Trump News

Secret White House meetings are prepping insiders for 'very likely' Dem majority: report

Bracing for what appears to be an inevitable Democratic takeover of Congress after November's midterms, the Trump White House is already preparing for a barrage of investigations and hearings by holding secretive briefings with executive branch staff on how to handle aggressive congressional oversight.

According to reporting from The New Republic, attorneys at the White House Counsel's Office are conducting private briefings to ready staff for life under Democratic-led scrutiny. The Washington Post first reported on the strategy Monday.

The 30-minute briefings feature a PowerPoint presentation detailing how congressional oversight works and best practices for navigating it. The sessions also include guidance on how to respond to congressional inquiries in a timely manner.

"It's obvious to everyone that it's very likely," one official who attended the briefings told the Post. "It was a sober-eyed conversation."

A White House official sought to minimize the importance of the meetings, claiming they represent "nothing new" and that the counsel's office has provided oversight guidance to staffers since Trump returned to office.

However, multiple sources who spoke with the Post indicated that recent meetings with the counsel's office were acutely focused on the midterm elections and their anticipated fallout — suggesting the White House expects significant losses.

According to the The New Republic’s Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling, Trump's declining approval ratings are fueling expectations of a Democratic wave. Sixty-two percent of Americans disapprove of the president, according to an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll published Friday — an increase of two percentage points since February.

Despite his waning influence, Trump has placed enormous pressure on his party to win, acutely aware of the consequences he would face if Democrats gain control of Congress, the report notes before adding, Democratic-led committees would have subpoena power to investigate his administration's actions on multiple fronts.

Marco Rubio MIA as he quietly remakes key agency into MAGA-first operation: columnist

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has gone missing from public view and has shifted his attention away from diplomacy amid "America's global collapse," an analyst pointed out on Tuesday.

Salon's Chauncey DeVega described how Rubio's focus appears to be on the State Department — and altering its previous emphasis on "cultural pluralism, secularism and inclusiveness in its public messaging and other communications" — and not on international peace negotiations, including the Iran war, or Ukraine and Russia war.

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Trump raids force church to move services underground: 'We are under attack'

PRAIRIE VILLAGE — After President Donald Trump took office, a small church in Kansas City retreated underground — abandoning their sanctuary for the basement.

Rick Behrens, senior pastor at Grandview Park Presbyterian Church, said he moved services to the locked basement in response to the administration’s decision to allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to enter churches.

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Hegseth ends press conference after snapping at question about Netanyahu's 'pull' on Trump

At the end of a brief and subdued Pentagon press conference on the Iran war, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cut off a reporter from Zero Hedge for suggesting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu will “pull” Donald Trump back into escalating the conflict.

Toward the end of a long question from a reporter identifying himself as being from Zero Hedge, the former Fox News personality was asked, “Netanyahu put this on Twitter, Israel's head of Mossad said Israel's goals are not finished until the Iranian government collapses,” followed by “… how can you ensure America doesn't get roped back into a war if that comes? And secondly, with Netanyahu comfortable tweeting something like that out? And also, Netanyahu has continued bombing Lebanon despite President Trump, I would say your —.”

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Trump said to sink his own case during unscripted rant: 'Got his words in a twist'

President Donald Trump hosted 130 small business owners at the White House Monday in honor of National Small Business Week, but what was supposed to celebrate entrepreneurs quickly derailed into a lengthy diatribe about the U.S. war against Iran, one that journalist Prem Thakker suggested undermined the president’s position.

Trump has repeatedly called his war against Iran a military “excursion” – a potential mix-up with the word “incursion” – and has avoided, in some cases, labeling the conflict as a war.

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'Kamikaze dolphin' question throws off Pentagon officials during briefing on war

During a relatively subdued Pentagon briefing on the Iran War on Tuesday morning, both Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine were caught by surprise by a question about “kamikaze dolphins” being deployed in the Strait of Hormuz.

During the question and answer segment following the opening statements, a reporter identifying herself as Mary Margaret Olohan from the far-right Daily Wire addressed her question to both of the Pentagon officials.

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Top Ken Paxton donors are sitting out as he 'struggles' to finance his campaign: report

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's attempt to unseat Republican Sen. John Cornyn is sputtering financially, with major donors who previously bankrolled his campaigns now sitting on the sidelines — a striking display of the deep fracture within the Republican Party between its business-oriented establishment and its hard-right MAGA base, writes the New York Times' Lauren McGaughy.

According to her analysis, Paxton has fallen dramatically short of his fundraising goals. He claimed last year he would need about $20 million to mount a credible challenge to Cornyn, but he's raising far less than anticipated as he "struggles" to rake in donations.

