A grass-roots movement and sympathetic Chicago aldermen are pushing to rename the street in front of Trump International Hotel and Tower on Wabash Avenue to "Barack Hussein Obama Way"—a pointed potshot aimed at the controversial president.
According to USA Today and Chicago Tribune reporting, the push comes from a Change.org petition (which can be found here) that has garnered more than 22,000 signatures as of June 16, combined with ordinances proposed Wednesday by Chicago aldermen who oppose Trump's policies and leadership.
According to the petition, "We propose a tribute to a figure who stands for hope and change, Barack Hussein Obama. By renaming Wabash Ave in Chicago to Barack Hussein Obama Ave, we would honor him at the time of his presidential center's opening. This move resonates with hope and progress, uniting us in the pursuit of a brighter tomorrow."
"This would send a small message about the values we uphold as a city, those of inclusivity, resilience, and forward-thinking change, and fighting back in any way possible," the Change.org petition added.
However, the effort faces a significant legal hurdle, the Tribune is reporting. Renaming a street requires approval from Chicago's City Council. Additionally, living people are not eligible for honorary street names that display brown signs over the standard green street signs, according to Block Club Chicago reporting.
Block Club reported, Ald. Brendan Reilly is leading the charge, stating, "The spirit of this is really to recognize Obama,” while Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson told reporters on Wednesday, "I’m glad that the alderman put it forward, and we’ll have the debate, but there certainly is no debate to the exceptional leadership of President Obama.”
A Fox Business segment on Thursday morning devolved into shouting as anchor Maria Bartiromo tried to talk over the objections of Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) to certain provisions of the SAVE America Act, the controversial Trump-backed legislation that would put extreme new restrictions on voting rights and effectively give the Department of Homeland Security oversight of state voting rolls.
Khanna focused on the fact that under the terms of the law, married women who had legal name changes would face significant obstacles to voting because they can't use the name on their birth certificate to verify their citizenship — but Bartiromo, who is known for embracing conspiracy theories on air, didn't see any issue with this.
" Elections have been lost by a couple of votes," said Bartiromo heatedly. "So just to say, oh, [the fraud is] not a lot, that's not an answer, sir."
"But people have been fearmongering that when it's not an issue in the election, and the reality is you have cases of people who are married, you want them if they've changed their name to have to prove with their birth certificate?" said Khanna.
"What's the problem?" Bartiromo said, talking over him. "Yes. Get your birth certificate. You can't vote if you're not an American citizen."
The SAVE America Act has no path to passage in the Senate, where it cannot overcome the 60-vote cloture threshold to defeat a Democratic filibuster.
Trump has spent months demanding Republicans either tack the bill onto some other must-pass measure or do away with the filibuster entirely to get it through, neither of which has support from the Senate GOP. The disagreement has caused a growing rift between Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD).
President Donald Trump signed a memorandum of understanding to end the war in Iran, and critics couldn't help but notice the historic symbolism around it.
The 80-year-old president signed the agreement at the Palace of Versailles, the historic setting of the 1919 treaty that ended World War I, after enjoying a lobster and caviar feast with French President Emmanuel Macron.
“It’s signed, yeah,” Trump told reporters as he left the dinner. “I signed it in Versailles.”
The terms of Trump's agreement to end his war in Iran have been criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike, and social media users highlighted the similarities between that deal and the Treaty of Versailles that Germany signed under protest, which ultimately destabilized its government and led to the rise of Adolf Hitler
"Yes, a treaty of Versailles should do the trick," cracked writer David Noll.
"I dunno, but signing a peace agreement in Versailles, of all places, strikes me as rather strange," noted Austrian economist Dominika Langenmayr. "I guess that the Treaty of Versailles (the 1919 one) isn't discussed too much in U.S. high schools?"
"Can you think of another famous treaty that was signed in Versailles in 1919?" asked The Blaze's David Krayden. "What happened as a result of that document? I know Trump wishes he could go back in time a few months and that this war never happened."
