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

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Shameful State of Trump’s Warship Is Finally Revealed

The USS Abraham Lincoln is at port after 286 days at sea.

The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier arrived in Thailand on Wednesday looking rusty and beat up after a nightmare deployment.

The ship is heading back to its home port of San Diego after being replaced by the Japan-based USS George Washington. The ship’s arrival at Laem Chabang Port in Chonburi province comes weeks after concerns were raised about the welfare of the crew of about 5,000 sailors and Marines aboard.

The Abraham Lincoln left San Diego on Nov. 21 last year and has spent almost all of the 286 days since at sea, making only brief stops in Guam in December and in Oman to replenish supplies as President Donald Trump’s war in Iran raged on.

The 1,092-foot warship, which is one of the largest in the world, looked a shadow of its former self as it lumbered into the port near the party destination of Pattaya in the east of Thailand.

Crowds gathered to watch the spectacle after sunrise, with the deterioration of the ship becoming clearer as it edged closer to port. The vessel’s paint has chipped off badly, whilst rust seems to dominate its hull.

It will stay in Laem Chabang Port for a four-day “rest and relaxation” stop before continuing its journey back to the U.S. This is its first full port stop since it was deployed in November.

“Our arrival in Laem Chabang provides a well-deserved opportunity for our sailors and Marines to rest and recharge,” said Rear Adm. Robert E. Loughran, commander of Carrier Strike Group 3. “It also underscores the strong and enduring partnership and alliance between the United States and Thailand.”

Indeed, those excited sailors and Marines were photographed spilling onto the streets of Pattaya, a resort town known as Thailand’s ‘Sin City,’ which has a murky sex-driven illegal underworld. NBC News reported that some 5,000 service members were set to enjoy the seaside destination.

“Please be on your best behavior,” a commanding officer could be heard saying over loudspeaker, according to the aforementioned publication.

The former fishing village has a murky underworld and a reputation as a sex tourism hot spot. Officials were ready for the arrival of the pent-up sailors.

In preparation, over the weekend Thai police conducted a late-night sweep targeting public prostitution along Pattaya’s main beachfront promenade, according to Thai media. Twenty-five people suspected of soliciting in public were detained, including 18 Thais, five Laotians and two Ugandans.

The sailors will be glad to leave the floating nightmare. Family members had spoken out about the gross conditions on the aircraft carrier, whose deployment was originally expected to last seven months before being extended. Conditions reportedly deteriorated after Iran destroyed a U.S. Navy base in Manama, Bahrain, which had served as a vital supply hub for American forces in the region.

Sailors have reportedly been forced to wash in moldy showers, ration their meals and necessities such as soap, toothpaste, and deodorant, while many are working to the point of exhaustion, with some experiencing deteriorating mental health.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-rust-covered-warship-limps-to-port-after-nightmare-voyage/?

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Pentagon in ‘Disarray’ as Hegseth Faces Double Crisis

The defense secretary is under fire for taking a wrecking ball to military leadership in the middle of a war.

Pete Hegseth is accused of setting the military up for potential disaster as the fallout of his ego-driven overhaul of top leadership spills into public view.

The 46-year-old former Fox News host has masterminded a massive purge within the Defense Department that saw Army Secretary Dan Driscoll walk out on Monday, raising fears about a lack of experienced leadership at the top of the military.

It comes as the Pentagon burns through resources—both material and human—in its fight with Iran, which has now dragged on for over six months despite President Trump initially projecting it to last four to five weeks.

The fight is thought to be exacting a heavy toll on the nation’s weapons and munitions stockpiles, which the Center for Strategic and International Studies says will last for the war in Iran, but which pose a threat to the U.S.’s ability to fight future wars. The Associated Press, however, reports that the war has used around 65 percent of Patriot interceptor missiles.

Driscoll said he feared that Hegseth’s leadership of the Defense Department could cause “generational damage,” a person familiar with the close JD Vance ally told the Financial Times.

He “had tried so many different ways and so many different times, but it was just clear that... Hegseth wasn’t willing to listen to the facts or the truth, or the reason, or any of that, because of his personal animosity,” they said.

Reflecting on his exit, Brookings Institution senior fellow Tom Wright told the FT that it was a “revelatory moment, and I think it illustrates that the Pentagon is in disarray.”

