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‘If That’s the Way Friends Treat You’

With a tentative confirmation hearing date set for mid-July today, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), a key member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, met with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Tuesday.

While Cornyn described the meeting as an “interview” and a “positive” one at that, he implied he would not make a decision about Blanche’s nomination to lead the Justice Department until after his confirmation hearing — and, it seems, until after Blanche answers Senate Republicans’ questions about the defunct (for now) and historically corrupt DOJ slush fund.

Cornyn is, of course, one of 11 Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Blanche’s nomination will have to advance out of this panel with a simple majority vote before reaching the Senate floor for a full confirmation vote. If all nine Democratic members vote against Blanche’s nomination, Republicans can only afford to lose one vote on their side of things. Republicans on the panel include staunch President Trump loyalists, like Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Ted Cruz (R-TX) and John Kennedy (R-LA). But Cornyn’s nod in the direction of a potentially showing some backbone, coupled with Sen. Thom Tillis’ (R-NC) newfound retirement-era reputation as a wildcard, does raise some questions about Blanche’s ability to be confirmed.

Cornyn hinted he may not be a guaranteed “yes” vote last week when he told reporters he was interested in hearing about how Blanche “would approach the job, because he was President Trump’s lawyer at one time, but if he’s AG, he won’t be the president’s lawyer.” While the notion that Blanche might ever not consider himself Trump’s lawyer reveals a willful naïveté, any murmurs of dissent from a congressional Republican is something of a surprise at this point in Trump’s second term.

But Cornyn has been claiming he is not going to go down quietly after Trump’s endorsement of Ken Paxton in the Texas Republican primary runoff last month ended his Senate career. In a recent interview with the New York Times, Cornyn alluded to a “miserable” final two years ahead for the Trump administration, insinuating a role he might play in that misery.

“If that’s the way friends treat you, you wonder about his enemies,” Cornyn said, referencing his relationship with Trump after the political back-stabbing.

“I think it is going to be a pretty bumpy ride for the next seven months,” he continued.

Blanche is one area where he might choose to demonstrates this supposed new-found political freedom. Cornyn and other Senate Republicans were more vocal than usual about their disdain for the $1.8 billion slush fund that Blanche set up at the DOJ for supposed victims of government “weaponization.” In reality, the “anti-weaponization fund” would likely serve as a vehicle for Trump to compensate his political friends and supporters, including those who tried to help him steal the election and ransacked the Capitol.

Since taking over as acting attorney general, Blanche has been working determinedly to impress Trump, hoping to make the post permanent. When he first assumed the position, he signaled his belief that the DOJ was Trump’s to weaponize. The DOJ brought a new indictment against Trump’s favorite boogeyman James Comey (over that seashell photo). He oversaw the creation of the cartoonishly corrupt slush fund — via the settlement of an equally bogus lawsuit Trump brought against his own IRS.

Whether the latter suck-up scheme will prove to be a bridge too far for Cornyn or Tillis or any other Republican member of the committee remains to be seen. We’ll keep an eye on this.

Protests Break Out After Indictment in Minnesota

You can catch up on the details of the new indictment against 15 protesters in Minnesota — and how this case may ultimately fit into the Trump administration’s broader effort to redefine dissent as un-American — from my colleague Kate Riga’s coverage here. A snippet:

The new indictment comes as federal prosecutors have had to dismiss over a third of their cases stemming from Operation Metro Surge — the inundation of Minneapolis with federal officers in late 2025 and early 2026 that included the officer killings of U.S. citizens Renée Good and Alex Pretti. The dismissed cases have predominantly centered on allegations of assaulting federal officers.

After the indictment was announced by Minnesota U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen on Tuesday afternoon, protesters gathered outside the Warren Federal Building as immigration, civil rights and defense attorneys made statements to the media about the new charges. One attorney described the indictment as “a renewed fascist offensive against the people of the community.” Defense attorneys for each of the 15 defendents have not yet been identified.

“Now the government is using its power, its unjustified power that’s illegitimate, to try and persecute the people who they were able to identify who were most involved in organizing the resistance, and organizing the non-violent, legal resistance to their fascism,” said defense attorney Jordan Kushner on Tuesday, per local CBS affiliate WCCO. “Let’s not sugar coat this, let’s be clear. This is a renewed fascist offensive against the people of the community.”

Protesters clashed with law enforcement outside the federal court building in St. Paul, Minnesota. Per the Star Tribune:

Tensions escalated outside the Warren E. Burger Federal Building after U.S. marshals deployed smoke devices near the courthouse entrance. During the ensuing confrontation, one protester appeared to kick a smoke canister back toward officers stationed in the doorway, and another person fell to the ground amid the struggle.

Zelensky Caught on Hot Mic Convo With Macron

French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky were caught on a hot mic discussing setting up a meeting with President Trump. Zelensky at one point describes a meeting with Trump as “difficult.”

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‘ICE Agents Are There to Flex If We Need to’

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin employed a bit of rhetorical spin, much like other member of the Trump administration have used before him, to evade directly answering questions about whether the Trump administration wants to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to the polls during a future election.

During an interview with CNN’s Kasie Hunt on Sunday, Mullin questioned why ICE would need to be there in the first place if only American citizens are voting, a disingenuous deflection that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has used as well when pressed on whether the administration was considering taking such action. President Trump has himself insinuated that the possibility of ICE agents at the polls still hangs in the air, saying recently that he’s willing to “do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections.”

“No, keep in mind, why would ICE be there?” Mullin asked. “Because the only people who should be voting there is American citizens. There shouldn’t be any immigration enforcement. So this should be a moot deal for any Democrat.”

“So, why would there be a circumstance where you would need ICE agents?” Hunt continued.

“Keep in mind, ICE agents are there to flex if we need to,” he said, before outlining some specifics:

“So you saw ICE at TSA lines, not processing, but in the soft areas. If a threat were to arise for whatever reason at a polling station — say a bomb threat would be called in — our ICE agents are more than just Immigration And Customs Enforcement. They’re also trained to have SRT (Special Response Teams), which means that we can have an emergency team respond quickly.

“The only reason why we would be there is not for voter identification. It’d be because law enforcement is needed, and the local law enforcement would be part of that conversation. So we wouldn’t show up on our own. We would be getting asked to show up but not for immigration purposes, because, as I said, the only people that should be in line are American citizens. So there should be no reason to have any type of that.”

You may recall the volume of bomb threats that surfaced on the last major Election Day in 2024, so it is perhaps an easy thing for Mullin to point to as an example of a threat that might lead local law enforcement to ask for backup — though it is unclear why ICE agents would be the responding federal force tapped to help out in that sort of situation.

The TSA line example was perhaps the more telling bit of Mullin’s response. You’ll recall earlier this year, ICE agents were deployed to major airports around the country by Trump while security lines languished amid a partial government shutdown. TSA agents weren’t getting paid because DHS was shut down while Democrats demanded meaningful reforms to ICE’s practices after the killings of U.S. citizens and immigrants.

Sending ICE to the airports was more of a political flex for Trump at a time when the agents needed some image rehab than some type of generous maneuver to help Americans suffering lengthy travel lines. There were obviously heightened security risks and dangers to navigate due to people like air traffic controllers not getting paid, but the ICE agents standing around near security lines did not help with that.

Leaving open the possibility for ICE to step in to deal with some sort of unspecified threat is another non-answer to a question to which Democrats and journalists have been seeking an answer, mindful of a possible effort by Trump to intimidate voters in the fall. Though it may be evasive, its a response that keeps Mullin in Trump’s good graces.

Trump Apparently Makes Good on Newsom Retribution Threats

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a video announcement on Monday that Trump’s Justice Department is investigating him and his wife, describing the probe as an attempt to dig up dirt on a political rival. (Newsom also used the video to firmly identify himself as a 2028 presidential contender.)

“Last year Donald Trump directed his Department of Justice to investigate me. And just in the last week, I’ve learned that his campaign has reached my own home,” he said in a YouTube video posted Monday. “To get me, he’s coming after my wife, Jen.”

Trump “can subpoena my records, you can investigate me, you can harass me, put my name on every and any enemies list you have, but leave my wife and family out of your personal vendetta,” he continued.

CNN reports that, as of now, there is no official investigation directly into Newsom himself:

A source familiar with the matter told CNN there’s no investigation directly into Newsom, but the Eastern District of California is leading probes into people connected to him — including Jennifer Siebel Newsom over possible tax-related crimes.

Here’s the full video:

Trump Desperately Wants to Shove SAVE Act into Another Unrelated Piece of Legislation

Trump demanded over the weekend that Republicans in Congress attach his SAVE America Act — a bill that would disenfranchise millions of voters — to attempts to pass an extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s (FISA) Section 702 surveillance authorities. (The extension has been met with bipartisan pushback.) This is not the first time he has tried to get Republicans to attach the restrictive voter ID bill to other unrelated pieces of legislation. And again, it sounds like Senate Republicans will sneak away from giving Trump what he wants.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told Punchbowl News on Monday that it was “unrealistic” to pass the SAVE Act by attaching it to the FISA extension.

“We will try and move 702 as soon as we feel like we have the votes to do it,” Thune said.

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Austerity only matters when Democrats are in charge.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) signaled this week how Republicans may begin stonewalling and messaging about Democrats should the party succeed in taking back the House this fall.

Buried at the bottom of a Washington Post piece about how the Social Security trust fund will begin running low on money by 2032, an insolvency problem that President Trump’s immigration policies and tax cuts for the wealthy have contributed to, was a quote from Johnson about his supposed plan to cut social services in order to decrease the deficit and, apparently, save the program:

“The reason we are in trouble is because over 74 percent of federal spending is on autopilot, mandatory spending,” Johnson reportedly recently told a Louisiana radio station. “That’s your entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and then things like Social Security. They have to be adjusted and fixed.”

It is hardly worth pointing out hypocrisy at this point amid Republican leadership’s utter capitulation to the Trump regime, but for posterity’s sake: Johnson was a key figure in ensuring the passage of the first reconciliation package of Trump’s second term — the Big Beautiful Bill that slashed Medicaid funding in order to help offset the impact of making Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy permanent. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that that legislation alone will add $3.4 trillion to the federal deficit over 10 years. Early CBO estimates show that the immigration enforcement package that Congress just passed via reconciliation (instead of the normal appropriations process) will add another $72 billion to the national debt over 10 years. In Republicans’ eyes, the trillions of dollars that those pieces of legislation will add to the deficit are not a factor in whether or not the legislation should be passed.

