First Lady Melania Trump is pursuing new sanctions in her battle against Michael Wolff, but as the prominent former biographer of her husband explained this week, her "preposterous" legal strategy is doomed to fail.Wolff is a veteran reporter and author, best known for several books documenting President Donald Trump's first term in the White House. In the last year, he has also been embroiled in a legal battle with the first lady after she initially threatened to sue him over comments about her and her family's connections to Jeffrey Epstein. He responded with an anti-SLAPP lawsuit, accusing Melania Trump of attempting to silence him, in breach of freedom of the press.In May, New York District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, a Trump appointee, tossed out Wolff's suit, saying that he must wait for an actual defamation suit from the first lady, while also noting that there appeared to be legitimate issues brought up between the two parties. In the past week, Melania Trump has moved to try and have Wolff's lawyers sanctioned, over what she described as "factual misrepresentations, frivolous legal arguments and bad-faith conduct."In the latest episode of his Daily Beast podcast, Wolff touched on these new developments in the situation, calling the first lady's strategy "preposterous.""Essentially, they are moving to sanction my lawyers for doing nothing more than bringing the lawsuit against Melania Trump,” Wolff explained. “So this is preposterous on its face."Speaking further on the matter, he said that the first lady's move fits the strategy established by her notoriously litigious husband, which means that it is almost certain to fail."... It is just another... kind of thing that comes with all of Trump-style... litigation, which is you do everything, no matter how... sordid and not respectable... and bound to be thrown out of court, you do this stuff to cost your opponents more money and to cause delay," Wolff explained.Indeed, Judge Vyskocil seemed to urge the first lady against continuing to pursue legal action against Wolff and his team during a hearing earlier this week."I wonder if it’s in the interest of the parties to continue litigating in this court," she said. "I think sometimes people get so caught up in the fervor of the moment that they don’t really stop and think about the cost-benefit analysis of motions that are contemplated and the burden you put a court to."Wolff further claimed to have known that this sort of sanction request was coming after he accidentally received a text from one of the first lady's lawyers, which also exposed how the case "was being coordinated at the highest levels of Trump law.”"On January 26th of this year, I got a text... from the president’s personal lawyer, a man by the name of Boris Epshteyn, and the text said, ‘Hey team, what’s our timing on the Section 11 filing?’” Wolff detailed. "I was not part of the team. I am in Boris Epshteyn’s address book because he’s... a frequent off-the-record chatterer... and as can happen, he was thinking about me and writing a text about me, but it wasn’t supposed to go to me.”
A presidential historian slammed Trump's Independence Day speech as nothing more than "Joe McCarthy Red Scare idiocy."During an appearance on MS NOW on Saturday, Doug Brinkley tore into the speech that Trump gave in front of Mount Rushmore to kick off the Independence Day weekend. In particular, Brinkley found it "deeply offensive" that Trump would spend time warning about communists because of recent primary victories by democratic socialists."It was just Joe McCarthy red scare idiocy because he's out there talking about this communist menace as if it's the early Cold War years," Brinkley went off. "It's just what he wants the Republicans to run on in this election cycle." MS NOW anchor Alex Witt agreed, adding, "When the president says, 'America will never become a communist country,' I was thinking to myself, 'Well, who said it was going to anyway?'"Brinkley compared Trump's speech to "McCarthy starting to have his list in Wheeling, West Virginia, waving it, that they are infiltrators all over." McCarthy famously tried to root out alleged communists during a period called the Red Scare.Trump's speech was "utter nonsense," Brinkley continued, while admitting that "politicizing" is "natural in our days."However, he optimistically viewed most Americans "watching on Main Street" as having the "spirit" of "a red, white and blue blast, and let's have a barbecue, let's see some family, see some friends, and then we'll get on to the bickering of politics during Monday or Tuesday."He also suggested, "I think our inclination for this weekend should be to try to transcend Donald Trump's rhetoric and just sort of block it out for 48 hours."
Fears are mounting over President Donald Trump's massive Independence Day fireworks display for one simple reason. His administration "couldn't even paint a pool blue."That's the criticism from MS NOW editor Ryan Teague Beckworth in an opinion piece detailing his pending dread of a 40-minute pyrotechnics "stunt" slated for 11 p.m. in Washington D.C."Organizers aim to launch more than 850,000 fireworks — compared to the 7,000 at the 2025 show," wrote Beckworth. "The fireworks display is just another attempt to force the city to submit to his whims. As with all his grandiose gestures, it won’t work."Beckworth pointed to multiple problems that have plagued the Great American State Fair in Washington D.C. — the extreme heat, complaints of "inedible" food and a collapsing stage, among them — as reasons not to trust the Trump team to pull off the last big shebang.The writer also suggested the firework show was a form of revenge. "Ninety percent of Washington voted against Trump in 2024, one of the largest margins of any U.S. city," wrote Beckworth."Trump doesn’t like that. He envisions himself as a grand potentate overseeing the capital city. Like Ozymandias, he wants its residents to build him a great arch and an opulent ballroom and hold elaborate events in his honor."Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Kyle Whitmere had another complaint for Trump, not as a citizen, but a dad."Donald Trump might have kids," he wrote on X, "but anyone who schedules fireworks at 11 p.m. never parented children."
