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A former federal pardon attorney flagged the "cynical purpose" of President Donald Trump's latest batch of pardons during a podcast interview on Monday.

Liz Oyer, the former pardon attorney in the Biden Department of Justice, discussed Trump's decision to pardon five former NFL football players, one of whom was deceased, last week during a new episode of "The Daily Beast Podcast" with Joanna Coles. She argued that there was no legally justifiable reason for the pardons and noted that the five players were surprised to have been granted pardons because they had not applied for them.

President Donald Trump's latest attack against a top Democrat on Monday night left analysts and observers astounded.

Trump posted on Truth Social that California Gov. Gavin Newsom had dropped out of the 2028 presidential race, a campaign that Newsom has yet to confirm that he is running. The post came after MAGA piled on Newsom for making a comment about his intelligence that they construed to be a negative comment about Black people.

President Donald Trump wants to project a certain image on the global stage, and some world leaders have learned how to use that to their advantage, according to one expert.

Trump wants to appear as a ruthless leader on par with strongmen like Russia's Vladimir Putin or China's Xi Jinping, according to Fiona Hill, Trump's Russia advisor during the first administration. Hill said during an interview on the "The Court of History" podcast on Monday that Trump's desire to be seen in this light gives world leaders a psychological advantage when they interact with the U.S. president, because they have turned that desire for adoration into currency.

MS NOW's Rachel Maddow previewed one of the side curiosities about President Donald Trump's State of the Union Address: the designated survivor, or the sole member of the Cabinet who is hidden in a safe room during the speech, to be sworn in as president in case there is an attack that takes out the Capitol building.

It's normally a fairly mundane Cabinet official, Maddow noted — but the problem for Trump is, even his most mundane Cabinet officials are steeped in scandal this year.

A plot to suspend the popular TSA PreCheck that angered travelers was hatched by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her top adviser Corey Lewandowski, and had to be stopped with a White House intervention, according to a new report in The Washington Post.

The Saturday announcement that PreCheck would halt at 6 a.m. Sunday sparked immediate outrage from Democrats and air travel groups. By Sunday morning, passengers discovered the program was running normally anyway, leaving everyone scrambling to figure out what was actually happening.

The Justice Department's chaotic rollout of millions of Epstein files has exposed sensitive information about vulnerable victims, including the name of a woman who accused President Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her as a child, according to reporting from investigative journalist Roger Sollenberger.

The woman's identity appeared in at least one document that has since been redacted, Sollenberger reported on his Substack. However, he said another identifying detail remains unredacted in the database. She's uniquely marked "PROTECT SOURCE" in case files, a designation given to no other victim or witness in the Epstein files.

President Donald Trump's insistence on raising taxes because the Supreme Court told him not to is going to wreck his party, former Trump administration DHS staffer Miles Taylor told MS NOW's "The Weeknight" on Monday.

Trump has already signaled his intent to use other statutes to restore his voided global tariffs — even though analysts are skeptical he has sufficient legal footing.

Republicans in vulnerable congressional districts are increasingly worried President Donald Trump has set a trap for his own party that is set to blow up in all their faces just before the midterms, Politico reported on Monday.

Specifically, after the Supreme Court struck down Trump's power to unilaterally issue tariffs under emergency powers law, Trump has scrambled to re-implement and double down on his import taxes — and Democrats have already moved for a devastating offensive with voters over the issue.