Daniel Hampton

White House Faith Advisor Paula White-Cain's attempt to rehabilitate the president's religious image during a Fox News appearance backfired spectacularly Saturday night, triggering a wave of mockery after claiming he attended Saturday and Sunday school up to three times a week as a child.

White-Cain made the claim during a conversation with Laura Trump, telling Fox viewers that "many people don't know about the upbringing of President Trump" before adding that he "went to, sometimes, three times a week to, he said, depending on the teacher, to Saturday school, Sunday school, church."

"Church was a big part of his life," she insisted.

The internet immediately noticed the math didn't add up.

"That's because he couldn't [expletive] count," former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann chided on X.

Attorney Bradley P. Moss was equally unimpressed. "That math ain't mathin, freak case," he wrote.

Journalist Helen Kennedy offered a more cutting interpretation. "Because his parents couldn't stand having him home," she wrote.

Podcaster Hemant Mehta took a more sarcastic tack. "Was he also raised in a log cabin he built?" he asked.

The political commentating account Molly Ploofkins simply added, "I'm sorry, what?"

Trump has leaned heavily into religious imagery during his second term, frequently invoking God's blessing and surrounding himself with evangelical allies like White-Cain.

Renowned historian Timothy Snyder leveled two explosive accusations against President Donald Trump: that his proposed 50% defense budget increase could be a bribe to secure military loyalty for a coup attempt, and that a staged domestic terror attack is his best remaining path to nullifying elections.

Snyder, a Yale historian recognized as one of America's foremost scholars of authoritarianism, made both cases in a Saturday Substack post laying out five historical scenarios through which Trump could exploit the ongoing U.S.-Iran war to nullify the 2026 midterms and seize permanent power.

On the defense budget, Snyder was unambiguous.

"The war has not been run in a way that brings military commanders to trust the president. Again, one has to see Trump’s proposal to increase the defense budget by nearly 50% as a kind of desperate bribe. There are sound strategic reasons why it is a terrible idea, but there is also a political one," he wrote.

Snyder argued the proposed increase is "meant as a payoff for officers, soldiers, and sailors -- people he has openly disrespected his entire life, people whose funerals he treats as an opportunity to sell his own branded merchandise -- to assist him in a coup against Americans."

On the false flag scenario, Snyder drew a direct line to Vladimir Putin's 1999 apartment bombings, which were staged attacks that helped launch Putin's march toward dictatorship. He called Trump "Putin's client in the White House."

"Some variant of terrorism is Trump’s best bet. And so one should be (preemptively, now) skeptical of Trump’s account of any future terrorist attack; we can be sure that, whatever its true origins and character, Trump will provide a self-serving account meant to serve a coup and a dictatorship," Snyder wrote.

He warned Trump would exploit any such event to "discredit or undo elections."

Snyder argued Trump's position is ultimately weak, but only if Americans actively resist.

"He can only carry out a coup if we decide to obey in advance: to pretend that wartime pretexts for coups are never used, although history instructs us that they are; and then to offer our surprise to Trump as the unique political resource that can transform his weak position into a strong one," he noted.

Second Lady Usha Vance triggered a flood of mockery Saturday after she told Fox Viewers there is a litany of misconceptions about her husband, who has repeatedly found himself on the wrong side of ridicule and memes.

Vice President JD Vance has faced backlash from social media commenters in recent years after agreeing to become Trump's running mate, particularly over Trump's awkward 2028 snub, a joke that didn’t land at a firefighters' event, and a widely mocked WWII history mistake.

This week, however, it was his wife who found herself buried by online critics.

"What do you want America to know about your husband," Usha Vance was asked on "Saturday in America with Kayleigh McEnany."

"I know it's been asked in reverse, but what's something we don't know that you want America to know?" asked McEnany.

The second lady cracked a wide grin as she prepped her answer.

"It's hard because he's written a book, he's given a lot of speeches," she began. "Um, there's so many misconceptions about him. He is just the nicest funniest guy. He makes everything an adventure. He's really just a wonderful person to be around. Our family has so much more joy because he is a part of it. I wish that people saw more of that."

But his past remarks, including a racist lie that Haitian immigrants were eating peoples' pets, didn't go unnoticed on the internet.

Podcaster and "Jeopardy!" champion Hemant Mehta shot back on X, "Remember when Vance spread false claims about Haitian migrants eating pets, leading to the harassment of an entire innocent community for months on end? Hahaha hilarious."

Cody Johnston, host of the Some More News podcast, wrote on X, "Hilarious answer. "Contrary to popular belief, my husband is not, in fact, a boring piece of [expletive].'"

Conservative attorney George Conway, who is running for Congress as a Democrat, wrote on X, "It is true that we, the American public, have seen no indication that J.D. Vance is the nicest, funniest guy. On this there can be no disagreement."

