Travis Gettys

Rep. Dan Crenshaw's potential primary loss to state representative Steve Toth represents a stark warning sign for congressional Republicans deemed insufficiently loyal to President Donald Trump.

The president has withheld endorsement despite backing 27 other Texas House Republicans, and Gov. Greg Abbott similarly bypassed him, but most damaging, Sen. Ted Cruz — after a tense airport confrontation — endorsed and campaigned for Crenshaw's challenger, reported CNN.

"The two famously brash Republicans had a tense exchange that now looms large over Crenshaw’s battle for political survival," the network reported. "Crenshaw accused Cruz of working against him in his House primary. According to three people with direct knowledge of their interaction, Cruz responded: 'If I’m working against you, you’re gonna know it.'"

Cruz made good on that threat by recording an ad for a pro-Toth PAC that's now airing in the Houston area, and a source familiar with the president's thinking said Trump is not likely to back Crenshaw.

“He told me he would — it’s up to him, he doesn’t owe me anything,” Crenshaw told CNN.

The hostility stems from Crenshaw's heretical positions by MAGA standards: supporting Ukraine aid, certifying the 2020 election, and advocating for resettling Afghan allies. His personal conduct has compounded matters — a bitter feud with Tucker Carlson, Twitter provocations calling MAGA hardliners "grifters," and allegations of public drunkenness that Crenshaw denies.

Yet Crenshaw's pro-Trump voting record remains firmly aligned with the White House. His actual policy positions don't justify the vendetta, but his crime is refusing to perform uncritical loyalty, maintaining independence on principle rather than pandering for endorsements.

If Crenshaw loses Tuesday or in a May 26 runoff, he would be the first Texas House incumbent defeated in a primary since 2014 — a symbolic breaking point.

"Crenshaw's kinda got a Cornyn problem, in that he wasn't a devout Trumpy the whole time," said Texas GOP strategist Reb Wayne, "and now he's paying for it."

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) faces his toughest reelection challenge from Trump-endorsed candidates questioning his loyalty. The pattern is explicit: Republicans demonstrating insufficient ideological purity face organized, well-funded primary challenges backed by Trump allies.

Toth's campaign explicitly targets Crenshaw's Ukraine support and 2020 election certification vote, and a loss would signal to other Republicans what's expected in the Trump era to keep their standing with GOP voters.

“He is not someone who just follows the party talking points and he has prided himself on telling the truth, including to Republican base voters, and sometimes they don’t like that,” said a person familiar with Crenshaw's thinking.

Newly released documents show intense disagreement within the FBI over an investigation into Donald Trump's retention of classified materials.

Bloomerg's Jason Leopold obtained the government records through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in 2022 that demonstrated "raw hostility" inside the federal law enforcement bureau after the execution of a search warrant Aug. 8, 2022, at Trump's private Mar-a-Lago resort that turned up classified materials.

“Did this really just happen? Am I dreaming? The FBI served a Search Warrant on a former president?” wrote one bureau employee in an email. “If he took documents, give him a call and ask for them back.”

The emails showed agents from the Washington field office who were assigned to the case disagreed with Justice Department leadership over the investigation and doubted they had developed probable cause to execute a search warrant at Trump's residence, and one agent complained in an email that field office did not initiate or request a grand jury subpoena.

“This was unilateral action by DOJ,” that agent said, adding that the Washington field office “does not have anything in the case currently that would indicate there are additional” classified materials “at Mar-a-Lago (or any other location).”

Another agent replied with a complaint about their own frustrations with DOJ.

“Each time I’ve picked a fight on this case (and I’ve picked more than a couple), l’ve gotten the ‘yes, understood. But do it anyway’ type of reply," the second agent said.

The FBI had hoped to avoid a Mar-a-Lago search by dealing directly with Trump’s attorney, Evan Corcoran, and even prepared a "call script" to use when contacting Corcoran to seek "future cooperation and a consent search of Mar-a-Lago."

“Your assistance would facilitate the proper retrieval and handling of these classified documents and governmental records,” read an unredacted portion of that script. “We therefore request the former president’s cooperation, and the opportunity to thoroughly search and retrieve any additional classified documents, or governmental records in order to properly secure these records. Your cooperation, in conjunction with a consensual search would help provide a level of comfort that the FBI has retrieved and safeguarded all the appropriate documents.”

