MAGA exile Nancy Mace is embracing her right to bare arms.

The GOP congresswoman showed off her brand-new tattoos as she went sleeveless on her new YouTube podcast, “Get Maced.”

The South Carolina Republican, 48, first revealed in a February Politico profile that she had gotten nine tattoos in rapid succession, but used her new podcast to debut them last week.

Mace told Politico she got the ink between late 2023 and early 2024 as she dealt with a breakup with her fiancé and losing all of her congressional staffers, and that they were a way to help her “reclaim” her body and feel “the pain that I need to feel.”

Among her new tattoos is the quote, “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself,” the first sentence of Virginia Woolf’s most critically acclaimed novel Mrs. Dalloway.

Her new “Get Maced” podcast, an avenue for Mace to comment on current events, marks her latest attempt to stay relevant after a string of major defeats at the hands of the South Carolina electorate.

Last August, she announced a gubernatorial bid for 2026 in South Carolina, but was trounced in the Republican primary. In her bid for governor, she vacated her congressional seat, leaving the state’s first district up for grabs after her current term ends in January.

Following the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham last month, people speculated whether Mace would throw her hat in the ring for his open seat. However, she announced on July 20 that she would remain in her current seat through the rest of her term.

The Republican firebrand was a proud ally of President Donald Trump until her support for the Epstein Files Transparency Act, spurred by her Republican colleague Thomas Massie, created a rift between her and Trump.

Mace told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo last month that her split with Trump “may have ended” her future political aspirations.

“Let’s be honest, I didn’t go to Washington to take orders from anybody, which is why you do see me scuffle from time to time, which is why I do call out Democrats and Republicans alike,” she told Cuomo. “I have a history of doing that.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

New polling shows more than half of voters think they are worse off now than when Joe Biden was president.

President Donald Trump has been battling unpopularity in the polls over his war in Iran and the rising cost of living, and this latest poll, conducted for the Financial Times, found that 53 percent of registered voters felt worse off financially today than they did on Jan. 19, 2025.

Trump, 80, took office on Jan. 20, 2025.

Fifty seven percent of independents, and nearly a quarter of self-identified Republicans, also felt worse off under the current president, the polling by Focaldata found. The poll was conducted among 1,913 registered voters between Aug. 7 and Aug. 10.

In a significant blow to longstanding Republican myth making, the poll found voters were more likely to say they trusted Democrats over Republicans to handle inflation and the cost of living.

Democrats also had an edge on handling jobs and the economy—issues that have long been claimed as strengths for the GOP.

Sixty-four percent of voters felt the economy was going in the wrong direction.

The poll is the latest in a long line of bad polls for Trump, 80, and the Republican party as they attempt to hold onto their majorities in the House and Senate in November.

Trump himself has exacerbated matters by often seeming out of touch with the cost of living concerns of his constituents.

Asked about inflation in the Oval Office earlier this year, he said he loved it. And he told a gaggle of reporters that he didn’t think about the record highs gas prices were heading for because of the war in Iran.

The president continues to spend his leisure time golfing and entertaining wealthy friends and donors at his various properties, while crusading for a massive ballroom to be added to the White House.

There was not one metric—from AI to immigration—measured in the poll where a majority of voters approved of Trump’s handling of an issue.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Trump-backed congressional candidate Cory Mills faces very bad odds in the final stretch before his GOP primary.

Mills, 46, is running for a third term in Florida’s 7th Congressional District against three other Republican contenders, including conservative news anchor Ryan Elijah.

According to a new poll from Capital Strategic Partners, 44 percent of likely voters support Elijah, compared to only 27 percent for Mills.

The stats got even worse when the pollsters asked: “Cory Mills has been the subject of a congressional ethics investigation, a police report alleging assault, and questions about his business record.

“Knowing this, if the primary were held today, would you vote for Cory Mills or Ryan Elijah?”

Responding again, some voters changed allegiance. Forty eight percent then went for Elijah, with Mills’ share dipping to 20 percent.

The numbers come as something of a dismissal to Trump, who gave Army vet Mills his firm endorsement back in February.

On Truth Social, the president raved: “Congressman Cory Mills is an America First Patriot and Tremendous Champion for the Great People of Florida’s 7th Congressional District!

“A Successful Entrepreneur, and Brave U.S. Army Combat Veteran and Bronze Star recipient, Cory knows what is required to Defend our Country, Support our Military/Veterans, and Ensure PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH.”

Trump—who appointed Mills to the Defense Business Board during his first term—commended Mills for “fighting tirelessly” in Congress to promote MAGA interests, such as defending the Second Amendment and holding an anti-migrant platform.

The president concluded: “Cory Mills has my Complete and Total Endorsement for Re-Election — HE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN!”

Despite the endorsement being months-old, Mills has seemed confident that Trump’s word might pull him through.

“I’m the only person who sits on this stage today who has been endorsed three times by President Donald J. Trump,” he boasted at a debate on August 5.

It’s unclear if that endorsement will be enough to detach him from his current House Ethics Committee investigation on allegations of sexual misconduct and campaign finance law violations.

The string of controversies surrounding Mills has prompted congressmen—many from within the GOP—to demand his expulsion, with Elijah even brandishing an expired restraining order against Mills at the debate.

Mills has denied all accusations against him.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

A mysterious bulge spotted on President Donald Trump’s backside has sparked fresh speculation about his health.

The peculiar bump poking through the 80-year-old president’s suit was spotted in a video posted on X by outgoing White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt from a rally on Long Island on Friday.

In the video, Trump descends from the stage and walks towards the crowd, with the backside of his suit visibly bulging outward as if something rigid were tucked underneath it.

The odd, box-like shape appeared to hold its position as the president, who suffers from a growing number of health issues, made his way to the crowd and back to the podium.

Speculation over what could have been tucked beneath Trump’s suit immediately ran wild.

“Seriously, what is going on with Trump’s rear end here? It looks like he has some sort of contraption back there,” independent journalist Aaron Rupar quipped on X.

“It depends,” commented George Conway, the former conservative lawyer turned Trump critic, apparently nodding to the Depend brand of adult diapers.

“That’s a big diaper, I think:),” Czech-American tennis legend Martina Navratilova put it plainly.

Trump, the oldest person ever inaugurated as president, has long faced speculation that he wears adult diapers, though his biographer told the Inside Trump’s Head podcast last week that there is no basis to support the claim.

Others took the speculation in a different direction. “It’s nice to see he’s no longer hiding his colostomy bag,” one person commented under Leavitt’s post.

Another X user quipped, “Did he get a Brazilian butt lift?”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Rumors about Trump hiding a medical contraption under his suit have swirled as scrutiny of his health has intensified over his second term.

The Daily Beast has chronicled the president’s health issues, including his bruised hand, bulging cankles, and the many instances in which he has fallen asleep during public events.

He has also appeared in public with a mysterious neck rash, bragged repeatedly about “acing” a dementia screening exam that he claims measures intelligence, and become known for rambling off topic during interviews and speeches.

Trump appeared to have his latest memory lapse during his speech in Long Island on Friday, when he seemed to forget the name of the woman he just endorsed to be New York’s attorney general, Saritha Komatireddy.

