The Reflecting Pool's new murky, green color is leaving onlookers disgusted and angry after a costly renovation.
"The Reflecting Pool is VERY green and VERY disgusting," posted Brianne Chapman, who runs the left-wing political X account Anarc-y princess. "Even on the worst days, I never saw it look this bad before."
Algae has left the Reflecting Pool tinged green, and workers are struggling to keep it clean despite a multi-million dollar renovation, according to recent reports. People are starting to notice as Trump prepares to celebrate his birthday and America's 250th anniversary.
"What a disaster," agreed MeidasTouch, a political news site, on X.
"Good to see the Reflecting Pool back to its normal color," joked Shane Harris, a staff writer for The Atlantic.
"Reflecting Pool today is looking...a little green," commented attorney and Democratic influencer Matt Rein.
Ron Filipkowski, the editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch, wrote, "Hard to believe this is from a guy who inherited $413 million from his father only to declare bankruptcy 6 times before convincing an NBC producer to bail him out by creating a fictional show that he was a successful businessman."
Former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger tore into President Donald Trump over his handling of the war with Iran on Saturday, accusing the president of buying his way out of the conflict and walking away with almost nothing for it.
"Trump lies constantly and he is desperate for the Iran war to be over," Kinzinger wrote in a post on X that accompanied a video. "So desperate that he's giving Iran 20 times the money Obama did, and getting nothing in return, except an open strait that Iran will charge a 'maintenance fee' to all ships. Well done, bozo."
In the video, recorded selfie-style from the driver's seat of his car, the ex-congressman argued that Trump's record of dishonesty has gutted Washington's credibility to the point that Americans now wait to hear Iran's version of events before believing their own government.
"It's because Donald Trump lies constantly, all the time," Kinzinger said. "The constant lies take away any version of credibility. And that is a terrible place for us to be in."
Then he ran the numbers as he sees them.
" Barack Obama gave Iran $1.5 billion and we lost our mind. And I think rightly so. We called that out," Kinzinger said. He claimed Trump "has already given Iran $3 billion," lifted sanctions on Iranian oil when the war started, and is now "set to give Iran an additional around $25 or $30 billion."
"Barack Obama, $1.5 billion. Donald Trump, 30-some billion," he said. "And we don't even have the nuke stuff."
Kinzinger ticked through the war aims he said the administration has quietly abandoned: regime change, an end to Iran's ballistic missile capacity, and a halt to its funding of proxy groups.
"None of that is going to happen," he said. "Instead we are fighting to open the strait. That's what Donald Trump wants, and he's willing to pay $30 billion for it."
"If there is anybody left on the planet who says this guy is anything but a complete bozo on foreign policy, it's because they're blinded by the cult," Kinzinger added in the weekend video. "That's the only reason."
The broadside landed as the administration signaled a deal was within reach. Trump, Iranian officials and Pakistani mediators said this week that a memorandum of understanding could be signed within days, an agreement that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, lift the U.S. naval blockade of Iran's ports and roll back oil sanctions.
Ex-Trump cabinet secretary Kristi Noem proved her poor geography skills on live TV, and online commentators let her have it.
During an interview, the former Department of Homeland Security chief flubbed as she answered NEWSMAX anchor Greta Van Susteren's question, "Who is our best friend in South America at this point?"
Noem responded, "We've worked so much with El Salvador," and "Costa Rica has been fantastic."
On X, onlookers mocked the former DHS chief for not knowing that those countries are in Central America, not South America.
"Can someone buy these idiots a map?" political strategist Mike Nellis demanded.
South Dakota-based political writer Michael Freeman pleaded, "Please don't judge the schools of my home state of South Dakota by the former governor."
"There was a time, kids, when government officials could find different countries on maps," lamented podcaster Hemant Mehta.
One of Donald Trump's personal lawyers in the E. Jean Carroll case is days away from a lifetime seat on a powerful federal appeals court, and legal experts say his written confirmation responses are riddled with "disturbing" red flags that can't be ignored.
Justin D. Smith serves as the counsel of record in Trump v. Carroll, where the president has asked the Supreme Court to overturn the civil judgment that found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation of Carroll. Trump has consistently denied Carroll's allegations, calling them a "hoax" and "politically motivated." He has continued to appeal both civil verdicts.
Smith was nominated by Trump as an "America First Fighter" in February to serve as a judge for the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis. The Senate advanced Smith by a unanimous consent agreement on Thursday and is set to vote on Monday.
