Iran must develop nuclear bomb to protect ‘peace and calm,’ IRGC media says — despite pledge to Trump
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Iran has "no choice" but to develop a nuclear bomb, a media outlet linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said — the latest threat to the US-organized peace deal.
House Speaker Mike Johnson floated the idea of getting a tattoo Sunday in honor of President Donald Trump and his agenda, telling Fox News exactly what it would say and where he would get it.Speaking with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo, Johnson was asked about Trump’s controversial voter ID bill known as the SAVE Act, which Trump has furiously insisted Republicans instead refer to as the “SAVE America Act,” despite the bill officially being called the “SAVE Act.”“The president and I laughed about it in the Oval [Office] last week,” Johnson said. “I told him, 'You know Mr. President, I don't have any tattoos, but if I did, it'd say “Save America” on my shoulder,’ okay? We passed it three times in the House already, we're going to pass it again!”As Johnson noted that the tattoo would be on his shoulder, he oddly pointed to his chest.Last week, Trump vowed to block the passage of an affordable housing bill Congress passed on a bipartisan basis until the SAVE Act was delivered to his desk for final approval.Described by some critics as a form of “voter suppression,” The SAVE Act would require voters to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote, something experts say could pose hurdles for the 52% of voters who don’t possess a passport and the 11% who don’t have access to their birth certificate. The bill would also disproportionately affect voters with lower incomes, who make up a significant share of Democratic Party voters.Mike Johnson says if he got a tattoo it would be to honor Trump and his agenda on his shoulder (he says as he points to his chest) pic.twitter.com/rigPEFruk5— Alexander Willis (@ReporterWillis) June 28, 2026
President Donald Trump has spent the last several weeks sparking chaos for Senate Republicans, who only now, according to New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, are “coming to understand” the threat the president poses, though the realization may be “a bit too late.”Trump has aggressively pushed Senate Republicans to advance his controversial voter ID bill known as the SAVE Act, despite Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s insistence that the bill lacks adequate support in the GOP caucus. Trump also derailed the Senate GOP’s entire agenda with a surprise cancellation of a Senate confirmation hearing, and caused further chaos by refusing to sign a bi-partisan bill on affordable housing.With the midterm elections just months away, Senate Republicans, Bouie argued, are starting to wake up to the threat Trump poses for their own political survival.“Trump does not identify himself with the Republican Party. He identifies himself with his own political standing. And so, if he feels he needs to do something to protect his standing that harms Republicans, he’ll do it without even thinking,” Bouie said in an episode of “The Opinions,” transcribed by The New York Times. “And Senate Republicans in particular, who did not expect to be fighting for their majority this fall, are somehow only now coming to understand that, yes, if you are in his way, he is going to make life difficult for you, even if that costs you a Senate majority. And there’s a 50/50 chance, 60/40 chance that, yeah, it costs the Republicans their Senate majority.”Amid Trump’s cratering favorability among Americans, the Senate may very well end up in Democratic Party control, an idea that analysts previously thought unthinkable. But Senate Republicans’ realization may have come too late, Bouie argued.“Politically for them, it’s just like a bit too late, right?” Bouie said. “They already spent all of 2025 tying themselves incredibly tightly to the administration under, as I read it, irrational exuberance – this idea that kind of caught hold, I think, throughout a large part of American politics that Trump’s win represented some sort of MAGA sea change in American life.”
