For months, Donald Trump and White House officials had a habit of insisting that the president had delivered an economy with “no inflation.” The public has heard a lot less of such talk lately, and there’s no great mystery as to why. CNBC reported:

The consumer price index, a broad gauge of goods and services costs across the U.S. economy, rose at a seasonally adjusted 0.5% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 4.2%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. Both numbers were in line with the Dow Jones consensus.

Inflation climbed above 4% for the first time in three years, though the increase met expectations amid concerns over how much the surge in energy prices would impact the economy. The level was the highest since April 2023 and above the 3.8% level from April.

The figures were entirely in line with a variety of related metrics related to the rising cost of living, including the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, the core personal consumption expenditures price index and wholesale prices, all of which recently hit three-year highs.

All of that related data, incidentally, was released shortly before White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told Fox News that Trump has transformed the U.S. into an “extraordinary paradise.”

As for what’s driving the discouraging data, it is — to the surprise of no one — energy costs that are pushing prices higher, which is the direct result of the war in Iran.

Perhaps most importantly, NBC News’ report emphasized that inflation’s rise “has surpassed wage growth,” which necessarily exacerbates the affordability crisis gripping American consumers.

The White House has not yet commented on the new data, although Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council and the top economist at the White House, has argued in recent weeks that rising inflation should be blamed on Democratic policies in blue states. Those claims, like much of what Hassett has to say, have been thoroughly discredited.

And no one is buying it. The latest national CNN poll found that 77% of respondents, including a majority of Republican voters, agreed that Trump’s policies have increased the cost of living. The same poll found just 30% of Americans approve of the president’s handling of the economy, a career low for the Republican across both terms. That mirrored the results of the latest national Associated Press poll.

There’s no reason to assume those results won’t continue to get even worse.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

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Today’s edition of quick hits.

* The latest on the downed helicopter: “President Donald Trump blamed Iran for downing a U.S. Army helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday and said the United States must respond to the attack. A drone boat rescued two Army aviators who were aboard the Apache attack helicopter when it went down near the waterway that Iran has effectively closed during its war with the U.S. and Israel. Trump said in a social media post that both service members ‘are safe and uninjured.’”

* It would be great if this were true, but hasn’t he said the same thing too many times before? “U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that, despite the exchange of strikes between Iran and Israel, a deal to end the war in the Middle East could be reached ‘in two or three days.’”

* Meanwhile, in Lebanon: “Israeli airstrikes pummeled the city of Tyre in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least eight people and wounding dozens more, in the latest sign that a new U.S.-brokered cease-fire has failed to take hold.”

* On Capitol Hill: “The House on Tuesday narrowly voted to take up Republicans’ $70 billion immigration enforcement bill, clearing a key hurdle to enacting the measure to fund President Trump’s deportation crackdown through the end of his term. The vote was 213-211 along party lines, with every Democrat opposed. A final vote on the legislation, which if passed would go to Mr. Trump’s desk, was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.”

* A staggering statistic: “In the first years after birth, the human brain develops at a remarkable pace. Every second, more than a million new neural connections spring into being, shaping a person’s physical and emotional health for the rest of their life. Since the Trump administration entered the White House last year, at least 500 babies and toddlers have spent some of that pivotal time in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

* Speaking of ICE: “Mismanagement at a massive Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Texas created unsafe conditions that contributed to detainee deaths and suffering even as millions of wasted tax dollars enriched contractors, according to a federal report released Tuesday.”

* In case this isn’t obvious, 2032 is during the next president’s term: “Social Security ’s retirement trust fund is projected to face a funding shortfall in 2032, a year earlier than last year’s projections, according to an annual report released Tuesday, while Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund will be unable to pay full benefits in 2033, which is unchanged from last year’s estimate.”

* Trump-appointed judges aren’t just wrong when issuing rulings: “A judge on the largest U.S. federal appeals court is facing a judicial misconduct inquiry after news reports over the weekend revealed that he had been criminally ​charged over a parking lot dispute in Idaho in April. Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Mary Murguia of the 9th ‌U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in an order released on Monday said she had initiated a judicial misconduct complaint against U.S. Circuit Judge Ryan Nelson after he was hit with misdemeanor charges of battery and malicious injury to property on April 22.”

See you tomorrow.

The post Tuesday’s Mini-Report, 6.9.26 appeared first on MS NOW.

Kash Patel’s tenure as FBI director has been a national embarrassment in a great many ways, but among the most jarring developments this year is the sheer volume of bureau personnel who have been purged for political reasons, leaving the agency destabilized.

MS NOW’s Ken Dilanian noted the ongoing purge “is without precedent in the modern history of the bureau. It raises questions about whether the Trump administration is trying to turn the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency into an instrument of presidential whim — exactly the thing he baselessly accused his opponent of doing.”

That was 10 months ago. Things are worse now. MS NOW’s Dilanian and Carol Leonnig reported late last week, for example:

FBI Director Kash Patel fired a group of bureau intelligence analysts Friday over a rescinded 2023 memo about “radical traditionalist Catholic ideology” that has long been a focus of Republicans despite an investigation that found no anti-Catholic bias, three people familiar with the matter told MS NOW.

The analysts worked in the FBI’s Richmond office, where the memo originated, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to sensitive personnel issues. They said at least five analysts were included in the firings.

That these firings were tough to defend is notable in its own right — there’s little to suggest the FBI analysts did anything wrong — though I’m also struck by the degree to which they tie into a broader pattern.

One week earlier, Dilanian reported that Patel also fired a senior intelligence analyst, Deputy Assistant Director Emily Morales, who played a role in the FBI’s 2017 assessment of the motives of the gunman who attacked a House Republican baseball practice.

That came on the heels of Patel firing a dozen FBI agents and staff for their role in investigating Trump’s classified documents scandal. In the process, the bureau director gutted the global espionage unit, known as CI-12, shortly before the start of the war in Iran.

A month earlier, Paul Brown, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Atlanta field office, was also forced out, not because he’d done anything wrong, but because he questioned the value in re-investigating Georgia’s election results from six years earlier.

Around the same time, the FBI also purged the acting assistant director in charge of the New York field office, a former special agent in charge in New Orleans, as many as six agents in Miami, as well as agents who were pushed out for their involvement in the baseless “Arctic Frost” investigation in 2020.

A month before that, we learned about a lawsuit filed by 12 FBI agents who were fired for having taken a knee during racial justice protests in 2020 as part of an effort to de-escalate a situation that threatened to intensify.

