Erik De La Garza

Frustration with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is intensifying among some Democrats, with conversations quietly underway about whether he should step aside after the midterm elections, according to an exclusive Wall Street Journal report.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) told progressive activists during a February dinner that lawmakers had been conducting informal vote counts to gauge whether enough support existed to remove the New York Democrat from his leadership post, the Journal reported Friday.

Murphy told the outlet he does not recall referencing any specific tally and maintains Schumer still has the backing of the caucus. “But the disclosure stood out nonetheless, because it revealed that frustration inside the Senate had reached a high enough level that some Democrats were actively contemplating how to oust Schumer,” the report said.

Murphy is among a group of Democratic senators – including Massachusetts ' Elizabeth Warren and Minnesota's Tina Smith – who have grown dissatisfied with Schumer’s negotiating style and his approach to candidate strategy ahead of November’s elections. Some progressive lawmakers – dubbed “Fight Club” – have even discussed countering Schumer-backed candidates in key races.

Schumer dismissed the criticism, saying scrutiny “goes with the territory” of leadership and insisting his support remains “deep and strong.” Allies also say he retains enough backing to remain minority leader.

Still, some Democrats privately view the 75-year-old top Senate Democrat as an obstacle to change, “who is slowing the party’s drive to stand up to President Trump and thwarting a new generation of leadership from rising.”

Among the names quietly circulating as possible replacements when Schumer does step aside are Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), and Brian Schatz (D-HI), who the Journal reported is viewed as Schumer’s preferred pick.

President Donald Trump’s influential MAGA ally Mike Davis is facing new scrutiny after allegedly threatening to stop a Justice Department official during negotiations over a major tech merger, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation.

Gail Slater, then head of the DOJ’s antitrust division, was reviewing Hewlett-Packard Enterprise’s $14 billion bid to acquire rival Juniper Networks when Davis – serving as outside counsel for HPE – reportedly warned her, “If you don’t approve this settlement, I will destroy you. I will destroy your job at the DOJ,” according to sworn testimony from her former deputy, Roger Alford, reviewed by the Journal.

Slater later told colleagues the call from Davis – who had not only been her friend for years but also recommended her to Trump for the top job – had left her shaken.

“The fallout was swift,” the Journal reported Friday. “Within months, two of Slater’s deputies – including Alford – were pushed out of the Justice Department. By February, Slater was gone, too. A senior White House official said Davis played a role in her ouster.”

Davis denied making any threats. The MAGA lawyer called the allegation “utter bull” in an interview published Friday by the Journal and insisted personnel changes stemmed from what he described as “bogus” corruption claims against him.

But a Journal investigation found that Davis “pushed antitrust officials at the Justice Department to approve his deals – and he went over their heads when they wouldn’t comply.”

“Davis, despite having little experience practicing antitrust law, is one of the most visible practitioners of a change playing out across the division,” the Journal reported Friday.

HPE ultimately pursued settlement talks after the DOJ moved to block the deal, arguing the merger would reduce competition in corporate wireless networking.

The White House is facing sharp backlash after the U.S. Treasury authorized limited sales of Iranian oil already at sea – a move aimed at easing soaring energy prices as President Donald Trump’s war with Iran escalates.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the decision as a “narrowly tailored, short-term authorization permitting the sale of Iranian oil currently stranded at sea,” Bloomberg’s Javier Blas reported Friday.

The policy shift less than a month after the U.S. attacked Iran alongside Israel quickly drew outrage from political figures, national security analysts, and journalists.

“YOU HAVE GOT TO BE JOKING,” former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) told his social media followers. “We are lifting sanctions on IRAN. Tell me how this is going ‘as planned’ again please MAGA?”

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s official press account posted, “This is blood oil. Trump and Bessent have betrayed the American people and our soldiers.”

Matthew Miller, a former spokesperson at both the Department of Justice and State Department, wrote, “Unreal. The Trump administration is putting money directly in the hands of the regime currently shooting at American soldiers.”

Veteran foreign policy journalist Laura Rozen added in her own social media post: “We are in the upside down.”

Democratic strategist Mike Nellis argued that easing sanctions on a country “we’re actively at war with makes zero f-----g sense.”

“These people are clowns,” he added Friday.

Political scientist Norman Ornstein called the move “impossible to overstate how insane.” While MS NOW national security contributor Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired CIA official, told his social media followers that the “optics of this are pretty bad.”

“Defeating MAGA in November is mandatory if we are to save our country,” concluded retired NASA astronaut Terry Virts. We’ve never faced such a grave threat."

