US News

'Almost feel sorry for him': Onlookers cringe at JD Vance's 'please clap' moment

Vice President JD Vance prompted second-hand embarrassment online after his applause line fell flat.

The cringeworthy moment came Friday during a speech at the Annual National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service as part of National Police week, but the 41-year-old vice president failed to land what seemed to be intended as an applause line decrying violent attacks against police officers.

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Washington Opera flourishing after bailing due to Trump's Kennedy Center chaos

Six months after dramatically departing the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to escape President Donald Trump's takeover of the institution, the Washington National Opera is experiencing unexpected success — expanding its artistic reach and attracting a groundswell of new support from donors nationwide.

The opera company's departure from its longtime home came after Trump stacked the Kennedy Center board with loyalists and had his name added to the facade, New York Times reported on Friday. But rather than crippling the organization, the move has enabled it to flourish.

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Trump loyalist turns to AI after election fraud theory shot down by Patel’s FBI: report

Former Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC), tapped by President Donald Trump to oversee a Justice Department (DOJ) probe into his false 2020 election fraud claims, is using generative artificial intelligence to pursue a theory rejected by Trump’s own FBI, The New York Times reported Friday.

Retiring from Congress in 2024, Bishop was among those who refused to certify former President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. His appointment last month to oversee a sweeping DOJ investigation, The Times wrote, was seen as “the latest example of the Trump administration putting untested loyalists in charge of sensitive criminal inquiries that feed into the president’s political agenda.”

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GOP in 'crazy territory' as red state governor accused of election 'strong-arming': report

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry's attempt to play kingmaker in the state's Republican Senate primary, aggressively "strong-arming" donors and party insiders to support Donald Trump's preferred candidate, is backfiring and alienating fellow Republicans who view his interference as an abuse of power.

On Saturday, Louisiana Republicans head to the polls to test a fundamental question the national GOP is wrestling with: Can Trump's endorsement topple an entrenched incumbent who has dared to defy him — even in a state Trump won by 22 points?

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This George Costanza theory explains everything about how Trump's team lies: analyst

President Donald Trump's Cabinet members and nominees have had to pass a loyalty test and often debase themselves publicly to keep their jobs — it's what an analyst has dubbed "the Costanza presidency."

In a Substack post published Friday, Tom Schaller, professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, detailed just how far Trump's allies have been willing to take their lies, even refusing to deny Trump lost the 2020 election. This "favorite lie" is something Trump has come to expect from his faithful followers and people within his inner circle, he wrote.

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'Unprecedented': Court hit with blistering demand to throw out Trump lawsuit

A federal court's own appointed attorneys filed a blistering brief Wednesday arguing that Donald Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS may be flatly unconstitutional — because, as Trump himself put it, he's essentially suing himself.

"This case is unprecedented," the court-appointed lawyers wrote in a 24-page filing this week. "A sitting president seeks monetary damages for alleged harm to his personal interests from an executive agency that he controls."

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Steve Bannon warns 'trench warfare' has been triggered by 'dumb' GOP mistake

MAGA strategist Steve Bannon pushed red states to plow forward with redistricting efforts because he said that if Democrats win the House by a single vote, "they're gonna run it like they got a 50-seat majority."

During a Friday interview with GOP adviser Caroline Wren, Bannon insisted he couldn't "get excited" about Republican redistricting efforts because party leaders were leaving seats on the table. He pointed to failures to draw new district maps before the midterms in Indiana and Georgia — despite pressure from President Donald Trump.

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'Republicans are toast': GOP insiders reportedly quietly mull throwing Trump overboard

President Donald Trump has put Republicans in a tough spot ahead of midterm elections — and GOP insiders are starting to acknowledge it behind closed doors, according to reports on Friday.

In a new episode from The Daily Blast, The New Republic's podcast from host Greg Sargent, he reported new polling results have revealed that Trump "is literally the most unpopular U.S. president ever when it comes to gas prices" as questions about the president's corruption have come into the public eye.

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Trump named in newly found Epstein accusation that officials sat on for 17 years: report

Newly unearthed court records reveal that in 2009, a woman accused President Donald Trump of having “knowledge” of Jeffrey Epstein’s “sexual desire for minor girls,” veteran journalist Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez wrote — an accusation she noted had been “available to law enforcement for 17 years.”

