David Edwards

A Fox News segment about Jill Biden's bombshell debate admission took a sharp turn Wednesday when Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) pushed back hard on host Martha MacCallum's attempt to draw a contrast between Joe Biden's fitness and Donald Trump's.

The segment opened with MacCallum pressing Coons on Jill Biden's revelation to CBS News that she feared her husband was having a stroke during his disastrous June 2024 debate against Trump.

"She thought he was having a stroke. It's inexplicable — as a wife, why wouldn't you stop the whole thing right then and go straight to a hospital?" MacCallum said.

Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, didn't take the bait. Instead, he pivoted hard to kitchen-table concerns.

"Nobody's asked me about Joe Biden's debate performance in 2024," Coons said. "They've asked me about the rising price of gas. They've asked me about Trump's tariffs."

But he didn't stop there — going after Trump directly.

"I see regular incidents where President Trump falls asleep in meetings in the middle of the day, makes no sense in answering questions," Coons said.

MacCallum fired back, arguing Trump's freewheeling press availability proved his sharpness. "President Trump answers like 30 to 100 questions every single day from the press — we never saw President Biden take that risk in a million years," she said, adding: "I think there was a lot of cover-up, frankly."

However, Coons didn't concede the point. He told MacCallum he had been with Biden earlier that day at a funeral in Wilmington. "He's fine," Coons said.

The two then clashed over Iran before MacCallum wrapped the segment.

Jill Biden's CBS interview, tied to her upcoming memoir View From the East Wing, will air on June 2.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent got testy at the White House briefing Wednesday when CNN's Kaitlan Collins pressed him on the Trump administration's push to put the president's face on a $250 bill — eventually cutting her off mid-question.

Bessent was filling in for press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who is on maternity leave, when Collins went after him on a Washington Post report that two of his political appointees had been pushing the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to design a note featuring Trump's portrait — potentially in violation of federal law, which prohibits living people from appearing on U.S. currency.

Bessent waved it off. "Terribly written, terribly edited," he said of the Post's reporting. "Basically, what it says is that Treasury is following the law."

But Collins wasn't finished. "Politically, do you think it's a good idea when people are struggling to afford gas and groceries?" she asked.

Bessent pushed back, arguing the $250 note was tied to the nation's 250th anniversary celebration — not a vanity project. "I don't think there's anything untoward about having the president of the United States, the person who is president on the 250th anniversary, on the bill," he said.

Then Collins shifted gears, asking whether Treasury's general counsel had resigned over the Justice Department's controversial $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund. But Bessent had clearly had enough of the CNN reporter at that point.

"I will not be taking any other questions," he said — twice — as Collins tried to follow up on sanctions.

The Post's investigation found that bureau director Patricia Solimene, a 24-year Army veteran and the first woman to hold the post, was abruptly reassigned after repeatedly warning the appointees that producing the note would be illegal without an act of Congress. She signed off with a pointed farewell: "The buck stopped here."

Ryan Fournier, the co-founder and chairman of Students for Trump, was arrested early Tuesday in Washington, D.C., on domestic violence charges — the second time in less than two years he has faced accusations of assaulting a woman.

The Metropolitan Police Department charged Fournier with simple assault and attempted threats to do bodily harm after an incident late Monday night at the Apartments at CityCenter.

According to an affidavit obtained by Defector, the victim — a woman who told police she had been dating Fournier for about two months and was in town to visit him — tried to wake him after finding him passed out, apparently intoxicated, on the floor. Fournier responded by swinging his fists and striking her in the face with a closed fist two or three times, she told police.

He also got on top of her as he hit her, and she said she had no choice but to defend herself. Officers noted he had a switchblade knife at his side.

A witness who identified himself as Fournier's roommate told police the situation escalated quickly. He heard Fournier scream, "Don't touch me, woman!" and "Do you want me to crush your head in with this lamp?"

When the witness stepped away, he heard Fournier yell, "Do you want to die today?" The victim ran into the bathroom, the witness said, and "looked like she had been punched in the face." As the witness called 911, the victim pleaded, "Don't let him stab me."

Based on independent statements from the victim and two witnesses, police determined Fournier was the primary aggressor. He pleaded not guilty at an arraignment Tuesday, and a pretrial stay-away order was imposed. A hearing is scheduled for July 7.

It was not Fournier's first arrest. In November 2023, he was arrested in North Carolina and charged with assault on a female and assault with a deadly weapon after allegedly striking his then-girlfriend with a pistol. Those charges were dropped.

