The country's theocracy hopes to see millions flood the streets of the capital beginning Saturday in scenes reminiscent to the burial of the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989.
An author who has written four books about President Donald Trump claimed on Thursday that first lady Melania Trump has concocted a "preposterous" new way to try and silence him. Michael Wolff, co-host of the "Inside Trump's Head" podcast with Joanna Coles of The Daily Beast, said during a new episode that Melania Trump's legal team has moved to sanction the lawyers representing Wolff for bringing a frivolous lawsuit against her. A federal judge threw out Wolff's anti-SLAPP lawsuit against Melania Trump in May, which he filed after she threatened to bring a $1 billion lawsuit against Wolff for his claims about the Trump family's ties to disgraced financier and convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein. “Essentially, they are moving to sanction my lawyers for doing nothing more than bringing the lawsuit against Melania Trump,” Wolff said on the podcast. “So this is preposterous on its face.”Wolff also claimed that he found out about the move from Boris Epshteyn, a lawyer close to the Trumps, whom Donald Trump has described as someone who will "say anything" to make him happy. He claimed that hearing about the move from Epshteyn revealed that the strategy behind the lawsuit “was being coordinated at the highest levels of Trump law.”
The Supreme Court has previously been accused of having a far right ideology, engaging in judicial activism rather than strict constructionism and moving to empower President Donald Trump even at the expense of the Constitution.“In the wake of Slaughter, presidents now hold the keys to the kingdom,” wrote Ryan J. Owens, a political science professor and director of the Institute for Governance and Civics at Florida State University, for The Dispatch on Thursday. Owens was referring to the Supreme Court case of Trump v. Slaughter, which overturned a 1935 case holding that presidents could not fire commissioners of independent agencies except for cause. By allowing Trump to fire a Federal Trade Commissioner, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, simply because she is a Democrat, the majority of justices brushed aside concerns that this would allow civic and non-partisan institutions to be manipulated for political ends.Owens argues that the Supreme Court was correct to make it possible for presidents to effectively implement their agenda so long as voters can remove that president. Yet he also argued that this is not in itself enough to help America.“If the president can remove agency officials at will and Congress continues to delegate substantial authority to the executive, the president will have become more powerful than the Framers possibly imagined,” Owens wrote. “The Supreme Court must now finish the job. Revive the nondelegation doctrine. Make Congress legislate again.”He then quoted a Trump-appointed judge, Justice Neil Gorsuch, who suggested in his decision that it might be time “to reinvigorate the intelligible principle doctrine and recognize that Congress cannot delegate its legislative authority.” Agreeing with this principle, Owens argued that “the court’s Slaughter opinion hints at such. Somewhat surprisingly (and unnecessarily), the majority opinion positively referenced A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. U.S. (1935), the last case in which the court struck down a law for violating the nondelegation doctrine. The Slaughter opinion further called the Federal Trade Commission Act’s delegation ‘startingly abstract.’ This sounds an awful lot like a formalist court ready to revive the nondelegation doctrine now that the president’s removal power is back in its rightful constitutional place.”Owens continued that “constitutional formalists and liberals should hope the Supreme Court revives the doctrine—formalists, because it would return legislating to Congress where it belongs, and liberals because they fear an empowered Trump.” He then concluded that, while he believes the Slaughter decision corrected an earlier case with which he disagreed, he hopes “it follows this great ruling with another.”
In a 6-3 decision breaking on partisan lines, the Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. Slaughter that Trump can fire Federal Trade Commissioners and other federal agency directors without cause. The ruling overturns longstanding Supreme Court precedent and express statutory instruction that combined to protect the political independence and subject matter expertise of federal agencies for over 90 years.The ruling presents a novel reading of a president’s Constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” expanding that power for a rogue president hellbent on breaking laws instead of executing them. As Justice Sotomayor put it, “The Court… is elevating (Trump) above his once-coequal branches by transforming a duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws.”An activist Roberts Court has now written into existence an all-powerful unitary executive despite elaborate instructions in art. I, II and III to keep the three branches of government separate and equal. Rejecting federal laws that restrict a president’s removal of agency directors to for-cause removal, SCOTUS has made the president all powerful and Congress less relevant, while arrogating scientific and technical questions to itself.Trump’s corporate donors can now choose their own regulatorsBefore republicans on the bench rewrote it this week, the Federal Trade Commission Act stated that a President could only remove a commissioner for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” That statute clearly and intentionally barred presidents from firing directors for partisan or corrupt reasons, and from punishing regulators who rule against a president’s corporate donor(s). Vesting a singularly authoritarian executive with unprecedented, expansive powers, the Supreme Court re-wrote federal laws to advance their own political narrative.Over two dozen federal agencies will be affected, covering everything from the financial markets, the commodities markets, and nuclear power. Agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission were all Congressionally designed to be independent watchdogs, enforcers insulated from partisan whims. Now Trump can remove any commissioners who threaten to rule against his allies, assuring that his political supporters will be afforded preferential review, licensing, merger approvals and other rulings.With Trump’s new latitude to fire any agency head who threatens meaningful regulation, his corporate donors have been effectively empowered to choose their own regulators. Federal laws passed to protect human health, finance, banking, communications, workplace safety, and clean air, soil and water have been rendered functionally meaningless.Replacing science, expertise and merit with political fealtyCongressionally created and funded federal agencies serve express, statutory purposes written to safeguard the American public. The Supreme Court had protected agency autonomy and expertise dating back to 1935, ruling that some degree of autonomy was necessary for federal agencies to meet specific scientific, economic, communications, trade, health, and environmental mandates. Federal agencies were never meant to be a president’s personal toys with which to reward donors and cronies.For a president in the habit of accepting lavish gifts and cash from foreign governments, along with hundreds of millions from domestic supplicants, finding even more room for self-dealing, corruption and political favoritism must be heady. For the rest of us, it’s dangerous. We actually need competent people to run the federal government, even in its post-DOGE watered down state.If Trump declares that every home must be heated by dirty coal, the head of the Energy Commission must try to effectuate that command no matter the harm to Americans’ lungs. If Trump declares that particulate matter, fossil fuels and the widespread use of Monsanto is good for the environment, any EPA director who contradicts him with cancer and death statistics will be silenced through removal. It’s governance by full Idiocracy.A know-nothing, anti-science president can now follow his gutTo every American outside the Fox News propaganda bubble, Trump has demonstrated astonishing incompetence on all fronts. From economically illiterate tariffs to our defeat in Iran, sprinkled with comically disastrous results in between, an ignorant and arrogant “I follow my gut” Trump revels in rejecting science and expertise as Americans pay the price.The only thing saving the nation from complete chaos and disaster to date is that several federal agencies had retained some level institutional competence despite Trump (and Musk’s) best efforts to dismantle them.