Hegseth’s latest act is to block the progression of seven officers tapped by a military committee to become two-star generals, amid a wider crusade that has seen 80 top military leaders either shown the door or have their promotions blocked. Two of the seven were Black, and two were female.

Driscoll reportedly feared that Hegseth’s reimagining of the Defense Department in his image was removing vital experience and harming both morale and the military’s effort to modernize, The New York Times reported.

More than half of Hegseth’s firings have been of Black or female officers, The New York Times reports

Driscoll’s exit follows the ouster of Army chief Gen. Randy George, who served as chief of staff of the United States Army from 2023 to 2026, but who Hegseth showed the door to in April, a year and a half before the typical four-year term would have ended.

The departure of both men means the Army currently has neither a top civilian nor a uniformed boss.

Announcing his departure, Driscoll wrote in a statement on X that, “I had the privilege of working… to modernize and accelerate how the Army mans, trains, and equips the most lethal fighting force on the face of the earth.

“We could not have made the progress we did without the support of Secretary Hegseth.”

To make Hegseth’s headache worse, his acting Army chief of staff, Gen. Christopher LaNeve, is not on track to get the required vote to pass his Senate confirmation hearing, if he were to be officially nominated.

Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Sen. Roger Wicker said in May that he had become aware of “some opposition within the committee” to LaNeve’s appointment, Politico reported at the time.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reported that Sen. Joni Ernst is among a group of Republican senators who don’t think LaNeve has enough experience as a four-star general to take over the role if he gets the appointment.

“The opposition... is not about LaNeve himself. It’s about Hegseth, and the anger that is very much still alive on Capitol Hill over General George’s exit and Hegseth running roughshod over the army,” a congressional aide told the FT.

Now concerns have been raised about the two top positions, both empty and in need of the Senate approval process at a time when the Army is engaged in direct operations—particularly in air defense—in the conflict with Iran.

Hegseth’s war is also taking a toll on the Pentagon’s human resources. Sailors and Marines aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln were only last week relieved from their deployment in the Middle East after over 250 days at sea.

They fought in the war from the very beginning in February, amid reports of deteriorating conditions onboard. The Military Times even reported that some sailors had attempted to go overboard.

The war has cost 18 service members their lives and left more than 750 wounded.

It is also feared that the war may have a long term impact on the U.S. presence in the Middle East. The Washington Post cited eight sources who said that the U.S. was considering a diminished presence once the fighting was over, with two saying many of its bases had taken a brutal beating at the hands of Iranian missiles and drones.

Hegseth faces a headache with the Navy too, after Navy Secretary John Phelan stepped down in April.

Trump on Tuesday tapped Acting Navy Secretary and two-time failed congressional candidate Hung Cao to take over the role, pending Senate approval.

“It is unimaginable that Secretary Hegseth is purging the ranks of top military officials at the same time that the U.S. is in an ongoing conflict and as security challenges mount,” said ranking armed services committee member Jeanne Shaheen, according to the FT.

“The premise that the Department is in disarray is completely baseless and an insult to every dedicated professional and warfighter in this building who comes to work every day to defend this nation,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told Axios.

He also said that the U.S. “maintains a deep, ready arsenal.”

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly denied that there was any shortage of munitions and said Trump has “complete trust” in Hegseth.

In a statement to the Daily Beast, she also blamed the previous administration for Hegseth’s overhaul of the military, saying: “After Joe Biden’s Pentagon prioritized DEI and woke ideology, President Trump and Secretary Hegseth quickly reversed course and restored a Department of War that is focused on readiness, lethality, and supporting our warfighters.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pentagon-in-disarray-as-hegseth-faces-double-crisis/?

ps:Oh man are these guys pathetic or what?????

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Trump Humiliated as Republicans Skip His Big Day En Masse

The president cannot even get his own lawmakers to care about his midterm convention.

Republicans are rolling out the excuses to skip Donald Trump’s midterm convention, which the president has organized in a desperate attempt to give the GOP a much-needed election boost.

Trump is set to headline the second day of the televised event in Dallas next week in an attempt to galvanize voters amid continuing expectations that the GOP is going to suffer an electoral wipeout in November’s crucial elections.

However, at least 45 Republican candidates and members have told Politico they will skip the Sept. 9-10 event, dubbed “Trumpapalooza,” with dozens still unsure whether they will bother to attend.