"The irony is NOT LOST on Macron," speculated Bluesky user BonFire. "Of course this demented idiot would have NO CLUE."
"'The Treaty of Versailles formalized the humiliating defeat of a great power' remains true," opined political theorist Jacob T. Levy.
"Undeniably good optics: signing a war treaty in Versailles," laughed podcaster Robert Evans. "It would be funny if OUR treaty of Versailles lead to the destruction of a fascist political party instead of its creation. I want that for us."
"This is the dumbest possible ending to the dumbest possible war," sighed science advocate Cole Donovan. "I honestly don't know why Iran didn't ask for ponies, they basically got everything else."
"He knows he’s heard of something from history called the Treaty of Versailles, so he thinks this is cool as hell," posited journalist Gillian Brockell.
"He signed an unconditional surrender at Versailles?" added historian Kevin Kruse. "Come the f--- on."
President Donald Trump just broke three of his own records in a new poll, and none of them are good.
The NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll, conducted June 8–11 among 1,340 adults with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, finds Trump hitting simultaneous lows: his worst-ever economy approval rating, his worst-ever approval spread, and a disapproval rating that ties the highest ever recorded for him.
Just 33% of Americans approve of Trump's handling of the economy — the lowest Marist has recorded since it began asking the question in 2019. Sixty percent disapprove.
Trump's overall approval sits at 36%, with 59% disapproving — a 23-point gap that is the widest Marist has ever measured for him across either term.
The damage cuts deepest outside his base. Among independents, 65% disapprove of Trump's handling of the economy. Even 22% of Republicans have turned against him on the issue.
"The economy is suffering a lot right now, and I just feel like a lot of the things that he did promise, you know, we're still waiting," Regina Kulenga, a 36-year-old Trump voter in Georgia, told NPR.
Kulenga called Trump's actions since returning to office a "slap in the face" and said she wasn't sure she would vote in the midterm elections.
Trump's economy approval is now three points below the worst rating former President Joe Biden received at any point during his term.
A Salon columnist said Thursday that President Donald Trump looked so worn out at this week's Group of Seven summit in France that his appearance revealed more about his standing than the Iran agreement he traveled there to tout.
In a column published this week, Heather Digby Parton wrote that the 80-year-old president seemed unusually low on energy in Evian-les-Bains, a setting where his meetings with European leaders have turned combative. She opened by recounting that Trump had stayed late celebrating his birthday at a UFC event on the White House lawn before flying to the summit.
"Trump really looks worn out. On Tuesday, he appeared to have forgotten his usual bronze makeup, which was a startling sight. His energy is notably low, especially for a gathering like this one; meetings with Europeans usually turn him combative and hostile," she wrote.
Parton tied that flagging energy to what she described as a weakened position, writing that the president is "still smarting" from Western leaders' refusal to back his war with Iran and is now promoting the memorandum of understanding he signed as proof he is a hero, even as, in her telling, he "lost the war and is desperate to get out of it." Another op-ed similarly argued that Trump's leverage is fading as the midterms approach.
The column noted the agreement would extend a ceasefire for 60 days, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, lift sanctions on Iranian oil and establish a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran while pushing nuclear talks into future negotiations. Trump signed it during a dinner hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron at the Palace of Versailles, a choice of venue that drew its own mockery.
Trump called Versailles "the real deal" and speculated that he might add a hall of mirrors to his planned White House ballroom. Parton's broader read echoed a conservative commentator who said Trump stumbled into a war he is now desperate to exit.
According to former CIA official Marc Polymeropoulos, Donald Trump’s Iran deal, which has set off a deluge of criticism within the Republican Party, has left the leadership of Israel in a state of shock.