But Smith’s written responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s questions are “disturbing” and present “a whole host of red flags,” said Nora Demleitner, a legal scholar and former president of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland.
Notably, Smith continues to misrepresent details about Carroll’s case relating to a “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” episode in his responses to questions from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
That includes misattributing to Carroll a quote from Trump’s former lawyer Joe Tacopina about an “amazing coincidence” involving a less-than-one-minute plot point from the “Law & Order” episode.
Smith's cert petition to the Supreme Court attributes the phrase "amazing coincidence" to Carroll herself — language Carroll never used.
The phrase was coined by Tacopina, Trump's lawyer at the time, during cross-examination. Carroll used "amazing" to praise the "Law & Order" writers for "keying in to the psyche of their viewers." When Tacopina rephrased her response as "amazing coincidence," Carroll pointedly substituted "astonishing" and immediately denied basing her allegation on the show.
Durbin asked Smith about how he “misrepresented” the details of a “Law & Order” episode in his written questions, which gave Smith “a chance to clear the record,” said Harold Krent, law professor and interim dean at the Chicago-Kent College of Law.
“The fact that he would have a misstatement again would be either he's very lazy, stubborn or very careless — or it's material,” Krent said.
Since Smith likely wasn’t under oath answering the Senate Judiciary questions, misstatements in the responses wouldn’t be perjury, but “it would be considered a false statement to Congress if he would ever be investigated and charged with that,” Krent said.
Lawyers can also “get punished under attorney disciplinary rules if you exaggerate too much,” Krent said.
“If you flat out lie, then it is presumably some kind of false statement to an official authority, almost never prosecuted,” Krent said.
The Trump administration “is not going to investigate [Smith], but a subsequent administration could investigate and have to decide whether that was a material misstatement or again just a careless or maddening exaggeration.”
Instead, the Trump administration announced investigations related to the case last month, looking into whether Carroll herself committed perjury, along with investigations into the nonprofit of Democratic billionaire and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who helped fund Carroll’s litigation against Trump.
‘So much lying’
The “Law & Order: SVU” episode called “Theatre Tricks” discusses a consensual “roleplay” with a New York judge and a woman “that took place in the dressing room at Bergdorf’s while she was trying on lingerie,” according to the episode viewed by Raw Story.
Smith’s certiorari petition to the Supreme Court incorrectly describes the episode where “a business mogul fantasizes about raping a victim in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room '[w]hile she was trying on lingerie.'”
Carroll accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in the 1990s. Carroll testified at trial that she had not seen the episode and did not make up the allegation based on the show.
A federal jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation in May 2023, awarding Carroll $5 million. In January 2024, a second jury found Trump liable for $83.3 million in damages for Carroll’s defamation claims.
The inaccuracies are not likely to rise to the level of stopping Smith’s confirmation, Krent and Demleitner agreed.
“We've seen so much lying — I think perjury — by officials and the administration, and this just doesn't seem to be of the same caliber,” Krent said.
Even the Supreme Court justices themselves are “not quoting accurately anymore,” Demleitner said. Justice Samuel Alito recently came under fire for citing a misleading brief in the Louisiana v. Callais decision, which gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
“There'll be enough of an argument for a GOP senator to make to confirm him, despite those misrepresentations,” Demleitner said.
Lori A. Ringhand, a professor at the University of Georgia School of Law, has authored several books about judicial confirmations.
“Lawyers sitting before the Senate Judiciary Committee are usually pretty careful about their words and good at walking a fine line that prevents outright lying. Instead, they hedge, they add fudge words, or they answer a slightly different question than they were asked,” Ringhand told Raw Story via email.
‘Truly disturbing’
Demleitner said Smith’s impending confirmation is “really troublesome” for his other written responses to Senate Judiciary questions.
When asked if Trump lost the 2020 election, Smith responded by saying President Joe Biden was certified as the winner. The topic of the election was a contentious point in Smith’s hearing last month, where he would not answer the same yes-or-no question.
“The 2020 election question should generally be a red flag to everybody. I think these nominees apparently are trying to strike a balance between staying in the good favor and graces of the person who nominated them, the president, and, on the other hand, obviously trying to get confirmed by the Senate, which is a tightrope to run for some of them,” Demleitner said.
