Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche dashed any remaining hopes that the Trump administration would move forward with its plan to create a $1.776 billion so-called "anti-weaponization" fund to pay claims to people who say they were wrongfully prosecuted by the government.
"We are not moving forward with the fund," Blanche told the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday.
Last week, the Trump administration proposed creating an anti-weaponization fund as part of a settlement agreement with the IRS over a case stemming from the 2019 leak of Trump's tax returns.
The fund faced immediate and intense criticism from Democrats and Republicans after multiple of Trump's allies said they would seek payments from the fund.
CNN's Paula Reid, the network's chief legal affairs correspondent, described Blanche's statements as an "interesting about-face" during a segment on Tuesday's broadcast of "The Arena."
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin refused Tuesday to commit to following federal court orders, telling senators he reserves the right to disregard rulings he considers politically motivated — setting off a tense confrontation at a Senate Appropriations hearing with the panel's top Democrat.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, pressed Mullin four times for a straight answer: would DHS comply with court orders directing the agency to halt illegal or unconstitutional conduct? Four times, Mullin refused to say yes.
"I will never break the Constitution," Mullin repeated. "We're going to enforce the law."
Murphy fired back that the two aren't the same thing. "The entire structure of the federal government gives the power to the federal courts to divine whether you are obeying the law or not," he said.
When Mullin suggested that courts are too "politicized" to deserve automatic compliance, Murphy warned the full committee: "If you're a Republican or Democrat on this committee, you should be really, really freaked out."
The exchange comes against a backdrop of documented mass noncompliance by ICE under Mullin's predecessor. Minnesota's Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz — a Republican appointee — found that ICE violated 96 court orders in a single month, writing that "ICE is not a law unto itself."
Murphy quoted that ruling directly at Mullin, noting pointedly: "That's not a Democratic-appointed judge."
Confirmed in March in a 54-45 vote as DHS's ninth secretary, Mullin replaced Kristi Noem, who was fired after bipartisan outrage over her tenure.
At his confirmation hearing, Mullin had pledged a softer approach to enforcement and promised to work across the aisle.
Eyebrows were raised on Tuesday as Dr. Mehmet Oz responded to questions about why President Donald Trump had an increased number of medical exams, prompting skepticism surrounding the commander-in-chief's overall health.
Oz, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator, was filling in for Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt at the White House press briefing when Daily Mail reporter Elina Shirazi pushed for Oz to respond.
"This is the fourth checkup that the president has had," Shirazi said. "He's supposed to have one a year. He's had several CT heart scans. What are the doctors looking for?"
Oz responded and said the visits to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center were "just a routine regular exam." The trained cardiothoracic surgeon then said the president's vitals were looking good.
"His cholesterol, his blood pressure, all the numbers are certainly in excellent parameters," Oz added. "That amount of energy and that amount of mental acuity does not exist in a vacuum. The president has unique abilities to just keep going at all hours of the day with remarkable strength."
But the internet was not convinced.
"'We know he’s healthy because he enjoys taking the same dementia test over and over' might not be the best argument," Emmy-nominated writer and comedian Mike Drucker, who has more than 182,000 followers, wrote on X.
"'Going to the doctor is fun.' That's where we're at now with this administration's lies," anti-Trump organization The Lincoln Project wrote on X.
"Dr. Oz really just said that Trump has gone to the doctor 4 times because he does so well there and 'likes the results.' The scariest thing about this is that this man is actually a real doctor who heads up the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. We are so screwed!" Writer and social media commentator Brian Krassenstein wrote on X.
"The thing that every Trump appointee has in common is a bottomless appetite to debase themselves in service to Dear Leader. When this era mercifully ends, clips like this will be used as evidence of our national mass delusion, which I imagine is a common theme in all post-authoritarian societies," political scientist and author Josh Zingher, who has more than 3,000 followers, wrote on Bluesky.
“We know he’s healthy because he enjoys taking the same dementia test over and over” might not be the best argument https://t.co/6Xdz1S81p8 — Mike Drucker (@MikeDrucker) June 2, 2026
President Donald Trump set a dubious social media record in May, and the White House has an odd justification, according to a new report.
With dozens of posts on some days and late nights, Trump posted on Truth Social 861 times in May, according to reporting by the Daily Beast.
The White House defended the vigorous posting, which included AI-generated images attacking his political enemies and boosting his own image.
In a statement to The Daily Beast, White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said Trump is blowing up Truth Social because the platform "has never been hotter."
The statement doesn't align with recent news of hemorrhaging $400 million during the first quarter of the year. Former GOP lawmaker Devin Nunes also departed his role as the CEO of the Trump Media and Technology Group, which runs Truth Social.
