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

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It’s Getting Screwy

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The first thing you should know about the New World screwworm is that it isn’t actually a worm; it’s a fly. At the larva stage, it twists into the flesh of its host, devouring it from within. These wormlike maggots feed on all kinds of warm-blooded animals (the fly’s scientific name is Cochliomyia  hominivorax, or “man-eater”), but they pose a serious threat to livestock, and to cattle in particular.

The second thing you should know about the New World screwworm is that it’s back. Last week, 60 years after the United States was declared free of the fly, the Department of Agriculture announced that it had found larvae in a three-week-old calf in rural Zavala County, Texas, not far from the Mexican border. Four more infected animals have since been identified across Texas and New Mexico: two calves, a goat, and a dog. The U.S. cattle herd is already the smallest it’s been since 1951 (in part because of drought), and the value of cattle is soaring. As meat-packers pay more for the few animals that remain, they’re passing those costs down the supply chain to beef consumers. To meet the demand, the industry will need to invest in new calves and build up the herd. But the White House’s mixed messages on tariffs has made farmers skittish, and the resurgence of a parasite that eats their animals alive may only make things worse.

Since the 1950s, the Department of Agriculture has been warding off the screwworm with a tried-and-true strategy. Workers raise batches of the flies themselves, sterilize them with radiation, and then air-drop them over affected areas each week. Wild flies mate with the sterile ones, slowly eroding the population over time. It’s one of those quietly effective taxpayer-funded programs that’s had an enormous impact in past decades: Before the sterile-insect technique repelled screwworms from the southern U.S., the pests had been costing cattle farmers tens of millions of dollars every year.

The insect population was eventually pushed south through Mexico and past the Darién Gap, the roadless rainforest on the border between Panama and Colombia, where it was held at bay until 2022. Then it began its march northward, speeding up in 2024, perhaps thanks to illegal cattle trafficking. The U.S. first closed its border to Mexican calves in November of that year, further reducing the size of the American herd and pushing up beef prices. Sally DeNotta, a professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Florida, told me that because the flies have already made it to the U.S., they’re unlikely to be fully eliminated for “months to years.” Many hundreds of millions of sterile flies need to be dropped onto these screwworm populations each week to have an effect. The USDA began investing in production and dispersal facilities for sterile flies last year, but right now, the only place in North America capable of producing sterile flies en masse is a Panamanian facility that produces just 100 million a week.

Officials are already pointing fingers. Democrats have been blaming DOGE, which reportedly cut funding for screwworm-monitoring programs in Central America last year (although it’s not clear that the programs would have done much to stop the spread). The Trump administration is blaming the Biden administration. Texas state officials are critiquing the USDA’s response, and the USDA is critiquing state officials. USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins called Texas’s agriculture commissioner, Sid Miller, “unserious” after he suggested that he might not report an outbreak among his own livestock. If ranchers do try to manage infections on their own in an attempt to avoid costly quarantines, they could inadvertently encourage the parasite’s spread.

Despite high cattle prices, the screwworm arrives at a moment of instability for American ranchers. The decision to raise a calf is effectively a bet on its future value; each animal takes about nine months to breed and about two years to raise. Ranchers are going to invest only if they’re relatively sure what the market is going to look like—a tough ask in a policy environment that seems to shift every few months. The cattle industry rejoiced when Donald Trump announced strict tariffs on beef imports last summer (which benefited ranchers by curbing foreign competition), and it balked when he later rolled back a tariff affecting Brazilian beef. The president quadrupled the quota for Argentinian beef imports earlier this year; he was planning to sign an executive order that would have removed even more tariffs on imported beef, but he punted at the last minute. Politico reported that Rollins helped stop the order because she didn’t want to anger ranchers.

Farmers are an important constituency for this White House, and Trump has made plenty of overtures to American cattle ranchers since his return to office. But in trying to lower beef prices amid a broader affordability crisis, his administration has created a rift. The rising price of cattle has in some ways played to ranchers’ advantage, allowing them to negotiate higher prices from the feedlots where these animals are sent to fatten up before slaughter. That’s helped push the price of ground beef up 14 percent since last year. Amid rising steak prices, some barbecue restaurants have struggled to stay open.

