Toobin joined Joana Coles of The Daily Beast on a new episode of "The Daily Beast Podcast" to discuss the Supreme Court's impact on the second Trump administration. The Court is expected to make several key rulings this term that could affect Trump's ability to implement his agenda, including a case over whether Trump can unilaterally impose tariffs without Congress's approval.
Toobin warned that Trump may have figured out a way to bypass the court if they issue a ruling he doesn't like, a move that could effectively end democracy in America.
"The Supreme Court in our country doesn't have any individual enforcement powers," Toobin said. "They don't have an army. They don't have a police force that can do anything except protect their members. So, they rely on the understanding in the other branches of government that the Supreme Court has the last word."
"I think Donald Trump is not going to directly defy the court, but this administration has figured out ways to get around court rulings, and in a way that I don't think it's entirely clear how he would react to an adverse decision, but we'll see," he continued.
CNN law enforcement reporter Whitney Wild was caught in the middle of a standoff between police and protesters in Minneapolis on Wednesday night after an immigration agent shot and wounded an immigrant during an arrest.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that a Venezuelan immigrant was shot in the leg after "violently" resisting arrest during a "targeted" traffic stop. DHS said the man fled the scene in his car, crashed into a parked vehicle, and took off on foot.
The event was broadcast on social media, which helped quickly attract a crowd of protesters to the neighborhood.
CNN cameras captured agents firing tear gas to disperse the crowd. Wild said she also heard flashbang grenades going off in the background.
"It's quite chaotic, andit's going more so," Wild said.
Wild said the crowd also appeared to be growing.
"They're surrounding these immigration officers and letting them know without any ambiguity that they do not like what they see and they want them to leave," Wild said. "This has been an ongoing scene throughout the city of Minneapolis."
After the shooting, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, called on Trump to take his immigration agents out of the state. Trump initially surged more than 2,000 agents into the state to address alleged social services fraud by the Somali community.
CNN reporter Harry Enten lost it on Wednesday night while discussing the results of a new CNN/SSRI poll on "The Source" with host Kaitlan Collins.
The new poll revealed that President Donald Trump's immigration forces have become increasingly unpopular during his second administration. Overall, the popularity of Immigration and Customs Enforcement has dropped by 17 points since Trump's first term, according to the poll. More than half of voters said ICE raids are making their communities less safe.
"I think this sort ofgives the game away!" Enten said animatedly. "ICEenforcement is making U.S.cities less safe."
Trump's approval rating on immigration has also cratered, according to the poll. Since March, Trump's approval rating on immigration has fallen by 16 points.
The poll was released at a time when Trump's immigration policies are facing increased scrutiny. Last week, ICE officer Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother in Minneapolis, which sparked protests nationwide.
CNN's Kaitlan Collins was floored late Wednesday when a MAGA lawmaker appeared to fess up to what a Trump administration official would not.
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) joined Collins on her show, "The Source," to discuss the latest on the White House's meeting with Danish officials on Trump's crusade to buy Greenland, as well as discuss a federal criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
Collins shared Lawler's own remarks back to him, noting he told Politico that he believed Powell was late in addressing inflation and "woefully slow" in lowering interest rates, but that he maintained the independence of the agency was "paramount." To boot, he said he opposed "any effort to pressure them into action."
Collins pressed him on his thoughts with the same biting question she posed a day earlier to Kevin Hassett, a conservative economist who serves as director of the National Economic Council in the Trump administration.
"Do you think Jay Powell would be under investigation tonight if he had cut the interest rates like the president demanded?" she asked Lawler.
His answer floored her.
"Probably not," he began.
"That's a crazy thing!" she cut in. "Don't you think?"
Lawler noted Powell's term is quickly coming to an end and that the Fed needs to focus on reducing interest rates and grow the economy.
"A lot of this is a distraction and wasted time and effort," he said.
Lawler's answer came a day after Hassett, rumored to be among Trump's top choices to replace Powell, rebuffed Collins' question."