Fournier also announced on LinkedIn that he had taken a role as Deputy Director of Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of Justice under President Trump. The day after his latest arrest, he was back on X pushing immigration enforcement. "ICE should never pull back," he posted at 12:59 a.m. "Arrest, and deport."

Vice President JD Vance delivered the commencement address Thursday at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs — and made sure the graduating class knew the rules upfront: no booing allowed.

Addressing more than 900 cadets commissioning into the Air Force and Space Force, Vance acknowledged he'd been watching other graduation speeches this season get derailed by heckling — specifically, corporate executives who praised artificial intelligence and got booed for it.

"This is the only commencement speech that I'm giving this year, and so I've watched a few highlights of graduation speeches where this or that corporate leader will discuss artificial intelligence — AI — and be met with literal boos," Vance told the cadets.

"Now, you can't boo me. I'm the Vice President of the United States."

It was a notable preemptive strike from a politician who has become something of a lightning rod for public heckling. Vance was booed at the Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Milan in February, and again in Michigan in March after goading a crowd with a claim about the state's educational rankings.

Active-duty military personnel are bound by regulations prohibiting political demonstrations while in uniform.

"AI will inevitably change warfare," Vance said. "But one of the things that makes Americans unique — that makes you as warfighters unique — is that we wage war justly."

The ceremony marked the Academy's 68th commencement, with the Air Force Thunderbirds performing a flyover at the conclusion.

A Fox Business correspondent didn't sugarcoat Thursday's grim economic data, telling viewers point-blank that rising prices are outpacing what workers bring home.

"Inflation is wiping out wages," correspondent Lauren Simonetti said on Varney & Company, reacting to two government reports released Thursday morning that painted a bleak picture for everyday Americans.

The reports landed as a gut-check for a president who promised voters he would lower costs on day one.

The Federal Reserve uses a measure called the personal consumption expenditures index — essentially a broad gauge of what Americans pay for goods and services — to track inflation. In April, that gauge rose 3.8% over the past year, a three-year high and a step up from 3.5% in March. Paychecks aren't keeping pace: wages grew just 3.6% over the same period, meaning workers are effectively taking a pay cut in real terms.

A separate report showed the economy grew more slowly than initially thought — first-quarter GDP was revised down to 1.6% from an initial read of 2.0%, missing Wall Street's expectations.

The strain is showing up in how Americans are managing their money. The University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Index plunged to a record low in May, with 57% of consumers saying high prices are eating into their finances. More than half of U.S. adults are now using credit cards to cover basics like groceries, rent, and utilities, according to a Debt.com survey. The personal savings rate has fallen to 4.0% — down from 6.2% in early 2024.

Gas prices aren't helping. The national average for regular gasoline hit a four-year high heading into Memorial Day weekend, with California topping $6 a gallon, according to AAA.

Host Stuart Varney acknowledged the pain but kept his chin up. "Not that bad," he said — twice.

A Trump insider is predicting that outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard will make a dramatic exit by releasing a trove of evidence she claims proves foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election.

Right-wing journalist John Solomon, whom Steve Bannon said has been working closely with Gabbard on declassifications, made the prediction Thursday on Bannon's War Room podcast.

"Tulsi is gonna go out in a blaze of glory in her final month because she will be able to release in succession some extraordinary evidence of foreign interference in our election in 2020 and since," Solomon said.

Solomon claimed the intelligence community had long concealed evidence of "active measures" by China, Iran, and other adversaries — and that Gabbard would "systematically destroy" the official narrative that 2020 was the most secure election in American history. He also alleged that China had penetrated voter databases in multiple states, and floated the unverified claim that Ukraine laundered a federal grant back to Joe Biden's 2024 campaign.

Gabbard announced her resignation earlier this month, citing her husband's diagnosis with a rare form of bone cancer. Her tenure was marked by deeply controversial involvement in Trump's efforts to relitigate the 2020 election.

In January, Gabbard was photographed on the scene as FBI agents executed a search warrant at a Fulton County, Georgia, election facility, seizing nearly 700 boxes of original ballots. She later told Congress she was there at Trump's direction. Her office also separately seized voting machines from Puerto Rico, claiming to have found "extremely concerning" vulnerabilities — but provided no detailed evidence.

Senate Democrats accused her of "amplification of baseless election conspiracy theories."

Spencer Pratt took his LA mayoral campaign to Fox & Friends Thursday morning with five days until the June 2 primary — and invoked divine intervention on his path to City Hall.