But you can all but guarantee that as soon as Democrats are in a position of power again, we will be hearing a lot about how the deficit has ballooned due to social services spending. Blaming Democrats for this newly rediscovered problem will become the party’s Priority No. 1. This may be what Johnson was foreshadowing. Aware of how unpopular it is to talk about making cuts to the social safety net, Johnson also, critically, previewed a plan for Social Security to be “adjusted and fixed” — the details of which we will not know about until, conveniently, after the midterms (and even the vague remarks are already causing issues for members of his conference). Per WaPo:

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) suggested Monday that he would release a plan next year to address ballooning entitlement spending, leading to Democratic attacks.

As Paul Krugman explains in a piece unpacking a recent Social Security Trustees’ report about the solvency of Social Security trust fund, Republicans will likely use these metrics in the future to slash benefits:

But this is a ploy, because while the cost of maintaining Social Security benefits at their promised level isn’t trivial, it is in fact affordable. According to the Trustees’ report, the actuarial balance of OASDI up through 2050 — the amount of additional funds it would need to keep paying full benefits for the next 25 years — is 1.06 percent of GDP. To put that number in perspective, the Trump administration proposes increasing military spending next year by $420 billion, equivalent to about 1.4 percent of GDP – without any discussion of whether that’s affordable.

…

So don’t believe Republicans’ gaslighting that it will be necessary to cut Social Security benefits. All that is necessary to preserve Social Security is political will to raise taxes on the wealthy and a sensible immigration policy.

Is Trump Hoping Jay Clayton Will Play a Part in 2020 Retribution?

Before she left as director of national intelligence to help care for her husband, Tulsi Gabbard was intimately involved in various executive branch efforts to unearth something that will help bolster Trump’s beliefs that the 2020 election was stolen from him. She was inexplicably present as the FBI raided Fulton County, Georgia, for its election records and materials — and even helped connect President Trump via phone with the agents who conducted the raid. Reporting emerged after the Fulton County raid suggesting that Trump gave Gabbard an outsized role in overseeing the administration’s investigations into the 2020 vote, reportedly because he did not believe his Department of Justice was moving fast enough in doing his bidding.

After Gabbard’s departure, Trump announced that Bill Pulte would serve as acting DNI in her stead. An extreme Trump loyalist with little to no foreign intelligence experience, Pulte’s appointment caused even some members of Republican congressional leadership to express their concerns about what might happen should he be permanently nominated to the post. On Thursday, Trump declared on Truth Social that he was appointing Jay Clayton, U.S. attorney in Manhattan and the former chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to the position.

And while he has hedged himself a bit more, at least publicly, when speaking about Trump’s claims of rampant fraud — most recently, Trump is fixated on vote counting in California being slow, and therefore fraudulent (to him) — he has signaled a willingness to fuel various conspiracy theories on that front. Per New York Times:

This week, Mr. Clayton appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” and raised concerns about the recent elections in California, after Mr. Trump suggested there had been fraud in the vote.

Mr. Clayton told CNBC earlier this month that the country was “doing an absolutely terrible job” on issues of election integrity, “and the American people are right to question it.” He also questioned California voting laws, including the lack of voter identification.

“I’m not saying that there is fraud,” Mr. Clayton said. “I am saying that the opportunity for fraud makes no sense to me when we can make a much better system.”

Whole States Are RSVP-ing ‘No’ to Trump’s Vanity Bday Bash

Per new reporting out today, from NOTUS:

Days after an exodus of musical acts, officials from Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Oregon told NOTUS they won’t officially send a delegation to the 16-day fair, one of the most high-profile celebrations of the nation’s 250th birthday this summer.

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Trump Thinks He Is Changing Votes?

The “red mirage” has again tricked President Trump and his followers, who were already salivating for a 2026 election fraud conspiracy theory — ideally one in a blue or purple state — to catch on this midterms cycle.

“Tricked” is perhaps too generous a word here. Back in 2020, when President Trump was lying that the election had been stolen from him and riling up his supporters to spread conspiracy theories and baseless myths about rampant voter fraud in some key blue and purple parts of the country, much of Trump’s complaints about the results seemed to stem from him not understanding the “red mirage” effect common in modern elections. In 2020, Trump watched as late-counted ballots shifted his election night lead in a handful of swing states, leading Trump to believe that the counting was somehow rigged.

Studies have shown that the the counties that went for Joe Biden in 2020 tended to be urban ones, with more ballots to count and slower counting processes than counties that went for Trump. Mail-in ballots also tend to be counted later than Election Day ballots. Democratic voters tend to vote by mail more often than Republicans, who tend to vote in person on Election Day, in part because Trump has built a political brand out of claiming that mailed-in ballots are subject to fraud.

The trends create an effect where in recent elections it has appeared that Republicans are doing better early on on election night before things like mail-in ballots are tallied. Add into the mix the fact that California allows voters to vote-by-mail more extensively than other states — and has millions of votes to count — and you’ve got a normal situation ripe to be seized on by President Trump and his allies looking for a reason to begin spreading lies about midterms “fraud.”

In reality, Trump is just projecting his willfully ignorant ideas about election counting trends on to California after the primary saw Democratic socialist candidate and Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nithya Raman surpass washed up reality TV villain and Republican candidate Spencer Pratt for the number 2 spot in the LA mayoral primary race (California has a unique top-two primary system where the first and second place primary candidates advance no matter their political party).

But Trump’s online theorizing about supposed fraud in California’s mayoral and gubernatorial races exposes a fundamental misunderstanding of how counting and political trends in voting work, at best.

And his remarks in the Oval Office on Wednesday suggest something more sinister — or dumb.

Trump claimed that the reason California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton secured enough votes to advance to the general election was because Trump started talking about his belief in rampant fraud in the state’s election.

“After a week, they determined that a kid who’s leading and had all the mojo, all of the sudden he doesn’t make the runoff, and then I hit them hard on that,” he said, referencing Pratt.

“I started talking about Steve Hilton who’s a fantastic guy and I saw them say it was going to be two weeks before they knew, and I started hitting them,” he said, “it’s going to happen to Steve Hilton.”

“And they approved Steve Hilton very quickly,” he concluded. “There was too much heat on them.”

His remarks seemed to suggest that his social media posts were in real time influencing how votes were counted. It also seemed confused about how race projections — carried out by the Associated Press and similar organizations — work.

Today’s remarks at best illustrate his delusion that all Republican losses in elections are the result of fraud … even in somewhere as blue as California. As worst, they demonstrate what we’ve had a window into since 2020: an attempt to confuse his followers about the mechanics of elections, regardless of his own beliefs, for his own personal gain.

— Nicole LaFond

SPLC Warns of Danger of Jan 6 Pardons

The Southern Poverty Law Center — the group that tracks far-right extremism and white supremacist activity in the United States and is currently being targeted by the Trump Justice Department — put out its annual Year in Hate & Extremism report this week. The group found that in the first year and a half of Trump’s second term, the Trump administration has radically shifted federal policy to “favor hard right, extremists.” The report frames Trump’s immigration enforcement and the threat it poses to minorities in America, plus his pardoning of Jan. 6 defendants and his weaponization of the Justice Department for his own political aims, as the pillars of the federal government’s shift toward extremism. Per SPLC:

The current partisan, skewed view of political violence, coupled with the promotion, normalization and mainstreaming of extremist and bigoted ideas, has led to a significant inflection point. Through its attempts to silence nonprofit organizations, ignore or downplay the very real threat of far-right and white supremacist extremist violence, and eliminate or misallocate violent extremism prevention resources, the Trump administration has created an environment that is less safe.

— Nicole LaFond

Americans Are Working More and Earning Less. But Trump ‘Love[s] the Inflation’

Americans started their day with yet another dismal economic snapshot and by lunchtime, they heard yet another flippant remark about it from the president.

The most headline grabbing news came when the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported inflation rose by more than 4% year over year for the first time since 2023. But buried in that data was the agency’s real earnings report, which showed what the headline inflation numbers actually mean. Americans earned 0.4% less money in May compared to that month last year in real average weekly earnings, defined as wage and salary inputs adjusted for inflation to reveal actual buying power. This decrease in income came after a 0.3% increase in the average workweek, which means that increasing the amount you work does not, on average, make up for the impact of inflation on your personal finances.

Fuel oil and gasoline up a staggering 58.9% and 40.5% respectively. (Now’s a good time to issue a reminder that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which is causing these price spikes, had been predicted and was entirely preventable.) But it’s not like the price for other consumer goods is going down. Food was up 3.1% year over year, and, excluding energy, price inflation was up 2.9%, though by less than in March.

How did the president respond? “I love the inflation,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office earlier today. “You know why? Because as soon as this war is over …,” Trump began before waxing poetic about an alleged U.S. scheme that he claimed removed 22 ships worth of oil from Iran, unbeknownst to Iran until that moment.

Later, Trump finished his thought. “When the war’s over? It’s going to come down like a rock.”

— Layla A. Jones

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Republicans Ramp Up Election Denial in California Just Before Suspiciously Related SCOTUS Decision Drops

Two things are happening at the same time: 1) President Donald Trump and his stooges are becoming increasingly shrill about the “election fraud” that they insist explains a very liberal city advancing two Democrats to the general election and 2) the Supreme Court is going to release a decision that’ll likely curtail voting by mail nationwide any day now.

Coincidence?

While election denial is depressingly old hat for Republicans by this point, the fixation with the Los Angeles mayoral race is odd. Yes, Republicans ran an attention-attracting candidate in reality television star Spencer Pratt, and yes, California takes forever to count its ballots. Conservative media covered Pratt in the runup to the jungle primary as if he stood a real chance of defeating the Democratic candidates. But Los Angeles County has three times more registered Democrats than Republicans — it’s a poster child for a big, lib city. It’s like feigning disbelief about Curtis Sliwa losing to Zohran Mamdani — if Sliwa was a proud Trump sycophant.

Republicans are training their denialism on a race their party hasn’t won for over 30 years.

This very plausibly could boil down to the fact that some gullible but influential people online thought Pratt could win, and cynical Republican electeds are weaponizing their naïvete to further the election denying agenda, softening the ground for a future attempt to steal a more important race. California could be crucial for determining control of the House.

But it also sets them up very nicely to be “vindicated” by the Supreme Court in the coming weeks.

We’re awaiting the Court’s ruling in Watson v. RNC, an odd bedfellows case where national Republicans are trying to outlaw Mississippi’s (and 30 other states’) grace periods, during which ballots mailed by Election Day but received afterwards can still be counted.

Here’s Justice Brett Kavanaugh at the March oral arguments picking quotes from a 2020 article by New York University Professor Richard Pildes: “If the apparent winner the morning after the election ends up losing due to late-arriving ballots, charges of a rigged election could explode.” “…The longer after Election Day any significant changes in vote totals take place, the greater the risk that the losing side will cry that the election has been stolen.”

Funnily enough, he quoted the same lines in his 2020 concurrence with the Court’s ruling not to reinstate a court-ordered extension of the deadline for receiving mailed ballots in Wisconsin at the height of the pandemic.