Legal commentators say Chief Justice John Roberts is pushing back against President Donald Trump after warning that criticism of judges can spiral into personal attacks.

Speaking this week at Rice University in Houston, Roberts suggested that criticism of court rulings can become problematic when it shifts “from a focus on legal analysis to personalities.”

“Their opinions are subject to criticism,” Roberts said of judges across the judiciary during the appearance on Tuesday. “But personally directed hostility is dangerous, and it’s got to stop.”

Analysts view the remarks from the conservative justice – who Trump has targeted, most recently for his ruling involving the president’s tariff policy – as a thinly veiled response to the MAGA leader.

“In one 48-hour period, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, the chief judge of the United States Supreme Court, and the Chief Judge of all things federal in the District of Columbia, all took on Donald Trump,” Michael Popok, a legal expert and host of the "Legal AF" podcast, said Friday.

“And John Roberts, it looks like he's had enough,” he added.

Attorney and legal analyst Karen Friedman Agnifilo said Roberts’ comments were notable but suggested a stronger response – and consequences – may be needed.

“It’s great that the chief justice is speaking up now,” she said. “But I think they have to be stronger and I think they really have to talk about how terrible this is…because it’s also eroding confidence and trust in the judiciary.”

Friedman Agnifilo added that Trump’s pattern of publicly targeting judges and their families has helped create what she described as a “dangerous" environment surrounding the courts.

Denmark’s military drew up contingency plans to destroy key airfields in Greenland if President Donald Trump made good on threats to seize the Arctic territory, according to a report Friday in The New York Times.

Citing two European officials familiar with the discussions, the outlet reported that Danish soldiers deployed to Greenland in January, equipped with explosives, live ammunition, and blood supplies as Trump’s rhetoric against the remote island escalated. The preparations were aimed at disabling runways and slowing any potential U.S. advances, the Times reported.

“The soldiers never actually did anything to the airfields,” according to the Times' report on Friday. “But Denmark’s consideration of such a scenario shows just how unnerved the Scandinavian country was in January as President Trump escalated threats to take over Greenland, a gigantic Arctic island that has been part of the Danish kingdom for more than 300 years.”

Denmark’s public broadcaster DR first reported details of the plans, revealing that the military exercise involving allies – including France, Germany, Britain, and Norway – was partly intended to signal unity against Trump’s threats.

The planning was not unusual given the stakes,

“Militaries will naturally think: ‘OK, what’s the worst that can happen?’” Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel, told the outlet. “So you start with the runways and you prepare for combat. Well, blood banks. Live ammunition. There you go,” he added.

Trump eventually softened his tone on Greenland and later invaded Iran alongside Israel, the Times pointed out. U.S. officials have said there were no active American war plans for the island.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper appeared stunned after reporting surfaced that the Trump administration official now leading federal disaster response has claimed he once involuntarily teleported to a Waffle House.

Gregg Phillips, the man President Donald Trump put in charge of overseeing FEMA disaster response, made the remarks on multiple podcasts, according to CNN’s KFILE.

“Teleporting is no fun,” Phillips said during a podcast appearance flagged by the network. “It’s no fun because you don’t really know what you’re doing.” The FEMA official also claimed his car was once lifted off the ground and carried roughly 40 miles before being dropped near a church.

“No, that's not an actor from a low-budget sci-fi movie talking about being teleported to a ditch,” an astonished Tapper told viewers Friday. “Those comments come from the man who’s now in charge of leading FEMA’s disaster recovery and response across the United States."

Reacting on air, Tapper raised concerns about the high-level appointment.

“So again, this individual is in charge of the disaster relief response for hundreds of millions of Americans – and he thinks he can teleport to a Waffle House in Rome, Georgia,” the CNN host added.

A FEMA spokesperson dismissed scrutiny of the remarks in a response to CNN, calling the reporting “so silly it’s barely worth acknowledging.”

A California jury found Friday that Elon Musk misled Twitter investors in the lead-up to his $44 billion acquisition of the social media company, potentially exposing him to billions in damages, according to multiple reports.

The verdict in the class-action case stems from claims that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO – who also served a controversial tenure as President Donald Trump’s DOGE head – made misleading statements during his 2022 effort to purchase Twitter. Musk later renamed the social media platform to X.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs said total damages could reach as much as $2.6 billion, CNBC reported Friday. Musk, however, was cleared of some fraud allegations, the outlet added.

“This is a great example of what you cannot do to the average investor -- people that have 401ks, kids, pension funds, teachers, firemen, nurses,” an attorney for the Twitter investors told CNBC outside a San Francisco courthouse. “That’s what this case was all about. This was not about Musk. It was about the whole operation.”

