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      in US Politics

      Trump warns Musk of ‘very serious consequences’ if he backs Democrats

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      Donald Trump warned Elon Musk on Saturday that he faces “very serious consequences” if he funds Democratic candidates following the pair’s epic public bust-up this week.The warning, delivered in an interview with NBC News scheduled to broadcast on Sunday, follows days of feuding and threats after Musk called Republicans’ budget legislation an “abomination”.Trump told interviewer Kristen Welker his relationship with the tech mogul was over and warned Musk against choosing to fund Democrats after spending close to $300m in support of Trump’s re-election last year.“If he does, he’ll have to pay the consequences for that,” Trump told NBC News. “He’ll have to pay very serious consequences if he does that,” he added.Trump was also asked whether he had any wish to repair his relationship with Musk. “No,” he said. Asked whether he thought their relationship was over, he said: “I would assume so, yeah,” and said he had no plans to speak with his erstwhile sidekick.“I’m too busy doing other things,” Trump said, adding: “I have no intention of speaking to him.”But he predicted that the spat had helped to unify the Republican party around him, saying the “party has never been united like this before. It’s never been. It’s actually more so than it was three days ago.”Musk’s opposition to the Republican budget bill, formally the “one big beautiful bill act”, would not, he predicted, affect its passage through Congress. The bill narrowly passed the House and is now under consideration in the Senate. However, some conservative Republicans share Musk’s concerns about the need for significant spending cuts and are considering making changes.The bill extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and includes new spending for border security and the military. Republicans aimed to offset these costs with cuts to programmes such as Medicaid, food stamps and green-energy tax credits.Projections from the congressional budget office and independent analysts indicate that the bill would add between $2.3tn and $5tn to the deficit over the next 10 years. White House officials contend that the economic growth generated by tax cuts will offset the increased spending.Still, Trump told NBC he is “very confident” that the bill will pass the Senate before 4 July.“I think, actually, Elon brought out the strengths of the bill because people that weren’t as focused started focusing on it, and they see how good it is,” Trump said. “So in that sense, there was a big favor. But I think Elon, really, I think it’s a shame that he’s so depressed and so heartbroken.”He also accused Musk of being “disrespectful to the office of the president”.“I think it’s a very bad thing, because he’s very disrespectful. You could not disrespect the office of the president,” he said.Earlier, Musk deleted a post from X, the social media platform he owns, that asserted links between Trump and disgraced US financier Jeffrey Epstein.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionQuestioned about the inflammatory post, Trump said: “That’s called ‘old news’, that’s been old news, that has been talked about for years. Even Epstein’s lawyer said I had nothing to do with it. It’s old news.”Musk has also retracted a threat to begin “decommissioning” SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft used by Nasa to ferry astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station.The original threat came after Trump suggested he might cancel SpaceX’s federal contracts. On Saturday, the president said he hadn’t given the subject any more thought.“I’d be allowed to do that,” he said, “but I haven’t given it any thought.”Earlier on Saturday, JD Vance told interviewer and comedian Theo Von that Musk was making a “huge mistake” going after Trump, but downplayed Musk’s attacks as being made by an “emotional guy” who got frustrated.“I hope that eventually Elon comes back into the fold. Maybe that’s not possible now because he’s gone so nuclear,” the vice-president said.But he added: “Look, it happens to everybody. I’ve flown off the handle way worse than Elon Musk did in the last 24 hours.”“I actually think if Elon chilled out a little bit, everything would be fine,” Vance said.David Smith contributed reporting More

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      in US Politics

      Federal prosecutor reportedly quit over concern Ábrego García indictment was politically motivated – as it happened