"I have a feeling God wants me to just win with 51% on June 2, and it's over," the registered Republican and former The Hills star told hosts Ainsley Earhardt, Brian Kilmeade, and Lawrence Jones.

Pratt, 42, launched his longshot bid for LA mayor in January after losing his Pacific Palisades home in the devastating 2025 wildfires — and has since parlayed viral outrage into a surprisingly competitive campaign against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass.

On Thursday, he touted a fundraising haul of $2.72 million between April 19 and May 16 — dwarfing Bass's $283,000 and progressive challenger Nithya Raman's $400,000 in the same period. A recent LA Times poll showed Bass leading with 30%, Pratt at 22%, and Raman at 20%. NBC News

Pratt has positioned himself as a nonpartisan outsider — despite being a registered Republican who voted for Donald Trump in 2024. On Fox, he leaned into the contradiction. "I'm a registered Republican, but my supporters are all Democrats," he said, "because Los Angeles is all Democrats."

The campaign hasn't been without turbulence. Campaign finance filings show his operation has paid more than $60,000 to the executive director of America First California, a MAGA-linked think tank. His own sister, Stephanie Pratt, has urged Angelenos to vote against him, writing on X that "a vote for him is a vote for stupidity" and accusing him of simply trying to stay famous and sell his memoir.

Bass is said to prefer a runoff against Pratt in the city where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly four to one.

Pratt closed his Fox appearance with a direct appeal to voters, urging them not to wait until Election Day.

"We can always outvote cheating, period," he said.

President Donald Trump has refiled his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal — and to bolster his case, he's leaning on a key witness interview conducted by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, the president's own former personal attorney.

In an amended complaint filed Tuesday in federal court in Miami, Trump's lawyers cited a July 2025 interview with Ghislaine Maxwell as evidence that the Journal's reporting was false. What the filing doesn't mention is that the interview was conducted by Blanche who was serving as Deputy Attorney General at the time and has since been elevated to Acting Attorney General — and who granted Maxwell limited immunity to participate.

The lawsuit centers on a July 2025 Wall Street Journal story reporting that a bawdy birthday letter bearing Trump's name was included in a 2003 album Maxwell compiled to celebrate Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday. The letter, the Journal reported, featured a typewritten note framed by a hand-drawn outline of a naked woman, with a signature mimicking pubic hair. Trump has denied writing it.

The amended complaint argues Maxwell's statements to federal investigators undercut the Journal's reporting. "Maxwell has stated, subject to penalty of perjury for lying to a federal officer, that she did not remember President Trump submitting a letter for Epstein's 50th birthday," the filing reads.

But when Blanche asked Maxwell directly during the two-day July interview, her answer was notably narrow. "Do you remember President Trump submitting a letter or a card or a note?" Blanche asked. "I don't," Maxwell replied. Asked again, she said, "I do not remember."

Her statement came in an interview which came with a limited immunity agreement, after which Maxwell was transferred to a minimum-security prison in Texas — a facility that typically does not house sex offenders.

When later pressed on whether Maxwell was a credible witness, Blanche told CNN it was "an impossible question to answer."

The original lawsuit was dismissed in April by U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles, who ruled Trump's complaint came "nowhere close" to the actual malice standard required of public figures in defamation cases. The amended complaint attempts to clear that bar by arguing the Journal ignored Maxwell's lack of recollection, buried Trump's denials, and published without ever producing the letter itself.

Dow Jones, which owns the Journal, said at the time of the original filing that it would vigorously defend against the suit.

"We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting," a spokesperson said.

The Democratic National Committee didn't reach for a policy argument when White House senior adviser Stephen Miller deliberately misgendered Texas Senate nominee James Talarico on Wednesday. They went straight for the jugular.

After the DNC posted a photo of Talarico — a cisgender man — declaring it was "time to take back Texas," Miller fired back with a false claim: "The Democrats made history in Texas by nominating their first transgender senate candidate."

The DNC's response was five words: "shut up you ugly f—."

Miller's post was no accident. It's the latest escalation in a coordinated Republican effort to paint the Democratic nominee as outside the mainstream — and it comes as the GOP appears increasingly rattled by the state of the race.

Polling shows Talarico leading Paxton by as much as 8 points, while Paxton's net favorability sits 9 points underwater compared to Talarico's +10. Talarico has raised more than $27 million in the first three months of 2026, dwarfing Paxton's $2.2 million haul during the same period.

Republicans have responded with a kitchen-sink assault.