Many of the wealthy donors who built Paxton's political career in Texas have decided to watch from the sidelines. Several businessmen who spent millions supporting his state attorney general campaigns have not contributed to either his Senate campaign or the political action committee backing his run.

Most strikingly, the Times is reporting, the billionaire West Texas oilmen and far-right kingmakers who have long backed Paxton have spent little on his Senate run. Over the last five years, Tim Dunn and brothers Farris and Dan Wilks gave Paxton more than $1 million directly or through their political action committees. But only Dan Wilks has contributed to the Senate campaign, throwing the candidate just $7,000. Dunn has spent millions in other federal races instead.

One prominent Texas donor, Alex Fairly, explained the calculus bluntly to McGaughy, stating, "It's more a matter of saving my bullets for the general," the Amarillo businessman said. "Winning in November is more important."

Fairly gave only $7,000 to Paxton's Senate campaign — far less than the $300,000 he has contributed to Paxton's state campaigns since 2021.

The fundraising disparity is stark as Cornyn has significantly outspent Paxton and still had $11 million in his campaign and committee accounts as of the latest filing — three times as much as Paxton had on hand. In total, Paxton has raised only around $13.5 million between his campaign and supporting committee.

The money gap reflects a fundamental split in the Republican Party. Business-oriented conservatives prefer the establishment-aligned Cornyn, while Paxton represents the pugnacious politics of the MAGA movement — a divide that's playing out in real time through donor behavior.

Trump mocked for evening posting spree reminiscing over his old speech: 'Coping mechanism'

President Donald Trump appeared to be reminiscing on Monday evening over his State of the Union address he delivered back in February, with onlookers baffled to see the president sharing several screenshots on social media of conservative commentators’ praise of his performance.

As Trump’s favorability dips to historic lows amid his wildly unpopular war against Iran – a conflict that has sent gas prices surging and disrupted global trade – the president took to his social media platform Truth Social to share three screenshots of conservative commentators lavishing him with praise for his State of the Union address he delivered more than two months ago.

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Republicans warned about 'powerful alarm bell' going off as Trump drags them down

According to a long-time Republican pollster, Republicans have a voter problem that is far and above worse than reeling back MAGA voters as Donald Trump’s influence wanes.

In an opinion piece for the New York Times, conservative Kristen Soltis Anderson warned the GOP leadership that, what she has dubbed “normie” Republicans, are fed up with where the party has gone under Trump and that “ought to be a powerful alarm bell for Republican candidates looking to win the 2026 elections.”

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Critics floored after GOP sneaks in late-night proposal for Trump's White House ballroom

Senate Republicans unveiled a $72 billion spending package late Monday night, and onlookers were left stunned after discovering a $1 billion line item related to President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project, which he’s long claimed would be entirely funded by private donors.

“What happened to the ballroom being paid for by private funds?” asked political strategist Reed Galen, co-founder of the conservative organization The Lincoln Project, writing in a social media post on X late Monday night.

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Trump reportedly on 'rocky ground' as MAGA ignores his choices: 'Just isn't moving voters'

Donald Trump’s attempts to throw his weight around and influence a handful of Republican primaries is falling flat with voters and donors who are not willing to back his pushback at GOP incumbents who have forged their own paths.

According to a report from Politico’s Liz Crampton, Lisa Kashinsky and Alec Hernandez, hand-picked candidates that the president tabbed to take on rogue Republicans like Rep. Tom Massie (R-KY) and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) are not catching fire with primary voters --- a sign of the president's waning influence as he heads into the lame duck years of his second term.

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Melania Trump humiliated her husband as he tries to outrun his decay: analysts

First lady Melania Trump just handed President Donald Trump his biggest humiliation yet as the president tried to outrun his decay, according to two political analysts.

Joanna Coles, chief content officer for The Daily Beast, argued during a new episode of "The Daily Beast Podcast" that President Trump is "decaying right before our eyes." She mentioned the president's ailing mental and physical health, as well as his seemingly erratic decision-making.

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Trump's latest 'war crimes' threat leaves legal expert aghast: 'An unfit embarrassment'

President Donald Trump's latest threat to Iran left a legal expert aghast on Monday.

Glenn Kirschner, a former U.S. Attorney, discussed recent reporting on Trump's threat that Iran should be "blown off the face of the Earth" during a new episode of his podcast, "Justice Matters." Trump made the threat in a Truth Social post announcing that the U.S. would guide ships through the Strait of Hormuz.

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