This should be interesting. As White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt remains on maternity leave, the Trump White House has done something remarkable and very unique. Cabinet members are taking turns delivering the White House press briefing. Today, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent steps up to the podium and will be delivering the White House briefing […] The post Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Give White House Press Briefing – 2:00pm ET Livestream appeared first on The Last Refuge.
Two major UFC figures raised concerns about the wisdom of holding a cage fight on the White House lawn this summer, after President Donald Trump set the idea into motion. UFC CEO Dana White, a close friend of Trump’s who has been tasked with overseeing the June 14 match, has heralded the event as an […]
No single electoral bloc was as essential to President Donald Trump’s victories in 2016 and 2024 as white, non-college-educated voters. As he famously declared during his first primaries, “I love the poorly educated,” who were backing him in big numbers. But now, according to the latest polls, Trump’s approval among such voters has plummeted in recent months, and for the first time he is disliked by the majority of those without whom he would not be in office.“The swing is stark,” reports the Washington Post. “54 percent of White voters without a college degree disapproved of Trump’s performance in a CBS News poll this month, up from 32 percent in February 2025 and 45 percent in February of this year. It’s a sobering sign for Republicans heading into the midterms and working to turn out the voters who carried Trump to victory in 2024.”According to former Trump supporters who spoke with the Post, they’re bailing on him over the floundering economy and skyrocketing cost of living. For example, the paper met with Ohio factory workers who were discussing strategies for stretching their already thin budgets. While one argued that Trump would bring costs back down, another was not so sure. “You could be paying these prices for a while,” said 64-year-old Trump voter Annette Dombrowksi. According to Dombrowski, the Post explains, “she believed Trump when he promised during his last campaign to lower prices. She watched excitedly alongside her boyfriend last year as Trump signed one executive order after another. But now her bills for gas, groceries and other necessities have gone up.”“I don’t even want to vote for anybody in the next election,” she said, noting that she normally votes in midterms. “I don’t care, because they’re all crap.” White non-college educated voters still approve of Trump’s approach to immigration, though the margin has shrunk. They disapprove of his handling of the economy by 22 points, and they are negative overall. According to Austin Keyser, a leader with an electrical workers' union, union members have been expressing regret at voting for Trump, frustrated by rising prices and the president’s focus on Iran. And as welder and three-time Trump voter Peggy Liff reminisced, before Trump’s second term, “prices were down” and “gas was low,” but now, “he’s concentrating on other things, like overseas, Iran. He says he’s doing it for us, but I don’t see where that’s happening.”Trump’s tumbling approval with working-class voters comes at a time when consumer sentiment has hit all-time lows and gas prices remain high, a situation that experts warn could persist for months to come, even if the war ends. In the meantime, voters like Dombrowski have lost faith in politics, saying politicians “want your money and give you fake promises.” The factory where she works represents an example of such broken promises.“The musical instrument company where she works, Conn Selmer, is shifting jobs overseas — even though the owner, Trump donor John Paulson, has echoed the president’s calls to keep manufacturing in the United States,” reports the Post. “Now their factory in northern Ohio is closing, despite employees’ pleas — and Dombrowski, at 64, needs a new job.”
President Donald Trump continues to suffer from low approval ratings in poll after poll, including, in late May, an Economist/YouGov poll showing his approval down to 34 percent and a CNN poll showing him at 36 percent approval. And GOP insiders interviewed by MS NOW are pointing the finger at Trump White House staffers, who, they argue, are failing to keep him on track from a messaging standpoint.Jake Traylor and Soorin Kim, reporting for MS NOW, explain, "President Donald Trump's numbers on job approval and the economy have sunk to record lows. His aides know it. His former advisers are saying so publicly. And yet, the president keeps talking about what he wants to talk about, not the issues voters say are driving their discontent — much to the White House's chagrin. As the U.S. war with Iran stretches into its fourth month — driving up gas and grocery prices and stoking inflation — Trump has instead devoted time to topics that make some of his own staff wince."The reporters continue, "There's his latest construction projects, including the new White House ballroom and the renovation of the reflecting pool on the National Mall. There's the purge of Republican lawmakers deemed insufficiently loyal, most recently four-term Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. The SAVE America Act."A former Trump adviser, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told MS NOW that the president's current White House advisers are "no longer effective" when it comes to keeping him on message.The ex-adviser argued, "I think it's a failure on the part of his staff. They're not focused on the issues that Americans are focused on, which is obviously, affordability."That MS NOW source lamented that the Trump Administration's $1.7 billion "anti-weaponization fund" and the proposed White House ballroom aren't helping Trump's popularity a bit.The former Trump adviser complained, "While obviously, the president is going to do what the president is going to do, his staff has just so ill-prepared him or ill-informed him of the political consequences of what he's doing. It's malpractice.”Another former Trump White House staffer, also quoted anonymously, told MS NOW, "While beautifying our nation's capital is surely important and appreciated, if you don't live, work, or visit DC, you don't really reap the benefits of the president's passion projects. What people do feel is $4.50 gas, and that's the real passion point for Americans."A current Trump White House official told MS NOW, "There's no new messaging approach. There can be no new approach. You can't do that with (Trump)."
