Daniel Hampton

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.

A fire marshal was rushed to Staten Island University Hospital in critical condition, intubated with a head fracture and brain injury. Another firefighter was also seriously hurt by what doctors described as a strong energy wave from the explosion.

The civilian who died has not been publicly identified. Authorities confirmed the victim was not a firefighter.

“As the fire grew, first responders did what they always do,” Mamdani said at the news conference. “They ran towards danger so others could escape to safety.”

The fire continued burning into Friday night as investigators waited for the flames to die down before launching a probe. The cause remains unknown.

An Iraqi terrorist with ties to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps allegedly pledged to kill Ivanka Trump in retaliation for her father's 2020 assassination of Iranian military chief Qasem Soleimani, and had a blueprint of her Florida home to prove he was serious, the New York Post reported Friday.

Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, a senior commander within the Iran-backed militia Kata'ib Hizballah, was arrested in Turkey on May 15 and moved to the United States, where he now faces six terrorism-related counts in Manhattan federal court. The Justice Department said he directed or coordinated nearly 20 attacks across Europe and North America since March, including an explosives attack on a Bank of New York Mellon branch in Amsterdam, a stabbing of two Jewish men in London, and a shooting at the U.S. consulate in Toronto.

Al-Saadi's vendetta was rooted in his close relationship with Soleimani, whom Trump ordered killed in Baghdad in January 2020, according to sources who spoke to the Post.

"After Qasem was killed, he went around telling people 'we need to kill Ivanka to burn down the house of Trump the way he burned down our house,'” former Iraqi embassy official Entifadh Qanbar told the Post.

Al-Saadi also posted a map on social media of the Florida enclave where Ivanka and Jared Kushner own a $24 million home, alongside an Arabic-language threat.

“I say to the Americans look at this picture and know that neither your palaces nor the Secret Service will protect you. We are currently in the stage of surveillance and analysis. I told you, our revenge is a matter of time," the threat said.

The arrest comes amid a broader wave of Iran-linked threats against Trump and his circle that accelerated after the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iran in February, a conflict analysts say has reshaped the Middle East. Al-Saadi is currently being held in solitary confinement at Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center.

The Trump administration is ordering federal agencies to install the White House's new app on the government-issued phones of millions of employees in a move IT experts are calling "dangerous" and unprecedented, according to a report from Government Executive published Friday.

The app, launched in March, promises users "unfiltered" access to the administration's priorities and includes a feed of presidential social media posts, policy announcements, and even a button that lets users send a pre-written text reading "Greatest President Ever!" to Trump.

The Federal Aviation Administration told employees Friday its IT team will automatically install "The White House" application on all FAA-issued iPhones and iPads "as mandated by the White House." Internal communications obtained by Government Executive show automatic downloads will begin at one agency next week.

Sonny Hashmi, a former longtime government IT executive, warned that "any app that is installed on government issued devices can potentially create backdoor access to government networks behind the firewall." Cybersecurity researchers previously flagged the app for sharing user data with third parties.

Former government tech official David Nesting was blunt about the move, telling Government Executive, "It's just making sure all federal employees are forced to see the same propaganda they push out to the public."

The push fits a broader administration pattern of using official channels to target political opponents and tighten control over a federal workforce already under pressure.

An estimated 40,000 residents in Orange County, California, were ordered to evacuate Friday after authorities lost control of a valve on a tank containing a highly toxic chemical at an aerospace manufacturing facility — raising fears of a catastrophic explosion.

The tank at the GKN Aerospace site in Garden Grove holds methyl methacrylate, a flammable and reactive chemical used to make resins and plastics. Orange County Fire Authority incident commander Craig Coby offered a blunt assessment of what could happen next.

“It fails or it blows up,” said Coby, according to NBC News.

The crisis began Thursday when a vapor release was detected at the facility, triggering the kind of mass evacuations Southern California has seen during recent disasters. The evacuation zone spans parts of Garden Grove, Cypress, Stanton, Anaheim, Buena Park, and Westminster — communities located about 35 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. Authorities initially stabilized the situation, but Friday brought fresh alarm when the tank's valve became inoperable.