“If you have an election and the election is going to turn on late arriving ballots in a way that means what everybody kind of thought was the result on Election Day ends up being the opposite a week later, 21 days later, the losers are not going to accept that result,” Paul Clement, attorney for the RNC, said during the Watson oral arguments. “Full stop. They won’t. And that is bad for our system.”

Compare that to Trump’s Truth Social: “Not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had. 3rd World Nation. Rigged Elections!”

Lacking any proof of fraud in voting by mail — because they are making it up — Republicans from Kavanaugh to Trump argue that the mere “perception” of fraud justifies making it harder to vote. Losing Republicans are the only ones perceiving this fraud, creating a pretext to allow fewer voters (who they assume to be Democrats, or at least more Democrats than Republicans) to cast a ballot.

Elected Republicans/influencers and those on the Court are in a perfectly symbiotic relationship here. The Court will almost certainly rule in their favor at some point in the next two months, perhaps even pointing to the hysteria Republicans have whipped up in recent days as evidence of the need to cut off voting earlier. Republicans, in turn, will point to the Court’s ruling as “proof” that their denialism was correct.

It’s hard to imagine that the LA mayorship is the real race they’re gunning for in perfecting this system.

A Dull Maine Senate Primary Becomes Interesting

We’ll be watching Tuesday night for the first big indicator of how badly, or not, Democrat Graham Platner has been wounded by the recent dribble of scandals. Platner will almost certainly win the ranked-choice primary, but by how much? If his numbers come in precipitously low — Democrat Sara Gideon got 71 percent of the vote in 2020 Senate primary — calls to replace him will grow louder.

Bari Weiss Fails Upwards to New Heights

The Trump toadying editor-in-chief of CBS News is reportedly in line to also take over CNN’s editorial operations, should Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. go through, per Axios. She is failing in her tenure at CBS — ratings are dismal for both the morning and evening shows, and she’s gutted 60 Minutes, a unicorn in profitable broadcast journalism — if you consider her job to be running the network. But since her job is actually to grease the skids for the Paramount-Warner Bros. deal, withering CBS and CNN in the process, she’s succeeding beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

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Big Lie 2026 Gets Underway

It was already burbling up in various venues toward the end of last week, but it officially got underway over the weekend: the long-expected 2026 midterm election disinfo bonanza.

At its core, the extremely predictable claim is this: That as we all watch California slowly, slowly tally its millions of mail-in ballots, we are in fact watching a Democratic plot to steal the election unfold in real time.

Though Trump asserted as early as election night that this fantastical scheme was underway — and spilled the beans that his DOJ was investigating — the conspiracy theory ripened on Friday and through the weekend, as DSA-backed City Councilmember Nithya Raman surpassed conservative cause célèbre Spencer Pratt in the LA mayor race, quashing Pratt’s hope of ousting incumbent mayor and first-place winner Karen Bass in November. It was an outcome many trained election analysts predicted way back on the evening of primary day, but that has still prompted deranged reactions among the full spectrum of conservative and reactionary influencers.

The particularly Trumpy top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, Bill Essayli, made his entrance into the fever swamps on Friday, noting that his office has “multiple election fraud investigations underway” — though he did, in a separate social media post late that night, attempt to debunk a specific, absurd claim circulating online: that Pratt got “zero votes” in one ballot drop.

On Sunday, Trump leaned hard into the conspiracy theory before storming off Meet the Press. “The election was rigged,” he declared of 2020. “It was a dirty election. And it’s happening again right now in California.” That claim only further inflamed the various self-appointed election administration experts dismayed about Pratt. And on Monday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson opined that the election “stinks to high heaven.”

“Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream that it’s impossible to prove, but I think everybody knows instinctively, something is wrong here, and that’s a concern,” he said.

California officials are quick to point out that their state processes a huge number of mail-in ballots, and their ambling process of reporting election returns is a byproduct of the fact that they must ensure the accurate, secure tally that MAGA activists profess to want. The state mails a ballot to everyone registered, and election workers must carefully inspect each one returned, the envelope it comes in, and the voter’s signature. Because Republicans tend to vote in greater numbers on Election Day, the days- or weeks-long tallying of mail-in ballots tends to see a shift toward Democrats in the state’s top-two primary system, dismaying Republicans and, in recent years, prompting conspiracy theories.

Bill Pulte’s Big, New, Retribution Job Derails Another Congressional Vote

Renewing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — the warrantless wiretapping program — is one of those rare votes of Congress, these days, that doesn’t fall neatly along party lines. Some Republicans and some Democrats support it, some Republicans and some Democrats oppose it.

But, last week, after Trump nominated his buddy, Bill Pulte, as acting Director of National Intelligence — a job Pulte seemingly got by combing through the mortgages of people Trump doesn’t like and accusing them of crimes — Section 702 lost its bipartisan sheen. Democrats came together to oppose it, saying they would not let the program move forward until Pulte was removed. Some Republicans voted with them for reasons unrelated to Pulte.

Today, Democrats are standing their ground. “Reversing the Bill Pulte appointment is a starting point, not an ending point,” Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Monday.

Schrödinger’s War and Schrödinger’s Ceasefire

As Emine Yücel and Josh Kovensky have been chronicling for TPM, the administration has insisted that it doesn’t need Congress’ green light for its war in Iran because there is no war. And, if there is in fact found to be a war, White House lawyers further insist, it was “terminated” by a ceasefire that began this spring.

Now, its not so clear there even is a ceasefire. Iran lobbed missiles at Israel over the weekend. Israel lobbed them back. Trump — at first, largely unsuccessfully — sought to constrain Israel’s response. It seems the exchange of fire has quieted, for now.

Regardless, the situation means that the White House’s claim that it doesn’t need Congress’ sign-off for this war is looking more absurd than ever. On Monday, 36 Democrats in the Senate sent a letter to the White House observing that its reasoning “stands in sharp contrast with the text of the War Powers Resolution, the relevant legislative history, domestic and international law, and past interpretations made by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) and the State Department under Administrations of both parties.” They demanded to see the OLC reasoning that informed this questionable perspective. (TPM scooped last week that this letter was in the works.)

The deteriorating situation in the Middle East, and the deteriorating relationship between Trump and Senate Republicans, will almost certainly will give rise to further votes of the sort we have now seen in the House and the Senate, attempting to force Trump to end the war. Because these War Powers Act bills would be subject to Trump’s veto, they’re unlikely to do much in the short term — but they highlight a growing divide in the Republican Party and channel American’s frustration with Trump’s most sweeping (so far) misguided intervention abroad as voters get ready to cast ballots in the midterms.

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President Trump is livid with the members of the House Republican conference who voted with Democrats to restrain him from launching new attacks in Iran, calling those who broke with the party on the matter “unpatriotic” and accusing them of “grandstanding.”

“It’s a meaningless, unpatriotic waste of time, very unpatriotic to do, but that’s okay — it means nothing,” he told The Independent in an interview Thursday.

But he also told the publication that he was “not concerned” about the Senate, specifically Senate Republicans, joining members of the House Republican conference to invoke the War Powers Act against him.

Though a growing number of senators have taken votes to oppose the war in recent weeks, Trump’s confidence may be because, just earlier today, the senators showed their defiant moods can be brief and fleeting. They dodged an opportunity to make sure another issue on which they profess to oppose him — his fantastically corrupt $1.8 billion slush fund to reward his allies — does not again rear its head.

Last month, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) had Republicans physically pack up and leave for recess early rather than take any meaningful action to address Senate Republicans’ concerns with the “Anti-Weaponziation Fund.” That early departure delayed their vote on a piece of legislation that Trump is demanding must be passed in the next few weeks to fund immigration enforcement years into the future.

This morning, the handful of Senate Republicans most concerned about the slush fund had the opportunity to vote with Democrats on their motion to block the administration from establishing it, but they ultimately did not do that. Republican leadership refused to offer any amendments to the reconciliation package that would’ve legislatively prevented the fund from being created, out of fear that Trump might get angry and refuse to sign the immigration package into law. Though acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told the House under oath that the fund was officially not going to be created, Trump does not appear to be on the same page, meaning a legislative fix could’ve provided more concrete assurances that the fund was dead and Trump’s corruption checked.

That did not happen, per the New York Times:

But Republican leaders were hesitant to add anything to the bill that could enrage the president, who has continued to express support for the fund, and potentially prompt him to veto funding for a centerpiece of his own agenda.

The vote proceeded slowly, as Republicans crowded together on the floor in deep discussions over how to address the issue. At one point, Mr. Cassidy appeared livid as he burst out of the chamber, refusing to answer questions from reporters. Two of the senators holding their votes, Mr. Husted and Mr. Sullivan, are running for re-election.

Mr. Tillis, who had voted against Democrats’ amendment, told reporters that he and other Republicans were working on a variety of proposals that would “get the fund out” without imperiling the bill’s passage.

Now, Republicans are professing heartburn about Trump’s decision to name Bill Pulte — the guy who has been using his post as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency to investigate Trump’s perceived political foes over unproven allegations of mortgage fraud — as the acting Director of National Intelligence.

It’s unclear if Trump will try to nominate Pulte to the position in a permanent capacity, but if he does, Senate Republican leadership has already indicated that the road to confirmation on this guy — who has zero known background in intelligence — is not exactly straightforward.

“I’ll try and get more information about the current state of their thinking about that position,” Thune said shortly after Trump announced Pulte would at least temporarily replace Tulsi Gabbard. “If he’s somebody they want in that position permanently, he’s got, as you all know, a lengthy road ahead of him.”

When You’re in a Cult

Bannon Predicts Republicans Will Lose Senate

We’re talking about Steve Bannon — former White House chief strategist during Trump’s first term turned MAGA fever swamps podcasting star — so the usual caveats apply: He is not a member of the Trump administration and it is hard to say what or whose ear he even has these days. But some of the more dangerous policies now being discussed by the administration have built up a head of steam on Bannon’s “War Room,” such as the notion that ICE officers might be sent to the polls this fall. The man is not not operating in a vacuum.

During some at-times indecipherable comments during his episode of “War Room” on Thursday, Bannon suggested that Republicans are going to lose the Senate this fall because, in his opinion, Republican leadership is too focused on “old school” campaigning strategies and not enough on grass roots efforts to get Republican voters enthused to hit the polls.

“There’s been a new day, and the Senate’s got to understand that, or we’re going to lose the Senate,” he said. “There is no enthusiasm for going door to door, having voter engagements, canvassing, to actually lead to victory. Those people are out there and it can be done. Texas shows you that. Virginia shows you that.”

Bill Pulte Rewarded For His Retribution Skills, Allies Claim

Far-right commentator Jack Posobiec also claimed on Bannon’s show this afternoon that Pulte — who demonstrated his willingness to go to absurd lengths to use the seemingly anodyne agency Trump tapped him to lead to go after the president’s political enemies — might now be on track to lead the administration’s efforts to prosecute left-leaning ideology and political dissent. My colleague Josh Kovensky has been chronicling the administration’s efforts in this realm up until this point quite closely here.

