Secretary of State Marco Rubio faced a blistering broadside Tuesday from Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the FY27 State Department budget — a session that quickly turned into a referendum on the Trump administration's foreign policy record."The Trump foreign policy has become a dumpster fire," Van Hollen said at the hearing, ticking through a lengthy charge sheet: a war in Iran that has killed at least 15 U.S. service members and sent gas prices up 28% year-over-year; a UAE crypto deal that enriched the Trump family; and USAID cuts he argued enabled the current Ebola outbreak in the DRC.Van Hollen also criticized Trump's China trip, saying the president returned with nothing but "ballroom envy" — a reference to Trump's Truth Social post marveling at Chinese ballroom architecture after a summit that produced no comprehensive trade deal — while having loosened chip export restrictions to Beijing beforehand.He also zeroed in on Trump's comments about gas prices."He called high gas prices 'peanuts' and said, 'I don't think about Americans' financial situation,'" Van Hollen said at the hearing. Trump made those remarks on May 19, as national inflation hit 3.8% — a three-year high.Rubio pushed back but conceded little. When Van Hollen pressed him on whether the administration had found new evidence to justify reinstating Cuba's state sponsor of terrorism designation, Rubio replied: "Why would I need new evidence?""Because you're claiming they're a state sponsor of terrorism, suggesting they're ongoingly involved in that," Van Hollen fired back.The two also sparred over media reports that the U.S. is working with Israel to strip Jordan of its custodianship over the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex. Rubio said he'd never heard the claim discussed. "Is it a credible website?" he asked. Van Hollen said he was glad to provide it.It was not the first time the two had clashed. Last year, Van Hollen told Rubio to his face that he regretted voting to confirm him. Rubio's response: "Your regret for voting for me confirms I'm doing a good job."
At the end of this month, Tulsi Gabbard steps down as the director of national intelligence, following a bumpy 16-month tenure as our nation’s top spy. Gabbard was an unconventional fit, as a Democrat opposed to most foreign wars. In President Donald Trump’s second term, with its multiple military operations around the globe, she became […]
President Donald Trump has built his political brand on defying limits, but a series of high-profile reversals in recent days suggests that even he cannot indefinitely outrun the consequences of his most outlandish gambits.The Trump administration signaled Monday that it plans to abandon its $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization fund" following an adverse court ruling — a significant retreat on an initiative that had already sparked a revolt among Republican congressional leaders, and he beat a retreat on renaming the Kennedy Center after himself, reported CNN's Aaron Blake."In both situations, it remains up in the air precisely how much Trump has capitulated," Blake wrote. "But he’s at least telegraphing retreat. Both ideas were wild to begin with — and now the president appears to be dealing with the consequences."On the so-called slush fund, Senate Majority Leader John Thune had called on the administration to "shut it down themselves," while other GOP senators demanded the White House explicitly rule out reviving the fund in the future.The fund, created as part of a settlement resolving Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, was intended to compensate allies who claimed they were victimized by the Biden-era Justice Department. Critics — including a federal judge — questioned whether the two sides of the settlement were colluding, and the fund drew outrage when the administration acknowledged it could benefit Jan. 6 defendants who assaulted police officers.That announcement followed Trump's Friday retreat on the Kennedy Center, where he said he would transfer control back to Congress after a judge ruled that plastering his name on a building memorializing a dead president was illegal. Trump had previously purged the center's board to install loyalists before the renaming — a move that a court found violated federal law.The two reversals fit a pattern. Earlier this year, Trump abandoned his push to seize Greenland amid bipartisan opposition, and his plan to fund a lavish White House ballroom with taxpayer money was stripped from a spending bill after Republican panic over the optics."In all of these cases, Trump was asking the courts and/or Republicans to sign off on what seemed to be impossible requests," Blake wrote. "He was asking them to stomach something drastic because he’s Trump, and they’re supposed to do what he wants.""But when his wild gambits push the envelope too far — and increasingly seem to jeopardize the GOP’s chances in November — they reinforce that Trump isn’t the unrestrained leader of his political movement that he’d like to be," Blake added.Trump, for his part, shows no sign of moderating his ambitions — his appointment Tuesday of a controversial housing official as acting director of national intelligence suggested the envelope-pushing is far from over.