“You have a person running, who I just met today for the first time, and I’ve endorsed her running for attorney general,” the president said.

Failing to name the woman he “just met,” he awkwardly called out to her from the podium: “Where the hell are you… Ma’am? Where are you?”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Vladimir Putin has reportedly opted to steer clear of Moscow as Ukrainian drones continue to pound the Russian capital.

The Russian president has seemingly fled east where he is thought to be beyond the reach of the surging drone attacks, according to a report from independent Telegram channel Mozhem Obyasnit.

“Putin has fled beyond the Urals,” the channel wrote, translated from Russian. “Following an intensification of Ukrainian attacks, his public itinerary has increasingly shifted toward Siberia and the Russian Far East, even as the Kremlin continues to present closed-door meetings with a ‘Moscow’ dateline.”

The Russian leader, increasingly paranoid about potential threats from both outside and within his own orbit, is said to have tried to conceal his whereabouts during a recent trip to Novosibirsk in which he used a decoy plane. Residents living along his motorcade route were even ordered to remain indoors during his visit to the city, according to independent outlet Novaya Gazeta.

The reporting comes as Ukrainian forces launched a massive drone assault on the Russian capital overnight on Sunday, according to The Moscow Times.

Moscow’s provincial governor Andrei Vorobyov said on Telegram that an 83-year-old man had been killed as a result of the strikes, and several more were injured as drones struck a warehouse belonging to Russia’s largest online retailer, Wildberries, in Podolsk.

Ukraine has been targeting Wildberries, the Russian equivalent of Amazon, as a way to damage Russia’s economic infrastructure. Kyiv has also accused the retailer of selling supplies to aid Russia’s military campaign.

The Russian Defense Ministry said it had downed 822 Ukrainian drones, the Moscow Times reported.

Even Putin’s own allies are admitting that his war is flailing.

Andrei Klepach, chief economist at Vnesheconombank and a former Putin appointee, offered a bleak assessment of the current status of the war during a forum in the nation’s capital, The Moscow Times reported.

“We’re falling behind,” Klepach was quoted as saying. “We’re losing both the technological and economic competition globally. And, as I’ve already said, we’re losing not only to China and the U.S., but in some ways, we’re losing to Ukraine.”

“We won’t win the competition in this war of attrition,” he added. “We’re under the illusion that everything will collapse. It hasn’t, and it won’t. Our costs are mounting.”

Klepach was fired within days of his comments going public, according to multiple local media reports.

The Russian president has defied criticisms of his war and vowed to double down, recently embarking on a charm offensive to counter the negative polling he’s received. He’s visited several cities throughout Siberia to promote the war effort he said nearly five years ago would only be a brief “special military operation.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

President Donald Trump was spotted alongside one of his most unwavering supporters—who also happens to be in the running to be the next White House press secretary.

The 80-year-old president spent the weekend at his Bedminster Golf Club in New Jersey, where he was seen dining with his eldest daughter Ivanka while one of Trump’s favorite songs, the Village People’s YMCA, played. At a nearby table, Alina Habba, one of his former personal attorneys, was also spotted dining.

Habba, 41, a longtime spokeswoman for Trump, is rumored to be one of the contenders to be the next White House press secretary after Karoline Leavitt announced her resignation last week.

After Leavitt’s resignation was made public, Habba posted online that whoever “gets that podium next better come ready for a fight they have big shoes to fill,” as she called Leavitt “perfection.”

Habba, who frequently went to bat for Trump during his 2024 campaign, has been floating within the administration for several months.

Trump tried and failed to get her to be the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, as she was never confirmed by the Senate to the role. Her brief but chaotic tenure there was plagued with legal trouble and eventually led to a federal appeals court ruling that her position was unlawful.

She later resigned from the position after being forced out, and former Attorney General Pam Bondi said she “will be continuing with the Department of Justice as Senior Advisor to the Attorney General for U.S. Attorneys.”

After that spectacle, she not so subtly signaled through social media that she wanted to replace Bondi as attorney general after Trump canned her in April.

But she has been largely quiet within the administration since her defeat at the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s office.

It remains unclear what exactly Habba was doing at the president’s New Jersey golf club. The New Jersey native previously lived close to the president’s Bedminster club in the nearby affluent town of Bernardsville, but she put that home on the market and quietly divorced her millionaire husband, Gregg Reuben.

She has since relocated to Palm Beach, Florida, where she purchased a home close to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

The women in President Donald Trump’s orbit have to lavish him with praise if they want him to treat them well, the president’s former adviser Anthony Scaramucci has claimed.

Speaking on The Daily Beast Podcast, Scaramucci, who infamously lasted just 11 days as communications director during Trump’s first administration, described the women the 80-year-old president wants around him as having to be “subservient” and “more or less a lackey of his.”

“Remember, people are transactions to Donald Trump—they’re not people,” Scaramucci told author Nell Scovell and host Joanna Coles, explaining that the president sees the women around him as “transactions in his field of vision.”

Speaking to the Daily Mail this week, several MAGA women appeared to confirm Scaramucci’s assessment of how Trump views women, revealing that the president’s relentless pressure to keep up with the latest beauty standards—including daily blowouts and regular Botox treatments—can grow tiresome.

The women spoke to the outlet after White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, 28, announced that she was stepping down to spend more time with her young children. But Leavitt was also reportedly fed up with Trump’s constant demands, a frustration the MAGA women who spoke to the Mail said they couldn’t blame her for.

“You have to be exceptional at your job, which is a given, but if you’re a woman you have to look a certain way, dress a certain way and be available 24/7, because this is a President who barely sleeps,” one MAGA woman said of working for Trump.

A woman Trump has increasingly appeared to like having by his side is his personal assistant, Natalie Harp, 35, who, according to the bombshell book Regime Change by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, would leave gushing letters for Trump to find in his “personal spaces” during the 2024 campaign, including one that read, “You are all that matters to me.”

“If you were saying something nice about him, he would be flattering to you,” Scaramucci said of the president’s behavior, adding that if someone said something negative about him, Trump would make some type of “AI rendition” of the individual.

Scaramucci referred to a “joke” the president made about CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins, 34, at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where he singled out the journalist and said she looked like transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, who prompted a Bud Light backlash a few years ago after appearing in an ad for the popular beer.

During the speech, Trump also said Collins should smile more and suggested she did not deserve an award she received that day.

Collins isn’t the only female journalist the president has treated rudely. Trump has had multiple incidents of lashing out at female reporters, including telling Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey “quiet piggy” last year.

The president has also made a point of criticizing women who disagree with him on Truth Social, even dragging the wives of political candidates he dislikes into his attacks. Last week, he targeted Democratic Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed and his wife in a post that appeared intended to compare their marriage with his own.

But Trump doesn’t always hide behind social media when attacking women. During the 2024 presidential campaign, he called his opponent Kamala Harris “mentally impaired,” while in 2016 he repeatedly branded Hillary Clinton “Crooked Hillary.”

“He’s a full-on misogynist, no question about that,” Scaramucci said about the president. “I look at him, and I say, this guy is weird about sex. He’s weird about women,” he added.

The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.