However, those efforts ended when it became clear a search warrant would be served, but the assistant special agent in charge asked Anthony Riedlinger in the counterintelligence division and Steven D’Antuono, the assistant director in charge of the Washington field office, to let the FBI serve the warrant instead of the DOJ because the bureau had a better relationship with Trump's defense team.

“This first contact will set the tone for the day," that agent wrote Aug. 4, 2022. "The FBI intends for the execution of the search warrant to be handled in a professional, low-key manner, and to be mindful of the optics of the search.”

The agent specifically singled out Deputy Assistant Attorney General George Toscas for not giving "a damn about the optics" and faulted Jay Bratt, the head of DOJ’s counterintelligence section, for fostering "an antagonistic relationship” with Corcoran.

“I think it is more than fair to say that the DOJ contact with Mr. Corcoran just prior to the execution of the warrant will not go well,” the email said.

Senate Democrats served the Trump administration notice that refunds should start flowing to U.S. companies who paid for the president's tariffs.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and other top Democrats, including Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent demanding tariff refunds begin immediately following Supreme Court's bombshell ruling that struck down President Donald Trump's tariff regime, reported Punchbowl News.

The court ruled 6-3 last week that Trump lacked the authority to invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs, and while Trump quickly pivoted to alternative legal authorities to continue his trade war, the question of whether businesses will receive refunds for illegally collected tariff revenue remains unresolved.

Democrats called Bessent's public statements and the administration's delay on refunds "unacceptable." Bessent has deflected responsibility, claiming lower courts will decide whether revenue must be returned — a position Democrats are targeting as evasive.

The tariff refund has become a centerpiece of Democratic strategy heading into midterms. Democrats have argued for months that Trump's trade wars directly fuel inflation and rising costs for consumers, but the Supreme Court ruling provided them a powerful political cudgel to attack Republican economic management.

However, Democrats face structural limitations as a minority party. Senate Democrats lack the votes to pass standalone legislation mandating refunds, though they've pledged to block any congressional approval needed to extend Trump's new tariffs beyond 150 days under the Trade Act of 1974.

House Democrats have more aggressive tools available, including discharge petitions to force floor votes on legislation mandating refunds and ending Trump's new global tariffs. Several bills have already been introduced pursuing both objectives.

A handful of Republicans in both chambers have shown willingness to break ranks on tariffs, suggesting potential bipartisan pressure exists. Yet without significant GOP defections, Democrats' ability to compel refunds legislatively remains minimal.

The battle will likely shift to courts, public pressure, and campaign messaging as 2026 midterms approach.

The U.S. military used a laser to shoot down a Customs and Border Protection drone in Texas, forcing the closure of more airspace near El Paso, and CNN's Pete Muntean tried to explain what happened.

It's not yet clear why the laser was used against the drone – the second such instance in two weeks in that area – but the incident again shows a breakdown in communication between the military and the Federal Aviation Administration, which is required to receive notification of counter-drone activity within U.S. airspace.

"I just got a very rare joint statement from the agencies involved in this," Muntean told "CNN News Central," "which signals the Trump administration and the White House is really playing cleanup right now, since this sounds a lot like the El Paso incident of two weeks ago, when an anti-drone laser was used without concern for commercial flights. That incident led the FAA to trigger a chaotic emergency airspace shutdown, and really highlighted the lack of basic communication between government agencies."

"This new case is described by three Democrats in Congress as essentially a friendly fire incident involving a government drone," he added. "A congressional aide tells me that these members, including the top Democrat on the committee overseeing Homeland Security and also Transportation, were told about this incident through official channels yesterday, and in a statement, they say the military shot down a Customs and Border Protection drone using what those House Democrats call a high-risk counter-unmanned aircraft system."

The FAA has shut down the airspace over the border town of Fort Hancock, Texas, but that restriction covers only a nine-mile radius instead of the 20-mile restriction over El Paso earlier this month, and Muntean said the joint statement did not disclose when the incident took place.

"The agencies say this reported engagement occurred when the Department of War employed counter-unmanned aircraft system authorities to mitigate a seemingly threatening unmanned aerial system operating within military airspace," Muntean said. "By the way, Congress has still not been briefed officially on that El Paso incident of two weeks ago, though there have been really major calls to do so now. A congressional aide tells me it's time for the military to brief them on this incident, to really highlighting maybe the military and the government has not learned its lesson about using these counter drone systems at the border with so much concern there about drone incursions over the border."