Trump Falls Asleep, Claims He Won All 50 States

There are multiple clips of the White House meeting today during which Trump looks like he is both falling asleep and struggling to keep his eyes open. He also made this assertion:

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Who Is Nick Bilton?

Still, it’s worth taking a close look at who, exactly, one of the people Trump selected as a top American immigration official is rubbing shoulders with, and what these people represent. Freelance journalist and author of "To Catch a Fascist” Chris Mathias broke it all down with Joe Ragazzo.

As Chris said, “The dude who was in charge, the face of immigration raids in the U.S., has had an ongoing dialogue with one of the most famous neo-Nazis in the world, who helped inspire, had a correspondence with a man who murdered Muslims [at two mosques] in New Zealand. That’s the water Bovino is swimming in.”

For more from Chris, check out his full TPM piece on Bovino’s pals and an excerpt from his book that we ran earlier this year: “What an Antifa Activist Learned While Undercover With Patriot Front.”

It Turns Out Trump Endorsed a Loser in Iowa

President Trump’s eleventh-hour endorsement not only didn’t propel Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-IA) to a win in the primary for Iowa governor, it didn’t even push him into a runoff.

Zach Lahn, a MAHA-aligned businessman who entered the race as a complete unknown, beat Feenstra outright with 38 percent of the vote.

To be fair to Trump, that endorsement had to carry a lot of dead weight; Feenstra skipped all of the debates and barely even bothered to hold in-person events.

Lahn will face Rob Sand, the popular, Democratic state auditor, in the general election. Following last night’s results, The Center for Politics at the University of Virginia shifted the governors’ race from “leans Republican” to “toss-up.” Cook Political Report, another major election prognosticator, already ranked that race as a toss up.

— Kate Riga

Not Out of the Woods in the Jungle Primary

California’s jungle primary, where the top two vote-getters in either party advance to the general, has caused significant Democratic angst this cycle as it’s threatened to lock the party out of major races, leaving voters in the very blue state to choose between Republicans in November.

While the risk in the governor’s race seems averted now (it has yet to be officially called), there was a time when two Republicans were polling first and second in the California governor’s race. Trump’s strategically idiotic endorsement of Steve Hilton helped put an end to that, and at least one Democrat is all but certain to advance.

The same dynamic has added tension to a couple of House races, one of which — the race for Rep. Kevin Kiley’s seat (I-CA) — is still playing out.

While there are certainly benefits to the system — a think tank that studies polarization suggests that it lessens extremism and boosts primary turnout — these races underscore its weaknesses. Voters in such a Democratic state shouldn’t have to choose one of two Republican candidates simply because there were more candidates running on the left and splitting the vote.

But on that note — Democrats, get it together! We don’t need 8 trillion people running if it means risking a Democratic lockout.

— Kate Riga

The Emptiness of the Administration’s Pro-Natalist Propaganda

Crisis pregnancy centers, or CPCs — which are truly religious anti-abortion organizations, poorly disguised as healthcare clinics — target the most vulnerable.

Now, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is helping to funnel people towards them.

On Mother’s Day, the HHS launched Moms.gov, describing the website as “groundbreaking.” To be clear, the website does not offer any new resources for expectant parents. It’s a glorified Linktree for information that any chump with an internet connection could find.

Featuring images like a headless, pregnant belly in a golden field of wheat, pink and blue baby footprints, and simple illustrations of only the wholest of foods, the messaging is clear: Make America Barefoot Again.

Dr. Oz underlined this theme when Moms.gov was announced, explaining that “one in three Americans are under-babied,” which was not a term I learned in public health school.

The first resource Moms.gov shares is a link to Option Line, an online directory of pregnancy crisis centers funded by the religious right. The CPC Map has identified over 2,600 CPCs in the U.S. Their use of manipulative tactics and medically inaccurate disinformation has been well-documented by journalists, late-night news satire talk shows, and even The L Word.

One study of hundreds of CPCs found that only 5% offered prenatal care, only 40% provided referrals for prenatal care, and only 26% and 16% of CPCs have a registered nurse or doctor, respectively — all the while using language and imagery that implies visitors can receive medical care onsite.

Moms.gov doesn’t stop with CPCs, also pointing visitors towards Trump Accounts for their unborn children, and TrumpRx for fertility medication. You can find links to a Focus on the Family page about adoption, tons of breastfeeding resources, and the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

To be clear, these are real concerns many people deal with. And, to be fair, Moms.gov was launched alongside the bipartisan Health Moms Health Babies America campaign, which addresses critical issues like reducing maternal mortality and expanding paid family leave. But it is hard to square these initiatives with the influx of federal and state dollars to CPCs, which may actually serve to increase the risk of maternal mortality and morbidity by causing visitors to delay critical prenatal screening and care. At the same time, funding for Title X — the Nixon-era family planning program for low-income families — has remained flat, and its services are being chipped away along with its administrative staff.

In reality, the administration’s pro-natalist propaganda and its actual policies are a web of contradictions. Abortion bans are associated with increased likelihood of sepsis, infant death, and pregnancy-related death, because those bans create legal uncertainty that leads to inconsistent care for high-risk pregnancies. But the biggest hit of all to pregnancy-related health may have been the 2025 budget reconciliation, or the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which slashed the single largest payer of births in the U.S.: Medicaid. By 2034, 14 million more people are expected to become uninsured, a status which is associated with poorer outcomes during pregnancy.

Pregnancy is encouraged, but only for those who can afford it and its associated risks. The rest of us are on our own.

— Farrell Brenner

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Democrats Gun for Missing New Jersey Congressman’s Swingy Seat

This much is certain: One of four Democrats will emerge victorious after Tuesday’s primary election and gear up to face uncontested Rep. Tom Kean (R-NJ) in one of the most competitive races in the country.

Foggier is where Kean has been since early March. Absent from Congress, absent from the campaign trail, missing over 100 votes, seeming to make all of two phone calls in preparation for the election, the congressman hasn’t been seen in months due to a mystery illness.

“I will transition from virtual work to in person work within a matter of weeks,” he said in a Tuesday statement. “At that time I will be completely transparent as to the nature of my medical condition.”

“Just your prayers,” he responded when a Republican official on one of the two calls asked if he needed anything, per the New York Times.

And the few people who presumably know what’s going on have developed a habit of making cinematically cryptic comments.

When asked why there haven’t even been photos or videos of Kean shared, his chief of staff Dan Scharfenberger said “there’s no cameras where Tom is.”

“He’s hopefully coming back soon and he’s under the care of a doctor,” former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean Sr. told CNN in May. “They all agree he’s going to be fine.”

“It took a real illness to knock him out,” he added. “This won’t linger. It’s not some kind of disease that’s going to incapacitate him in the future. The consensus is that he will be 100 percent okay.”

Kean’s seat has swung from party to party in recent cycles. Former Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) won it in 2018 and held it in 2020, narrowly losing to Kean in 2022 after redistricting made the seat more Republican friendly. It’s one of just 18 House races Cook Political Report rates a tossup.

Former Navy helicopter pilot Rebecca Bennett is considered the frontrunner on the Democratic side. Kean does not have any primary challengers.

— Kate Riga

Sullivan vs. Sullivan

Dan Sullivan entered the Alaska Senate race last Friday. But it’s not the Dan Sullivan you may be thinking of. This Dan Sullivan is challenging the incumbent, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK), for his Senate seat.

And Sen. Sullivan is frustrated, claiming that his new challenger is a plant by Democrats and former Rep. Mary Peltola’s (D-AK) Senate campaign to confuse voters. He railed about it at length in the Senate hallways Tuesday.

“The Democrat party is talking about ‘we care about fair elections.’ It’s bullshit,” Sullivan, told a group of reporters, including TPM, as he made his way to the weekly GOP luncheon. “The Democrats in DC, the Peltola campaign are complicit in trying to trick Alaskans — that’s an insult — to rig, and I say very strongly, rig an election in their favor.”

“The Democratic leadership here, if they know about it, it’s a scandal … It will be a scandal,” Sullivan insisted, raising the prospect of legal action.

Peltola is expected to mount a competitive challenge to Sullivan, and a few votes for the wrong Sullivan could make a difference.

— Emine Yücel

Can Trump’s Endorsement Spare Iowa Republicans a Messy Convention?

President Trump endorsed Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-IA) for governor Friday after over 15,000 Republicans had already cast their votes, per local news outlet The Gazette.

Feenstra has run a less than inspiring campaign, skipping all of the debates and dropping behind another Republican in a recent poll.

If no candidate breaks 35 percent on Tuesday, party activists will choose the winner at a Republican convention.

The Democratic nominee will be state auditor Rob Sand. Sand is running such a strong campaign that Cook Political Report rates the November election a tossup. A Sand win could also help pull the Dems’ Senate nominee — also to be decided Tuesday — over the line in one of the party’s reach states.

— Kate Riga

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Our race preview for the Iowa Democratic primary for U.S. Senate: Iowa Dems Mull ‘Electability,’ the ‘Establishment’ in Tuesday Primary as They Try to Pull Off the Unthinkable

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‘It’s Dead for Now’ But Is It?

There are two threads of developments to unspool today regarding President Trump’s surreally corrupt “anti-weaponization fund,” which has even some of the more spineless members of the Republican congressional conference raising concerns.

First, the Justice Department posted a cryptic statement on Monday suggesting that it would do what it is, in fact, required to do — abide by court rulings — in the wake of an order issued on Friday by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema that temporarily blocked the establishment of the program while she considers whether to block it more permanently. Brinkema is presiding over a case stemming from a lawsuit that was filed against the DOJ’s creation of the slush fund — which has been brought by a former federal prosecutor involved in Jan. 6 cases.

Her order blocks the DOJ from “taking any further action pursuant to the creation or operation” of the fund temporarily — that includes transferring money to the fund, working through applications for compensation and paying any funds out — for the time being. She set a hearing on the issue for June 12. There are other cases unfolding involving the fund, including one examining its origin in a collusive lawsuit Trump filed against his own IRS to reach the point of settling and creating the fund, which my colleague David Kurtz unpacks here.

By stating that it will comply with the order for now, the DOJ leaves open the question of whether the fund will be revived again. It also leaves unanswered why it felt the need to release a statement saying it would abide by the ruling, as everyone involved would have expected it to — at least in normal times.

Here’s the DOJ’s full statement, which was posted on Twitter:

The Department of Justice disagrees strongly with the decision on the Anti-Weaponization Fund put forth by the United States District Court Judge in the Eastern District of Virginia, wherein the Court stated that, under no circumstances, may the Department of Justice proceed with the Anti-Weaponization Fund recently established in order to make up for the tremendous abuse, harm, and hate unfairly shown to so many people. This Fund was open to anybody who was so weaponized, targeted, or persecuted, whether they were Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Independent, or otherwise. The Department will abide by the Court’s ruling.

