President Donald J. Trump tried to quell a mutiny from some GOP lawmakers that has paralyzed the House of Representatives over the SAVE America Act. Frustrations boiled […]
House conservatives' push to force Senate action on the SAVE America Act has stalled the chamber, drawing sharp backlash from fellow Republicans.
Republican New York Rep. Mike Lawler called on the Trump administration Thursday to prevent the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian healthcare workers after the […]
A British content creator is trending on social media after a viral clip shows him meeting President Donald Trump during his visit to the United States. Content […]
Tuesday’s sweep of the New York City primaries by Marxist-inspired Democrats backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, widely seen as a full-fledged communist himself, resulted […]
President Donald Trump’s Wednesday night speech to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary was garbage, according to a former U.S. Naval War College professor.“I mean, it was trashy,” Tom Nichols, retired professor from the U.S. Naval War College, told The Bulwark’ podcaster Tim Miller on Thursday. “The whole business was trashy. And I know that sounds — oh, that's snooty and elitist. But no, it was just trashy. And his speech was small. That's a thing. That's what I wrote about last night. He took this thing that could have been grandiose.”Nichols then quoted George Washington, America’s first president, who in his last will and testament started by describing himself as a citizen first and a president second.“For him, that was the most important thing to be — to be a citizen, and he understood that we were all sharers in this great adventure, this great experiment, and Trump just doesn't understand any of that,” Nichols said. “He made it all about me, me, me.” Quoting Trump’s bragging about ending taxes on tips, declaring war against Iran and renovating the Reflecting Pool, Nichols added that “the few times that Trump tried to be elevated, or tried to be presidential, he said things like — the one that jumped out at me — ‘from the storied alleys of Boston to the streets of Philadelphia.’”“Okay, first of all, anybody who's lived in Boston knows there's no such thing as these storied alleys of Boston,” Nichols said. “They have some stories, and we won't tell them. But "to the streets of Philadelphia" — I'm sorry, wasn't that a Bruce Springsteen song about a movie about a guy with AIDS? I mean, it just went on and on — skyscrapers and railroads and Normandy and Saratoga. But then he would go right back to the really petty, small, you know, ‘look at me, look what I did.’”He concluded, “And I'll finish with one serious comment, which is that it shows that Trump and his people don't understand the difference between patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism is love of one's country for itself — for what it is, for its eternal characteristics. Nationalism is ‘my tribe is better than all other tribes.’ And that's the only way Trump can conceive of this. He kept saying we're better than everybody else, we're the hottest, we're the biggest.”Nichols is not the only one to draw attention to a “trashy” quality in Trump’s celebration of America’s 250th birthday. His Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy aroused controversy when he described Trump’s critics and the artists who cancelled appearing at his event as “libtards,” even though his daughter with Downs Syndrome was present. According to CNN senior political reporter Aaron Blake, “In one sentence, Duffy both complains about the musical acts who canceled and completely legitimizes their stated reason for doing so.”More controversially, during a UFC event on the White House lawn intended to commemorate both America’s birthday and Trump’s own birthday, fighter Josh Hokit told pro-Trump podcaster Joe Rogan that “Michelle Obama is a man! Am I right, America?”Similarly National Park Service employees have balked at being required to wear Freedom 250 pins under the threat of “professional reprimands,” with one employee telling Mother Jones “when I asked if I would receive any disciplinary action if I chose not to wear the pin, I was told, ‘Yes.’ I chose not to continue the conversation after that.”
The Great American State Fair kicked off on Wednesday night, June 24 with a speech by President Donald Trump on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The Trump administration is touting the Fair, which continues through July 10, as a celebration of the United States' 250th anniversary. But Trump's critics are arguing that the opening felt more like a partisan MAGA rally than an actual celebration of America's achievements as a democratic republic. One of those critics is Media Matters' Matt Gertz. During a late June appearance on The New Republic's podcast "The Daily Blast," Gertz stressed that turnout at the Great American State Fair's opening was a major disappointment — citing the MAGA themes as a key factor and attacking Fox News' glowing coverage as painfully awkward.Fox News, according to Gertz, went out of its way to "carry water" for Trump with its Fair coverage.Gertz told podcast host Sargent, "It's been a tough few months for people who have to carry water for Donald Trump every night…. And basically, they're trying to use what should be a celebration of the Declaration of Independence, of America’s 250th birthday, as a partisan wedge issue, as a cudgel against the Democratic Party, while simultaneously talking up Donald Trump and his ability to pull a huge crowd and get them together for a big rally. So, the failure, I think, of the kickoff event is a pretty big problem for them in the medium term as they try to keep that message going over the next 10, 12 days."Gertz described attendance on Wednesday night as a major disappointment.The Media Matters report told Sargent, a former Washington Post columnist, "Originally, this was supposed to be a big concert with a bunch of different artists who were scheduled to play. But as it became more and more clear that these Freedom 250 events are extremely partisan, the artists decided to drop out. And eventually Trump kind of threw up his hands and said, instead of having this concert, we’re going to launch the state fair with what he called the greatest rally ever. It doesn’t seem to have worked out that way."Sargent pointed out that Trump "seems very sensitive" about the "low turnout" on June 24, lamenting that he "tried to turn a celebration of America's 250th birthday into a Trump rally." When the "Daily Blast" host described Trump's Great American State Fair speech as an "imperial, dictatorial display of self-glorification," he got no argument from Gertz.The Media Matters reporter told Sargent, "I mean, I think what we have here is a president who does not respect any sort of separation between himself and the country at large. And so, he views the idea of celebrating the nation's birthday as one and the same with celebrating himself. I think there's no clearer way to see that than how he decided to kick off the festivities with what he personally described as a rally speech — a partisan speech in which he sort of ran down what he claims are his accomplishments and talked about himself, rather than the nation, rather than what brings us together. And that becomes more and more fraught as he becomes more and more unpopular."