The lawmakers have come up with an array of excuses, from wanting to remain in their districts to campaign, prior arrangements, the eye-watering $25,000 entrance fee, and a desire to distance themselves from the deeply unpopular president to boost their election hopes. One House Republican said they are not attending the event because it will be a “waste of time.”

“You shouldn’t be having to rally your base at this point,” the House Republican told Politico. “You should be trying to convince independents. Independents are not attending nor watching the midterm convention.”

Rep. Tom Barrett, who is fighting to retain his competitive Michigan seat in November, said he will not be attending Trump’s convention because he feels he would be “more useful in my district.”

“I travel a lot for this job and if I can be back home and see my family and do the job back home as well, then that’s sort of what I lean toward doing,” he said. House Republicans are well aware that intense voter backlash to Trump’s second term—including the war in Iran and rising gas and food prices—could affect their chances in the midterms.

Some are also concerned that, rather than using the convention to boost Republicans’ election hopes, Trump will waste his headline appearance by rambling on about his personal obsessions, such as his White House ballroom, or dismissing the affordability concerns faced by tens of millions of Americans.

“I can’t control what the president’s going to say at the convention, but I can control where I’m at, what I’m doing,” Rep. Barrett said.

Several other House members said they cannot come to Dallas because of prior family or campaign engagements.

Reps. Chris Smith of New Jersey and Andrew Garbarino of New York said they will remain in their districts to take part in events related to the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole said he will be going to a dove-hunting event in Oklahoma rather than attending Trump’s convention.

House Speaker Mike Johnson will be at the convention and still expects a decent attendance in Dallas. However, he admitted at a Tuesday news conference that many House Republicans will want to remain in their districts because “it’s a critical time right before early voting begins nationwide.”

There is also the issue of who will actually want to watch the event on television. Both nights of the convention will coincide with the first two games of the NFL season, which are guaranteed to draw a bigger primetime audience.

“It raises the question of whether the timing is somewhere between ill-conceived or just not conceived at all,” Joshua Blank, research director for the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Hill. “It seems more like a reaction to concerns about enthusiasm among Republican voters. It’s more of a reaction than it is a clear plan.”

The White House referred a request for comment to the Republican National Committee.

“The outreach and enthusiasm to attend, participate, and speak at this historic midterm convention has been incredible, from members of Congress to Republican candidates to everyday Americans,” RNC National Press Secretary Natalie Baldassarre said.

“Republicans across the country are rallying behind President Trump’s America First agenda that’s brought lower drug prices, lower taxes, and a secure border, and this convention will provide the momentum needed to expand our majorities in November.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-humiliated-as-republicans-skip-his-big-day-en-masse/?

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Trump Administration Sets Grim New Poll Record

An astounding nine in 10 Americans now believe corruption is widespread in the U.S. government—a figure that has spiked under Trump.

More Americans than ever now believe corruption is widespread across the U.S. government.

A new Gallup poll found that nearly nine in 10 Americans now believe corruption is prevalent across the government—a 10-point increase from the same survey last year, in the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term.

Those figures mean the United States has the highest level of perceived government corruption among countries with advanced economies, according to Gallup, which polled 1,000 Americans in May and June.

The increase has been particularly pronounced among Democrats, whose views have shifted sharply since Trump returned to the White House.

In 2024, during Joe Biden’s presidency, 57 percent of Democrats said corruption was widespread. That figure increased to 76 percent in 2025, Trump’s first year back in office, and reached 91 percent this year, according to Gallup.

Republican views, by contrast, have changed comparatively little over the same period. This year, 83 percent of Republicans said corruption was widespread, compared with 90 percent of independents.

In response, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told the Daily Beast: “President Trump has launched an all-out war on fraud across the entire federal government, holding criminals accountable and saving taxpayers billions of dollars. The Democrats in Congress have refused to do anything to stop waste, fraud, and abuse in our government.”

Polls point to a likely brutal midterms for Republicans, with perceptions of corruption within the Trump administration likely a factor in the grim GOP outlook. A recent Emerson College poll has Democrats leading Republicans by eight points on the generic congressional ballot.

Democrats have increasingly focused their criticism on what they describe as potential conflicts of interest and “self-dealing” within the Trump administration. The allegations include scrutiny of a proposed $1.8 billion compensation fund for administration allies who said they had been unfairly investigated, as well as no-bid contracts awarded to individuals and firms with ties to Trump allies.

