Matthew Chapman

A fight is taking shape in the House for control of a powerful committee chairmanship — with a militant MAGA lawmaker going against a vice chair who faces one of the toughest re-election battles of his life.

According to Meredith Lee Hill of Politico, Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) "announce[d] his bid to chair the House Armed Services Committee next Congress," which puts him in conflict with Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA), who currently serves as vice chair.

Wittman has rarely faced serious competition in his district, but a tide of voter anger in Virginia has put him in a tough race — even after Democrats' efforts to redraw his seat were turned back for now by the state Supreme Court.

Further complicating the issue for Republicans, Hill noted, is the fact that "Jackson here also assumes there will be a GOP majority next year."

The Armed Services Committee is currently chaired by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), not to be confused with the former congressman of the same name currently running for U.S. Senate in Michigan.

Jackson, a former U.S. Navy rear admiral who previously served as a White House physician under multiple presidents, is a hard-right ally of President Donald Trump. He was Trump's initial pick to replace disgraced Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin in 2018, but withdrew his name after allegations surfaced of heavy drinking on the job and handing out pills to government employees.

A far-right film enthusiastically promoted by tech tycoon Elon Musk has white supremacists jumping for joy — as they see the film as a powerful tool to radicalize and recruit new people to the cause.

The movie, "Citizen Vigilante," was directed by controversial German filmmaker Uwe Boll and stars Armie Hammer, who plays a former U.S. soldier named Sanders.

Per Wired, in the film, Sanders "inherited his father’s real estate empire in an unnamed European country," and "angered by what he sees as a Muslim takeover of the continent, Sanders embarks on an extrajudicial killing spree of migrants, youths, and judges he views as complicit." He is motivated further as he gains a following for his cause on social media and is widely praised for his lethal brand of justice.

Even Hammer himself has disavowed the film after starring in it, condemning the finished product as "disgusting" and "hateful."

Boll, for his part, insists he has nothing against Islam, but has added in an interview with Piers Morgan that Muslims “will take over in around 30 years and then will start killing everybody who is not a convert to Islam.” He also dismisses his star actor's criticism, pointing out that Hammer promoted the film in interviews.

According to the report, white supremacists are hailing the film as a way to persuade "normies" to join them.

"Like many of Boll’s other works it was set to be mostly ignored, until Elon Musk, who has spent weeks endorsing it, intervened," said the report.

Musk, who recently became a trillionaire after the IPO of SpaceX, "shared the entire film on X for 48 hours where it was viewed millions of times," and also shared a post that praised the scene where Sanders "murders an entire family of Syrian refugees" when their son commits sexual violence against a 14-year-old girl.

Musk, who heavily backed President Donald Trump's return to office, has grown radicalized by far-right spaces in recent years. His platform has often been a vector for extremism, and his Grok AI model has spread white nationalist conspiracy theories.

House Republicans have been blocked from doing business for days as a renegade group of far-right lawmakers refuses to back a House rules package that will allow legislation to advance — and there are no signs the standoff is cooling down, Politico reported on Monday.

One of the main ongoing crusaders leading the charge is Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), who has demanded action in the Senate on President Donald Trump's package of voting restrictions known as the SAVE America Act. Republicans don't have the votes in the Senate to either get around a Democratic filibuster or change Senate rules to do so.

"Before the July 4 holiday break, she blocked votes on the annual defense policy bill in protest, frustrating GOP colleagues are now just wondering if she can be persuaded to stand down," the outlet wrote. Rep. Craig Goldman (R-TX) remarked, “The hope is that when we come back, we start moving legislation again" — but so far, Politico noted, "It's not looking good."

Luna is not alone in her revolt.

A number of other lawmakers, per the reporting, are furious that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is not following through on a supposed "handshake agreement" to allow new anti-immigrant legislation through.

According to the report, GOP leaders in Congress "have asked the White House for help leaning on the Republican holdouts." Vice President JD Vance, who has had his hands full heading up Trump's supposed anti-fraud task force, "is set to visit a Tuesday conference meeting and encourage Republicans to reopen the floor and advance Trump’s agenda."

The upshot is that House Republicans still don't know what, if anything, is going to break the impasse — and there is even more coming that could be derailed by the situation.

"Also in a state of paralysis is the yearly appropriations process as a Sept. 30 funding deadline approaches," said the report, which also noted that even without the House woes, this process is struggling in the Senate, "where a partisan stalemate over spending levels had left the Appropriations Committee unable to act."

