Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat who visited the first Democratic presidential primary state of South Carolina last Friday, is in hot water after a deep look into his campaign spending.
President Donald Trump on June 19 got a look at his upgraded Boeing 747, a plane gifted by Qatar, at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland as the aircraft neared delivery to join the Air Force One fleet.
Views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author. If the SAVE America Act eventually manages to pass the Senate and becomes the law of the […]
President Donald Trump is slated to attend the Senate GOP’s Steering lunch event on Wednesday at the invitation of Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), an invite seen by other Republican lawmakers as “a slight” toward Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) amid the president’s ongoing spat with the chamber, Punchbowl News reported Monday.Trump has sparked significant “chaos” for Senate Republicans in recent weeks, from derailing the caucus’ entire agenda last week by “canceling” a Senate confirmation hearing, to pushing his controversial voting ID bill the SAVE Act that Thune has said does not have the support to advance.Trump has also attacked Senate Republicans regularly on social media for their refusal to eliminate the filibuster, the Senate rule that allows members to block bills that receive less than 60 votes, among other things, setting the stage for a potentially contentious lunch on Wednesday as the president comes “face-to-face with Republican senators at his weakest point yet.”“They’re openly dismissing Trump’s legislative demands, expressing rare public anger over the Iran [memorandum of understanding], bucking his repeated calls to get rid of the filibuster and furious about his abrupt halting of the confirmation process for Jay Clayton, the nominee to be director of national intelligence,” Punchbowl News’ report reads.“But this session has the potential to become a disaster for Senate Republican leaders. They see Trump’s fixation on the SAVE Act as a strategic misstep that could cost them their majority by turning the MAGA base against GOP candidates and incumbents.”While Thune has dismissed calls to continue to push the SAVE Act – which he said the odds of advancing in the Senate were “slim to none” – Scott, a loyal Trump ally, has fiercely advocated for the bill to take center stage. As such, “Scott inviting Trump during this row with Thune is seen within the GOP Conference as a slight toward the South Dakota Republican,” Punchbowl News reported.
Frustration between President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans is now growing harder to mask.The 80-year-old president's relentless push to attach the SAVE America Act to various Senate bills has created mounting friction between the White House and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), with GOP lawmakers increasingly expressing frustration at what they characterize as the president's misunderstanding of Senate operations, reported MS NOW."Is Trump burning goodwill on the hill? Absolutely," said one senior GOP staffer.Trump has repeatedly pressured Thune over legislation that lacks the votes to pass, then publicly blamed him when it fails. He's called on the Senate to scrap the filibuster, branding anyone who opposes that "a FOOL," and warned that Republicans who resist "will go down on the wrong side of History." He also tied his support for renewing warrantless surveillance powers to passage of the SAVE America Act, prolonging a lapse in a key national security tool.Other moves have added to the friction: a proposed anti-weaponization fund delayed an immigration bill, the appointment of Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence helped unravel a bipartisan surveillance deal and Trump's last-minute decision to pull intelligence nominee Jay Clayton from a confirmation hearing further muddied efforts to resolve the standoff.Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) attributed the tension to a deeper disconnect. "I don't think he understands [the Senate], and quite honestly, I don't think he cares," she said, while still praising Thune's handling of the pressure.Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) framed the dysfunction in broader terms: "The president's inconsistency is making it harder on the nation."The White House has sought to downplay the discord. Legislative affairs director James Braid acknowledged "a big disagreement over the filibuster" but insisted the relationship remains strong. Spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the administration has "enjoyed working closely" with Thune and Senate Republicans.Still, as one Republican senator put it, the dynamic between Trump and his party's Senate leadership has become "awkward for everybody" — and the goodwill once extended to the president shows signs of running thin.