Last August, Patel and his team ousted three experienced bureau leaders, including Brian Driscoll, a widely respected figure among rank-and-file agents who was removed after he helped prevent a mass firing of thousands of FBI officials who worked on Jan. 6 cases.

During his confirmation hearing early last year, Patel, a former podcast personality, assured senators that the bureau under his leadership “will not go backwards. There will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken by any FBI should I be confirmed as FBI director.”

As things stand, that testimony appears increasingly ridiculous.

Work on cases related to the criminal investigations into Trump? Fired. Work on Jan. 6 cases? Fired. Refuse to needlessly humiliate a former director? Fired.

It reached the point last fall when the FBI Agents Association said Patel was not only imposing “chaos” on the bureau, but that he’d also “disregarded the law and launched a campaign of erratic and arbitrary retribution.”

The FBI Agents Association added at the time that the director’s antics had created conditions that make “the American public less safe.”

Months later, as the number of those caught up in Patel’s personnel purge continues to grow, it’s tough to feel any better about the state of federal law enforcement.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post Kash Patel’s FBI purges become a defining feature of his controversial tenure appeared first on MS NOW.

In the months leading up to Election Day 2024, when Donald Trump was ostensibly focused on his candidacy, the Republican launched a dizzying merchandising campaign, pitching everything from Trump-branded watches to silver Trump commemorative coins, batches of digital trading cards to a weird cryptocurrency project, and gold sneakers to Trump-endorsed Bibles.

Even after the president returned to the Oval Office, those efforts continued with Trump-branded guitars and Trump phones, among other things.

In light of just how much the president, his family and his controversial businesses have profited during his second term, it’s tempting to think there would be no need to pursue yet another merchandising opportunity. After all, as The Atlantic’s David Frum recently explained, Trump has taken self-enrichment “to a scale never seen before in America.”

That assumption, however, would be wrong.

MS NOW’s Jake Traylor and Soorin Kim reported Tuesday that there are Trump-branded “medallions” on sale, tied to this weekend’s UFC event on the White House’s South Lawn.

The souvenir gold and silver coins range in price from $249.99 to $11,999.99. That’s not a typo: A website called RealTrumpCoins.com is actually selling UFC Freedom 250 “medallions” that people can purchase for just under $12,000. (The website boasts that the coins were “designed” by the president himself.)

Donald Trump is selling UFC-branded coins for $12,000 to promote the UFC fight on the White House lawn

— FactPost (@factpostnews.bsky.social) 2026-06-09T17:20:05.074565128Z

The reporting from MS NOW’s Traylor and Kim added that some of the profits are expected to go to the president’s licensing company, DTTM Operations LLC. And while the White House has said the president isn’t personally controlling his family business while he’s in office, his son Donald Trump Jr. is.

To be sure, the scheduled UFC bout, set to coincide with the president’s 80th birthday, was already controversial, and not just because of the bizarre structure that continues to take shape at the White House. There have also been related questions about Trump’s stock purchase in UFC’s parent company before the upcoming match on the South Lawn.

As for tickets to the upcoming event, NBC News recently reported that the tickets are technically free and that the UFC is footing the bill for the event. That said, sponsorship packages, including ringside seats, have been selling for $1 million or more, and no one seems to know where the sponsorship money is going.

The $12,000 gold coins, however, take this mess to a new and unsettling level.

This week, a new lawsuit was filed alleging corruption in connection with the upcoming UFC event, with the hopes of derailing the plans for the gathering, and a judge is expecting a response by Tuesday. Watch this space.

The post Trump-branded UFC ‘medallions’ go on sale ahead of scheduled White House match appeared first on MS NOW.

At first blush, the idea of a Democratic senator in a red state focusing attention on a mining project in Kazakhstan might seem odd. After all, many voters couldn’t find Kazakhstan on a map and probably have priorities that have nothing to do with foreign mining projects.

But Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, ahead of his re-election bid this year, took the time in recent days to highlight a Kazakhstan mining project because of allegations that the Trump administration invested American tax dollars in the endeavor, which has been linked to two of the president’s sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.

The emphasis wasn’t surprising. The incumbent senator has built much of his 2026 candidacy around the idea that corruption isn’t just a major national issue, it’s also the principal cause for the problems plaguing regular Americans in their everyday lives. “You aren’t the problem. Neither are your fellow Americans,” Ossoff routinely tells Georgians. “Corruption is why things don’t work for ordinary people.”

The senator’s focus appears to be resonating. Going into 2026, Ossoff was generally seen as the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent, but with 21 weeks remaining before Election Day, both parties see him as an increasingly strong candidate who might very well prevail despite Trump having won Georgia two years ago.

It’s not yet clear whether other Democrats will be equally inclined to emphasize corruption as a campaign issue, but with each passing day, the White House and its allies offer fresh evidence of a systemic issue. Consider some of the reporting and allegations that have surfaced over the last five days:

• The Washington Post reported that of the publicly identified donors to the president’s ballroom project, more than half “have won new or expanded federal contracts worth more than $50 billion during the past six months.”
• The Washington Post also reported that the Trump administration has sharply accelerated spending on border wall construction and that most of the money has gone to two companies with “ties to the White House and the Republican Party.”
• As if there weren’t already enough questions surrounding special favors for MAGA Inc. PAC donors, CNN reported on the generous support Trump’s super PAC has received from those who either have federal contracts or who are trying to influence the administration.
• The New Yorker reported on how the wealthy continue their efforts to buy presidential pardons.
• Reuters reported that the Trump family has generated at least $2.3 billion in profit from investors since the president returned to the White House, which contrasts with “the more than a million investors whose net losses totaled $2.3 billion at the end of April.”

If we widen the aperture a bit, a new lawsuit was also filed this week alleging corruption in connection with the upcoming UFC event on the White House South Lawn.

This isn’t a comprehensive list, and again, these are just headlines from the last five days. A similar assessment of related reports from the last few months would supply a staggering list that’s vastly longer.

In a recent piece for MS NOW, Paul Waldman explained, “Voters might be willing to ignore all this self-dealing if the economy were doing great, everyone had health insurance, housing was cheap and gas was $2 a gallon. But when people are struggling, corruption takes on a new urgency. That’s because it provides a way for voters to understand a deeper rot in the system that manifests in all kinds of ways.”