Last week, the broadcasting world was shocked by the sudden firing of two correspondents and key production staff at the legacy news program 60 Minutes. Now, the figure behind the shakeup — CBS News chief and MAGA media personality Bari Weiss — is being accused of attempting to “sabotage” the show for the benefit of President Donald Trump. While such accusations may be expected from liberals, even conservative voices are slamming the “shameful” decision. “There are many words that can be used to describe 60 Minutes: Venerable. August. Excellent. Important. Beloved,” writes longtime Republican strategist Steve Schmidt. “But since the purchase of CBS News by the Ellison family, another word belongs on the list: Sabotaged.”As Schmidt suggests, under its new ownership, CBS News — and as a result, 60 Minutes, which is part of CBS — has been reworked in a way that critics say is a blatant effort to support Trump’s political project. After its purchase, Weiss — an opinion journalist with no experience in broadcast news — was appointed to helm the organization, and since then she’s raised many eyebrows with her decisions. The latest involves the firing of anchors Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega and executive producer Tanya Simon, who were replaced by Nick Bilton, who, like Weiss, also has no background in TV news. This has prompted no shortage of outrage, including from those on the right. Says former Fox host Megyn Kelly, Weiss is “loathed” for her actions. And according to Schmidt, the program has been “assaulted with malicious intent by new corporate leadership that appears determined to gut one of the last remaining institutions in American journalism in order to satisfy a corrupt political arrangement with Donald Trump.”“The destruction isn’t accidental,” asserts Schmidt. “It’s deliberate. It’s strategic. It’s ideological. It’s transactional.” As he noted, 60 Minutes has long been known as a serious program where facts and credibility mattered. “That is what is being destroyed for no reason beyond the insatiability of Trump’s ego.”Shortly after the firings were announced, it was revealed that longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley had subsequently laid into Weiss and Bilton, accusing the former of trying to “murder” the show and arguing that the latter has “slender” qualifications for his new job. “Scott Pelley represents the tradition that built the program,” says Schmidt, explaining that he got to know him while staffing for Senator John McCain, whom Pelley interviewed. “There was no performance. There was no ideological hysteria. There was no narcissism. There was no branding exercise. There was no desperate attempt to become the center of the story. There was journalism. There was rigor. There was seriousness.” Schmidt notes that while Pelley has never made his politics obvious, “The same obviously can’t be said for Bari Weiss.”“Her ideological agenda radiates from every pore of her public conduct,” Schmidt claims. “Her loyalties plainly do not include CBS News, 60 Minutes, institutional integrity or the preservation of a shared factual reality. She’s not a steward. She’s a vandal. Additionally, she’s staggeringly incompetent.”Schmidt argues that while many viewers have tuned into 60 Minutes for decades, watching with a trust that was “earned through excellence, not algorithms,” and “through reporting, not branding,” “now Bari Weiss has effectively stolen something Americans love in order to help deliver profits to the son of one of the richest men in the world, while accommodating the demands of an American fascist who despises the First Amendment, and views journalism as an enemy to be subdued.”According to Schmidt, “America is living through a period during which many of its most important institutions are being hollowed out from within by weak people desperate for proximity to power, and terrified of losing money.” Furthermore, “What’s happening at CBS News isn’t merely a business story. It’s a warning story. It’s a story about how institutions collapse. Not all at once, but piece by piece. Compromise by compromise. Coward by coward.”“Americans should understand clearly: when journalism dies, corruption flourishes,” concludes Schmidt. “And that’s why what is happening right now at CBS News should outrage every American who still believes truth matters in a free society.”