With screwworms on the move, the industry’s supply and pricing issues have become only more urgent. Demand has yet to drop off—but most people also can’t tell the difference between an imported rib eye and a domestic one. If the administration’s push to bring back imports does end up curbing grocery-store prices, ranchers’ loss will be consumers’ gain.

Related:

• Cattle ranchers are beefing with Trump.
• Eat more deer, Yasmin Tayag argues.

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Trump, 79, Unravels in Jaw-Dropping ‘Allah’ Rant as His Peace Plan Implodes The president also issued an ominous threat in his unhinged outburst. Donald Trump issued a deranged threat against Iran and signed off by saying, “Praise be to Allah!” during an early morning Truth Social blitz. In a typically unhinged post, the 79-year-old president warned that Tehran will “pay the price” for not agreeing to a peace deal with the U.S. Trump followed up with a second message desperately defending how the U.S. has the upper hand in the war, adding, “Praise be to Allah!” “Iran’s Military is a complete and total mess. Much of it, like their Navy and Air Force, doesn’t even exist anymore-They have been completely defeated. Iran is all talk and no action. The Bully of the Middle East is DEAD!!!” Trump posted at 7:03 a.m. ET on Wednesday. “They’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!!!” For weeks, Trump has claimed that a deal with Iran was on the verge of being agreed upon. These boasts blew up in the president’s face as both countries exchanged fire after Iran’s military shot down a U.S. Army helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, further threatening an already shaky ceasefire arrangement. In a follow-up Truth Social post, Trump insisted the war is going well, but the “Fake News Media refuses to report how EFFECTIVE” the U.S. naval blockade is on Iran. “NOTHING GETS THROUGH unless we want it to. IT IS A STEEL WALL! Iran is doing ZERO business, not paying their military, or any of their bills, and quickly becoming a FAILED NATION,” Trump wrote at 7:32 a.m. “Lots of oil is getting out. Praise be to Allah!” Trump has previously caused confusion by writing “praise be to Allah” in his social media updates on Iran—a country with a near-total Muslim population. This includes an expletive-ridden Easter Sunday message in which the 79-year-old warned Iran to “Open the f---in’ Strait, you crazy b-----ds, or you’ll be living in Hell.” “JUST WATCH!” he added. “Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.” Separately, Trump told Fox News that he is “getting close to ordering new strikes against Iranian power plants and bridges.” He also accused Iran of “tapping the United States along when it comes to the negotiating process.” Trump’s threats arrived after the U.S. retaliated against Iran for shooting down an Apache helicopter on Tuesday by targeting Iranian air-defense systems, ground-control stations, and surveillance radar sites. In response, Iran also carried out missile and drone attacks on U.S. military bases in Jordan, Kuwait, and Bahrain. The tit-for-tat strikes are the latest indication that the deeply unpopular Middle East conflict has no real end in sight, despite Trump’s insistence. Analysis from CNN found that since just before the shaky ceasefire deal between the U.S. and Iran was agreed to on April 7, Trump has claimed on at least 38 occasions that the war with Iran will end any day now and that Tehran is close to agreeing to a peace deal. Trump even claimed that a deal could be made within “two or three days” just before the countries began exchanging fire. “We should be able to do it in one hour, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said. “We’re very close to having a very, very good, strong, powerful deal.” Tehran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei accused the U.S. of standing in the way of peace. “What happened last night demonstrated that Iran’s brave armed forces do not hesitate when it comes to defending the country,” Baghaei said. “Unfortunately, the United States is undermining this process through contradictory messages, frequent shifts in its positions and demands, and repeated violations of the ceasefire.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/seething-trump-fires-off-ominous-threat-after-humiliating-iran-deal-failure/? ps:Pathetic as usual!!

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White House’s Situation Room Meltdown Over Epstein Exposed

Donald Trump’s top advisers needed to convince the president’s supporters he cared—even though he clearly didn’t.

