As part of peace negotiations, the U.S. Treasury issued an unprecedented total waiver from Iranian oil sanctions.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she is considering restarting oil shipments to Cuba, taking advantage of the Cuban government’s new free-market reforms. Such an action would provide relief to the island, which has been pushed to the brink of economic catastrophe by the oil blockade that the Trump administration has put in place to put […]
The Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration on Tuesday in an immigration case dealing with the government’s power over green card holders.
CBS News and other news organizations have investigated President Donald Trump's claim that vandals left a 350-foot gash in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and have found that there is "no sign."On Monday, Trump doubled down on his assertions about how the Reflecting Pool fiasco happened, saying it "has been given a 300-foot-long gash." The president told CBS News that he would present the evidence in court."I can't help it if somebody goes in with a knife and starts hacking it up," Trump has told reporters. On Tuesday, however, CBS correspondent Ed O'Keefe said the network had inspected the Reflecting Pool and could not substantiate the president's accusations."We checked again and still no sign of a 350-foot gash as President Trump alleges," O'Keefe wrote on X.The correspondent went further in his report that was broadcast on CBS Mornings, noting that he "did a lap around the pool a little earlier to check on things.""There are far more National Guard troops, local police, even US marshals out here keeping an eye on things," O'Keefe said. "But the one thing we still can't find is that alleged 350-foot gash along the floor of the pool that the president says is there.""Despite that, the interior department is getting ready to drain the pool again and make repairs again," O'Keefe told anchor Errol Barnett. "The president previously claimed the pool was impenetrable with a blade.""But Monday, he said that's exactly what happened, claiming someone cut a long gash in the pool's lining and pulled at its edges."O'Keefe added that other "reporters have been down there today looking for that slit that you mentioned, and there's no evidence of it.""So many more questions," Barnett concluded. "I'm sure taxpayers will be encouraged to know they at least paid for something with a warranty."
Plus: the worst rule at the World Cup, and the worst person in golf?
President Trump is sticking by his claims of vandalism at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, following reports that the pool’s new base covering is peeling off. The Trump administration’s multimillion-dollar renovation project of this iconic water feature was only recently completed. The water has since turned green from an algae bloom outbreak and the pool’s…
While it’s become widely known that President Donald Trump tends to keep unusual hours, a new book has revealed the extent of his “bizarre” sleep habits and that they keep getting “stranger.”As the Daily Beast explains, “Trump, 80, has gained a reputation for sleeping less and less in his golden years. He has also developed a penchant for going on Truth Social posting sprees after midnight, as well as being caught on camera seeming to nod off during important White House meetings. His ability to operate as the most powerful person on Earth with minimal shut-eye has been hailed as a superpower by fawning members of his administration.”Now the new book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, by White House correspondents Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, is raising eyebrows by revealing just how erratic Trump’s sleep patterns can be. For example, the book claims that in a White House lead by Trump, “time is a flexible concept,” and that his inconsistent sleep drives the “rhythms and structures and operations of the place.” This is especially true of his second term. During his first administration, Trump typically arrived in the Oval Office by 11 am. In term two, however, his schedule has become less predictable as he’s slept with growing inconsistency. “Some mornings Trump would be up early making phone calls and posting on social media while watching TV,” says the book. “But occasionally, aides couldn’t reach him during the hours between eight and ten, when they soon came to realize meant he had stayed up all night, on the phone or watching television or both, only to finally catch some sleep around four or five in the morning.”According to the book, “one late morning,” no one had heard from the president and his staff was unable to contact him: “an aide checked on the President only to find that he was still asleep in the residence.”“He had never been a big sleeper, but now it seemed to his staff that he was sleeping even less, keeping stranger hours than he had in his first term,” the book claims, revealing not only that Trump has “remained a night owl,” but that he and Melania sleep in separate rooms. What’s more, his aides have privately begun to admit that Trump is “beginning to seem old” during his second term as “those who spent time with him could see the signs — the moments of fatigue, the cupped hand behind the ear.” As the book explains, “That he had aged since he last lived in the White House was obvious. There were the repeated bouts of drowsiness during mid-afternoon public events. And there were the near-constant bruises on his hands, which his aides first attributed to marks from frequent handshaking. Trump, who usually tried to conceal the bruising with makeup, later said they were caused primarily by the unusually large aspirin regimen he took as a blood thinner.” Amidst all the talk of Trump’s strange sleeping habits, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has attempted to deny claims that the president appeared to fall asleep during Cabinet meetings. As Rubio testified to Congress, under oath, “That’s false. That’s false. I’ve never seen him fall asleep. On the contrary, the guy doesn’t sleep, which is a big problem, because he calls me at 2 in the morning, he calls me at 5 in the morning, and you know, I like to sleep a little bit — maybe not 12 hours — but at least six… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”Democrat Congressman Ted Lieu then played a video that showed Trump falling asleep mid-meeting, noting, “You are literally talking about issues of war and peace, and Donald Trump is sleeping right next to you.”“This is a joke,” Rubio responded.
