Billionaire Elon Musk's America political action committee (PAC) shared a warning to President Donald Trump's government hours after the former DOGE administrator slammed a spending bill as an "abomination."
In a post early Wednesday morning, America PAC suggested the government should be "fired" over Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill."
The post on X included a 2024 clip from Musk speaking about government spending.
"If a government official is effective in spending your money, they should be rewarded; if they waste your money, they should be fired," the post quoted Musk as saying.
On Tuesday, Musk said he could no longer be silent about the spending bill and called it a "disgusting abomination."
Legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance noticed something "very unusual" just happened in the case of Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man taken by the Department of Homeland Security and sent to an El Salvador prison despite a judge's order.
Ábrego García was captured by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the guise that the tattoos on his hand, one of which included a Christian cross, represented the MS-13 gang.
On Bluesky, Vance found that the docket revealed that the judge in the case has granted permission for Ábrego García's lawyers to file sanctions against President Donald Trump's Justice Department.
"Which is very unusual," said Vance.
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) "37 allows courts to order a number of sanctions against a party that fails to comply with court ordered discovery, including, 'directing that the matters embraced in the order or other designated facts be taken as established for purposes of the action, as the prevailing party claims,'" she cited.
"There are some interesting options in the rule," she pointed out. "We'll see what Abrego Garcia's lawyers ask for, but more importantly, just how far the judge is willing to go to maintain the authority of the courts. The sanction mentioned in post 2 is a powerful one."
It's possible that the public may not see much more information, she noted, because there's "a motion to seal discovery-related proceedings from yesterday, but it's hard to tell if it will apply to what's to come, or related to another matter that was terminated yesterday."
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the administration must “facilitate and effectuate the return of [Abrego Garcia] to the United States." They have not done so, according to some experts.
Media insiders are debating if we are seeing the end of democracy, which is making Mother Jones Washington, DC, Bureau Chief David Corn concerned about the media “normalizing Trump’s outrageous conduct.”
At a private event, Corn casually got into a discussion with a “media poohbah” about the challenges the media is facing under President Donald Trump.
“My interlocuter pooh-poohed my premise,” the Bureau Chief said the poohbah then declared “that the American experiment was not at risk: ‘We are strong and resilient. There’s no need to worry.’”
“We’ll be fine,” this person said.
“For a moment, I assumed they were joking. Then I realized they weren’t.” Corn said, “Time for another drink, I told myself and offered a plausible excuse for moving along.”
“As I headed toward the bar, I was disturbed.” Corn then thought to himself, “If this highly educated, well-informed media person of, no doubt, a somewhat liberal bent—no Trump supporter—doesn’t see the threat, that’s worrisome.”
With the subject line “I couldn’t believe my ears” Corn’s newsletter railed against the “We’ll be fine,” approach to Trumps policies.
“I fear many in the media have adopted this attitude. Too often, they normalize Trump’s outrageous conduct and the threat he poses to the nation. But that’s not me and my colleagues at Mother Jones.” Corn said. “We know that the future of American democracy is at stake right now and that journalism should ferociously cover and reflect the crisis at hand.
“That’s why I’ve been busy these past few months breaking stories on Trump’s war on life-saving government programs, his nonstop disinformation operation, his corruption, his embrace of authoritarianism, and his extremist appointees, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Kash Patel, and Tulsi Gabbard,” Corn said.
“These are perilous times, and I will not normalize the dangerous conduct and policies now emerging from the Trump White House.”
MAGA influencer Steve Bannon dismissed Elon Musk's DOGE cuts as a failure because he said the billionaire had found "no fraud" in government spending.
"This Elon thing is exactly like I told you," Bannon said on his Wednesday War Room podcast. "The $9 billion [in savings], there's no fraud in there, there's no waste."
"Yeah, it's outrageous," he continued. "But this has all been identified for years. Where's the fraud? Where's the $1 trillion of fraud? Elon got the political class off the hook. That's how you get the Big Beautiful Bill."
Bannon insisted that Musk was unable to find fraud in Social Security and Medicare.
"Show me where the DOGE fraud is," he demanded. "Not $9 billion of programmatic cuts that people have identified for years... I haven't seen any fraud in Social Security... Or the Defense Department. Defense Department is a festering sore of waste, foreign, abuse."
The MAGA host also slammed President Donald Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" for giving tax breaks to the wealthy.
"You're going to have to raise taxes," he predicted. "The wealthy can't get an extension of the tax cut. That's got to go to the middle class and the working class."
