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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was seen with a new tattoo earlier this week while visiting U.S. troops in Hawaii. And it's causing a stir among the Muslim community due to what some view as an implied message.

The Daily Beast reported Thursday that Hegseth first showed off the new tattoo on his right bicep when training with sailors at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickman on Tuesday. Hegseth's tattoo is known as a "kafir (كافر)," which translates to "infidel" or "disbeliever" in Arabic. Journalist Tam Hussein, who is Muslim, observed that the kafir tattoo is directly under his "Deus Vult" tattoo, which is a slogan from the Crusades that translates to "God wills it."

After winning the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump called for the United States' debt ceiling to either be paused or eliminated. But the debt ceiling, two months into Trump's second presidency, remains. And the Bipartisan Policy Center is warning that the U.S. will default on its $36 trillion national debt sometime between mid-July and early October if Congress doesn't act.

In an opinion column published on March 26, MSNBC's Hayes Brown details the role that the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) could play in a debt ceiling default.

Democrats in a key swing state got some good news on Tuesday, March 25 when Dan Goughnour defeated Republican Chuck Davis in a special election for a seat in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, which gives Democrats a narrow 102-101 majority in that chamber.

The outcome wasn't a huge surprise, as Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris won roughly 58 percent of the vote in that district in 2024. Nonetheless, Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Ken Martin was paying very close attention that race. Democrats are taking nothing for granted in Pennsylvania after the election of 2024, which found Donald Trump narrowly winning the state and Democratic then-Sen. Bob Casey Jr. being voted out of office after three terms.

It’s not all sunshine and roses for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) among Republican voters, The Hill reports.

“Republicans are facing mounting voter frustration with Trump administration cuts” spearheaded by the tech billionaire, The Hill’s Julia Mueller writes.

GOP strategist Alex Conant, who served as Marco Rubio’s communication director in 2016, told the Hill voters “haven’t necessarily heard about the benefits” of DOGE, warning “there’s gonna be political costs” if the department slashes services Republicans support.

READ MORE: Trump 'doesn’t really do much in the morning': CNN reporter

“What Republicans should be concerned about is Musk’s effectiveness,” Conant said. “If DOGE actually breaks things that people care about and rely on, there’s gonna be political costs to that.”

Republican strategist Doug Heye warned the department’s efforts to slash jobs throughout the federal government will eventually show in “real job losses.”

“There’s gonna be real job losses that we’re not measuring yet, but we’re going to in the coming weeks and months,” Heye told Mueller.

Heye added the losses will have an “an impact, especially in specific communities,” and could make “life harder for the reliable voter, typically, for Trump.”

President Donald Trump drew a lot of criticism in the legal world after issuing executive orders removing security clearances for some prominent law firms, including Perkins Coie and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison (often abbreviated as Paul, Weiss). But on Thursday, March 20, Paul, Weiss reached an agreement with Trump.

The president rescinded his executive order against Paul, Weiss, which agreed to do pro bono work for him and avoid any DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) efforts. Critics of the agreement are calling out the deal as Paul, Weiss caving in to a bully.

It isn't just Republicans who are getting an earful from constituents during rowdy town hall meetings. According to a new report, Democrats are also in the hot seat over their perceived fecklessness in the early stages of President Donald Trump's second term.

In a Friday article for Axios, journalist Andrew Solender wrote that multiple Democratic members of Congress confided to him that they were feeling significant pressure from voters back home upset with their response to Trump and the Republican majorities in the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate. One "unnamed senior House Democrat" told Solender that lawmakers who have been "voting ... with Republicans on these messaging bills are people that could get primaried" in 2026.

One primetime host on Fox News recently uttered a remark about public education and disabled students that visibly shocked one of his co-panelists.

On Thursday, Rolling Stone reporter Nikki McCann Ramirez posted a video clip to Bluesky of a segment from Fox News' "The Five." In the segment, liberal panelist Jessica Tarlov was commenting on President Donald Trump's executive order aimed at shuttering the Department of Education, and her fears that it would negatively impact the quality of education that disabled children receive.

Billionaire Elon Musk — head of SpaceX, Tesla and X.com (formerly Twitter) and the richest man in the world — was a major contributor to Donald Trump's 2024 campaign. And after Trump narrowly won the election, Trump thanked Musk by putting him in charge of a new advisor group called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The Trump Administration, with DOGE's help, is laying off thousands of federal government workers. And Musk is so close to Trump that some of the DOGE leader's critics are sarcastically calling him "Vice President Musk."

President Donald Trump's former longtime confidant and personal attorney recently went into detail about an ordeal he endured during Trump's first term when he was incarcerated in federal prison.

In a Monday episode of the Jim Acosta Show on Substack, Acosta — a former CNN reporter — spoke with Michael Cohen, who was known until 2024 as Trump's personal "fixer" before he became the prosecution's star witness against Trump in his New York criminal trial. Acosta reminded viewers that Trump has repeatedly promised to go after his political enemies, and to use the apparatus of the federal government to do so. Cohen corroborated that threat by describing what he went through after he agreed to plead guilty and serve a three-year federal prison sentence between 2018 and 2021.

Since his departure from CNN, former host Jim Acosta hasn't been shy about criticizing President Donald Trump in his SubStack column, "The Jim Acosta Show."

Acosta often attacks Trump from a policy standpoint. But in his March 17 column, Acosta's main focus is Trump's "whining."

On Saturday afternoon, March 15, President Donald Trump announced that he has ordered a "decisive" military action against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Trump vowed to use "overwhelming lethal force" against them "until we have achieved our objective." On his social media platform Truth Social, the president posted, "They have waged an unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence, and terrorism against American, and other, ships, aircraft, and drones…. The Houthi attack on American vessels will not be tolerated."

Several top corporate CEOs recently confided that despite their public shows of fealty to President Donald Trump, they are less than flattering of him behind closed doors.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump was the main topic of conversation a gathering of corporate executives at the Yale CEO Caucus earlier this week. The economy has been on a roller coaster ride since Trump announced — and then almost immediately withdrew — punishing new tariffs on all goods imported from Canada and Mexico. 25% tariffs on Canadian imported steel and aluminum products went into effect Wednesday, however.