Lawyer Adam Cohen wrote on X, "Oh, yeah. That bit about Haitians eating people’s pets was friggin hilarious."

The progressive commentator account evan loves worf wrote on X, "She knows everyone hates his guts lmao."

Journalist John Harwood wrote on X, "actually he's a bad person."

Republican strategist Steve Schmidt couldn't hide his disbelief Saturday after learning that a senior FEMA official claimed he was transported to a Waffle House in Rome, Georgia, by the hand of God.

Gregg Phillips, who leads FEMA's Office of Response and Recovery, the agency's top disaster response position, made the teleportation claim seriously enough that the New York Times dispatched reporters to interview roughly two dozen workers and regulars at Rome's three Waffle House locations to investigate.

None of them, the Times found, could confirm anyone had arrived by paranormal means.

Schmidt, a founding partner of the anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project and one of the most prominent Republican critics of the president, reacted to the revelation with barely contained sarcasm in his Substack newsletter Saturday.

"I wonder if Pete Hegseth plans to deploy him in Iran as a secret weapon," Schmidt wrote.

The joke comes as the U.S. engages in ongoing military strikes against Iran, and an American pilot remains missing.

Schmidt used the episode as a launching pad for a broader indictment of the Trump administration, rattling off a roster of officials he described as "corrupt whack jobs" running the federal government.

"It seems the most powerful government in world history has fallen to the audience of midnight AM conspiracy radio," he wrote.

Phillips has not publicly responded to the Times investigation.

The White House was forced onto the defensive Saturday after social media speculation that President Donald Trump had been hospitalized at Walter Reed Medical Center sent the administration scrambling to tamp down the rumors.

The unfounded whispers spread after Trump went roughly 12 hours without speaking to the press, prompting the White House's Rapid Response account to hit back on X, The Daily Beast reported.

“Deranged liberals cook up insane conspiracy theories when @POTUS goes 12 hours without speaking to press,” the White House’s Rapid Response account fumed on X. “(They said nothing when Biden routinely went 12 days without speaking to press) Fear not! President Trump literally never stops working."

White House communications director Steven Cheung also weighed in, though without directly addressing the hospitalization rumors.

"There has never been a President who has worked harder for the American people than President Trump," Cheung wrote on X. "On this Easter weekend, he has been working nonstop in the White House and Oval Office."

There is no evidence Trump was hospitalized. The firestorm of speculation comes as the 79-year-old president has faced persistent public scrutiny over his health since returning to office.

Wisconsin Republicans admitted their own state Supreme Court candidate has failed to give conservative voters a reason to turn out in a high-stakes election Tuesday, as liberals prepare to expand their majority on the state's highest court.

"If you’re a Republican voter, what reason has Maria Lazar’s campaign given you to, like, show up and go to a poll on Tuesday?" a Wisconsin Republican operative who has run statewide races told The Hill in an article published Saturday.

The blunt critique cuts to the heart of why conservatives are bracing for what many expect to be a landslide defeat in the race to fill a seat being vacated by retiring conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley.

Democratic-backed candidate Chris Taylor has outraised Lazar nearly 5-to-1, pulling in roughly $6.2 million to Lazar's $1.2 million. The state party gap is even starker as Wisconsin Democrats spent nearly $750,000 on Taylor's behalf between January and late March, while state Republicans spent just $96,000 supporting Lazar.

The Lazar campaign tried to push back, with spokesperson Nathan Conrad pointing to a Thursday debate as evidence that she made a direct case to conservative voters.

A Taylor win would expand the liberal bloc on the Wisconsin Supreme Court from a narrow 4-3 majority to a 5-2 supermajority, making a conservative path back to control significantly harder.

President Donald Trump's closest allies in the Middle East are privately sounding the alarm as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pushes the president to escalate the Iran war by targeting civilian infrastructure — including power plants and desalination facilities that millions of people depend on to survive, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

Hegseth has personally briefed Trump on a legal rationale for striking Iran's bridges and roads, arguing that Iran's military could theoretically use them to move missiles and drone materials, the Journal reported. A White House official added that destroying power plants could "foment civil unrest," potentially complicating Tehran's path to a nuclear device.

But current and former military lawyers warn that it breaches the laws of armed conflict.

"I could write a memo that says the entire energy infrastructure of Iran is a legal target — but that would be overbroad," said Geoffrey Corn, a former Army lawyer who now directs the Center for Military Law and Policy at Texas Tech. He added, "and for those people who say if you attack civilian infrastructure you’re committing a war crime, well that’s equally overbroad.”