The Air Force has confirmed a trainee died as a result of a flu outbreak at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, according to Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas). Keon McDaniel was in his sixth week of basic military training when he experienced a “medical emergency” June 12. He was taken to Brooke Army Medical Center and died there on June…
Many MAGA Republicans exploded in anger when conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett sided with Chief Justice John Roberts and three Democratic appointees — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — in Trump v. Barbara, which invalidated an executive order by President Donald Trump calling for an end to birthright citizenship. This wasn't the first time MAGA Republicans raged against Barrett, and an editorial by the conservative National Review calls out MAGA "abuse of" the Trump appointee.Barrett has a decidedly conservative resumé, describing herself as an "originalist" and an admirer of the late Justice Antonin Scalia. But her willingness to occasionally buck MAGA and vote with the Democratic justices is infuriating MAGA Republicans and Trump loyalists."Criticism comes, rightly, with the territory of being a Supreme Court justice," the National Review editors argue in their editorial. "Hysteria shouldn't. With the conclusion of the 2025–26 Supreme Court term and Donald Trump's defeat on birthright citizenship, we have been treated to another round of abuse from right-leaning commentators directed toward Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The immediate trigger of their ire is Barrett's joining the Trump v. Barbara majority (along with Chief Justice John Roberts and, on the outcome, Justice Brett Kavanaugh) striking down Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship."The Review editors continue, "Barrett critics also cite her majority opinion in Watson v. Republican National Committee, which allowed states to accept ballots postmarked by Election Day for up to five days later, as well as her vote, along with Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch, to strike down Trump's 'emergency' global tariffs and her rulings against Trump in a few of last summer's torrent of emergency decisions on deportations."On the MAGA far right, the conservative justice is often attacked as "Amy 'Commie' Barrett" — which is the type of rhetoric the Review is calling out."It's the intemperate vitriol of these attacks, and their utter lack of perspective, that appalls us," the Review editors lament. "Critics brand Barrett a traitor, a DEI hire and a left-winger who has doomed the country. They complain that she makes poor decisions because she is a woman and a mother of adopted children from Haiti. Perhaps more ominously, there is much muttering that future Republicans should fill judicial vacancies with fewer people devoted to the law and more who will be mere party apparatchiks, voting in the results-oriented fashion we traditionally associate with the liberal justices…. No, we don't always agree with her, or with the Court's decisions since her arrival in 2020 formed the current 6–3 majority."The Review editors continue, "Nor, for that matter, do we agree every single time with any of her distinguished colleagues. The Court's cases are often hard, and its justices fallible. That's why there are nine of them."
A new report from Punchbowl News has revealed new details about the recent hospitalization of longtime Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).Last month, news broke that McConnell was hospitalized on June 14. Spokesperson David Popp released a statement that day that said little more than that the senator had been "admitted to the hospital" and that he was "receiving excellent care."The dispatcher requests 'ALS' services, which Thompson said referred to 'Advanced Life Support.'No updates have been released in the weeks since. However, a Punchbowl News report released Wednesday revealed that McConnell was "unconscious" when first responders were sent to his home in Washington, D.C.The report cited an emergency dispatch recording shared on X by D.C. journalist Desirée Thompson. Thompson claimed the recording came from "Washington, D.C., Fire and EMS dispatch."On the recording, the dispatcher requests "ALS" services, which Thompson said referred to "Advanced Life Support." The dispatcher also notes that the emergency relates to someone who is "unconscious."Blaze News reached out to McConnell's office to confirm that the senator had been unconscious at the time and to learn the current status of his condition and whether he has been discharged from the hospital. The office did not respond.RELATED: Longtime GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell hospitalized Photo dated June 1, 2026, featuring Sens. Mitch McConnell and Jim Justice of West Virginia; Nathan Posner/Anadolu/Getty ImagesPunchbowl News reported that multiple senators, including Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), have claimed to have spoken with McConnell. Thune said the day after McConnell's hospitalization that McConnell remained "dialed in to what's going on" in the Senate.Thune's office did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News about whether he has been in touch with McConnell since that time.McConnell's health has been the subject of concern for years. The 84-year-old has apparently frozen up, tripped, fallen down stairs, and used a wheelchair on multiple occasions, including in early June. Back in February, he checked himself in to a hospital after experiencing "flu-like symptoms."About 10 days before his latest hospitalization, a noticeably frail-looking McConnell required assistance from two men as he made his way through the U.S. Capitol to vote on a reconciliation bill, a photo showed. His most recent message on X was posted on June 12.McConnell announced in early 2025 that he would not seek another term.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