The statement was released around the same time that reporting was beginning to emerge from Punchbowl, Axios, Politico and other Beltway outlets suggesting that Trump, in conversations with Republican leadership, may be retreating on the idea of the fund in the first place. Axios was first to report on Monday that the Trump administration “plans to drop” the weaponization fund, in Axios’ words, citing two senior administration officials.

“It’s dead for now,” one of the sources told Axios.

Reporting from Politico suggests that Trump has decided to drop plans for the slush fund due to intense pushback from Republican members of Congress and that that decision was communicated to Republican leadership on Monday. If that’s true, someone better clue in Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), who has been uncharacteristically vocal about the fact that members of his conference would like to put guardrails on the fund, at the very least, into the must-pass reconciliation package if the administration moves forward with it.

Trump reportedly met with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Monday to discuss the $1.8 billion fund — in part because lawmakers’ displeasure with it is imperiling the $70 billion immigration enforcement bill, along with another billion in funding for the Secret Service related to Trump’s vanity ballroom. Johnson told Trump that it might not be viable due to GOP opposition in the Senate, according to Politico. Senate Republicans reportedly tore into acting Attorney General Todd Blanche about the fund, especially the optics of giving payouts to people who assaulted police officers, shortly after it was announced.

Per Politico:

It’s not immediately clear whether pledge to obey the court ruling will be enough to staunch the uproar among Republicans on Capitol Hill, however, as the administration’s immigration agenda hangs in the balance.

Tina Peters Dives Right Back In

The former elections clerk in Colorado who was convicted on multiple charges related to her decision to breach secure voting equipment as she helped to spread lies about the 2020 election results is back to spreading conspiracy theories!

Fresh out of prison Tuesday after Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) commuted her sentence, Tina Peters joined Steve Bannon’s podcast to make the baseless suggestion that Democrats are going to “cheat” in the 2026 midterms, ostensibly because they have … won a few recent elections?

“I see these elections that are taking place in real time: the Mamdanis, the Virginia governor — Spanberger — and then what’s going on in California and Texas and Maine — just all over the country,” Peters said. “And I know that the Democrats are going to cheat, and no one’s really addressing the problem that I spent my time in prison as retribution for, and that was exposing the election machines that allow the votes to be flipped.”

Hegseth Blocks Promotions for Women and Black Navy Officers

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — one of the more extreme anti-DEI members of the Trump administration — blocked promotions for seven Navy officers. Two of the officers up for promotion were women and two were Black men, according to the New York Times. The officers were selected by senior Navy admirals for promotion.

It’s not the first time Hegseth, who has said women should not serve in combat, has taken such actions. Per the Times:

No female officers were included on the new one-star list, which was released publicly in late May, despite the fact that women make up about 21 percent of the active-duty Navy. The list appears to include only two nonwhite officers, even though sailors who identify as racial minorities make up about 38 percent of the active-duty Navy.

Mr. Hegseth’s removal of the officers from the one-star list is highly unusual, said the current and former defense officials. According to Pentagon rules, the defense secretary is only supposed to pull officers from the list for moral, mental, physical or professional failings that raise questions about the officers’ fitness to lead.

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‘Due Diligence’ 🙄

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is on maternity leave, so over the last few weeks a revolving door of Trump administration lackeys have stepped in to cover for her — and to face news-of-the-day questions from reporters.

The whole experience has been getting them (said lackeys) really worked up.

Last week this involved Vice President JD Vance having to eat shit in front of the press as he was pummeled with questions about the cartoonishly corrupt slush fund that Trump’s Justice Department established as part of a comedically depraved settlement between President Trump and his own IRS. Vance tripped over his words quite a bit as he tried to explain that people who assaulted police officers on Jan. 6 may, or may not, qualify for compensation through the now-infamous Anti-Weaponization Fund.

This week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent faced the music as his department comes under criticism in the wake of new reporting that Treasury Department appointees are preparing plans to create and distribute a $250 bill with President Trump’s face on it. It all comes just in time for the big America birthday bash Trump is preparing for as he turns the White House into an amusement park for a UFC fight to mark the anniversary, spending millions in taxpayer dollars to put his face on things and complete vanity projects around Washington, D.C.

The Washington Post has the details:

Trump administration officials have pressed the office responsible for printing the nation’s money to design a $250 bill featuring the president’s portrait, according to four current and former employees, in what would be the first appearance of a living person on U.S. currency in more than 150 years.

Starting last year, two political appointees at the Treasury Department — U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach and his senior adviser, Mike Brown — repeatedly urged staff at the agency’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing to prepare prototypes of the note, according to the employees, who said the move raised concerns because federal law currently allows only deceased people to appear on bills.

The banknote that includes Trump’s portrait, and is being prepared at the Treasury, is apparently just part of “appropriate planning and due diligence” in the event that legislation to create the new currency passes Congress, a Treasury spokesperson told the Post. A bill that would require the Treasury Department to print $250 Federal Reserve banknotes featuring a Trump portrait was introduced in the House more than a year ago by Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) and the legislation somehow has 15 Republican co-sponsors (which is both way too many for such unserious legislation and not that many for a bill that was proposed so long ago).

The legislation has been sitting in the House Financial Service Committee ever since and has not been voted out. If it was, and it passed the House, it’d still have to clear the 60-vote threshold of the filibuster in the Senate. I do not see a world in which any Senate Democrats (except for maybe one …) would ever help pass such a bill.

“Should this legislative mandate be signed into law, the BEP is moving proactively to produce a $250 commemorative note which will appropriately recognize the 250th Anniversary of our great nation,” a Treasury spokesperson told ABC News.

When asked about the $250 bill on Thursday, Bessent began by lashing out at the Washington Post.

“I don’t really understand this Washington Post article, but who here is from the Post?” he asked, before saying, “Terribly written, terribly edited.”

“Because basically what it says is that Treasury is following the law, and that we’ve created the bill, and that it’s up to Congress … I didn’t really understand what the story was,” he said.

He was later pressed on whether it was a good idea for the Trump administration to be making such preparations when Americans can barely afford their groceries. Bessent said he didn’t think there was anything “untoward” about it.

“It’s happening because it’s being funded by private citizens, by the federal government, by state governments, by municipal governments to celebrate our country, and I don’t think that there’s anything untoward about having the president of the United States on the 250th anniversary bill,” he said.

Spending Millions on Gold Paint for Horse Statues

This all comes against the backdrop of some other Really Bad Optics for the White House (though it is an open question whether they still care about that sort of thing). Trump’s approval rating among white working class Americans has dropped dramatically in recent weeks, as his war in Iran continues to spike gas prices and all of his vanity projects around D.C. have his supporters scratching their heads.

While Republicans literally left Washington, D.C. to avoid having to approve taxpayer funding for additional security measures for Trump’s ballroom project, Trump is still pushing for a 250-foot tall triumphal arch to be erected in time for the anniversary. Other projects include reportedly overpaying by $850,000 to have the bottom of the Reflecting Pool painted blue and, according to new reporting this afternoon by NOTUS, his administration is also spending $5 million on getting some horse statues painted gold in time for the July 4 anniversary.

JD Vance Breaks With Hegseth on AI-Powered Bloodlust

Perhaps taking cues from other, recent commencement speakers who have been booed into seeing that college graduates around the nation actually hate most of what artificial intelligence has done to their job prospects, Vice President JD Vance broke with a few of his fellow administration officials about the Pentagon’s use of AI while speaking to graduating cadets at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs on Thursday. Vance acknowledged that Americans are concerned about how AI will continue to “affect the labor market” and how it has “fundamentally changed how we interact with one another.”

“But the thing I worry about most with AI is how it will change warfare,” he said. “If the warfare of the future is to live up to the moral values of our ancestors, decisions over life and death must be made by humans and not machines.”

“So as AI transforms the battlefield — in some ways positively, in some ways not — I ask that you be jealous and selfish about your role as a decision-maker in warfare,” he continued. “Use technology to make you better, but never submit to it. You are the masters of warfare, and both your minds but also your hearts are the opposite of artificial.”

That’s a far-cry from how Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has talked about the technology.

In Case You Missed It

New edition of The Franchise, from Khaya Himmelman, out this afternoon: Some Glimmers of Hope in the GOP’s Bleak Bid to Disenfranchise Black and Dem Voters

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Morning Memo: Trump Sics DOJ on Famed Victim of His Sexual Abuse

A helpful breakdown of how the federal deficit works (sort of): The White House’s Latest Anti-Fraud Spin Does Not Come Close to Adding Up

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No Easy Fix

During his State of the Union address in February, President Trump made an absurd, fantastical and quickly debunked claim: Once Vice President JD Vance had a chance to root out fraud from (blue states’) social services programs, the federal budget would be balanced and the deficit would disappear.

That claim has been making the rounds again this week after Vance hosted a group of attorneys general from around the country to attend a forum at the White House focused on investigating fraud — a meeting that he conveniently did not invite Democratic attorneys general to until the last minute — and, so, they all declined to come. (While the official reason for their absence had to do with the disrespect of the timing of the invite — they were invited on Friday and asked to RSVP by Saturday — Vance has made it clear that he intends to use this anti-fraud commission as another weapon in the retribution campaign Trump’s waging against blue states by withholding federal funds as a form of punishment for various, nebulous offenses.)

During the meeting with Republican attorneys general on Tuesday, Vance urged state officials to partner with the Trump administration to help investigate and prosecute fraud in federal welfare programs, specifically Medicaid, Republicans’ favorite social safety net program to demonize and gut. He also announced that the Department of Health and Human Services would soon review how states use their Medicaid Fraud Control Units — a drum he’s been beating for a while. Ironically, these Medicaid Fraud Control Units most often prosecute cases of Medicaid provider fraud.

Vance has been tasked with threading these needles after Trump appointed him as his fraud czar. Trump’s fixation with “fraud” only emerged after right-wing online influencers manufactured hysteria about its prevalence in Minnesota — where there have been legitimate investigations into social services fraud stretching back years. He used the online outrage as justification for not just his lethal immigration enforcement operation there, but also a pretext for freezing federal funding to other blue states.

There is bipartisan agreement that there is fraud in federal spending that should be investigated and rooted out. But it is not as wildly rampant (and blue-state specific) as Trump administration officials’ spin would suggest.

During the Tuesday meeting with state AGs, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for policy Stephen Miller elevated Trump’s State of the Union falsehood — that the federal deficit could be eliminated if fraud was rooted out of federal programs.

“Based on what I’ve heard, we could balance the federal budget if the only dollars that went out of the Treasury went to individuals who were properly, lawfully, correctly eligible to receive them,” he said Tuesday.

