Media

The weather forecast for Trump's White House UFC fight on Sunday looks perfect — for gnats.

UFC Freedom 250 kicks off at 8 p.m. ET on the South Lawn of the White House, with The Weather Channel now putting the chance of rain at 78 percent — thunderstorms possible in the afternoon and carrying into the evening. Temperatures will hit 90 degrees around 5 p.m. Journalist David Shuster flagged the overlap on X on Wednesday evening.

Speaker Mike Johnson fled down the Capitol steps Thursday rather than say whether Congress should vote on Trump's plan to seize Iran's main oil hub.

Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, was caught by CNN's Manu Raju on the Capitol steps hours after Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that the U.S. "will be taking Kharg Island" — the Persian Gulf terminal that handles roughly 90% of Iran's crude exports — along with "other oil infrastructure points," to "assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets."

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche twice refused to discuss the federal lawsuit threatening Trump's White House UFC fight — with a ruling expected within hours.

Blanche was appearing alongside DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin at a Thursday morning press conference on unaccompanied migrant children when a reporter tried to get him on record about the looming court fight.

Vice President JD Vance is losing his chief of staff, Jacob Reses, whose influence over foreign policy, insiders say, rivaled that of the vice president's own national security adviser.

Reses, Vance's chief of staff since joining him after the 2022 Ohio Senate race, will leave the administration at the end of the summer, people close to the vice president's office said Thursday. He informed Vance of his plans several months ago after his wife became pregnant with their first child.

As President Donald Trump's approval ratings hit record lows, far-right media outlets are experiencing a parallel collapse, with major conservative websites posting devastating traffic declines in May.

According to media watchdog Status, The Righting—which monitors website traffic—reported catastrophic numbers across the conservative media landscape. The top 20 right-wing news websites all posted year-over-year declines in May visits, with 90 percent experiencing double-digit drops.

Asked Thursday about bombing Iran's civilian water supply on Fox News, Donald Trump launched into a minutes-long rant about rigged elections instead.

Brian Kilmeade, the Fox News host who fielded Trump's call-in, had framed the water strike in approving terms — describing the U.S. campaign as an "Anaconda" strategy squeezing Iran into submission. But when he pointed out that American strikes had hit a water facility serving a population already running out of water, Trump changed the subject.

A loyal Fox News booster of President Donald Trump told the network's own war correspondent Thursday that MAGA viewers were done with his war of choice.

Ainsley Earhardt raised the alarm during a live Fox & Friends update from chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst, who had just gotten off a phone call with President Donald Trump — placed from the Situation Room as U.S. strikes on Iran were still underway.

In four minutes on Wednesday morning, Donald Trump promised to bomb Iran and wished for world peace.

At 11:50, gathered in the Oval Office for the signing of a $70 billion immigration enforcement bill, President Donald Trump turned to reporters with a warning about Iran. "We hit them hard yesterday, and we're gonna hit them again hard today — in case you miss it, in case you don't turn on your television set," he said.

A pro-MAGA Real America's Voice host declared he won't wear a single drop of sunscreen on an upcoming Florida trip — then played a clip of an anti-medicine influencer arguing against science that the sun doesn't cause cancer; it's the corn dogs.

Steve Gruber, host of the conservative network's morning program Day Break, made the announcement Wednesday alongside his guest and wife, Ivey Ramos Gruber, who agreed sunglasses might also be unnecessary. The segment fits neatly into the MAHA movement's growing anti-sunscreen wing — and straight into a public health nightmare.

The federal prosecutor leading California's election fraud investigations appeared on Glenn Beck's show Monday to announce imminent charges — then pleaded with the public to help him find the evidence to bring them.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, the number-two federal prosecutor in the Central District of California, told Beck that election fraud charges are coming — "one to two months, I believe" — before pivoting to ask the conservative host's audience for help.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche didn't defend a single allegation in his latest court filing. His opponent — a journalist and lawyer — is now arguing that silence speaks for itself.

In a reply brief filed Monday, Katie Phang — a Yale graduate and trial attorney turned independent journalist who spent three years hosting her own MSNBC show — accused Blanche of what her original complaint called a "brazen, shocking, and ongoing violation" of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Her case: he conceded every charge.

Andrew Tate is facing rape charges in two countries, free to travel only because the White House intervened on his behalf — and this week he used that freedom to lavish praise on Russian President Vladimir Putin's Russia before a Kremlin-backed audience.

"If you have patriotic masculine men, you're gonna protect Russia," Andrew Tate told RT's Sanchez Effect in an interview that aired Monday. Russia, he continued, "is a very patriotic nation, and they don't fear having a masculine population…"

Bari Weiss could be taking over the editorial leadership of another news network.

Paramount has begun preliminary conversations with several top media executives about a business-side counterpart to Weiss, the CBS News editor-in-chief, as the company awaits regulatory approval of its proposed merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, two sources familiar with the matter told Axios.