The NRSC launched a deepfake attack ad depicting an AI-generated version of Talarico reading his own social media posts, with the committee branding him "the most radical, woke Democrat Texas voters have ever seen." Paxton debuted a string of nicknames at a victory rally — "Tofu Talarico," "Six-gender James," and "Tala-freak-o" — seizing on a resurfaced 2021 legislative statement in which Talarico argued that modern science recognizes more than two biological sexes.

Political journalist David Weigel noted the subtext of the GOP attacks has rapidly become text — that Republican messaging has consistently sought to cast Talarico as effeminate or queer.

Talarico has pushed back, accusing Paxton of "intentionally clipping my cringey comments to distract from his career of corruption." Even Karl Rove has warned that with Paxton as the nominee, Democrats have a real shot.

Miller's post drew immediate corrections across social media, including from Rowan Fornow, a digital organizer for a Utah congressional campaign, who noted that the first transgender Senate candidate was actually Misty Snow of Utah, who ran in 2016.

More than 700,000 children have lost access to food stamps in 12 states with available data since President Donald Trump signed the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" into law — and experts warn the true national toll is far worse.

A new analysis published Wednesday by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that 728,492 children lost SNAP benefits in those states between July 2025 and April 2026 — nearly half of the 1.6 million total participants who dropped off the rolls in that period. The nonpartisan research group cautioned that the data covers only states that publicly report child caseload figures, meaning the real number is likely much higher.

"Nowhere has the SNAP decline been more alarming than in Arizona," the report's author, Joseph Llobrera, wrote. The state shed more than 200,000 children from its rolls — a 55 percent drop — even as unemployment there rose, undercutting any suggestion the decline reflects an improving economy.

Texas lost 253,000 children. Louisiana shed 79,000. Massachusetts saw nearly 50,000 fewer children receiving benefits — a 15 percent drop in just eight months — with the state's unemployment rate also climbing.

Signed into law on July 4, 2025, the bill cuts federal SNAP funding by $186 billion through 2034 — the largest cut to the program in its history. The law shifts a growing share of benefit costs onto states, which experts say is forcing agencies to erect new bureaucratic barriers that are pushing eligible families off the program.

The consequences extend beyond grocery benefits. Children who lose SNAP also lose automatic eligibility for free school meals and summer EBT, with CBO estimating 96,000 children per month will lose access to school meal programs as a result.

"Children's learning will be disrupted and their health will be jeopardized," said Erin Hysom, senior child nutrition policy analyst at the Food Research & Action Center. "It's really going to be devastating. Every state will be affected."

CBPP is calling on Congress to delay the law's cost-shift provision by at least two years to prevent further losses.

A Texas congressman dodged questions about Ken Paxton's scandals on Wednesday, pivoting to culture war attacks on the Democrat who will face the newly minted GOP Senate nominee in November.

The confrontation came on the Charlie Kirk Show, where host Andrew Kolvet pressed Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) to respond to critics — including New York Times conservative columnist David French — who argued that Republican primary voters actively embrace corruption rather than merely tolerate it.

Kolvet cited French's post on X following Paxton's 63.8% primary win over Sen. John Cornyn on Tuesday. "Can we be done with the pretense that Republican primary voters vote for MAGA candidates in spite of their apostasy and corruption?" French wrote. "The transgression is a feature, not a bug."

French later doubled down, writing that establishment Republicans who attack corruption in a primary and then immediately fall in line prove "how few principles they have."

Kolvet summarized French's argument bluntly, asking Gill what he had to say to people "attacking Ken Paxton's character" over his "moral failures" — and suggesting that for MAGA voters, "corruption is a feature, not a bug."

Paxton's record gives that critique plenty of material. The attorney general was impeached 121-23 by his own Republican colleagues on charges including bribery and abuse of public trust. Eight of his top deputies reported him to the FBI. A court ordered $6.6 million in damages to whistleblowers he fired. His wife filed for divorce, citing adultery.

Gill never answered the question. Instead, he unloaded on Democratic nominee James Talarico, calling him a "freak and lunatic" over his 2021 statement that modern science recognizes six biological sexes, and mocking his immigration position that the border should have a "giant welcome mat."

"Integrity means also having, not contorting scripture and living in reality," Gill said, "and Talarico certainly does not."

Kolvet's response: "I completely agree, by the way."

President Donald Trump spent roughly 10 minutes of a high-stakes cabinet meeting on Wednesday — convened amid delicate negotiations to end the U.S. war with Iran — ranting about his efforts to renovate the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, falsely claiming predecessors wasted "hundreds of millions" on the landmark and repeatedly comparing it to a swimming pool.