Sen. Chris Murphy says a single image from this week's G7 summit captures one of his deepest fears about the growing power of the tech industry: the chief executives of major artificial intelligence companies seated at the table alongside presidents and prime ministers, as if they were heads of state themselves."At the G7, the CEOs of the big AI companies sat at the table like heads of state, alongside presidents and prime ministers," the Connecticut Democrat wrote, sharing a photo of the summit's main session. His reaction was blunt: "This is the nightmare scene."For Murphy, the optics were not a harmless photo op but a visual representation of how far corporate influence has crept into the highest levels of government. The concern is that companies building the most powerful AI systems are no longer simply lobbying governments from the outside, but are being granted a seat among the elected leaders who are supposed to regulate them.Murphy paired the warning with a call for governments to push back against what he described as the "state-like power" of these firms. He floated several possible responses, suggesting officials consider "taking ownership shares, breaking them up into smaller entities, or imposing a regulatory structure that controls their power over citizens." The range of options, from partial public ownership to outright breakup, signals how seriously he believes the threat should be taken.The senator has emerged as one of the more vocal critics in Congress of concentrated corporate and technological power, and his framing fits a broader unease on the left about the cozy relationship between the tech sector and the current administration. The sight of AI executives integrated into a gathering traditionally reserved for the world's most powerful elected officials, in his telling, is evidence that the balance has already tipped too far toward private industry.His underlying argument is that state-like power demands a state-like response. If a handful of companies can shape economies, information, and security on a scale once reserved for governments, Murphy contends, then leaving their authority unchecked is itself the danger. The photo, to him, is less a snapshot of cooperation than a warning about who is really sitting at the table when the world's decisions get made.At the G7, the CEOs of the big AI companies sat at the table like heads of state, alongside presidents and prime ministers.This is the nightmare scene.Governments need to have a response to the state-like power of these companies, whether it’s by taking ownership shares,… pic.twitter.com/aPdK7FFRaE— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) June 21, 2026
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) on Sunday said Senate Republicans must do the “hard work” to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, a voter ID bill touted by President Trump as his legislative priority. Lee told “Fox News Sunday” host Shannon Bream that the SAVE America Act makes “it easy to vote, hard…
Of all the people Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent could have compared Donald Trump to, he reportedly landed on the one name engineered to make a Republican flinch: George Soros.According to "Regime Change," the new account of Trump's second term by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Bessent told associates that Trump reminded him of his old boss, the billionaire investor and Democratic megadonor the right has spent two decades casting as its all-purpose supervillain. "They are the same animal," Bessent said, per the book.That is a striking thing for any sitting Trump official to put into words, and it lands even harder coming from Bessent, who built part of his Wall Street career working for Soros before he ran the Treasury. When he went looking for something to capture Trump, in other words, he picked the man whose name conservative fundraising emails use as shorthand for everything they claim to be fighting. The comparison is, by the book's account, his private assessment of the president he serves.The Soros line is the most quietly damaging revelation, but it is not the only one. "Regime Change," set for worldwide release Tuesday, also reports that Bessent had blunt and unkind things to say about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the run-up to the infamous February 2025 Oval Office meeting.Bessent, the authors write, had strongly urged Trump not to even let Zelenskyy into the White House until he had signed a minerals deal the treasury secretary had drafted. Behind closed doors, his language about the wartime leader was harsher still. "I've dealt with this little f------," Bessent reportedly told associates, calling Zelenskyy "tricky," describing him as "the special-needs child for the Europeans," and saying he was "acting like Mr Bean on crack."Zelenskyy came anyway, and the meeting collapsed in real time as Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated him for insufficient gratitude and for not wearing a suit. Bessent was also in the room. Afterward he told Bloomberg that Zelenskyy had scored "one of the great diplomatic own goals," professing himself "shocked, shocked" at the visitor's conduct.
Vice President JD Vance and his negotiating team are in Switzerland for a new round of talks over the war in Iran. President Donald Trump said that if there is not a deal within 60 days, he will impose tolls on the Strait of Hormuz. NBC’s Keir Simmons reports for Sunday TODAY.