Gulf state partners have directly expressed alarm to Trump administration officials, fearing retaliatory strikes on their own facilities. When Israel struck an Iranian gas field, Iran responded by hitting a major Qatari gas field. Kuwait accused Iran of attacking a major desalination plant just this week.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has acknowledged Iran isn't currently enriching uranium, raising pointed questions about what exactly Trump's goal is for the war.

"The bombing will continue to degrade not just the regime, but the nation," one Iran analyst warned, "until Iran itself starts to come apart."

An Alabama city is plowing ahead with prosecuting a 62-year-old grandmother who was thrown to the ground and arrested at an anti-Trump rally last fall for wearing an inflatable costume shaped like a male reproductive organ.

Renea Gamble was arrested Oct. 18 at a No Kings rally in Fairhope, Alabama, after a police officer threw her to the ground for refusing to remove the costume, which she bought at a Spirit Halloween store. Body camera footage showed Gamble repeatedly asking, "Am I being detained?" before Cpl. Andrew Babb grabbed her from behind and wrestled her onto her back.

Rather than dropping the case, the city attorney hit Gamble with additional charges of disturbing the peace and giving a false name to law enforcement, The Intercept reported. Her trial is now set for April 15.

"One would have thought at some point somebody would have decided to dismiss the case," said her attorney, David Gespass, a veteran civil rights lawyer who called the prosecution "absurd."

He was aghast by the city's response to back her arrest before the facts came out, according to the report.

No witness testimony or recording shows Gamble breaking any laws. Police initially responded to the scene over traffic complaints — not anything Gamble had done.

Videos of her arrest went viral, aired on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," and a local radio station named her costume Alabamian of the Year.

For her part, Gamble showed up to the next rally dressed as an eggplant.

President Donald Trump's Justice Department filed an emergency appeal Friday night to keep his $400 million White House ballroom under construction, and legal observers immediately noted the filing reads less like a federal appellate brief and more like one of the president's Truth Social screeds.

The 27-page motion, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, invokes "American Patriots" who donated to the project, boasts that construction is "under budget and ahead of schedule," and describes the ballroom as "beautiful" and "desperately needed."

The Washington Post, which reviewed the filing, noted that its tone, particularly the first five pages, "departs from the usual style for federal appellate briefs, which typically focus on legal arguments."

"Instead, the language closely resembles Trump‘s charged remarks and social media posts about the ballroom, which the president has identified as a personal priority," the report said.

"Time is of the essence!" DOJ lawyers wrote, using an exclamation point that is essentially unheard of in federal appellate filings.

The brief also argued the ballroom protects against "hostile attacks via drones, ballistic missiles, bullets, biohazards" — a national security argument that U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, had already dismissed with barely concealed contempt.

"Please!" Leon wrote in his ruling, adding that the "large hole" beside the White House was "a problem of the President's own making."

The administration said it would seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court if the appeals court doesn't rule in its favor.

Just days after firing Attorney General Pam Bondi, Donald Trump is already eyeing another major leadership shake-up at the Justice Department, according to a new report.

Trump is targeting the department's No. 3 official while promoting one of his most ardent loyalists, sources told CBS News Saturday. The expected changes would demote Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward while elevating Harmeet Dhillon, currently head of the Civil Rights Division, to one of the department's top roles.

Dhillon has been one of the most controversial figures at Trump's DOJ since taking over the Civil Rights Division.

More than 75 percent of its attorneys fled over the past year, accepting buyouts or early retirements rather than serve under her leadership. Over 200 former division attorneys signed an open letter accusing her of destroying an office created by the landmark 1957 Civil Rights Act, legislation enacted to dismantle Jim Crow segregation and protect Black Americans' voting rights.

Under Dhillon, the division launched investigations into DEI policies at universities, sued to ban transgender athletes from women's sports, and aggressively pursued voter registration data from dozens of states. She also created a new gun rights section and killed consent decrees with Minneapolis and Louisville police departments despite findings of systemic constitutional abuses.

Woodward, meanwhile, has drawn fire from far-right influencer Laura Loomer over his wife's support for progressive causes.

The shakeup comes as Trump continues searching for an attorney general willing to pursue his political enemies without constitutional guardrails getting in the way.

A CNN panel burst into laughter and groans Saturday over a remarkable Fox News clip in which host fierce MAGA loyalist Jesse Watters told acting Attorney General Todd Blanche that he fundamentally misunderstands what the public believes about the Jeffrey Epstein files.

During the Fox News interview Thursday, Blanche attempted to put the Epstein controversy behind him.

"I think that that to the extent the Epstein files was a part of the past year of this Justice Department, it should not be a part of anything going forward," he said in one clip.

In a second clip, Blanche made the bizarre claim that it's "undisputable that nobody talked about the Epstein files for four years" of Joe Biden's presidency. He insisted the Trump administration did its job by releasing them when the law required it.