The Trump administration has doubled down on Donald Trump’s threats against Oman.Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned Thursday that Washington “will not tolerate any effort to impose a tolling system in the Strait of Hormuz.”“Oman, in particular, should know the U.S. Treasury will aggressively target any actors involved—directly or indirectly—in facilitating tolls for the strait and any willing partners will be penalized,” Bessent wrote in a statement posted to X.“All nations should reject outright any efforts by Iran to disrupt the free flow of commerce,” he continued. “Tehran’s days of terrorizing the region and the world are over.”Trump shocked attendees of a Cabinet meeting Wednesday when he casually threatened Oman, promising to blow the country up if it tried to take control of the strait, which Oman borders.“It’s international waters, and Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow ’em up,” Trump said. “They understand that, they’ll be fine.” The president insisted that “nobody” would control the Strait of Hormuz, and that the U.S. would instead “watch over” the passage.But Bessent’s toll ban would actually undermine Trump’s plan to make a buck off the vital trade route: The president pitched the idea of imposing a toll on ships traversing the Strait of Hormuz back in April, although it was not immediately clear how the U.S. would obtain control of the foreign waterway, let alone toll it.Approximately one-fifth of all crude oil shipments funnel through the strait, which is situated between Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Most of that oil is moved toward China or India. In 2024, the U.S. imported roughly 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day through the strait, accounting for about 7 percent of total U.S. crude imports, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.Nonetheless, the shuttered strait has caused a crisis of global proportions. The average cost of gas in the U.S. is $4.42 per gallon, with large swaths of the country pushing $5 a gallon, according to the AAA’s price tracker. That’s about 50 percent higher than prices were before the war started. Costs have also gone up for the rest of the world, a reality that has only aggravated U.S. alliances.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced sanctions on Tehran’s nautical authority that is seeking to establish control over the Strait of Hormuz, denouncing it as “maritime extortion.” The new sanctions were announced as part of Washington’s intensifying Operation Economic Fury, the effort to strangle Iran’s economy through economic and financial means. Iran has tried to maximize […]
If the government does not reduce the cost of public services, then a special tax break for one group merely forces everyone else to pick up the slack.
When the Pentagon announced a $620 million loan last year to a small North Carolina startup linked to Donald Trump Jr., defense officials and the company tried to tamp down suspicions of cronyism.The president’s eldest son said through a spokesperson that he wasn’t involved. The Pentagon said Trump Jr. played no role in the record-setting deal. And the startup’s founder told reporters that his company, Vulcan Elements, received no political favoritism.But interviews and Defense Department records reviewed by ProPublica show that the request to loan hundreds of millions of dollars to the firm linked to Trump Jr. was made by Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to President Donald Trump and a friend of Trump Jr.’s.Of the dozens of companies the Pentagon was considering funding at the time, Vulcan’s was the only deal initiated by a top aide to the president, said an official at the Pentagon who was not authorized to speak publicly.After defense officials got the White House request, they asked Pentagon staff to move at an unusually rapid pace, said another person who was involved in the deal at the Pentagon but not authorized to speak about it. The staff worked late nights and with little sleep to get the loan through in a matter of weeks, the source said.“The call came from the White House: We have to get this done,” the person said.The deal is one of many actions by the Trump administration that have helped companies in which the Trump family holds stakes. Government contracts and other benefits have gone to various Trump-linked companies, prompting allegations of self-dealing by Democratic lawmakers and good government experts. But ProPublica’s reporting on the Vulcan loan represents the first time the awarding of a contract from a federal agency has been directly linked to White House intervention.The loan was a massive financial commitment from the Pentagon in its effort to fund companies that could help the U.S. reduce dependence on China’s critical mineral supply chains. The deal was a dramatic win for Vulcan, a North Carolina rare-earth magnet company launched just two years earlier. Estimates of its valuation grew tenfold after the deal was announced. It was also a win for Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm, which took a stake of undisclosed size in Vulcan about three months before the Pentagon announced the deal.And there may be more good news on the way for the president’s eldest son. Among other companies under review for a Pentagon loan was a drone parts manufacturer that Trump Jr. advises and owns a stake in, according to one of the defense officials who spoke to ProPublica.Navarro, who served as trade adviser in Trump’s first term, and Trump Jr. have formed a close bond in recent years. The president’s son visited Navarro in prison while he served time for defying a subpoena from lawmakers investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Trump Jr. was one of the small group of people Navarro dedicated his latest book to for having “my back when it was against the wall.” And a week before the Vulcan deal was announced, Trump Jr. hosted Navarro — now the president’s senior counselor for trade and manufacturing — on his streaming show, encouraging his nearly 2 million subscribers to buy Navarro’s book. That interview was not long after word came down from Navarro to Pentagon staff to make the massive loan to Vulcan, one of the defense officials involved in the deal said.Navarro did not respond to questions from ProPublica sent to him directly. Neither did Vulcan. A White House spokesperson said in a statement that the administration is working “in the best interest of the American people,” adding, “The President’s entire team, including Senior Counselor Navarro and officials at the Department of War, is working together and with private industry to secure America’s critical mineral supply chain at Trump Speed.” Trump Jr.’s spokesperson said the president’s son does not discuss companies he has invested in with federal government officials and did not speak to Navarro about Vulcan. He “has no knowledge about how this deal came together,” the spokesperson said. A spokesperson for 1789 Capital, the venture firm where Trump Jr. is a partner, said it also played no role in Vulcan getting the loan and did not learn about the deal before it was public.“No company receives preferential treatment,” a Pentagon spokesperson said. “Outside affiliations, investors, or political connections play absolutely no role in the Department’s funding decisions.”Richard Painter, the chief White House ethics lawyer during the George W. Bush administration, said aides to the president should not be intervening in contracting and lending decisions by agencies, particularly in matters that financially benefit the president’s family.“This is our money they’re spending,” Painter said.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent issued another warning to Oman Thursday morning after President Trump said the nation should “behave or we’ll have to blow ’em up.” “The United States Government will not tolerate any effort to impose a tolling system in the Strait of Hormuz,” Bessent wrote in a social media post, referencing a reported…