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      A career federal prosecutor resigned in protest the same day that charges were filed against Kilmar Ábrego García, following an investigation that apparently began after the mistaken deportation of the Maryland resident became a legal and political headache for the Trump administration, ABC News reports.Ben Schrader, announced his resignation as the chief of the criminal division at the US attorney’s office for the Middle District of Tennessee in a LinkedIn post on 21 May, the same day the indictment of Ábrego García was signed by the acting US attorney for that district.Sources told ABC News that Schrader stepped down because of concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons.“Earlier today, after nearly 15 years as an Assistant United States Attorney, I resigned as Chief of the Criminal Division at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee”, Schrader wrote on LinkedIn that day. “It has been an incredible privilege to serve as a prosecutor with the Department of Justice, where the only job description I’ve ever known is to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons. I wish all of my colleagues at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nashville and across the Department the best as they seek to do justice on behalf of the American people.”At a news conference on Friday, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, refused to say exactly when the investigation that led to the charges was opened, but she told reporters that the indictment was based on “recently found facts” about a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee, and that “thanks to the bright light that has been shined on Ábrego García, this investigation continued”.The indictment was signed by Robert McGuire, who has been the acting US attorney in Nashville since December, and three senior prosecutors from the justice department’s Joint Task Force Vulcan, which was created during the first Trump administration “to dismantle MS-13”.This brings our live coverage of the second Trump administration to a close for the day. Here are some of the latest developments:

      Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland resident who was deported to El Salvador in violation of a court order, was returned to the United States and charged with the criminal smuggling of undocumented immigrants inside the United States.

      Ben Schrader, a career federal prosecutor, reportedly resigned in protest the same day that charges were filed against Ábrego García, following an investigation that apparently began after the mistaken deportation became a legal and political headache for the Trump administration.

      Donald Trump suggested that court orders to his administration to return Ábrego García to the US was a sign that “the judges are trying to take the place of a president that won in a landslide”.

      One day after his feud with Elon Musk exploded Trump claimed that he was far too busy to think about the billionaire donor who had accused him of sex crimes and called for his impeachment. That claim was undermined by the fact that Trump spent a chunk of his morning on the phone with at least three television reporters, gossiping about Musk.