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CNN's John Berman pressed Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) to explain why Hillary Clinton's testimony about Jeffrey Epstein was necessary but Melania Trump's was not.

The former first lady told lawmakers Thursday that she could not recall ever meeting the late sex offender, but the current first lady appears in many photos with Epstein and his now-imprisoned co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, both of whom were friends at one time with President Donald Trump.

"You did three rounds with Secretary Clinton yesterday, said you asked a number of questions about former President Bill Clinton, including whether the former first lady had any feelings about young women massaging her husband," Berman said. "Why did you ask that? Why was that important?"

Mace cautioned that she could not speak freely because a transcript from the deposition was not yet publicly available, but she defended her line of questioning as fair.

"Statements have been made, I believe, publicly about President Trump and why he should be called in," Mace said, "and I think it's fair to ask questions about the standard of the types of people, who they are and why they should be called in for the Oversight Committee, and I was making a comparison based on certain statements made yesterday, and making that clear that, you know, everybody should be treated equally and in the same standard apply to her husband. That was the line of questioning I was going for."

Berman then asked whether Melania Trump should be held to that same standard and asked her husband's name appearing thousands of times in the Epstein files, but Mace disagreed.

"I don't believe so, and I don't believe that President Trump should be called before the Oversight Committee," the congresswoman said. "He has answered questions, and the victims that I've spoken to actually exonerated President Trump, and so the victims I've spoken to and their family members have not exonerated people like former President Bill Clinton, who has denied being on the island, but I will bring out some documents today that show that Jeffrey Epstein was directing victims and or witnesses to deny he ever was at the island, and I think this is going to be there are going to be a lot of people that need to come before the Oversight Committee today this morning."

Mace has called for Trump's commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, to testify before the committee about his relationship with Epstein, but she insisted that the president and first lady did not need to be questioned under oath.

"I want to take everything seriously, and I'm not looking at this through a partisan lens, and when you see me come out with a list of people that need to be interviewed by Oversight, you're going to see Republicans and Democrats alike," Mace said. "You're even going to see women who I believe are selling other women to Jeffrey Epstein."

That opened the door for Berman to ask a follow-up question about the first lady.

"Yeah, again, and that's why I just go back to the first line of questioning I had there, because Hillary Clinton said that she has never met, doesn't remember ever meeting Jeffrey Epstein – Melania Trump did," he said. "I mean, we have pictures of Melania Trump with Jeffrey Epstein. If you're going to question former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about someone she's never met, at least if you're throwing a wide net, why not question Melania Trump?"

Mace did not address his question directly but instead deflected blame back to the Clintons.

"Well, are you going to throw a picture up on the screen of Hillary Clinton with Jeffrey Epstein?" she said. "I believe there are photos out there of her and Jay-Z and Jeffrey Epstein and a photo, there are photos of president, former President Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at a wedding. There are, I believe, more pictures of the Clintons with Epstein and Maxwell than there are of Trump."

"But again, you know, Epstein, again, Epstein was involved with people who are very powerful and very rich, and how did he have that kind of access, and I think it's not just the sex trafficking, it's the access to power, the access of power," Mace added. "It is, was he an asset? Was he getting information, trading information? What country was paying him? I think there are multiple countries. He could have been in multiple or dual agent, and how did he have all this access? I think that's important, equally important to the sex trafficking and prostitution was happening."

Berman agreed, but asked why she wasn't interested in hearing from the first lady.

"You have thrown a wide net on the people you want to talk to," he said. "It's just I'm just curious about why the line stops at first lady Melania Trump. If there are, you know, if there is a clear relationship that she had there or knowledge of something potentially."

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Testimony from Bill and Hillary Clinton as part of the congressional probe into the Jeffrey Epstein case opens the door for the current president and first lady to talk about their own ties to the late sex offender.

Hillary Clinton told lawmakers Thursday that she did not recall ever meeting the well-connected financier who died in prison while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, and Bill Clinton is expected to testify about his relationship with Epstein – a former friend of President Donald Trump and an associate of Melania Trump.