Appearing on MS NOW with “Morning Joe” co-host Willie Geist, Polymeropoulos, who just returned from Tel Aviv, claimed he found a sense of betrayal during his visit. Geist prompted the 26-year veteran of the CIA with, “Marc, take us to Tel Aviv this morning. And what Bibi Netanyahu must be thinking; that he got his man in the White House in Donald Trump, that he went to the Situation Room, sold the war successfully. He thought that Donald Trump, the United States military, would come in and finish off Iran, take out the regime, and now he sits here this morning with this memorandum of understanding anyway, with explicit language that says there can be no attacks on Lebanon.”
“So the Israelis I speak with are in a state of panic, one former Mossad official said, literally, ‘I can't believe this is happening,’” he reported. “But in some ways they should have known better,” he explained. “And one analyst actually told me, ‘Look, you know, Benjamin Netanyahu decided to ride the tiger — that's Donald Trump. And the tiger just turned around and just bit him on the rear end.’”
“And like many of us predicted he would, he continued, “Because Trump was no dedicated, you know, savior. He was not the messiah for Israel. He's too transactional.”
“Let me just add one quick thing, Willie,” he insisted. “Let's not forget at the end of the Biden administration, if you calculate what President Biden did after October 7th, he gave the Israelis $18 billion in military aid. Yet somehow, he is seen as not a supporter of Israel. That was preposterous. And right now, I think the Israelis are realizing that Trump was not who they thought he was, and that this MOU actually puts them in a very precarious national security situation, particularly in terms of ballistic missiles and what to do about Hezbollah, a terrorist entity sitting on their northern border.”
President Donald Trump's administration is quietly diverting over $350 million from the Secret Service to pay for "security" elements in the president's White House ballroom project.
According to The Washington Post, the Office of Management and Budget "did not specify the purpose of the unusually large shift in response to questions on Wednesday." However, an anonymous source involved with the budget for the Secret Service "told The Washington Post the funding was to help pay for a new White House East Wing that includes a large ballroom."
The diverted funding was intended to pay for training and retention for Secret Service agents.
A White House spokesperson did not deny this when asked by reporters, saying simply, “The East Wing Modernization Project is inextricably tied to the security of the President, the White House grounds and the certain security infrastructure assets.”
Trump initially promised that the White House ballroom project, which has already seen the summary demolition of the old East Wing, would be paid for entirely by donations from corporate benefactors, which was itself controversial since it opened up the White House to bribery and conflicts of interest.
But in recent months, as the cost of the project has doubled and tripled, the Trump administration has grown more insistent in finding a taxpayer source for at least some of the funding, pushing hard — though unsuccessfully — for "security" funding to be included in the GOP's Homeland Security reconciliation bill.
Federal courts have called out the Trump administration for trying to claim that anything they deem to be a "security" feature in the ballroom project automatically is one and can divert money from elsewhere.
CNN's Audie Cornish schooled a former Donald Trump staffer who pooh-poohed the opening of Barack Obama's presidential library.
The 64-year-old former president will be joined at his library's grand opening Thursday by George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and the event will include performances by legendary artists like Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Bono, Eddie Vedder, Jennifer Hudson and The Roots, and Cornish couldn't help but compare that to President Donald Trump's lackluster Freedom 250 lineup.
"It's very Obama erain terms of all the celebritiesbeing there, and we made a listof, like, who's going to be,who's going to be at this Obamaevent and their global recordsales, and then what's going onwith the Trump-backed Freedom250, which pretty much kickedoff a few weeks ago in terms ofwho was leaving it," Cornish said. "In theend, it's Lee Greenwood, apresident, the president'sfavorite, and a handful of otherartists. Is this a reminder of,like, kind of where Hollywood'sheart lies or the complicationthat Trump has his relationshipwith pop culture?"
Mike Dubke, a former communications director in Trump's first term, seemed caught off guard by the question.
"Is this to me?" he said. "I don't know that it's afair comparison."
Cornish disagreed, saying they were both massive events taking place within weeks of one another.
