President Donald Trump, not even halfway through his second term in office, is about to see his worst fear realized as he faces a reckoning within the Republican Party, according to a new analysis. The Atlantic analyst Jonathan Lemire argued this week that Trump has "crashed into reality" as he "flails" both internationally and domestically. "Recent months have delivered a reckoning for Trump, who has crashed hard against some real limits," wrote Lamire. "His approval numbers have sunk, and Republicans are finally, in small doses, beginning to defy him." The president predicted his war with Iran would be a quick surgical strike but it has now metastasized into a five-month quagmire with mounting casualties, depleted weapons stockpiles, and surging gas prices making him "just the latest U.S. president to be humiliated by hard-liners in Tehran," wrote Lemire.National policy has stymied as well. "Trump has demanded that the Senate blow up the filibuster to pass the SAVE Act, which would make voting more difficult and require voters to provide proof of citizenship," Lemire noted. "But Republicans have refused." Once the midterms conclude, Trump will face the grim future, he wrote."Trump could face his worst fear," wrote Lemire. "Irrelevance. He will be a lame duck, down to his final two years in office, and at some point will no longer be the nation’s top topic of conversation. As focus shifts to the presidential primaries, Trump risks disappearing from the headlines. Even some of his closest allies don’t know how he’ll react," he wrote.What comes next for Trump looks worse, Lemire wrote."Trump may no longer be among each day’s top stories—arguably for the first time since he came down the Trump Tower escalator more than a decade ago. It’s not as if he will suddenly vanish; he’ll aim to play GOP kingmaker, and he’ll still be commander in chief. But he’ll be staring at life as a private citizen again," he predicted.
Sixteen-year-old California lifeguard Ryder Williams did not stop saving lives after his heroic rescue of a 10-year-old boy from violent surf went viral.
The post MORE HEROICS REVEALED: 16-Year-Old Lifeguard Ryder Williams Made TWO More “Gnarly” Rescues After Saving Boy from Monster California Surf appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
A two-year investigation identified 47 adults accused of sexual misconduct against students at a Michigan arts institution with deep ties to Jeffrey Epstein, drawing on more than 70 firsthand accounts of abuse dating back to the 1950s, MLive reported Tuesday night.Epstein has a well-documented history with Interlochen Center of the Arts, having attended the institution in 1967 when he was around 14 years old. In the 1990s, Epstein became a major donor to the institution, and previous reporting has revealed how he and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell used the center to target young girls. Recent reports also revealed that Epstein had set up his own lodge at the institution, and was accused by the mother of soap opera actress Nadia Bjorlin of trying to groom her daughter when she was 13.Carried out by Sanghavi Law Office at the behest of the institution, the new investigation revealed that the scope of abuse was far greater than previously known, including new allegations of abuse by Epstein himself.“The information gathered during this investigation is, simply, devastating,” reads Sanghavi Law Office’s report. “Despite the deep and positive connections that many individuals expressed to the investigative team regarding Interlochen, some of these same individuals detailed the significant negative impact of the conduct that they reported.”The law office’s investigative team forwarded the names of the alleged abuser to the Grand Traverse County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, though a significant number of accused adults are now deceased, per the report. Having conducted around 180 interviews, the law office also uncovered a previously unreported allegation against Epstein.“One alum said that when she met Epstein and Maxwell at Interlochen, they offered to pay for her tuition, which they did. She noted that they withdrew financial support for subsequent schooling after she did not engage in requested conduct,” the law office’s report reads. “This alum said that during the time she interacted with Epstein and Maxwell at Interlochen, they asked her to Epstein’s lodge on campus, and that while there, Epstein engaged in sexual conduct with her, brushing against her body over her clothes, in a manner in which he indicated was accidental.”The same alum told investigators that she visited Epstein at his home in New York on three occasions while a student at Interlochen, during which Epstein would make unwanted sexual physical contact, and that she “did not tell anyone about Epstein’s conduct towards her until decades later.”In another new revelation, investigators discovered that a male faculty member at the institution had allegedly made unwanted physical advances and contact with a female student. That student told investigators that she confronted the faculty member and read aloud a letter to him: “Can you promise me that you won’t do this to anyone else?”The faculty member, according to the student, “told her that this was part of how he expressed love, and that he could not promise he would not do it again with anyone else,” the law office’s report reads.Per the report, the student informed leadership at the institution of the alleged unwanted physical contact. Within days of informing leadership, the male faculty member accused of abuse received a letter of recommendation from an institution administrator, and a second letter of recommendation from another administrator a month later.