      Two federal appeals court judges appointed by Trump overturned a lower court ruling to allow him to resume punishing the Associated Press for continuing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico by that name instead of the new one Trump gave it.
      Two judges appointed by Donald Trump to a federal appeals court ruled in his favor on Friday, allowing him to resume blocking the Associated Press from covering him at events in the Oval Office, on Air Force One and in his Mar-A-Lago club.The 2-1 ruling was written by US circuit judge Neomi Rao, who served in Trump’s first administration, and joined by fellow Trump appointee Gregory Katsas.The divided ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit temporarily blocks an order by another Trump appointed judge, US district judge Trevor McFadden, who had ruled in April that the Trump administration had to allow AP journalists access to events while the news agency’s lawsuit moves forward.The AP sued after Trump banned the news organization for refusing to follow him in referring to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.The court left in place part of a lower-court order that required Trump to give AP access to events held in larger spaces, like the East Room of the White House.The Department of Homeland Security conducted raids on multiple locations across Los Angeles on Friday, clashing with the crowds of people who gathered to protest.Masked agents were recorded pulling several people out of two LA-area Home Depot stores and the clothing manufacturer Ambient Apparel’s headquarters in LA’s Fashion District.There has not yet been confirmation of how many people were taken into custody, but initial estimates provided by news helicopter reports shows roughly two dozen people were loaded into white vans and taken away.Armed agents clad in heavy protective and tactical gear, including some who wore gas masks, could also be seen pushing individuals and trying to corral large groups that congregated to challenge the raids, and smoke grenades were reportedly thrown near the crowds. Pepper spray was used as the federal officers attempted to clear the area.Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Friday, Donald Trump suggested that some sort of unspecified action needed to be taken against federal judges who ordered his administration to bring the wrongly deported Maryland resident Kilmar Ábrego García back from El Salvador.Trump continued to insist that the supreme court’s order requiring his administration to bring Ábrego García back to the United States was incorrect. “He should’ve never had to be returned”, Trump said. “Either way it’s a total disaster – this is a pretty bad guy.”In comments posted on YouTube by the Washington Post, Trump seemed to give insight into the political calculation behind his administration’s decision to bring Ábrego García back, as the supreme court had ordered, but first indict him on new criminal charges.“I could see a decision being made” Trump said, “‘bring him back; show everybody how horrible this guy is’”.He then returned to his outrage at federal judges for not allowing him to deport people like Ábrego García who have been accused of crimes without giving them an opportunity to challenge the evidence against them in court.“Frankly, we have to do something, because the judges are trying to take the place of a president that won in a landslide” Trump said. “And that’s not supposed to be the way it is”.Trump seems convinced that Ábrego García is so obviously a gang member that there is no need for a trial. However, the president demonstrated in April that he is deeply confused about at least one piece of the supposed evidence.In a social media post in mid-April, Trump held up a photograph of the tattoos on Ábrego García’s hand, symbols that one corner of the internet is convinced represent the letters and numbers M,S,1 and 3, to signify that he is a member of the gang MS-13.In an interview with Terry Moran of ABC News two weeks later, though, Trump revealed that he had been confused by the photograph, which added the letters and numbers as a form of annotation. “He had MS-13 on his knuckles, tattooed”, Trump insisted to Moran. When Moran pointed out that the letters and numbers had been added to the photograph he held up to illustrate what people thought the four symbols represented, Trump made it clear that he had mistaken the annotation for part of the tattoo. “Go look at his hand”, Trump said.Now that Ábrego García is back in the United States and will be in court, new photographs of his hand will soon be available for Trump to inspect.During a brief news conference on Air Force One, en route to his golf course in New Jersey, Donald Trump told reporters that he has been far too busy to spend any time thinking about Elon Musk, his top donor and former aide who called for him to be impeached on Thursday.“Honestly, I’ve been so busy working on China, working on Russia, working on Iran, working on so many things, I’m not thinking about Elon” Trump said. “I just wish him well.”The president’s comment, one day after Musk accused him of having been involved in his late friend Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes, oddly echoed Trump’s response to a question about Epstein’s longtime companion, Ghislaine Maxwell, in 2020 when she was arrested and charged with helping Epstein recruit and sexually abuse girls.Back then, when Trump was asked during a coronavirus briefing in the White House if he expected Maxwell “to turn in powerful men”, he responded: “I don’t know, I haven’t really been following it too much. I just wish her well, frankly.”“I’ve met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach, and I guess they lived in Palm Beach. But I wish her well, whatever it is.”Maxwell was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to 20 years in jail the following year. Her prosecution was led by Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York. Williams later oversaw the indictment on New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, on corruption charges that were later dropped by the Trump administration.On Friday, Williams left the law firm Paul Weiss to join Jenner & Block, moving from a firm that struck a deal with Trump to one that fought him in court.Trump’s claim that he was far too busy on Friday to concern himself with Musk’s criticism was slightly undermined by the fact that he spent much of his morning at the White House talking about Musk to multiple reporters on the phone. When Jonathan Karl of ABC News called the president at 6:45 am, Trump picked up to talk about Musk and called him “a man who has lost his mind”. Trump also took time to tell Bret Baier of Fox, “Elon has totally lost it”. Trump also spoke to CNN’s Dana Bash, to insist: “I’m not even thinking about Elon, he’s got a problem, the poor guy’s got a problem”. Bash said that Trump also told her he wishes Elon well.Donald Trump, who is again enjoying a long weekend at one of his golf courses, took a moment to respond, obliquely, to Elon Musk’s unsourced claim on Thursday that the Trump administration has not released all of the files from the sex-trafficking investigation into Jeffrey Epstein because Trump is implicated in his late friend’s crimes.During an Air Force One flight to New Jersey on Friday, Trump shared a comment from David Schoen, a lawyer who defended the president at his second impeachment trial in 2021, over the January 6 riot.