The lawsuit was originally filed in October 2022 after Musk completed the takeover at $54.20 per share.

A federal judge dealt a major blow to the Trump administration on Friday, ruling that Pentagon restrictions on journalists violated the Constitution.

U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman, a Bill Clinton appointee, granted summary judgment to The New York Times, finding that key portions of a Defense Department policy setting alternate Pentagon press credentials were “unlawful because they violate the First and Fifth Amendments to the United States Constitution.”

The policy stemmed from an October 2025 memorandum issued to senior Pentagon leaders, prompting the Times' lawsuit against the MAGA administration in December.

But Friedman, in a sharply worded opinion on Friday, stressed that public access to information is critical – especially during wartime.

“The court recognizes that national security must be protected, the security of our troops must be protected, and war plans must be protected,” he wrote in the four-page ruling. “But especially in light of the country’s recent incursion into Venezuela and its ongoing war with Iran, it is more important than ever that the public have access to information from a variety of perspectives about what its government is doing.”

The judge added that such transparency allows the public to support – or protest – government policies, “and decide based on a full, complete, and open information who they are going to vote for in the next election.”

Friedman’s ruling also ordered the immediate reinstatement of credentials for multiple Times reporters.

The White House stepped in Friday to stop late-night television host Bill Maher from receiving a prestigious humor award at the Kennedy Center shortly after news of the honor was reported, according to The Atlantic.

Earlier Friday, the outlet reported that Maher – a frequent critic of President Donald Trump – had been selected to receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

But Atlantic staff writer Michael Scherer told his followers on social media, “After this story was published, the White House called the Kennedy Center and made clear that Maher would not receive the prize.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also disputed the report in a statement to the magazine. “This is fake news. Bill Maher will NOT be getting this award.”

The move to block Maher’s award comes amid Trump’s sweeping changes at the storied Washington, D.C. institution. The president took over the Kennedy Center last February by replacing its trustees with loyalists who went on to name Trump as its chair.

The MAGA-fied board also rebranded the venue as the Trump-Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Trump and Maher have sparred in the past, including a recent social media barrage by Trump targeting the HBO host. In a span of roughly 15 minutes on March 6, the president repeatedly posted about Maher, dismissing the comedian as a “joke” and a “total waste of time.”

U.S. stocks sank Friday as President Donald Trump’s escalating war with Iran rattled global financial markets and sparked concerns that the market downturn may not yet be over, according to a new CNN report.

The Russell 2000 – an index of smaller companies seen as more sensitive to interest rates – fell 2.7% and moved in “correction territory,” a Wall Street term that describes when an index drops 10% or more from its most recent peak.

“The stock market remains in negative territory for the year, and has made new 2026 lows this week, which suggests that the market may not have yet found its bottom,” David Laut, chief investment officer at Kerux Financial, told CNN.

Major indexes also declined. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 444 points, or 0.96%, while the S&P 500 dropped 1.51% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq slumped 2.01%, briefly dipping into correction territory during trading.

“The war with Iran is sending energy prices soaring, raising concerns about inflation and complicating the outlook for central banks across the globe,” CNN reported Friday. “Uncertainty about the duration of the conflict, and the prospect of higher-for-longer interest rates to combat inflation, are dimming the outlook for stocks.”

Meanwhile, U.S. Treasury yields jumped to their highest level since July, and gold fell to its worst week since 1983, the report said.

Laut added in an email to CNN that the markets are still “in the process of sorting out and pricing in the duration of the Middle East conflict and oil price outlook.”

President Donald Trump and some of his closest advisers were caught off guard by the scope of Iran’s military response to U.S. strikes, while key Gulf allies have privately expressed anger at the White House’s decision to escalate the conflict, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

The publication reported Friday that “the president and some aides were surprised at the breadth and scope of Iran’s retaliation,” which included missile and drone launches targeting regional countries from Azerbaijan to Oman, according to people familiar with the matter.”

The response has raised fears of a wider regional conflict and complicated the administration’s efforts to frame the operation as a success, the Journal said. Trump has publicly suggested the mission was largely accomplished, telling supporters this week: “We’ve won.”

Gulf allies have reacted sharply behind closed doors.

“Allies in the Gulf are privately furious with the U.S., according to diplomats and others familiar with the matter,” the Journal reported Friday. “They blame the Trump administration for triggering a war that put them in the crosshairs and pierced their image of a luxurious, business-friendly locale free of the region’s chaos.”

Trump’s war in Iran has also left Americans in the region vulnerable. The State Department urged citizens to depart or shelter in place only after fighting had intensified, with commercial airspace already shutting down in parts of the Middle East.

