Specifically, the House Administration Committee shined a spotlight on the Dems’ major fund-raising platform, ActBlue, and its apparent efforts to end-run the federal laws that Dems insist are all about “clean campaigns.”
NBC News chief data analyst Steve Kornacki joins Meet the Press to break down a new NBC News poll ahead of the nation’s 250 birthday next month, with most saying the U.S. has already seen its best days and over one-fifth of respondents saying they are only a little or not at all proud to be Americans.
Senior technical Anthropic staff are in Washington to meet with White House officials to try to fix a dispute that has taken the company's top models offline, a source close to the company tells Axios.Why it matters: Anthropic is mobilizing quickly to make amends with the Trump administration, after safety concerns resulted in sweeping export controls on its most powerful models, Mythos and Fable.Driving the news: Administration officials claim Anthropic has not engaged in a serious manner. But Anthropic technical staff have held virtual meetings with White House officials since the administration's initial outreach on Friday, according to the source.Sources from both sides say they are eager to resolve the issue. This is a developing story.
Friends,Tonight, Trump is throwing an 80th birthday bash for himself (he says it’s in honor of the 250th birthday of the United States) with a “Freedom250” Ultimate Fighting Championship cage match on the South Lawn of the White House at 8 p.m. ET.It will be a bloody gladiator fight taking place inside a 600-ton, 154-feet-tall skeletal structure called “the Claw,” painted red, white and blue. Opponents will punch, kick, wrestle, choke, and use jiu-jitsu on each other until one of them is unconscious or verbally concedes, or a referee stops the fight because one is judged too damaged to absorb any more violence.This is a money-making operation for the UFC (which is offering special-access VIP packages for $1.5 million), for Trump buddy David Ellison’s Paramount (which will livestream it to you if you buy a subscription for $8.99 a month — see here), for Crypto.com and Ram (which are sponsoring it), and for Trump (who’s deciding which of his billionaire friends and CEO buddies will be invited ringside. Last night, Trump held a $1 million-a-person dinner at the Trump National Golf Club at Potomac, Virginia, to benefit his Super PAC, Maga Inc.).Beyond the usual Trumpian issues of self-dealing and pay-to-play corruption, today’s fight also raises the question: What does a cage match on the White House lawn have to do with America’s 250th anniversary?Just this: Trump and his regime are seeking to project an America that’s like the winner of a cage match.Trump sees everything and everyone in terms of dominance or submission, and he’s hellbent on dominance. “You’ll never take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong,” he told his supporters on January 6, 2021, before urging them to go the Capitol.He views America as locked in a zero-sum match with the rest of the world, and there’s no limit to our violence. Unless Iran opened the Strait of Hormuz, he memorably said, “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”Trump’s entire “manosphere” is obsessed with force and violence. His secretary of “war,” Pete Hegseth, threatens “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies” and “maximum violence to the enemy.” When told some fishermen survived the American bombing of their boat, Hegseth reportedly ordered his commander to “kill them all.”Trump’s secretary of health and human services frequently posts shirtless workout videos in which he’s lifting weights alongside figures like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Kid Rock. He claims Trump has “the highest testosterone level” ever seen in an individual over 70 years old.Trump’s whole circle — including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and JD Vance — glorify male prowess and power. (In a Twitter exchange a few years ago, Musk said he was “up for a cage fight” with Zuckerberg, who replied: “Send me location,” eliciting from Musk: “Vegas Octagon,” and the suggestion that podcaster Joe Rogan referee.) Musk and Vance champion pronatalism — the belief that the single greatest threat to Western civilization is collapsing birth rates — and argue that Western women must have more children.Much of the Republican Party is likewise focusing on male virility. Texas Republican senatorial candidate Ken Paxton calls the Democratic candidate “low-T Talarico.”Part of this comes directly from the fascist playbook, organized around a “strongman” touting male dominance. In that playbook, war and violence are thought means of strengthening society by culling the weak and extolling heroic warriors.I suspect many Americans find Trump’s neofascist “strongman” attractive because they feel powerless in a society that’s left them behind. The cage match and similar public displays of aggression enable them to feel vicariously powerful.Young men in particular — who make up a disproportionate share of Trump’s base — have been economically emasculated. Most lack college degrees at a time when such a degree is necessary (although hardly sufficient) for a decent job, and when some 60 percent of university undergraduates and 67 percent of graduate students are female.In this way, cage matches darkly echo “The Full Monty,” the 1997 British comedy about unemployed steelworkers in Sheffield, England, who form a male striptease act to make quick cash.But the cage match today on the White House lawn is no laughing matter. It’s deadly serious and deeply troubling.When so many Americans are struggling to make ends meet, Trump’s gladiator fight suggests that the essence of the nation on its 250th birthday isn’t the democratic ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, nor is it the pull-yourself-up-from-the-bootstraps ambition that’s driven our economy, but zero-sum violence and male aggression.What do you think?Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
Sometimes I provide you with information that I hope you’ll find helpful in making arguments with others. I don’t expect that what I share with you will change the minds of committed Trumpers, but the facts and the evidence may have some sway with Republicans and independents who are wavering about whom to support in the midterms. One of the main reasons Trump was elected was his pledge to keep the United States out of wars, especially the kind of “endless” wars America has fought in Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Afghanistan. Obviously, he broke that pledge. We’re now well into the fourth month of a war he said would be four or five weeks at most. In addition, the war he initiated in Iran was a war of choice — Iran did not attack the United States, and most specialists in foreign policy say Iran was not close to devising a nuclear weapon at that time. (It’s likely to be closer now, or at least more committed to making one.)Yet in a lengthy interview with Kristen Welker, the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” which aired Sunday, Trump was once again trying to rewrite his own history, He claimed:“I didn’t guarantee no war. So when you say I promised, I didn’t promise anything. I don’t like these endless wars. This is not an endless war. We’ve been doing this for three months.”In fact, Trump repeatedly and unequivocally promised during the 2024 election campaign that the U.S. would not have any wars during his second presidency. Herewith, some examples.In a June 2024 social media post, Trump described the election as “a choice between STRENGTH or WEAKNESS, COMPETENCE or INCOMPETENCE, peace and prosperity or war and no war.” In one of the highest-profile speeches of his campaign — his July 2024 address to the Republican National Convention — he said, “With our victory in November, the years of war, weakness, and chaos will be over. I don’t have wars.”He made the promise again and even more directly during an August 2024 rally in the swing state of Pennsylvania, saying: “Under Trump, we will have no more wars, no more disruptions, and we will have prosperity and peace for all.”Trump reprised the same pledge in an August 2024 interview with Adin Ross, an online personality. After saying there were no wars during his first administration, he promised, “And we won’t have wars again.” At another rally that month in the hotly contested state of North Carolina, Trump approvingly cited Viktor Orbán, then the prime minister of Hungary, as supposedly having said, “Make sure that Trump gets reelected president, and you’re not going to have any more wars.” Trump reiterated moments later, “No more wars. No more disruptions. We will have prosperity, and we will have peace.”Trump told versions of the Orbán story at numerous other events. For example, in the swing state of Wisconsin in October 2024, he said, “Viktor Orbán said, ‘If Trump comes back, you won’t have any wars. You won’t have any wars.’ And he’s about as tough as they get, and he said it loud and clear and he said why. But you won’t have any wars.”Finally, in his victory address in November 2024, Trump made a clear promise that he would not start a war — even when he no longer had to persuade voters to elect him. He said in that high-profile speech: “Four years, we had no wars, except we defeated ISIS. … They said, ‘He will start a war.’ I’m not going to start a war, I’m going to stop wars.”In reality, of course, Trump has been one of the most bellicose presidents in modern American history. His failing war in Iran and his campaign pledge not to start any wars should be held against Republicans in the House and Senate. They’re partly responsible. They have repeatedly refused to stop his wars. They have repeatedly enabled his aggression. Robert Reich is a professor at Berkeley and was secretary of labor under Bill Clinton. You can find his writing at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
There were the 80,663 fans who made the trek to MetLife Stadium and saw Brazil and Morocco play to a 1-1 draw.
The rule would also prohibit distribution of federal grants to organizations that “promote anti-American values.”
Elon Musk made history when shares for his rocket company, SpaceX, blasted off in its initial public offering on Friday, making him the world’s first trillionaire and […]
Trump endorsed far-right candidate Abelardo De La Espriella, who has pledged to “disembowel the left.”