Matthew Chapman

President Donald Trump has put up multiple excuses for not being able to attend his eldest son Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding in the Bahamas — and the explanation he settled on was that it is "not good timing" with all his responsibilities and with Memorial Day coming up.

But according to an analysis by The Daily Beast, Trump has taken time to golf extensively during similarly busy and high-stakes moments of his presidency.

"That claim did not align with the president’s initial public schedule for the weekend, which said he planned to travel to his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey. However, Axios reported later on Friday that Trump will now stay in Washington after scrambling to fix the schedule," said the report. "Staying in Washington is inconsistent with how Trump has spent many of his weekends this spring, during which he has frequently jetted out of town despite the war."

This downtime, the report continued, "includes the weekends beginning March 7, March 13, March 21, March 28, April 24, and May 2. He was in China for a state visit in mid-May, but he headed for his Virginia golf club upon returning to Washington. He even skipped a 'Rededicate 250' faith event on the National Mall that same weekend for a day at the golf club—though he appeared at the event virtually."

All told, according to the report, Trump has taken golf trips 14 times just since the Iran war started.

A recent Page Six report indicated Trump Jr. and his fiancée, model Bettina Anderson, are in a "hurry to get hitched."

President Donald Trump is dragging the Republican Party down at a moment when it could cost them everything, the conservative-leaning Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote in an analysis published on Friday evening.

"Republicans don’t want to say this publicly, but privately they do," wrote the board, an increasingly frequent critic of the president's policies despite sharing many of his political beliefs. "President Trump’s personal political obsessions are hurting his Presidency, harming the chances for further policy gains the rest of this year, and putting control of the House and Senate in jeopardy."

GOP lawmakers' inability to pass Trump's Homeland Security funding bill, while also turning up the heat against his "Anti-Weaponization Fund" to pay out $1.776 billion to his political allies, is beginning to make the cracks show, the board wrote. Trump's other fixation on getting White House ballroom funding passed has similarly ground the DHS budget bill process to a halt, and the ongoing war powers votes Democrats are forcing against his action in Iran are starting to divide the party as well.

But the real catalyst, the board wrote, is Trump working to unseat two Republican incumbent senators.

"First he helped defeat Lousiana's (sic) Bill Cassidy in a primary, and this week he endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over Sen. John Cornyn," wrote the board. "Mr. Trump’s motives in both cases were largely personal — he wanted revenge against Mr. Cassidy for thinking his behavior on Jan. 6, 2001 (sic), was an impeachable offense, and Mr. Cornyn didn’t endorse him for President with enough alacrity to suit his loyalty test."

Through all of this, the board wrote, Trump "seems incapable of rising above, even as voters care much more about the economy and prices and his job approval falls to new lows."

"Mr. Trump’s Presidency will be all but over — except for impeachment 3.0 — if the GOP loses control of Congress in November," the board concluded. "If he wants to accomplish more legislatively, he has only a few months to do it. Does he want his remaining legacy to be a ballroom, an Arc de Trump, and payoffs for his friends from a fund that Republicans would denounce if a Democratic President tried it?"

A judge has dismissed Donald Trump biographer Michael Wolff's lawsuit against first lady Melania Trump, accusing him of employing "gamesmanship" and "forum-shopping" tactics.

According to TMZ, "Wolff — the longtime Trump biographer behind books like 'Fire and Fury' — sued after Melania's lawyers threatened him with a $1 Billion defamation lawsuit tied to comments he made linking her to late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein."

However, in a scathing opinion, New York-based U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, herself a Trump appointee, accused Wolff of trying to go around the standard legal process by pre-emptively suing Melania rather than defend himself against a suit from her.

"While Plaintiff and the First Lady have a real dispute, they must litigate it according to the same procedures as everyone else," wrote Vyskocil. "Plaintiff asks for a declaration that, if the First Lady sues him, he deserves to win. That is not how the federal courts work."

"Whether or not to entertain a declaratory judgment action is a matter of discretion left to the Court," she wrote later in the opinion. "The Court declines to entertain this one. To do otherwise would be to reward Plaintiff for his gamesmanship, perverting the process by which speech-tort claims are ordinarily resolved. If and when the First Lady sues Plaintiff for defamation, he may raise his defenses and counterclaims in that suit. Indeed, by his own telling, she has already sued him in Florida, under Florida law. He may not short-circuit that process by preemptively litigating his defenses and counterclaims here, under New York law."

