Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Monday the Jewish state would “hold fire” after President Trump called on Israel and Iran to return to a cease-fire.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said on Monday that the California mayoral race result “stinks to high heaven” as the state’s vote-counting process drags on nearly a week after the primary. President Donald Trump had previously said on social media that the race is “rigged” and called California a “3rd World Nation.” Nearly a week […]
Over the course of both Trump terms, he and his allies have used a “flood the zone” approach where they attempt to overwhelm opponents with controversial actions and statements so quickly that response becomes impossible. Now, the court wrangling over President Donald Trump’s controversial ballroom reveals that he applies a similar strategy to his vanity and construction projects: “move fast and break things and nobody has standing.”This is according to Lawfare senior editor Molly Roberts, who was directly quoting the judge overseeing the case — a characterization with which Trump’s lawyers openly agreed. Roberts was on hand for the oral arguments between attorneys representing the White House and those for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the latter of which had filed for an injunction barring construction while the case was heard. That injunction was granted while allowing only construction “strictly necessary to ensure the safety and security of the White House and its grounds” to continue pending appeal. The White House then tried to argue that the ruling actually allowed for the construction of the ballroom, arguing that the whole thing was vital for security, which the judge did not buy, reaffirming that aboveground construction must halt until approved by Congress. The president’s ‘break things’ approach was revealed in the subsequent appeal.According to Roberts, these latest appeal proceedings are “simultaneously more like and more unlike your typical litigation than those following the matter might have expected. More like, because the lawyer presenting for the government sounds like a lawyer and not the president on a Truth Social spree… Less like, because what this lawyer is saying is that neither these judges nor any can stop the administration from building what it wants to build once it has started building them. Not now, not ever.”During oral arguments, after much back and forth, the White House lawyers essentially argued that once the president had already taken certain actions on the basis of security — such as, say, bulldozing the White House East Wing — there was no legal mechanism allowing a lawsuit to be brought against the government. The judge then raised a specific example: what if the White House were gone? Say an administration decides that security justifies an entirely new building, tears down the White House, and then someone decides to sue. Would such a suit be legal?According to Roberts, White House lawyers argued that it would not be if the destruction of the original White House had already occurred.“So move fast and break things and nobody has standing?” asked the judge. “Bulldoze the Statue of Liberty, and as long as the government does it fast enough, too bad, nothing to be done?”“I think that’s right,” said the White House attorney.What’s more, the judge had an important question about what would happen were construction allowed to proceed while the case was heard. If the government lost a year or so down the line and the ballroom was declared illegal, would the White House tear it down, or would its argument, “for the same safety and security reasons, be we can’t take it down?” The White agreed with the latter. “So your position is this can’t be stopped by a court?” the judge asked. “That court, this court, the Supreme Court, no court could stop the building of this?”The White House agreed.“If this were complete lawlessness by the government,” the judge pressed, “it couldn’t be stopped?”“Yes,” Roberts explained. According to the Trump administration, “even if the ballroom construction were complete lawlessness by the government, only Congress — not the courts — would have any independent role in stopping it.”
President Donald Trump just received a public assist from House Speaker Mike Johnson in his unsubstantiated claims that California’s elections have been stolen — but Johnson himself admitted that Trump’s claims are “impossible to prove.”“I'm not saying it's rigged,” Johnson told CNN’s Manu Raju on Monday. “I'm saying it stinks to high heaven. And everybody knows that. Let's remove the appearance of impropriety. Let's have, what a concept, let's have votes on an election the day of the election. That's what many states are able to do. I think California is playing around with this.”When Raju asked whether Johnson has any evidence that the election is being rigged, the House Speaker admitted that he does not.“I don't — some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream that it is impossible to prove,” Johnson told Raju. “But I think everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here. And that's a concern. We need people to believe in the integrity of our election system.”Johnson has been accused of controlling the House Republicans rather than serving the traditional presidential role of respecting the balance of power between the executive and legislature. In fact, NOTUS reported on Monday that Trump has so much power over the House, he has joked that he and not Johnson is in fact the real House Speaker.“I have two jobs: being president and being speaker,” Trump once teased Johnson while other lawmakers watched him do it. Trump’s joke refers to Johnson repeatedly going to the president to get potentially defecting Republicans in line behind his agenda, with Johnson himself repeatedly failing to do so.For example, in 2025 Trump reportedly yelled at Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) over the phone until she started crying and walked away, according to what two sources told NOTUS. After she left, Trump continued to rant to the remaining lawmakers who were present for her humiliation.“I have no f—— idea what she just said," Trump told the other members.That incident, according to NOTUS, was merely one of many. Two sources told NOTUS that House members are instructed to check with the White House before proposing legislation. One anonymous House Republican lawmaker told NOTUS that as a result, House Speaker Johnson and the rest of that body’s leaders have failed in their basic legislative duties.This is "a total shirking of responsibilities to the White House,” the source told NOTUS. “Everything has to be preordained and pre-blessed, and there’s very little that we’re able to have our own will on. We should be empowered to pass our own priorities, not just follow what the mandate of the day is.”
President Trump says the United States is “very close” to reaching a deal with Iran that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and permanently block Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The president is also signaling confidence that the conflict will not become another endless war. Meanwhile, Trump is expected to attend the Knicks’ first...
The “UFC Freedom 250” event is slated to take place on June 14.
President Donald Trump might have just stumbled into a "perfect storm" that could lead to a federal court smackdown against his planned UFC cage match on the White House South Lawn, former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance told MS NOW's Alex Witt on Monday.This comes as a lawsuit filed by two local activists, including a Vietnam veteran, details the appearance of corruption surrounding the event, as well as its defacement of public property and violation of multiple regulations and the constitutional separation of powers.That complaint, noted Vance, tears at the heartstrings on top of it all: "If you don't mind, I'll just read you two sentences that explain where we are. Mr. Romano writes 'One of the most moving and powerful aspects of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is its quiet tranquility. That tranquility both honors the fallen, the fallen, and allows those who have come to pay their respects an opportunity to reflect and remember without interruption.'"This, she noted, is part of a "forceful case" that the UFC event will desecrate these sites, which gives them legal standing to challenge it."Can I ask you on a big picture level, Joyce, what is the point of having rules, of having laws that require congressional approval if they are treated as mere suggestions?" asked Witt.This sort of brazen defiance of the law, Vance replied, is "the modus operandi for this administration" as they do all they can to "plow past laws and regulations that don't suit them, acting on the assumption that no one will get in their way, that Congress will continue to be supine, that the courts won't interfere."Unfortunately for them, Vance said, the lawsuit has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta — a jurist who has a long history with Trump."They have a jurist who has shown a pronounced ability to look at the facts and the law and try to hold the administration accountable," said Vance. Mehta, she continued, is the same judge "who permitted the civil case around January 6th to move forward, finding that the First Amendment might not cover the sort of language of incitement Donald Trump used that morning of the insurrection."The upshot, she concluded, is "this may be the perfect storm that Donald Trump fears about to take place here." - YouTube www.youtube.com
Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime executive assistant Lesley Groff is expected to testify before the House Oversight Committee on June 9 as part of its ongoing investigation into the disgraced financier.