"I love presidentiallibraries," Dubke filibustered. "I think they are, andespecially to the point thatthey tell the story of thepresident in their own words. SoI've been to a few. I've beento Bill Clinton's down in Little Rock, I've been to Ronald Reagan's out in California. I think it'sincredibly interesting to walkthrough each of these libraries, and I'm in Chicago, I willprobably go to Obama'spresidential library because Ithink they're fantastic things."
"Trump is not invited," Cornish prodded, "just so we're clear."
"No, that's fine, but I don't – I will take a little issue onthis pop culture thing because Idon't know that comparing America's 250 and all thepolitics that are surroundingthis with what should be acelebration for Obama," Dunke said. "I'm not sure I'm there. We should be celebrating America's. 250 but look, thisis this is a celebration for Obama and the folks that reallyenjoyed his presidency, and, youknow, good on them for having a go."
Cornish then offered to provide some historical context to Obama's event in comparison to Trump's partisan takeover of the celebration of the United States' semiquincentennial.
"In an era where [diversity, equity and inclusion] has been completely, not justDEI, when Black American historyhas been carved out of the hallsof the federal government with awith like a butcher knife, themdoing this library on Juneteenthweek is on purpose and issignificant because maybe for Black Americans, that is ahistoric moment that this nationwill no longer celebrate underthe Trump administration," Cornish said. "Theyare not interested in talkingabout the history of slavery. Soit feels like the Obamas aredoing something very purposeful. They're creating an alternativehistorical celebration forpeople who feel like part oftheir history is forgotten."
President Donald Trump took to his Truth Social platform Thursday to praise a comparison of himself to murderous 20th-century dictators.
The president screenshotted a lengthy quote from someone he referred to as David King, who he identifies as a "presidential historian" which compared historic “powerful” people known for “brutal conquest and the fear that they instilled in the populations” during their reigns.
He did not give any further identifying information on who "David King" is or where he found the quote. But the same quote in a book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan actually came from a golfer's caddy, the pair wrote.
“Common names that would come to mind are Alexander the Great, the Caesars, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Tamburlaine, Napoleon and, more recently, Hitler, Mao, and Stalin,” King said. Ultimately, he said, Trump has a power advantage over all of them because of his "global reach."
"Their power was limited to restricted local areas (even though some of these areas were quite large in a local context)," the quote read. "They had nowhere near the control over modern logistics, manpower, technology, and the global economic muscle that President Trump can enforce.”
Trump didn't appear at all offended by the comparison. On the contrary, he shared the write-up with the words, "Presidential Historian Dave King — Sounds good to me!"
Trump has faced a number of comparisons to dictators in the past. Ironically, one of the most notable came from now-Vice President J.D. Vance, who prior to joining Trump's inner circle condemned him as potentially "America's Hitler."
Donald Trump's highly controversial Iran peace deal is causing the Republican Party no small measure of angst, with conservative journalist David Drucker half-jokingly stating on MS NOW that the GOP is caught up in the throes of the “35 stages of grief" — a far cry from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's "5 stages of grief" when death approaches.
Appearing on “Morning Joe,” the conservative “The Dispatch” pundit attempted to explain how Republicans — with Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) leading the charge — are laboring to defend the president just moments after co-host Mika Brzezinski read off widespread criticisms of the president and his deal from GOP lawmakers and conservative media outlets.
Asked what he is hearing, Drucker reported, “We've talked about this before, but, you know, there were so many Republicans in Congress and and center-right thinkers who have believed that after nearly 50 years, the action President Trump took going to war against Iran with israel was a courageous decision, was the right decision, and the United States needed to see it through.”
“And they were very gratified by the president's policy here,” he added, “And now they're going through the, you know, the 35 stages of grief, which is ‘If this is true, it's going to be really bad. Well, I don't know if it's true because I haven't seen the text. I'm not going to react until I've seen the text. All right. Well, I've seen the text, and now that I've, you know, now that I've looked at the text, maybe it's really not so bad because look, he did say he'll bomb them if they don't follow through.’”