"From 1922 on, it really never worked," Trump told cabinet members, calling the pool — which he repeatedly referred to as a "reflecting lake" — an embarrassment. "It was filthy dirty. It was Biden."

In fact, the Obama administration spent roughly $34 million on the last major renovation of the pool, completed in 2012 — not the "hundreds of millions" Trump claimed. The Biden administration shelved a more comprehensive overhaul after bids came in above $100 million, but never spent that money.

Trump also credited his personal swimming pool expertise for the project's design, telling cabinet members, "Over the years, I built hundreds of pools. I built them every time I built a building. I always like to build Olympic-size swimming pools. I was very aware of [the] swimming pool."

Trump said he personally chose "American flag blue" as the new color for the pool's basin — a decision that has triggered a lawsuit from the Cultural Landscape Foundation, which argues the makeover violates the National Historic Preservation Act.

Trump claimed the project would cost "like $10,000,000, maybe $12,000,000." But federal records show the no-bid contract awarded to Atlantic Industrial Coatings — a Virginia firm Trump chose because it had worked on pools at his golf club — has already climbed to $13.1 million, more than seven times his original estimate of $1.8 million. Critics also note that Trump's plan does not address the pool's faulty filtration system, which has caused chronic leaks for decades.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, apparently unfazed by the extended detour, used Trump's pool remarks as a springboard to discuss the Iran war — drawing a direct line between pool tiles and nuclear deterrence.

"Your efforts on the reflecting pool are actually a great segue," Hegseth said. "If you look at Washington and Lincoln, these are two men that faced monumental tasks and stood up in historic fashion... there's only one man over the course of both presidencies who has stood up and said they will never get a nuclear weapon."

Veteran 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi says CBS News has effectively pushed her out after she refused to alter her explosive report on the Trump administration's deportation of Venezuelan men to El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison — and stood her ground against network boss Bari Weiss.

Alfonsi's contract expired earlier this month, and CBS News executives have made no effort to contact her representatives at talent agency UTA to negotiate a renewal, according to Variety. Her producers have been reassigned. She remains an at-will CBS employee and will continue to be paid, but she can no longer do the work of a working correspondent.

"I think it was a deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize accurate reporting," Alfonsi told the New York Times.

The clash with Weiss, CBS News's controversial editor in chief, erupted in December when Weiss pulled the "Inside CECOT" segment hours before it was set to air, saying it needed comment from a Trump administration official — even though Alfonsi's team had already invited the White House, DHS, and State Department to participate. All declined.

In an internal memo, Alfonsi warned that making government participation a condition of airing a story would hand the administration a "kill switch" over 60 Minutes' journalism. The segment finally aired in January, but in a low-viewership slot opposite the NFL playoffs.

Weiss arrived at CBS after Paramount paid Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, a move widely seen as a concession to secure FCC approval of Skydance's $8 billion takeover of the network.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee spent months calling Ken Paxton corrupt, adulterous, and incompetent. Then he won — and the receipts started disappearing.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton defeated incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in a Republican Senate runoff Tuesday, making Cornyn the first Republican senator from Texas to lose his party's nomination for reelection. Within hours, the NRSC was quietly deleting its own ads and press releases attacking the man it will now be expected to elect.

Danny Dabbs, Senate director at American Bridge 21st Century, was first to flag the purge. "NRSC is also actively scrubbing their website on Ken Paxton releases," he posted on X. "So embarrassing." He later confirmed the links were "all leading to 404s."

But the NRSC couldn't outrun the Internet Archive. A cached version of the committee's July 2025 statement on Paxton's divorce — still accessible online — shows NRSC Communications Director Joanna Rodriguez declaring: "What Ken Paxton has put his family through is truly repulsive and disgusting. No one should have to endure what Angela Paxton has, and we pray for her as she chooses to stand up for herself and her family during this difficult time."

Screenshots captured before the scrub show the NRSC had published at least eight ads and press releases targeting Paxton, including ones headlined "Ken Paxton's Lies and Incompetence Keep Piling Up," "Ken Paxton Caught Using Taxpayer Dollars to Buy Hotel Rooms for Donors," and "Texas Deserves Better than Ken Paxton." All now return 404 errors.

Paxton will face Democratic state Rep. James Talarico in the general election in a race expected to be one of the most expensive in the nation. He captured 63.4% of nearly 903,000 votes.

Paxton was impeached on bribery and corruption charges in 2023 by a GOP-controlled state House; the state Senate acquitted him. His wife filed for divorce last year on what she described as "biblical grounds."