President Donald Trump’s record-breaking fireworks show slated for Saturday night has a growing number of critics worried about the safety of Washington, D.C. residents, with one commentator offering a particularly disturbing prediction as to how the event could take a turn for the worse.Trump announced the fireworks show in June, and proudly touted that it would be “the LARGEST FIREWORKS SHOW IN HISTORY” in a post on social media. Around 850,000 fireworks are expected to be launched during the show, scheduled to begin around 11 p.m. Saturday night.A handful of internal National Park Service documents obtained this week by The Washington Post, however, revealed that the fireworks show is expected to cause “dangerous pollution” and “very unhealthy conditions” around the National Mall, conditions so severe that several critics feared the event could turn into a disaster.“They'll probably accidentally set the White House on fire,” predicted Nathan Robinson, editor-in-chief of Current Affairs and political commentator, in a social media post on X Saturday.The air quality at the fireworks show is expected to be so dire that the Park Service advised that attendees “wear an N95 mask when outdoors,” and that they should “remain indoors as much as possible during and after the show.”“Air quality is already bad due to the heat, this is gonna be brutal,” predicted Amanda Carpenter, writer and editor at Protect Democracy and former writer for The Bulwark and CNN contributor, in a social media post on X Saturday.Democratic communications strategist Josh Dorner predicted it was unlikely that attendees would adhere to the Park Service’s warning, further exacerbating the danger present at the event.“The air is going to be SO BAD because of the enormous quantity of fireworks to be set off tonight in DC that officials cautioned people nearby to wear an N95 mask, which I am guessing approximately no one will do,” Dorner wrote Saturday in a social media post on X.And Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center of Economic & Policy Research, argued that a show of such magnitude was simply beyond Trump’s ability to oversee safely.“This is waaaay too complicated for an 80-year-old man suffering from dementia to understand,” Baker wrote Saturday in a social media post on X.they'll probably accidentally set the white house on fire https://t.co/feXssTlI2i— Nathan J Robinson (@NathanJRobinson) July 4, 2026
Online critics slammed top White House aide Stephen Miller after he implied President Donald Trump's second term was an act of God. Miller praised the Trump presidency in a Saturday post on X. "It is impossible to review the events of the last decade and conclude that it is anything other than divine providence that Donald J. Trump is the President of the United States on the year of America 250, July 4th, 2026," he wrote.Not everyone responding to Miller's post saw the Trump presidency the same way.Veteran political columnist Bill Kristol reacted by writing, "Stephen Miller, for some reason trying to give divine providence a bad name."The account PatriotTakes, which monitors right-wing extremism, responded, "Trump is a religion for MAGA.""Easy to dismiss this as the delusional fevered rantings of a diseased mind," wrote former GOP strategist Jeff Timmer. "But the disease is rampant at the epicenter of the most powerful government ever known on the planet. We should be far more alarmed than we are. Far more."Tom Nichols, another long-time political commentator and staff writer for The Atlantic, reacted to Miller's post with an Abraham Lincoln quote and a Bible passage."The Almighty has His own purposes," he wrote. 'Woe unto the world because of offenses for it must needs be that offenses come but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.'"Meanwhile, journalist John Harwood simply advised, "Just say no to drugs."
A fired Federal Trade Commission official said Saturday that a recent Supreme Court ruling favoring President Donald Trump will leave billionaires "running wild."During an appearance on MS NOW, Rebecca Slaughter talked about her Supreme Court case against Trump in which she and another former Federal Trade Commission commissioner, both Democratic appointees, challenged their dismissals. "I was just profoundly disappointed," Slaughter said about the Supreme Court decision that allowed Trump to fire independent agency commissioners at will."That's a really sad change in our fundamental structure of government, mostly for the American people," Slaughter said. "The American people deserve a government that is fighting for them, and not just for the powerful."However, Slaughter warned that billionaires in particular stand to benefit from the Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. Slaughter.She described the Federal Trade Commission as a "check on unfair and illegal business practices on billionaire corporations and the billionaires who run them." The "chilling effect" of the Supreme Court ruling will leave those billionaires and corporations "running wild," Slaughter warned.Federal Trade Commission officials will have to "operate in fear of getting fired for failure to do a favor for the president's billionaire buddies," and won't know "whether they're going to be able to operate as a check" on the powerful, according to Slaughter."What will it mean if the president says to the FTC commissioners, 'I want you to make this case go away because this company is helping to build my ballroom or donate to my inauguration,'" Slaughter said. "In the past, what it would mean would be nothing because the way the FTC was structured, commissioners were obligated to follow the law, follow the facts, follow their oath."Slaughter added that the chilling effect could extend to "about two dozen agencies" that are under Trump's purview, including those that oversee "all kinds of important things, from nuclear safety to consumer product safety."