New episodes of The Daily Beast Podcast are released every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday on YouTube, and on other podcast platforms the next morning. Follow our new feed on your favorite podcast platform at beast.pub/dailybeastpod and subscribe on YouTube to watch full episodes.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has accused Mitch McConnell of rebuffing all attempts to get in contact with him or film a quick proof-of-life video.

Beshear, 48, appeared on Face the Nation Sunday, and was asked whether any of his multiple attempts to get an update on 84-year-old McConnell had garnered a reply.

“I have heard absolutely nothing back from Mitch McConnell,” the Democrat told host Ed O’Keefe.

“And while I do hope that he is getting better—I’ve known him my entire life, I wish him no harm, I actually wish him good health—his boss is the people of Kentucky,” he said.

“And this is why the Senate, the Republican-controlled Senate, feels so broken. They feel like they’re not accountable to anyone.”

Beshear urged of his fellow Kentucky politician: “All he needs to do is call into this show for two minutes, or Fox News for two minutes, or do a video for two minutes to the people he’s supposed to serve.

“But you know what? He absolutely refuses to do it.”

The former Kentucky attorney general then suggested that the buck didn’t stop with McConnell, and called out his GOP colleagues for failing to get their house in order.

“John Thune, as the leader of the senate you’ve got a duty to make sure all of your senators have the capacity to serve, and what is he saying? ‘Not my job,’” he raged.

“It’s not surprising. None of them will do their job right now and stand up to a president that is running over the Constitution at every turn.”

Closing the segment, O’Keefe said: “Well, we’ll take a call from Senator McConnell if he’d like to make it.”

Representatives for the senator did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

McConnell has been out of the public eye since being being found unconscious at his home and taken to a hospital on June 14.

In July, his team silenced rumors that the senator was dead by sharing two photos of McConnell and his wife Elaine Chao.

A statement attributed to McConnell was released along with the first photo, in which he claimed the theories of his poor health were an exaggeration and pledged to return to work.

“My doctors have confirmed that I didn’t break any bones or suffer a concussion. I didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke. I don’t have any tumors or hemorrhages,” the statement shared.

Of his complete radio silence and public disappearance, the statement said: “Folks of my generation often hesitate to share the vulnerability that comes with growing older.”

Despite none of his Kentucky voters having seen or heard from McConnell in over two months, his team last week claimed that he is now out of hospital and recovering at home. To date, he has not released any video or audio to reassure the public of his improving condition.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

The U.S. Navy is downplaying concerns about a reported ongoing crisis onboard the USS Boxer.

The families of sailors onboard the ship have described to Medias Touch that they have been running out of supplies, including feminine hygiene items.

The ship, stationed in the Middle East to support President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, has been at sea for months on end with no port stops after leaving its home port of San Diego in March.

Without regular stops in ports, ships do not get access to their normal window to resupply for essential items. They also miss the opportunity to give sailors a reprieve from life at sea, which is seen as necessary for their mental well-being and overall morale.

“Family and friends on the Boxer have been out so long and aren’t receiving care packages. Women have run out of feminine hygiene items due to no resupplies happening. They pack enough and some extra for deployment but not for all the extensions and no port calls,” one family member told Medias Touch.

But the Navy is asserting that these reports from concerned family members are overblown, saying in a statement posted to social media that the “reports emerging of USS Boxer experiencing a shortage in hygiene products for women in uniform are FALSE.

The Navy said the ship has had four port visits, and that it is “stocked with feminine products.”

“The Boxer Amphibious Ready Group remains fully equipped and prepared to execute all assigned missions,” the statement concluded.

The apparent crisis aboard the Boxer comes as sailors aboard the USS Lincoln, also stationed in the Middle East, have reported deteriorating conditions and morale, as their deployment has been extended twice with no end in sight.

Sailors have reported that the ship does not have working toilets, and that they have been served undercooked chicken and beans. Similar to the Boxer, they have also said they do not have adequate hygiene products.

Tensions on that vessel came to a climax last month as several sailors went or attempted to go overboard in an attempt to take their own lives.

The USS George Washington is currently headed to the Middle East to replace the Lincoln, but officials have maintained that the swap had been preplanned, CNN reported.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has insisted that reports of the bad conditions onboard have been “completely misrepresented.”

“We make sure every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment,” Hegseth said last week. “Some deployments are longer than others, and I have more respect and gratitude for those sailors than anybody.”

Trump took his defense of the military a step further. When asked on Friday about family members who are concerned about conditions on the ship, Trump replied, “No, they’re not.”

And when asked if the deployment to support his disastrous war had gone on too long given the mental health risks, he responded, “No, no, no. Not nearly long enough.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

President Donald Trump, 80, takes his blonde aide Natalie Harp with him everywhere because she’s his “human binkie,” according to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.

Haberman, a Trump biographer, offered the striking description Sunday morning on Connect with Jacob Soboroff while discussing why Harp, 35, was among the select few aides who accompanied Trump during his mysterious departure from Turkey in July.

Trump snuck off Air Force One in a catering truck before flying out on a military plane with key administration officials, while leaving the press and other aides on board the presidential plane.

“I can guess why Natalie Harp, Walt Nauta and Dan Scavino were with him,” Haberman said.

“Natalie Harp, because she is sort of his Binkie, for lack of a better way of putting it—his comfort blanket.”

Harp, 35, has been seen by the president’s side constantly over the past few months, accompanying him on official business and to the golf course. There is even speculation that Harp could be the wild card in the race to replace departing White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Haberman suggested Trump may have handpicked some of the aides who provide him the most comfort for the cloak-and-dagger escape from Ankara.

“Walt Nauta because he is something similar [to Harp], he also always carries that brown leather briefcase that became very familiar in term one,” Haberman said.

The briefcase, she said, carries Trump’s must-haves: hairspray, Tic Tacs “and all kinds of stuff.”

She said Dan Scavino was likely there because he’s one of Trump’s “closest aides, and has been with Trump for 30-some odd years first as a caddy on his Westchester golf course.”

There may also have been a more practical reason for bringing Harp and Scavino along: both have access to Trump’s social media accounts.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Haberman’s reporting on Trump and his administration has drawn the president’s ire numerous times in the past. He lashes out at her through his social media platform regularly, and is a long-time critic of the New York Times.

Haberman and co-author Johnathan Swan’s bombshell book about the Trump presidency is on track to become the bestselling nonfiction book of the year, despite Trump’s repeated attempts to sink it.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

It sounds like Prince Harry has had enough of sitting around in Montecito watching his wife make jam. His people are briefing that Harry is planning to make “more and more” visits to the U.K. after a successful trip last month when he finally managed to get together with his father.

Roya Nikkah, royal editor of The Sunday Times, reports that Harry will be back in Britain next month for a week-long trip with engagements for the charity WellChild, and the Invictus Games, the multi-sport event for disabled veterans that Harry founded 12 years ago. The next Invictus Games are to be held in the English city of Birmingham next July, and Harry wants to step up the frequency of his visits before then, as well as more actively support the various U.K.-based charities with which he’s still involved.

“The template for his visits has been working well, so the frequency of trips will increase, especially in the run-up to Invictus–which he’s determined to make the best games yet. So he’ll be coming back and forth a lot more, every few months,” a source close to Harry told the newspaper.