Still, Wales insisted that the posting spree is because "Trump offers his unfiltered and direct thoughts to the American people, without the biased media taking him out of context," she told The Daily Beast.
"The American people have never had a president as transparent as President Trump, who shares his thoughts with them in real time."
President Donald Trump received immediate backlash Tuesday over his pick to replace outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard – and just hours later, the nominee may already be in trouble after a GOP senator ousted by Trump last week voiced concerns, according to one Senate reporter.
Trump’s nominee was Bill Pulte, currently the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Pulte has no prior intelligence or national security experience, and his nomination was immediately scrutinized by liberal and conservative critics alike.
Pulte will need to be confirmed as National Intelligence director by the Senate, but according to NOTUS Senate reporter Igor Bobic, one GOP senator – Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who lost his primary election last week to his Trump-backed opponent — is already skeptical.
“YOLO watch,” Bobic wrote in a social media post on X, referencing the abbreviation for the slang term “you only live once.” “Cornyn says he doesn’t believe Bill Pulte is qualified to serve [as National Intelligence director]. And he says he has ‘serious concerns’ with the reconciliation bill.”
Cornyn is just one of several outgoing GOP lawmakers who, after either resigning or losing their re-election bid due in part to Trump’s interference or threats of interference, may feel less compelled to go along with the president’s agenda.
YOLO watch
Cornyn says he doesn’t believe Bill Pulte is qualified to serve at DNI
And he says he has “serious concerns” with the reconciliation bill — Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) June 2, 2026
Spencer Pratt, former reality TV star turned Republican Los Angeles mayoral candidate, confirmed that he lost millions — and shared his reason why, TMZ reported on Tuesday.
Pratt was a guest on the "No Jumper" podcast on Monday when he defended his goals to be famous and how he lost $10 million in his 20s, at the height of his reality television career. The former star of "The Hills" and MAGA-friendly candidate has challenged incumbent Mayor Karen Bass for the top city job, arguing that Bass has misused taxpayer funding and describing what led him to lose part of his own fortune amid criticism over his spending, according to TMZ.
"I had great dinners, I treated a lot of friends," Pratt said.
"I was supporting people, I was funding rappers, MMA fighters, I had so many people I was taking care of with that money," he said. "You go ask them right now — [I was] buying my friends' suits so they could go be real estate agents. I was a very good person to be friends with, with that money. I'll run it back right now, this is what's going to stop me from being mayor, those decisions? I would have done all those decisions again."
He said if it doesn't work out on Election Day, he would go back to his old business — Pratt Daddy.
"And if I don't get elected, I'm going to go back to selling healing crystals and being with my family... I'll just be eating my tacos at Don Antonio's," he added.
Spencer Pratt defends blowing through $10 million years before his L.A. mayoral run.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz found himself on the other side of the tough questions Tuesday, fielding a pointed inquiry about President Donald Trump's unusually frequent medical exams during his turn at the White House briefing podium.
Daily Mail reporter Elina Shirazi didn't let Oz — filling in for Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who is on maternity leave — off the hook.
"This is the fourth checkup that the president has had," Shirazi said. "He's supposed to have one a year. He's had several CT heart scans. What are the doctors looking for?"
Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon by training, brushed off the concern. "I think it's just a routine regular exam," he said, pivoting to praise for the president's vitals. "His cholesterol, his blood pressure, all the numbers are certainly in excellent parameters."
"That amount of energy and that amount of mental acuity does not exist in a vacuum," Oz continued. "The president has unique abilities to just keep going at all hours of the day with remarkable strength."
Last summer, Trump was also diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, a condition in which veins struggle to return blood to the heart, causing visible swelling in his legs. The White House insisted there were no serious complications.
After his May visit, Trump declared on social media that "Everything checked out PERFECTLY." His doctor recommended that he lose weight and exercise more.
President Donald Trump took to his Truth Social platform on Tuesday to triumphantly announce that the White House Correspondents' Dinner will get a do-over.
"In a sign of Strength and Fortitude, it was just announced that The White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which violently ended rather abruptly on April 25th, will be rescheduled to July 24th," Trump wrote. "This announcement is a very good thing in that we cannot allow Lunatics to change our way of life, or even its scheduling."
"I was asked to be there, and speak, by Weijia Jiang, President of The White House Correspondents’ Association, and have accepted," Trump continued, adding, "I don’t know whether or not I will give the same rather nasty statements, at least as it concerns certain people, but we will soon find out. In any event, it will be a 'HOT' ticket! Interestingly, the location will be The Waldorf Astoria, on Pennsylvania Avenue, a Building and Ballroom that I built."
The shooting that shut down the previous dinner earlier this year left much of the press badly shaken. The alleged gunman was found to have a manifesto listing Trump administration targets.