The issue has also drawn attention to Trump’s personal financial activity while serving as president.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Robert Garcia sent Trump a 17-page letter last month demanding an explanation for the more than 21,000 stock trades made in his name in 2025, followed by another 3,500 in the first three months of 2026. The transactions generated more than $2.2 billion in revenue last year, according to The New York Times.

Warren and Garcia characterized the activity as extraordinary, writing: “The sheer volume of stock trading by a sitting president is unprecedented. You—or the entities responsible for your accounts—made an average of approximately 50 trades every day markets were open during the first quarter of 2026.”

The lawmakers also pointed to 15 transactions they argued could present potential conflicts of interest. One involved Trump’s purchase of Nvidia and AMD stock on Jan. 6, shortly before the administration announced policy changes that would make it easier for the companies to sell chips to China.

Trump has said he does not participate in the decisions underlying his investments. White House officials have likewise claimed that the president and his relatives have not, and would not, engage in conflicts of interest.

Congressional Democrats are also expanding their scrutiny to members of Trump’s family.

House Democrats announced last week that they had launched an investigation into Donald Trump Jr. and 1789 Capital, the venture capital firm he joined after his father returned to the White House.

In a letter obtained by MS NOW, Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, asked whether 1789 Capital’s investment decisions since January 2025 benefited from access to the Trump administration.

“There is a broad base consensus for the fact that something is broken in Washington,” David Szakonyi, a political science professor at George Washington University, told The Washington Post.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-administration-sets-grim-new-poll-record/?

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• ⚓ The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier docked in Thailand today after its grueling Middle East deployment sparked concerns about sailors' mental health and living conditions. Today is the first full port stop in more than nine months — a deployment Trump said last month wasn't "nearly long enough." Go deeper.

• 💰 The U.S. Mint began selling gold-colored $1 coins featuring an image of Trump today. The coins can be used as legal tender, but that doesn't guarantee every store will accept them, Axios' Herb Scribner reports.

🇨🇦 Trump's beef with Canada is irking Americans. More than 6 in 10 (63%) oppose Trump's executive order to rename Lake Ontario "Lake America," per a recent Reuters-Ipsos poll. Americans also expressed wariness over the renewed U.S.-Canada trade war, Axios' Avery Lotz reports.

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Some Bets Are Off (Alex Kent / The Washington Post / Getty)