OCFA Division Chief Nick Freeman called the substance "extremely flammable" and warned it could trigger an explosion in its current reactive state. The EPA lists methyl methacrylate as a potential cause of lung and skin irritation and a possible contributor to colon and rectal cancers.

Officials said the tank, holding between 6,000 and 7,000 gallons, is currently being cooled by a sprinkler system and an unmanned hose line. No injuries have been reported.

Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong called the situation unprecedented."

“This is a unique situation,” she told reporters. “We don’t have information of a similar situation where this happened, right. So we’re going into unique times, and we have limited information.”

It's the latest crisis to test a region still recovering from devastating wildfires and bracing for the next emergency.

GKN Aerospace said it is "fully focused on working with emergency services" to protect employees and the surrounding community.

A media analyst who closely tracks Fox News says the network just published the most damaging poll of Donald Trump's presidency.

Writing in The New Republic, columnist Greg Sargent cited the reaction of Media Matters analyst Matt Gertz, who called this week's Fox News survey "certainly the most devastating Fox News poll of this presidency" and said it "portrays a presidency in free fall."

The poll, conducted May 15-18 among 1,002 registered voters, finds Trump's overall approval underwater at 39%. His economic numbers were devastating: just 29% of voters approve of his handling of the economy, while 71% disapprove. On inflation, it's even worse — only 24% approve, down from 35% in January. Trump's economic standing has steadily eroded for months.

Trump is now underwater with working-class whites (46-54), rural voters (43-57), and white men (48-52). Among Latinos, his approval sits at just 33-67, suggesting his 2024 gains with nonwhite working-class voters have largely evaporated. Analysts have called Trump's inflation numbers the worst ever recorded for any president at this point in a term.

Even border security, once Trump's strongest issue, has tipped into net negative territory for the first time this term, with voters now split 49-51.

Sargent argued the poll, combined with fresh signs of voter fury over the economy and new GOP resistance to Trump's $1.8 billion slush fund, signaled that Republican lawmakers are no longer willing to absorb unlimited political damage on his behalf.

"It's far too optimistic to conclude that Trumpism is dying. But its principal tenets and mythologies appear to be getting badly discredited, putting the whole project in considerable jeopardy," he wrote, concluding that Trump has shrunk MAGA to its "molten core" — yet "there's a whole universe of American voters outside of it — and in a truly startling revelation, it turns out that they matter too."

Stephen Colbert didn't just sign off Thursday night — he went out swinging, with nearly 7 million people watching.

The final episode of "The Late Show" drew an estimated 6.74 million viewers, making it the most-watched weeknight episode in the show's history, according to preliminary Nielsen data obtained by The Hollywood Reporter. That's more than double the season's average of 2.69 million viewers per episode.

The star-studded finale featured celebrity cameos from Bryan Cranston, Paul Rudd, and Tim Meadows, with Paul McCartney closing out the show — giving Colbert a sendoff fit for late-night royalty.

CBS canceled the show last July, just days after Colbert blasted parent company Paramount's $16 million settlement with Trump as a "big fat bribe," a move widely seen as retribution. Colbert spent his final months defying the network's attempts to rein him in, at one point flouting lawyers' orders to blast FCC pressure on CBS.

Trump, who spent years feuding with Colbert on social media, tried to get in the last word. In a bitter 2 a.m. Truth Social post after the finale, the president called Colbert "a dead person" with "no talent, no ratings, no life."

A New York Times opinion writer warned Thursday that President Donald Trump's new $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization fund" has created an unprecedented mechanism for federal money to flow to paramilitary groups loyal to the president.

Noah Shachtman, a Times contributing opinion writer who covers government corruption, argued in a guest essay that the fund could "institutionalize" cronyism as an official function of the federal government — and worse, finance the violent supporters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6.