Wolff is a figure notorious for making explosive claims about deep inside knowledge within the Trump White House.

Trump biographer Tim O'Brien made clear on MS NOW Friday that he doesn't remotely buy the Trump administration's excuse for the recent series of suspiciously timed stock trades coming from within the White House that profited off major government decisions before they happened.

"Tim, let's start there," said anchor Antonia Hylton, quoting a statement from the White House: "'Neither President Trump, his family, nor the Trump Organization plays any role in selecting, directing, or approving specific investments.' So end of story. No more questions needed, right?"

O'Brien noted that even accepting that claim, the "curious reality" remains that "while those trades were being made, there were policy decisions coming out of Washington and the White House that directly affected the profitability and the prospects of the companies whose stocks the Trump family was trading."

For example, he noted, massive trading around oil happened before the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, and before the invasion of Iran, "which all hinged on people having access to information from the Trump White House." Vice President JD Vance, he noted, blew off questioning on this when he "said, come on, do you think Donald Trump sits ... in the White House with a computer and is just trading stocks thousands of trades a day? He probably isn't. That's what he pays other people to do."

"He's on Truth Social," said Hylton.

"He's on Truth Social," agreed O'Brien. "And often he's tweeting things that affect the value of the stocks he's trading or his representatives are trading. So no one is saying that he's on Vanguard or any other app trading stocks for the fun of it and for his own, you know, financial gain. He's obviously doing it through advisers. But the timing of these trades, the stocks involved and the policy decisions happening in Washington had a confluence that makes it very suspect and should be examined."

The sad reality, however, he continued, is that any government officials who would investigate this, like the Securities and Exchange Commission, report to Trump and take orders from him — making a real reckoning almost impossible.

"I've been a business journalist for decades," said O'Brien. "I don't own individual stocks for the simple reason that I don't want someone to say, I edited a story or wrote a story about a business because I had a financial interest. My colleagues do the same thing. You know, if Barack Obama had picked up $5 on a street corner, the Republicans would have investigated him the next day. And why aren't they raising alarms about all of this stuff?"

The bottom line, O'Brien concluded, is that "from the Reflecting Pool to the jet to his trades, to his cryptocurrency dealings ... Donald Trump has made more money in two years in the White House over a two-year span than he ever did in decades as a real estate developer, because he's grifting off of his position in the White House."

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Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) has fired Brandon Phillips, a top staffer on his Senate campaign, after an explosive post from his "War Room" campaign account attacking an opposing staffer's wife for being sexually assaulted.

The staffing shakeup was reported by congressional reporter Juliegrace Brufke on Friday evening.

The offending post came in response to Luke Thompson, who advises rival GOP Senate candidate and former football coach Derek Dooley, who mocked the Collins campaign on X following new polling that showed their lead dropping after the runoff.

Collins' account posted "Matt Laurer's [sic] sloppy seconds chiming in to take an L" — a reference to the fact that Thompson's wife came forward to accuse former NBC News personality Matt Lauer of rape, and later tried to take her own life over the situation.

The post was deleted — but not before it went viral and generated widespread outrage.

Collins took to X himself to apologize for the situation.

"Earlier today, a campaign advisor sent out a despicable and unauthorized twitter comment using a Team Collins campaign account," wrote Collins. "The statement was made without my knowledge or approval and in no way represents or reflects my values or the values of this campaign. I want to apologize for this offensive tweet. I have made staffing changes to ensure this type of behavior never happens again."

Collins and Dooley are currently vying for President Donald Trump's endorsement as they seek the GOP nomination to take on Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff.

MS NOW anchor Chris Hayes opened up on a podcast with Public Notice's Thor Benson this week about his concerns about artificial intelligence — and the way it could shape not just the labor market, but politics going forward.

It's a topic that scares him, he confessed to Benson, because of the unnerving way it has been "shoved down our throats" — like how even Zoom conferencing is asking whether he wants to use AI, when he "just want[s] to talk to my team."

"But at the same time, this does seem to be a pretty important development in the general lay of the land of American society, economics, and politics. I needed to get out of this defensive crouch and try to learn. That’s really the impetus, and what I’ve discovered is that a lot of people feel the same way," said Hayes. "Every discussion of this makes me want to run away from it. But I do feel like I should get my arms around it a little bit, because clearly it’s coming for us."

