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Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) gave a remarkably blunt assessment of the intra-party chaos sparked by President Donald Trump’s “bombshell” he dropped early Wednesday morning - that he would be “cancelling” a scheduled Senate confirmation hearing – and shrugged his shoulders when asked to speculate on Trump’s reasoning.

At around 4 a.m. Washington time, Trump claimed that he was “cancelling” the Senate confirmation hearing for Jay Clayton, whom he tapped to become the next Director of National Intelligence (DNI) after his initial pick faced considerable bipartisan backlash. He appeared to walk that back, however, after announcing that his initial pick – Bill Pulte – would remain as the acting DNI for the foreseeable future, and in the process, derailed the Senate GOP’s agenda.

President Donald Trump canceled the hearing for his own nominee for Director of National Intelligence, Jay Clayton, in a dead-of-morning Truth Social post on Wednesday — but at least some Senate Republicans are signaling they plan to go forward anyway.

Clayton is nominated to succeed Tulsi Gabbard, who is resigning from office this month. Democrats and many Republicans are concerned about Trump's selection of Bill Pulte, a partisan loyalist with no intelligence credentials, to serve as acting DNI, which pressured Trump into selecting Clayton in the first place — and now Trump and the Senate are at odds about how fast to confirm Clayton to try to avoid Pulte serving in the role at all.

Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) grilled President Donald Trump's budget office nominee, warning that his confirmation would enable "anti-American" policies.

Slotkin zeroed in on Hal Duncan, Trump's pick for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday.

New York Times columnist Bret Stephens dropped the hammer on Donald Trump for “betraying” conservatives like himself who were encouraged that he took on Iran — only to capitulate when his war stalled out because he miscalculated the enemy.

To make his point about the president’s lack of courage, Stephens brought up the way the president avoided the Vietnam War by getting a doctor to diagnose him with bonespurs, purportedly making him unable to serve and fight.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who lost his re-election bid after President Donald Trump endorsed his GOP primary opponent, confused onlookers Tuesday night after sharing an image online depicting a Senate GOP colleague sitting atop a throne made of human skulls.

“My favorite Senator [Susan] Collins (R-MA) picture,” Cornyn wrote Tuesday evening in a social media post on X, alongside a cartoon depiction of Collins with a fierce look on her face, sitting atop a throne of human skulls in a fiery abyss.

President Donald Trump startled onlookers with a profane outburst when he was asked about former President Barack Obama's nuclear agreement with Iran.

The 80-year-old Trump has been fixated on proving the agreement to end his war in Iran is stronger than the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – which he withdrew from in May 2018, during his first term – and he blew up Wednesday morning when asked about the comparison at the G7 summit.

President Donald Trump's "Freedom250" UFC match on the White House lawn was a massive display of weakness, Salon's Amanda Marcotte argued in an analysis published on Wednesday — and it reveals the true insecurity of the MAGA psyche.

The whole movement, she said, is "run by men obsessed with looking tough, but who are, in actuality, weak and incompetent. The more they fail, the more they grasp for these theatrical but ineffectual displays of masculine preening, hoping that the public mistakes loud and violent displays for strength." It gets eaten up by the MAGA faithful, she said, but the rest of America can easily see it for what it is.

The Department of Justice made an unusual concession to six protesters arrested during an immigration crackdown in Chicago that experts say shows how "desperate" government lawyers are to make the failed prosecution go away.

Defense attorneys for the "Broadview Six" have asked U.S. District Judge April Perry to appoint an independent special counsel to investigate alleged misconduct in the case, which they argued extends far beyond Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg – possibly all the way up to the top of the Justice Department, reported the Chicago Tribune.

President Donald Trump's move to pull the hearing for his own Director of National Intelligence nominee Jay Clayton at the last minute was driven by fury over Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), Politico's Meredith Lee Hill reported on Wednesday.

This comes as Republicans are eager to get Clayton confirmed before current DNI Tulsi Gabbard officially resigns her position, at which point Bill Pulte, a controversial Trump loyalist with no qualifying experience in national security, would take over the office on an acting basis.

President Donald Trump lashed out at a reporter Wednesday while in France when pressed on the tentative peace deal his administration reached with Iran last weekend, the supposed details of which, while not officially released, have leaked and sparked outrage among hawkish figures.

“No, it's not final, it's a memorandum of understanding!” Trump is heard saying while attending the Group of Seven summit in Évian-les-Bains, France.

At the end of a segment on Donald Trump’s Iran deal, which is being highly criticized across the board as a disaster, MS NOW host Willie Geist made a point of holding up in the front page of Wednesday’s edition of the New York Post featuring a blaring headline criticizing the president.

Prior to Geist’s display, each member of the “Morning Joe’ panel took a shot at the president now that details of his memorandum of understanding (MOU) have been leaked, with the Financial Times’ Ed Luce offering, “It doesn’t even pass the laugh test.”