Staff at CBS News' flagship news magazine "60 Minutes" are voicing sharp discontent over network chief Bari Weiss' latest round of hires, with insiders saying they doubt the new additions belong on one of television's most storied broadcasts.The most contentious pick is conservative New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat, who joins despite having no reporting background and minimal on-camera experience, reported Status. Newly installed executive producer Nick Bilton praised Douthat in an internal memo as a rigorous thinker with deep empathy, a characterization industry insiders reportedly found laughable.“The idea that Ross can be a ‘60’ correspondent is a joke," snorted a veteran TV executive.According to the New York Post, insiders mock Bilton interviews as an excuse for him to air grievances about CBS — calling them "therapy sessions."The Post reports Bilton is telling people he's “assembling ‘The Avengers of news.'" “We’re journalists,” one source said. "Not Marvel movie characters."Douthat isn't the only addition raising eyebrows. Writer Sebastian Junger, former VICE correspondent Gianna Toboni, and ex-Sky News host Sir Trevor Phillips — who has faced past accusations of Islamophobia — round out the new roster of contributors and correspondents, alongside CBS veteran Norah O'Donnell's promotion to full correspondent.Industry figures who spoke with Status measured the newcomers against legends like Mike Wallace, Diane Sawyer, Ed Bradley and Scott Pelley, concluding the new hires wouldn't have made the cut in that earlier era.“These are the most coveted on-air jobs in TV news,” said another news veteran.Paramount Skydance chief David Ellison installed Weiss, who lacked experience in broadcast news and once bragged about not owning a television, as CBS News editor-in-chief in October, and critics say CBS has lurched rightward since her arrival and grown reluctant to air anything critical of the Trump administration.Viewers have rejected the changes under her stewardship.CBS Evening News, anchored by Tony Dokoupil, is on pace to average just 3.8 million viewers in July, marking its fourth straight month below 4 million. CBS Mornings fared even worse, pulling in its lowest monthly average, 1.6 million, in the show's history. One CBS executive told Status the overhaul has driven ratings to record lows, with little sign the "60 Minutes" changes will reverse the trend.CBS News has not yet responded to a request for comment.
President Donald Trump pardoned a Republican megadonor linked to a massive fraud scandal after he contributed to a high-stakes swing state campaign, according to a new report.Adam Kidan — who pleaded guilty in the lobbyist Jack Abramoff conspiracy case —received a pardon from Trump just days after making a $2,600 to Rep. Ryan MacKenzie's (R-PA) leadership PAC on June 30, NOTUS reported Wednesday."Trump traveled to Mackenzie’s eastern Pennsylvania district on June 23 to campaign with him," the report stated. "The president pardoned Kidan on July 3."Mackenzie’s office denied communication with Trump regarding the pardon but did not respond to question about whether the campaign would keep the cash, NOTUS reported. Neither the White House nor Kidan replied to requests for comment.But his Democratic challenger Bob Brooks's campaign told NOTUS they are livid as it fights to win a “toss-up” race, according to the report.“Three days after a convicted fraudster cut Ryan Mackenzie a massive campaign check, that same fraudster walked away with a presidential pardon," Brooks campaign manager Jenna Kaufman told NOTUS. "That is corruption in plain sight.”Kidan donated about $270,000 to Trump-affiliated committees during the 2024 election cycle and hosted fundraisers at Mar-a-Lago, according to the report.He pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy and mail fraud in 2005."As part of his sentencing, Kidan and Abramoff were ordered to pay a total of $217 million in restitution," the report stated. "It’s unclear whether Kidan paid the full amount, and Trump’s pardon is likely to erase any remaining financial obligations."