Demleitner was also concerned about Smith’s written responses about Supreme Court precedents. In only two cases — the landmark civil rights cases Brown v. Board of Educationand Loving v. Virginia — he explicitly said “Yes” that the Supreme Court correctly decided cases.
“I thought it truly disturbing to make that kind of distinction between Supreme Court cases, and also only that kind of the most iconic cases that would never be reconsidered … cases that have become a fabric of our society,” Demleitner said.
Advocacy groups have expressed concerns about Smith’s anti-abortion record, and during the confirmation hearing, Durbin questioned Smith about his involvement in political groups.
Demleitner said Smith’s advocacy to the Supreme Court makes her “worry about the claim of unbiased decision-making.”
“We should all be concerned about these types of lawyers being on the federal bench. I think we've certainly seen a number of Trump nominees turning out to be excellent lawyers [who] really weigh the facts and weigh the law and have ruled against the president as much as in favor of the president or the administration, whenever different questions arose,” she said.
“On the other hand, we have seen some, especially appellate court nominees, who do not seem to understand that they're not the advocates for the government, but instead that they are impartial judges.”
Smith did not immediately respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.
Richard Wolff, a renowned economics professor, issued a grave prediction recently that not only would the United States ultimately “lose” its war against Iran, but that the loss would bring about an end to the U.S. “global empire” that had stood unrivaled for more than six decades.
“The United States operated for the last 65, 70 years on empire, a global empire,” said Wolff, who teaches at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in a video interview published this week.
“The U.S. dollar was the currency used everywhere in the world, the U.S. Navy protected shipping and made sure that the United States got what it wanted out of any other country in the world. People like you and me, we lived in a time when the American empire was dominant and it was growing. Here comes the hard part: that part of American history is over! It's not coming back, it's done.”
Iran appears to have emerged from the conflict with the United States as a new “major world power,” having been able to withstand the full military might of the United States and survive largely intact. As such, Wolff argued, the global perception of the United States would likely shift following the war, and to such an extent as to cause great economic damage.
“The damage to the American economy, which is already declining, will be huge. Every small country in the world has had their problems with the United States. Now they can imagine winning,” Wolff said.
“They haven't been able to imagine that for 75 years, and that's a new exciting option. When you put that together with the fact that they can turn to China to buy and sell almost everything, what do they need the United States for?”
And, as noted by Wolff, the decision to launch the U.S. war against Iran was made by President Donald Trump, who he described as “not the sharpest knife in the drawer.”
“Not a good time to be Donald Trump, even in MAGA land, they're having doubts about it,” Wolff said.
Marco Rubio's comparison that President Donald Trump's White House UFC bash is akin to the Apollo moon landing left an MS NOW panel stunned.
The Secretary of State defended the controversial mixed martial arts event during a Thursday appearance, casting UFC Freedom 250 as a quintessentially American feat on par with one of the nation's greatest achievements.
"You just gotta hear this bizarre comparison he made," quipped host Jonathan Capehart.
"When President Kennedy announced that we were going to put a man on the moon and return him safely to the Earth, no one thought that was possible. And we did it," Rubio said in the clip. "We are a nation founded on doing what no one else dared to do, and no one else aspired to do. And at some level, that's what this whole company, what UFC has been."
MS NOW panelists burst into laughter off camera, as Capehart tried to hold back a chuckle and added, "I'm just gonna leave that alone."
Scrutiny has grown over the spectacle.
Court filings show the $60 million UFC event is being supported by at least seven federal agencies, while D.C. taxpayers will foot an estimated $10 to $12 million in supplemental security costs, per ESPN.
Reuters/Ipsos polling shows just 16 percent of Americans support holding the fights at the White House. Critics — including the Public Integrity Project, which has called the event a "volcano of corruption" — argue the bash is a thinly veiled birthday celebration for Trump, who bought UFC parent company stock before announcing the event.
Laura Barron-Lopez wrote for MS NOW about a $1 million per plate fundraiser for Trump's top super PAC the night before the brawl.
"And Trump 'officially designed' a line of 'Trump x UFC Freedom 250' medallions, which are selling for $250 to $12,000," she wrote.
Sharing an excerpt from her piece, Capehart was left aghast.
After defending President Donald Trump’s deeply unpopular war against Iran, Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was pressed Friday evening on why he wasn’t “on the front lines in Iran,” a question that sent the ex-Trump official into a rage.