“He wants more and more of a foothold here, more trips back, less courtroom drama. And he always love seeing his family.”

If we set aside the “less courtroom drama” remark for a moment, The Royalist has no doubt that Harry would indeed like to spend more time in the U.K., even without the automatic taxpayer-funded police protection that he’s been pushing for. But this still sounds like wishful thinking on his part.

Nikkah says Harry felt “buoyed, very happy and really energized” after last month’s trip, when he and Meghan and their children Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5, were received by the King and Queen at Charles’ private estate in Gloucestershire, Highgrove. It was a momentous occasion: the first time Charles had seen his California-based grandchildren in four years.

But no advance notice was given of the meeting, and no photos or footage were released afterward. We still don’t know what they spoke about.

So what’s going to happen on his next trip home, or the one after that? Will Charles and Camilla receive him again? Will Meghan and the kids come along for the ride? Would it be another clandestine meeting, iPhones confiscated on arrival and with the Sussexes sworn to eternal secrecy? That’s never going to satisfy Harry, let alone his wife. He wants to rebuild his royal career, or at least fashion something resembling it, not to be treated as a family pariah, only one step up from his Uncle Andrew.

Plus, the family goes beyond Charles and Camilla. There’s also William and Catherine, Prince and Princess of Wales, and there’s no sign of any olive branches being offered from that quarter, however much Charles would like to see his sons reconciled. William felt profoundly, absolutely, unforgivably betrayed by his brother’s decision to spill all on their private lives in his best-selling ghostwritten memoir Spare, and in the interviews he did to promote it. The two brothers, once so close after living through the trauma of their mother’s death in 1997, no longer speak.

The 77-year-old monarch is responding fantastically well to his cancer treatment that once looked likely to curtail his reign, so the power dynamic in the Windsor family has shifted. But Charles will know that there can be no real return to royal life for Harry without William’s consent.

And the “courtroom drama” that Harry says he wants to see less of, that still has to play out after his humiliating defeat to the publisher of The Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday. Harry and his six co-claimants, including Sir Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley, accused Mail reporters of having used illegal means to gather their information. But the most expensive and complex privacy case in British legal history crumbled in the courtroom and Mr Justice Nicklin found in the newspapers’ favor on all 97 claims of unlawful information gathering.

Associated Newspapers says its costs exceeded £34 million ($46 million) and wants Harry and his co-defendants to pay £10 million upfront before a final costs hearing in the next couple of weeks. It’s going to prove a very expensive mistake for Harry.

Want more royal gossip, scoops and scandal? Follow all Tom Sykes’ reporting at The Royalist on Substack or listen to The Royalist podcast on YouTube.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Attorney General Todd Blanche defended his absolute deference to Donald Trump during his first interview following his confirmation.

Blanche, who was confirmed on Aug. 8 after taking over from Pam Bondi in an acting capacity in March, appeared on Meet the Press on Sunday.

Host Kristen Welker first asked whether he could pledge to operate the Department of Justice independently from the White House’s whims, the idea of which he railed against.

Blanche, 52, stammered as he argued: “Well, there’s a big difference between saying, ‘We will always do our job and investigate any case’ and ‘act independently of the White House.’”

“No, I’m not going to pledge that, and no attorney general should ever pledge that.”

Trump’s former personal attorney then seemed to suggest that he saw “acting independently” as simply saying “no” to Trump, regardless of the duty of the DOJ.

“The president—I mean if I were to pledge that I will be independent of the White House, what that means is that if President Trump says, ‘I want the Department of Justice to go after every violent criminal in this country,’ which is what he has said, what you’re saying to me is I just say, ‘No, sir, not going to do it,’” he mocked.

In another question, Welker asked if Blanche would ever follow an illegal order from Trump, with the AG suggesting that the possibility was a smear made up by the left-wing media.

“The president would never ask me to do something illegal. Never has, never will,” he stated.

Later, the duo locked horns over Trump’s pardoning of violent Jan. 6 rioters, many of whom attacked Capitol and D.C. police.

“How is that consistent with your pledge to always protect law enforcement?” Welker asked.

Blanche argued: “There is nothing inconsistent. The president’s pardon powers—any president’s pardon powers—are not limited.”

“Every attorney general vows to protect law enforcement, including me. So no, I am not opining or in any way saying what President Trump did is wrong. Absolutely not,” he said.

Blanche was later asked about Trump’s criticism of U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro for her decision to drop a case of alleged Reflecting Pool vandalism.

Questioned about whether he would listen to Trump’s calls to revisit the case against former Olympian David Hearn, Blanche hinted that his ear was always open to his boss.

“Will I take the president of the United States’ view on something into consideration? Yes. Of course. And I hope every attorney general in history would not answer that question differently,” he said.

As his face reddened, Blanche derisively continued: “Just let’s play that out. The president of the United States, the elected president of the United States, says something to me and I am supposed to say to you, I would say, ‘Nope.’

“I mean, that’s not the way it works. I mean, the president is extraordinarily—every day he wakes up with one mission, which is making this country better. As it relates to me, making this country safer.”

Blanche concluded that he’d be keeping an eye on Trump’s Truth Social rants for his next moves.

“So if he has a view on that, he talks about it on social media, he talks about it when he speaks to the American people, that’s certainly something that I listen to,” he said.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

President Donald Trump’s once-star-studded legal team has dwindled to a lone lawyer as he barrels toward three appeals.

According to Politico, four of the five members of Trump’s legal team have left Sullivan & Cromwell, the firm the president first tapped to represent him in an attempt to appeal and overturn his hush money conviction in January last year.

The five partners on Trump’s legal team had all clerked for Supreme Court justices, making it unusually elite and, as The New York Times described it last year, a sign that “legal power players have warmed to the president.”

Yet four of the partners have since left for other firms or been given posts in the Trump administration or judiciary, according to Politico.

By April, only Sullivan & Cromwell co-chair Robert Giuffra Jr. remained, representing Trump in his hush money criminal appeal, his E. Jean Carroll defamation case appeal, and his bid to overturn New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud judgment.

In July, Giuffra and a junior lawyer were the only signatories on Trump’s petition asking the Supreme Court to overturn Carroll’s $83.3 million defamation judgment, stemming from her allegations that Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s and later defamed her.

Trump had already suffered a legal blow in the other of Carroll’s two civil lawsuits, when the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal, leaving intact the $5 million award from the 2023 trial.

Politico noted that, given Giuffra’s role, it would be unusual for him to handle all three appeals at once. A person familiar with the situation said additional partners are expected to join Trump’s team in the coming weeks.

Still, the turnaround looks tight.

Trump’s lawyers are due to file their brief in the New York civil fraud case on Aug. 26. The case has largely gone his way so far, after an appeals court overturned the roughly $500 million judgment brought by James over claims that Trump inflated his assets and misrepresented his net worth to secure better loan terms.

His lawyers are nevertheless asking the New York Court of Appeals to overturn the underlying fraud finding entirely.

The team will then have to file another brief in October seeking to overturn Trump’s May 2024 conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a hush-money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels during his 2016 campaign.