President Donald Trump is quietly backing off an aggressive trade posture against Canada, which some were suspicious was an under-the-table handout to major GOP donors.

According to Politico, "Canada’s Housing and Infrastructure Department and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced Friday" that the Gordie Howe International Bridge, a new suspension bridge connecting Detroit to Windsor, Ontario, "will open July 27. A statement from the Canadian government said the agreement was made 'with the support of the United States Government.'"

The bridge has sat closed for months after its completion, because President Donald Trump refused to open it, ostensibly in protest of Canadian trade practices unfair to the United States.

"Trump demanded at the time that the U.S. be given at least half ownership of the bridge, which has been under construction since 2018 and funded by a corporation owned by the Canadian government," said Politico — a contrast to the original agreement, under which "the U.S. and Canada would split toll revenue from the bridge 50/50 after Canada had recouped the amount it spent financing the project."

However, some political observers pointed out that the Gordie Howe Bridge stands to compete with the Ambassador Bridge, a privately owned bridge across the Detroit River under the control of a powerful family of trucking magnates that contributed to Trump's super PAC.

Whitmer cheered the development, saying in a statement, “This bridge is a testament to the enduring partnership between Michigan and Canada and what we can get done when we think big and bet on our shared future together. Thank you to our allies in Canada and to the Michiganders who advocated for years to get this done. Let’s keep working together to build a bright future for Michigan and Canada.”

FBI Director Kash Patel has reportedly been summoned to the White House following outcry over his behavior, MS NOW reported Friday, though the White House is denying core parts of the reporting.

According to the report, Patel "was set to travel to Chicago in the Bureau's jet to see his girlfriend perform at a music festival when he was called in" and had plans to spend the entire day at the White House. Patel, who in recent months has grown paranoid and constantly fearful of losing his job according to prior sources, was reportedly panicked over the order.

Patel has become notorious for using government jets to travel to see his girlfriend, as well as a number of other questionable uses of government resources like the purchase of a BMW to get around in secret.

"Several people said top Trump deputies were disturbed by a range of actions by Patel. Some found it confounding that the FBI director was leaving town amid the recent revival of the war with Iran and alleged threats against the president’s life," said the report. Other sources alleged the White House was frustrated over "two unforced errors by Patel that created bad optics for the Trump administration, the first being his early morning tweet bashing MS NOW for its coverage of his high-flying lifestyle, they said, in which Patel boasted: 'my jet ski is gold plated ... (expletive).'"

In response to the story, Trump administration communications director Steven Cheung denied the story with his typical bombast.

"Completely false. There has been no frustration over his tweet this morning," wrote Cheung. "I reposted his tweet. Other White House officials reposted his tweet. Him calling MSNOW (expletive) is an accurate description of their (expletive) reporting."

President Donald Trump has lost one of the very few things he became famous for, New York Magazine's Sarah Jones argued in an analysis published on Friday.

Specifically, she argued, he's lost his ability to put on a show.

This became obvious with the long string of disasters that befell his Great American State Fair, Jones wrote.

"A mock-up of Trump’s triumphal arch oozed a puslike substance, and a robot dog danced alone in the mud. Nearby, the reflecting pool sat green and full of algae, lethal to ducklings and irresistible to protesters, who demonstrated next to it in costume." Meanwhile, Trump's D.C. prosecutor Jeanine Pirro got an indictment against an Olympian for "touching a piece of the pool’s disintegrating bottom liner," while "two days before the storm, a portion of the stage broke off and nearly struck dancers who were in the middle of a rehearsal."

None of this would have been seen at a Trump celebration of old, argued Jones, which, despite their chaos, were bombastic and grandiose.

"Trump’s tastes have always been entertaining, if garish. Lately, though, the seams are fraying," she wrote — and the State Fair disaster is "almost the least of it." The problem, she said, is that "if Trump can’t throw a good party or make everything golden, what’s left? Loyalists have leaned on MAGA for glitz and a little excitement. Without spectacle, the future of the movement is in jeopardy."

Back in 2015-16, wrote Jones, "Trump made the mob laugh and channeled its libidinal hatred," and his rallies almost had a similar quality to megachurches. He captured the same energy as the far-right Tea Party rallies in the early 2010s, as well as the segregationist rallies of George Wallace. That isn't the case anymore, she argued — he has their politics, but not their spirit.

Ultimately, Jones said, "There won’t be a mass epiphany within MAGA" — but there is a slow burn as many of them lose the magic and feel "the sense of being had." The president "understands his vulnerability, on some level, which is why he is obsessed with the size of his crowds," she concluded — because "In the absence of spectacle, corruption and cruelty are more difficult to ignore."