"Precedent in Congress is only as strong as whoever holds the majority," said CNN's Elie Honig, "but we've heard Democratic members of this Oversight Committee say if [they] take over in November, which certainly could happen, [they] then plan to subpoena Donald Trump. Now, the response from the Republican side has been, well but the sitting president is different than a former president, and there's something to that. There are many legal settings where the courts give the sitting president more privileges, more exemptions, more immunities than a former president. So we'll see if the Democrats take over. But it certainly gives them a political mechanism to say, well, hey you subpoenaed the Democratic former president, we want to subpoena the Republican former president."

However, the legal analyst said the first lady has no specific shield under the law that would prevent her from getting called to testify.

"But Melania is an interesting one, too, right, because the justification, part of the justification for Hillary Clinton is neither of them are president but, well, she knows something about her husband's activities," Honig said. "That same rationale would certainly apply in reverse to Melania. So, again, if the Dems take over that could be a subpoena they're considering."

The former president appears in photo released by the Department of Justice swimming with Ghislaine Maxwell and reclining in a hot tub next to a person whose face is blacked out, and Honig explained what to expect in his testimony Friday.

"Bill Clinton is a notoriously difficult subject to be questioned," Honig said. "The man is a lawyer, he was president. He's been questioned by prosecutors and lawyers and the media countless times when they prepared for the 1998 grand jury testimony in front of Ken Starr sounds like similar to what the reporting is about, how they've prepared for this testimony they've spent hours upon hours, days upon days getting ready for this like it was a boxing match or a chess match, and the thing they did in '98 – and I would watch for this today – is they had Bill Clinton prepared with about a dozen what they called set pieces, meaning pre-rehearsed speeches or talking points that he would use, and there's a couple reasons for that."

"One, they want to keep him on message, and two, they want to run out the clock," he added. "Bill Clinton is really good at taking over these settings and filibustering and running down the time allotted."

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A former MAGA congresswoman ripped President Donald Trump's second term in a blistering social media post.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican who retired from Congress last month after just two terms in office, faulted the 79-year-old president for ignoring domestic issues and covering up his involvement with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and she warned voters that he was trying to "gaslight" them into backing the GOP in November's midterm elections.

"Everything in Washington will be purely performative, for the remainder of the year, to gaslight you to vote in the midterms," Greene posted Thursday on X. "We all knew and discussed in internal meetings back in January of 2025 that we only had 6-9 months to do anything serious and after the third quarter of 2025 our opportunity would be gone because courage would fade and campaign mode would kick in."

"And all that was really accomplished was an extension of the tax law with a few additions," she added.

Despite her criticism of the president, Greene complained that Republicans had not held anyone accountable for Covid pandemic measures, the so-called "lawfare" against Trump and his allies, Trump's 2020 election loss, or evidence turned up in the Epstein files, and she criticized her former colleagues for ignoring other issues of importance.

"Not only is there nothing tangible in terms of accountability, but Republicans have done NOTHING to make health insurance affordable and hide from the issue like the pedophiles in the Epstein files," she wrote. "Meanwhile we are on the verge of war with Iran from the 'NO MORE FOREIGN WARS' President."

"This is where you are now," Greene added. "The red meat throwing tough talk and legislation that will go nowhere phase but will only create some [viral] media posts and headlines to try to inspire you and scare you into voting for Republicans again in the midterms."

She griped that Democrats were no better.

"After getting brutally beaten in 2024, they learned nothing and made no serious changes to their policy platform on the issues they lost the biggest as they continue to put illegals and trans first, while suddenly (starting in 2025) caring about the Epstein files," Greene wrote. "It’s all America LAST from both sides of the never ending Political Industrial Complex."

A federal judge found the Internal Revenue Service has broken the law thousands upon thousands of times by sharing confidential taxpayer information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued a ruling Thursday that found the vast majority of taxpayer addresses shared with ICE in August were provided without the IRS confirming the agency had provided a valid address for the individuals whose records were sought, as required by law, reported the Washington Post.

“The IRS violated the [Internal Revenue Code] approximately 42,695 times by disclosing last known taxpayer addresses to ICE ... without confirming that ICE’s request set forth the ‘address of the taxpayer with respect to whom the requested return information relate[d],’” the judge wrote in her opinion.

The requirement exists to make sure the government can access confidential tax records for someone who has already been specifically identified, but ICE's requests frequently contained incomplete addresses or listed jails, detention facilities or prisons without including the street location.

“This confirms what we’ve been saying all along: that the IRS has an unlawful policy that violates the Internal Revenue Code’s protections by releasing these addresses in a way that violates the law’s requirements,” said Nina Olson, founder of the Center for Taxpayer Rights, which has sued the government over the ICE sharing agreement.