“The primary risk is that this money is going to be used to fund paramilitary organizations that are loyal to the president. The financial support for violence, that is going to be the most important thing, and it’s fundamentally new and different from, say, the Qatari jet," former Justice Department special counsel Brendan Ballou told Shachtman.

Shachtman noted that five members of the Proud Boys sued the government last year for $100 million, claiming "political persecution" after their convictions for Jan. 6, in which more than 140 law enforcement officers were injured. Heads of the Oath Keepers could also apply for compensation under the fund's loose criteria.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche declined this week to assure Democratic senators that abusive felons or extremist groups would be barred from payments. The five-person commission that decides claims will be appointed entirely by Blanche, with Trump able to fire any member at will.

Ballou now represents two officers who filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday to block the fund, calling it "a taxpayer-funded slush fund to finance the insurrectionists and paramilitary groups" that attacked them.

Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner is warning Donald Trump's inner circle to study the fate of Richard Nixon's lieutenants — and to remember that proximity to power was no shield from prison.

Kirschner, a 30-year prosecutor turned legal analyst, told viewers Wednesday that the loyalists embedded across Trump's second-term government should look closely at the Watergate ledger.

"After the Watergate scandal, 48 of Richard Nixon's goons were convicted of crimes and 30 of them went to prison," Kirschner said. "But you know what? Before they got caught, before they were prosecuted, before they were held accountable, they thought they were untouchable."

Nixon was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford, and never faced criminal prosecution, but his aides were not so lucky. Among those convicted were Attorney General John Mitchell, White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, and domestic affairs adviser John Ehrlichman — three of the most powerful officials in the administration.

The warning landed days after Trump's Justice Department unveiled a $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization fund" to compensate Trump allies who claim they were unfairly prosecuted by the Biden administration. The fund was announced on Monday as part of a settlement of Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump's former personal defense lawyer, signed off on the deal. Time reported that Blanche framed the fund as "a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress."

House Democrats have filed an amicus brief calling the arrangement a "specter of corruption unparalleled in American history."

President Donald Trump's "anti-weaponization fund" is an "extraordinary incident of bald self-dealing, even in an administration where such blatant corruption has become de rigueur," according to a blistering new Guardian column.

Columnist Moira Donegan pulled no punches in her assessment of the $1.776 billion fund, which Trump established after settling a $10 billion lawsuit he personally filed against the IRS over leaks of his tax returns.

"Donald Trump is stealing almost $2bn in taxpayer money and handing it out to his friends," Donegan wrote. "That's the upshot of the president's recent agreement."

The fund, Donegan argued, is structured to ensure Trump maintains total control — with four of five commissioners appointed by his own attorney general and Trump retaining the power to fire them. The settlement also requires the IRS to drop all audits of Trump and his family, she noted.

Donegan reserved particular scorn for the timing, as the deal was struck at the eleventh hour, just before a federal judge's May 20 deadline demanding the parties explain how Trump could actually be in legal conflict with an agency he personally controls.

"The little matter of the law would not be allowed to get in the way of a payout," she wrote.

The columnist also warned that Trump's corruption is "likely to be one of his most enduring legacies" — setting precedents for future administrations and instilling what she called a "profound sense of cynicism" in voters who increasingly view their government as a "self-interested scam in which graft is ubiquitous and civic-mindedness is for suckers."

"They do not like being stolen from; they do not like being played for fools," Donegan warned of American voters.

President Donald Trump's string of Republican primary victories may actually be a paradoxical sign of weakness rather than strength, with a leading political analyst warning that Trump’s standing appears to be "deteriorating."

And the numbers back it up.

David Graham, writing in The Atlantic, argued this week that while Trump successfully ousted Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and helped knock out Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the same tactics that cement his grip on the MAGA base are quietly destroying his standing with the broader public.

"Trump’s hold on the MAGA base is still powerful, but the same actions that help him maintain it also help erode his standing with the broader public—and threaten to lead Republicans to defeat in November’s midterm elections," Graham wrote.

