Trump’s interior secretary dismisses calls to identify donors for ‘nonpartisan’ concert series
Center Left
Doug Burgum complains some musicians ‘segmented their audiences’ after artists back out of 250th anniversary eventThe Trump administration’s interior secretary, Doug Burgum, complained on Sunday that some musicians “seem to have segmented their audiences” after artists bailed on participating in a concert series planned for the 250th anniversary of the US’s independence.In the interview on CNN’s State of the Union, Burgum also dismissed calls to publicly identified who had made donations for the concert series – and maintained it was a “nonpartisan” event despite Donald Trump referring to it as a rally. Continue reading...
Kevin Hassett, the National Economic Council director, caught heat from political analysts and observers after he made what some described as an "incredible" claim about the financial health of Americans during a Fox News interview. Hassett joined Fox News host Shannon Bream on "Fox News Sunday," where he was asked about a recent report finding that 13% of Americans had delinquent credit card balances, meaning their accounts had become past due. That figure was the highest since the 2008 financial crisis, Bream noted, which Hassett seemed to dismiss altogether in his response. "We talk to the CEOs of the credit card companies in the time, and we do see some stress like the Wall Street Journal pointed out," Hassett said. "But delinquency is different than default and there's not any kind of financial threat to the credit card companies. They don't feel like they're heading towards default scenarios. It's just that people are taking a little bit longer [to pay]."Hassett's claim was roundly criticized on social media. Jared Sears, a Navy veteran, wrote on X that Hassett's claim was "incredible.""Effectively sums up the administration's entire approach to governing: make sure the corporations and the rich are doing well, and forget about everyone else," Sears posted. "This has all the empathy of someone who learns that people are starving and instinctively calls General Mills to see if they're feeling an earnings pinch this quarter," Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) posted on X. "I do not advocate for political violence, but damn, it feels like Hassett has been trying his absolute hardest to become the most punchable member of the Trump administration," Hunter Gordon, a political candidate in Washington, posted on Bluesky. "Don’t worry if you’re struggling. The credit card companies will make sure to get their money from you regardless," Scott Imberman, an economics professor at Michigan State University, posted on Bluesky.
President Trump is in continued negotiations with Iran after last week's Situation Room meeting failed to result in an agreement to end the war. As The Gateway Pundit reported, Trump held a meeting with advisors in the Situation Room on Friday, where he said he would “make a final determination” and potentially sign a deal with Iran.
The post UPDATE: Trump Seeks Amendments to Iran Deal After Situation Room Meeting appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
GOP strategist Brad Todd on Sunday said President Trump made a “100-million-dollar mistake” by backing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) to replace incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). “I think the president made a 100-million-dollar mistake in picking Ken Paxton and urging Republican primary voters to vote for him. John Cornyn is a much more…
Fans of President Donald Trump's Make America Great Again movement melted down on Sunday after Trump's former vice president sharply criticized one of Trump's major initiatives. Mike Pence, who was vice president during Trump's first term, told NBC's "Meet the Press" that Trump's idea to create a nearly $1.8 billion fund to pay victims of alleged government abuse is "deeply offensive." He said the fund, which was created as part of a settlement agreement between Trump and the IRS for a lawsuit over Trump's tax returns being leaked, is a stark example of how far "departed" Trump has become from traditional conservative values. “I think that the weaponization fund is a bad idea from the start, and I would encourage the administration just to drop it,” Pence said during the interview on Sunday. Pence's comments sparked swift backlash from MAGA fans online. "Go to hell, Judas Pence," Mike Engleman, a MAGA political commentator, posted on X. "Nobody cares what that POS loser thinks," Phillip Buchanan, a MAGA personality who goes by "Catturd" on social media, posted on X. "Who cares what Mike Pence thinks?" Amy Curtis, a writer at Townhall, posted on X.