The question isn’t why Ossoff is focusing so heavily on corruption as a foundational 2026 issue; the question is why every other Democrat isn’t pushing the same issue in their own campaigns.

The post Republicans keep making it easier for Democrats to run against corruption in midterms appeared first on MS NOW.

A few months ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth complained that the Pentagon had officially recognized too many faith traditions, which he characterized as “impractical.” A few weeks ago, the Defense Department acted on those concerns, shrinking the list of recognized religions from 211 faiths to 31.

The rather dramatic shift did not go unnoticed, though no one in American politics responded with greater fury than Sen. Mike Lee of Utah — ordinarily a conservative Republican closely aligned with the Trump administration — who said it was “repugnant” to see the Pentagon’s list exclude his own faith, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (whose members are generally referred to as Mormons), from among the identified Christian faiths.

The pushback appears to have worked. As my MS NOW colleague Ja’han Jones reported:

The outcry seems to have prompted a reversal from the Defense Department. On Monday, a social media post from the department included a new list with a caption that said the previous one “included redundant and unnecessary labeling, and the mistake has been fixed.”

The new list’s codes no longer identify which of the recognized faiths are considered Christian, which raises the question of whether Pentagon officials consider the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to be a form of Christianity, or if they would simply prefer not to flaunt their beliefs on the topic in public.

A spokesperson for the Utah Republican said, “Sen. Lee spoke with President Trump and Secretary Hegseth over the weekend and received their assurance that the Pentagon’s religious classifications would be fixed. He appreciates the administration’s action to address this issue.”

Whether the Pentagon is prepared to make additional changes remains to be seen, but as the dust settles on this dispute, it’s worth pausing to appreciate the context.

When Hegseth and his Defense Department team took steps to discriminate against transgender service members, Lee said nothing. When Hegseth intervened in promotion lists to disproportionately target women and minority officers, Lee again said nothing.

But when the GOP senator saw a list of Pentagon-recognized faith traditions and didn’t see his own church, that’s when he felt the need to speak out.

In November 2000, there was an episode of “Futurama” in which Bender famously complained, “This is the worst kind of discrimination: the kind against me!”

It came to mind watching Lee in recent days.

The post GOP’s Mike Lee gives away the game with his pushback against the Pentagon’s faith list appeared first on MS NOW.

In Los Angeles’ closely watched mayoral race, it’s been clear for several days that Karen Bass, the city’s Democratic incumbent, received enough support in last week’s primary to advance to the general election in November. The question was who she’d run against.

This week, the answer came into focus. MS NOW reported:

Los Angeles Council member Nithya Raman will advance to the November general election in the mayoral race to face the incumbent, Karen Bass, after overtaking ex-reality TV star Spencer Pratt in the primary, The Associated Press projects. 

Raman has steadily trended upward in the vote count since Election Day, and she overtook Pratt on Sunday. Monday’s vote update gives Raman a cushion of more than 20,000 votes, making her position in the top two safe, with an estimated 93% of the vote counted.

In California’s gubernatorial race, meanwhile, the vote count is still underway, though we now know that Xavier Becerra, a former Democratic congressman who served as Joe Biden’s health secretary, has advanced to the general election.

It’s not yet clear who his rival will be, but with nearly 83% of the ballots tallied, Steve Hilton, a Trump-backed Republican, appears well positioned to finish second, while Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer is (at least for now) running third.

And therein lies the problem with Republican conspiracy theories about California’s vote count.

In recent days, a great many GOP leaders, including Donald Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill, have invested an enormous amount of time and energy trying to convince the public the state’s elections process is “rigged” by nefarious Democratic schemers who’ve secretly orchestrated the results to ensure their preferred outcome.

When pressed for evidence, GOP officials tend to embarrass themselves, but that’s not the only — or even the central — problem. On the contrary, the Republican conspiracy theory suffers from an obvious fatal flaw: If nefarious Democratic schemers existed and were secretly orchestrating the results, they wouldn’t have picked these outcomes.

In Los Angeles’ mayoral race, it’s no secret that the Democratic incumbent, running in a city with an enormous progressive voter base, welcomed the opportunity to run against a conservative television personality with an embarrassingly thin professional resume. Instead, Bass will face Raman, a Harvard- and MIT-educated City Council member who’s already demonstrated an ability to win local elections.

If powerful Democratic operatives were pulling the strings from the shadows, they would’ve gladly pitted Bass against Pratt, if only to watch him lose in November.

Similarly, Democrats would’ve loved to see two Democratic candidates emerge from the state’s gubernatorial primary, thus ensuring party control. Instead, it appears increasingly likely that a GOP candidate backed by the Republican president will advance to the general election — which, again, is not the outcome these ostensible powerful Democratic operatives pulling the strings from the shadows would’ve deliberately orchestrated.

Put it this way: Either the Republican conspiracy theories are wrong, or Democrats are the most incompetent schemers imaginable.

The post Republicans’ California election conspiracy theories suffer from one fatal flaw appeared first on MS NOW.

Donald Trump hasn’t exactly gotten along well with his attorneys general. Ten days into his first term, for example, the president fired acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she notified the White House that then-national security adviser Michael Flynn lied about his post-election talks with Vladimir Putin’s government and may be vulnerable to a Russian blackmail campaign.

In the months and years that followed, Trump clashed with Jeff Sessions during his tenure as attorney general, accusing the Alabama Republican of “disloyalty” and being an “idiot.” He later similarly condemned Bill Barr, calling him a “spineless RINO” and a “disappointment in every sense of the word.” The president wasn’t even satisfied with Pam Bondi, complaining that she didn’t move quickly or aggressively enough to meet his partisan demands.

Trump likely believes he’ll have better luck with his latest choice. MS NOW reported:

President Donald Trump on Monday formally nominated his longtime loyalist and former personal defense lawyer Todd Blanche to serve as attorney general permanently.

Blanche has been serving as the nation’s top prosecutor in an acting capacity after Pam Bondi was fired by Trump in April. Blanche was Bondi’s deputy at the time. The nomination has been sent to the Senate.

Since becoming the acting attorney general, Blanche went to almost cartoonish lengths to use his office in ways designed to please the White House, up to and including indicting people the president doesn’t like. Trump, not surprisingly, was delighted. Whether senators are equally impressed remains to be seen, though there’s no reason to assume that his confirmation will be easy.

Stepping back, however, there’s the related question of why Blanche actually wants this job.

