GOP's primed for primary season payback on Trump's most ambitious, controversial policy
Senate Democrats plan to kill Trump's $2 billion anti-weaponization fund as GOP dissent grows and a reconciliation vote-a-rama approaches this week.

Tina Peters—the Trump-supporting, election-denying former Colorado county election clerk found guilty of tampering with voting machines—is now free.Peters was freed from prison on Monday after Democratic Colorado Governor Jared Polis granted her clemency and reduced her sentence just weeks earlier. Peters was originally sentenced to nine years in prison for conspiring to publicize the voting machine records in Mesa County, turning all the cameras off while allowing fellow election denier Conan Hayes to copy, photograph, and download information in an effort to prove President Trump’s absurd claims of election fraud in 2020. Polis’s decision to cut short her sentence angered his local party, even leading them to censure him. Now, he claims that he “concluded that her sentence was simply too long.” After the backlash, he appeared on a party Zoom call with black tape over his mouth. His fellow Colorado Democrats weren’t amused then, and certainly aren’t now. “The Governor’s grant of clemency to Tina Peters is an affront to our democracy, the people of Colorado, and election officials across the country,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in a statement. “It sends a dangerous message about accountability for those who would attack elections. Peters’ release also will embolden the election denial movement; since the grant of clemency, she has continued to spread election falsehoods and conspiracies.”Peters has become something of a political prisoner for those on the MAGA right, especially those in the deepest depths of QAnon. Trump had been pressuring Polis to release Peters for months, and Vice President JD Vance recently suggested that Peters should get a taxpayer-funded payout from Trump’s “Anti-Weaponization Fund” for those who felt wronged or targeted by the Biden administration. Meanwhile, the first thing Peters did upon her release on Monday was go on Steve Bannon’s podcast, double down on her claims of election fraud, and ask Trump for a job. NEW: Tina Peters, newly freed by Colorado Gov Jared Polis (D), begins her MAGA media tour by telling Steve Bannon that Democrats are cheating on elections and she was imprisoned as retribution for exposing voting machines that flip votes. pic.twitter.com/KCC9q22fOZ— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) June 1, 2026“I would like for President Trump—I’d like to be more involved in prison reform,” Peters said, if “that’s the way the Lord leads me.”This story has been updated.
Senate Democrats plan to kill Trump's $2 billion anti-weaponization fund as GOP dissent grows and a reconciliation vote-a-rama approaches this week.
According to satellite imagery and video analysis, Iran has attacked at least 20 American military facilities across the Middle East, with some experts estimating as many as 28 bases targeted. The report by BBC Verify significantly exceeds public U.S. acknowledgment of the attacks. Strikes have hit key installations across eight countries: Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Bahrain, and Oman, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. Notable losses include three THAAD anti-missile batteries, each costing approximately $1 billion, and forming a complex regional defense network that cannot be quickly replaced. At Prince Sultan Airbase in Saudi Arabia alone, 42 aircraft have been destroyed or damaged since February, including F-15s, F-35s, Reaper drones, and an A-10 attack plane worth up to $700 million. Iran's tactics evolved from mass missile barrages to precise strikes targeting high-value assets. The Pentagon declined to dispute the BBC's findings, while the U.S. requested satellite imagery restrictions on the region.Watch the video below. Your browser does not support the video tag.
Russia is now bombing NATO countries, and it appears that President Donald Trump is asleep at the wheel. Writing on Monday, MS NOW producer Steve Benen sounded the alarm about an incoming disaster visible on the horizon. A Wall Street Journal report last week quoted several world leaders in Europe as saying that they fear Russian President Vladimir Putin is about to go beyond Ukraine and look at the countries he can go to war with next in an effort to grow the former Soviet Union back to its original borders. "Russian drones have repeatedly crashed without causing casualties along the Danube River border between Romania and Ukraine since 2023. But the drone crash on Friday, on the roof of a residential compound in the port city, Galati, sharply escalated tensions between NATO and Moscow," The New York Times reported.On Friday, a Russian drone hit an apartment building. The incident was condemned by world leaders, and even Trump's ally and NATO ambassador, Matthew Whitaker, reaffirmed the U.S.'s commitment to NATO, promising that the U.S. was ready to defend Europe. Trump, by contrast, has remained silent. It's unusual, Benen said, because he loves to beat his chest and project strength. Hitting a building in Romania isn't merely a one-off. Benen explained that it is a pattern with Russia. Last fall, Russian drones entered Polish airspace. NATO pilots shot them down. Then, Russian pilots violated Estonian airspace.Benen added that none of these "tests" happened under non-Trump administrations. It makes Trump's "weakness toward Vladimir Putin ... especially humiliating," he wrote. The GOP has similarly been quiet. "In recent weeks, the Republican president has repeatedly criticized NATO as a 'paper tiger' because its members chose not to participate in his misguided war with Iran, but he has offered no comparable criticisms of Russia for incidents inside NATO member nations," Benen closed.