During a discussion on MSNBC on the budget bill before the Senate that suddenly has a surprising opponent in Elon Musk, former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) noted a tax break included by Republicans in it that she called "nuts."
Appearing on "Morning Joe," McCaskill had her doubts about the future of the bill that contains a multitude of cuts in government services.
"Let me point out one thing in this bill that we haven't talked enough about," she began. "This is –– if you distill it down to the essence –– this is how nuts this is, this bill actually cuts funding to people who really need it, health care in rural hospitals to give a tax break to gun silencers."
"Let that sink in for a minute," she suggested. "How many Americans are out there protesting and saying, 'I want gun silencers to get a tax break?'"
"That's some of the stuff that's buried in this abomination and as time goes on, more and more of those little nuggets are going to become public it's going to be more and more difficult for [Republican Senate Majority Leader John] Thune to find 51 votes."
Elon Musk inveighed against the so-called "big beautiful bill" president Donald Trump is pushing Republicans to approve, and CNN's Harry Enten handicapped the four-way power struggle between the key players.
The tech billionaire called the spending bill a "disgusting abomination" just days after formally exiting his White House role, saying the measure would explode the national debt and undo all of his accomplishments with the Department of Government Efficiency, and Enten broke down polling data to project what might come next.
"Please just never call me a disgusting abomination, John, please," Enten told "CNN News Central" host John Berman.
"Never to your face," Berman replied.
"Thank you, thank you," Enten said. "Behind me is perfectly fine."
The data analyst then turned to his touch screen and showed that the bill would add a projected $2 trillion to the national debt, while Trump was asking for just over $9 billion in spending cuts.
"President Trump wants to send these DOGE cuts to Congress [through] the rescission process, and that, get this, would only bring down the national debt by about $9 billion," Enten said. "The big, beautiful bill over 10 years, get this, through the roof in terms of the federal deficits, and the debt up $2 trillion. You don't have to be a mathematical genius to know that $9 [billion] doesn't come anywhere close to $2 trillion. So all of DOGE's work, that they would send at least a part of it to Congress, gets completely wiped out, wiped off the map by the big, beautiful bill."
"No wonder Elon Musk is so upset," he added. "So as I said, he's taking on this bill. He's mostly critical of Congress here."
Berman asked who would win a battle between Musk and Congress, and Enten said the Tesla CEO was far more popular among Republicans than the party's congressional leaders.
"Who wins between Elon Musk and Congress?" Enten said. "Well, look, Elon Musk is a very popular guy amongst Republicans [with] a plus-63 net favorability rating. Beats Mike Johnson at plus-46, who, of course, is the [House] speaker. How about John Thune, the Republican leader in the Senate? Only a plus-30, so if Musk is taking on these two gentlemen, it's not a fair fight. Elon Musk is a very popular dude, but he is nowhere close to where Donald Trump is within the Republican ranks. Look at that, a plus-79 net favorability rating."
"So if Donald Trump decides to turn his fire on Elon Musk, that is a fight that Elon Musk simply cannot win," Enten said. "If Donald Trump stays out of it, he stands a pretty good chance, Elon Musk does, against Johnson and Thune."
The Trump administration may continue to deny that they've been sending mixed messages on tariffs since "Liberation Day" back in April, but a timeline published by Forbes laid out in black and white the reality of President Donald Trump's erratic trade policy.
The timeline of "The 22 Times He's Changed His Mind On Tariffs" comes as Trump's latest action on steel and aluminum imports ballooned to 50% on Wednesday.
The timeline included comments from aides like Peter Navarro and Howard Lutnick claiming in televised interviews that Trump was “not going to back off” his tariffs. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declared "there would be no exemptions" to Trump's tariffs on foreign goods.
But, according to Forbes, Trump's "new math" of "just dividing a country’s trade surplus with the U.S. by its export value, rather than the more sophisticated formula the administration claimed" led to "flip-flop No. 1."
Shortly thereafter came "flip-flop No. 2," that contradicted Leavitt’s comments, after Trump decided to exempt “copper, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, lumber articles, certain critical minerals, and energy and energy products" from his executive order on foreign goods.
And on it went, according to Forbes, with incidents like Trump declaring aboard Air Force One that "he was open to negotiating the tariffs," to his Truth Social post in all caps declaring, "MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE.”
Forbes labeled "flip-flop No. 6" as "a stunning about face," when Trump announced he was pausing "the worst of his tariffs on most countries for 90 days, though he would continue a baseline 10% tariff rate and raise his tariffs on most Chinese goods by 125%."
His analysis comes on the heels of a Washington Post analysis, which claimed President Donald Trump had posted 2,262 times to Truth Social in the first 132 days of his second term.
“In other words,” Aleem said, “America’s president is subjecting himself to unprecedented levels of internet brain rot.”
The writer and editor added, “Trump is publishing his stream-of-consciousness statements primarily on his own social media platform, Truth Social, in which he owns billions of dollars’ worth of shares.”
This “incessant posting” is forcing people to create profiles on the president's media outlet, which in turn “boosts the company’s value and enriches him.”
This makes it a good “incentive [for Trump] to post for the sake of posting, to maintain a constant buzz around his platform and keep his media business in the news and at the center of the culture.”
Comparing his first term social media posts to his second, Aleem claims Trump’s more recent posts “have garnered more widespread attention for their uniquely strange content.”
He went on to say, “Consider, for example, how over the weekend Trump reposted a post on Truth Social that claimed that former President Joe Biden was executed in 2020 and replaced by clones and 'robotic engineered soulless mindless entities.'”
Aleem echoed colleague Steve Benen's claim that posts like these “combine the weird with the authoritarian at breathtaking levels.”
“Trump’s intensifying obsession with posting on social media is a natural expression of his presidency: impulsive, reckless, self-promotional, and filled with misinformation,” Aleem concluded. “It is common to counsel the terminally online to ‘log off and touch grass.’ But in this case, it seems useless — the posting is the point.”
A Florida woman is facing multiple charges after allegedly using bear spray on two Black girls, ages 3 and 6, while yelling racial slurs.
Marion County deputies told Fox 35 that the incident occurred on May 30 when the two girls were playing with bubbles in their driveway.
The girls' mother said Ada Anderson, 81, approached the fence and sprayed mace at the girls. According to the arrest report, Anderson was screaming racial slurs at the time.
Bear spray can be toxic to humans if ingested.
"I thought at first, I thought it was a gun, so I was startled," mother April Morant recalled to Fox 35. "I'm like, but it was like bear mace. A big old cloud came, so I rushed the kids like, go in the house, go in the house."
"And so then I called the police on her, and I found out like she did it twice, and I didn't even know it was twice until my daughter let the officer know," she added.
Morant said the harassment has been going on for months since they moved in.
Anderson was also arrested in 2019 for aggravated assault with a gun and stalking.
A conservative commentator clashed with CNN's John Berman and another panelist over defense secretary Pete Hegseth's decision to remove the name of gay rights activist Harvey Milk from a U.S. Navy ship.
The defense secretary is expected to announce the ship's renaming June 13 aboard the USS Constitution, the oldest commissioned Navy ship, and the service branch is also reportedly considering renaming of other John Lewis-class oiler, a group of ships that are to be named after prominent civil rights leaders and activists, such as the USNS Thurgood Marshall, USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and USNS Harriet Tubman.
"I think that the defense secretary should spend his time doing things to keep Americans safe," former White House aide Meghan Hays told "CNN News Central." "I don't know why we would be spending money or time and his energy to rename battleships. It just doesn't seem right, I don't think that's what the American people want. I don't think that's what the American people want taxpayer dollars spent on."
"He needs to focus on what is important in keeping America safe and keeping our troops safe," added Hays, a former communications staffer for Joe Biden. "But, again, he is wholly unqualified for this job, so this just goes to point that he is his his energy is not placed in the right direction."
Conservative activist David Urban disagreed, saying Hays had misidentified the class of ships that Hegseth was renaming.
"Listen, Meghan's got it wrong," Urban said. "Battleships, Meghan, by the way, are named after states, if you know anything about this stuff. So look, the Navy and the military should be focused on war fighting and focused on lethality, and, you know, ships are named after people like Ruth Bader Ginsburg. This is a construct of recent the recent left. Listen, I'm all for heroes, for people who are inspiring soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, people who fought. That's who ships should be named after. There are lots and lots of heroic people. If you want to look at, you know, African Americans, Hispanics or other folks who served in the Navy, served in the military, let's do that."
Milk served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War but resigned at the rank of lieutenant rather than be court-martialed due to his homosexuality, and he was assassinated in 1978 after becoming the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
"I think that we can we can examine this and have a discussion about it and come to a better place than some of these ships are currently named," Urban said. "So I agree with Hegseth on this one."
Berman pushed back, pointing out that these civil rights icons were widely considered to be American heroes and no doubt inspired many military service members.
"I will say, if you're talking about heroes, some of these people on that list are heroes to a lot of people," Berman said.
Urban kept talking right into the commercial break.
"I'm saying military heroes, John," Urban said. "Military heroes."
“At this early point in Donald Trump’s second term as president, Marco Rubio is riding higher than many predicted,” Columnist Andreas Kluth wrote. “Yet he appears simultaneously to be getting weaker and hollower by the day.”
Kluth, who covers US diplomacy, national security, and geopolitics for the outlet, claimed “Washington’s foreign-policy wonks assumed that Rubio would be among the first to be pushed out of the administration.”
They were not only shocked to see National Security Advisor Michael Waltz demoted, but also “ever-feckless and chaos-prone Defense Secretary” Pete Hegseth on the chopping block next.
Waltz's dismissal gave way for Rubio to become head of the NSC. The only other person to be both head of the NSC and Secretary of State at the same time was Henry Kissinger.
But Rubio has more than just these two roles, the former senator is also acting USAID head and acting archivist.
Kluth believes the main secret to Rubio’s success is “his willingness to abandon all pride and principle in toadying up to Trump.”
“Rubio is just as zealous in gutting the bureaucracies which he’s running, but which MAGA considers parts of the deep state,” Kluth said. “
In his roles, Rubio has overseen the “dismantling of USAID,” more importantly, Kluth says Rubio has “alienated many career diplomats in the foreign service.”
“All of this rhymes with Trump’s message and style, which Rubio has made his own.”
“Staffing at both State and the Council now depends relatively less on expertise and more on fealty to POTUS.” Going over a worst-case scenario, Kluth claimed, “as rumor has it, Rubio may eventually hand the NSC over to Stephen Miller, a Trump firebrand with no notable qualifications for the role.”
More than just turning over the NSC to Miller, the columnist claims, despite the title, Rubio is not acting as “America’s top diplomat.” Instead, Kluth believes the true top diplomat in the country is “Steve Witkoff, a real-estate tycoon whom Trump has made special envoy for all sorts of overseas crises.”
Kluth believes Rubio has abandoned his worldview for Trump’s. The columnist noted how in 2016 their world views were “stark,” adding, “Trump’s transactional autocrats-come-hither, allies-be-damned nihilism versus the hawkish and often moralistic notions about American exceptionalism and leadership that Rubio used to hold.”
Following up on her Wednesday report on how Miller and Donald Trump's war on immigrants is "reshaping" the focus of what crimes should be prioritized, NBC's Julia Ainsley told the hosts of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that the abrasive Miller is increasingly angering other members of the administration.
For NBC News she wrote that in May, Miller "berated and threatened to fire senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials if they did not begin detaining 3,000 migrants a day," and has since demanded other agencies help out with his "Operation At Large."
On MSNBC, the reporter noted other agencies feel they are being forced to drop more important investigations not related to immigrants in order to satisfy the Trump adviser and they are not pleased.
Noting plans to use members of the National Guard to round up immigrants, Ainsley added, "This comes a week after the infamous, now infamous meeting where Stephen Miller called in the leaders of ICE and screamed at them, yelled at them, threatened to start firing the bottom 10 percent of performers if they didn't get their arrest numbers to 3000 a day."
"But all of those law enforcement agencies obviously had other jobs," she elaborated. "And oftentimes if they were called into immigration, it would be because there was a real criminal element to this. As we understand from Miller's direction to ICE, is that they shouldn't just be focusing on criminals; they need to spread the net more widely."
"And so there's some push back we're hearing from DOJ and other agencies about how much of their resources they're being asked to give to immigration," she reported. "In fact, this has been coming for some time now. And where U.S. attorney's offices have said they feel like they are passing over U.S. citizens who have committed dangerous crimes, and they're not prosecuting them."
After staying up late on Tuesday night to lash out at China and ex-President Joe Biden, Donald Trump was back at it early Wednesday morning, this time aiming his ire at Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
After earlier complaining about trade negotiations with China by writing, "I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!" the president later rages about more economic news.
On Truth Social, he first wrote, "ADP NUMBER OUT!!! 'Too Late' Powell must now LOWER THE RATE. He is unbelievable!!! Europe has lowered NINE TIMES!"
Trump has been at war with Powell since he was re-elected, writing back in early May, "'Too Late’ Jerome Powell is a FOOL, who doesn’t have a clue. Other than that, I like him very much! Oil and Energy way down, almost all costs (groceries and ‘eggs’) down, virtually NO INFLATION, Tariff Money Pouring Into the U.S. — THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF ‘TOO LATE!’ ENJOY!”