By Wednesday, Trump was publicly repeating the same claim during a Cabinet meeting (plus, some marching orders for Todd Blanche, who is serving as acting attorney general and doing everything he can to make that post permanent).

The federal deficit has remained consistently around $1.8 trillion for the past two years in a row and is projected to reach $2 trillion in fiscal year 2026. The amount of funds saved in rooting out fraud in federal programs would have to be triple what the Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan congressional agency that examines federal spending, has estimated for Miller and Trump’s statements to be true.

In the spring of 2024, during the Biden administration, the GAO released a “first-of-its kind, government-wide estimate of federal dollars lost to fraud.” GAO estimated in 2024 that between $233 billion to $521 billion in taxpayer dollars was lost to improper spending and fraud each year, between the years of 2018 and 2022 (a portion of which were abnormal pandemic years). Here’s how it reached this estimate:

GAO collected data from three key sources to develop the estimate: investigative data, such as the number of cases sent for prosecution and the dollar value of closed cases; Office of Inspector General (OIG) semiannual report information; and confirmed fraud data reported to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) by agencies. GAO organized these data around three fraud categories—adjudicated, detected potential, and undetected potential. Model design and validation were also informed by 46 fraud studies. OIG and other knowledgeable officials agreed with these categories and subcategories.

The GAO review found that the annual fraud losses amounted to between 3 percent and 7 percent of what the government spent during those years.

When Trump first started publicly suggesting that eliminating fraud would somehow balance the federal budget after his SOTU speech, even the libertarian and right-leaning Cato Institute put out a report fact checking the president’s assessment:

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the US faces cumulative deficits of $24 trillion over the next decade (FY27—FY36). Most of the growth in the federal deficit is traceable to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest costs. Even if we take GAO’s upper-bound estimate and assume we can eliminate all fraud via traditional fraud prevention, that would optimistically generate $5 trillion in savings—not nearly enough.

While there is much to be done about fraud in federal spending, the easy fix that Trump and Miller are spinning is likely another effort to justify the cuts in federal funding to blue state that they are already actively pursuing as punishment for opposing Trump’s agenda.

Republicans Delete Their Paxton Criticism

After Texas Attorney General defeated Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) in the primary runoff for Cornyn’s Senate seat, Trump, his allies and Republicans in Congress are banding together to spread lies about the Democratic nominee being trans — and to wipe their past insults of Paxton from God’s internet.

Per NOTUS:

Within hours of Ken Paxton defeating Sen. John Cornyn in Tuesday’s Senate Republican primary runoff in Texas, the Senate GOP’s campaign arm deleted at least nine press releases and digital ads from its website that had attacked Paxton — an erasure of a monthslong opposition campaign that the committee had waged against the man it will now help elect.

Congressional Black Caucus Hit Southern States Where It Hurts

In the face of MAGA Republicans’ no-holds-barred push to eliminate Black electoral power across the Old Confederacy in the wake of SCOTUS’ Callais ruling, the House Congressional Black Caucus is fighting back.

Following the NAACP’s call for Black college athletes to reject admissions at colleges in the South in the wake of the gerrymandering scramble, the Congressional Black Caucus is taking it a step further. Members are blocking a bill in the House that seeks to create a national standard for paying college athletes. The Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements Act (SCORE Act) had bipartisan support until members of the CBC announced they’d be pulling their support, a move that has, for now, killed the legislation.

“What is happening in America right now should be a wake-up call to everyone. The big-time conferences, especially in the South, want our babies’ lungs, but don’t want their voices,” Rep. Janelle Bynum (D-OR) said in a statement to Democracy Docket. “They want the power of their bodies to score a touchdown, but will look away when they ask for their freedom to walk into the voting booth.”

In Case You Missed It

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‘Neither My Conscience Nor Common Sense Will Allow Me to Stop an Election’

South Carolina on Tuesday joined the outlier southern states that will not redraw their lines to snuff out Black voting power before the 2026 midterms.

Twelve Republicans in the state Senate joined Democrats on a procedural vote that killed the bill for the special session on redistricting called by the governor at the White House’s behest. That number included rock-ribbed conservatives.

“Neither my conscience nor common sense will allow me to stop an election that is already underway,” said state Sen. Richard Cash (R), per the Post and Courier.

Thousands of votes had already been cast in the primary, and Tuesday saw record turnout as early in-person voting began. Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey (R), who spoke out early against the redistricting effort, had cited the mobilization of Democrats as a reason not to redraw. He and a small group of Republicans reportedly worked with Democrats on delay tactics to run out the clock on the session.

Other South Carolina GOP senators bristled at the full-court press from the White House.

“We pass this map, it is going to stand for the proposition that a legislature can outsource its obligation to the federal government, it can truncate its obligations to proceed in good faith, it can do all of these things,” said Sen. Tom Davis (R) on the Senate floor. “I don’t want that infection to spread, I don’t want that infection to spread to other parts of the country, I especially don’t want South Carolina to be the reason that it spreads.”

The votes seem to end the effort to jam through a new map before the midterms, after Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster was bullied into calling a special session for the purpose of redistricting. It’ll also at least temporarily preserve the seat of Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), the most powerful Democrat in the state whose district President Trump wanted South Carolina Republicans to carve up before November.

South Carolina may take another bite at the apple before 2028 — especially since the whole state Senate will be up for reelection. Both Georgia and Mississippi passed on redrawing before 2026, but have committed to eliminating Black-majority seats before the presidential cycle.

— Kate Riga

Worse News for Fair Map Advocates Elsewhere

Tuesday also saw court losses for those trying to block the Republican gerrymanders.

In Florida, where the voter-passed amendments that ban partisan gerrymandering apparently continue to mean zilch, a state judge and appointee of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) turned down a challenge to the new map that the governor signed into law earlier this month, designed to give Republicans a 24-4 advantage (up from the current 20-8). He said that the plaintiffs didn’t prove partisan intent and invoked the dreaded Purcell (which is for federal courts, but whatever) to decide that it’s too close to the election to change the maps.

The good government group plaintiffs have vowed to appeal, but their odds of success are near nonexistent, given the DeSantis-stocked and rabidly right-wing Florida Supreme Court.

Over in federal court in Tennessee, a Trump-appointee likewise ruled against an attempt to block Tennessee’s post-Callais redraw that would eliminate its sole Democratic seat. Judge William Campbell wrote that the plaintiffs failed to show that Florida officials were motivated by race as well as partisanship, and that it’s uncertain whether the redraw would infringe on affected voters’ First Amendment rights.

And get a load of this Purcell pretzel: “On balance, given the timing of the legislation vis-a-vis the election, Plaintiffs’ immediate request for relief, and the relative burdens, it does not appear to the Court that this is a case where the Purcell principle alone warrants denial of an injunction. The Court does, however, give strong weight to the likelihood of voter confusion in the face of ongoing litigation close to an election regardless of the outcome of that litigation. This consideration counsels strongly against the issuance of an injunction.”

So Tennessee implementing a new map a couple months before the primary election doesn’t violate Purcell, but blocking that map so Tennessee has to proceed with the map it’s been using since 2022 does. Fascinating.

— Kate Riga

Dem AGs Didn’t Attend Vance’s Retribution Forum Guised As Anti-Fraud Roundtable

As TPM has reported, the Trump administration is using its supposed interest in combatting fraud as a mechanism through which to punish blue states and cities whose elected leaders Trump wants political leverage over. It appears Democratic attorneys general are seeing through the charade.

Vice President JD Vance, whom Trump has appointed as a sort of fraud czar to oversee this retribution effort, hosted a roundtable on the administration’s anti-fraud initiatives on Tuesday. The panel discussion was reportedly originally intended only for Republican attorneys general, but Vance invited their Dem counterparts on Friday. They declined to attend.

“While we would appreciate the opportunity to engage in serious discussions, the invitation was provided with less than one business day’s notice with no agenda,” 24 attorneys general wrote in a letter to Vance dated Tuesday.

“This short notice does not match the spirit of collaboration that has long defined our joint efforts with federal partners,” the letter said. “Accordingly, we respectfully decline to attend at this time.”

— Nicole LaFond

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Morning Memo: Trump Races to Bury Jan. 6 Under More Lies and $1.776 Billion

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‘It Makes Everything Way Harder’

“We will pick up where we left off,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told reporters after a lengthy private Republican conference lunch on Thursday, which reportedly ended with Thune telling Senate Republicans that they were being sent home to start their Memorial Day recess early.

The House quickly followed suit, dropping its plans for a Friday vote on the reconciliation package that includes funding for immigration enforcement. As of this morning, the Senate was scheduled to send the legislation to the House after a vote in the upper chamber today.

But President Trump’s vanity and corruption scuttled those plans, according to multiple reports from Capitol Hill this afternoon.

Some Senate Republicans were already wary about including about $1 billion in additional Secret Service and White House funding tied to Trump’s ballroom project in the upcoming reconciliation package that is expected to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Border Patrol into 2029. A handful had indicated publicly that they wouldn’t vote in favor of the immigration package if it also included the ballroom funding, and more, according to reports, supposedly privately had heartburn about it.

The Senate Parliamentarian ruled that the ballroom proposal could not be included in the package and, as of Wednesday, Senate Republican leadership had decided to remove the provision from the bill in order to pass the immigration funding. (Trump went ballistic, of course, and used his Truth Social platform to call on Republicans to punish the parliamentarian.)

But then Trump’s comedically corrupt settlement agreement between his own IRS, which he sued, and his Justice Department came to light. The settlement purported to establish a $1.7 billion slush fund — dubbed the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” by the DOJ — to be used to compensate people who feel they’ve been wronged by the judicial system, aka Trump’s allies and supporters who were charged as part of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and the broader effort to overturn the election, as well as people who assisted with Trump’s various other misdeeds. Some Senate Republicans, during a hearing with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, vocalized concerns about who might be eligible for compensation. Specifically, they had concerns about whether those who attacked police officers on Jan. 6 would qualify. Blanche would not say for sure. Politico reported on Wednesday that there might even be enough GOP support for a planned Democratic amendment targeting the slush fund to be attached to the reconciliation package.

During a private briefing between GOP senators, Blanche and other DOJ officials on Thursday, Blanche reportedly faced a grilling from Senate Republicans about the slush fund of taxpayer dollars, which will have to be approved by Congress. Per NBC News:

The Justice Department has said it plans to make $1.776 billion in taxpayer money available for the fund. Given Democratic opposition, the only method of passing that through Congress would be to add it to the immigration “reconciliation” package, which can pass with only Republican votes.