President Trump and the White House Press Office has discussed that matter, I think I have nothing to add to that," he said.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) appeared on MS NOW's "The Weeknight" on Wednesday to express his shock at how quickly the public mood is turning against Immigration and Customs Enforcement after the fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis — and how, while Democrats should be cautious about how they seize on it, it's still a critical moment.
"It's interesting watching Democrats really try to attack this problem from multiple angles," said anchor Alicia Menendez. "You have your colleagues, representatives, Goldman and Swalwell, who are looking at the possibility of stripping qualified immunity from ICE agents. You have Senator Murphy looking at a number of ways in which DHS funding could be restricted ... you have articles of impeachment being drawn up for Secretary Noem. Do you have a sense of where there is the greatest political will, or for that matter, any political will on the part of Republicans to actually rein in the terror that we are seeing from ICE?"
"So let me say this," said Moskowitz. "I think Kristi Noem is the weakest link of the administration. I think the president should remove her. She just embarrasses him every single day. That's my position on her. And it's not just about ICE. She's destroyed FEMA. It's not even clear FEMA could even respond to a disaster based on what she's done there. That's going to hurt red states, most rural people, most poor people, most farmers. And so I just think she's just an embarrassment, quite frankly, to the president."
Regarding how Democrats should respond to the fury over ICE, Moskowitz continued, "We also have to make sure we don't fall into a trap here."
"Republicans are very, you know, are great at setting these traps about, oh, Democrats want to defund law enforcement or Democrats want open borders," he said. "So we have to make sure that we also don't overreact and get ourselves into a situation as we approach the '26 election into these, you know, moderate districts, into these districts in play."
"As far as courage on my Republican colleagues, no, they're not going to do anything here," he continued. "But the factthat Joe Rogan is coming outand talking about the 'Gestapo'language Democrats were usingmonths ago, and we were toldwhen that language was beingused that it was over the top.Now Rogan is using it, becauseliterally masked men are in thestreet shooting Americancitizens in the face. And thenwe're hearing that's 'domesticterrorism.' On the same day, wehad a January 6th hearing whenwe actually had domesticterrorism, when all those folksobviously rushed into theCapitol. And so, you know,listen, we're living in theupside down. I don't know whatelse to say."
President Donald Trump may soon prove one of America's founding fathers right, that a government that attacks the press is a "prologue to a tragedy or a farce," according to a new column.
Comedian and actor Michael Ian Black argued in a new piece for The Daily Beast on Wednesday that the Trump administration's raid on Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson's home should alarm every American. The FBI said that it seized Natanson's devices in relation to an investigation into a national security leak. These raids are typically protected under the Privacy Protection Act, Black noted, and the case doesn't appear to meet the exceptions of that law.
Instead, the Trump administration appears to be sending a very clear message to people who dare to speak out in protest, Black argued.
"Our interests have been betrayed. Our rights trampled. Our lives sacrificed," Black wrote. "To what end? Maybe you don’t care about a single reporter at a single, failing newspaper. But you should. The farce is upon us. The tragedy is underway."
Black also noted the conspicuous absence of Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos in the affair. Bezos's Blue Origin company has millions of dollars in government contracts, which could be influencing his decision on whether to speak out.
"Having already overhauled the Post’s opinion coverage—and its editorial priorities more broadly—to curry favor with the administration, he does not seem inclined to risk even a single dollar for the sake of our pesky First Amendment," Black wrote.
President Donald Trump added yet another notch to his belt of legal losses on Wednesday, as a federal judge ruled his Department of Agriculture cannot cut back nutrition assistance payments to Minnesota.
The preliminary injunction was first flagged by Politico's Kyle Cheney on X in the evening.
The restriction, announced earlier this week, shut off some $130 million in federal funding for food stamps. It was part of the Trump administration's efforts to play up allegations of widespread fraud in Minnesota's public benefits programs.