View in browser The day before Donald Trump’s second State of the Union address, the former Representative George Santos shared a video of himself saying, in no uncertain terms, that he was “going to be there.” The next day, he didn’t show up. According to the prediction-market company Kalshi, that was the plan—the firm alleged that he made roughly $17,000 by betting on the platform that he wouldn’t appear at the speech. Kalshi flagged the wager to federal authorities, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the agency that regulates prediction markets, fined Santos over it in July. On Monday, Kalshi doubled down, levying a fine of its own and giving him the platform’s first-ever lifetime ban.   Prediction-market companies, which let users make bets on the outcomes of all sorts of real-world events, have fully entered the mainstream over the past few years. You can find their logos at major sporting events, on cable-news broadcasts, and at awards shows. They’re easy to access and, thanks to a recent advertising blitz, essentially ubiquitous. Trading volumes on Kalshi and Polymarket, the two market leaders, have exceeded $200 billion and $100 billion this year, respectively. But these companies have strenuously resisted the idea that they should be thought of as gambling platforms. “I just don’t really know what this has to do with gambling,” Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour said of his company last year. (By avoiding this classification, prediction markets have also been able to operate in states where sports betting is banned.) Instead, Kalshi and Polymarket have suggested that their platforms are digital oracles: potent indicators of what the future might hold, fueled by the wisdom of the crowd.   In recent months, a nascent crackdown on insider trading has been exposing a fundamental tension in these companies’ guiding principles. If the goal is to create fair markets and not get targeted by the government, then they must enforce a ban on insider trading, as U.S. regulators already do. But if the goal is forecasting—aligning these markets’ odds with what’s really going to happen in the world—then allowing bettors to trade on inside information could actually benefit these platforms. This, at least, was once the thinking of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, who described his platform last year as “the most accurate thing we have as mankind right now, until someone else creates some sort of a super crystal ball.” In response to a question about his approach to preventing insider trading, he said in November that Polymarket “creates this financial incentive for people to go and divulge the information to the market”—theoretically creating more accurate projections.   This may help explain why Polymarket has taken so long to clamp down on insider trading. The company didn’t explicitly ban the practice until March, nearly six years after its founding. Kalshi took a different tack: When I reached out to the company in January, its representatives stressed that insider trading was unambiguously prohibited. (But the question of which offenders are penalized—and what those punishments look like—still seems to be decided on a case-by-case basis.)   This year, both companies have been ramping up their enforcement efforts. The shift began back in January, when The Wall Street Journal reported that, in the lead-up to the U.S. capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, an unknown trader had made more than $400,000 betting that Maduro would soon be out of power. To many observers, it certainly looked like insider trading—and lawmakers from both parties began pushing for stricter regulation. A few months later, Polymarket notified the Department of Justice that one of the soldiers involved in the operation had allegedly placed the wager, and the agency indicted him for trading on nonpublic information (he has pleaded not guilty).   According to a spokesperson for Polymarket, the company’s insider-trading investigations have led to “nearly 100 referrals to law enforcement,” and its work on the Maduro bets and on a separate case involving a Google employee resulted in the “first and second prediction markets insider trading cases charged in the United States.” This week, in addition to the Santos ban, Kalshi announced several new settlements with public figures accused of insider trading on its platform, including a North Carolinian candidate for the House who has admitted to betting on her own race. (“I bet on myself,” she wrote in an emailed statement. “It was a dumb mistake, and as soon as I learned there was an issue, I worked to make it right.”) And this past weekend, Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator paid $172,000 to settle the CFTC’s claims that he was betting on the individual words that the president would use in his speeches—claims first made by Kalshi.   Regulators don’t have a unified approach to this sector. As The New York Times points out, 20 states are now waging legal battles over whether these companies should be subject to the same laws as online sportsbooks. In an apparent defense of the industry, the CFTC has sued some of the states suing prediction-market companies for infringing on federal jurisdiction. Polymarket’s international platform, which runs on the blockchain, is off-limits to U.S. traders and isn’t bound by the CFTC’s rules on insider trading.   But even as major legal questions remain unresolved, what’s indisputable is that insider trading is a red line for U.S regulators. Polymarket’s and Kalshi’s stricter enforcement of those rules may help keep them in the federal government’s good graces, and the appearance of fairness may also prevent people from betting elsewhere. But in taking these steps, these businesses will have to reckon with how they present themselves. They can cling to the idea that they’re not gambling platforms—but regulators may not always see it that way.   Related: A technology for a low-trust society Insider trading is going to get people killed.

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☎️ Pic du jour

Photo: Doug Mills/The New York Times President Trump has a new Oval Office phone that says "The President," with a golden image of the White House and a scripted "Donald J. Trump." The phone has "45" and "47" branding for Trump, the 45th and 47th president. When asked about it yesterday by Fox News' Peter Doocy, Trump cracked: "You know who gave this to me? The phone company." The phone bears the logo of Cisco, the technology giant. See a close-up. Photo: Kylie Cooper/Reuters The U.S. Mint yesterday began selling golden $1 coins featuring Trump's portrait. Go deeper.

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A judge blocks Trump’s new bid to curb birthright citizenship, citing Supreme Court precedent U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman on Wednesday issued a preliminary injunction against an executive order that the administration said would target “birth tourism,” until a class-action lawsuit brought by immigrant families and advocacy groups is resolved. Read more.

Why this matters: President Donald Trump has long wanted to end birthright citizenship, issuing a previous executive order declaring that children born to people who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens. The Supreme Court struck down that attempt in June. “The Supreme Court has spoken: Children in the certified class are ‘citizens at birth,’” Boardman, appointed by President Joe Biden, wrote in the ruling. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ Immigrant rights group seeks to block use of federal databases it says could purge legal voters FACT FOCUS: Texans listed as ‘suspense voters’ can still cast a ballot if they confirm their address Trump promises to campaign for Republicans and says they have a winning midterm message Here’s a look at ‘reach’ election races where Democrats hope to pull off House upsets Trump’s plan for a fence at Lafayette Park near White House gets review by federal panel Apple changes Lake Ontario name to ‘Lake America’ for US users of its Maps, following Trump’s order Kennedy Center disassembles Blue sculpture from its grounds Heads or tails? $1 coin with Trump’s face and gold finish goes on sale