“I was hired to lead Jeffrey Epstein’s defense as his criminal lawyer 9 days before he died”, Schoen wrote on Musk’s social media platform X on Thursday. “He sought my advice for months before that. I can say authoritatively, unequivocally, and definitively that he had no information to hurt President Trump. I specifically asked him!”Following Musk’s post on Thursday, which was viewed more than 200 million times (according to Musk’s company), Schoen also wrote on the billionaire’s platform: “I can tell you unequivocally as someone who would know that President Trump never did anything wrong with Jeffrey Epstein.”A career federal prosecutor resigned in protest the same day that charges were filed against Kilmar Ábrego García, following an investigation that apparently began after the mistaken deportation of the Maryland resident became a legal and political headache for the Trump administration, ABC News reports.Ben Schrader, announced his resignation as the chief of the criminal division at the US attorney’s office for the Middle District of Tennessee in a LinkedIn post on 21 May, the same day the indictment of Ábrego García was signed by the acting US attorney for that district.Sources told ABC News that Schrader stepped down because of concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons.“Earlier today, after nearly 15 years as an Assistant United States Attorney, I resigned as Chief of the Criminal Division at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee”, Schrader wrote on LinkedIn that day. “It has been an incredible privilege to serve as a prosecutor with the Department of Justice, where the only job description I’ve ever known is to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons. I wish all of my colleagues at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nashville and across the Department the best as they seek to do justice on behalf of the American people.”At a news conference on Friday, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, refused to say exactly when the investigation that led to the charges was opened, but she told reporters that the indictment was based on “recently found facts” about a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee, and that “thanks to the bright light that has been shined on Ábrego García, this investigation continued”.The indictment was signed by Robert McGuire, who has been the acting US attorney in Nashville since December, and three senior prosecutors from the justice department’s Joint Task Force Vulcan, which was created during the first Trump administration “to dismantle MS-13”.In a new statement, Senator Chris Van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat who visited Kilmar Ábrego García in El Salvador, reiterated the point he made after his trip in April, when he said that he was “not defending the man” but “defending the rights of this man to due process”.Here is Van Hollen’s new statement:
      “For months the Trump Administration flouted the Supreme Court and our Constitution. Today, they appear to have finally relented to our demands for compliance with court orders and with the due process rights afforded to everyone in the United States. As I have repeatedly said, this is not about the man, it’s about his constitutional rights – and the rights of all. The Administration will now have to make its case in the court of law, as it should have all along.”
      This restates what Van Hollen said in an interview with ABC News in April, of the Trump administration: “Here’s where they should put their facts: they should oput it before the court. They should put up or shut up in court.”El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, joined the White House in attacking Senator Chris Van Hollen on social media with a post on Elon Musk’s X in which he referred back to a staged photograph of the Maryland senator’s meeting Kilmar Ábrego García in April.Referencing the release of Ábrego García from custody in El Salvador on Friday, Bukele wrote: we work with the Trump administration, and if they request the return of a gang member to face charges, of course we wouldn’t refuse.”He added: “No more margaritas under custody”.On his return from El Salvador in April, however, Van Hollen accused the government of El Salvador of creating the hoax he called “Margarita-gate”, by placing a pair of cocktail glasses on the table between himself and Ábrego García as they met to make it look as though they were enjoying drinks.Those photographs were posted on X by Bukele, along with a caption that downplayed the seriousness of the situation by falsely claiming that the senator and the wrongly deported man had been “sipping margaritas” as they met.But the senator said that the drinks were placed there during the meeting by someone from the Salvadoran government before the photographs were taken and that neither he nor Ábrego García had touched them. Van Hollen pointed out that there was visual evidence for this in the photographs: the rims of both glasses were covered in salt or sugar, but it was clear from the images that neither glass had been drunk from, since the rims were undisturbed.The US supreme court on Friday permitted the so-called ‘department of government efficiency’, or Doge, a team set up by former Trump aide Elon Musk to take a chainsaw to the federal workforce, broad access to personal information on millions of Americans in Social Security Administration data systems while a legal challenge plays out, Reuters reports.At the request of the Justice Department, the justices put on hold US district judge Ellen Hollander’s order that had largely blocked Doge’s access to “personally identifiable information” in data such as medical and financial records while litigation proceeds in a lower court. Hollander found that allowing Doge unfettered access likely would violate a federal privacy law.The court’s brief, unsigned order did not provide a rationale for siding with Doge. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Its three liberal justices dissented from the order.White House officials have wasted no time in using the newly announced criminal charges against Kilmar Ábrego García to attack Democrats who objected to his deportation without due process in violation of a previous court order.Writing on Elon Musk’s social media platform X, the White House’s official account dedicated to partisan “rapid response” resurfaced an April post from Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat whose constituents include Ábrego García’s wife, to suggest that he should now be ashamed of having stood up for the undocumented Maryland resident’s due process rights.“A grand jury found his full-time job was human smuggling, Chris,” the White House account commented. “He spent his entire life abusing people – including women and children. This is who you spent so much time defending. Shame on you.”The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, also using the platform owned by a former Trump aide who called for the president to be impeached just yesterday, claimed that the indictment against Ábrego García “proves the unhinged Democrat Party was wrong, and their stenographers in the Fake News Media were once again played like fools”.Apparently unaware that the allegations have yet to be tested in court, the president’s chief spokesperson insisted that “Democrat lawmakers” including Van Hollen, “and every single so-called ‘journalist’ who defended this illegal criminal abuser must immediately apologize to Garcia’s victims”.At a news conference, the US attorney general, Pamela Bondi, just announced that Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland resident who was deported to El Salvador in violation of a court order, has been returned to the United States and charged with criminal charges related to smuggling undocumented immigrants inside the United States.Bondi said that the US government presented an arrest warrant for Ábrego García to El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele.She also said that the grand jury indictment on 21 May was based on recently discovered facts and that the grand jury “found that over the past nine years, Ábrego García has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring.”