“There are others who are just very honest about their disappointment, about their disappointment with both President Trump and the deal,” he added. “But it's a real mixed bag politically. I will just say the president boxed himself in here, because this is what happens when you don't make a public case for major military action. The president never asked for the support of the American people, for the support of Congress, for support from our allies. And so when things inevitably bog down, because we were only willing to do so much militarily for understandable political reasons, the president didn't have any allies and friends with skin in the game who were there to back up the policy and see it through. And that's part of why he ended up looking for a get out of jail free card here."
A Marine Corps colonel who appeared on a podcast in which a co-host later called for now-Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to be shot has been promoted to brigadier general.
The U.S. Senate voted unanimously to approve Thomas Siverts’ promotion after Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) released his hold on the nomination. Wyden said his concerns were addressed when he listened to Siverts’ March 2023 interview on the Berm Pit Podcast, and didn’t hear anything objectionable. He also cited a letter Siverts wrote to him “unequivocally condemning antisemitism and racism.”
Siverts received his promotion to brigadier general on June 10, a Marine Corps spokesperson told Raw Story.
Roughly 18 months after Siverts appeared on the Berm Pit Podcast, the podcast's co-host stated that Hegseth deserved to be shot for his support of Israel. At the time, Hegseth had recently been named by then-President-elect Donald Trump to lead the Department of Defense.
During the exchange, Scott Siverts, who is the younger brother of the Marine Corps brigadier general, asked his co-host, Matt Wakulik, to rate Trump’s Cabinet appointments.
“Why don’t we grade them on a scale of how many bullets I put in their head?” Wakulik suggested, as previously reported by Raw Story. The underlying premise of the exchange, based on the antisemitic views of the two men, was that support for Israel is treasonous.
Working through a list that also included Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Border Czar Tom Homan, Scott Siverts eventually queried Wakulik on how he would rate Hegseth.
“Six bullets,” Wakulik responded. “I’d have to put another one in there after I emptied the whole chamber.”
Siverts could not be reached for comment for this story, but he said in his letter to Wyden that at the time of his appearance "the podcast had no association with the hateful ideologies expressed by others on different episodes many months later.
“The ideologies of antisemitism and racism are antithetical not only to the values of the Marine Corps, but to the core of who I am as a person,” Siverts wrote. His letter did not specifically address Wakulik’s “six bullets” comment, either to condemn it or clarify his own views on the matter.
"Col. Siverts clearly stated in his letter to Sen. Wyden that he does not share the views of these hosts," acting Pentagon Press Secretary Joel Valdez told Raw Story. "Shame on those attempting to smear his name after writing this letter to a senator in good faith."
Wyden told Raw Story, "I condemn anyone who uses their platform to openly discuss murdering government officials, or to amplify antisemitism. The Berm Pit hosts have done both."
Hegseth, who has vowed to root out “woke garbage” from the military while deriding efforts to remove extremists from the ranks, announced Siverts’ nomination for promotion last December, after the Marine Corps Inspector General declined to open an investigation in response to a complaint against the officer.
Wakulik died of cancer in April. The X account for the Berm Pit Podcast, which appears to be operated by Scott Siverts, has continued to circulate old clips of Wakulik’s inflammatory rants, including ones that discourage service in the U.S military.
In May, Scott Siverts re-posted a clip of Wakulik saying, “Let me tell you this, American people: Your government hates you.” Using an antisemitic acronym that stands for “Zionist Occupied Government,” Wakulik continued, “How much are our veterans getting for being blown up fighting ZOG wars which they’ve got nothing from?”
ZOG stands for Zionist Occupied Government.
And in April, Scott Siverts posted a clip of Wakulik saying, “I would have to support the draft-dodging. Why should you have to fight for ZOG?”
Scott Siverts wrote in an X post earlier this month that he supports his brother “condemning any views shared on the show."