The Joe Biden administration had already investigated fraud cases and schemes in Minnesota in 2022 and convicted a handful of ringleaders; however, things exploded again when a right-wing YouTuber claimed, based on flimsy and now-disproven evidence, that the Somali-American community in Minneapolis is running fraudulent day cares with no kids enrolled to collect state payments.
Trump has been particularly obsessed with attacking the Somali diaspora in Minnesota, often calling for the deportation of Rep. Ilhan Omar, who was born in Somalia and fled violence as a child refugee.
The food stamp funding freeze was one of a number of measures Trump has launched as part of his vendetta against Minnesota. Another measure was to flood the Twin Cities with immigration agents, which led to massive backlash and outrage around the country after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot a 37-year-old mother of three in the head multiple times through the open window of her car.
Trump has even gone so far as to refuse to include Minnesota state law enforcement officials in the investigation of that incident, treating reporters to a long and disorganized rant about Mercedes-Benzes and imaginary election fraud when pressed on why.
Donald Trump has had a stroke, a prominent clinical professor of medicine said, listing evidence he said he saw in the president's behavior.
"My impression is that President Trump has had a stroke, and I think there's several lines of evidence supporting that," said Professor Bruce Davidson, of Washington State University Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine, in Spokane, Washington. "I think his stroke was on the left side of the brain, which controls the right side of the body."
Davidson was speaking to the Clinton aide turned Lincoln biographer Sidney Blumenthal and Princeton historian Sean Wilentz on their podcast, The Court of History.
Now 79, Trump is the oldest president ever to assume office. Speculation over his health has been a persistent feature of his second term. Physical slips have been noted, as have occurrences in which Trump has appeared to sleep during daytime events. Slurred speech and difficulty forming sentences have been widely remarked upon.
Trump regularly claims to be in excellent mental and physical health — claims backed up by White House statements.
OnThe Court of History, Davidson was asked what formed his belief about the president's health.
He said, "I think the stroke was six months ago or more, earlier in 2025. There's video of him shuffling his feet, which is not what we'd seen him [doing], striding on the golf course … previously. We've seen him holding his right hand in his left, cradling. And earlier in the year, in 2025, he was garbling words, which he didn't do previously, and which he's improved upon more recently. And he's also had marked episodes that have been noticed of daytime, excessive sleepiness, — medical term, hypersomnolence — which is characteristic of many patients after they've had a stroke. … Most recently, there was video of him walking down the stairs from Air Force One, holding the banister with his left hand, although he's right-handed, and all of this is consistent with having had a stroke on the left side of his brain. A stroke is an area of infarction. It's an area of dead tissue."
Davidson also described behavior he said he thought showed Trump's psychological reaction to surviving a stroke.
"People who … have a stroke, it's a very serious, concerning, life-threatening, upsetting, scary thing, and people react in different ways," Davidson said. "Some people respond with humility, grateful to be alive and viewing life as precious. Others become, as they improve, positively euphoric, that, 'I was at the cliff of death, and now I'm back,' and and some view it as, 'That was my chance to die, and I didn't, and now I'm going to do everything I wanted to do, because the next one may be fatal."
The accelerating pace of Trump's policy announcements, military orders, demands for the prosecution of enemies, and attacks on political opponents has been noted around the world.
Referring to Trump's regular claims about his own health, Davidson said: "Another piece of evidence in favor of him having had a stroke is his telling us that he's taking a whole aspirin tablet, 325 milligrams daily."
Trump said that this month, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, about his health. Saying the aspirin had caused widely noted bruising on his hand, Trump told the Journal: "They say aspirin is good for thinning out the blood, and I don't want thick blood pouring through my heart. I want nice, thin blood pouring through my heart. Does that make sense?"
To Davidson, it did not.
"The instruction to take one full aspirin, 325 milligrams daily, is solely, only for prevention of recurrent repeat stroke after partial 50 percent or more blockage, occlusion of a large vessel in the brain," the doctor said. "It's not recommended for anything for the heart, and we were told that President Trump's chest CT scan was unremarkable, was fine."
Trump recently said he had an MRI, then said it was in fact a CT scan.
Davidson told Blumenthal and Wilentz: "A CT scan of the chest takes three or four minutes, and when you add the abdomen, that's another three or four minutes. An MRI is what we use to most carefully image the brain. You can image the brain pretty well with a CT scan, and that's emergency imaging of the brain, because it's more available, but an MRI gives you far more detail, and an MRI takes a minimum of 20 minutes, and they put this over your head, and it's extremely noisy, it's a banging sound, and they put headphones to block the sounds. So there is no mistaking an MRI for CT. And when President Trump said he had an MRI, he undoubtedly did. Now we do MRIs of the spine, of bone and joints. But that's not what he was talking about when he talked about cognitive testing. So I think it's, it's certainly clear that did not sound like a misspeaking, that he had an MRI of his brain and he had CT, surveillance, CAT scans of his chest and abdomen."
Blumenthal and Wilentz noted that presidents have suffered strokes in office — Woodrow Wilson's was hidden from the public, while Franklin D. Roosevelt died.
Trump has also regularly boasted about passing basic cognitive tests, adding to widespread speculation that the president could be suffering from dementia. Davidson did not think so.
"He doesn't, to me, behave demented," he said, adding: "It seems to me that with thoseNew York Times questions recently and press conferences, he grasps the question and appropriately responds — or inappropriately, depending on your views — but he certainly handles the gist of the question. So I do not see dementia, for which I'm glad, but it is common after strokes for people to behave, as some people say, more like they were beforehand. So if President Trump had a brash personality, I think everyone would say, long ago, he appears to have become even more so."
Davidson said there would be no current reason to invoke the 25th Amendment because Trump appears functionally capable, at least from a superficial perspective. He emphasized that many people recover from strokes while retaining their judgment and ability to perform complex work, though such recovery typically requires support from trusted advisors, whether family or colleagues.
"I think there could be a way for President Trump to thread the needle," he said.
Davidson suggested Trump could navigate this situation by acknowledging a stroke without losing cognitive function, thus avoiding the need for temporary replacement. In this scenario, with proper support from advisors whom he heeds, along with attention to diet, medication, exercise, and intellectual engagement, Trump could continue serving as president despite the health event.
"There is no need to get all exercised about that issue. But I think it'd be good for the public to be informed. That's just the nature of my view of the way I was trained in elementary and junior high school about democracy," he said.
A MAGA firebrand ripped Bari Weiss's rebrand of CBS News during a new broadcast of her podcast on Wednesday, according to a report.
Megyn Kelly, host of the right-wing podcast "The Megyn Kelly Show," trashed the new CBS News during her latest episode, The Daily Mail reported, going so far as to directly attack the new host of "CBS Evening News," Tony Dokoupil. Kelly's comments come at a time when CBS News has taken a rightward turn, prompting many longtime viewers to leave.
Kelly did not mince words when she spoke about Dokoupil, who she said is only in his role because of Weiss's sexual orientation.
"I figured it out. Bari is an out lesbian, and she's in a marriage to another woman, and they have kids, and so on. This is a lesbian's idea of what women want. Like, he's sweet, he's soft, this is what this is going to sell," Kelly said.
She also compared Dokoupil to another popular daytime host, Oprah Winfrey.
"CBS Evening News is officially launched with its new anchor, 'T'Oprah' Dokoupil," Kelly said. "That's what I call him, because he's crying and constantly trying to therapize us through the news."
She also chided him for "patronizing" his audience.
"'Get up and down on the news and stop trying to handhold your audience like they're a bunch of babies who need you to stroke them through every update," Kelly said.
President Donald Trump's beloved ballroom project has been delayed by yet another one of the president's unfulfilled promises, according to a new report.
Last year, Trump removed all six members of the Commission of Fine Arts, an agency that reviews ballroom plans before construction begins. Trump said at the time that he would install loyalists to make the approval process easier, but he has not yet filled those positions, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
In turn, the commission postponed its review of the Trump ballroom project for another week to give the president more time to appoint the commissioners.