“Upon completion of his sentence, we anticipate he will be returned to his country of El Salvador”, Bondi said.Bondi suggested that Ábrego García was involved in other crimes, based on what unnamed co-conspirators allege, but he was only indicted on two counts related to the alleged smuggling.In response to a reporter’s question, Bondi said that Ábrego García would serve a prison sentence in the US if convicted, on charges that carry a possible sentence of 10 years, and then be deported to El Salvador again.We are waiting for the start of a livestreamed justice department news conference, which is expected to deal with the indictment of Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland resident who was deported to El Salvador and is reportedly on his way back to the United States to face new criminal charges stemming from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee which prompted officers to suspect that he might have been transporting undocumented migrants.The criminal indictment, which was filed on 21 May, accuses Ábrego García of being “a member and associate” of the Salvadoran gang MS-13 and charges him with taking part in a conspiracy to transport undocumented immigrants inside the United States.The reportedly imminent return to the United States of Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland resident who was deported to El Salvador in violation of a court order that he should not be sent there because he had a reasonable fear of persecution in that country, comes nearly two months after the attorney general, Pamela Jo Bondi, insisted that it would never happen.“He is not coming back to our country” Bondi told reporters at a news conference on 16 April. “President Bukele said he was not sending him back. That’s the end of the story.”Asked if she could provide evidence that he was a member of the MS-13 gang, Bondi said only that the allegation was contained in a 2019 court hearing.Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man unlawfully deported to El Salvador, is on his way back to the US where he will face criminal charges, ABC News is reporting, citing sources.A federal grand jury has indicted Ábrego García for allegedly transporting undocumented migrants within the US, according to the report.The outlet, citing sources, reports that a two-count indictment, filed under seal in federal court in Tennessee last month, alleges that Ábrego García participated in a years-long conspiracy to transport undocumented migrants from Texas to the interior of the country.Among those allegedly transported were members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13, according to the report. The alleged conspiracy spanned nearly a decade, according to the report.A US trade delegation including three cabinet officials will meet with trade representatives from China in London on Monday “with reference to the trade deal”, Donald Trump has announced.He posted on Truth Social:
      I am pleased to announce that Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and United States Trade Representative, Ambassador Jamieson Greer, will be meeting in London on Monday, June 9, 2025, with Representatives of China, with reference to the Trade Deal. The meeting should go very well. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
      It comes a day after Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping held a “very good” phone call during which they discussed “some of the intricacies of our recently made, and agreed to, Trade Deal”, Trump said.Trump also said Xi had invited him to visit China, an invitation he aid he reciprocated.Xi said of the call that a “consensus has been reached”, adding that the two sides “should enhance consensus” as well as “reduce misunderstanding, strengthen cooperation” and “enhance exchanges”. “Dialogue, cooperation is the only right choice for China and the US,” the Chinese president said.Elon Musk may believe his money bought the presidential election and the House of the Representatives for the Republicans. But he is discovering painfully and quickly that it has not bought him love, loyalty or even fear among many GOP members of Congress on Capitol Hill.Faced with the choice of siding with Musk, the world’s richest man, or Donald Trump, after the two staged a public relationship breakdown for the ages on Thursday, most Republicans went with the man in the Oval Office, who has shown an unerring grasp of the tactics of political intimidation and who remains the world’s most powerful figure even without the boss of Tesla and SpaceX by his side.The billionaire tech entrepreneur, who poured about $275m into Trump’s campaign last year, tried to remind Washington’s political classes of his financial muscle on Thursday during an outpouring of slights against a man for whom he had once professed platonic love and was still showering with praise up until a week before.One after another, Republican House members came out to condemn him and defend Trump, despite having earlier been told by Musk that “you know you did wrong” in voting for what has become Trump’s signature legislation that seeks to extend vast tax cuts for the rich.Troy Nehls, a GOP representative from Texas, captured the tone, addressing Musk before television cameras:
      You’ve lost your damn mind. Enough is enough. Stop this.
      It chimed with the sentiments of many others. “Nobody elected Elon Musk, and a whole lot of people don’t even like him, to be honest with you, even on both sides,” Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey congressman, told Axios.“We’re getting people calling our offices 100% in support of President Trump,” Kevin Hern, a representative from Oklahoma, told the site.
      Every tweet that goes out, people are more lockstep behind President Trump and [Musk is] losing favour.
      Republicans were balancing the strength of Trump’s voice among GOP voters versus the power of the increasingly unpopular Musk’s money – and most had little doubt which matters most.“On the value of Elon playing against us in primaries compared to Trump endorsing us in primaries, the latter is 100 times more relevant,” Axios quoted one unnamed representative as saying.The Trump administration is preparing to make good on the president’s threat to strip “large scale” federal funding from California, an effort that could begin as early as Friday, according to CNN.The report says agencies have been directed to start identifying grants the administration can withhold from the state. A whistleblower reportedly told a congressional committee that the administration was planning to cut all research grants to California.The White House has not commented on the plans. The timeline remains speculative, and it is unclear what grants would be targeted.Trump has repeatedly threatened to cut federal funding as a way to force states, institutions and universities to comply with his agenda. Last week, he said California could lose “large scale” funding “maybe permanently” if the state continued to allow transgender athletes to participate in girls’ and women’s sports.The declaration appeared to be in reference to a transgender track-and-field star from southern California. On Saturday, she won two gold medals and a silver, which she shared with other teen athletes under a new rule by the state’s high school sports body.Trump had also repeatedly threatened to withhold federal disaster aid, assailing the state’s Democratic leaders for their handling of the wildfires that devastated Los Angeles earlier this year.More from House speaker Mike Johnson, who has told CNBC he has been texting with Elon Musk and hopes the dispute is resolved quickly.He said of the “big, beautiful bill”:
      I don’t argue with [Musk] about how to build rockets and I wish he wouldn’t argue with me about how to craft legislation and pass it.
      Johnson earlier issued a warning: “Do not second-guess and don’t ever challenge the president of the United States, Donald Trump.”He had also projected confidence that the Trump-Musk dispute won’t affect prospects for the tax and border bill. “Members are not shaken at all,” he said. “We’re going to pass this legislation on our deadline.” More