“He’s still at the Pentagon and he got promoted to a 1 star,” Scott Siverts continued. “When we go golfing this summer we’ll cheers to a couple cigars. A for effort to all the r----ds that tried hard to harm his career. You lost.”
In contrast to Brig. Gen. Thomas Siverts, who is white and linked to a blatantly antisemitic and racist podcast, Black and female officers have found themselves blocked from promotion to one-star general through repeatedinterventions by Hegseth. Since taking office, Hegseth has “fired or sidelined nearly three dozen senior military leaders,” nearly 60 percent of whom are Black or female, the New York Times reported.
Scott Siverts, the colonel’s podcaster brother, has taken note of the pattern.
Matt Wakulik gives his assessment of President Trump's cabinet appointments, including Pete Hegseth, in an episode of the Berm Pit Podcast that was released in late 2024. roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms
President Donald Trump signed an agreement aimed at ending his war in Iran, but many noticed the symbolism of the location he chose to do it.
The 80-year-old president signed the so-called memorandum of understanding Wednesday during a dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron in Versailles, the historic setting of the 1919 treaty that ended World War I, and CNN's Audie Cornish asked her panelists about his choice.
"This was signed at Versailles," she said. "Lots of things have been signedat Versailles. But usually when youcall something a Versaillestreaty, it's, in foreign languagepolicy land, kind of an insult,right? It's a self-defeatingagreement. What's your responseto the critics out there who aremaking those analogies?"
Germany signed the original Treaty of Versailles under protest, and the severe penalties it imposed ultimately destabilized its government and led to the rise of Adolf Hitler, and the "CNN This Morning" panelists agreed the symbolism was strange.
"President Trump didn't have tosign that peace deal at Versailles today," said Middle East expert Sina Azodi. "He could havehad an agreement in Februarybefore he decided to go to war.He was dragged into a war ofchoice that didn't have to [and] 13 Americans died, billions ofdollars [were] spent. He could havetaken the deal that the Iranianshad offered, and it was a prettygood deal compared to the [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action], and I know that President Trumpis very sensitive to the war and JCPOA and Obama.But that was a very good dealthat he had on Feb. 26 in Geneva."
"Well, the hope is from the White House that 60 days fromnow, whatever they have will bemuch better than happened in2015," Cornish added.
President Donald Trump's administration came closer to suspending habeas corpus — the constitutional right that lets a detained person challenge their imprisonment in court — than was previously known, according to a Slate analysis of recent reporting.
Writing in Slate's "Executive Dysfunction" newsletter, Shirin Ali described the idea as what would have been "perhaps the most aggressive and terrifying attack on the rule of law yet." The right has been formally suspended only a handful of times in U.S. history, all during wartime.
The push was detailed in reporting drawn from a forthcoming book by New York Times correspondents Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who is not a lawyer, championed the move to speed deportations after judges repeatedly found immigrants had been unlawfully detained. In May 2025, Miller said suspending the writ in "a time of invasion" was "an option we're actively looking at."
The proposal drew pushback from conservative lawyers inside the White House. Staff Secretary Will Scharf wrote a confidential April 2025 memo to Chief of Staff Susie Wiles warning that only Congress can suspend habeas, and only in cases of rebellion or invasion.
The idea was ultimately shelved, though reporting indicates it has not been entirely set aside. Legal experts have since warned how close the country came.
"Removing a person’s right to challenge a detention via habeas petition would essentially be a death knell to any semblance of protection from deportation for pretty much anyone, regardless of legal status," wrote Ali.
Ali noted that more than 54,000 habeas petitions have been filed since Trump's second term began — more than the past three administrations combined. The administration has admitted to mistakenly deporting people, including Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Ali wrote.
Ali pointed to detainees like Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, who used the petitions to win their release — for many, one of the only tools left before deportation.
Ali concluded with a grim warning.
"For now it seems as if Trump, Miller, and the rest of the White House have abandoned the idea of suspending habeas. Still, as long as Trump is in office, there is plenty of time for the administration to change course."