Spicer appeared on “Piers Morgan Uncensored" alongside several guests to discuss the ongoing U.S. war against Iran, which Spicer claimed Trump had launched “because it was the right thing to do.”
Harry Sisson, a liberal influencer and political commentator, immediately pressed Spicer on why he wasn’t currently deployed to the Middle East to support the war effort.
“I don’t know why Sean hasn’t signed up to serve, you should go over there, Sean! Go serve in Iran right now, Sean!” Sisson said. “You keep talking about this great war, ‘we’ve got to do it’ – I’d love to see you on the front lines out in Iran.”
Spicer, who joined the Navy Reserve in 1999 as a public affairs officer, didn’t take well to Sisson’s remarks.
“Why don’t you read my bio, take a time out for a second before you say stupid things like that,” Spicer said. “Get your head out of your a--! I am in the military, you dumba--!”
Sisson quipped back, “Okay, great, go suggest yourself to serve, call them up and say ‘I want to go to Iran!’”
Spicer refused to directly address Sisson’s suggestion, and instead hurled another insult at the liberal commentator.
“I wish your smug little a-- understood anything about how this works,” Spicer said.
Sisson responded, “Sean, cry more. You’re one of these wealthy Republicans who sits in your wealthy home and tells other people to go serve while you’re sitting there making a bunch of money, advocating for Donald Trump. Go serve!”
“I’m not crying!” Spicer insisted.
I made Trump’s former employee, Sean Spicer, melt down after telling him to go serve in Iran since he wants the war to continue so badly pic.twitter.com/BRpmsNCS2V — Harry Sisson (@harryjsisson) June 12, 2026
"Are we upset that the president of the United States took an interest in the Kennedy Center?" Jennings asked while on a CNN roundtable.
"A lot of people are upset about that, yes," CNN host Abby Phillip responded.
"Why?" Jennings followed up before taking a shot at Trump opponents. "They've never been able to stand the fact that Donald Trump won the White House the first time, and especially the second time."
Phillip quickly countered Jennings' argument by pointing out why people are really upset about Trump's attempted renaming.
"How about Congress established the Kennedy Center as a memorial for John F. Kennedy, and that it is illegal for him to slap his name on it?" Phillip said. "That is why people are upset about it."
Jennings tried to hold up his argument, though.
"But here's the deal, he took an interest in this," Jennings said, referring to Trump.
"What about the laws, Scott?" Phillip asked.
"What about it?" Jennings shot back.
Phillip laughed as soon as Jennings said that, but he kept on going.
"Who cares?" he insisted. "These haters stand out on the street screeching about a name."
"Wow, haters," journalist Cari Champion reacted. "Unbelievable."
World Cup audiences showed their anger with the United States by booing renditions of the Star-Spangled Banner.
Canadian spectators at a watch party jeered nonstop during the U.S. National Anthem at the opening of the U.S. versus Paraguay match in Los Angeles, according to a social media video.
Those boos followed heckling and hissing as the U.S. flag came out during the opening ceremony of the Canada versus Bosnia match in Toronto earlier in the day, per more video.
Trump was notably booed during his appearance at Madison Square Garden when the Knicks played the Spurs during Game 3 of the NBA Finals.
Nobel Prize-winning economist turned liberal political commentator Paul Krugman broke down for MS NOW's Ari Melber on Friday evening why the SpaceX IPO valuation that just made tech tycoon Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire stinks to high heaven.
'You make several critiques," said Melber. "I wonder if you could start with kind of what I've read to be your most conservative kind of math critique, which is you basically lay out why you don't think this thing is worth what it claims to be worth."
First of all, Krugman said, "Imagine that ... Musk had a spiritual awakening and went to a monastery somewhere. What's left? What is SpaceX? It's a medium-sized satellite launch company? That's an okay business, but it's not a huge business, attached to a really bad AI model. Grok is, by all accounts, terrible ... and that in turn is bolted to what's left of Twitter, which has been turned into a, you know, a right-wing, Nazi-infested wasteland."
It defies belief, Krugman continued, to imagine that company is "worth almost as much as Microsoft, you know, which is are supplying the software that, you know, like it or not, the world runs on. So this is crazy, the valuation. There's no conceivable way."
Musk has a track record of making lofty promises on everything from self-driving cars to Mars colonies.