Donald Trump’s panicked aides met without him in the Situation Room during an emergency meeting in which they desperately sought to quell the MAGA civil war that had erupted over the administration’s failure to release the Epstein files, according to an explosive new report. Ten days after the Justice Department and FBI released a memo last July declaring there was no Jeffrey Epstein client list and that the disgraced financier had killed himself in jail, Vice President JD Vance presided over a heated debate about how to appease the president’s outraged supporters, New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan write in their new book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. Vance, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Communications Director Steven Cheung, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and FBI Director Kash Patel all joined either in person or on speakerphone, according to an adaptation of the book’s account published Wednesday in The New York Times.

There, the group hatched a plan to offer an empty gesture of transparency that would calm Trump’s base and convince them the president was sympathetic to their concerns—even though he clearly wasn’t.

Publicly, the administration was projecting confidence, but privately, the Epstein crisis was paralyzing the White House, the Times reported.

The Wall Street Journal was on the verge of publishing its bombshell report on a graphic birthday letter to Epstein allegedly signed by Trump, despite the president trying to bully the publication into killing the story.

The two men were close friends for more than a decade, though Trump has denied knowing anything about the late sex offender’s crimes and maintains he was never involved in any wrongdoing.

Epstein died in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, and members of Trump’s own administration—including Patel—have long pushed conspiracy theories that he was murdered by his powerful associates.

Vance also seemed to believe the conspiracy theories, sources told the Times.

He was alarmed by the wedge that the Epstein scandal had driven in the MAGA coalition, and thought the administration should rip the Band-Aid off and release the DOJ’s millions of investigative files.

He also floated a wild idea to ask Tucker Carlson to interview Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell in prison, where she is serving a 20-year sentence, in the hopes she would say that Trump had not been involved in Epstein’s crimes.

Other people in the room were skeptical of Vance’s maximum transparency idea, though Blanche proposed a variation on the Maxwell interview and suggested that he or another DOJ lawyer could be the one to speak to her.

Blanche also had the bright idea of petitioning the federal courts in Florida and New York to unseal the grand jury testimony in their Epstein-related cases, knowing full well that grand jury materials are generally considered sacrosanct and the request would almost certainly be denied.

In that case, though, the Trump administration could pin the lack of disclosure on the judges and make it seem as though the White House wanted the materials released, even though it knew all along it wouldn’t happen, according to the Times.

While the president’s aides were debating the details of their strategy, they received word that the Wall Street Journal story had been published.

Trump ended up posting two Truth Social posts—one denying the story and one calling for the grand jury transcripts to be released—but it did little to calm the Epstein maelstrom.

Throughout the summer, the Situation Room—a secure bunker in the West Wing typically used to respond to national security emergencies—became inseparable from the Epstein crisis, according to the Times.

Trump wanted the scandal buried and snapped at anyone who mentioned it, so his aides repeatedly convened in the Situation Room without him.

A bipartisan group of members of Congress had begun pushing for the files’ release, and Trump’s team spent hours in the bunker trying to craft a response, the Times reported.

In the meantime, his officials were fighting among themselves about who was to blame. Patel and then-deputy director Dan Bongino—a former podcaster who had also pushed Epstein-related conspiracy theories—blamed Bondi.

The former attorney general had implied in February that there was a client list sitting on her desk, and had organized a high-profile stunt in which MAGA influencers were given binders of “new” Epstein materials that turned out to be mostly recycled material.

Bongino thought it was a mistake to put out the “no client list” memo, and that it wouldn’t really kill the controversy the way other administration members hoped, according to the Times.

The day it was released, he erupted at Bondi during a daily Justice Department meeting with the FBI staff and the attorney general, according to the Times.

“You f---ed this thing up from the start,” Bongino yelled. “The way you’ve been talking about this — that dumb f---ing charade with the Epstein files, the ‘They’re on my desk’ nonsense, all the promises to the folks out there.”

In another July meeting at the Situation Room complex, he unloaded on Wiles, much to the shock of the other people in the room.