Donald Trump’s attempt to insert Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHA) Director Bill Pulte as acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) on Tuesday could run into a legal roadblock according to MS NJOW’s Ken Dilanian, with Republican lawmakers also questioning whether he should hold the job.According to a report from the New York Times, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), James Lankford (R-OK) and Susan Collins (R-ME) are questioning his stunning lack of experience in intelligence matters.As Dilanian pointed out, that lack of experience runs afoul of the law that created the intelligence gathering department after the 9/11 attacks.Speaking with host Anna Cabrera, he explained, “This is really an incredible development. Bill Pulte is an investment guy, he's a real estate guy. He has not only no intelligence experience, [but] no foreign policy experience. And we should remember there is a provision in the law; this job was created after 9/11, remember, to knit together strands of intelligence and connect the dots and there's a provision in the authorizing legislation that requires that the person holding this job has significant, substantial intelligence experience.”“When Tulsi Gabbard was nominated for this role, a lot of people believed that she didn't fit the bill, but at least she had been a military officer and a member of Congress,” he recalled. “I don't even know if Bill Pulte has a security clearance right now. And this role, this job, this person gets access to some of the most sensitive intelligence that the U.S. government collects. The biggest secrets, just incredible things, sensitive compartmented programs, need-to-know things that only a handful of people in the government know — and now Bill Pulte will know them.” - YouTube youtu.be
Gov. Mikie Sherrill blames out-of-state agitators for Newark's Delaney Hall unrest, but critics point to a lack of police presence before clashes.
The number of young children without health insurance in the US rose sharply between 2022 and 2024 and is set to continue surging as the Trump administration implements work reporting requirements and other changes expected to kick millions—adults and kids—off Medicaid.A report published Monday by the Center for Children and Families (CCF) at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy found that nearly 220,000 additional children under the age of six were uninsured in 2024, a 23% increase from 2022. During that period, the total share of young children without health insurance rose to 5.3%—the highest rate in almost a decade.The new report argues the rising uninsured rate among young children is “at least in part” attributable to the unwinding of pandemic-era protections that allowed people to remain on Medicaid without undergoing routine eligibility checks. The analysis found that Texas, Florida, and Georgia accounted for more than half of the increase in young children without insurance between 2022 and 2024.Elisabeth Wright Burak and Aubrianna Osorio, researchers at CCF, wrote that “these data provide a major warning sign for what’s to come, as states grapple with the onslaught of Medicaid cuts from [the 2025 Republican budget law] and new coverage restrictions.”“One in 4 children in the US have at least one parent who was born abroad,” the researchers wrote. “For these children, the vast majority of whom are citizens, harsh anti-immigration policies and rhetoric are already leading to missed doctor appointments, on top of the ongoing fear, uncertainty, and overall stress that can compromise healthy development of young children. Fears of safety and separation have made more parents afraid to enroll their eligible, citizen children in programs like Medicaid and [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program], exposing children and families to additional financial risk and food insecurity.”“Many more parents of young children enrolled in Medicaid themselves will be at higher risk of losing coverage as work reporting requirements and added red tape come along in 2027,” they added. “We know as parents lose coverage, their children are also at grave risk of losing access to health care through the ‘unwelcome mat’ effect.”CCF’s report came as the Trump administration rolled out a new rule that will dictate how states implement Medicaid work reporting requirements included in the 2025 Republican budget law, which contains around $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade.Advocates warned the rule will result in millions of people, including many children, losing coverage by creating onerous bureaucratic barriers to obtaining and keeping Medicaid coverage. CCF estimated last week that, as of April 2026, roughly 2 million fewer children were enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program compared to January 2025, the start of President Donald Trump’s second White House term.“This is terrible news because when child enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP goes down, the child uninsured rate goes up,” wrote Joan Alker, CCF’s executive director. “And the child uninsured rate was already going up when President Trump took office, yet we have heard nothing about this from them. Federal officials should be scrambling to figure out the root cause of this coverage loss for children as income eligibility levels did not change and the unemployment rate has been inching upward since President Trump took office.”
'I know your staff wrote up this cute statement for your TikTok video, but it's not true'
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that any new nuclear deal with Iran would have to go far beyond the Obama-era JCPOA, arguing that agreement failed to stop Tehran from building up its enrichment capabilities.