Ultimately, he said, "this is all it really is a Ponzi scheme," but unlike most Ponzi schemes where all the suckers have to choose to opt into it, "People are being forced effectively to buy into SpaceX because the indexes are including it, even though by the normal rules they should not," and there are now even "universities that have 10 or 15 percent of their endowment invested in SpaceX."
The bottom line, Krugman concluded, is that "this is a rigged system ... this is genuine rigging. Clearly the the system has all been tilted into producing this absurd valuation that makes the world's first trillionaire."
Paramount Skydance's greenlight to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery will lead to a major shakeup at CNN, warned a political strategist.
The upheaval coming for CNN will make recent events at CBS look like peanuts, political strategist Chai Komanduri said on MS NOW. While Paramount awaited approval from the Trump administration for the Warner Bros. deal, CBS ended "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" and ousted a slew of "60 Minutes" anchors and producers.
"Now, if you can replicate that on CNN, and you can diminish and downsize the voices in opposition to Trump or the criticism of moves of the administration, that gives Trump a lot more power," Komanduri said. "The stories that we have heard out of CBS News will be peanuts compared to the stories that will probably come out from CNN."
He warned Kaitlan Collins, the CNN correspondent who has been the target of Trump attacks, and said the Trump administration is "very much interested in who gets to be the CNN White House correspondent."
The Trump Department of Justice gave Paramount CEO and MAGA ally David Ellison the thumbs-up to acquire Warner Bros. for $110 billion. One of the most notable Warner Bros. properties is CNN, along with streaming services like HBO Max and Paramount+, and the Warner Bros. movie studio, MS NOW anchor Ari Melber noted.
Komanduri added, "One thing Trump wanted was control of CNN," and "that was his entire interest in the deal. Donald Trump and the DOJ weren't interested in who was going to be the next Batman."
The Texas Republican Party decided to parade a fully grown elephant through the hall of their party convention on Friday — and it didn't go well.
According to a video shared by New York Times Texas political correspondent Lauren McGaughy, the elephant "took a giant pee" on the floor just as it was passing the press area, prompting shouts of surprise and laughter from nearby onlookers, with one saying, "Oh, shoot!"
The Texas GOP, coming off a bruising Senate primary that saw voters throw out longtime incumbent John Cornyn, made a strong effort at their convention to project a show of unity and celebration for their party, but cracks were visible even aside from the mostly symbolic issue of large animals urinating.
For instance, state House Speaker Dustin Burrows, who has been a frequent target of the GOP's far-right faction over their frustration that he hasn't done enough to lock Democrats out of committee power, was greeted with boos when he took the convention stage.
Senate nominee and state Attorney General Ken Paxton worked the crowd to the best of his abilities, proclaiming, "I am the Democrats' No. 1 target for November. ...This is Texas, and we're not going to let you take it." He vowed also to "carry the torch for the America First agenda" and to pass President Donald Trump's voter restriction package, the SAVE America Act.
Renowned political analyst Larry Sabato told MS NOW's Antonia Hylton on Friday that the public could be sleeping on a key Senate race that might help Democrats take the majority: Alaska.
"Larry, do you think that there is a race out there right now that people aren't talking quite enough about?" asked Hylton, noting that plenty of other races, like North Carolina, are attracting massive attention. "Is there another area where they actually may have a shot, and the party or the base just aren't really thinking about it right now?"
"I've had a lot of people say to me, 'Oh, come on, you can't be serious about Alaska, Alaska is not going to go Democratic,'" said Sabato. "Well, normally, of course, it wouldn't go Democratic, and it certainly won't be by a landslide if in fact it does go Democratic."
This time, though, there are a number of factors working in the Democrats' favor.
For one thing, he said, Democrats "have in Mary Peltola a candidate who got elected to the U.S. House of Representatives under their unusual system of election from Alaska. She's already been able to do that."
Making matters more complicated, he noted, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) has to contend with a candidate with the same name running for office on the same ballot. "One of [the Dan Sullivans] hasbeen kind of thrown off, but Ithink maybe the courts will puthim back on."
Regardless, said Sabato, "the Republicanincumbent is clearly worried.If he weren't worried, hewouldn't have put so much timeand effort along with the party,national and state to debunkthis other Dan Sullivan.They're worried about everyvote, and they should be."
Above all, he concluded, Sullivan simply hasn't been around long enough in the Senate to build up a reputation the way many of Alaska's other longtime senators managed to.
"They reallydon't know Sullivan all thatwell, no matter what he says.So I would continue to watchAlaska."