“No, no, no, no, no. We didn’t get ourselves into anything. I warned you guys about this the whole time, and you ignored me,” he said. “And exactly what I said was going to happen happened. And now you’re pretending I was in on this. I was never in on this.”

He eventually resigned in December.

A month earlier, Congress defied Trump and passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, forcing the files’ release, though millions of documents have been held back by the DOJ.

Reached for comment by the Times, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson repeated Trump’s claims that he is innocent in all Epstein-related matters.

“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,” she said.

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

https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-houses-situation-room-meltdown-over-epstein-files-exposed/?

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D Vance Makes Embarrassing Confession About Trump’s Failed War Boast

The vice president contradicts Trump’s oft-cited insistence about when the Iran conflict might end.

JD Vance suggested that the war in Iran might not end for “months,” even though Donald Trump frequently suggests it will be over any day now.

In an interview airing this week on CBS Sunday Morning, the vice president claimed that the U.S. is “very close” to reaching a deal with Tehran, then covered his back by offering a broad timeline for such an agreement.

“Right now, I feel that we are in a position to get a deal that is good for the United States economically, and that really does deal with the Iranian nuclear program—not just now, not just while Donald Trump is president—but for the long term, to where my kids can say when they’re adults, Iran is not going to have a nuclear weapon,” Vance said.

“I think we’re very close to achieving that goal, but we still got some wood to chop, and we’re going to keep doing it.”

When asked by CBS’ Robert Costa if a deal with Iran to end the deeply unpopular Middle East conflict would be reached before the midterm elections, a defiant Vance said: “Oh, absolutely.”

“I think we’re going to know a lot before the midterm elections. Look, I think that the deal could happen in the next week, but the deal could also happen months from now,” Vance added.

Vance’s suggestion that a deal with Iran could happen at any point before November’s crucial midterm elections contradicts claims made by Trump for several weeks.

Not only has Trump for three months said that the war with Iran will end imminently, but the president has also claimed dozens of times over the past two months that Tehran is close to reaching a peace deal with the U.S.

Analysis from CNN found that since just before the shaky ceasefire deal between the U.S. and Iran was agreed to on April 7, Trump has claimed on at least 38 occasions that the two countries were close to a deal.

“I think it’s close to over, yeah. I view it as very close to being over,” Trump told Fox Business on April 14.

Even before the ceasefire was put in place, Trump insisted that Iran was close to agreeing to a deal that both sides would be happy with.

“We have points, major points of agreement, I would say, almost all points of agreement,” Trump told reporters in Florida on March 23.

Trump’s claim became even more ridiculous as both countries exchanged fire after Iran’s military shot down a U.S. Army helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday.

Elsewhere during his CBS Sunday Morning interview, Vance was asked if Iran was “stringing President Trump along,” knowing that the unpopular war and the high gas prices it has caused will be politically damaging for him and the GOP in the midterms.

“No, I don’t think so. Again, I think their system takes a long time to reach consensus,” Vance said.

“I always hear people ask me, ‘Do you trust the Iranians?’ And what the president has said is, ‘I don’t trust anybody,’” he added. “What I do trust is my own ability to negotiate. I trust our administration’s ability to negotiate, and I trust the enforcement provisions that we’re going to get in place.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jd-vance-makes-embarrassing-confession-about-trumps-failed-war-boast/?

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Trump Family Scores Massive Payday as Company Falls Apart

The Trumps made a killing from a partnership with a fintech company—but investors weren’t as lucky.

Investors have seen steep losses since putting their money on a fintech firm that partnered with a Trump family-backed crypto venture—but the president’s family got the better end of the deal, according to a new report.

ALT5 Sigma, now known as AI Financial Corp., teamed up with the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial last August in a deal that the president’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, celebrated with cheery photos at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York.

But not everyone was as lucky.

Just a day before announcing its WLF partnership in August, ALT5 stock closed at $8.97. Since then, however, the company’s stock has fallen to 66 cents per share—a loss of more than 90 percent. Now, according to CNBC, AI Financial Corp faces delisting from Nasdaq in the next two weeks if it cannot raise its price. Nasdaq declined to comment to the publication.