The gaps on Trump’s legal team are partly of his own making. Trump tapped Jamie McDonald as Manhattan U.S. attorney, nominated Matthew Schwartz to a lifetime seat on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, while the other two partners left to join a rival firm.

Last month, people familiar with the matter told Politico that Giuffra encouraged the firm to work with Trump and was even considered by the president for attorney general, though Trump ultimately chose his former criminal defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, for the job.

Though Trump has rewarded some partners at one of the world’s most prestigious law firms with positions in his administration and the judiciary, others have chosen to leave over the firm’s association with him.

The Daily Beast has reached out to Sullivan & Cromwell and the White House for comment.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Women working under President Donald Trump are speaking out about the toll that the job can take, given the beauty standards and the president’s demanding nature.

Several MAGA women told The Daily Mail that they didn’t blame outgoing White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt for wanting to leave. While Leavitt cited a desire to spend more time with her young children, she was also reportedly fed up with the constant demands from Trump.

Some women revealed that the constant pressure to keep up with the latest beauty standards, which can include daily blowouts and regular Botox treatments, can also grow tiresome.

“It gets to be utterly draining,” one MAGA woman said of working for Trump.

“You have to be exceptional at your job, which is a given, but if you’re a woman you have to look a certain way, dress a certain way and be available 24/7, because this is a President who barely sleeps,” she explained.

“Add to that the pressure of a family at home and it’s no wonder so many of us flame out,” she added.

Blanche Sprague, one of Trump’s former executives from his days as a New York socialite, told The Daily Mail that it was exhausting working “like a nanny” to keep up with his demands.

“He used to call me up at night and say, ‘Did you know that there’s a soda bottle in front of Trump Plaza?’ and I would have to make sure that it was picked up right away because he would drive past again to see that it was gone,” she recalled.

Some defenders of the president’s demands asserted that it was not Trump’s behavior exactly that drives women to focus on appearance, but “female competition” among his staffers.

“He doesn’t force these women to have 6 am blow-outs or get plastic surgery or go on weight-loss drugs,” one person said.

“They get the Botox and fillers because the White House is a competitive place,” they added. “Everyone is vying for his attention.”

Sources also revealed that for some of the lower-level staffers, the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze with the high-pressure nature of the work and the relatively low salaries compared to other entry-level political gigs in Washington.

“You are expected to look a certain way. Most of the women at the White House get their hair blown out at least twice a week before work and then there is pressure to go to the gym and dress well,” one source explained to the Mail.

“A lot of the younger aides don’t make that much money. You’re talking maybe $50,000 to $70,000 a year. It’s not only a stressful business working in Trump’s world – it’s an expensive one,” they elaborated.

Still, in addition to Leavitt, six other women from Trump’s inner circle have departed since the start of the year: Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, embattled Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson and Director of Media Affairs Sonny Joy Nelson.

In his post announcing her departure, the president said that Leavitt will be moving into a new role as an “outside advisor” to “work to defy History, and conclusively win the Midterm Elections.”

Sources told the Mail that even though she is leaving the podium, Trump will likely still be frequently calling her up in her new role.

“The President trusts her judgment. He respects her decision to spend time with her kids but he will continue to seek her guidance,” they said.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Fox News host Joey Jones erupted on sailors complaining about conditions aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier deployed in the Iran war, blasting them as “weak.”

In a segment Saturday on Fox’s The Big Weekend Show, Jones can be heard huffing out an annoyed breath as he listens to a member of the USS Abraham Lincoln’s crew complain about the food they are being served.

“How weak are you?! On TV, complaining about tuna and noodles?” Jones rants after the segment, which first aired on CNN Thursday, is done.

“I’m sorry, you volunteered to serve your country. You can come back, get out of the military, and do like all these Democrat veterans and complain about it, and make commercials, and be a sellout if you want to,” he continues.

The crew member is describing conditions on the ship, which have come under scrutiny following complaints from sailors and their families about food shortages, poor sanitation, and plummeting morale.

“I would say morale’s pretty low, and not just in the division, like in the ship entirely,” the unnamed crew member says. “We’re running pretty low on rations, I mean at some points in the day it would just be about noodles and tuna mixed in together, and that was it…sometimes you get a corndog, sometimes you get a hot dog.”

In response, Jones tells his other panelists that when he was deployed in Afghanistan, he survived for months on ramen and tuna packets, for the most part choosing to avoid the food prepared by a local cook.

“That’s what I ate, and I was happy to have it, because the alternative was an MRE [Military rations called meals ready-to-eat] or something cooked by the Afghan guy who was too stupid to be given a gun, and they let him be the cook,” Jones ranted.

He said the servicemen and women on the carrier—who have been at sea for over 250 days—were deployed for significantly less time than he was on the ground in war zones, and claimed they were much safer at sea, too.

Jones served eight years in the U.S. Marine Corps, deploying to both Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2010, while serving as an explosive ordnance disposal technician in Afghanistan, he stepped on an IED, losing both legs above the knee and severely injuring his right forearm and wrists.

He said he was “sorry” the Lincoln crew “might have got bored” but joked that by July 2010, he would have traded C4 [explosives] to the Taliban for better food.

“I just do not understand the mentality,” he continued. “If this a representation of who our military is now...we’re just Rome sitting there waiting to burn—we’ve got nothing left.”

He also questioned the commitment of the newest generation of military recruits.

“It makes me fume,” Jones said. “To that little kid, and whoever raised him, lord help ya if you ever go into a hot war on the ground.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy is raging against President Donald Trump’s “potentially tragic” overhaul of the childhood vaccine schedule.

Cassidy, a physician, appeared on State of the Union Sunday, and was asked about Trump’s claims that the current combined MMR vaccine could be “quite lethal,” and was comparable to “pumping” a child with “a large vat” or “gallons” of chemicals.

“Yeah, that’s a crazy, stupid thing,” Cassidy said.

Trump has asserted that “nothing bad can happen” by tripling the number of scheduled MMR shots.

Cassidy, however, warned that—particularly amid the affordability crisis and with a base of vaccine-skeptic voters—plenty of bad things could happen.

“Instead of the child getting two shots, they’re getting six. Instead of mom and dad missing work twice to bring the child to the doctor, they’re missing six times.

“And instead of the insurance company paying for two visits, they’re paying for six, which is going to drive up the cost of the premium.”

He described it as a disaster in the making, saying that ultimately “the child is going to get more jabs. The parents are going to lose money directly, and indirectly premiums are going up, which works against affordability.”

Trump’s sudden desire to change the vaccine schedule is another sign that he’s out of touch with voters, according to Cassidy.

“This is why the president’s poll numbers are going down, because people don’t perceive that he knows the reality of their life,” he said.

“The reality of life is that the current regime has been put in place precisely for the convenience of the child, for the convenience of the parent, and to prevent disease. This is going backwards. We need to go forwards.”

Cassidy also spoke of having seen lives lost directly due to lack of vaccine uptake, and said of Trump’s “nothing bad can happen” comment earlier in the conversation: “If it wasn’t so potentially tragic, you would break out laughing at a comment like that.”

Measles is having a worrying resurgence in the U.S. after being declared eliminated in the country in 2000 by the World Health Organization.

