SmartNews

Ohio Senator Jon Husted (R-OH) can’t be too thrilled with John Kasich’s appearance on MS NOW on Saturday morning after the popular former Republican governor refused to say if he would vote for him and questioned if he will be re-elected.

Brought on to talk about the Republican infighting over, among other things, Donald Trump’s angering GOP lawmakers for pushing for a $1.8 billion “weaponization” slush fund, Kasich was asked by “The Weekend” co-host Jackie Alemany about voting for Husted.

While American voters have increasingly soured on President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy, Republican voters have largely remained consistent in giving the president passing marks on the issue – that is, until a new survey revealed the first cracks among GOP voters, Axios reported Saturday.

“Trump's approval rating has been dropping for months, but the University of Michigan's May consumer sentiment survey released Friday revealed something more striking: Republicans are beginning to lose confidence in the economy, too,” wrote Axios’ Mike Zapler in the outlet’s report.

As part of an interview with Kentucky Democrat Charles Booker, who is running for the seat now held by retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell (R), MS NOW host Jonathan Capehart was left, as he put it, “bereft of words,” after watching a flagrantly racist ad being run by GOP nominee Andy Barr.

Capehart told his guest, “Well, Mr. Booker, in order to win, you're going to have to beat Republican Congressman Andy Barr. He's got — he's getting a lot of backlash for a campaign ad where he tells Kentuckians, quote, ‘it's not a sin to be white.’”

When asked about the Trump administration’s new $1.7 billion taxpayer-funded settlement for those alleging unfair targeting by Biden's Justice Department – including violent Jan. 6 Capitol rioters – a GOP strategist told CNN Saturday that not only was it a “political miscalculation,” but that the fund could be politically toxic in the midterm elections.

Named by the Trump administration as the “anti-weaponization fund,” the settlement agreement was reached after President Donald Trump agreed to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over his tax returns leaking in 2019. Among those eligible for payouts from the taxpayer-funded settlement are those who violently stormed the U.S. Capitol in 2021 and Trump’s donors, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was forced to admit this week.

President Donald Trump floated the idea of a U.S.-takeover of Iran Saturday with an image of a map of the Middle East nation overlaid with the American flag, and the caption in the form of a question: “United States of the Middle East?”

Trump shared the image on his social media platform Truth Social, and amid growing speculation that his administration is preparing to launch a massive attack on Iran sometime this weekend. Signs supporting a U.S. attack commencing this weekend include the president’s abrupt cancellation of his weekend plans in New Jersey, as well as Iran shutting down much of its airspace until Monday.

British media personality Piers Morgan pleaded with President Donald Trump Saturday morning amid growing speculation that his administration was preparing to launch a massive operation overseas this weekend, one that Morgan said, if carried out, would unleash “mayhem.”

“All the signs are pointing to the U.S. and Israel launching another huge attack on Iran,” Morgan wrote Saturday morning in a social media post on X. “I urge President Donald Trump not to do it. This war’s been damaging enough without yet more mayhem being unleashed.”

A combination of bad Donald Trump polling and highly controversial proposals like his so-called “slush fund” to compensate allies who feel they were victimized by President Joe Biden’s DOJ for their criminality has finally given GOP lawmakers the nudge they needed to abandon him and save their own careers.

According to MS NOW, a single week of Republican defiance saw GOP lawmakers strip $1 billion in security upgrades — including $220 million for Trump's new East Wing ballroom — from their reconciliation package, move closer to backing a resolution forcing Trump to end the Iran war without congressional authorization, and abruptly cancel a vote on $72 billion in additional funding for the administration's immigration and deportation agenda.

The Trump administration went on the defensive Friday night after getting exposed for scrubbing online Justice Department (DOJ) records of those convicted of violent crimes related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, including one Texas man who was later convicted of online solicitation of a minor.

In June of 2024, the Biden administration’s DOJ published a press release about Andrew Taake, a 35-year-old man from Texas who that month was sentenced to more than 6 months in prison after violently attacking police officers during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot armed with “bear spray and a metal whip.” At the time, Taake had another criminal case pending for child solicitation, a detail mentioned in the DOJ’s press release.

In a deep dive on Donald Trump’s “bad week” that prompted a massive Republican Party revolt against the president who is used to having his way, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the outburst against the president’s proposed “slush fund” was a direct result of their existing discontent with his GOP primary meddling.

According to the Journal, the verbal abuse that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was greeted with, in what Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) called “One of the roughest meetings I’ve seen in my entire time in the Senate,” was an outgrowth of previous frustration with Trump.

President Donald Trump has put up multiple excuses for not being able to attend his eldest son Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding in the Bahamas — and the explanation he settled on was that it is "not good timing" with all his responsibilities and with Memorial Day coming up.

But according to an analysis by The Daily Beast, Trump has taken time to golf extensively during similarly busy and high-stakes moments of his presidency.

A series of explosions tore through a barge at a Staten Island shipyard Friday afternoon, killing one person and injuring 34 firefighters and emergency medical workers in a chaotic emergency that Mayor Zohran Mamdani called "complex" and "fast-developing."

The initial blast struck the barge at 3:25 p.m. in Arlington, an industrial neighborhood along Staten Island's northern coast, triggering a massive FDNY response, The New York Times reported. Crews arrived to thick smoke and were told two workers were unaccounted for inside the vessel. Less than an hour later, the barge erupted again, this time with firefighters positioned in, on top of, and beside it as they searched for the missing workers and battled the flames. The 4:19 p.m. blast wounded dozens.