Vice President JD Vance took a severe tongue-lashing on Fox Business Friday, as hosts continued to react to his strange recent statements attacking legendary conservative economist Milton Friedman.

"I think JD Vance, on economics, just generally does not understand the role of capitalism and investment and so forth," said analyst Liz Peek, to the approval of her peers Stephen Moore and Larry Kudlow.

Friedman, a Nobel laureate and founding member of the influential "Chicago school" of economics, often faces criticism on the left — but it's rare to see it from a Republican.

Vance gave the remarks during an interview with The Daily Wire.

“Milton Friedman’s ideas made more sense in the 1980s because they were being advocated in a country that still had a very rich and powerful institutional Christianity,” said Vance. “If you look at modern Britain and the result of Margaret Thatcher’s policies, you would say that her policies actually got Britain further away from that ideal and not closer to that ideal. I think that meritocracy can steal from us a sense of what really, really matters.”

Vance added that “American economic policy on the right is now much more Alexander Hamilton than it is Milton Friedman. I think that’s obviously a good thing.”

Moore, himself a former Trump strategist, penned a scathing response to these comments in the Marshall Independent, writing that Vance "sounded much more like a Mitt Romney, big-government RINO than a Trump or Ronald Reagan."

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) remains hospitalized, and his condition is unknown — but to some of his Republican constituents, the 84-year-old lawmaker should no longer be in office regardless, MS NOW reported on Friday.

"There are growing calls from Democrats and Republicans alike for transparency," said anchor Jackie Alemany, noting that his office has given barely any details. After Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear issued a letter demanding information about McConnell's condition, Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) told the press he doesn't even know if McConnell is alive.

"And then there are the voters," said Alemany, playing a clip of reporter Alex Tabet talking to a local Kentucky Republican, Rebecca Messinger.

"I think that he should release a picture of himself or one of his aides should release a picture," said Messinger. "We have the right to know that he's even conscious." Furthermore, she added, "some of these phone conversations people are claiming to have, like Scott Jennings on CNN ... it's not ringing true for me."

Tabet followed up, "Why do you think we haven't seen those videos or those photographs or anything like that?"

"Arrogance," said Messinger, adding, "My goodness, your retirement is long overdue. Give up this fight. Give it up. We don't want you. You're not representing us well, so don't represent us at all."

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Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) is giving an ongoing headache to House leadership by continuing to refuse to vote for any rules that would allow normal business in the chamber to resume.

According to Punchbowl News, Luna, a devout MAGA ally, "has held a blockade on rules ... in frustration with the Senate’s inaction on the SAVE America Act. Senate Republican leaders say they don’t have the votes for SAVE in the Senate – it would require 60 votes for passage."

If a rules package cannot be passed, the House is unable to vote on "several bills on the calendar for next week," said the report, including "the National Security-State FY2027 spending bill, the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act, Protecting Privacy in Purchases Act and the Sunshine Protection Act of 2025."

The SAVE America Act is one of President Donald Trump's pet projects. It would impose severe new restrictions on voting, including limits to mail-in voting and federal review of state voting rolls against a controversial and often error-prone Homeland Security citizenship database.

Senate Republicans have debated various procedures that might allow them to get around the filibuster, but they have been deemed either impractical or lacking the votes.

Luna told Punchbowl, “Nothing right now has changed for me. It’s time to smoke out some rats in the Senate.”

Trump himself has demanded Congress stop at nothing to pass the SAVE America Act, even going so far as to refuse to sign the landmark bipartisan housing reform bill and let it take effect without his signature in protest.

Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare announced on Friday that his office is investigating the Immigration and Customs Enforcement shooting death of 52-year-old Houston man Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, whether or not the federal government offers any help.

"Since Tuesday, when this incident occurred, we have been conducting our own investigation," said Teare. He added that "we were not invited into this scene," but that "my investigators and my civil rights division have been out there ... looking for surveillance footage, talking to witnesses, doing everything that we can and we do in every case to ensure that a full, fair investigation is conducted so that we can be transparent with our community."

Teare added that he is fervently seeking information from the public.

"Anyone that was there that day, anyone that has a snippet of footage from a camera, regardless of whether or not you think that it's even relevant — send it to us," he said. "Things that you may not think are important could be the pivotal piece of information for us to finally figure out what actually happened."