A new record was set this July, with the highest annual count of cases since 1991—despite being just over halfway through the year.

Alongside the wave of measles cases attributed to Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s platform of vaccine hesitancy, doctors have reported similar rises in illnesses such as whooping cough and bacterial infections.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

A three-time Trump voter was left devastated after the immigration policies of the president he repeatedly supported resulted in his wife being taken away.

Tech salesman and former MAGA supporter Brent Jindra, 48, was stunned when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained his wife, Galina Bobreneva, after the couple landed at Burbank Airport in California, The New York Times reported.

“A U.S. citizen just watched his wife get dragged away and had no idea where she was going,” Jindra, who voted for President Donald Trump, 80, because of his promises of strict immigration enforcement, recalled of the day.

Jindra was in town to see clients, while Bobreneva—who is originally from Russia—had traveled with him to visit friends. Instead, she was taken to the Adelanto ICE Processing Facility, leaving Jindra struggling to understand how his wife, who “did not jump a wall, she did not swim a river,” could be detained when she “came in Trump’s beautiful, big front door.”

Bobreneva arrived in the U.S. in 2021 on a tourist visa, which she later extended after the war in Ukraine broke out. She applied for asylum in 2022, before meeting Jindra.

“It was your storybook romance,” Jindra told the Times of their relationship. The couple met in March 2025 and married that December. In April, Jindra petitioned to sponsor his wife for a marriage-based green card.

By the time she was detained, Bobreneva had reportedly received official confirmation that her application had been accepted and had already been fingerprinted as part of the process. Her lawyer has asserted that she was never out of lawful status.

“I never thought that it was so easy to take freedom from anyone,” she told the Times, describing conditions inside the Adelanto ICE Processing Facility as making her feel “like a piece of meat, not like a human.” She said the lights were kept on around the clock and that women were crammed together inside the facility. A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official disputed her characterization in a statement to the Times.

Bobreneva’s account comes as scrutiny of ICE’s treatment of detainees and use of force continues to mount. On Monday, DHS announced that ICE plans to equip its agents with gloves capable of delivering painful electric shocks to migrants.

The announcement came weeks after a July ACLU report, which reviewed more than 1,200 immigration enforcement operations involving ICE, found that nearly a third involved the use or threat of force. Overall, thirty-two detainees died in ICE custody in 2025—the agency’s deadliest year in more than two decades, according to a Guardian tally published at the end of the year.

Bobreneva was released on July 29 on a $35,000 bond and fitted with an ankle monitor. Her case remains ongoing, and she must report to ICE and appear in court, as the proceedings could take months to resolve.

“The allure of the MAGA campaign was around illegal entries of criminals,” Jindra told the Times. The DHS said in a statement to the Times that Jindra’s wife was “an illegal alien” who was targeted for arrest because “she overstayed her welcome in violation of our nation’s laws.”

“We are living in fear in my own country,” Jindra said.

The tech salesman is not the only Trump voter to become frustrated with the president’s policies.

An MS NOW segment from June featuring Trump voters—including some who have supported him in every election since 2016—captured growing frustration directed at the president.

“The average American is struggling to make ends meet right now. And nobody wants to hear ‘the war’s almost over.’ Nobody wants to hear ‘it’s gonna get better,’” said Chris Tackett, a three-time Trump voter from Ohio who works as a truck driver.

In a separate segment aired in August, the network spoke to an Ohio mother and three-time Trump voter who broke down in tears as she described how the affordability crisis was making life increasingly difficult.

“You can’t do anything,” she said, pointing to rising gas prices that have made it difficult to “afford to breathe at this point.” She also admitted she felt “hurt” by what she sees happening in the country.

The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Democratic lawmakers are taking aim at the Supreme Court to curb its rightward shift.

They’ve grown increasingly frustrated by the court, as it has delivered sweeping conservative victories in recent years, erasing decades of progress, including scaling back the 1965 Voting Rights Act, overturning the constitutional right to an abortion, loosening campaign finance rules, and increasing executive power. Some in the party have argued that recent rulings from the high court are more about politics, and less about the interpretation of the law.

“There’s constant and building dismay about the increasingly appalling record of the court,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, told The Washington Post.

“And I think the continuing interest in reform springs from continued dismay and concern about the court’s misbehavior,” he added.

In response, Democratic lawmakers have introduced several bills in recent months aimed at curbing the Supreme Court amid its rightward shift.

Whitehouse introduced a bill to have term limits for Supreme Court Justices, cutting their lifetime appointment to 18 years. Under that proposal, a president would nominate a justice every other year, in an attempt to maintain an ideological balance on the bench.

“Even in a Congress like this one, where these bills have no chance of passage, it’s really important to file them and to stand by them, because they reassure people that there is in fact a mechanism by which the court could be restored to some degree of better order,” Whitehouse told the Post.

Another bill proposed by Democrats includes increasing the number of Supreme Court justices from nine to 13. One proposal would require justices to place some assets into blind trusts, and another would create standards for rulings from the court’s emergency docket, often referred to as the “shadow docket.”

The new push from Democrats for Supreme Court reform mirrors a push in 2020, when they were angered that President Donald Trump was able to nominate three justices, while former President Barack Obama had been snubbed on his pick due to maneuvering from then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who is said to be mulling a third presidential run in 2028, has called for her party to “revisit” the idea of expanding the court to 13 justices.

There are also signs that the push is picking up speed within current Democratic leadership. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Thursday that there are a “variety of different options that are on the table, and I think we can’t foreclose on any single one of them.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Chuck Grassley’s household vacuum crisis has reached catastrophic new levels. After mourning his beloved 49-year-old “Beth” last week, the 92-year-old Iowa senator has now revealed that his backup vacuum also bit the dust.

The Iowa Republican—who, at 92 years old, is the oldest U.S. senator—shared his last sucky vacuum parting just last week, when the 49-year-old clean machine that he had named “Beth” passed.

“U willl see Beth no more,” the senator wrote on X, with a photo of visible burn marks near Beth’s power cord from “electrical sparks,” Grassley explained. “It’s not safe to use anymore. GOOD BYE BETH. U hv been a real workhorse.”

Now, the nonagenarian is lamenting the loss of yet another ancient appliance.

“Disappointed my backup plan to vacuum for my family reunion didn’t work,” he wrote on X Saturday. “My 1966 Electrolux is also broken. I’m going to have to wait now until someone gives me a used Hoover,” he added.

Grassley, who has been on vacation this month, said his mom gave him the Electrolux decades ago. He hoped it would hold out until he bought a new Hoover, “but it just didn’t work out that way.”

X posters were agog, with one reminding the platform that Grassley, as the current president pro tempore, is chillingly “Third. In. Line. To The Presidency.”

Many of the critics appeared to be right-wingers, with several angrily pressing Grassley on their favored legislation. “You don’t work, either,” snapped one poster. “Get your sorry a-- back to work and pass the SAVE America Act.”

The Daily Beast has reached out to Senator Grassley’s office for comment.

Another urged: “Pass the SAVE America Act and I’ll send you a Miele” vacuum cleaner. (Ironically, Mieles are made in Germany and China.)