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      The Guardian view on the Trump-Musk feud: we can’t rely on outsized egos to end oligopoly | Editorial

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      It would have taken a heart of stone to watch the death of the Trump-Musk bromance without laughing. Democrats passed the popcorn on Thursday night as the alliance between the world’s most powerful man and the world’s richest imploded via posts on their respective social media platforms.Less than a week ago they attempted a conscious uncoupling in the Oval Office. Then Elon Musk’s attacks on Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax and spending plan escalated to full-scale denunciation of a “disgusting abomination” – objecting to its effect on the deficit, not the fact it snatches essential support from the poor and hands $1.1tn in tax cuts to the rich.The president said that Mr Musk had “gone crazy” and was angry that electric vehicle subsidies were being removed, claimed he had fired him, threatened to terminate his government contracts, and mocked the billionaire’s recent black eye. Steve Bannon chipped in, suggesting that Mr Musk should be deported.Mr Musk said Mr Trump should be impeached and alleged the government had not released files on the late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein because the president was in them. He threatened to immediately start decommissioning the Dragon spacecraft – now key to Nasa’s programme – and suggested it was time for a new political party. The ultimate insult: “Without me, Trump would have lost the election,” he wrote.Mr Musk later appeared minded to limit the damage, backing away from the spacecraft threat – not surprising, perhaps, when he had just watched $152bn wiped off Tesla’s value. Each man knows that the other could hurt him, via government fiat or political war chest. Yet both are so unpredictable that the row could still reignite.Two narcissists used to imposing their will were never likely to coexist happily for long, despite the advantages of doing so: this was less a marriage of convenience than of naked self-interest. Mr Trump loathes sharing the limelight; the Tesla boss frequently grabbed it. The president is surely as resentful of as he is dazzled by Mr Musk’s spectacular wealth. He was angered to discover that Mr Musk had arranged private briefings on the Pentagon’s plans for any potential war with China – not only a blatant conflict of interest, but perhaps more upsettingly, a sign of his growing power. Mr Musk’s behaviour has also appeared increasingly erratic. A recent New York Times report alleged he took large amounts of drugs including ketamine while advising Mr Trump prior to the election. Mr Musk has described the story as “bs”.His departure from the president’s orbit is good news. Mr Musk implausibly claimed he would save $2tn annually – approaching a third of the federal budget – by taking a chainsaw to bureaucracy. Wild decisions by the so-called department of government efficiency are mired in the courts. But he has nonetheless caused real damage which will not easily be remedied, gutting agencies and departments which took decades to build. People are dying because of his demolition of USAID.Yet while the bond between the peak of power and the peak of wealth has been severed, politics remains in thrall to money. Mr Trump’s approach is particularly noxious, turning wealth directly into political favours and power, and power into further wealth. This is the new oligopoly. He oversees a cabinet of billionaires, and has directed his real estate tycoon friend Steve Witkoff, a man with no diplomatic experience, to bring peace in the Middle East and Ukraine. But though megadonors are heavily skewed towards the Republicans, Democrats too depend on billionaires. Mr Musk is a symptom of the underlying malaise. Democracy requires better safeguards against the unhealthy marriage of wealth and power than the rampant egos of those who command them. More