A New York Times/Siena poll released this week put Trump's approval rating at just 37 percent — his lowest ever in that survey and a four-point drop since January. A Reuters/Ipsos poll has him even lower, at 35 percent — a whopping 12 points below where he began his second term.

Graham notes that primary voters in ruby-red Indiana, Louisiana and Kentucky — states Trump won by 19, 22 and 31 points respectively — are not representative of the general electorate that will decide November's midterms.

"MAGA isn’t collapsing, and the base remains devoted, but it is shrinking. Trump’s sinking numbers may not matter as much to him, because he won’t face voters again, but they matter a great deal to other Republican officeholders," Graham warned.

Meanwhile, Sen. Bill Cassidy, in his first act after losing his primary, immediately bucked Trump with a procedural vote to advance a resolution ending the Iran war, a sign that some Republicans are already calculating the post-Trump political landscape.

A tobacco giant donated $5 million to President Donald Trump's super PAC just days before his administration rolled out a new policy that could prove enormously lucrative for the industry — and critics are not letting it slide.

Reynolds American, makers of Vuse vapes, made the donation on April 30 through a subsidiary to MAGA Inc., the Trump-backed super PAC, bringing its total contributions to the group to $8 million, according to campaign finance records released Wednesday and reported by the New York Times.

Two days after the donation, a top Reynolds executive and two company lobbyists had lunch with Trump at his Jupiter, Florida, golf club. Two executives from rival tobacco company Altria were also there. During the meal, the industry representatives complained about FDA regulation of e-cigarettes, and Trump interrupted the meeting to personally call FDA Commissioner Marty Makary. When Makary didn't pick up, Trump called his boss, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to complain about vape regulation.

Less than a week later, the FDA issued new guidance that could allow major tobacco companies to sell flavored vapes and capture a chunk of the $6 billion e-cigarette market. The policy circumvented the FDA's normal rule-making process, the Times noted.

Four days after the guidance was announced, Makary resigned, telling associates he could not in good conscience remain at the agency after it backed such a policy.

The revelation triggered immediate outrage online.

"President Trump doesn't even bother to hide his grift anymore," investor Doug Kass posted on X.

Commentator Paul Niland was equally blunt: "If you assumed the FDA approval of flavoured vapes could only have been as a result of a bribe, congratulations. You have passed the test of being a rational human being," he wrote.

Physician Tyler Black, MD, posted simply: "I was told America didn't like tyrants."

Perhaps most cutting was the reaction from musician Five Times August, who responded to the news with a single line of biting sarcasm: "Make America Healthy or whatever" — a reference to RFK Jr.'s signature MAHA health initiative.

The White House denied any connection between the donation and the policy shift.

"The only guiding factor behind the Trump administration’s health policymaking is gold standard science,” a White House spokesman told the Times in a statement. The spokesman said the FDA's regulatory treatment of vapes and nicotine pouches “is rooted in recent evidence that has found they can help adults quit smoking.”

Someone at the State Department appeared to make an unforced error this week.

The department posted a video to X on Wednesday of President Donald Trump answering reporters' questions about the administration's increasingly aggressive stance toward Cuba.

But The Daily Beast noted that the person who wrote the accompanying transcript made a humiliating error.

"[Rubio] is from there, so we have a lot of expertise," the transcript read, implying that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is Cuban-born.

Rubio was born in Miami to Cuban immigrant parents who left the island before Castro took power, making him the American-born son of Cuban immigrants, a biographical fact he has repeated thousands of times.

The clip clearly shows Trump stating, "Marco is there, Marco's parents, as you know, were from Cuba."

The gaffe comes as the Trump administration escalates its campaign against Havana, with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announcing the indictment of former Cuban president Raúl Castro for conspiring to kill U.S. nationals in a 1996 attack that killed four Cuban-American exiles.

Jan. 6 rioters, Proud Boys leaders, and Trump allies are racing to stake their claims to President Donald Trump's $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization" fund, and some are already calculating exactly how much they believe they're owed.

Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys leader sentenced to 22 years for seditious conspiracy for his role in planning the Capitol attack, told Reuters he plans to apply, estimating he deserves between $2 and $5 million.

"I'm not greedy," Tarrio said. "But my life was all [expletive] up because of this."

Peter Ticktin, an attorney representing more than 400 Jan. 6 defendants, warned the fund may not stretch far enough.

"People lost multi-million dollar businesses while they were locked up," he said. "I don’t think the DOJ is ready for us ⁠yet."

Trump seemed to agree.

"You're talking about peanuts," he told reporters at Joint Base Andrews. "It destroyed the lives of many, many people."

Even some who attacked police officers expect a cut. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche refused to rule out payouts to rioters who assaulted officers, and Tarrio endorsed that position.

"The Justice Department over-prosecuted for political gain," he said. "So everyone deserves to get money."

The fund has drawn a lawsuit from two Capitol Police officers who called it "the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century." Democrats and some Republicans have questioned its legality, while critics noted the settlement also permanently bars the IRS from auditing Trump, his family, and his businesses.

Perhaps most remarkably, former FBI Director James Comey — twice indicted by Trump's DOJ — said he's considering applying too.

"It's to compensate people who've been targeted by the Justice Department for, they say, ⁠personal, political or ideological reasons," Comey told CNN. "So I'm guessing I'll be in line."

The Trump administration has no plans to seek congressional approval for President Donald Trump's proposed 250-foot arch near the Lincoln Memorial and is instead relying on a 100-year-old authorization for a completely different project that was never built, according to a report.

Administration officials argue that Congress effectively pre-approved the arch when lawmakers ratified a 1925 report by the Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission, which called for two 166-foot columns on Columbia Island, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. Those columns were never constructed. Trump's arch would use the same 166-foot base but add another 84 feet of pedestal and statuary to reach 250 feet total.

Legal experts expressed skepticism.

"The notion Congress a century ago authorized construction of this 250-foot arch in Memorial Circle is absurd," said Wendy Liu, a lawyer at Public Citizen Litigation Group, which is representing military veterans and an architectural historian suing to halt the project. The 1925 authorization was "for a now-defunct commission to design and construct Arlington Memorial Bridge, which was completed a century ago, pursuant to a 10-year construction and funding schedule," Liu added. "It did not authorize this arch."

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, called the legal argument "tortured" and "laughable," comparing it to the administration's pattern of bypassing Congress on the White House ballroom and the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation.

A fine arts commission stacked with Trump allies is scheduled to review a revised arch proposal on Thursday. The administration has removed four golden lions from the original design, but the arch remains 250 feet tall, taller than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

Funding for President Donald Trump's pricey White House ballroom is on the verge of being "ejected" from his own party's immigration enforcement bill, according to a new report.

The White House ballroom project has been touted as a $400 million privately funded build, though Republicans have also pushed a separate $1 billion taxpayer-funded security request tied to the broader East Wing modernization project that includes the ballroom.

Politico reported late Tuesday that the ballroom is "on the brink of being ejected" from the GOP's immigration legislation.

"Four Republican senators have raised public objections to spending taxpayer money on the project, possibly enough to kill it given the broad Democratic opposition. A larger group of Republicans is privately opposed to the funding, according to five people granted anonymity to disclose internal deliberations," the report said.

The report comes after Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), fresh off a high-profile primary loss, said he would not vote in favor of funding the ballroom.

"They don't have a bid, they don't have engineering, they don't have architecture. …They just kind of made that number up," he said. "So from what I know now, I will not be voting for the ballroom fund."

Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) have also dumped cold water on the idea, along with outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC).

"One billion in ballroom funding is just not going to fly, right? It's just not going to fly," Murkowski said.

The crumbling support follows a Senate parliamentarian ruling Saturday night that GOP leaders couldn't include the $1 billion in the reconciliation bill under chamber rules. The procedural verdict infuriated Trump and prompted him to privately demand that Senate Majority Leader John Thune fire parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough. Thune refused.