Trump began the ballroom project last October when he abruptly tore down the East Wing of the White House. Initially, Trump said the ballroom would be a small addition to the White House.
The project's cost has ballooned. Trump initially projected the ballroom would cost around $200 million, with construction costs covered by donations from private companies and investors. Recently, he has projected the project to cost between $350 million and $400 million.
Trump has also locked horns with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, whom he has accused of mismanaging the $2.5 billion central bank headquarters renovation project.
Mockery erupted Wednesday after video surfaced of a Mar-a-Lago event for the American Humane Society's 15th Annual Hero Dog Awards Gala, which featured performers in dog masks and elaborate 18th-century aristocratic costumes.
The swanky Palm Beach benefit, which celebrated canines working with law enforcement and first responders, included professional dancers decked out in ball gowns and tailcoats alongside their dog-masked faces, The Daily Beast reported. Videos circulating on social media showed the costumed entertainers dancing, posing on the red carpet, and mingling with guests.
The peculiar fashion choices sparked immediate ridicule. Social media users compared the scene to unsettling sequences from Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" and "Eyes Wide Shut," with one commenter simply stating, "Oh this is not creepy at all," according to the Beast.
Some online commentators labeled the event a gathering for "MAGA furries," while liberal political commentator Vince Wilson declared, "This is some weird a-- dystopian s---." Others questioned whether the footage was even real, asking AI tool Grok, "Is this AI?"
President Donald Trump made an appearance at the gala despite arriving late.
The event comes as conservative parents throughout America have been gripped with fear about their schools trying to accommodate students who dress up in animal costumes.
🇺🇸 Entertainers wearing dog masks and Rococo-era 18th-century European aristocratic court costumes danced for Mar-a-Lago guests at a party this weekend.
President Donald Trump's efforts to "make America great again" have actually helped another country become recognized as a global superpower, according to a new survey.
The Guardian reported on Wednesday that a survey conducted by the European Council of Foreign Relations revealed Trump's leadership has made the U.S. more distant from its European allies and helped raise the tide for China. Nearly all of the 21 countries surveyed expected China's influence to grow over the next decade, according to the survey.
"Amid increasingly favourable views of China, the status of the US as an ally has declined across almost all the countries surveyed, with India the only one where a majority still feels the US is an ally, sharing the country’s values and interests," the report reads in part.
The results come at a time of great global instability. The war between Ukraine and Russia has grinded on for more than four years. There are also wars in the Middle East, and Trump recently approved an operation to arrest and deport Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and force him to stand trial for narco-terrorism and weapons charges.
The survey's authors also warned that the results suggest the "old order" is over.
"Political leaders in Europe should no longer ask themselves whether their own citizens grasp the radical nature of the current geopolitical changes. They do,” the authors said in a joint statement, adding that Europeans see the old order is over.
Republicans in Louisiana demanded California turn over a doctor who has been shipping abortion medication to their state — but Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday told them to pound sand.
The doctor in question, Remy Coeytaux, was indicted by Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill earlier this week, on charges that could include up to 50 years of hard labor, and Gov. Jeff Landry proclaimed the defendant must be rendered to their state.
"I am signing the extradition paperwork to bring this California doctor to justice," said Landry in a post on X. "Louisiana has a zero tolerance policy for those who subvert our laws, seek to hurt women, and promote abortion. I know Gavin Newsom supports abortion in all its forms, but that doesn’t work in Louisiana. We are unapologetically pro-life."
In response, Newsom posted a four-word statement to X on Wednesday: "Louisiana's request is denied."
With several Republican-controlled states imposing near-total bans on abortion, the new front of the fight has moved to abortion medication, which can often be shipped easily between states in spite of laws that seek to restrict the practice.
In a twist development, Wyoming's first-in-the-nation categorical ban on abortion medication was struck down earlier this month by the state Supreme Court, under a state constitutional health care rights amendment that was passed in 2012 in protest of the Affordable Care Act.