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      Trump orders inquiry into Biden’s actions as president over ‘cognitive decline’ reports

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      Donald Trump has ordered an investigation into Joe Biden’s actions as president, alleging top aides masked his predecessor’s “cognitive decline”.The investigation will build on a Republican-led campaign already under way to discredit the former president and overturn some of his executive actions, including pardons and federal rules issued towards the end of his term in office.Biden issued a statement dismissing the idea of a cover-up as “ridiculous”. “Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.”GOP lawmakers on Wednesday sought testimony from five of Biden’s top aides and advisers, including his first chief of staff, about his “mental and physical faculties”. The House oversight committee headed by the Republican representative James Comer of Kentucky was already speaking to four others, according to reports from CBS News.A separate inquiry was launched on Tuesday by Ed Martin, a justice department attorney, into clemencies Biden issued in his final days in office to family members as well as death row inmates.Biden’s cognitive abilities during his presidency have been a Republican talking point for several years and Trump has frequently suggested that some of Biden’s actions are invalid because his aides were usurping presidential authority to cover up what Trump claims is Biden’s cognitive decline.Biden, 82, is not significantly older than Trump who turns 79 this month and has also faced questions about cognitive decline. But scrutiny about Biden’s health intensified after a disastrous debate performance going into the 2024 election that led to him dropping out.Concerns about his age and mental acuity have come into sharper focus in recent weeks following the disclosure that the former president was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. Reporting in numerous US media outlets and a recent book co-authored by Jake Tapper, a CNN host, have also revealed that top Democrats and people in Biden’s inner circle had serious misgivings about his ability to do the job of president. The book is referenced in an announcement about the House oversight committee’s expanded inquiry.In a memo, Trump took aim at Biden’s use of an autopen – a mechanical device that is used to replicate a person’s authentic signature, as used by presidents for decades – to sign executive actions. The administration’s investigation will focus on “who ran the United States while President Biden was in office”, according to the memo.“This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history,” Trump wrote. “The American public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power, all while Biden’s signature was deployed across thousands of documents to effect radical policy shifts.”Trump directed Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and David Warrington, the White House counsel, to handle the investigation.Comer requested transcribed interviews with five Biden aides, alleging they had participated in a “cover-up”.“These five former senior advisers were eyewitnesses to President Biden’s condition and operations within the Biden White House,” Comer said in a statement. “They must appear before the House oversight committee and provide truthful answers about President Biden’s cognitive state and who was calling the shots.”Interviews were requested with White House senior advisers Mike Donilon and Anita Dunn, former White House chief of staff Ron Klain, former deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed and Steve Ricchetti, a former counsellor to the president.Comer reiterated his call for Biden’s physician, Kevin O’Connor, and former senior White House aides Annie Tomasini, