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Service members and chaplains are raising alarms as a deadline nears for troops to choose a religion from a sharply reduced list approved by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon.

The Defense Department is cutting the military’s recognized religious affiliations from 211 to 31, an 85 percent reduction, according to a May memo obtained by MS NOW, and only nine of the remaining options are non-Christian faiths.

The Air Force has told active-duty airmen to make their selections by Friday, Oct. 16, while a separate Marine Corps administrative message says service members who don’t choose a new affiliation in time will have one selected for them....

The disastrous debut by new White House press secretary Katie Zacharia has raised new questions over how she landed the job with MS NOW host Joe Scarborough saying she may be the worst Donald Trump hire yet.

After sharing clips of the woman who has claimed to be an attorney stumble through 14 minutes before the White House press corps, the MS Now co-host stated, “This is the worst vetting in a decade for the White House since Bernie Kerik.”

Saying he was flooded with phone calls Tuesday night, he added, “White House officials were blindsided. And now I can't even repeat some of the things they are saying about this decision. But inside the White House they are angry.”...

Over the span of roughly three hours, President Donald Trump posted two dozen videos — and one rant about Greenland — on social media Tuesday night into early Wednesday morning, a late-night barrage that left onlookers questioning the president’s mental state.

The first of the two dozen videos Trump posted online was an AI-generated clip of himself chasing, tackling and then warmly embracing a tiger, a likely reference to the recent death of 23-year-old William Chapman, a British man who was killed by a tiger during an incident at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park on Saturday and who, according to his family, struggled with “significant mental illness.”

“Trump posted this video to his Truth Social, just days after a man was mauled to death by a tiger at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park,” wrote Patricia Eguino, a former commissioner in Washington, D.C., and political activist, in a social media post on X. “His brain is cooked.”...

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) suggested over the weekend that a Trump administration official may have quietly contacted a federal appeals judge to stall a contempt inquiry, and the legal analyst interviewing him declared that if so, “people are going to jail.”

In a clip flagged by political video aggregator Acyn Torabi from the Legal AF podcast, Whitehouse laid out a hypothetical involving D.C. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee.

“If some MAGA official communicated to Judge Rao or her chambers and that resulted in the administrative stay that held the door open and kept the facts from the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation and stalled investigation into misconduct by the DOJ,” Whitehouse began, “ask any judge how big a deal that is.”...

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) bragged about a road salt win at a Maine Senate debate, and her challenger's comeback had observers cheering.

On Tuesday, Collins faced Democratic challenger Troy Jackson in a debate weeks before the midterms. Asked what she would do about President Donald Trump's tariffs on Canada, Collins pointed to a specific victory.

"I was successful at getting road salt removed from the tariff list," Collins said. Jackson responded by pouncing on the answer....

Former MLB superstar Roger Clemens fact-checked President Donald Trump during his Texas rally Wednesday night.

Trump traveled to San Antonio, Texas, to stump for Republicans like Tano Tijerina in his race against Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), whom Trump attacked for what he considered to be a "disloyal act" by not becoming a Republican after Trump pardoned him. At the rally, Trump invited Clemens on stage to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor, because Clemens had not yet been elected to the Hall of Fame.

In typical Trump fashion, the president also rattled off a fact about Clemens that the former big league pitcher was quick to correct. ...