With recent history in mind, it’s clear that serving as Trump’s attorney general isn’t easy. A recent Slate piece described it as “the worst job in Trump’s Cabinet,” adding that under the incumbent president, this is an “impossible, degrading, no-win job.”

That might’ve seemed hyperbolic, but it’s grounded in fact: Trump has a very specific vision in mind related to the position, and it’s not pretty. As has become painfully clear, the president wants a partisan loyalist who will serve as his personal tool, using the Justice Department to advance Trump’s goals and interests at all times, under all circumstances, and without regard for any other considerations.

The president, in other words, expects an attorney general who’s part puppet, part weapon and part cheerleader. Those serious about the rule of law and apolitical ethical limits need not apply.

I’ve seen some analyses that have described the office under Trump as “an impossible job,” largely because no one can be quite pathetic enough to satiate all of the president’s whims and demands. It’s a fair point, to be sure, but that’s what makes Blanche’s nomination inherently interesting: He, unlike guys such as Sessions and Barr, doesn’t actually want to lead the DOJ or oversee federal law enforcement; Blanche simply wants to serve Trump.

In other words, Blanche might very well be the first and only attorney general Trump actually gets along with because he and the president share a common view of the office. By tradition, those in this role strive to be “the people’s lawyer.” The president’s new nominee has no such ambitions: His goal is to serve one American, not 340 million Americans.

Blanche has made it abundantly clear that he doesn’t want to be the American people’s attorney general; he wants to be Trump’s attorney general. Is it any wonder why the president is optimistic about his choice?

The post Being Trump’s attorney general is an awful job. Todd Blanche apparently doesn’t care. appeared first on MS NOW.

In an English port city late last year, Vickrum Digwa stabbed and killed Henry Nowak, and by any fair measure, it was a brutal crime. Digwa was arrested, charged, convicted of murder and, as of last week, sentenced to life in prison.

Complicating matters, however, was the initial police response. When officers first arrived, the murderer falsely claimed to be a victim of a hate crime, and a video of what transpired showed the police temporarily putting the actual victim in handcuffs for about a minute. Officers then realized that Nowak had been stabbed and began administering first aid, but given the severity of the attack, he did not survive.

Because the attacker was Sikh and the victim was white, prominent British voices eager to stir racist animus have seized on the crime. As of late last week, JD Vance decided to weigh in, too.

In a three-paragraph statement posted to social media, the Republican vice president described the murder as “enraging” and blamed “European elites” for failing to stand against “the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants.”

The Ohio Republican went on to write, “It is because we love the West that we want to preserve it. We love our civilization. We love our country. We love our children. And nobody — nobody — should ever die the way that Henry Nowak died.”

Vance, whose wife is a Hindu Indian American, neglected to elaborate as to who counts as “we.”

What’s more, the American vice president also neglected to mention the inconvenient fact that the convicted murderer isn’t an immigrant: He’s British-born and -raised.

With this in mind, officials in the U.K., already dealing with domestic political voices that appear eager to stoke racial fires, have made their dissatisfaction with Vance known. The New York Times reported:

Mr. Vance’s intervention has been met with a fierce response by British government officials, who noted that Mr. Digwa was not an immigrant. A spokesman for Prime Minister Keir Starmer accused Mr. Vance of trying to “interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division on our streets.” […]

Over the weekend, David Lammy, the deputy prime minister, who has in the past talked of a friendship with Mr. Vance over their shared Christian faith, said he had called the vice president to express his disagreement.

“I told him he was wrong: This has got nothing to do with mass migration,” Lammy told the BBC. Lammy added that he made clear to Vance that his intervention in the matter was “not helpful.”

For his part, Mark Nowak, the victim’s father, criticized the police’s initial response but also said the family did “not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension.”

With this in mind, the British prime minister told lawmakers, “Exploiting this tragedy to create grievance and division would be wrong in any circumstances. But to do it when the family is expressly saying please do not is unforgivable.”

Whether Vance cares about such pushback remains to be seen.

The post Why officials in the U.K. are accusing JD Vance of trying to ‘interfere in our democracy’ appeared first on MS NOW.

Donald Trump has earned a reputation as the nation’s most prominent and powerful election conspiracy theorist, but to the extent that there’s a competition for the silver medal in this ignominious category, House Speaker Mike Johnson is a clear contender.

Indeed, after Trump’s defeat in the 2020 race, it was the Louisiana Republican who took the lead on Capitol Hill, effectively becoming the White House’s congressional point man, doing his best to overturn the results and hand the outgoing president illegitimate power. Johnson even echoed a discredited conspiracy theory involving Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Dominion Voting Systems — nonsense that even many Trump acolytes didn’t feel comfortable repeating.

With this in mind, it wasn’t too surprising to see Congress’ top GOP lawmaker echo his party’s baseless conspiracy theories regarding California’s latest elections, though one word in his pitch was of particular interest.

RAJU: But what evidence is there to prove the California election is rigged?MIKE JOHNSON: Look, some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream it's impossible to prove. But I think everybody knows instinctively that something is wrong here.

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-06-08T19:56:22.798Z

Apparently comfortable speaking on behalf of the nation, Johnson told reporters on Monday afternoon that “everybody knows” that the process of counting votes in California “stinks to high heaven.”

Asked the obvious question about conspiracy theorists’ lack of evidence, the House speaker added, “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.”

It was an implicit acknowledgment of an inconvenient truth: Johnson and his cohorts simply don’t have any evidence. The speaker and other Republican leaders don’t know if their baseless ideas are true, but they apparently want the public to know that their conspiracy theories feel true.

It’s the basis for a debate, not about election administration processes, but about vibes.

But Johnson’s use of the word “instinctively” stood out, in part because it was so foolish, in part because of its familiarity.

A couple of years ago, for example, during a Fox Business interview, the House speaker asserted that there are now “terrorist cells set up around the country.” Asked how many, Johnson conceded that he had no idea — despite his access to intelligence at the highest levels — but added that we are “intuitively” aware of the problem.

Similarly, after Trump’s 2020 defeat, Johnson also insisted that “a lot of us know intuitively” that there were problems with the vote tallies. After the Senate rejected the House’s impeachment effort against then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Johnson said “we know already intuitively” that Mayorkas deserved to be punished. When the House speaker unveiled legislation to ban noncitizens from voting — which is already illegal, and which effectively never happens — Johnson declared at a press conference, “We all know intuitively that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections.”

