High temps, thin crowds don’t kill good vibes for Great American State Fair attendees

A crowd of people gathered at the Great American State Fair on Thursday stopped to gaze up at the sky as several fighter jets streaked over the National Mall.  Blake Boggs crouched down to his young son’s stroller and pointed up.   “You don’t get to see the Thunderbirds anywhere,” he told The Hill.  Despite the…

More New Poll Data on Senate Races That Doesn't Look Good for Dems

How Much Is Trump’s Insane July 4 Fireworks Show Going to Cost?

The White House is trying to break a fireworks record on Saturday—but doing so will likely cost taxpayers a pretty penny.The Trump administration has not communicated how much the July 4 celebration will cost, or who is expected to foot the bill for the pyrotechnics display. There has been no public record of the company behind the show, Pyrotecnico, receiving a standard government contract for the job, as has been the case with Washington’s previous July 4 celebrations.In lieu of concrete digits, NOTUS’s Anna Kramer reached out to several fireworks companies for a rough estimate on the show’s price tag. They projected the cost in the millions.“You’re talking a many multimillion-dollar production, without a doubt,” James Woods, the director of sales at Pyro Shows in Tennessee, told NOTUS. Pyro Shows assisted in one of the previous world record-setting fireworks displays in Dubai in 2014.Woods told NOTUS that some of the individual shells used in the upcoming celebration could cost anywhere between $50 to $1,000. NOTUS estimated that if even “3 percent of the devices used in this show cost $50, that would total $1.3 million for those devices alone.”This year, the Freedom 250 celebration has promised a record-shattering 40-minute display beginning at 10:30 p.m. that will use more than 860,000 explosives. They’ll be set off along the Reflecting Pool, as well as in West Potomac Park and off of eight barges on the Potomac River.The current record is held by the Iglesia Ni Cristo, a church in the Philippines that earned the Guinness World Record title in 2016 for lighting 809,000 fireworks during a New Year’s Eve event.Another fireworks professional, Kellner’s Fireworks owner Bob Kellner, hypothesized that even if the entire record-setting show were composed of “filler” shells (the cheapest explosives possible, sold for around $2 a pop), the display would still cost a minimum of $1.7 million. But only hitting that bare minimum is highly unlikely, as more sophisticated fireworks cost significantly more.There is just one federal record offering details about the upcoming semiquincentennial. A document from the Interior Department, dated December 2025, dedicated $1.5 million to Garden State Fireworks to run the display. But that was months before Donald Trump promised to launch “the LARGEST FIREWORKS SHOW IN HISTORY” on Independence Day 2026.NOTUS reported that Garden State Fireworks has been responsible for the capital’s July Fourth show for the last decade, and typically receives a contract between $250,000 and $300,000 for the display.

Trump's 'well unified' party isn't so unified —and it's costing the GOP everything

President Donald Trump likes to boast that he has a “well unified” Republican Party, and even that he is so influential he rather than Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) is the true Speaker of the House of Representatives. Yet according to a respected political analyst, the evidence is that neither Trump nor Johnson can keep the 218 Republicans in sufficient line to get anything done against the 212 Democrats who oppose them.“GOP leaders intended to focus this week on advancing an annual must-pass defense policy bill, called the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, and a key spending bill that funds the State Department, among other things,” reported MS NOW’s Steve Benen on Wednesday. “More than a dozen House Republicans, however, decided they didn’t care for that plan, with some arguing the chamber should do nothing but focus on Trump’s voter-suppression proposal, which the White House has labeled the SAVE America Act, as others pointed to party leaders’ promise of a vote on an anti-immigration bill before the July 4 recess.”He added, “The House speaker tried to legislate anyway, hoping enough of his members would stick together and follow his lead. That didn’t go well: 13 GOP members revolted and voted with Democrats on a key procedural vote, making Johnson look weak and leaving him with little choice but to start the chamber’s holiday break early.”Johnson has gone out of his way to support Trump whenever possible, from vowing to keep Republicans in control of the House so Trump will not face investigations from Democrats to soothing his rage at losing in the Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship case by suggesting a Constitutional amendment to get around that problem. Yet he was unable to actually accomplish anything in the lead-up to the July 4th holiday season.“For his part, Trump has made at least tacit efforts to curb these GOP rebellions, declaring by way of his social media platform last week, ‘House Republicans should unify, and stop voting down ‘Rules’ or, threatening to do so. … No more grandstanding, please!’” Benen reported. “The trouble is, the far-right members ignoring the speaker’s wishes (and the president’s rhetorical sops) are doing so in order to do the president’s bidding and champion his legislative priority.”He concluded, “But the underlying problem is the unavoidable fact that Johnson is simply too weak to legislate with such a small majority. Bipartisan majorities have already gone around him with more successful discharge petitions than anyone has seen in generations, and the Louisiana Republican’s latest failures this week reinforce perceptions that he just isn’t in control of the House floor he ostensibly leads.”