Watters wasn't buying it.

"Ok ... uh, huh," Watters said, unable to hold back his visible disbelief. "I'm not sure you totally get what people feel about that."

The clip sent CNN's panel into fits, with legal analyst Elliot Williams letting out a loud audible laugh off camera.

"Wow," exclaimed GOP strategist and commentator Melik Abdul.

"See that level of skepticism from a conservative ... is quite something because he's right!" said Seung Min Kim, White House Correspondent for the Associated Press.

"Jesse Watters of all people!" said fill-in anchor Pamela Brown, also chuckling.

More than a dozen Republican leaders in state legislatures across the country have headed for the exits over the past 14 months, in what analysts said could be yet another ominous sign of midterm trouble for a party already reeling from Donald Trump's cratering approval ratings.

The departures, which come from battleground states including Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia and Iowa, mirror a parallel exodus happening in Congress, where 36 Republican House members and seven GOP senators have announced they won't seek reelection in November.

"I think he puts Republicans on the defensive with his actions," Colorado GOP consultant Dick Wadhams told Politico in a report published Saturday. "They can't stand it anymore."

The most damaging losses have come in Wisconsin, where Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu both announced retirements in recent months, leaving the party defending razor-thin margins on redrawn maps that already cost them 10 Assembly seats in 2024.

"Democrats are salivating at the opportunity. Politico put it bluntly: 'Republicans are losing their bench.'"

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee is spending $50 million — its largest investment ever — targeting 42 chambers this November, with party officials explicitly comparing 2026 to 2010, when Republicans flipped 22 chambers in a single wave election.

A recent Marquette Law School poll found just 42 percent of Wisconsin voters approve of Trump's job performance, with majorities opposing the Iran war and supporting the Supreme Court's decision to overturn his tariffs.

A candidate for the Georgia State Senate earned a heaping of mockery on Saturday over a glaring gaffe in an advertisement in the Atlanta Jewish Times that wished Jewish constituents a "blessed Passover" and used a picture of challah bread, which cannot be consumed during the holiday.

Nathalie Kanani is a Georgia attorney and Democratic candidate for State Senate District 14 in Fulton County. Her advertisement raised eyebrows on social media this week.

"Have A Blessed Passover," the ad reads in the print version of the newspaper. "Wishing you a Passover rich in divine love and blessings."

The ad appeared to include a blue and white flag draped over a loaf of Challah bread, sitting next to a pair of tall candles.

However, observers homed in on the challah bread gaffe.

Greg Bluestein, chief political reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, wrote on X, "Georgia Senate candidate’s Passover ad in this week’s Atlanta Jewish Times features challah. It’s the thought that counts, I guess."

Jonah Goldberg, editor-in-chief at The Dispatch wrote on X, "Nothing like a good Passover challah. Almost as good as a Yom Kippur BLT sandwich."

Progressive political commentator Molly Jong-Fast wrote on X, "Omg this is incredible."

She added: "Veep was a documentary."

Georgia state Rep. Esther Panitch (D) chided on X, "Bless her heart, someone put challah in a Passover ad. This candidate wants to be my senator. As the only Jewish member of the Georgia General Assembly, I am available for holiday consults — or you could just consider a candidate who knows the difference, whose ad is just a few pages after this one in the @AtlJewishTimes."

Journalist Rachel Feldman wrote on X, "Just my head making up staff conversations at the @AtlJewishTimes: 'They paid for it…' 'Do we correct them?' 'We’re advertising, not news.' 'So people can buy…' 'Yup.' 'So we don’t correct them?' 'The public will.' 'Can we report on that?' 'That’s none of my business.'"

Donald Trump added to a turbulent Saturday with a racially charged immigration post on Truth Social, repeating a slogan popular among white nationalists — just hours after threatening Iran with an apocalyptic 48-hour ultimatum.

Earlier in the day, Trump warned that "all Hell will reign down" on Iran if they didn't make a deal or reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, signing off with "Glory be to GOD!"

Hours later, he pivoted to domestic messaging with equal intensity: "If you import the Third World, you become the Third World!" he posted. "AND THAT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AS LONG AS I AM PRESIDENT."

The phrase, long circulated in far-right circles and previously used by Trump adviser Stephen Miller, frames immigration from developing nations as an existential threat to American civilization. It's often referred to as Great Replacement theory.

The posts come amid a cratering economy and as 13 American service members have died in Iran, with gas prices topping $4 a gallon nationally.

Trump has repeatedly used dehumanizing language to describe immigrants, including describing them as people who are "poisoning the blood" of the country, language historians have noted echoes of the rhetoric of authoritarian movements.