Among the obvious problems is the simple fact that instincts and intuition are utterly irrelevant when dealing with factual questions like these. Elections are either proper or they’re not. Voters are either casting legal ballots or they’re not. Evidence either exists or it doesn’t.

His track record suggests this basic dynamic is lost on the House speaker in fundamental ways.

What we’re dealing with, in other words, is a political leader who believes gut feelings are a legitimate substitute for knowledge. They are not.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post Speaker Mike Johnson says his election conspiracy theories feel ‘instinctively’ true appeared first on MS NOW.

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* Renewed violence in the Middle East: “Iran said it would halt its military offensive against Israel after the two countries exchanged missile fire yesterday for the first time since April. However, Iran warned that its military would launch harsher attacks if Israel engages in further ‘hostile acts,’ The Associated Press reported.”

* Russia’s latest offensive in Ukraine: “Russia struck targets across Ukraine overnight into Sunday, including an area near the site of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, a day after Kyiv launched a large-scale drone attack on Russian territory. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Moscow’s forces hit infrastructure around the Chernobyl nuclear site, calling it ‘an extremely vile Russian strike.’ Ukrainian media say the Russian strikes hit a fuel storage facility in the exclusion zone.”

* Ohio’s latest mass shooting: “Gunfire erupted Saturday near a busy street festival in Ohio, wounding at least 12 people and sending some eventgoers scrambling for cover while others rushed to help the victims. No suspects were in custody hours afterward, Toledo Deputy Police Chief Joe Heffernan said, and officials urged people who were at the festival to come forward with any photos or videos on their phones for possible leads.”

* The administration’s latest legal loss: “A federal judge in Massachusetts on Monday struck down the $100,000 fee imposed last year on H-1B visas for highly skilled workers. In a 42-page ruling in response to a lawsuit brought by 20 Democratic states, Judge Leo Sorokin, an Obama-appointee, agreed with the plaintiffs who argued the fee imposed by President Donald Trump’s executive order in September amounted to an ‘unauthorized tax,’ as opposed to a ‘regulatory payment,’ as the Trump administration contended.”

* I can think of a certain president who probably won’t care for this: “A new lawsuit seeks to halt the ‘UFC Freedom 250’ event that is scheduled for this coming weekend, calling it ‘deeply corrupt’ and arguing that it runs afoul of federal regulations. The plaintiffs are activist Susan Douglas and Vietnam War veteran Paul Romano.”

* I meant to mention this scary discarded plan on Friday: “The Trump administration had plans to classify 2.7 million living people — including some U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents — as dead as part of its immigration enforcement efforts, according to a former senior Social Security executive.”

* An effort worth watching: “Senate Democrats on Thursday urged the Trump administration to halt production of a commemorative 250th anniversary solid gold coin that would bear the president’s image, citing concerns that some of the U.S. Mint’s gold could have links to foreign cartels.”

* This case was always a long shot, and for now, it’s no more: “A judge in Washington on Friday tossed a lawsuit filed by the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts against a jazz musician who canceled a performance at the venue’s annual Christmas Eve concert last year after the center’s board added President Trump’s name to the building.”

See you tomorrow.

The post Monday’s Mini-Report, 6.8.26 appeared first on MS NOW.

Donald Trump spent much of last week railing against California’s recent statewide primaries, baselessly insisting the slow process of tallying ballots must reflect a “rigged” system. This week, the president picked up where he left off.

In the early hours of Monday morning, he used his social media platform to argue there’s “no way” a candidate he liked has fallen behind in response to an updated vote count. Hours later, he emphasized the same point, insisting it’s “not possible” for his preferred candidate in Los Angeles’ mayoral race to lose ground as more ballots are counted.

None of that made logical sense, but it is part of an exasperating effort to undermine public confidence. During his latest “Meet the Press” appearance, the president was even more aggressive on the issue, making all kinds of unfounded allegations. When NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked him to substantiate his claims with evidence, Trump replied, “All I have to do is look.”

When the host explained that that wasn’t evidence, the Republican added, “And I listen to people.” (He didn’t say who, what they were saying or why he found these unnamed people to be more credible than official election results.)

The problem, however, is not just hysterical conspiracy-mongering, all of which is demonstrably incorrect, from a president who has long railed against election results he doesn’t like. Just as important as what Trump is saying is what Team Trump is doing. NBC News reported:

A federal prosecutor in California said Friday that authorities have launched investigations tied to the state’s recent elections following President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of fraud.

Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said Friday morning on X that his office was pursuing “multiple election fraud investigations” alongside the FBI, without providing details.

To date, no credible fraud allegations have been made, so it’s not at all clear what the federal prosecutors in California intend to investigate.

Indeed, over the weekend, state Attorney General Rob Bonta told MS NOW there is no basis for the Trump appointee’s probe.

“There are no details, there is no specifics, there is no specific allegation of any individualized act of voter fraud,” the California Democrat said. “And every count, recount, hand count, court case and audit has shown time and time again — not just in California, but throughout this country — that there is no widespread voter fraud.”

Bonta added that claims of voter fraud are “only a figment of the imagination of Trump and others who follow that conspiracy theory.”

What I’m most curious about, however, is what happens when Essayli and his team look for evidence to bolster Trump’s accusations, only to come up short. Do they tell the truth and admit the election results were legitimate, inviting partisan rage from the right? Or do they bring baseless charges, inviting pushback from the courts?

The post Trump’s DOJ pretends California election conspiracy theories are worth taking seriously appeared first on MS NOW.

When the American job market struggled badly during Donald Trump’s first term, the White House not only struggled to come up with an explanation, but it also struggled to come up with anything to say at all.

The reticence was understandable, though embarrassing: The president promised to deliver an economic “boom” immediately after taking office, and he failed spectacularly, delivering the worst job market since the Great Recession (excluding the pandemic).

The White House was in a far better mood late last week, however, when the public learned that the economy gained 172,000 jobs in May, extending a three-month winning streak and getting closer to the kind of robust growth Americans saw during Joe Biden’s presidency.

But as the political and financial sectors digest the latest data, there’s a trend that’s worth dwelling on.

In the first four months of Trump’s second term, as 2025 was just getting underway, job growth slowly improved, and over the three months leading up to the unveiling of the White House’s trade tariffs agenda, the economy averaged monthly job growth of roughly 72,000.