In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces here. Once you couldn’t trust the legacy media any less, enter […]
Center-left Democratic officials are coalescing around the opponents of Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong and Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in primaries that will take place over the next month. That’s in part because of ideology—many centrists simply don’t agree with the progressive policy stands of Hong and El-Sayed. But some centrists say that they are backing Hong and El=Sayed’s opponents because progressive candidates like those two don’t often win in swing states. And many of Hong and El-Sayed’s supporters are also essentially buying into that historical analysis. They are deeply invested in Hong and/or El-Sayed winning the general election, suggesting those victories would be unique evidence of progressive electoral strength in swing states and would show that someone like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could be elected president. Both sides’ perspectives are ahistorical, too caught up in the current Mamdani-Sanders-AOC moment. Numerous progressives have won in swing states and districts in the past. Neither El-Sayed nor Hong would be the first progressive candidate to win in the Midwest. Ocasio-Cortez wouldn’t be the first president with a left-wing background. These primaries are a real fight over which faction controls the Democratic Party today. But they shouldn’t obscure the success of progressive candidates years and even decades before anyone had ever heard of Claire Valdez or Ilhan Omar. What makes this debate complicated is that there are not precise definitions of progressive, leftist, or other such ideological terms. And what constitutes progressive or leftist politics changes over time. Many progressive politicians were not supportive of same-sex marriage in 2002, but virtually all progressive politicians hold that stance today. So for this article, I looked at politicians who were described or self-identified as progressive or very liberal during a given campaign and their results. Let’s go back 20 years. “An unabashed progressive takes aim at a Senate seat in Ohio,” was the tagline of a November 2005 piece in the leftist publication In These Times. The author is Chris Hayes, who went on to greater fame. The unabashed progressive is Sherrod Brown, then serving in the House. Brown is considered a traditional Democrat now. But back then, his opposition to the Iraq War and deep skepticism of NAFTA and other international trade agreements put him firmly on the Democratic left. “If a bedrock economic populist like Brown can win in a red state, it will explode the post-Clinton conventional wisdom that anything resembling ’class warfare’ is a non-starter for the Democrats,” Hayes wrote. Among those who praised Brown in Hayes’s article was Bernie Sanders, then Vermont’s congressman. Brown ended up winning the Ohio Senate race in 2006—against a two-term incumbent—by 12 points. “I ran a very outspokenly progressive campaign, standing up for the middle class, taking on the drug companies and the oil companies … And I think that that campaign shows that you can win in moderately conservative states as progressive Democrats,” Brown told NPR in November 2006. Two years later, a man described by another In These Times writer as an “unflinching progressive” won Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and other states across the Midwest. Again, today we don’t think of Barack Obama as being particularly leftist. But in 2008, being a strong opponent of the Iraq War, a critic of the death penalty, and a skeptic of the Israeli government, all positions he held in his rise in Illinois politics, were very much on the party’s left. Obama’s 2007 voting record was the most liberal of any senator, according to National Journal. And it’s not just those two. In 2012, Tammy Baldwin, who had been a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, was elected to the Senate from Wisconsin. Andy Kim won reelection in 2022 in a competitive district in New Jersey even though his opponent attacked him for being a member of the Progressive Caucus. Ruben Gallego, elected to the Senate in 2024 from Arizona, was a member of the Medicare-for-All and Progressive caucuses during his House days. Adam Bonica, a political scientist at Stanford University, found that from 2016 to 2024 there were 27 successful U.S. House campaigns in swing districts by candidates whose ideology was left of the average Democratic politician. Georgia’s Raphael Warnock and Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman won Senate races in swing states even though voters perceived them as fairly progressive, says Bonica, citing the Cooperative Election Study, in which voters themselves rank candidates on a seven-point ideological scale. (Sadly, Fetterman has changed his stripes since then.)Progressive candidates at times obviously lose, including Brown in his 2024 reelection bid. And it’s true that there are far more centrists and more moderates than progressives representing swing districts and states. But that’s in part a screening effect.
