trump’s meetings ended, Guo Jiakun, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, described Lai as an “instigator” and said China agrees with his 20-year sentence.

The trip, seemed to inspire the real estate man in Trump, rather than the diplomat. Barely an hour after Air Force One left Beijing, he was posting on social media about beautifying Washington, D.C. à la communist China. “China has a Ballroom, and so should the U.S.A.!” he said as well as pushing for his Eastern Bloc style garden of heroes.

Despite the lack of clear wins on the trip, Trump could be playing the long game. He has invited Xi to the White House in September. “You’re gonna walk away hopefully very impressed, like I’m very impressed with China,” he said on Friday, after his tour ended.

The White House has been approached for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-went-to-china-and-all-he-got-were-seeds-by-mail/?

Sunday at 11:48 PM

MAGA Star Candidate Secretly Planning Reality Show in Office

It comes after he was caught lying about living in a trailer while staying at a $2,000-a-night hotel.

A reality TV star running for mayor of America’s second-largest city has signed a contract to turn his campaign—and potentially his time in office—into a television show, according to TMZ.

Spencer Pratt, best known as the villain of millennial reality staple The Hills, inked a deal with Los Angeles production company Boardwalk Pictures to document his run against Democratic Mayor Karen Bass, sources with direct knowledge told TMZ.

Cameras are reportedly about to begin rolling with Pratt, his wife, and fellow Hills star Heidi Montag, and their children. Crucially, the contract specifically provides that filming would continue if Pratt wins and is sworn into office. Sources told TMZ the production team and Pratt have not yet discussed the logistics of filming inside the mayor’s office, but the deal is signed.

The 42-year-old built his campaign around the devastating Los Angeles fires of 2025, attacking Bass over her handling of the disaster. In his campaign announcement video, Pratt spread his arms in front of a silver Airstream trailer and declared, “This is where I live. This is where I live. That’s where Karen Bass, Mayor Bass, burnt down my house,” he said.

TMZ subsequently reported that Pratt had, in fact, been staying at the Hotel Bel-Air, where rooms can run up to $2,000 a night, for more than a month. Montag and their two children are not in the Airstream either, residing instead in Santa Barbara.

When confronted, Pratt denied saying what he said. “I have never told anyone I lived there,” he told TMZ, before adding: “The Airstream is a temporary facility. A hotel is a temporary facility. Where my kids are in Santa Barbara right now is temporary housing, this is semantics.”

The trailer troubles arrive at an otherwise promising moment for Pratt’s campaign. He delivered a surprisingly strong performance against Bass in a recent debate, with Mike Bonin, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs, telling TheWrap: “I’m sure the debate organizers were worried, going in, about how the reality TV star bad boy would behave. Would he keep interrupting? But he came across as serious and passionate and funny at times.”

Pratt’s latest professional credit before entering politics was a stint as Mr. Snow Cone on The Masked Singer. But sources told veteran gossip journalist Rob Shuter that he “studies Trump,” including rally speeches and old episodes of The Apprentice. “If one reality star became president,” one source told Shuter, “Spencer honestly thinks another one can become mayor.”

Pratt himself has drawn the comparison explicitly, insisting his past villainy was always calculated. “People know when I was a reality villain, I was doing it to get paid. It was strategic,” he told CBS News. “I’m being very strategic to win and save L.A., but there’s no strategy when you’re standing in an Airstream on your burned-out town. You can’t fake that.”

The election is on June 2. Los Angeles has not elected a Republican mayor since 2001.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-star-candidate-spencer-pratt-secretly-planning-reality-show-in-office/?

Monday at 12:22 AM

Trump and Boeing say China agreed to buy 200 aircraft, reopening a key market for the US planemaker

Aircraft manufacturer Boeing will make its first major sale to China in nearly a decade under an agreement for 200 planes announced Friday after President Donald Trump’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-china-summit-boeing-5dbc392537048dca743fd3b115e252d5?

Pentagon halts deployments to Poland and Germany to cut troop numbers in Europe, AP sources say

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon is drawing down thousands of troops in Europe by canceling deployments to Poland and Germany as opposed to yanking forces already stationed there, U.S. officials say, as President Donald Trump has tussled with allies over the Iran war and called for changes.

https://apnews.com/article/poland-us-troop-reduction-deployment-europe-34138e62c7afc0b83ab7c7cc8fa60071?

Trump administration prepares to seek Raúl Castro indictment as it pressures Cuba, AP sources say

MIAMI (AP) — The Justice Department is preparing to seek an indictment against former Cuban President Raúl Castro, three people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Friday, as President Donald Trump threatens possible military action against the communist-run island.

https://apnews.com/article/raul-castro-cuba-doj-indictment-trump-40939c6644185652649bc90d4e445394?

Monday at 07:07 PM

Trump waffles on Taiwan arms deal after Xi talks

President Trump said Friday he's unsure whether he would greenlight a planned $14 billion weapons package for Taiwan after discussing arms sales in "great detail" with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

https://www.axios.com/2026/05/15/trump-taiwan-arms-sale-xi-summit?

Monday at 07:28 PM

Sole Food

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Donald Trump deserves plenty of criticism for his serial dishonesty, but on the rare occasions when he speaks frankly, that causes problems too.

This week, a reporter asked the president whether the deteriorating economic situation has created any urgency for him to reach a peace deal with Iran. “Not even a little bit,” he replied. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.”

Who can doubt that he was being sincere? Trump has conducted the war as though he is both uninterested in and unaware of the economic effects that it is having. He has reportedly mused about simply withdrawing from the field of battle and leaving the Strait of Hormuz closed, despite the disruption that has caused for global trade. He’s previously called talk about affordability a “hoax.” And with his own bank accounts growing fatter through corruption, he doesn’t feel the pinch of inflation himself.

Trump, a billionaire who inherited a real-estate fortune, has always been a curious sort of populist. As I have written, he managed to convincingly campaign as one by flaunting his genuine scorn for cultural and intellectual elites. This served him well for many years, especially during the 2024 presidential election, when inflation was a major concern for many voters. Once in office, however, Trump didn’t actually have any ideas for combating rising prices. He’s hardly unusual in this—elected officials have few good tools for fighting inflation, though most of them at least act sympathetic. Joe Biden tried a different path, trying to convince voters that they weren’t really experiencing high costs. (It didn’t work out well for him.) Trump’s decision to tell voters that he just doesn’t care is a novel strategy, but not a very promising one.

The sentiment that Trump was (apparently) trying to convey might be defensible in some cases. When the nation is at war, a president must at times call on the people to make sacrifices in the name of the greater good. Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt all did this. The conservative commentator Marc Thiessen, using tortured logic, argues that “if we cannot accept a few months of higher inflation and a few months of higher gas prices in order to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, we’re not a superpower anymore.” The problem is that Trump hasn’t definitively stated that ending Iran’s nuclear program is the goal of the war, nor has he laid out any reasonable path to achieving it. As a result, the president is asking Americans to suffer for no clear reason, and he is also suggesting that he doesn’t care about their suffering.

This was only the worst in a string of notable gaffes from Trump over the past few days. Over the apparent objection of First Lady Melania Trump, he said that the White House was a “shit house” when he arrived. Trump used to be celebrated for the creativity of his insults, but this week he kept it simple, snapping at a reporter who asked him about the ballooning cost of his planned East Wing ballroom: “I doubled the size of it, you dumb person.” The president also can’t get his story straight on whether he selected or even knows the contractor adding a garish cerulean hue to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

When a reporter asked the president how he’d respond to Black voters worried that changes to congressional districts—changes spearheaded by his GOP allies and urged on by his Justice Department—would reduce Black representation, he replied, “I think it’s been a wonderful process.” This may have been another moment of imprudent honesty, but at least he’s answering his 2016 question to Black voters: “What the hell do you have to lose?”

Will these remarks hurt Trump? One plausible answer is that they won’t. He’s been making outrageous statements for years, and it hasn’t slowed down his political career. Another possibility is that they will but that it doesn’t matter to him. His approval rating continues to decline steadily. CNN’s Harry Enten noted with amazement this week that Trump owns the five worst polls on inflation of any U.S. president in history. But Trump, who won’t face voters again, seems less concerned with poor polling than he was in his first term.