There were several serious jabs over the issue from heavier hitters. Former GOP Alabama state House candidate Billy Ray Todd complained that Grassley should stop grousing and instead “be in D.C. passing the SAVE Act.”

Grassley’s post was either an “enormous detachment from reality or a giant middle finger,” posted conservative commentator and comedian Joe Dan Gorman, who added: “And this applies to ALL 53 Republican senators.”

Conservative journalist Chris Nelson torched Grassley over his age: “He’s not ever a boomer,” he wrote. “His kids are boomers.”

Grassley’s harsh critics may be unaware of where he stands on the controversial voting bill.

Grassley strongly supports Donald Trump’s pet SAVE America Act, and was even a co-sponsor of the bill. He believes that requirements of the proposed law—such as voters showing specific identification at polling booths, states sharing all voter lists with Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, and sharp restrictions on mail-in voting—would protect the integrity of elections, even though there’s no evidence that U.S. elections are fraudulent.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

The investigation into Nancy Guthrie’s kidnapping may have been hobbled from the start by inexperienced homicide detectives, friction with the FBI, and a decision to give the family control of the crime scene too soon, according to a local law enforcement union leader.

Sgt. Aaron Cross, president of the Pima County Deputies Organization, detailed what he believes went wrong in the case in an interview with TMZ

Cross’s biggest concern is that local investigators relinquished control of Guthrie’s crime scene to her family too soon.

The disappearance of Guthrie, 84, the mother of Today co-host Savannah Guthrie, 54, remains shrouded in mystery. Authorities believe Nancy was kidnapped from her home in Tucson, Arizona, in the early morning of Feb. 1 by a masked man whose image was captured by her door camera. Her family last saw her the previous day.

A note claiming to be from her kidnapper, who was seeking a ransom, told the family that she died of health issues, believed to be “heart-related,” soon after she was abducted.

Clues to the crime and various notes have led nowhere so far.

Cross was not involved in the probe, but as the president of the Pima County Deputies Organization, the union representing local sheriff’s deputies, he learned about the crime and the investigation.

According to Cross, the local sergeant initially put in charge of the Guthrie case had no homicide experience and had only become a sergeant in 2023.

“He very rapidly went inside from patrol and then was assigned to homicide,” Cross explained. The two “most senior” homicide detectives had recently been transferred out of the division, he added.

The detectives who worked on the case had homicide experience, but it was only “three years or less,” which is “limited,” noted Cross, who said he considered the investigators “novice” murder detectives.

It was “almost unheard of” for detectives with so little relevant experience to work such a case, he told TMZ.

Cross also described “animosity” toward the FBI within the sheriff’s office. Yet he credited the federal agency with unearthing the door camera footage at Guthrie’s home, which ultimately captured an image of her alleged kidnapper.

Cross called the footage the “best piece of evidence we’ve had so far in this case. Frankly, I’m not sure where we’d be now without it.”

“To my knowledge,” there hasn’t been any significant new progress in the case, Cross said, though he acknowledged that he may not have access to all the details. But he complained that Sheriff Chris Nanos and the “command staff” are “hoping to solve this from behind a desk.”

The Daily Beast has reached out to the Pima County Sheriff’s Office for comment.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

President Donald Trump spent his Saturday living it up in a Truth Social fantasy world while thousands of American sailors continue to endure brutal conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier serving in his Iran war.

In four of his wild posts, Trump, 80, imagined himself showing off his new White House ballroom to the nation’s first president, George Washington, who has been dead for 227 years.

Trump’s tacky $400 million construction project is currently on hold after a federal appeals court ruled that the administration lacked the necessary congressional authority to move ahead with it.

Trump followed that up with a photo of him with the nation’s first president, both on horseback. Trump, wearing a suit and tie, sits astride a black horse beside Washington and his white mount.

In another AI-generated image, Trump and Washington are shown writing together on what appears to be a map.

Trump also posted a shadowy photo of himself wearing a “TRUMP 2028″ hat with the caption “We are going to win.”

In another message, Trump fondly reminisced about the time he and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un enjoyed each other’s company, though they decidedly did not look that way in the photo. “Despite the unfriendly look on this particular picture, there are many where we’re smiling,” the president wrote. “Kim Jong Un and I get along GREAT!”

Trump furiously crammed several endorsements for Republican candidates into his twisted trip through history, as the party grows increasingly fearful of the midterm results.

When asked on Friday whether sailors’ family members were worried about conditions aboard the ship, Trump, who has never served in the military, flatly replied: “No, they’re not.”

When he was asked whether the deployment had gone on too long, given the conditions and mental health risks, the president responded: “No, no, no. Not nearly long enough.”

The wife of one of the crewmen on the ship told Jake Tapper in a phone interview on CNN on Friday that her husband’s experience was like being “stuck in a floating metal prison in the middle of the water, eating prison-like food with the same people in the same bunk beds in the same small quarters for 200 days, 250 days. You start to go a little insane.”

At least two desperate sailors have attempted to jump overboard, while another soldier actually did (and was rescued).

Regarding Trump’s callous dismissal of the conditions the sailors are enduring, the woman, whose identity was not revealed, said: “I don’t think the man thinks before he talks. Try to redeem yourself at least a little bit,” she said of Trump.

“Have some sympathy, some empathy, take some accountability for what’s going on with your military, your ship, your war,” she continued. “It’s infuriating.”

On Friday, Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao said the USS Abraham Lincoln will “return home soon as part of its scheduled rotation.” He didn’t specify the timeline.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

A George H. W. Bush-appointed Supreme Court justice claimed that a prestigious university was “off limits” to conservatives like him—but quickly got shut down.

Clarence Thomas, 78, suggested that places like Stanford Law School are unwelcoming to him. He made the remarks at a forum hosted by Hoover Institution, a public policy think tank at Stanford University.

“You know, I have never been to Stanford Law School,” he said. “Never been. That’s the reality. That’s the world we’re in. Because there’s certain places that are just presumptively off limits. This is the way it works.”

“I mean, I’ve been to Yale Law School, but that’s the way it works. And to say it isn’t is to lie, okay? So you don’t get [in], and even if you do, it comes with all this attendant animosity and negativity,” he continued. “In other words, to make it unpalatable. So this person, we’ll allow here, but this person’s views are unpalatable. Whereas if you’re agreed with, it’s sweetened up and it’s rose petals and, ‘This is presumptively the right idea.’”

Thomas claimed that the ideas of thinkers like the economist Thomas Sowell, who were critical in shaping his views, would never reach the younger generation if it wasn’t for YouTube. The forum centered around the legacy of Sowell, a prominent Black conservative intellectual.

“What these kids are getting is all that stuff [that] is not there,” he said. ”It’s just on YouTube. It’s available to everybody, and they get to make up their own mind. The five of them or whatever can sit together and decide whether they agree without all this negative trapping.”

But the high-ranking university was quick to call Clarence’s bluff.

“We would be honored to host Justice Thomas at Stanford Law School,” a Stanford spokesperson told Fox News Digital.