The Trump White House waged a behind-the-scenes pressure campaign on the obscure federal board responsible for shielding government workers from unfair firings, ultimately securing a ruling that could hand the president sweeping power to purge the civil service and install loyalists throughout the government, according to a New York Times investigation.The report centers on the Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent agency whose job is to act as a neutral arbiter between federal agencies and dismissed workers. In a March ruling the Times described as landing "like a thunderbolt" in legal circles, the board broke with decades of precedent and embraced the White House's argument that Article II of the Constitution gives President Donald Trump the power to fire officials without due process.According to the Times, the decision came after a concerted pressure campaign waged both publicly and privately — an effort the paper likened to "calling a federal judge and telling him how to rule." That private push, the report said, was led by James Sherk, a special assistant to the president who has spent years focused on making it easier to quickly fire federal workers.At the center of the account is a late-November meeting at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, after which the board's acting chair, Henry Kerner, gathered a small group of staff and appeared "shaken and unsure how to proceed," per the Times. Kerner reportedly recounted that administration officials had conveyed their belief that the board was bound to follow the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel opinion on the Article II cases.The White House disputed that characterization. Officials said the meeting's primary purpose was to interview Kerner for a possible nomination as permanent chair and insisted he was not told how to rule — which a White House official said showed the idea of a pressure campaign was "categorically false."A White House spokeswoman, Allison Schuster, defended the underlying philosophy in stark terms."There can constitutionally be no independent executive branch agencies because independence from the president would mean independence from the voters who elected him," Schuster told the Times.Legal experts saw the ruling very differently. Nicholas Bednar, a University of Minnesota law professor who studies the federal civil service, said the revelation of White House involvement undermines the decision's legitimacy."Knowing that it was made with influence from the White House means the decision was not based on positions of law," Bednar told the Times, adding that it "reflects the same ideological considerations that is driving the evisceration of the federal civil service."The Times noted the striking internal logic of the ruling: for the first time in its history, the board embraced a constitutional argument that, taken to its conclusion, would invalidate its own existence — since the board itself is a product of the same Civil Service Reform Act that Article II theory would override.Former board members underscored the magnitude. Raymond Limon, who left the board in February of last year, called it "a monumental decision, reversing years of board law and determining who and who does not get board protections." He added: "It is seismic."Some federal employment specialists, the Times reported, equated the ruling to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The full Federal Circuit has since agreed to review the case, an unusual step that highlights its significance.The report closed on a telling scene from this month, when Sherk stood in the Oval Office as Trump signed an executive order stripping job protections from nearly 8,000 workers in policy-making roles. Told the order was Sherk's idea, Trump summoned him to the Resolute Desk.Sherk explained that the order treated policymakers like private-sector workers: "If they're messing up, they can be removed quickly.""That's great," Trump replied, according to the Times. "And you were very much involved in this?""I was, sir," Sherk said, according to the reporting.
A handful of GOP lawmakers made their way to Washington, D.C. recently to attend and promote the Great American State Fair, organized by the President Donald Trump-linked group Freedom 250, but in doing so, “accidentally” exposed the event for its numerous shortcomings, The Daily Beast reported.Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R-WA), for instance, took to social media to attack his own state’s government for not participating in the fair, posting a photograph online of himself standing on the National Mall lawn. The “awkward post,” the Beast noted, depicted Baumgartner standing in front of “only a handful of people visible behind him.”Other GOP lawmakers engaged in similar “self-owns,” as the Beast described them. Rep. Blake Moore (R-UT) posted a video online from the fair asking Americans to attend the event, but in a manner in which he “all but [begged] people to let his office help them get there.” The video also “came with the unfortunate visual aid of Moore standing in an almost empty park, with an empty Ferris wheel turning behind him,” the Beast’s report reads.“Contact our office if there’s any help that you need to organize things or tours or get more information,” Moore said in the video he published online. “Please, please reach out. We’d love to help out in that way.”The Great American State Fair faced challenges weeks before it opened to the public last week after artists backed out of the event en masse after learning of its connections to Trump. In the four days since opening, the fair has been plagued with power failures that stalled a Ferris wheel and melted ice cream supplies.Investigative reporter Eric Flack also revealed that the state exhibits at the fair ranged wildly in quality, with some states’ exhibits amounting to two chairs in a small, shared booth.
