Senate Democrats unveil bill to block Trump’s ‘anti-weaponization’ fund
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Democratic Sens. Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Adam Schiff (Calif.) and Elissa Slotkin (Mich.) on Monday introduced legislation to block the Trump administration’s “anti-weaponization” fund, which the Department of Justice (DOJ) scrapped earlier in the day. The bill, dubbed the Drain the Slush Fund Act, would bar the use of taxpayer money for payments to President Trump,…
Democrat strategist Melissa DeRosa appeared on FOX News today and absolutely slammed Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, noting that even though she has the establishment machine fully behind her campaign, she can't break past 27 percent in polling.
The post Democrat Strategist TORCHES Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Suggests Spencer Pratt Could Win Based on Voter Anger (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
President Donald Trump has often been accused of starting the Iran war to help Israel — and yet now one of America’s major conservative newspapers is blasting him for not being pro-Israel enough.“Iran’s regime began Monday by throwing a wrench into negotiations with the U.S., and President Trump spent the rest of the day scrambling to satisfy Iran’s demand,” The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote on Monday. “The result is a new cease-fire in Lebanon, rescuing Hezbollah for the moment, though the terrorists didn’t abide by the first cease-fire for even a day.”The Journal proceeded to argue that “Hezbollah began this war with Israel on March 2, firing on soldiers and civilian targets on the orders of its Iranian patrons. The first Lebanon cease-fire was announced April 17 after Iran’s regime had said Israeli retaliation against Hezbollah was preventing the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Mr. Trump pressured Israel and delivered the cease-fire, but Iran reneged on Hormuz—and its Hezbollah proxy kept firing.”After adding that Israel refrained from attacking Hezbollah’s Dahiyeh stronghold in Beirut until Monday, after the attacks averaged 125 rockets and 49 drones every day for a week, the Journal described the next events as involving Iran’s state media reporting they had stopped exchanging messages with Trump because of Israel’s retaliation.“The shamelessness is always striking,” the Journal opined. “Iran has repeatedly violated its April 7 cease-fire with the U.S. by firing drones and missiles at commercial vessels, U.S. forces and Gulf states. In recent days it has downed a U.S. drone over international waters and fired ballistic missiles at U.S. forces in Kuwait. Through it all, Mr. Trump has limited the U.S. responses to self-defense and insisted the cease-fire still obtains.”Yet instead of recognizing these facts, the Journal concluded, Trump had blamed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pressured him into agreeing to a ceasefire against Lebanon.“Lebanon and Israel suggested the deal is only partial,” the Journal continued. “As long as Hezbollah doesn’t attack Israeli territory, Israel won’t attack the terrorists in Dahiyeh, Mr. Netanyahu said. This is a recipe for managing the conflict, limiting it to southern Lebanon, where both sides expect to continue the fight.”While this status quo is currently adequate for Israel, since they won the high ground in Lebanon and need time to protect themselves against fiber-optic drones, the Journal declared that “Hezbollah’s capital again has been spared the consequences of the group’s own actions. Iran is winning its proxy a refuge. Anytime it wants, Iran could tell Hezbollah to stop shooting and end the war, which Israel has no desire to wage. Instead it encouraged Hezbollah’s fire, so it could cut off U.S. talks when Israel inevitably responded in force.”Expanding the critique beyond Israel’s war against Lebanon, the Journal expressed concern that Trump may take the same approach in his war against Iran.“If it fires on U.S. forces in the Strait or Gulf, will he still try to salvage the cease-fire?” the Journal asked. “How about stepped-up attacks on Israel? How about claiming to quit negotiations? In each case, Mr. Trump has chosen to avoid escalation and keep talking. If he won’t send a different message, it will be difficult to get the regime to comply with a deal, no matter what it promises now.”Despite being criticized for his recent policy toward Israel, Trump has actually been accused by some elements in his party of being too pro-Israel. Indeed, both the Democratic and Republican parties have seen a massive surge in anti-Israel sentiment since the Oct. 7th terrorist attacks. When it comes to Trump’s Republican base, this includes far right voters who are motivated by opposition to Israel’s alleged human rights violations, a desire to limit foreign spending in general, a belief in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jewish control of government and the anti-Semitic opinion that all Jews and/or Israelis should be blamed for the Israeli government’s actions.Speaking with AlterNet in March about the issue of American anti-Semitism, Brandeis University historian Jonathan Sarna argued that one can criticize Israeli government policy without being anti-Semitic. He added that it can easily become anti-Semitic, however.“If you go back to ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ — the great antisemitic forgery of the turn of the last century — that really began this sense that Jews are all-powerful, that they operate behind the scenes, and that whatever happens is ultimately their fault,” Sarna told AlterNet. “Before then, for centuries, the prevailing view was that Jews were persecuted and lowly because they had killed Christ, and that was what they deserved — they were powerless. That was their punishment.