The catch is that although Trump won’t face another election, many of his fellow Republicans will in less than six months. Republicans have been pleading with the White House to formulate and stick with a consistent message for the midterms. Instead, they’re getting a president who is either nodding off in public or dismissing the concerns of the public.

The media have puzzled over Trump’s fixation on footwear this spring. The president has commented on aides’ choice of dress shoes, and he presented a visibly ill-fitting pair to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. But perhaps Trump cares so much about feet and what goes on them because he knows that, sooner or later, he will place his own in his mouth.

Related:

Monday at 07:58 PM

Trump says Islamic State ‘second in command’ killed by US and Nigerian forces

Donald Trump has said US and Nigerian forces killed the “second in command” global leader of the Islamic State.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/16/islamic-state-abu-bilal-al-minuki-killed-by-us-nigerian-forces-trump-says?

Donald Trump does ‘not feel optimistic’ for Jimmy Lai after speaking with Xi Jinping

Donald Trump raised the case of jailed Hong Kong democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai in talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping but was told it “is a tough one”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/16/trump-not-optimistic-jimmy-lai-release-xi-jinping?

Monday at 10:12 PM

Jen Psaki Hits Back at Eric Trump With On-Air Fact Check

The MS NOW host refused to stand down after the president’s son accused her of spreading “blatant lies” about his ties to a crypto-linked firm.

MS NOW’s Jen Psaki devoted part of her Friday night episode of The Briefing to fact-checking Eric Trump after he threatened to sue her and the network over a Thursday report on his business interests.

“Today, the adult son of the President of the United States, Eric Trump, came after us on social media and accused us of lying,” the former Biden press secretary told viewers.

“Specifically, Eric took issue with us describing him as a member of the board of… a company called ALT5.”

The segment was a direct response to a furious X post from the president’s second-born son earlier Friday, in which he accused Psaki of spreading “blatant lies” for describing him as connected to crypto-linked firm ALT5 Sigma during coverage of President Donald Trump’s state visit to China.

Psaki had questioned whether Eric’s presence on the official trip posed a potential conflict of interest after The Financial Times reported that ALT5 Sigma was pursuing a deal with a Chinese chipmaker that U.S. lawmakers have warned is tied to the Chinese Communist Party.

“Contrary to her monolog (sic) and blatant lies, I have NEVER been on the board of ALT5 — not now, not ever," Trump wrote on X.

The MS NOW host responded by airing footage from Nasdaq’s opening bell ceremony from August last year.

“It is my great pleasure to welcome ALT5 board member Eric Trump,” one announcer says in the clip.

“I now want to welcome fellow board member and World Liberty co-founder, Eric Trump,” another speaker adds.

Psaki then walked viewers through what she described as the “complicated” history of Trump’s formal relationship with the company, noting that ALT5 had previously announced Trump would join its board of directors and that, at one point, SEC filings and the company website listed him as a director.

“In subsequent filings with the SEC, Eric was designated as an ‘observer’ on the board—a role that typically means you cannot cast a vote at board meetings, but you are able to attend them,” she explained.

But Psaki argued the broader issue was ALT5’s close relationship with World Liberty Financial, the Trump family crypto company that Eric co-founded.

The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment.

Trump’s appearance at the Nasdaq opening last year came as ALT5 celebrated its acquisition of a 7.5 percent stake in World Liberty Financial’s token supply, a deal worth $1.5 billion.

“Eric, of course, says that he has no business interests in China at all, and that he joined his dad’s official trip there for one reason and one reason alone: as a loving son who adores his dad,” Psaki said. “I’ll let you be the judge.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ms-now-host-jen-psaki-hits-back-at-eric-trump-with-on-air-fact-check/?

Monday at 10:29 PM

SCOTUS Justice Refuses to Recuse Himself Over ‘Conflict of Interest’

Justice Samuel Alito has been accused of “undermining public confidence in the impartiality of the court.”

Conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has rebuffed calls to recuse himself from a major looming decision.

A coalition of liberal groups asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to look into Alito’s involvement in the case, which involves energy companies ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy as they look to throw out a Colorado lawsuit seeking damages for harms related to climate change. The left-leaning groups cite Alito’s stock holdings in energy companies as the reason he should recuse himself.