He worries a lot about AI displacing jobs, he told Benson, as well as the potential for it to be used in warfare. But "the information aspect, which I don’t think we’ve even really started to touch, is front of mind for me."

A key moment illustrating that, Hayes argued, is when tech billionaire Elon Musk tinkered with his Grok model to be obsessed with South Africa "white genocide" conspiracy theories, and the model started ramming that into every answer to every prompt.

"In the same way that a generation of people would go to Google if they were wondering who’s running for office or something like that, now people will ask Anthropic or ChatGPT or Gemini," said Hayes. He finds it "insane to think about" the "power that comes from putting a finger on the scale of those models to manipulate the political information people consume."

All of this is coming as widespread, grassroots opposition to AI and the infrastructure to support it, like data centers, flares up around the country, to the horror of the tech industry, which is finding its expansion plans resisted at every juncture.

A protege of longtime Donald Trump ally and controversial GOP campaign strategist Roger Stone has been arrested on drug possession charges.

Jacob Engels, 34, is a notorious figure with ties to the far-right Proud Boys group.

The arrest was flagged by Peter Schorsch of Florida Politics, who posted to X on Friday, "Blogger, @RogerJStoneJr protege @JacobEngels (although even Roger hasn't been able to put his pet on a leash lately as Engels attacks @SusieWiles47, etc.) was arrested this week in Wisconsin for meth possession."

The case summary, posted on the Wisconsin court system website, shows Engels charged with felony possession of methamphetamine, as well as several misdemeanors, including resisting an officer, disorderly conduct, and possession of drug paraphernalia and illegally obtained prescriptions.

Engels has found himself in trouble with the law before. In 2023, he was held in contempt of court in Florida, but for months was a fugitive from the order, and even wrote a taunting email to the judge proclaiming he runs a "kangaroo court."

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has jumped into a brewing crisis in Maricopa County over how ballots are to be collected, kicked off by the county's MAGA-aligned recorder jumping to push a new restriction.

The recorder, Justin Heap, put the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors on notice not to install any of the 12 new ballot drop boxes they had approved for sites around the county, and warned that any election workers in the state who handle ballots deposited at "unauthorized" drop boxes will face criminal penalties.

Mayes, a Democrat, is stepping in, sending a letter to the legal counsel for Heap and two members of the Board of Supervisors, clarifying this is not how it works.

"As the chief legal officer of Arizona and the officer entrusted with enforcing the criminal provisions of Title 16 for the upcoming primary and general elections, I consider it my duty to speak here," wrote Mayes. "By voting to designate drop box locations, Board members did not become criminals. And, by collecting ballots at these drop box locations, Board employees would not become criminals."

On the contrary, she continued, "the Board was following established practice. Every two years, Arizona's Secretary of State issues an Elections Procedures Manual with rules governing 'early voting and voting,' as well as 'collecting, counting, tabulating, and storing ballots' and other subjects. A.R.S. § 16-452."

"Recorder Heap's counsel claims that the rule conflicts with a statute that authorizes Recorder Heap to establish 'early voting locations,'" wrote Mayes. "But, as a matter of common sense, a drop box is not an early voting location. It is simply a place to deposit a voted and sealed early ballot packet. One cannot obtain a ballot and fill it out at a drop box like one can at an early voting location. Indeed, if Recorder Heap's counsel were correct, every mailbox in the state would be an early voting location, and every mail carrier could be accused of illegally harvesting ballots."

Mayes concluded the letter by warning Heap not to continue making "unfounded threats of criminal liability" against county officials and election workers.

Rep. Mike Collins' (R-GA) Senate campaign deleted a shocking attack posted Friday after invoking former NBC anchor Matt Lauer to mock an adviser to his runoff rival — a reference critics say weaponized one of the most painful chapters of the adviser's wife's life.

Luke Thompson, a strategist for the PAC of Collins' runoff rival Derek Dooley, reposted new polling information on X, showing a significant tightening of the race, with Collins leading Dooley 46-41.

"48 hours later and the Collins lead has cut in half," said Thompson. "Dooley beats [Democratic Sen. Jon] Ossoff. Collins can't. Not hard to understand."