The accusation was discovered in a set of written answers provided by a woman who claimed to have been abused by Epstein as a minor between 2002 and 2005 at his home in Palm Beach, Florida. The filing is part of a lawsuit the woman, whose name is redacted in the document, brought against Epstein in the Circuit Court of the 15th Judicial Circuit in Palm Beach County.

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Famed psychiatrist sounds fresh alarm as Trump's speech deteriorates: 'This is dangerous'

A prominent psychiatry professor who signed a statement with 35 other medical experts raising concerns about Donald Trump's mental fitness is now highlighting alarming changes in the president's cognitive abilities — including what he characterizes as a dangerous linguistic regression and compulsive repetition patterns.

According to the Daily Beast, Dr. Henry David Abraham, professor of psychiatry emeritus at Tufts University School of Medicine, has spent extensive time analyzing Trump's public appearances for signs of mental deterioration over 40 years. His findings paint a troubling picture of declining cognitive function.

While Abraham has long characterized Trump as narcissistic and sociopathic, he believes the president is now exhibiting regression in his ability to manage language — a development he views as particularly alarming given Trump's access to nuclear weapons, the Beast is reporting.

Abraham has identified what he calls a "pathological technique of perseveration" — the compulsive repetition of verbal patterns and actions. Trump has increasingly returned to the same lines attacking political opponents and repeatedly touting his own cognitive test performance, among other self-congratulatory claims.

"This is not normal. This is dangerous. And worse, this is a man who has access to nuclear weapons," Abraham cautioned.

Abraham explained that such repetitive speech patterns indicate serious cognitive problems. "People perseverate because they can't think of anything else to say, because they're cognitively impaired, or they perseverate because their emotional motor is stuck in high gear," he said.

Abraham noted that Trump's speeches have become shorter while exhibiting increased repetition — a troubling combination. "In the last five to 10 years, he has planted red flags of concern again and again and again, and they've clustered," Abraham observed.

The psychiatrist also documented instances of verbal confusion and disorientation. Earlier this year, Trump repeatedly mixed up Greenland and Iceland during a single speech — a linguistic failing that Abraham views as symptomatic of deeper cognitive issues, according to the report.

Beyond linguistic problems, Abraham said Trump has exhibited escalating signs of rage, poor impulse control, and what appear to be manic episodes — particularly nocturnal social media binges where Trump posts 100-200 times in a single night.

"Not only did he have these kinds of linguistic failings, but he began to exhibit more and more signs of rage and poor impulse control, and at night, what appeared to be manic kinds of episodes where he would tweet, you know, 100, 200 times a night," Abraham said.

Abraham emphasized that national security must take precedence over presidential privacy regarding medical records. "I think what we're missing in this whole story is medical transparency. The safety of the country and the world has to be given a higher priority than whether or not the president has the right of confidentiality to his medical records," Abraham warned.

Bizarre DOJ court filing rants about Trump hate while calling ballroom 'gift to people'

The Trump administration's Justice Department filed a reply brief Wednesday that reads less like a legal document and more like a late-night tweet storm, accusing the National Trust for Historic Preservation of suffering from "Trump Derangement Syndrome" and declaring the proposed $400 million White House ballroom "a gift to the People of the United States."

The seven-page filing this week, signed by Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr., asks a federal judge to issue an indicative ruling that would dissolve an injunction currently blocking above-ground construction on the project — and it doesn't hold back.

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Data guru aghast as he hunts for sliver of good news for Trump — and finds nothing

CNN's Harry Enten hunted high and low — and was unable to turn up even the faintest sliver of good news in polling for President Donald Trump Friday.

The president's approval ratings have been drooping since his return to the White House at the start of last year, and the data analyst to "CNN News Central" said that he couldn't find a single survey that showed voters approved of his performance.

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Victim exposed by Epstein file flub comes forward with new fears about Ghislaine Maxwell

An Epstein survivor whose name was inadvertently exposed in Justice Department files is living in fear that a potential Trump pardon of Ghislaine Maxwell could put her life in danger — and is questioning whether Maxwell is actually incarcerated following her conviction.

In WhatsApp conversations with journalist Josie Ensor of The Times in the United Kingdom, the woman — identified as "Francesca" to protect her identity — recalled the psychological manipulation tactics Maxwell used to recruit her into the sex-trafficking ring when she was just 15 years old in the 1990s.

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