Republicans were apparently specifically trying to nail Blanche down on potential guardrails for the fund’s disbursement. Blanche reportedly committed behind closed doors that settlement funds would not be given to those who assaulted police officers on Jan. 6 — something he was not willing to do publicly. Senate Republicans also received a one-page fact sheet from the White House that outlined details like where the money would come from, who would be in charge of pay outs and who might be eligible. (The memo reportedly did not mention that people who assaulted law enforcement would be ineligible.) Per NBC News:

“This is about seeking accountability for all Americans who were victims of lawfare and weaponization: millions of Americans whose online speech was censored at the behest of the government, parents silenced at schoolboards, Senators whose records were secretly subpoenaed, churchgoers targeted by the FBI, and so on,” the fact sheet said.

“There is no partisan restriction: Democrats can submit claims, too,” according to DOJ.

As he exited the meeting Thursday, Thune was candid with reporters about the lack of progress that was made during the meeting and the roadblock the slush fund has created for the passage of the immigration reconciliation package.

“They need to help with this issue, because we have a lot of members who are concerned obviously about the timing but also about the substance,” Thune said, referencing the slush fund and the help he needs from the administration to organize his conference around it. Per Politico:

Asked about the internal furor over the settlement fund, Thune told reporters that “it makes everything way harder than it should be” and that it “would have been nice if they had consulted” senators.

— Nicole LaFond

Blanche Clearly Struggling With the Assaulting Police Question

His attempts to clean this up have not gone well.

There’s More 👀👀👀

First of Many Ex-Trump Officials Running for Office Wins Dem Primary

An ex-federal prosecutor who said he resigned from the Justice Department after Trump began weaponizing it against his perceived political enemies, Zach Dembo, won the Democratic primary in the race to represent Kentucky’s 6th House District and replace Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY), who’s running for Senate.

Dembo is part of a slate of ex-DOJ attorneys and other former Trump administration officials who launched Democratic bids for office this year after leaving or being kicked out of the administration. Fired-FBI official David Sundberg is running for Congress in Maryland. An ex-Capitol police officer who fought off rioters during the January 6 insurrection is also running for a Maryland congressional seat. And former DOJ deputy to prosecutor Jack Smith is running for Congress in Virginia.

Dembo worked as a U.S. Navy JAG before heading to the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. He worked in policy for Kentucky’s Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear before returning to the DOJ as a prosecutor in Lexington.

“When Donald Trump started using your Justice Department to go after his political enemies, I resigned,” Dembo said in a campaign ad released earlier this month.

Dembo’s chance at beating his GOP opponent in November looks like a long shot right now, according to the Cook Political Report, which rates Kentucky’s 6th District as “solidly Republican.” According to state data, registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats in the district by just over 1,000 voters.

— Layla A. Jones

Tariff Watch: Court Denies Admin’s Request for Stay After Blocking New Levies

The Trump administration has to stop collecting its newest set of tariffs, refund the importers who sued the government, and carry out a court’s orders blocking the tariffs even as it appeals the decision.

After the administration scrambled to replace Trump’s widespread tariffs, which were blocked by the Supreme Court, with some new levies under a different statute, a couple of small businesses and two dozen states sued the government afresh. In early May, the Court of International Trade struck down those new import taxes. The court ordered the administration to repay the harmed plaintiffs, which were the small businesses and the state of Oregon. As expected, the administration immediately appealed and asked for a stay of judgement in the meantime. Wednesday evening, the court denied the administration’s request for a stay while it appeals the ruling, dealing another blow to Trump’s unceasing attempt at reordering global trade.

— Layla A. Jones

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MAGA Hats and Middle Fingers

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) took a break from throwing out tens of thousands of his constituents’ votes this week to take a little foray to Greenland, the off-and-on target of President Donald Trump’s imperialistic whims.

Predictably, the locals did not take kindly to the special envoy’s visit.

One woman followed his entourage, reportedly yelling at him to “go home.”

In another episode that is physically uncomfortable to watch, a little boy asked whether Landry is famous. When Landry offered to take a photo with him, the boy said no.

His offer of MAGA hats to local children was reportedly rebuffed, and he was greeted by at least one middle finger.

He vented by lashing out at the journalists covering his trip, berating them for not giving Trump adequate credit for being the first president to pay attention to Greenland. That the attention was solely rapacious, he did not mention.

“Who cares more about Greenlanders than the Trump administration and the president? Because it seems that before the president, no one cared,” Landry exclaimed to the scrum.

While Trump has backed off (read: gotten distracted from) his desire to take Greenland by conquest, the United States is demanding a permanent installation of troops, veto power over major investments on the island and a share in the country’s natural resources, per the New York Times.

— Kate Riga

Jan 6 Police Officers Sue Trump, Blanche and Bessent Over Slush Fund

Two members of law enforcement, former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and Officer Daniel Hodges of Washington’s Metropolitan Police, sued Trump and two other administration officials in an attempt to block the creation of the $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization fund” that will ultimately serve as a slush fund to reward rioters and far-right militia groups that stormed the Capitol for President Trump on Jan. 6, 2021.

“In the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century, President Donald J. Trump has created a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund to finance the insurrectionists and paramilitary groups that commit violence in his name,” the lawsuit says. “The fund, styled the “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” is illegal. No statute authorizes its creation, the settlement on which it is premised is a corrupt sham, and its design violates the Constitution and federal law.”

The lawsuit argues that the creation of the fund puts the lives of Dunn and Hodges in danger and claims that the Trump administration officials named as defendants — President Trump, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — exceeded their statutory authority in creating the fund without the approval of Congress.

“Although Trump and his cronies have been secretive about the fund’s ends, reporting leaves no doubt that it will be used, among other purposes, to pay the nearly 1,600 people charged with attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,” the lawsuit says.

Dunn and Hodges both testified before the House January 6 Select Committee as it was investigating the insurrection and Trump’s role in inciting it. They described the violence they witnessed from the mob of Trump supporters that day as it breached the Capitol. The lawsuit also outlines the violence they endured personally, including photos of Hodges being “nearly crushed by rioters in a Capitol door.” Both have faced “a series of credible death threats” ever since their testimony, according to the lawsuit. (Dunn is also running as a Democrat for Congress in Maryland.)

While Blanche has not denied that Jan. 6 rioters and members of the militia group that stormed the Capitol that day could technically apply for compensation through the anti-weaponization fund, both he and Vice President JD Vance were skittish about directly answering public questions about whether those who assaulted police officers would be entitled to compensation. Context, per the Times:

More than 150 officers were injured during the violence on Jan. 6. Some were hit in the head with baseball bats, flagpoles and pipes. One lost consciousness after rioters used a metal barrier to push her down as they marched to the building.

— Nicole LaFond

Trump Wants Senate Parliamentarian Punished

Even though several Republican members of Congress have publicly expressed concerns about shoving an additional $1 billion in White House and Secret Service security funding, related to Trump’s ballroom, into the upcoming reconciliation package, Trump is lashing out at the Senate Parliamentarian this week, blaming her for the legislation’s possible demise. Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough determined this week that Republicans could not include that funding in the reconciliation package under Senate rules. The package is meant to try to address a handful of Trump’s legislative priorities, including three years of no-strings-attached funding for immigration enforcement.

“Shockingly, Republicans have kept the very important position of ‘Parliamentarian’ in the hands of a woman, Elizabeth MacDonough, who was appointed, long ago, by Barack Hussein Obama and a vicious Lunatic known as Senator Harry Reid, who ran the Senate for the Dumocrats with an ‘iron fist,’” Trump posted on Truth Social Wednesday. “Over the years, she has been brutal to Republicans, but not so to the Dumocrats — So why has she not been replaced?”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) gave a rather bleak response to Trump’s calls for her replacement, acknowledging that whether or not the ballroom funding passes is less about the parliamentarian and more about whether his caucus will support it, and suggesting that she would be kept safe after Trump’s public attacks on her. Per Politico:

Speaking with reporters Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota observed that it’s not the first time Trump has made such a demand, adding that while “there may be some issues related to the parliamentarian, but most of the issues we have here are votes.”

“That’s, I guess, his opinion. But that would create even more vote issues here if we were to try and do something like that. So we’ll make sure that everybody has got security around here,” Thune said, referring to concerns that MacDonough could be targeted after Trump’s broadside.

— Nicole LaFond

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‘We’re Trying to Give Money — Not Give Money …’

Two of President Trump’s closest cronies were made to face the music today. Bipartisan outrage over the corrupt slush fund created by the Justice Department for Trump’s friends and political allies has swelled in the hours since it was announced on Monday.

As TPM has reported, the actions from the Justice Department yesterday were some of the most blatantly corrupt we’ve seen, and that is a high bar in Trump II, when the president did not hesitate for even a moment before folding the Justice Department under his purview upon returning to office.

On Monday, Trump and the IRS signed a settlement agreement which involved Trump dismissing his lawsuit against the IRS, his own government’s agency, in which he was claiming damages for the 2019 leak of his tax records. In exchange, the DOJ would establish an “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” which was immediately panned as nothing more than a “slush fund” for Trump’s supporters — including, it seems, those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 — and other MAGA allies. Trump’s move to dismiss the lawsuit also created a convenient-for-Trump situation in which the U.S. District Court judge overseeing the case did not have time to scrutinize whether the lawsuit was legally valid in the first place.

The Justice Department announced the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” in a press release on Monday, arguing it was accessible to anyone who believes they’ve been mistreated by a “weaponized” justice system — a claim Trump’s friends, overwhelmingly, make.

But the vagueness of the agreement set up a situation where Trump’s Vice President JD Vance and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche were made to sorta publicly eat shit on Tuesday, selling the arrangement publicly as they responded to pointed questions from reporters and, in Blanche’s case, bipartisan concerns from lawmakers.

Both reporters and lawmakers had questions about whether those who were convicted of attacking police officers on Jan. 6 would qualify for a payout. Vance’s response was garbled as he flailed between attacking the reporter who asked the question and giving a cohesive answer that wouldn’t upset the faction of Trump’s base that still respects law enforcement.

“We’re not trying to give money to anybody who attacked a police officer. We’re trying to give money — not give money, we’re trying to compensate people where the book was thrown at them, they were mistreated by the legal system,” he said during a White House press briefing, during which he was covering for White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt while she is on maternity leave.

“Sometimes, you know, we are — we do have, John, in this country, innocent until proven guilty,” he continued, addressing the reporter. “We have people who were accused of attacking law enforcement officers. That doesn’t mean that we’re gonna completely ignore some of the claims they’re gonna make.”

Clear as mud. Blanche was asked to answer to similar concerns during his previously scheduled appearance before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee. Democrats tore into the acting AG for the “obvious abuse of power by the Department of Justice, by the president,” as Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) put it.

“What we are talking about is nothing short of the sitting president of the United States looting from the treasury for his own gain. Do you seriously think this arrangement is appropriate? The president telling the federal government to settle a case and let him pay billions to the people that he chooses?” Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) said. “This is corruption that has never been more blatant. … What is happening is you write the check, Trump and his cronies cash it. American taxpayers, who are already being whacked with high prices, are going to foot the bill.”