In a now-deleted post, the Mike Collins War Room campaign account replied, "Matt Laurer's [sic] sloppy seconds chiming in to take an L."

The post, noted Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Greg Bluestein, is a reference to the fact that Thompson's wife accused Lauer of sexually assaulting her and then tried to take her own life. Lauer went on to be forced out of the network after a long list of women came forward detailing his alleged predatory behavior.

The Georgia GOP Senate primary has faced mounting tension. Dooley, a former football coach, has the endorsement of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, but Trump was reportedly unhappy that Kemp made the move without consulting him. Trump is expected to endorse Collins, who has cast himself as a die-hard foot soldier for the president and the MAGA movement.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was confronted by reporters about President Donald Trump's planned $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" — and his reaction was to sprint away from the questioners.

"Governor, what do you think of the Weaponization Fund, the DOJ fund? Could you comment on that?" asked the reporter, as DeSantis broke into a run up the stairs and made for the exit onto the street.

The fund was created as a so-called "settlement" of Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS for failing to prevent the leak of his tax information — a suit that raised alarm bells since he was effectively on both sides of the case.

Since the fund has been announced, and Jan. 6 rioters have expressed interest in applying for it, a number of Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill have condemned it, and there is even debate over including provisions in the GOP reconciliation bill that would limit who could be paid out under the fund.

The video of DeSantis, posted to X on Friday afternoon, was met with laughter and scorn from commenters on social media.

"He LITERALLY can’t run faster away," wrote former Florida Agriculture Secretary and state Democratic Party chair, Nikki Fried.

"Governor Drive-ins and Diners puts a hurting on those three or four stairs," wrote Florida Politics editor Peter Schorsch.

"To be a Trump loyalist is to be a coward & refuse to tell the truth or stick to the rule of law," wrote economist and author Anders Åslund.

An MS NOW panel on Thursday evening was floored by the meltdown of Republicans on Capitol Hill, as Trump alienated them with his "Anti-Weaponization Fund" and demanded politically toxic votes from them.

Anchor Chris Hayes began by turning to Rolling Stone reporter Nikki McCann Ramirez. "There's ... this sense, I mean, today it was, again, I say the one poll ... 31% approval."

The current mindset of Trump, Hayes argued, is one of two things. "Either he's term-limited out, in which case, like he doesn't care. What does he care? He wants to build his arch. He wants his, like, ballroom. He wants to make his money. Or the way he's going to stay in power is through extrademocratic and extraconstitutional means. In either case, he doesn't care about the median voter ... but the people that do have to care about the median voter are the people that sit in Capitol Hill, as we saw them melting down."

"No, no, absolutely," agreed Ramirez. "And I think there was the dual insult of the request for funding for the ballroom. And then on top of that, the White House is just demanding that they authorize almost $2 billion in spending—"

"Didn't even demand they authorize, just authorized, just to be clear!" cut in Hayes.

"You are correct. Yes," said Ramirez. "But for people who tried to kill them, yes. And just ask them to rubber-stamp it. And I think you saw even in John Thune's face, he is so over it. He is done with this."

Civil rights leader Maya Wiley weighed in at this point.

"Look, anytime you want to win a race or you want your party to win a race, what are you running on?" she said. "What are you actually going to do for people? None of this is talking about what anybody is actually saying their problem is."

"I mean, if you're pulling out people who have extremist views and, and have said really hateful things or align themselves with hate, and you're using that to attack a civil rights organization ... Southern Poverty Law Center. A flimsy criminal indictment," said Wiley. "But you're using your time to at the same time that this slush fund to protect people like the Proud Boys who orchestrated and incited intentionally violence on our Capitol to prevent voters votes from counting. This is where you're going to put money?"

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Texas Republicans are facing an unprecedented challenge this year — with new polling giving them a flashing warning sign about one of the state's most important demographics.

According to Newsweek, "President Donald Trump’s inroads with Latino voters, a voting bloc that historically leaned toward Democrats, helped carry him to victory in the 2024 presidential race. But his support among those voters has slipped amid backlash to his economic and immigration policies, raising major red flags for Republicans approaching the midterms in states like Texas that have a sizable Latino population."

"The new poll from Texas Public Opinion Research found that Latino voters are backing Democrats by sizable margins in 2026," the report continued. "State Representative James Talarico comfortably leads among Latino voters in the Senate race, according to the poll ... Talarico led Cornyn by 32 points among Latino voters, with 57 percent support to the senator’s 25 percent. Talarico received 57 percent against Paxton as well, though the attorney general’s support stood at 30 percent, according to the poll."