President Donald Trump bragged about his intelligence shortly after midnight on Sunday — but, in the process of doing so, made a fundamental mistake in explaining just how intelligence is measured.“I’m glad the president did well on the MOCA exam, but it’s a dementia screening tool, not an IQ test, so a score of 26 or higher represents normal cognitive performance, not extreme intelligence,” Dr. Jonathan Reiner, Professor of Medicine and Surgery Interventional Cardiologist at GW School of Medicine, posted on Sunday. “None of the questions are high difficulty.”Reiner was responding to a post the president posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, earlier on Sunday."The results of my Physical Examination, taken at Walter Reed Military Medical Center, and just released, were extremely good,” Trump wrote. “Unlike other U.S. Presidents, none of whom have ever taken an approved, high difficulty, Cognitive Test, I scored a perfect 30 out of 30, considered ‘extreme intelligence.’”He added, “Are the Dumocrats really surprised? In fact, this is my fourth such test, all PERFECT or, 120 correct answers out of 120 questions asked! It is very rare that anyone gets a Perfect Score, especially when achieved four times in a row. All people running for President and Vice President should be forced to take high difficulty Cognitive Tests. Congress, and the Dumocrats, should demand it! President DONALD J. TRUMP"Earlier this month, psychiatrist Dr. Henry Abraham — who formerly taught psychiatry at Tufts University — told AlterNet that he views much of Trump’s recent behavior as indicate of cognitive decline.“It’s a red flag,” Dr. Abraham told AlterNet. “People perseverate because they can’t think of anything else to say, because they’re cognitively impaired, or they perseverate because their emotional motor is stuck in high gear. In the last five to 10 years, he has planted red flags of concern again and again and again, and they’ve clustered.”Dr. Abraham added that, while Trump used to modulate his rhetoric for public opinion, his recent verbiage suggests that he struggles to “internalize certain control over his language.” For example, Trump at one point repeatedly mixed up Iceland and Greenland in a recent speech.“Not only did he have these kinds of linguistic failings, but he began to exhibit more and more signs of really rage and poor impulse control, and at night, what appeared to be manic kinds of episodes where he would tweet, you know, 100, 200 times a night,” Abraham explained.Speaking to this journalist for Salon in 2020, when there were widespread concerns about both Trump’s and future President Joe Biden’s cognitive fitness, Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe broke down why Americans have a right to be familiar with their elected officials’ mental fitness for duty."The so-called 'concerns' that Trump, his family, and his acolytes are raising about the former Vice President aren't worthy of response," Tribe told Salon at the time. "I've known Biden for years and detect no loss of intellectual acumen. His slips of the tongue are legendary and, even if slightly more frequent these days, are nothing compared to the constant truly idiotic slips of the brain that characterize Trump. Had we not grown sadly accustomed to Trump's mangling of language, logic, syntax, and sense, we'd all be running for the exits."
Friends,It’s impossible to understand American politics without also understanding the American economy (and vice versa). Politics and economics may be different disciplines but they’re two sides of the same coin.This came home to me again when I saw Thursday’s report on the U.S. gross domestic product.Numbers can be pretty boring but bear with me. Worker compensation—wages and benefits — grew 0.8 percent from the fourth quarter of 2025 to the first quarter of 2026. Corporate profits grew 2.7 percent.When you adjust for inflation, hourly wages have risen 3 percent since the end of 2019. Corporate profits have risen 50 percent.Worker’s share of the nation’s income has now dropped to the lowest it’s been since records began in 1947. Profits’ share is the highest since 1950.Most people who depend on wages for a living are struggling, while a small minority at the top who own most shares of stock and private equity — that is, people who rely on capital gains — have never had it as good.The trend toward lower wages and higher profits began in the 1980s, increased in the 2000s, picked up speed after the pandemic, and is about to explode as Artificial Intelligence takes over.In coming months three companies centered on AI will go public — Space X, OpenAI, and Anthropic — with expected valuations of around $1 trillion each (reflecting the gargantuan profits investors expect). But what about workers?This is not just morally wrong. “Income from capital risks replacing income from labor,” Pope Leo wrote in Magnifica Humanitas, his encyclical letter devoted to the effects of AI, released this week.It also threatens the future stability of our economic and political system.What accounts for the increasing shift of the American economy from wages to profits, even before AI?One big reason is monopolization. The economy has become concentrated in a few giant corporations with the power both to raise prices