New York Times reporters Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman gave a shocking revelation while speaking on MS NOW Monday evening. According to the two writers of a forthcoming book, there is an entirely different group of people in charge of major national policy than the experts. Speaking to Lawrence O'Donnell late Monday, Haberman and Swan were promoting their forthcoming book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, which comes out Tuesday, the Daily Beast reported. “The thing that was really notable about this White House, compared to the first one, is they keep talking about how they’re the most transparent White House in history,” Swan explained. “It’s a canard. They’re actually incredibly good at keeping secrets.”According to Swan, “You have a tiny group of people that are running this country, five or six people and Donald Trump.”“The war-planning group had been kept so tight that the two key officials who would need to manage the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Energy Secretary Chris Wright — were still not in the loop, one day before the launch of the war,” Haberman and Swan note. “Nor was the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.”It isn't unusual to keep war-planning meetings small, but those in attendance generally have military experience. That wasn't the case in the Iran planning, which likely speaks to why so many important consequences weren't gamed out ahead of time. The authors say that those in the room plotting the war were Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, White House Counsel David Warrington, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, State Secretary Marco Rubio and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine. Not on hand were Bessent and Wright, who likely would have lent some comments about what would ultimately happen to global oil markets if the Strait of Hormuz were closed. Reducing costs on food and fuel were key pieces of Trump's 2024 promises.Another detail O'Donnell read from the book is that in the middle of the disastrous Iran war, Trump welcomed the two authors into the Oval Office, where he was picking out trees for the White House grounds. "I know how to pick out good trees," he told them. He then bragged about his views on TikTok and began showing off his "grand ballroom" designs. Behind the scenes, aides told the authors they wish Trump was more concerned about his plunging poll numbers and "the dangers he was courting." According to the staff, Trump isn't "receptive" to polling or to bad news in general. So, they simply don't tell him."He [is] willing to take breathtaking risks, risks that could throw not only his presidency but the Republican Party and the entire world into chaos and carnage. More than ever before as President, he was operating on pure gut instinct. It would take a combination of mind reader and psychologist to explain fully why Trump was willing to gamble so much more recklessly now," the book continues. His confidence in himself and his instincts had ballooned, and more often than not, he feels "vindicated." "Then there was the fact that he was a walking moral hazard, rarely saddled for long with the costs or consequences of his risk-taking and rule-breaking. Now was his moment to try things, like military adventures and overthrowing the global trade system," the authors cautioned.
If the chaos of this last year and a half week has shown us anything, it’s that every distraction Donald Trump has manufactured to stop people from talking about the Epstein Files has failed spectacularly. The UFC fiasco kicked off a week that ended with a full surrender to Iran at Versailles, which was glaring enough. But the Reflecting Pool scandal has also been an excellent visual metaphor representing all of Trump’s failures to distract from his entire administration’s involvement in the biggest political cover-up in American history. From his initial “I have the best pool guy” promise to calling the algae-green swampwater “American Blue” to pieces of the bottom literally peeling off, it’s just the latest example of Trump never once delivering on his promises, and then shifting the blame to anyone else he can when he fails. He’s seriously blaming “vandalism” for all of the issues when he’s the vandal. Trump also revealed his brand-new Air Force One, a bribe gift from Qatar that he turned into yet another grift on the American taxpayers. His predecessors managed just fine on the current AFO, but, then again, we’re talking about the same guy who had Jeffrey Epstein’s legendary Lolita Express repainted instead of just borrowing a plane from some rich friend of his. The audacity of this is staggering. Astonishingly, no one from the Harris/Walz campaign pointed out that Trump was flying around inside a crime scene. When I found out about it, I screamed into the abyss of Twitter to beg them to make a “Black Lights Matter” joke or SOMETHING to call attention to Trump’s decades-long friendship with the world’s most notorious dead pedophile and his partner-in-unspeakable-crimes, Ghislaine Maxwell.I tried my best to warn MAGA as well, but it’s fine, what do I know about politics? It’s not like he’s repeatedly blasted them for wanting him to deliver on his campaign promise to release the full Epstein Files. Oh, wait. Yes, he did.And for a moment, it seemed like the biggest MAGA accounts on Twitter were ready to finally start acknowledging what we’ve known all along. But he somehow fooled them again and again, and you won’t be shocked to learn that those and other paid MAGA shill accounts are back to either calling the Files a “hoax” or saying they’ve been fully released, which we know isn’t true.Nothing they say or do will get us to stop talking about the Epstein Files. You can count on me to stay on this story until the Trump regime actually complies with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, instead of continuing to violate it every day for the last 210+ days. The top news story every day should be that JD “Vladimir Futon” Vance led a secret staff meeting in the SITUATION ROOM nearly a year ago to discuss how to better cover up the Epstein Files to protect Trump, rather than seeking justice for any of the victims and survivors. Aside from the egregious misuse of the Situation Room, we know the entire administration is involved. Of course, that’s kind of tough with so much of the media under Trump’s sway while he continues to bully anyone who dares to tell the truth about him or ask any questions that might force him to think about things he doesn’t want to think about. We now know that FBI was told that Trump Tower was a “hunting ground” for “recruiters” to find young women for him to have sex with. And thanks to yet more bombshell reporting, we’ve also learned that at least three million more pages of Epstein documents are still being held back by acting AG Todd “Trumpsimp” Blanche, who seems super excited to be the first to go to prison for Trump. Blanche will once again face questioning by the Senate, and I was fortunate to grab a moment with my Senator, Ron Wyden (D-OR), on Friday after a press conference centered around Juneteenth and Pride. “Sen. Chutzpah” is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee and also sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, among his many other responsibilities. He promised me last year that he’d never give up on Epstein, and he continues to deliver on that promise, as evidenced by his most recent questioning of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. He also ripped Bessent over the latest Trump grift that was created to enrich his two older adult sons.As Wyden and I walked out of the press conference, I quietly asked him about the Situation Room meeting. “Wasn’t that something?” he replied.“So, what people want to see is accountability,” I said. “Do we have to wait until Democrats get the majority back before that happens?”“Nope!” Sen. Chutzpah immediately responded. He then told me that more hearings were coming, and specifically mentioned Blanche. As I said, he’s been good about delivering on his promises, and I have no reason to doubt him now. The issue we currently face with Epstein is keeping the story at the top of a news cycle that’s already full of Trump’s other failed attempts at distracting from Epstein.