Analysts say Trump now faces difficult choices between seeking an exit or risking deeper instability, according to the Journal.

"U.S. officials, however, say privately there are no plans to withdraw forces - more Marines and warships are headed to the region - and some expected the fighting to last weeks or longer," the report said.

President Donald Trump was warned before launching military action against Iran that Tehran could try to shut down the vital Strait of Hormuz – a move now helping drive up oil prices and fuel economic fears.

That’s according to a new Wall Street Journal report, which revealed Friday that Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine told Trump in multiple briefings that U.S. officials long believed Iran would deploy mines, drones, and missiles to close the critical shipping lane.

Trump acknowledged the risk, according to people familiar with the internal discussions, but proceeded anyway with what the Journal described as “the most consequential foreign-policy decision of his two presidencies.”

“He told his team that Tehran would likely capitulate before closing the strait – and even if Iran tried, the U.S. military could handle it,” the publication said.

But two weeks into the conflict, Iran has instead targeted cargo ships and blocked tankers, contributing to a surge in oil prices that have stoked economic fears across the U.S.

Administration officials said Trump was confident U.S. forces could deliver a swift victory and had discussed contingency plans such as escorting commercial vessels through the strait.

“With the strait nearly closed, the Pentagon is now concerned that any American warships escorting tankers through the strait would be targets unless the U.S. destroys Iranian vessels and coastal defense weapons, including drones and missiles,” according to the Journal’s report on Friday.

The possibility of the closure of the critical passageway was one of a handful of scenarios Trump’s top general and other advisers outlined for the president in the run-up to the war.

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said President Donald Trump’s recent moves in Iran “really angers” her when confronted on CNN about her past praise for him.

The moment unfolded during Greene’s appearance on “The Source” when host Kaitlan Collins asked her whether Trump still deserved a Nobel Peace Prize amid escalating tensions abroad. The former MAGA lawmaker acknowledged she once believed he was worthy of the international honor.

“At one time, when he wanted to be the president of peace, he wanted to end wars and constantly talked about no more foreign wars… of course, I thought he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize,” Greene said Friday. “But do I think he deserves it now? No. Absolutely not.”

Greene went on to frame her criticism in generational terms, arguing that younger Americans are weary of foreign wars.

“It really angers me, Kaitlan, because I feel like they're ruining it for the rest of us,” she said, referring to older leaders she called “baby boomers that are… just clinging to power.”

Greene warned that continued military engagement overseas could widen the national debt and threaten future Social Security payments, adding that younger generations “don’t want war with the world.”

“We want peace,” she said. “We desperately want peace between all of our nations.” She then took another shot at Trump.

“I'm praying for the administration to stop the insanity,” Greene said. The exchange comes as Trump announced that he had ordered “one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East.”

The World Anti-Doping Agency is considering a rule change that could attempt to bar President Donald Trump and other top U.S. officials from attending the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics over a long-running dispute involving unpaid American dues.

The Associated Press reported Friday that the proposal is on the agenda for next week’s executive committee meeting and stems from years of tension after the U.S. government withheld funding in protest of the agency’s handling of a string of high-profile doping cases, including one involving Chinese swimmers.

“The Associated Press learned of the agenda item through correspondence it obtained between WADA and European officials involved in the agency's decision-making,” according to the news agency’s report. “Two others with knowledge of the agenda confirmed the existence of the rules proposal to AP; they were not authorized to speak publicly about the agenda, which has not been released publicly.”

But WADA spokesperson James Fitzgerald said “there is nothing new here,” noting similar discussions about governments withholding funding have been underway since 2020, AP said.

If adopted, the rule could also have implications for other international events hosted by the U.S., such as this summer’s World Cup. A draft proposal would apply restrictions to officials from governments that fail to pay dues by a set deadline.

“The rule, if passed, would figure to be mostly symbolic, given the limits an international sports federation could have on the president of a country attending an event inside his own borders,” according to AP.

Sarah Carter, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said the MAGA administration will continue “to stand firm in our demand for accountability and transparency from WADA to ensure fair competition in sport.”

President Donald Trump escalated his rhetoric against Iran on Friday, claiming the country had plans to dominate the Middle East shortly after announcing a major U.S. military strike.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote that “Iran had plans of taking over the entire Middle East, and completely obliterating Israel.”

“JUST LIKE IRAN ITSELF, THOSE PLANS ARE NOW DEAD!” the president added.

Trump’s ominous remarks came less than an hour after he announced that he had ordered “one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East."

According to Trump’s earlier post, the operation “totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island.”