Then the White House-imposed “Liberation Day” arrived, launching an avoidable and unnecessary trade war. In the 10 months that followed, the U.S. job market, on average, lost 4,900 jobs per month. That’s not a typo: For the first time in several years, the economy actually started losing jobs in a sustained way.

In February, to the hysterical outrage of the president, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down his tariffs agenda. In the three months that followed, the economy added a combined 565,000 jobs — more than quadruple the total for the entirety of 2025 — for an average of more than 188,000 jobs per month.

Maybe that’s a coincidence, but I rather doubt it. To recap:

• Average monthly job growth in the immediate run-up to Trump’s tariffs: 72,000
• Average monthly job growth during Trump’s tariffs: -4,900
• Average monthly job growth in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s tariffs: 188,000

What this suggests is that if Trump wanted an economic success story, all he had to do was nothing. He inherited an economy firing on all cylinders, which was the envy of the world. If he had spent every day golfing, the job market almost certainly would have continued to hum along quite nicely.

But Trump couldn’t leave well enough alone, choosing instead to ignore literally everything we know about Economics 101 and imposing illegal tariffs that did economic, political and diplomatic harm to his own country.

Trump has repeatedly railed against the justices who ruled against him in the tariffs case, including two he appointed to the high court. The latest job numbers, however, suggest he owes them a fruit basket, not condemnation.

It’s something to keep in mind as the White House eyes new efforts to impose a fresh round of trade tariffs.

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All Donald Trump had to do was nothing. A group of lawmakers, hoping to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, crafted a bipartisan solution that appeared likely to advance ahead of Friday’s deadline. If the president simply let the process play out, the White House’s position was on track to succeed.

But Trump wasn’t content to do nothing. Instead, with time running out, he announced last week that Bill Pulte, his highly controversial director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, would serve as the acting director of national intelligence, sending shockwaves through political and intelligence circles.

Pulte has literally no background in intelligence or national security, failing to meet the statutory qualifications for the office, and he’s earned a reputation as a hyperpartisan hatchet man who has routinely abused his office to target the White House’s perceived political foes. Complicating matters, MS NOW reported last fall that a federal grand jury investigated whether Pulte illegally shared sensitive information with unauthorized people.

Democrats let Republicans know the president’s move imperiled the FISA extension, at which point Trump made matters worse, telling reporters he expected his unqualified loyalist to “find out some things about the rigged elections.”

On Friday, the president went even further still. The Wall Street Journal reported:

President Trump said he wants Bill Pulte, his incoming acting director of national intelligence, to begin firing a large number of employees as part of a shake-up of the U.S. intelligence community. […]

Trump, in the interview, argued that Pulte’s acting status is an asset. “You’re less shackled,” he said. “It sort of gives you more power, you know, for a somewhat limited period of time.”

So from the president’s perspective, his acting DNI, who apparently didn’t have the security clearance needed to do the job, should quickly start firing U.S. intelligence professionals without having to worry too much about the “shackles” that come with congressional oversight or accountability.

This did not go unnoticed on Capitol Hill.

Politico reported that several Democrats who had been inclined to help Republicans pass a long-term FISA extension are now saying they are not interested in cooperating until Pulte is removed.

Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told Politico, “You just couldn’t have thrown an uglier wrench into the process,” adding that Democrats are now running away from the bipartisan deal.

Soon after, the Connecticut Democrat appeared on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” telling host Margaret Brennan, “The president needs to sober up and realize that this appointment is arguably, in the basket of awful appointments he has made, this is probably the worst and most dangerous.”

Four days remain before the FISA deadline. Watch this space.

The post As Democrats slam Pulte as ‘dangerous,’ Trump expands acting DNI’s portfolio appeared first on MS NOW.

As last week got underway, Donald Trump used his social media platform to take swipe at, of all people, communists. “Communists always do well with the Voters or, as they would say, THE PEOPLE, in the Early Years!” the president wrote for reasons that were unclear. “But, in the end, the Country, State, or City, GOES TO HELL!”

He added soon after, “Has anyone ever seen a Happy Communist?”

With this rhetorical question still rattling around the algorithm, it was rather ironic to see the Republican end the week calling for a government stake in yet another private industry. The New York Times reported:

President Trump told reporters on Friday that he would soon meet with artificial intelligence companies to discuss partnerships that would give the United States government a stake in the burgeoning industry.

“There’s so much money and it’s so big,” Trump said, according to a pool report from his flight to Wisconsin on Air Force One. Trump added that in the deals he envisions “the American public essentially becomes a partner” in the growth of A.I.

Asked which private AI companies he was eyeing, the president replied, “All of them. All the big ones.”

The comment came just days after independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a self-described socialist, wrote an opinion piece for the Times touting a congressional proposal he had introduced that would “give the public a direct ownership stake in the largest A.I. companies in our country.” The proposal was predictably panned soon after by the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal as “the road to AI state socialism.”

It was around this same time that Trump not only endorsed the same idea, he also told reporters that there was some overlap between his economic vision and the Vermont socialist’s.

Trump: Bernie Sanders lost, you know that I got many of his people — they voted for me. Because, as far as economics is concerned, we have certain things that are not that far apart pic.twitter.com/ZMaks3WS2Z

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 5, 2026

The debate can and should continue about the merits of such a policy, but it’s hard not to notice the familiarity of the circumstances. On the one hand, Trump seems to like condemning those who disagree with him as communists. On the other hand, he also seems oddly interested in having the government taking ownership of parts of a variety of private industries.

In fact, late last year, after the government became the largest shareholder in a company developing extreme ultraviolet lithography tools that are seen as key to the development of semiconductors, my MS NOW colleague Ja’han Jones noted that this extended the Republican administration’s “socialist — if not blatantly authoritarian — trend of making the government a stakeholder in supposed ‘free market’ enterprises.”

Indeed, Jones added, “This trend stands in clear contrast with an administration that publicly decries socialism and a conservative movement that has labeled things like free buses and government-owned grocery stores as anathema to private industry and the American way of life.”

There’s no reason to assume the list won’t keep growing. The president, by his own admission, isn’t eyeing stakes only in AI companies, he and his team have also raised the prospect of seeking ownership stakes in oil companies, pharmaceutical companies and, in one recent instance, the rare-earth metals industry.

This is the same Republican president who’s also spoken publicly about limiting private companies’ profits, dictating private industries’ prices and cutting salaries for some private sector executives.

The Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip published a provocative analysis on this last summer, noting that Trump’s vision doesn’t quite constitute “socialism,” because it more closely resembles “state capitalism, a hybrid between socialism and capitalism in which the state guides the decisions of nominally private enterprises.”

During the 2024 race, when many business leaders lined up behind the GOP ticket, they likely thought Republican rule would mean corporate tax breaks and fewer regulations. And while those assumptions have proved correct — the White House has delivered corporate tax breaks and freed polluters from regulatory burdens — those same business leaders have also ended up with more than they probably bargained for.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

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Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.

* In Texas’ closely watched Senate race, Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton is running despite an avalanche of scandals, including the fact that Texas’ Republican-led state House impeached him over alleged bribery, abuse of power and obstruction of justice.

The good news for Paxton is the Republican-led state Senate ultimately acquitted him. The bad news for Paxton is Dan Cogdell, a Houston-based defense lawyer who represented the Texas attorney general in both the impeachment trial and a long-running securities fraud case, told NOTUS in a statement that his former client “has lost sight of his core mission, which is to represent the people of Texas.”

Making matters worse, Paxton’s former defense lawyer, after getting to know Paxton and reviewing the evidence against him, endorsed his opponent, James Talarico, and contributed to the Democratic state lawmaker’s 2026 campaign.

* Graham Platner’s Democratic Senate campaign in Maine has confronted a series of damaging allegations — and this week, he’ll face voters for the first time in the state’s Democratic Senate primary. Technically, Gov. Janet Mills will be on the ballot despite the incumbent suspending her candidacy in late April, and there’s growing interest in whether Platner’s local Democratic detractors will turn out to register a protest vote against him.

* Speaking of Maine, both parties are also poised to hold gubernatorial primary elections, and many of the top candidates will have familiar last names: Among the top Democratic contenders are Angus King III (the son of Sen. Angus King) and Hannah Pingree (the daughter of Rep. Chellie Pingree). On the Republican side, there’s also a crowded field, which includes Jonathan Bush, George H. W. Bush’s nephew.

* As California continues to count its votes from last week’s primaries, we now know that Xavier Becerra, a former Democratic congressman who served as Joe Biden’s health secretary, has advanced to the general election in the state’s gubernatorial race. It’s not yet clear who his rival will be.

* Sen. Lindsey Graham is generally seen as the odds-on favorite in South Carolina’s Republican primary, but with one day remaining before the intraparty contest, it’s worth emphasizing that the GOP incumbent has already spent an astounding $27 million on his re-election campaign. As HuffPost noted, his Republican rivals combined have spent less than a fifth of that total.

* In Michigan’s closely watched Senate primary, Democratic leaders have made little effort to hide their concerns that Abdul El-Sayed might struggle as a general election candidate, but the former state health official nevertheless picked up a key endorsement over the weekend from the United Auto Workers.

The post Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 6.8.26: Paxton’s impeachment lawyer endorses Talarico in Texas appeared first on MS NOW.

A couple of months after taking the reins at the Department of Health and Human Services, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sat down with Dr. Jonathan LaPook, CBS News’ chief medical correspondent, who pressed the Cabinet secretary on some of his most controversial decisions. RFK Jr., however, repeatedly said he wasn’t aware of the actions LaPook was describing.

It was an embarrassing moment, but it wasn’t an isolated incident. About a month later, during back-to-back appearances before House and Senate committees, the HHS secretary ran into a similar problem: Lawmakers kept asking Kennedy about steps he and his department had taken, and he kept responding with answers such as “When did I do that?”

It reached the point at which Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington eventually told RFK Jr. that she wasn’t sure whether he was “the one making decisions” at the department he ostensibly leads.

All of this came to mind while reading The New York Times’ new reporting on the way Kennedy manages HHS — or, in his case, fails to manage HHS. From the article:

Mr. Kennedy has shown little interest in managing the details of work in his department, according to multiple colleagues. Instead, they say, he is single-mindedly focused on his top priorities, including food recommendations and pesticide exposures, and hunting for evidence to support his long-held beliefs that vaccines are harmful.

Deeply mistrustful of career civil officials, the secretary has surrounded himself with a close circle of handpicked advisers and stacked agencies with political appointees aligned with his views. While major posts have sat vacant and a wave of veteran health experts and scientists have departed, Mr. Kennedy has remained isolated from much of the department’s top staff.

The Times’ reporting (which has not been independently verified by MS NOW) was based on accounts from a dozen people at HHS, including many who have had direct contact with him as secretary, who agreed that Kennedy rarely engages with department employees or members of Congress.

Even his work hours have proven controversial: When he’s in the department’s headquarters in the nation’s capital, he “keeps a low profile” after arriving around 10 a.m., before departing by 4 p.m.

The reporting is striking, but it isn’t too surprising. When Donald Trump nominated Kennedy, the list of reasons not to confirm him was long, though it emphasized his lengthy record of weird and conspiratorial beliefs related to public health, medicine and science.

But there was a related practical concern that in hindsight probably received too little attention: The Department of Health and Human Services is a massive federal bureaucracy, which has a direct impact on the well-being of hundreds of millions of Americans.

Even putting aside his unscientific vision, Kennedy simply didn’t have the requisite skills, background or experience to lead a Cabinet agency of this size or importance. Indeed, by all appearances, he didn’t even express any meaningful interest in being a managerial technocrat.

RFK Jr. is an activist and an advocate for his discredited conspiracy theories. Of course he’s disengaged as a secretary, preferring instead to focus his energies on his pet causes. Kennedy has been put in a position for which he was wholly unprepared and ill suited.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

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Before Donald Trump abruptly ended his latest “Meet the Press” interview, NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked the president to reconcile his pre-election assurances about not starting new wars with his decision to start a war with Iran. The host started to ask, “Did you break that promise to the American …” when the Republican interrupted to say, “No.”

Welker pressed forward, adding, “So you’re saying you didn’t break your promise. And yet, Mr. President, in your first term, you held to that promise, and it was so fundamental to who you were as a candidate, to a first-term president. What changed, because you insisted ‘no new wars’?”

Trump replied, “First of all, I didn’t guarantee no war. Why would I have built the strongest military in the world?” (As the exchange continued, the president tried to defend his position by referring to the stock market and then pivoted to attacking Welker’s professional integrity.)