Former "Superman" actor and prominent Trump supporter Dean Cain set out to showcase the administration's Great American State Fair this weekend — but critics say the photo he chose did the opposite, capturing a sea of mostly empty grass on the National Mall.Cain posted an aerial shot taken from the fair's Ferris wheel, framing it as a celebratory snapshot of the event marking America's 250th anniversary."View from atop the Ferris Wheel at the Great American State Fair!!" Cain wrote.The image, which showed long rows of white tents flanking a vast green expanse with only sparse clusters of people scattered across it, quickly drew ridicule — most notably from former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a frequent Trump critic."Hahahaha dude this is not the picture to show," Kinzinger wrote, adding a sardonic jab at the visible attendance: "All 6 people."Cain pushed back, insisting the turnout was robust and questioning Kinzinger's motives."There were thousands of people there and all around DC today, Adam. Why do you wish it was empty? That seems odd," Cain replied.But Kinzinger turned the exchange into something sharper, arguing his objection wasn't about crowd size at all — it was about what the event had become under President Donald Trump."Dean I don't WISH it empty. I WISH Trump wouldn't have turned the celebration of America into a celebration of HIM," Kinzinger wrote. "America is about no allegiance to one man."He went on to express personal disappointment at how the milestone anniversary had played out."I've been looking forward to 250 since i was a kid and heard about 200," Kinzinger wrote. "But Trump ruined this for his 80 year old ego."The back-and-forth added to a rocky stretch for the White House-backed fair, which has faced criticism over low attendance, performer dropouts, and a string of operational stumbles since its opening. For Cain, the attempt to project a thriving celebration instead handed critics a wide-angle view of empty lawn — and a fresh opening to needle the administration over the event's struggles.Dean I don’t WISH it empty. I WISH Trump wouldn’t have turned the celebration of America into a celebration of HIM. America is about no allegiance to one man.I’ve been looking forward to 250 since i was a kid and heard about 200. But Trump ruined this for his 80 year old ego https://t.co/aPmw9XbU6R— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@AdamKinzinger) June 28, 2026
President Trump late Saturday threatened Iran’s existence as the renewed strikes between the Islamic regime and the U.S. threaten a shaky ceasefire. “United States aircraft just struck Iranian missile and drone storage locations, and coastal radar sites, for violating the Cease Fire Agreement, AGAIN!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “It is very possible that they…
President Donald Trump's announcement of a fresh round of strikes on Iran touched off a wave of backlash this week — not just from his usual critics, but from voices on the right, including prominent America First and MAGA-aligned figures.The reactions followed Trump's post on Truth Social declaring that U.S. aircraft had struck Iranian missile and drone storage sites and coastal radar positions for again violating the ceasefire, warning that "the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist" if the U.S. is "forced to militarily complete the job."Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, once among Trump's most steadfast allies, reacted with alarm and invoked the anti-interventionist promise central to the movement."He might have opened Pandora's Box," Greene wrote. "I'm praying this ends. We said no more foreign wars."Some of the sharpest criticism came from David Pyne, an America First conservative who posts under @AmericaFirstCon, and who openly called for the president's removal."Trump says the cease-fire has collapsed as the US continues daily bombing strikes on Iran and then again threatens to wipe it off the face of the Earth implying the use of US nuclear weapons to do so," Pyne wrote. "Can Congress impeach and remove this lunatic already?"Pyne amplified several other critical voices. One, posting as Richard under the handle @ricwe123, framed the strikes as a strategic blunder."Starting a conflict is easy. Living with the consequences is the hard part," Richard wrote, adding that "Trump made a catastrophic miscalculation by blindly following Israel into a confrontation with Iran, with little apparent regard for the geopolitical and economic fallout."Another account Pyne shared, Ryan Matta, is widely followed on the right. Matta argued the episode had shredded American credibility abroad."Trump looks like complete fraud on the world stage. Every peace talk was a lie, the MOU was a hoax, and this was the plan all along," Matta wrote on X. "No country should ever take a peace talk with America seriously. We look like a joke on the world stage."Tom Nichols, the Never-Trump conservative writer and retired Naval War College professor, took a more caustic approach, mocking the administration's characterization of the situation as a ceasefire at all."I'm just simple retired War College professor, but two sides exchanging fire is not a 'cease-fire,'" Nichols wrote, before taking a shot at the administration's rebranding of the Defense Department: "Maybe renaming the DOD was a little hasty." His post was amplified by Lincoln Project co-founder Reed Galen, also a conservative.
Iran warned Sunday that it could bring ongoing peace talks with the United States to a “complete halt” after a fresh exchange of military strikes in recent days. The ceasefire agreement reached earlier this month appeared to fracture after Iran attacked commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S. retaliated against Iranian targets […]