Last April, Democracy Defenders Fund wrote a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission demanding that it “commence an independent investigation” into ALT5 “without delay,” but it never received a response.

“The question now is: What happened to all that money?” Virginia Canter, the group’s chief anti-corruption counsel, told CNBC.

The Trump Organization, led by Don Jr. and Eric, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In an emailed response to CNBC, Trump spokeswoman Kimberly Benza said, “Neither Eric nor Don have any involvement in ALT5, nor have any visibility to the company. Neither have ever been on the board, know anything about the leadership team, or have ever been involved in their operations.”

The report notes, “There is no evidence that anyone involved in ALT5 Sigma’s August stock sale, which ultimately benefited the Trump family, tried to exploit that relationship for their own benefit.”

Eric has forcefully distanced himself from ALT5.

“I have zero leadership or decision-making in the company,” he said in

The White House, meanwhile, has bucked criticism of the 79-year-old president.

“President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public—which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said. “President Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children. There are no conflicts of interest.”

AI Financial Corp., meanwhile, told CNBC, “We have no interest in participating in stories built on unfounded accusations and speculation. AiFi’s management team is laser-focused on building its business, serving its customers, and creating long-term value for shareholders.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-family-scores-massive-payday-as-company-falls-apart/?

ps:How Pathetic!!!!! The greed is just incredible!!!!!

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Trump Hit by Humiliating Poll as Trust in the U.S. Plummets

Most Europeans no longer believe the U.S. would come to their defense if attacked.

European trust in the United States has fallen to historic lows in a fresh embarrassment to President Donald Trump.

A major new survey found that only 1 in 10 people across 15 countries now considers America an ally, a collapse that researchers are linking directly to Trump’s foreign policy.

The poll, published by the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank ahead of upcoming G7 and NATO summits in France and Turkey, found majorities in every country surveyed no longer believe the U.S. would come to their aid if attacked.

Just 11 percent of respondents now view the U.S. as an ally, down from 16 percent six months ago and 22 percent in November 2024. Thirteen percent of Europeans now consider the U.S. a rival, and 12 percent a direct adversary.

The researchers attributed the freefall to Trump’s military aggression in the Middle East, his threats against Greenland, his vows to pull troops from European bases, and his open skepticism about the future of NATO.

“Across the continent, there’s clear support for reducing dependence on Washington,” said Jana Kobzová, a senior policy fellow at the think tank and co-author of the report. “Europeans are increasingly open to higher defence spending and, crucially, show a striking degree of confidence that neighbouring countries would come to their aid in a crisis.”

Co-author Paweł Zerka said the public mood had “created a window for Europe’s leaders to go further and faster” on security, with clear demand for self-reliance and a desire to hedge against U.S. defense guarantees.The survey, conducted in May across Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, found Europeans on average 4 percent more likely to support higher national defense spending than a year ago. Italy was the only country where a clear majority still opposed it.Support for collective European Union borrowing to fund defense came in at 47 percent, versus 35 percent opposed, with the strongest backing in Portugal, Denmark, and the Netherlands. In nearly every country polled, most respondents said their nation should reduce its strategic dependence on U.S. military hardware—a “buy European” sentiment strongest in Denmark, at 75 percent, followed by the Netherlands at 72 percent and Sweden at 70 percent.

Despite the anti-American mood, there was little appetite—just 29 percent support—for scrapping NATO in favor of an EU-only defense body. And in a sign that Europeans are still willing to separate Trump from America itself, majorities in most countries, including 60 percent or more in France, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden, said U.S.-European relations would “probably get better” once Trump leaves office.

There were limits to European unity on other fronts. Support for Ukraine joining the EU remained deeply divided, with opposition outpacing support even in Estonia—one of Kyiv’s most vocal backers. And while energy costs have risen sharply, 44 percent of Europeans said resuming oil and gas imports from Russia would still be a bad idea.

The White House has been contacted for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/poll-finds-european-trust-in-us-has-fallen-sharply-under-trump/?