New Poll Shows Some Good News for Senate Republicans

Trump's latest economic figures raise red flags for CNN analyst: 'Defying logic'

The latest economic figures for President Donald Trump's economy raised all sorts of red flags for one analyst on Thursday. The Department of Labor reported that just 57,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy over the last three months, which is far below the 129,000 jobs that were cited in the last report. The unemployment rate also dropped to 4.2%, which is often a sign of a healthy economy, but the numbers were not comforting to David Goldman, CNN's senior business reporter. Goldman reacted to the numbers on "CNN News Central" on Thursday. He noted that the data suggest certain sectors of the economy, such as health care and hospitality, are struggling to hire workers. For instance, he noted that just 22,000 nursing jobs had been added over the last year, far below the 38,000 added at this time last year. "That is something that we need to watch," Goldman said. He also noted that the figures showed a significant decline in hospitality hiring, which seemed hard to believe because multiple cities are hosting World Cup games. "I think, and there are a number of economists who are smarter than me who think, that this might change as we get those revisions in the future months, because this is kind of defying logic and defining what we can see with our own eyes," Goldman said.

Trump Shows Off His Qatari Jet as He Dodges Key Question on Costs

President Donald Trump took some time out of his morning to announce his very first trip on the Qatari jet he was gifted last year, bragging about the Air Force One replacement he claims was “free” while dodging questions about how much it actually costs.“Air Force One was 35, 36 years old. It would be parked next to the new [jets] like this, and it didn’t look appropriate for our country,” Trump told reporters outside Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday morning. “The country is very proud of it.… You can low-key it, or you can show it. And I think the country should be very proud of it.”“What’s your favorite upgrade to the new plane, and how much did it cost American taxpayers to upgrade the plane?” a reporter asked.“Very little relative to what it would cost if we did it a different way. This was a gift from a country that’s treated us very well, they’re an ally of us over in the Middle East—Qatar. And I went to Boeing, I said ‘who has the best one?’ Qatar, there’s never been a plane like it,” Trump replied, not actually answering the question. “The Emir [of Qatar], Tamim [bin Hamad Al Thani], who’s a great gentlemen, he said, ‘No, no, I’d like to make a contribution to the country.’ So it was very nice. We were able to do it in about five months, bring it up to the presidential standard—meaning security-wise. You’re gonna get a kick out of it.”Q: How much did it cost American taxpayers to upgrade the plane?TRUMP: It cost very little relative to what it would cost if we did it a different way. This was a gift from a country that's treated us very well. pic.twitter.com/JNd27YeGpR— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 1, 2026The jet—one of the largest presidential gifts ever—is valued at $400 million. The Air Force said it spent around $400 million on renovating the plane, changing the cabin layout, communications system, and security upgrades. That doesn’t account for the taxpayer-funded, continued maintenance of the plane, either.

Mamdani reaches budget agreement with NYC Council that omits costly campaign promises

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani reached a handshake agreement with City Council Speaker Julie Menin regarding the $126 billion budget on Tuesday, hours before the city’s next fiscal year starts. The socialist mayor cast the deal as a major step toward solving the city’s budget crisis, with the deficit having been expected to reach […]