President Donald Trump has built his political brand on defying limits, but a series of high-profile reversals in recent days suggests that even he cannot indefinitely outrun the consequences of his most outlandish gambits.
The Trump administration signaled Monday that it plans to abandon its $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization fund" following an adverse court ruling — a significant retreat on an initiative that had already sparked a revolt among Republican congressional leaders, and he beat a retreat on renaming the Kennedy Center after himself, reported CNN's Aaron Blake.
"In both situations, it remains up in the air precisely how much Trump has capitulated," Blake wrote. "But he’s at least telegraphing retreat. Both ideas were wild to begin with — and now the president appears to be dealing with the consequences."
On the so-called slush fund, Senate Majority Leader John Thune had called on the administration to "shut it down themselves," while other GOP senators demanded the White House explicitly rule out reviving the fund in the future.
The fund, created as part of a settlement resolving Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, was intended to compensate allies who claimed they were victimized by the Biden-era Justice Department. Critics — including a federal judge — questioned whether the two sides of the settlement were colluding, and the fund drew outrage when the administration acknowledged it could benefit Jan. 6 defendants who assaulted police officers.
That announcement followed Trump's Friday retreat on the Kennedy Center, where he said he would transfer control back to Congress after a judge ruled that plastering his name on a building memorializing a dead president was illegal. Trump had previously purged the center's board to install loyalists before the renaming — a move that a court found violated federal law.
The two reversals fit a pattern. Earlier this year, Trump abandoned his push to seize Greenland amid bipartisan opposition, and his plan to fund a lavish White House ballroom with taxpayer money was stripped from a spending bill after Republican panic over the optics.
"In all of these cases, Trump was asking the courts and/or Republicans to sign off on what seemed to be impossible requests," Blake wrote. "He was asking them to stomach something drastic because he’s Trump, and they’re supposed to do what he wants."
"But when his wild gambits push the envelope too far — and increasingly seem to jeopardize the GOP’s chances in November — they reinforce that Trump isn’t the unrestrained leader of his political movement that he’d like to be," Blake added.
Trump, for his part, shows no sign of moderating his ambitions — his appointment Tuesday of a controversial housing official as acting director of national intelligence suggested the envelope-pushing is far from over.
Donald Trump’s attempt to insert Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHA) Director Bill Pulte as acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) on Tuesday could run into a legal roadblock according to MS NJOW’s Ken Dilanian, with Republican lawmakers also questioning whether he should hold the job.
According to a report from the New York Times, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), James Lankford (R-OK) and Susan Collins (R-ME) are questioning his stunning lack of experience in intelligence matters.
As Dilanian pointed out, that lack of experience runs afoul of the law that created the intelligence gathering department after the 9/11 attacks.
Speaking with host Anna Cabrera, he explained, “This is really an incredible development. Bill Pulte is an investment guy, he's a real estate guy. He has not only no intelligence experience, [but] no foreign policy experience. And we should remember there is a provision in the law; this job was created after 9/11, remember, to knit together strands of intelligence and connect the dots and there's a provision in the authorizing legislation that requires that the person holding this job has significant, substantial intelligence experience.”
“When Tulsi Gabbard was nominated for this role, a lot of people believed that she didn't fit the bill, but at least she had been a military officer and a member of Congress,” he recalled.
“I don't even know if Bill Pulte has a security clearance right now. And this role, this job, this person gets access to some of the most sensitive intelligence that the U.S. government collects. The biggest secrets, just incredible things, sensitive compartmented programs, need-to-know things that only a handful of people in the government know — and now Bill Pulte will know them.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio erupted at a Senate hearing Tuesday after Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) accused him of attending a party with President Donald Trump in Miami instead of joining high-stakes Iran peace negotiations in Pakistan — an exchange that quickly devolved into one of the most combustible moments of his first congressional testimony since the Iran war began.
"This is why I was shocked to see that you were at a party with President Trump in Miami instead of accompanying Vice President Vance to Pakistan for negotiations," the Nevada Democrat told Rubio before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Rubio cut her off immediately.
"What party was I at?" he fired back. "I was at a party? That's an absurd statement. I was not at a party."
Rosen pressed on, arguing that Rubio had left unconfirmed civilians — Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and envoy Steve Witkoff — to handle negotiations that Rubio himself was confirmed to lead.
"It's just unthinkable to me that you are missing high-stakes negotiations," she said. "It's sad."
That set Rubio off.
"You people are going to slander me," he snapped, before delivering a lengthy rebuttal insisting he was "co-located with the president" to relay real-time intelligence to the negotiating team in Islamabad. He said he spoke to Witkoff and Kushner at least six times that evening, twice on a secure line.