Let’s not brush past the rhetorical question the president posed. Indeed, the Republican seemed to suggest he had increased defense spending precisely because he intended to go to war, which is quite an admission. It also reflects the mindset of someone desperate to rebrand the Department of Defense as the “Department of War.”

But the underlying point is just as important, if not more so, since Trump’s record is unambiguous.

Trump: "I didn't guarantee no war."Trump guaranteeing no more wars:

— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) 2026-06-07T16:26:26.795Z

Throughout the 2024 election cycle, Trump and his team went to bizarre lengths to present the Republican as the “peace” candidate who would “expel the warmongers” from the federal government and lead as a “peacemaker,” while rascally Democrats prepared to lead us into war. Common sense might have suggested any thinking adult would know better than to believe such obvious nonsense, but some voters accepted these absurdities at face value and cast their ballots accordingly, optimistic that the GOP nominee would pursue a foreign policy rooted in restraint.

In other words, many Americans believed Trump when he told voters, among other things, “I’m going to be the one that keeps you out of war”; “we’re not going to have war in the Middle East”; and “they said, ‘You will start a war.’ I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”

Under the circumstances, the president could at least try to make the case to the nation that despite what he said on the campaign trail, he concluded it was in the nation’s best interest to go to war anyway. To be sure, that wouldn’t be an easy sell under the circumstances, but it would at least be an honest response when pressed on his pre-election promises.

But that’s not the path the Republican has chosen. Instead, the candidate who promised not to launch a war has been reduced to “I didn’t guarantee ‘no war,’” as if we don’t remember the events of two years ago.

I’m reminded of a George Orwell quote from “1984” that I emphasized in my book about GOP efforts to rewrite recent history: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

The post On campaign promises about foreign wars, Trump rewrites recent history appeared first on MS NOW.

With Donald Trump in the White House, one of the most important times of the week is Friday night. That’s when the president and his team have an unnerving habit of announcing news they hope the public won’t notice.

Take this past Friday night, for example. The New York Times reported:

President Trump has pardoned Stephen E. Buyer, a former Republican representative from Indiana who was convicted of insider trading in 2023.

The pardon for Mr. Buyer was endorsed by current and former Republican lawmakers, including Senators Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and former House Speaker John Boehner, according to the proclamation, which was dated June 4.

Buyer’s congressional career came to an unfortunate end in 2010, when the Indiana Republican faced allegations that he used a scholarship fund as a front to travel to pricey vacation locales to hobnob with donors. In fact, the fund reportedly never awarded a single scholarship.

Almost immediately after the controversy came to light, Buyer announced his retirement, although he said his decision was related to his wife’s health.

After leaving Capitol Hill and beginning a private consulting career, Buyer’s troubles managed to get worse, and in 2023 he was sentenced to 22 months in prison stemming from four counts of securities fraud related to a pair of insider trading schemes in 2018 and 2019.

Trump pardoned him anyway, which wasn’t exactly surprising, given his track record: The incumbent president appears to have a real soft spot for politicians accused of — and in some cases, convicted of — assorted felonies.

In the president’s first term, for example, he pardoned seven former Republican members of Congress, each of whom had been convicted on corruption charges: New York’s Chris Collins, California’s Duncan Hunter, Texas’ Steve Stockman, Arizona’s Rick Renzi, North Carolina’s Robin Hayes, Michigan’s Mark Siljander and California’s Randall “Duke” Cunningham.

In his second term, Trump has picked up where he left off, issuing pardons to many politicians who were indicted for or convicted of corruption, or both. The list includes Rod Blagojevich, Illinois’ former Democratic governor, but mostly it’s Republicans who have benefited: former Reps. Michael Grimm and George Santos of New York, former Gov. John Rowland of Connecticut, former state House Speaker Glen Casada of Tennessee, former state Sen. Brian Kelsey of Tennessee, former Culpeper County Sheriff Scott Jenkins of Virginia and former Las Vegas City Council member Michele Fiore of Nevada.

As outlandish as this might seem, Trump has now extended clemency to nearly all of the Republican congressmen convicted of felonies in the 21st century. (The most notable exception: Dennis Hastert, the longest-serving Republican House speaker in American history, who pleaded guilty to illegal hush money payments to those he’d sexually assaulted.)

Let’s also not forget that Trump’s Justice Department has abandoned the criminal case against a former Republican congressman who’d already been found guilty of corruption by a jury, while simultaneously abandoning a corruption investigation targeting an incumbent Republican congressman.

The message to politicians convicted or accused of corruption couldn’t be clearer: You have a friend in the Oval Office.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

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Every year, there’s an event in France to honor the anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy, and every year, a prominent U.S. official speaks at the commemoration ceremony to honor those who helped save the world.

The ceremonies are never controversial. This year, however, was an exception.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration decided to dispatch Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to speak at this year’s event, and there was pushback before he even arrived in France. A local group in Normandy issued a statement criticizing the Pentagon chief’s role at the event, arguing, “This individual carries values contrary to democracy, human rights and peace.”

Soon after, the former Fox News host delivered his comments, at which point things went from bad to worse. NBC News reported:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used a speech marking the anniversary of D-Day in France on Saturday, commemorating 82 years since the 1944 push to liberate Nazi-occupied Europe, to lambast what he described as another “invasion” of Europe’s shores.

“Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies,” Hegseth said in a speech at the Normandy American Cemetery in ​Colleville-sur-Mer. “Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion, or is ​it too late? I pray not, and I believe not.”

On D-Day, the lesson was supposed to be alliance, sacrifice, and the defense of democracy. Hegseth turns that memory into an anti-migrant “invasion” riff.

— The Steady State (@thesteadystate.org) 2026-06-06T23:00:03.785Z

That Hegseth has an anti-immigrant vision is unsurprising, but context is everything. This wasn’t CPAC or a conservative media interview, these were prewritten remarks at a D-Day commemoration ceremony.

A day later, even Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, the former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, conceded during an interview on ABC’s “This Week” that Hegseth’s remarks were “inappropriate.”

The Texan, who’s retiring at the end of his term, added, “Look, there’s a time and a place for these issues of immigration. That was not the day, not the anniversary of D-Day. I think out of respect to the veterans, and myself being the son of a D-Day veteran, those remarks were out of place. I think it should have been about their sacrifice, their service to their country, and what they did to protect the free world at a time of great peril against Nazi Germany.”

After the ceremony, a British official said of Hegseth and his remarks, “I hope he regrets it.”

Given everything we know about the defense secretary, that seems unlikely.

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