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A former senior U.S. official who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations delivered a blunt assessment when asked about the Trump administration's failure to plan for Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz: "I'm dumbfounded."

Trump's own top officials admitted to lawmakers behind closed doors that they never planned for the possibility that Iran would shut down the strait in response to U.S. military strikes, multiple sources familiar with classified congressional briefings told CNN. The scenario is among the most catastrophic economic scenarios American national security planners have war-gamed for decades.

President Donald Trump's adopted home state of Florida is one of the few that appears on track to pass its own state-level version of the SAVE America Act, the national legislation Trump is demanding that would add show-your-papers requirements to registering to vote, and impose such strict voter ID requirements that even most driver's licenses wouldn't be sufficient.

However, according to Politico, Florida Republicans conspicuously chose to leave a very key aspect of the bill out, despite Trump's insistence that it is critical.

A comedy of errors has befallen the Justice Department's crusade to chase down Oklahoma election officials for voter data, according to a new report.

The blunders were revealed through internal correspondence and public records reviewed by Democracy Docket's Yunior Rivas, who wrote the debacle "raises questions about whether a department that appears to struggle with email can be trusted to keep safe the sensitive personal data of millions of American voters."

President Donald Trump named the new leader of the U.S. Agency for Global Media on Thursday, just one week after a federal judge ousted one of his allies from the post, according to a new report.

NBC News reported that Trump named Sarah Rogers, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, to lead USAGM after Trump ally Kari Lake was ousted by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth last week. Rogers is a First Amendment lawyer who formerly represented the National Rifle Association, or NRA, and challenged social media companies for allegedly censoring the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk and other conservative voices.

Former Trump administration Homeland Security staffer Miles Taylor delivered a blistering assessment Thursday on MS NOW on how unprepared President Donald Trump was for the risk that Iran would shut down the Strait of Hormuz.

"One of the things I really have been trying to do is not to let my biases and priors override how I am interpreting the news, which is I obviously don't think particularly highly of the individuals that run the federal government or White House," said anchor Chris Hayes. "But at the same time, I want to think, well, it can't be as shambolic as it looks, right? I'm missing something. Obviously, the Department of Defense has an incredible architecture around planning. As someone who worked in the first Trump administration, like, how are you interpreting these signals?"

The Department of Justice and Department of Veterans Affairs just quietly handed themselves a troubling new weapon, analyst Steve Kennedy wrote Thursday in Slate.

They announced a partnership allowing VA attorneys to become federal prosecutors with the power to petition state courts for guardianship and conservatorship over veterans deemed unable to make medical decisions.

Legal experts were alarmed on Thursday as the latest "laughable" legal theory put forward by President Donald Trump's allies seemed to move closer to becoming law.

The Trump administration has been circulating a draft executive order that would federalize the U.S. election process in the event of a national emergency, The Washington Post reported. Even though the legal theory underpinning the order is "far from irrefutable," Anna Bower and Molly Roberts, senior editors at Lawfare, argued in a new article that "bits and pieces" of the order could still become law.

President Donald Trump's administration is considering defunding a key election watchdog agency just in time for the 2026 midterms, according to a report.

CBS News reported on Thursday that the White House is mulling defunding the Department of Justice's federal observer program, which dispatches election observers across the country to protect the right of minority groups to vote. The move is being contemplated at a time when public polling shows Trump is losing support from key voting blocs, like young males, over recent moves, such as starting a war in Iran.

A group of federal judges tore into the Trump administration for the escalating threats to their safety — noting that the president's attacks on any judge who rules against his policies has led to threats, cyberstalking, and even unsolicited pizza deliveries to the judges' homes.

According to Politico, the judges in question were speaking at a recent white-collar crime conference held by the American Bar Association.

A pair of MAGA firebrands were at each other's throats on Thursday over claims made in a series about Erika Kirk, the widow of the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Ben Shapiro, editor emeritus of conservative media company The Daily Wire, posted a video on X sharply criticizing MAGA radio host Megyn Kelly for not criticizing another MAGA firebrand, Candace Owens, over her claims that Erika Kirk participated in the assassination of her husband. Owens has made similar outlandish claims about Kirk in a podcast series called "Bride of Charlie."

President Donald Trump instituted a drastic change to the legal immigration process in recent months, implementing a new $100,000 fee for noncitizens to enter the United States on an H-1B visa, a program used to import high-skilled workers like engineers.

However, with the program in force, the net effect has been a drop in revenue for the government.

Democrats snatched a stunning flip this week in a Republican stronghold after Democrat Bobbi Boudman won a state house seat in a rural New Hampshire district where President Donald Trump won by double digits just 16 months ago.

Boudman's 52-48 victory over Republican Dale Fincher in the special election marked her third attempt at the seat and signaled a dramatic shift in voter sentiment, The Daily Beast noted Thursday. More than 4,000 ballots were cast in the Carroll County race near the Maine border.