US News

Rachel Maddow kicked off her Monday night MS NOW program with a discussion of Star Wars — and specifically, how one track from the original trilogy just cost the Trump administration a big settlement payout for unlawful police conduct.

"The Empire Strikes Back is just as exciting as the first Star Wars movie, but it is darker, it is definitely darker, right?" said Maddow. "Our heroes aren't, you know, just plucky underdogs like they were in the first movie. It really, really feels like they are losing ... it's dark. The whole vibe of The Empire Strikes Back is this, you know, the dark dread of this tyrannical force having the upper hand, seeming like it's winning."

President Donald Trump's image within the MAGA movement is "collapsing under the weight of reality" as his followers find it more difficult to reconcile his brand with the administration's recent fumble in the war with Iran, according to one analyst.

Mary Trump, a psychologist and author, argued in a new Substack essay that her uncle is driving a wedge in his base as he continues to tout his brand of strength after he signed a memorandum of understanding with the Iranian regime that some have described as a complete capitulation. The agreement allowed Iran to immediately resume selling oil and lifted some sanctions on the regime in exchange for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which had been shut since the early days of the war.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) finally found an issue he is willing to threaten President Donald Trump over.

According to Politico's Meredith Lee Hill, Johnson "told Politico tonight the bipartisan, landmark housing bill will become law and President Trump will NOT veto it."

MS NOW host Luke Russert laid out on Monday's edition of "The Weeknight" how the newest grift by the Trump family dwarfs the corrupt deals that had Republicans enraged with the Biden family — by three orders of magnitude.

Specifically, they brokered a mining deal in Kazakhstan through the federal government, from which members of the Trump family could reap hundreds of millions of dollars due to personal stakes.

Vice President JD Vance revealed the new scheme he has cooked up to salvage what's left of his political career during a recent talk at the Nixon Presidential Library, according to one political analyst.

David A. Graham, a staff writer at The Atlantic, argued in a new edition of "The Atlantic Daily" newsletter that Vance's comments about Watergate being a 12-hour news story today were revealing for all of the wrong reasons. Vance may have been trying to make a point about the state of the American media, but instead exposed that he is cozying up to President Donald Trump's corrupt side as he seeks a way to take the MAGA reins once Trump leaves office.

President Donald Trump had a decidedly mixed day at the Supreme Court, suffering some major losses — and former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb thinks another huge one is coming down tomorrow on the last day of the court's term.

Specifically, he told CNN's Erin Burnett that he believes the court is about to deliver a "rebuke" of Trump's executive order abolishing birthright citizenship, and possibly a unanimous one.

Alaska Republicans' bid to keep a second Dan Sullivan off the U.S. Senate ballot has failed at the state's highest court.

The Alaska Supreme Court on Monday affirmed a lower-court order directing the state Division of Elections to include Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired teacher from the fishing town of Petersburg, as a candidate in the August primary against incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan (R-AK), who seeks a third term. The justices sent the case back to the division to decide how the challenger will be listed under existing ballot-design law.

President Donald Trump issued an ominous threat to gas stations across America on Monday, telling them that they must lower their prices or else "big problems lie ahead."

"Gasoline Retailers must get their Prices down, IMMEDIATELY! They’re too high considering that Oil is now at $68 a Barrel, and heading south," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "The Retailers must quickly react to this statement and do what they know is right — DROP YOUR PRICE FOR OUR GREAT AMERICAN PEOPLE!"

CNN's Erin Burnett was taken aback on Monday by a new report about how President Donald Trump plans to navigate what he's describing as a "betrayal of his base."

Last week, Trump abruptly canceled the signing ceremony for the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, an overwhelmingly popular bipartisan bill that would address housing costs ahead of the midterm elections. Republicans and Democrats alike were outraged at the decision, which Trump claimed to make in order to force lawmakers to pass his unpopular SAVE America Act, which would fundamentally rewrite how American elections are conducted.

Former CNN stalwart Jim Acosta ruthlessly trolled President Donald Trump on a sunny Monday afternoon, delivering a withering in-person review of the Great American State Fair, where Acosta could barely contain his glee at the near-empty spectacle and "shoddy" construction.

Videoing himself from the National Mall, Acosta pulled no punches.

A Republican lawmaker slammed the calamity the Trump administration has created by revoking Temporary Protected Status for thousands of immigrants.

Last year, the Trump administration abruptly revoked TPS for Haitian and Syrian immigrants, a move that impacted approximately 356,000 people currently living in the U.S. The order was swiftly challenged, but the Supreme Court recently ruled that President Donald Trump has the authority to unilaterally revoke TPS, an opinion that stunned many legal analysts.

Beltway insider John Heilemann had a grim assessment of President Donald Trump's current mental state as his Great American State Fair flops for all to see, and yet he continues to insist everything's going great.

MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace turned to him in a panel discussion on Monday to discuss how absurd she found Trump's latest ranting about the issue.

A Colorado newspaper found a striking resemblance between a Republican running for governor and a supervillain, and it's daring readers to tell them apart.

Denver alt-weekly Westword published a quiz Monday lining up 15 quotes from Victor Marx, the GOP gubernatorial frontrunner, against lines from Homelander, the mass-murdering antagonist of Amazon's "The Boys" who wraps himself in American flags and Bible verses.