Olson was surprised by the judge's ruling listing the number of times the IRS had broken the law by disclosing taxpayer information to immigration officials, which the Department of Homeland Security defended as necessary to crack down on illegal immigration.

“Information sharing across agencies is essential to identify who is in our country, including violent criminals, determine what public safety and terror threats may exist so we can neutralize them, scrub these individuals from voter rolls, and identify what public benefits these aliens are using at taxpayer expense,” DHS said in a prior statement.

An anonymous 4Chan post announcing Jeffrey Epstein's death remains one of the most intriguing unsolved mysteries in the case.

At 8:16 a.m. on August 10, 2019, an anonymous user posted: "don't ask me how I know, but Epstein died an hour ago from hanging, cardiac arrest. Screencap this," beating ABC News by 38 minutes — a significant head start suggesting the poster possessed real-time knowledge of events inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center, reported Business Insider.

The 4Chan user demonstrated fluency in medical jargon, accurately describing Epstein's intubation, fluid infusion and transfer to a lower Manhattan emergency room. Yet the poster also immediately seeded conspiracy theories, claiming someone may have swapped Epstein's body due to a "mysterious van" seen the previous night — narratives that would proliferate across the internet for years.

The Justice Department's investigation went nowhere. FBI agents obtained four IP addresses from 4Chan and subpoenaed both AT&T and T-Mobile seeking subscriber information. AT&T responded that it maintains no records associating dynamic IP addresses with individual accounts. T-Mobile's response remains absent from released files.

Federal prosecutors ultimately admitted they could not identify the anonymous poster, but the failure raises uncomfortable questions. How did someone with real-time jail information access 4Chan? Was the poster a correctional officer, medical personnel or administrative staff? Did they possess advance knowledge or merely rapid access to developing events?

Most tantalizing is Epstein's own 4Chan activity. Newly released files confirm Epstein used 4Chan, occasionally sharing links with associates. The files also reveal Epstein knew 4Chan founder Christopher Poole ("moot"), meeting him for lunch following an introduction by Boris Nikolic, a former science advisor to Bill Gates. Epstein's email to Nikolic praised Poole as "very bright."

This connection raises the possibility that Epstein's 4Chan connections extended beyond casual browsing to deeper network involvement. Did his associates use 4Chan to communicate about his death? Did someone within his orbit post the news?

The DOJ inspector general's 128-page report on Epstein's death addressed systemic failures — non-functioning cameras, missing cellmate — but never mentioned the 4Chan posts.

The government's inability to trace a post containing accurate, real-time information about a high-profile prisoner's death, combined with Epstein's demonstrated 4Chan involvement, suggests that uncomfortable gaps in the official narrative remain.

The Department of Justice failed to take down more than a dozen problematic images released from the Jeffrey Epstein files, including nude photos and identifying details from passports and drivers licenses.

CNN worked with Israeli software firm Visual Layer to analyze tens of thousands of photos released by the DOJ and found more than 100 explicit photos that show what appears to be naked teenagers and other images that should have been redacted, and some of those lingered online for weeks.

"We found more than a dozen photos that definitely should have been redacted but weren't and remained on the public DOJ site for nearly a month," said CNN's Marshall Cohen. "Now, I'm about to show you some of these pictures, but keep in mind CNN blurred the versions that you're going to see, but they were available fully unredacted on the DOJ site for weeks. So there were pictures of a young girl kissing Jeffrey Epstein on the cheek [and] there were also non-sexual but unredacted images of other young children and toddlers who are obviously minors and should have been redacted, and also there were several pictures of passports and driver's licenses revealing private data like ID numbers, addresses and dates of birth."

Those images were all taken down and replaced with properly redacted versions after CNN contacted the DOJ, and spokesperson said the federal agency was working around the clock to address victim concerns in compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, but Cohen said that was not previously the case.

"This is where the story takes an even darker turn," Cohen said. "It's incredibly disturbing because we found also, in addition to everything I just described, more than 100 sexually explicit photos that the DOJ actually posted online last month now, they did take these down pretty quickly, and some of them were replaced with redacted versions, which is what we're about to show you on your screen there were dozens of photos showing what appeared to be two naked teenagers on a beach. There were also multiple uncensored nude selfies and at least one image showing Epstein with an undressed female."