Paxton is currently the heavy favorite to win the GOP Senate primary runoff, after Trump finally broke his silence on the race and gave Paxton his endorsement.

Hispanic voters make up a majority of Texas's population. Texas is one of the only so-called "majority-minority" states that consistently backs Republicans in statewide elections, but Democrats have come within single digits in multiple recent cycles.

Trump managed to win Texas by a fairly comfortable margin in 2024; however, there are signs that many of his supporters from that election are turning on him.

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) broke with a number of his Republican congressional colleagues to enthusiastically endorse President Donald Trump's "Anti-Weaponization Fund" to pay out $1.776 billion to his allies who believe they were unfairly persecuted by the government — but when a reporter asked him about whether January 6 rioters would be eligible, things went off the rails.

When asked about "people who assaulted police," Norman, who is currently running for governor of South Carolina, replied, "Look, January 6 is an issue that was made up in the first place."

"People were convicted of assaulting police," the reporter said.

"Well, I know," he said. "That was a staged thing from day one."

"What about it was staged?" asked the reporter.

"Well, you had police officers let people in the building," said Norman. "We had people who have not been prosecuted, Ray, I forget his name. There's no excuse for that."

"Your Republican colleagues ran for their lives and barricaded themselves in their chamber. Do you think they were acting?" said the reporter.

"No, there was a riot there, but it was a self-made riot by the members who hate Trump. It was made up," said Norman.

Angry demonstrators in Greenland converged on a newly-built U.S. consulate on Thursday to protest the activities of President Donald Trump's special envoy to the island, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry.

According to The Hill, "Hundreds of Greenlanders took to the streets Thursday to protest the opening of the U.S. Consulate, chanting that the Americans must 'go home.' Protesters waved Greenlandic flags and held signs that read 'USA Asu,' or Stop USA,” The Guardian reported. Others shouted 'Greenland belongs to Greenlanders' outside the Greenlandic Parliament."

Greenland is a territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, and Danish officials had their own frosty reception, per the report.

"Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and other politicians declined invitations to attend the consulate’s opening," said the report. "'We haven’t made a decision in principle, but I won’t participate,' Nielsen told the Greenlandic daily Sermitsiaq, according to Reuters."

Trump has for years fantasized about the United States annexing or purchasing Greenland, something neither Denmark nor Greenland has consented to. Greenland has a strategic military purpose for the United States, being a staging ground for some critical operations in the far north, but the United States already has access to the island for that purpose because Denmark is a NATO ally.

This comes after a stunt in which Landry attempted to pass out MAGA hats to Greenlandic kids — and got an extremely negative reaction.

President Donald Trump's new taxpayer-funded "Anti-Weaponization Fund" to pay out allies who claim to have been victims of "lawfare" horrified GOP pundit Erick Erickson, who tore into Trump on Thursday for losing focus on issues that matter — and trying to hold his majorities in November.

"You’re not going to like it, but here’s the harsh truth: Trump would rather use taxpayer money to relitigate the 2020 election and January 6th through an 'anti-weaponization' fund than focus on winning the midterms," Erickson posted to X, along with a clip of him elaborating more on the issue.

"If you haven't heard, the President of the United States has got the Justice Department to agree to a multi-billion dollar fund to reimburse people who they claim were victims of government weaponization," said Erickson. "This is a terrible idea."

"No one deserves my taxpayer dollars because the government was not nice to them," he said. "The government is not nice to people all the time. And you know what, there are juries out there that the government is abusive to you, you can file suit and if the government is abusive to you, you tend to win. Juries don't like an abusive government. The idea that there needs to be some 'anti-weaponization fund' — I'm sorry, y'all, I am morally opposed. I am philosophically opposed, I am intellectually opposed. I do not want my taxpayer dollars being used to enrich the pockets of the president's friends."

"This is a gift for the Democrats," he continued. "They can just campaign on the images of people breaking the windows and smashing the doors to get into the Capitol and say, the president is rewarding these people with a billion dollars ... that's going to sell to the American public. People are already frustrated with the President of the United States. This anti-weaponization fund is a giant pot of corruptible money."