Democrats and Republican Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Jerry Moran (R-KS) pressed Blanche to give specifics about who exactly could qualify for compensation.

“It’s not limited to Republicans. It’s not limited to the Biden weaponization. It’s not limited to in any way, scope or form to Jan. 6 or to Jack Smith. There’s no limitation on the claims,” Blanche said.

“It’s entirely voluntary if an individual wants to apply and assert that they were a victim of weaponization, and the commission can do anything according to what was set up yesterday, from issuing an apology to the … claimant to awarding to awarding compensation,” he continued before making the cartoonish suggestion that even Hunter Biden could qualify!

“It does not limit it to President Trump or President Trump’s friends. To the contrary, President Trump isn’t taking a dime,” Blanche said. “The commissioners will set rules I’m sure … That’s not for me to set. That’s for the commissioners, and whether an individual, an Oath Keeper as you just mentioned, applies for compensation … anybody in this country can apply.”

As long as Trump himself isn’t personally profitting, but the Oath Keeper insurrectionists are, who could be concerned?

Raskin Wants to Force Republicans on Record

Democrats in the House are planning to soon introduce a bill that would block Trump’s settlement slush fund and also block the creation of something similar in the future as part of an effort to force their Republican colleagues to go on record on the unprecedentedly corrupt action. They’re considering using a discharge petition to work around Republican House leadership to get the legislation on the floor, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told The New Republic‘s Greg Sargent:

“We need to put Republicans on the spot as to whether or not they are going to endorse this rank corruption, or whether they are going to stand up for basic constitutional values,” Raskin said in an interview, adding that he will pursue “straightforward legislation to block this outrageous misappropriation.”

Even Lindsey Has Questions

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) did not have a lot to say when questioned about Trump’s $1.8 billion “lawfare” fund, but he told reporters Tuesday he was “not a big fan” of it and did not “see a purpose for that.”

“I think that there are, and will be continue to be, a lot of questions around that, that the administration is going to have to answer,” he said at a news briefing.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) expressed a similar sentiment on Tuesday to reporters, per Politico:

Even Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of the White House’s staunchest allies who once championed a payout for lawmakers who had their phone data subpoenaed by the Biden administration, said Tuesday he believed senators needed more information.

“Conceptually I understand what he’s trying to do, but I don’t know,” he said. “I think we need to ask more questions.”

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‘Corruption Unparalleled in American History’

Democrats in the House and Senate are sounding the alarm about the $1.776 billion “slush fund” that Trump’s Justice Department is creating for his supporters and political allies in exchange for President Trump, his two eldest sons and the Trump Organization dropping their $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, an agency he oversees as president. It’s a legal challenge that has long had legal experts up in arms about the potential for corruption, as Trump sues his own government, demanding damages over the 2019 leak of his tax information. And that was before today, when Trump’s lawyers purported to dismiss it — news swiftly followed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announcing billions to pay off Trump’s allies.

The move follows reports that the DOJ was negotiating such a settlement. Trump’s lawyers announced he was dropping the suit in a Monday court filing, an attempt to stop a Miami federal judge from reaching a conclusion about how and if the lawsuit could proceed. In an almost comical attempt to dress up the corrupt arrangement in the trappings of a settlement agreement, the DOJ explained that, in exchange for Trump dropping the civil suit that he brought against his own federal agency, the DOJ will create the $1.776 billion slush fund that will settle claims of weaponization, which Trump’s friends have defined extraordinarily expansively. It will be funded through the DOJ’s Judgement Fund, which legal analysts are already blasting as a misuse of the fund.

Blanche argued, without betraying any awareness of the irony, that “the machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again.”

Ninety-three House Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) signed off on an amicus brief filing with the court on Monday in an attempt to “block this unconstitutional taxpayer-funded settlement,” House Judiciary Democrats said in a statement. In the filing they said Trump’s scrutiny-evading supposed dismissal and settlement “raises the specter of corruption unparalleled in American history.”

“Never in the history of the United States has a sitting President sought a monetary settlement from the government he leads — let alone sought many billions of dollars in taxpayer funds,” the filing said. “The President seeks damages from the citizens he purports to represent equal to nearly the entire budget he proposed for the Internal Revenue Service (‘IRS’) itself.

“$10 billion could fully fund almost the entire annual budget for federal child welfare spending or the National Cancer Institute for a year,” it continued. “Or it could be used to purchase childcare for a million young families. Instead of serving these worthy purposes, the President instead asks this Court to allow him to use collusive litigation to force the American people to put that money into his pockets, and the pockets of his family and friends.”

In a statement, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) called Trump’s actions “pure fraud” and “highway robbery”:

No president can concoct a fake case for $10 billion in damages against the government so he can be plaintiff and defendant and then ‘settle’ his bogus case against himself as a judge. This is simply not a genuine case or controversy as required by the Constitution. But Trump’s DOJ is not arguing any of this because it is in on the scam. This case is nothing but a racket designed to take $1.7 billion of taxpayer dollars out of the Treasury and pour it into a huge slush fund for Trump at DOJ to hand out to his private militia of insurrectionists, rioters, and white supremacists, including those who brutally beat police officers on January 6, 2021, and sycophant accomplices to his election stealing schemes.

Several Senate Democrats also released a flood of statements condemning the corruption.

“Regardless of whether Trump filed this lawsuit with a personal payday or a slush fund in mind, he deserves no credit for dropping it, and even by his standards the move he’s trying to get away with now is a stunning act of corruption,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) said.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) called it an “outrageous abuse of power.”

Tillis Won’t Vote for Reconciliation Bill This Week

Retiring-Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) sent an email to his Republican colleagues on Monday, saying he won’t vote for the budget reconciliation bill if it goes up for a vote this week and if it includes funding for Trump’s vanity ballroom, Axios reported. Tillis is not the first Republican senator who has expressed concerns about shoving funding for Trump’s ballroom security in to the reconciliation package, which is meant to address a handful of other Trump priorities that will not pass outside of the reconciliation process due to the filibuster and Democratic opposition.

The Senate Parliamentarian ruled on Saturday that, as currently written, the funding for the Secret Service/ballroom security cannot be included in the bill because it violates the Byrd Rule, which blocks lawmakers from including measures in reconciliation bills that the parliamentarian finds to be outside of the realm of federal spending, or outside the jurisdictions of the panels that are tasked with writing the draft bills.

Tillis is reportedly opposed to the package if it includes Trump’s ask for taxpayers to fund $1 billion in security upgrades tied to his ballroom. There’s also another reason, Per Axios:

Tillis is fuming over the ouster of incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana’s GOP primary — and he’s warning that pushing a bill this week would hurt Sen. John Cornyn in Texas’ GOP primary runoff next week.

Tillis believes Cornyn should be free to campaign in Texas this week instead of being in D.C. for votes.

Hegseth Gets Involved In Massie Primary

In what experts are describing as, at best, a serious breach of decorum, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is reportedly planning to campaign for Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-KY) Trump-backed Republican primary challenger in Kentucky tonight, the night before the election.

Hegseth’s team at the Pentagon is describing the event as one designed to award Purple Heart medals to soldiers. Ed Gallrein, the Republican challenging Massie, is a former member of the Navy SEALS. Per the Times:

“Secretary Hegseth is attending this event in his personal capacity,” Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement. “No taxpayer dollars will be used to facilitate his visit. His participation has been thoroughly vetted and cleared by lawyers, including the Department of War Office of General Counsel, and does not violate the Hatch Act or any other applicable federal statute.”

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President Trump told reporters this week that he does not care about Americans’ financial situations “even a little bit” when it comes to ending the war he launched with Iran earlier this year.

“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation,” Trump told reporters Tuesday, before diving into a screed about how much he does care about making sure Tehran does not have nuclear capabilities.

It was the perfect sound byte for Democrats who are already not having to do too much to remind Americans that Trump’s economy, and his decision to launch another endless war in the Middle East, is ruining their financial prospects, at a time where record high inflation and Trump’s own tariffs are making it difficult to afford anything. But the gaffe — a generous take for a billionaire president — was even more tone deaf than we initially realized.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Trump actually made the remarks after a handful of Republican senators visited the White House on Monday and begged him to help them message to the American people about how the party will address their concerns about … not being able to afford basic necessities. Sens. John Kennedy (R-LA), Eric Schmitt (R-MO) and Bernie Moreno (R-OH) made the pilgrimmage to implore Trump to support a bill that they think will help address the high costs of homeownership, according to the WSJ.

Trump publicly announced his support for the legislation after the White House meeting with the senators. He posted on Truth Social urging Congress to pass the legislation and reportedly got on the phone with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) during the meeting to press him to get his caucus in line to pass it (there is reportedly some opposition in the House over build-to-rent rules for new rental home developers that are included in the bill).

But then a day later, he reminded everyone he is, in fact, an out-of-touch billionaire, focused, yes, on his war no one wants, but also much more on the ballroom no one wants to pay for.

Dem Shows Some Righteous Anger

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) remarks have been making the rounds today.

“We’re going to win in November, and then we’re going to crush their souls as it relates to the extremism that they are trying to unleash on the American people,” Jeffries said Wednesday, per Politico Playbook, with an accompanying piece out today headlining the fact that “ruthless partisan tactics are in” for Dems. 🫠

While the fire from Democrats is welcome, the focus on “partisan tactics” is just one of the many ways in which the mainstream media, in the wake of the Callais ruling, has spoken of what’s unfolding in the language of politics-as-usual, sidestepping historical context and normalizing the rage-inducing fact that southern state legislators and officials did not pause to take a breath for even a second before leaping to erase Black political representation in the South.

Least Surprising Headline of the Week

Emails show FBI Director Kash Patel’s Hawaii trip included ‘VIP snorkel’ at a Pearl Harbor memorial

The Associated Press is out with a new piece today on FBI Director Kash Patel’s luxury snorkeling adventure in Hawaii while he was there touring the FBI’s Honolulu field office and meeting with local police. Patel reportedly went swimming near the USS Arizona, which is almost entirely off limits with a few exceptions for things like placing remains of passed members of the USS Arizona crew who wanted their ashes with their crewmates among the wreckage. It fits the pattern with the FBI director, as the AP notes:

Left out of the FBI’s news releases was an exclusive excursion that Patel took days later when he participated in what government officials described as a “VIP snorkel” around the USS Arizona in an outing coordinated by the military. The sunken battleship entombs more than 900 sailors and Marines at Pearl Harbor.

The swim, revealed in government emails obtained by The Associated Press, comes to light amid criticism of Patel’s use of the FBI plane and his global travel, which have blurred professional responsibilities with leisure activities. The FBI did not disclose the snorkeling session or that Patel had returned to Hawaii for two days after his initial stopover on the island.

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