and keep wages down.Sure, there are still lots of small businesses and mom-and-pop operations. But the gravitational center of the U.S. economy is now Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Meta, Walmart, Costco, Home Depot, Kroger, United Health, Cigna, CVS, AT&T, Verizon, ExxonMobil, Chevron, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Vanguard, Fidelity, Blackstone, Apollo, and KKR.These giants control large swathes of the economy. They also exert significant political power. They’re like black holes in space, sucking in vast sums of money.Their political power makes it impossible to know whether government policy is based on the public interest or private gain.Consider Trump’s war in Iran and its resulting surge in energy prices. The energy-price rise has caused after-tax disposable income to drop and the profits of energy companies to soar. Did Trump decide to go to war because he thought it necessary, or because Big Oil nudged him into it?Workers, meanwhile, no longer have any countervailing power. In the 1950s, over a third of workers in the private sector were unionized. That gave them enough bargaining power to claim a significant share of the total economy. Now, only 6 percent of workers are unionized. Their bargaining power has been further eroded by their easy replacement by lower-wage workers in Asia and by software. AI will further erode it.This trend is not sustainable. It feeds growing anger at the system, which demagogues like Trump exploit for their own ends.What should be done? Let me list five steps (I’ll go into each in greater detail in coming months).1. For one thing, we’re going to need a new era of antitrust. Giant corporations will have to be busted up.2. We’ll also need to tax those at the top, especially on the value of their ownership of capital. (California voters will likely be asked to vote on a billionaire tax in November.)3. We’ll need regulate AI and simultaneously provide a universal basic income to cushion those who lose their jobs because of it.4. Universal health care will be a necessity (perhaps via Medicare for all) along with subsidized childcare and eldercare.5. Finally, we’ll need to distribute capital far more widely, so that the broad American public has a palpable stake in the rip-roaring stock market and the AI tsunami.None of these fixes will be easy. Even if all are implemented, they may still be insufficient.But, my friends, we have no choice but to try. We’ve already witnessed what mass anger can do to America, in the form of Trump. Unless we act soon, we’re likely to have Trumps, or worse, as far as the eye can see.
Following a recent conversation with President Donald Trump, Sen. Lindsey Graham pressed the president Sunday to ditch a key demand of Tehran amid the ongoing U.S.-Iran peace negotiations, a proposal that has been described as a "poison pill” and a non-starter for Iranian officials.“In a recent conversation with President Trump, I affirmed my support for a deal with Iran that accepts President Trump’s demand to open up the Strait of Hormuz and start negotiations about forever ending their nuclear ambitions and support for terrorism,” Graham wrote in a social media post on X.“On a separate front, it is my belief that we must allow Israel to neutralize the threats the country faces from constant Hezbollah attacks emanating from Lebanon. It would be unconscionable to ask Israel to accept a ceasefire with Hezbollah given Hezbollah’s stated desire to destroy Israel and their constant attacks.”Iran has demanded that Israel halt its bombardment of Lebanon as a key condition in its negotiations with the Trump administration, an ask that Israel has largely ignored, despite Trump himself demanding as much last month. More than 3,100 Lebanese have been killed by Israeli air strikes since early March and nearly 10,000 wounded, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.Hezbollah has launched strikes into Israel in response to its military siege on Gaza, which countless human rights groups have labeled a genocide, strikes designed to divert Israel’s military away from Gaza and toward the Israel-Lebanon border to the north.And yet, despite Israel's halt of its invasion and bombardment of Lebanon being a non-negotiable demand of Iran's – and an explicit demand by Trump – Israel has expanded its military siege of its northern neighbor, most recently being accused of using white phosphorus bombs, an incendiary and waxy chemical that ignites when exposed to oxygen and burns at extreme temperatures, a potential war crime.“Any ceasefire with Hezbollah would allow them to re-arm and become stronger,” Graham continued. “In my view, there must not be any linkage between an Iran deal and Israel’s ability to fight back against Hezbollah’s unceasing aggression in Lebanon. Any deal with Iran that restricts Israel’s ability to fight back against Hamas and Hezbollah would be unwise.”In a recent conversation with President Trump, I affirmed my support for a deal with Iran that accepts President Trump’s demand to open up the Strait of Hormuz and start negotiations about forever ending their nuclear ambitions and support for terrorism. I have confidence that at… https://t.co/t9Ht9GS6qZ— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) May 31, 2026