But Alito, 76, is ignoring these calls, with a court spokesperson saying, “Alito does not have a financial interest in any party” involved in the case, and that his counsel has advised that “his recusal is not required.”

While Alito, a George W. Bush appointee, does not own stock in ExxonMobil or Suncor Energy, he did hold stock in oil companies ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66, as well as several other energy firms, according to his most recent financial disclosure report, which was filed last year.

The liberal groups have accused Alito of “undermining public confidence in the impartiality of the court.”

“His irregular recusal practice in oil and gas industry-related cases is undermining public confidence in the impartiality of the Court. They could not occur were he compelled to adhere to enforceable ethics standards against adjudicating cases where he has financial interests or the appearance of a conflict of interest where his impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” the groups wrote.

Under Supreme Court ethics guidelines, justices do not have to recuse themselves from cases unless they have a direct conflict of interest, like stock ownership or a personal relationship with one of the parties.

But the letter sent by the liberal groups argues that justices should still rescue themselves if their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned” by an “unbiased and reasonable person who is aware of all relevant circumstances.”

The high court is expected to hear arguments in the case during its next term, which starts in October.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/scotus-justice-samuel-alito-refuses-to-recuse-himself-over-conflict-of-interest-in-climate-case/?

Tuesday at 12:52 AM

Three-Time Trump Voter Unloads on ‘Worst President Ever’

A C-SPAN caller said years of loyalty made it difficult to walk away from Trump.

A man who voted for Donald Trump three times has gone from loyal supporter to public defector, using a live TV call to brand the president “the worst” America has ever had.

During Saturday’s edition of C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, a caller from Hawaii, identified only as Thomas, revealed he had backed Donald Trump in all three of his presidential campaigns before reaching his breaking point over the past year.

“It’s hard for me to say this,” Thomas began. “I wanted to believe Trump was the real deal for a long time.”

The caller said he had doubts due to Trump’s business history, but chose to support him anyway.

“Now I regret my support for him and I should’ve known better,” he said.

Thomas then launched into a blistering assessment of the president, accusing Trump of being “a con man, a liar” who “doesn’t keep his promises.”

“He’s in office all for himself and he doesn’t even try to hide his corruption anymore,” he said.

“He’s the worst president we’ve ever had and he’s the most corrupt president we’ve ever had.”

C-SPAN host Taylor Popielarz shared the interaction on X, including the moment he asked Thomas what had finally pushed him over the edge after voting for Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024.

“It’s been a cumulative process,” Thomas replied, before pointing to the many campaign promises Trump had made, including claims that he would lower prices “on day one.”

Thomas’s frustration is representative of a growing unease among voters who helped return Trump to the White House.

A University of Massachusetts Amherst poll found that 17 percent of Trump’s 2024 voters now express reservations about their vote, up from 8 percent in April 2025.

The same poll found Trump’s overall approval rating had fallen to 33 percent, with most Americans disapproving of his handling of inflation, jobs, immigration, Iran, and the administration’s handling of information related to Jeffrey Epstein.

That unease has also spilled into Trump’s once-loyal orbit.

Megyn Kelly and Marjorie Taylor Greene have publicly broken with Trump on issues ranging from Iran to the Epstein fallout, while Tucker Carlson claimed he will be “tormented” by his support of Trump “for a long time.”

For Thomas, untangling years of loyalty and finding somewhere else to belong proved the hardest bridge to cross.

He said finding others who had gone through the same buyer’s remorse ultimately helped him process his own change of heart, pointing viewers toward LeavingMAGA.org, a community for Trump supporters wrestling with similar doubts.

“Being part of this [MAGA] community is a big part of the appeal, I think,” Thomas said.

“Others who might be having doubts could check into it.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/three-time-trump-voter-unloads-on-worst-president-ever/?

Tuesday at 01:23 AM

🇨🇳 Scoop: Trump advisers fear China may target Taiwan

Some close advisers to President Trump fear the China summit heightened danger that Xi Jinping will take control of Taiwan in the next five years, potentially choking off the chips used to power AI to U.S. companies, Axios CEO Jim VandeHei scooped in his new weekly newsletter, Axios C-Suite.