The following is a transcript of a conversation between election rights lawyer Marc Elias, TNR’s Win McCormack, and Carol Butler. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.Marc Elias: Donald Trump’s going to impose provisions [attacking voting rights] through executive orders. He issued a voting executive order last year that we were successful in striking down, and we will succeed in striking [the next] one down.… The Department of Justice right now is operating like his private law firm and is seeking to obtain confidential voter data from all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia. Win McCormack: Oh, I thought it had stopped with Georgia and Arizona.Marc Elias: No, no. So those are the ballots that they’re seeking from 2020. They have seized the ballots from Georgia from 2020, and they have [sued to get] the ballots from Arizona from 2020, but the Department of Justice is suing to get access, essentially, to the unredacted voter rolls in all 50 states. And they’re suing 30 of those states, and we have intervened to oppose them in all those states. And so I think that’s one of the big battles to focus on, because if you want to run a voter-turnout program, you need the voter files, but if you also want to run a voter suppression operation at scale, you need the voter files. We’re entering the season in which we will see lots of different state laws by Republican legislatures try to suppress voting rights, and we’re litigating against those. We’re going to see more efforts by the administration, perhaps, to deploy federal paramilitary like [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement]. And we’ll have to be prepared to litigate against that. It’s just gonna be a knife fight from here to the end.Carol Butler: Can I ask a question on the private voter roll data? I know that a lot of [states’ attorneys general] have been filing lawsuits. Have some A.G.s been beaten in court anywhere on this yet? Have there been any victories on that?Elias: Seventeen states turned them over voluntarily. Thirty states and D.C. have fought [back]. In the 30 states that have fought, we have intervened to defend voters in all 30. We have won alongside the A.G.s in Oregon, California, and … Michigan. There are three states that have dismissed their claims. So we are awaiting decisions in the other statesMcCormack: And is there anything in the law that actually gives [Republicans] the right to have what they want?Elias: No. [Laughter.] They’re claiming their versions of the law that let them have access to this, but this is unprecedented, and there’s a reason why we’re 3 and 0, and soon to be 4 and 0, then 5 and 0, and then 6 and 0. Look, they are trying to bully these states in ways that you see them try to bully states in other arenas. The challenges are that the Department of Justice can literally litigate everywhere. But for every state that opposes this, we also have states like Florida, Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi that are voluntarily complying with these requests. And that’s going to be a challenge as we go forward, because we assume—everyone assumes—that where there is voter suppression, we are necessarily fighting against the federal government. But remember, most voter suppression is actually fighting against states where either the state itself or the Republican National Committee or Republicans are doing it.McCormack: So the Republican National Committee can come in and intervene in states?Elias: Well, the RNC runs voter suppression programs to try to prevent people from voting, and they also bring litigation to try to make voting harder. There’s a case [Watson v. Republican National Committee] that was just argued in the U.S. Supreme Court, in which the RNC sued Mississippi to try to make mail-in voting more difficult.McCormack: Well, I heard somebody on MS NOW last night saying that, regardless of what happens with the Save America Act [a suppressive “voter ID” bill that would also give the Trump administration a federal surveillance system of voters], they have a very well-worked-out plan for doing what they want to do. Is that what you were referring to before, or is there more to what they said?Elias: There’s more to it. What we’ve seen from Donald Trump in the past is that he starts with lies, then he increases the rhetoric behind the lies, then you see the legal process, and then when he fails in the legal process, we have violence. We are on that progression. He has lied about voting, he has now upped the rhetoric for all of the SAVE Act, which began as a proof-of-citizenship law. It’s now become a voter suppression, voter purge, ban on mail-in voting, trans-targeting law. So when he loses in court in the cases I referenced, and he’s not able to pass this law through Congress, as we’ve discussed, I think he’s going to escalate further. Ultimately we’ll see some type of violence, I fear.
President Trump will welcome a group of American farmers from across the U.S. to the White House for a dinner Thursday evening in the Rose Garden. The event comes as Trump has ramped up his efforts to court the voting bloc ahead of the midterm elections, after farmers experienced rising fertilizer costs sparked by the…