What Rosen called a "party" was, in fact, UFC 327 at Miami's Kaseya Center on April 11 — where Trump and Rubio sat ringside as the Pakistan talks collapsed after 21 hours without a deal. House Democrats called it "amateur hour."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio got in a heated exchange with Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday.
Rubio was testifying for the first time since the United States launched the Iran war and Booker raised questions about the Ebola crisis and the military operation. Booker told Rubio he was concerned the U.S. had rolled back its investment in eradicating diseases in Africa, and expressed doubt that the Iran war was over, despite the Trump administration's claims that it was.
"With the crisis of Ebola, we seethe challenges have been broughtabout as a result of oursurveillance, early detection,and the like.I'm concerned about what theadministration's strategy is," Booker said. "We are clearly seeing that whatgoes on on the continent of Africa directly affects ourpublic health as well."
But Rubio did not see eye to eye with Booker.
"I don't agree withthe assessment," Rubio said. "It's not about cutting back.The response is that how muchmoney you spent it's the resultsyou will get.Ebola, the outbreak was in awar-torn, isolated, rural areain the DRC.Since then, our response hasbeen very rapid."
Booker pushed back.
"You did not cutearly detection?" Booker asked.
"That's not thereason there was Ebola," Rubio said.
Booker cut him off as the conversation intensified.
"I'm not trying toget in an argument.I would like to have myquestions answered," Booker said. "We cut early detection when itcomes to infectious diseases onthe continent, factually. This is not an opinion.We cut early warning systems onthe continent."
Rubio continued to argue with Booker and interjected the senator, saying "It had nothing to dowith the Ebola outbreak."
"I don't need totell you, we are living in aplace where an infectiousdisease crisis anywhere is athreat everywhere," Booker said, adding that he worried further budget cuts would complicate future outbreaks. "The United States made majorreductions in these areasputting us more at risk.If you're talking about the Ebola crisis, other cuts we havemade, you see it factually.Even our own State Departmentpersonnel I've talked to aresaying we are less prepared fora global outbreak than we werebefore."
Rubio denied Booker's comments.
"I don't agree withthat assessment," Rubio said. "I don't know who told you thatat the State Department."
"You can't evenagree on the facts.It is not accurate that we cutearly detection?" Booker asked, pressing Rubio to respond.
"Those have beenrepurposed," Rubio said. "The different arrangements withthe countries are an example."
But Booker wasn't convinced.
"If you're tellingme that we are as or moreprepared before the Trumpadministration came in, I wouldlike to see the facts," Booker said.
"I think when thereforms are finalized we will bebetter prepared.We are responding faster notjust humanitarian crises butfaster than before," Rubio said.
Booker then moved on to discuss the Strait of Hormuz blockade.
"The conclusion I have is the Strait of Hormuz was openedbefore this unjustified war," Booker said. "We are now scrambling to find away to get it back open again."
Booker argued the U.S. was now in a "worse situation,an adversary and our enemy iscausing havoc in the region,funding proxies and terrorists,has discovered, thanks to youall, the power of shutting downthe Strait of Hormuz." He said Iran was now in a better position, while America was worse off.
"It made our adversary have astronger negotiating position," Booker said. "We are the strongest on earthand we are in a stalemate with Iran.We are begging to get back intoa deal that you trashed in thefirst place."
"There is no onebegging," Rubio maintained.
Rubio argued that the war was over — and Booker pushed back, saying that although Trump says it has ended, it hasn't.
"You keep saying howwe are winning the war," Booker said.
"The war is over now," Rubio said.
"The war is notover.The American people see how weare losing at the pump and withcosts.Yet this thing has not beenresolved," Booker said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio faced a blistering broadside Tuesday from Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the FY27 State Department budget — a session that quickly turned into a referendum on the Trump administration's foreign policy record.
He also zeroed in on Trump's comments about gas prices.
"He called high gas prices 'peanuts' and said, 'I don't think about Americans' financial situation,'" Van Hollen said at the hearing. Trump made those remarks on May 19, as national inflation hit 3.8% — a three-year high.
Rubio pushed back but conceded little. When Van Hollen pressed him on whether the administration had found new evidence to justify reinstating Cuba's state sponsor of terrorism designation, Rubio replied: "Why would I need new evidence?"
"Because you're claiming they're a state sponsor of terrorism, suggesting they're ongoingly involved in that," Van Hollen fired back.
The two also sparred over media reports that the U.S. is working with Israel to strip Jordan of its custodianship over the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex. Rubio said he'd never heard the claim discussed. "Is it a credible website?" he asked. Van Hollen said he was glad to provide it.
It was not the first time the two had clashed. Last year, Van Hollen told Rubio to his face that he regretted voting to confirm him. Rubio's response: "Your regret for voting for me confirms I'm doing a good job."