Why it matters: Trump loved the pageantry and the special access Xi shrewdly rolled out during the Beijing visit. But the words didn't match the bonhomie.

One Trump adviser told us Xi is "trying to move China to a new position where he's saying: 'We're not a rising power. We're your equal. And Taiwan is mine.'"

"This trip signaled a much higher likelihood that Taiwan will be on the table in the next five years," the adviser added. "There's no way we can be ready economically — the chip supply chain won't be anywhere close to self-sufficiency. For CEOs, and really the economy as a whole, there's no more pressing issue than the supply chain for chips."

The big picture: Several CEOs praised Trump for pushing very hard on Iran and Venezuela and opening markets. Some came away hopeful their companies will get licenses to operate in China, and credit POTUS.

Tuesday at 01:47 AM

Trump administration promotes a program to check voter eligibility. Critics fear a midterm purge

Even as Democratic officials fight the effort in court, the Trump administration has run millions of voter registrations through government databases to determine their eligibility in a process that critics worry could end up purging valid voters from the rolls before the November elections. Some states allow only a month for people to prove their eligibility and others suspend it immediately. Voters such as 29-year-old Anthony Nel have been caught in the middle. The native of South Africa, who became a citizen more than a decade ago, was flagged as a potential noncitizen. Nel’s local election office in Denton, north of Dallas, temporarily canceled his registration last fall while he was waiting for a new passport to replace an expired one. “I’m like, ‘You should know that I’m a citizen, that the passport exists,’” he said in an interview. Read more.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

Tuesday at 10:17 PM

📱 Trump on Iran: "Clock is ticking"

President Trump told Axios' Barak Ravid in a phone call yesterday that "the clock is ticking" for Iran and warned that if Tehran doesn't come up with a better offer for a deal, "they are going to get hit much harder."

Why it matters: U.S. officials say Trump wants a deal to end the war, but Iran's rejection of many of his demands and refusal to make meaningful concessions on its nuclear program have put the military option back on the table.

Trump is expected to convene his top national security team in the Situation Room tomorrow to discuss military options, two U.S. officials said.

Trump spoke yesterday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the situation in Iran.

👀 Behind the scenes: Trump met Saturday with members of his national security team at his Virginia golf club to discuss Iran, a source with knowledge said.

Attendees included Vice President JD Vance, White House envoy Steve Witkoff, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
More from the call.

⚛️ The International Atomic Energy Agency expressed "grave concern" after a drone strike sparked a fire on the edge of the UAE's sole nuclear power plant in what authorities called an "unprovoked terrorist attack." The UAE recently accused Iran of attacks. Get the latest.

Tuesday at 10:27 PM

⚖️ Quiet DACA doom

Photo illustration of demonstrators protesting DACA, with a barbed wire fence in the background, and stars and stripes referencing the U.S. flag

Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photo by Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

President Trump talks sympathetically about the country's 500,000 Dreamers — but his administration is putting them in the crosshairs for deportation, Axios' Brittany Gibson writes.

Trump officials are slowing renewals, narrowing deportation protections and ramping up enforcement against some DACA recipients.

The big picture: In Trump's first term, he almost struck a deal to give Dreamers a pathway to citizenship in exchange for border wall funding. The deal never materialized.

Joe Edlow, Trump's current head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency overseeing DACA renewals, has called DACA "illegal" and "quasi-amnesty."

👓 Between the lines: Immigration hardliners think the administration is effectively ending DACA while trying to avoid political fallout.

Keep reading.

Tuesday at 10:43 PM

Prayer event

An all-day prayer event on the National Mall on Sunday — backed by taxpayer dollars and private donations — has become the latest flashpoint in the debate over the separation of church and state under the Trump administration. The gathering was part of a broader push by the White House to elevate Christianity in the government's operations, culture and policy. Experts CNN spoke with were split on whether the event was constitutional. Read more.

MORE: Religion is 'back in fashion' in America

Trump's new warning

President Donald Trump is escalating his rhetoric toward Iran as he considers resuming US military strikes there. In a social media post on Sunday, Trump warned that if Iran does not move quickly toward a deal, "there won't be anything left of them." The threat came a day after he met with his national security team to discuss the path forward on the war. Read more.

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