"Now, we spoke to legal experts and advocates for survivors of sexual abuse," he added. "Everyone is stunned that these images made it through the DOJ's review, especially because top officials were adamant that they redacted every single woman in the Epstein files. Advocates said this situation could retraumatize the victims, and even though the DOJ did take down the explicit photos, we all know it's basically impossible to truly delete something from the internet after it's posted."

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A right-wing YouTuber whose work has been hyped by Vice President JD Vance has been called out as an example of the Republican Party's "Nazi problem."

Conservative activist Nick Shirley's investigation into alleged Somali fraud helped inspire President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown in Minnesota – which led to the fatal shootings of two Americans by federal agents – and earned him an invitation to the State of the Union address by Rep. Pete Stauber (R-MN), but fellow right-wing influencer Laura Loomer highlighted an antisemitic remark he posted online in response to another post.

“Hello Goyim,” posted another right-wing YouTuber, Tyler Oliveira. “I have released a 73 minute long documentary on New Jersey’s Jewish Invasion.”

“EXPOSE IT ALL," Shirley replied.

Loomer, an informal adviser to President Donald Trump, directed attention to the comments by Shirley and Oliveira.

"Expose what? Jewish US citizens living their life peacefully?" Loomer posted. "As I said before, the GOP has a massive Nazi problem."

Shirley gained prominence in December, when he posted a 42-video visiting Minneapolis-area daycares run primarily by Somali Americans and baselessly concluded they were fraudulent fronts because he was denied entry.

Vance amplified this conspiracy, tweeting: "This dude has done far more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 @pulitzercenter prizes."

The video accumulated nearly four million YouTube views and helped launch a surge by federal immigration agents that ultimately led to the fatal shootings of two Americans – Renee Good and Alex Pretti – last month before Trump border czar Tom Homan rolled back the mission.

"Meanwhile Nick Shirley, the dip---- MAGA influencer who started this whole racist panic about fraud at Somali-run daycares, is saying 'EXPOSE IT ALL' in response to a deeply antisemitic video about 'New Jersey’s Jewish Invasion,'" warned journalist Christopher Mathias.

"Perhaps not the wisest decision to put so many eggs in this basket (JD Vance praised him; Rep. Stauber had him as his guest at the SOTU last night)," noted The Bulwark's Sam Stein.

"Anti-Jewish hate is a cancer growing on the right," added writer and attorney Dean Obeidallah. "This should be the focus -- not trying to silence those who speak out on behalf of Palestinian humanity."

Concerns about President Donald Trump's mental fitness are approaching levels comparable to those that forced Joe Biden from the 2024 race.

Multiple recent polls show majorities of Americans question the 79-year-old president's cognitive capacity and physical stamina, including a Reuters-Ipsos poll released before Trump's State of the Union address that found 61 percent – including 30 percent of Republicans – agree that Trump has "become erratic with age," reported CNN.

A CNN survey showed those confident in Trump's "stamina and sharpness to serve effectively as president" declined from 53 percent in late 2023 to 46 percent today. A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found 56 percent doubt his mental sharpness and 51 percent question his physical health — representing increases of 13 points and 23 points respectively since May 2023.

While Trump's numbers remain better than Biden's were at this stage — Biden faced 54 percent doubting his mental sharpness in February 2022 — the trajectory is striking.

A Pew Research survey shows confidence in Trump's mental fitness dropped from 39 percent to 32 percent year-over-year, with physical fitness dropping from 35 percent to 28 percent. Among Trump's own base, only 66 percent remain "very confident" in his mental fitness, down from 75 percent.

Multiple factors contribute to this erosion. Verbal stumbles — such as repeatedly confusing Iceland and Greenland — combined with scrutiny over bruises on his hands and reports of falling asleep during public events have fueled concerns. The White House's delayed medical disclosures and Trump's reduced public schedule further invite questions.

Trump's marathon one-hour-48-minute State of the Union speech, despite breaking his own record, failed to assuage doubts. While Trump frequently boasts about acing cognitive tests, independent polling suggests Americans perceive cognitive decline regardless of official health assessments.

The parallel to Biden is unmistakable: an aging president facing mounting public concerns about fitness for office. Though Trump's numbers haven't yet reached Biden's pre-withdrawal crisis levels, the deteriorating trajectory suggests this issue will dominate 2026 political discourse.