President Donald Trump is committed to rewriting reality when it comes to a certain "bald-faced lie," one political scholar wrote for The Hill, and it is one that is putting him on a collision course with his own party.John Kenneth White is a professor emeritus of political science at the Catholic University of America, and on Monday, he published a piece for The Hill arguing that Trump has lost "all sense of reality" when it comes to the Jan. 6 Capitol Riots — and it is proving to be a massive headache for Republicans staring down tight races in the coming midterms."For years, President Trump and his fellow Republicans have sought to recast the events of that day. Trump called it a “day of love,'" White wrote. "Recently, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) told reporters it had been a 'self-made riot by people who hate Trump.' Today, the price of admission into Trump’s Republican Party is to accept the bald-faced lie that the 2020 election was stolen, and the violence of Jan. 6 either did not happen or was staged."He added later: "But Trump’s version of history is running afoul of Republicans who fear voter retribution is coming this November. After Trump sued his own government for leaking information about his tax returns, the Justice Department announced a $1.776 billion settlement. The money, Trump said, is to be paid to people who were 'really treated brutally by a system that was so corrupt with corrupt people running it,' among whom he likely intends to include Jan. 6 rioters."This plan, White noted, was a bridge too far even for Republicans, many of whom "demurred" at the idea. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said that he was "not a big fan," of the fund, while Rep. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin called it a "galactic blunder." This face-off between Trump and the GOP comes as economic matters are set to be the defining issue of the midterms, and Republicans sweat about the president's increasing obsession with frivolous and costly ideas at the expense of actual policy wins."Trump’s intentional forgetfulness about the violence of Jan. 6 and his role in it is akin to white Southerners’ rewriting of history after the Civil War," White continued. "Following the Confederacy’s defeat, the South recast the Civil War as a noble cause in defense of states’ rights. By the early 20th century, nearly 700 Confederate statues were erected throughout the South and the history books were whitewashed to make the conflict primarily about states’ rights, not slavery."He added later: "Trump has adopted an even more aggressive stance when it comes to rewriting the history of Jan. 6. This month, the Justice Department began scrubbing its website of any references to the insurrection. The department said it is, 'proud to reverse' its 'weaponization under the Biden administration,' and 'will do everything in our power to make whole those who were persecuted for political purposes,' including removing 'partisan propaganda' from the Justice Department’s website."
The Trump Justice Department's criminal case against former FBI Director James Comey got a worrisome sign on Monday — and it wasn't a development in that case itself, but one in an unrelated case involving the National Park Service.According to Politico, U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss has issued a two-week restraining order prohibiting the park service from doing anything to interfere with a protest by the liberal group Accountability Now USA, which has for months been protesting President Donald Trump outside a federal courthouse near the National Mall — by flying a huge banner that says "86-47," with "47" being a reference to Trump and "86" a common slang term for getting rid of something.The group has been harassed by the Secret Service, and more recently, a National Park Service official issued an email ordering the group to remove it as it is "obscenity" not protected by the First Amendment. This is in line with a number of Trump officials and allies who have claimed "86-47" is a call for violence against the president."Moss, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, disagreed in his ruling.“The Court does not doubt that political violence is on the rise and that it poses a grave threat not just to the targets of the threats but to the country as a whole," wrote Moss. "But the enormity of that problem does not change the meaning of Plaintiff’s speech, which by any reasonable measure merely advocated for the President’s impeachment and removal from office — that is, ‘to throw [him] out.’”This could have grave implications for the administration's separate efforts to prosecute Comey, who was charged with violent threats for a social media post from last year depicting seashells arranged to spell out "8647." Comey deleted the post and apologized, but has made clear he was never advocating violence.All of this comes as the DOJ quietly reassigned a prosecutor in charge of the Comey case.
President Donald Trump ripped California’s elections as a “fraud,” triggering Gov. Gavin Newsom to respond by calling him names. The long-running war of words between the president […]
Questions about a Democrat’s character amid a sexting scandal found an incumbent senator resorting to Trump Derangement Syndrome-spin to claim a “pretty clear contrast.” Over the weekend, […]