MSN

John Bolton, President Donald Trump's former national security adviser-turned-chief critic, has reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors and is expected to plead guilty to illegal retention of sensitive national security documents, CNN reported Thursday, citing three sources familiar with the matter.

Bolton has also agreed to pay a fine of more than $2 million, according to one of the sources. A conviction on a single count of illegal retention carries a sentence of zero to 60 months in prison. A hearing is scheduled for June 26, according to the court docket.

The Trump administration is opening up an "irreparable blind spot" in the nation's ability to predict natural disasters, according to experts.

The National Science Foundation announced plans to dismantle a $368 million deep-sea observation system just days after President Donald Trump fired all members of an independent board that oversees the foundation, and CNN's Bill Weir explained what that vast undersea network monitors and what will be lost.

Brian Kilmeade surprised his Fox & Friends co-hosts Thursday by breaking with the conservative line on Confederate monuments — declaring that Robert E. Lee shouldn't have a statue because he "made a choice, and it was the wrong choice."

The moment came after co-host Carley Shimkus noted that a Lee monument removed from a Charleston, South Carolina, school campus in 2021 had been put back on public display, and that Italian American groups had filed a federal lawsuit seeking to restore a Christopher Columbus statue removed from Columbus, Ohio's city hall in 2020.

A little-noticed Supreme Court concurrence may have just telegraphed how right-wing justice Amy Coney Barrett will rule on some of the most consequential legal battles of the Trump era, according to a detailed analysis by Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck.

At issue is a May 26 ruling in Margolin v. National Association of Immigration Judges, which, on its surface, was a narrow procedural decision. But buried inside it was a concurrence by Justice Clarence Thomas, joined, critically, by Barrett, that would have gone further and slammed the courthouse door on federal employees challenging politically controlled administrative tribunals.

During a “Morning Joe” discussion on Donald Trump’s constantly evolving statements about bringing the Iran war to a close, MS NOW contributor Katty Kay suggested the president’s deep-seated obsession with former President Barack Obama could be the biggest roadblock.

Speaking with co-host Willie Geist, Kay humorously claimed the president lives in fear of the “O word.”

A former Trump administration figure has come forward to blow the whistle on serious mismanagement at the CIA.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, the daughter-in-law of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is alleging that there was no control over how taxpayer money was being spent at the premier U.S. intelligence service.

President Donald Trump has accomplished a "rare trifecta" in the current polarized era by uniting all political factions against his war against Iran, according to CNN's Harry Enten.

The 79-year-old president launched the war Feb. 28 and has been unable to negotiate an end to the conflict or Iran's crippling closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and Enten presented new polling data that found his war is more unpopular than ever.

Conservative podcaster Candace Owens is facing a firestorm from within her own movement after speaking at a Kremlin-backed forum in St. Petersburg alongside sanctioned Russian officials — and the backlash from the right has been savage.

Radio host Mark Levin fired the opening shot Wednesday, calling Owens a "Woke Reich traitor" on X. Far-right activist Laura Loomer went further, demanding a federal investigation into whether Owens violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act — and suggesting she may be "auditioning to be the female Edward Snowden so she can avoid all accountability…" Loomer also took personal shots at Owens, appearing to mock a possible pregnancy and making an unverified allegation about her husband, George Farmer, and drunk driving.

President Donald Trump's latest medical results have something unsettling buried in them, Dr. Jonathan Reiner posted to X on Thursday — and what it means exactly is obfuscated by a conspicuous absence in his medication records.

At the core of the issue, wrote Dan Diamond for The Washington Post, is the drug finasteride, a common treatment for hair loss among men. Although three of Trump's previous doctors have said he uses it, "the drug has not appeared on Trump’s medical reports since he returned to office last year, including a report released Friday night that mentioned three other medications."

At the same time that Donald Trump is demanding $1 billion for his ballroom to fill the space where the East Wing used to be, congressional leaders are facing the prospect that the Rayburn House Office Building where they work is falling apart and needs a massive renovation.

To the tune of an estimated $9 billion.

The House of Representatives passed a resolution Wednesday to curtail President Donald Trump's war powers in Iran, with four Republicans breaking from their party to deliver one of the most significant legislative rebukes of his presidency – and a signal that his grip might be slipping.

The resolution passed 215-208, and if approved by the Senate — where it appears to have the support of roughly 50 members — the president would be required to either withdraw American forces from Iran or obtain explicit congressional authorization to continue military operations, and CNN's Aaron Blake examined the significance of that vote.

The Trump Justice Department issued a new superseding indictment against the extremist group watchdog the Southern Poverty Law Center, trying to fix defects with their original indictment — but in doing so, not only did they violate grand jury secrecy rules, they didn't really even fix the fundamental issue, national security journalist Marcy Wheeler wrote for her EmptyWheel blog.

The trouble starts with the fact that the DOJ, led by director of public affairs Emily Covington, leaked the indictment to the press before it had even been properly docketed — a clear violation of practice.