Iran has severed all diplomatic talks with the United States, accusing Israel of violating the ceasefire by bombing its proxy militia Hezbollah in Lebanon.
MS NOW's Rachel Maddow kicked off Monday night's broadcast with a devastating round of mockery for President Donald Trump's recent celebrations to himself.She set the scene by covering an episode she had already reported on in Philadelphia, where the Trump administration tried to take down memorials to enslaved people at the President's House, only for locals to sue and stop him — but then the National Park Service only restored half the memorials, leaving the entire site looking obviously unfinished.That, said Maddow, is a perfect metaphor for the half-realized festivities Trump is putting on to honor himself and, ostensibly, the country."I know you've heard all about Trump kind of botching the celebrations that are planned for the 250th in Washington, right?" said Maddow. "Putting a cage match on the lawn of the White House, sponsored by what multiple state gambling authorities widely considered to be an illegal gambling operation?" This was further botched by a disastrous marketing campaign for Trump's car race in D.C., where he sold white T-shirts that said "One Nation, One Race," that had to later be taken down.Meanwhile, Maddow continued, "Trump now has called for the cancellation of a concert that he had tried to plan in Washington for the 250th after, again, a melange of celebrities and former celebrities they thought they had persuaded to come perform" ended up dropping out amid backlash. As a result, she said, Trump "has announced that he himself should be the headliner instead. So, okay, that'll be great."This, she said, is already shaping up to be a rerun of Trump's inaugurations. The first one's musical performances were "poorly organized, poorly attended, and sort of sadly underwhelming when it came to star power. The vibe was like cut-rate wedding DJ and desultory junior varsity marching band." This is why, she said, Trump probably found it "kind of a relief when his second inauguration came around and had to be moved indoors for poor weather."Many more of these flops abound, said Maddow, from Trump's smaller-than-planned birthday military parade, to the utter flop of the right-wing alternative Super Bowl halftime show where "Kid Rock kind of just lost the thread trying to lip sync and gave up halfway through."Ultimately, she concluded, all of this can be easily symbolized by what Trump left at the President's House in Philadelphia: "This half there, half not there, half taken down mess thanks to Donald Trump." - YouTube youtu.be
Twenty-one protesters were arrested for allegedly assaulting federal officers between May 26 and May 29. At least another 20 were arrested on Sunday alone.
President Donald Trump just got a "fast lesson in political gravity" by retreating from his most recent plot to pay his supporters with federal money, according to one analyst. On Tuesday, reports indicated that the Trump administration is backing down from its plan to create a nearly $1.8 billion so-called "anti-weaponization" fund that would pay people who claimed they were wrongfully prosecuted by the government. The fund received sharp bipartisan criticism after multiple Trump allies and former advisors publicly said they intend to seek compensation from the fund. Brian Tyler Cohen, a progressive YouTuber, said in a new reaction video that Trump's retreat from the anti-weaponization fund should serve as an important lesson for the president. "Trump might have thought that he could act with impunity, but he is learning a fast lesson in political gravity, specifically the fact that it still exists," Cohen said. Throughout Trump's second term, he has acted as if political norms and rules simply don't apply. For instance, Trump directed his former Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to prosecute people such as New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey, and sought to unilaterally impose a tariff regime on America's largest trading partners. Cohen added that Trump's ability to misguide and mislead his followers illustrates his fatal conceit. "These people have so much contempt for their own supporters that they will lie to them on a minute-by-minute basis instead of just acknowledging objective reality that their plans are insane, aggressively unpopular, help no one, make us all less safe, and couldn't even garner support in a political party full of Trump's colon dwellers," Cohen said.
One of the Make America Great Again movement's biggest stars shared a blistering warning for President Donald Trump during a new interview on Monday. Megyn Kelly, who hosts an eponymous radio show on SiriusXM, warned Trump during an interview with Piers Morgan on his YouTube show that he risks sinking the Republican Party's chances in the upcoming 2026 midterm election and the 2028 general election by continuing the disastrous war in Iran. Kelly added that losing the House seems likely, and losing the Senate has become more likely, according to some polling. "We assume we're going to lose the House on Team GOP, but now more and more political pundits are predicting that the Republicans are going to lose the Senate as well," Kelly said "And the map doesn't get any easier for Republicans two years after these midterms when we go into 2028 with a presidential election and yet another election for House members in some Senate seats. So all the math is bad. We don't have the cards to play."Trump has claimed that he started the war in Iran to prevent the regime from having a nuclear weapon. He's even gone so far as to claim that he "doesn't care about the midterms" so long as Iran never has a nuclear warhead. That claim has not sat well with Republicans and their voters, who are facing a cost-of-living crisis at home. Kelly added that Trump might make those problems worse if he doesn't withdraw the military from Iran soon. "It's already a quagmire. Yes, it's only 13 weeks [old] or whatever it is, but it's already a quagmire because there's no easy solution left even if we just pack up our bags and leave, which is what we should do."