“The Stanford Constitutional Law Center, directed by Professor Michael McConnell, former Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, regularly hosts members of the judiciary on campus,” the spokesperson added. “Our students and faculty would welcome the opportunity to hear from Justice Thomas and engage with his perspectives on the Court, the Constitution, and the law.”

Editor’s note: This post has been updated to make clear which president appointed Thomas.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s decision to quit at the end of the month has caused chaos in Trump world.

Leavitt is the fifth high-profile female staffer working for President Donald Trump to abruptly leave, and her departure is reportedly not being taken well.

“There were really only two women who could both appease Trump and challenge him: Karoline Leavitt and Susie Wiles. There is concern on how this administration will move forward with so much work ahead,” one source described as close to Trump opined to the Daily Mail.

Leavitt, 28, returned from maternity leave on July 16, following the birth of her second child with husband Nicholas Riccio, 60, on May 1.

She is said to have been planning to leave the White House for some time but was trying to figure out the best way to let Trump, 80, down.

But while she was on maternity leave, Trump reportedly contacted Leavitt regularly, wanting to know when she would return. She ultimately came back early at the president’s insistence, according to the Mail.

Her decision to quit was “no doubt one of the hardest decisions of her life so far,” an insider said.

Leavitt joins former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, former Attorney General Pam Bondi, former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem among the high-ranking Trump women who have either quit or been pushed out since March of this year.

“What was meant to be a showcase of administrative discipline has devolved into an exhausting exercise in crisis management,” an insider complained.

“Trump demands absolute loyalty and expects immediate results. So that creates a meat-grinder environment where work-life balance is non-existent,” a female administration official told the Daily Mail.

“Not only that, but they have to walk the ethics line of being devoted to Trump and also doing the right thing.”

There is reportedly already a contest among ambitious staffers to fill Leavitt’s post, with another young blonde, former Department of Homeland Security press secretary Katie Zacharia, a frontrunner alongside principal deputy press secretary Anna Kelly, Trump lawyer Alina Habba, and CNN political commentator Scott Jennings.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

The Defense Department says ice cream served to sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln a month ago proves the ship is not in crisis, despite pleas for help from sailors’ families.

The official X account for what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has dubbed the “Department of War” seized on a CNN segment from last month in which reporter Pamela Brown visited the Lincoln.

The account pointed to a brief moment in which sailors were shown eating ice cream as evidence that conditions aboard the ship are better than multiple accounts from sailors and their families suggest.

“Wonder about the USS Abraham Lincoln?” the DOW Rapid Response account wrote on X Friday, adding: “Reporter & CNN anchor Pamela Brown was there last month. Take her word for it…(with a scoop of ice cream).”

The same segment was recycled on Saturday in response to Washington Post journalist Dan Lamothe, who had hit back against the Pentagon’s claims that the media wasn’t accurately reporting on conditions aboard the ship. The account responded by reposting the segment, writing: “Pamela Brown from CNN was actually embedded aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln just a month ago—and they even ate ice cream while visiting the ship!”

The sailors on board the Lincoln went out to sea thinking their deployment would last for seven months before they were sent to fight in the Iran war, which President Donald Trump, 80, initially said would last four to six weeks.

Conditions aboard the aircraft carrier have reportedly deteriorated as the 5,000 sailors and Marines on board enter the ninth month of their deployment, with no end in sight to the president’s war.

Sailors aboard the carrier and their families have described deteriorating conditions, with MS NOW reporting moldy showers, food shortages, sailors running out of toothpaste, deodorant and soap, and worsening mental health issues.

Family members have raised the alarm that several sailors went or attempted to go overboard in apparent suicide attempts.

The Defense Department’s “ice cream” defense comes as Trump himself has dismissed family members’ concerns about conditions aboard the ship.

Asked whether families were concerned, the president flatly replied, “No, they’re not.” As for whether the deployment had gone on too long given the potential mental health risks to sailors, Trump again brushed off the concern, saying, “No, no, no. Not nearly long enough.”

The wife of a sailor aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln called out the president shortly after he made the comments, telling CNN’s Jake Tapper that Trump should show more “sympathy” and “accountability” for the service members stuck at sea.

“I don’t think the man thinks before he talks,” she said in a phone interview Friday.

Others in the administration have followed their boss’s pushback against reports of poor conditions aboard the Lincoln, blaming the media while appearing to ignore the pleas from service members’ families. Hegseth, whose own wife was tapped by Trump earlier this month to head a commission meant to support military spouses, called the reporting “completely misrepresented.” Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao said sailors had been pushed to their limits but “have never broken.”

The Daily Beast has reached out to the Defense Department for comment.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

A bizarre twist in the Kennedy Center saga has exposed how much President Donald Trump struggles to let things go, his longtime biographer says.

Author Michael Wolff said Trump, 80, is not letting up on his crusade to remake the Kennedy Center in his image anytime soon, despite a federal judge’s smackdown of his brazen decision to put his name on the facade of the storied arts institution.

Trump loyalists on the Kennedy Center board voted Friday to add his name to the facade as an inscription beneath the main signage that reads, “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.”

“I was saying that, you know, he’s obsessed by the Kennedy Center because he wants the validation of the artistic community, something he’s avoided,” Inside Trump’s Head co-host Joanna Coles told Wolff. “And you immediately jumped in and just said, ‘No, no, he’s fixated about the Kennedy Center.’”

Wolff answered, “It is literally that things just get into his head. He can’t get them out of his head and has to have them happen.”

After Trump slapped his name onto the Kennedy Center, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper issued a scathing ruling in May stressing that “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”

But the Kennedy Center board, stacked with Trump appointees, still approved an alternate plan to get the president’s name on the facade. It also approved a plan to rename the physical site “The President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”

“He baldly tried to contradict this and put his name on the Kennedy Center. The court came along and said, ‘No, you can’t do that.’ So there is no way for him to do that. But he can’t stop. He literally can’t stop himself,” Wolff said. “So now the proposal is that, in big letters, it will say ‘The Kennedy Center refurbished, rehabilitated,’ who knows what else. In very large letters, it will say this.”

He continued, “So this is an example of two things: that he has to get what he wants. That if he doesn’t get what he wants, he can’t move off. He can’t go forward. He’s stuck in place,” he added. “And then the second thing is that all of the people around him, what they have to do is figure out some way for him to get what he wants in some way that satisfies him. So I can see days and days and days of people sitting around talking. ‘How do we get his name on the building?’”

When reached for comment, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle—in a shortened version of a frequently recycled statement—said: “Michael Wolff is a lying piece of s--t.”

Congress named the center in 1964 as a “living memorial” to former President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated a year earlier.

But Trump has been fixated on giving the Kennedy Center a MAGA makeover since he returned to the White House last year. Ric Grenell was installed as president, but he lasted just 13 months after a tumultuous term marked by poor ticket sales and backlash from artists, donors, and performers.

Trump also pushed ahead with a tacky plan to put his name on the Kennedy Center without congressional approval, but that effort also ended in curtains after Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, an ex officio member of the board, brought a case.

“In scenes more reminiscent of authoritarian regimes than the American republic—the sitting President and his handpicked loyalists renamed this storied center,” her lawsuit said. “This is a flagrant violation of the rule of law, and it flies in the face of our constitutional order.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.