ICE agents initially claimed that Araujo, a Mexican national who has lived peacefully in the United States for 35 years, struck a law enforcement vehicle with his car and attempted to run down an agent. However, footage of the scene appears not to show any of this happening, and new reporting indicates that ICE was seeking a different person when the encounter happened.

The Justice Department under Trump has systematically closed investigations of ICE-related deaths, including the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis that sparked a national uproar.

President Donald Trump's arch project just outside Washington, D.C. got initial approval from a planning commission stacked full of his appointees on Thursday, despite going against the 1910 Height of Buildings Act — but not over considerable and colorful objections from public comment, Meidas Touch's Scott MacFarlane wrote in a humorous takedown of the project Friday.

" Trump has stacked the NCPC with surrogates," wrote MacFarlane. "So a full approval is expected.…… No matter how 'dangerously alien' this whole project risks becoming."

The arch will sit just across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial, a location that was controversial from the beginning as veterans' groups worry it will block views of Arlington Cemetery. But that's far from the only issue, MacFarlane wrote.

"I’m reading through the public comments that’ve been submitted about President Trump’s huge Monumental Arch project near the National Mall," he wrote, and "there are still a tonnage of responses to sift through."

One that particularly caught MacFarlane's eye, he noted, was a summary from the National Capital Planning Commission that read, “Some commenters asserted that the arch is alien, oversized, inconsistent with the McMillan Plan, visually jarring, and hazardous within a high-speed traffic circle central to circulation along the George Washington Parkway, and that the proposal includes insufficient planning for increased visitation to Memorial Circle, inadequate pedestrian-safety measures, and insufficient parking and circulation capacity along the Parkway.”

"The Arch is gilded…. To give it an unambiguous Trump-y touch," MacFarlane continued, displaying a mockup image of the completed arch, and adding, "Note how small the people look."

At the end of it all, he added, he's just sure of two things: The Trump-stacked NCPC will fully approve the project, and "I’m totally using the team name 'Dangerously Alien' for my fantasy football team in September."

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth noticed too many people were getting exemptions from his strict "no beards" crackdown while visiting a naval ship last month, CNN reported — and heads rolled over it.

The Pentagon chief, who styles himself Secretary of War due to a Trump executive order, "left the ship wondering if the Pentagon rank-and-file paid attention to his beard policy and other policy changes he has made to the workforce," said the report. And soon after, department higher-ups "held a series of meetings in which they told subordinates that Hegseth was closely monitoring agencies’ progress on the beard policy and other workplace changes, and that there was pressure from political appointees to move faster on the directives."

Beards have always been restricted in the military, but exceptions are made based on religious or medical reasons. Hegseth wants the number of those exceptions to be curtailed as much as possible.

The orders could significantly impact Black men, as they are particularly likely to suffer from pseudofolliculitis barbae, a painful condition where shaved hair "curls back into the skin," the report noted. Per Hegseth's orders, "commanders can kick out military personnel who require a shaving waiver after a year of medical treatment for PFB."

In addition to the beard policy, Hegseth also pressed leaders on progress enforcing his changes to Equal Employment Opportunity law, which include "requirements that workplace complaints be dealt with in a timely manner and that the subject of a complaint be presumed innocent unless evidence showed otherwise."

This comes as hostilities resume in full with Iran, with no end in sight and rising costs to taxpayers.

A CNN panel exploded into argument on Friday morning, after conservative Terry Schilling defended the ICE actions under scrutiny regarding the death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston.

Schilling opened with a disparaging response to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who threatened legal action over the shooting. "Game on," he said.

"You want to sue over this?" said Schilling. "I guess we'll have to sue over the hundreds of thousands of young men and women in this country that have died from fentanyl overdoses or, or even the hundreds of people that have had violence inflicted on them that have been raped and sexually assaulted."

Schilling then added, "There were seven deaths by ICE and 11 deaths in 2024. That's when there was like no immigration enforcement at all ... so it seems like there's some violence embedded into illegal immigration in the first place."

Former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams had a sharp retort to Schilling's claims, pointing out that he had experience working with ICE, and the idea there was "no immigration enforcement" in 2023 is "just not accurate."

"You're still talking about deporting 400,000 people a year, even under the low points of any administration's immigration enforcement efforts," said Williams. "More enforcement is happening now than happened in 2023. But ... I don't think that that those numbers are reflective of enforcement simply not happening in detention centers."

New York Times reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro chimed in, adding, "I will also say that the implication that somehow enforcement is violent and therefore these deaths are somehow acceptable is, is not acceptable."

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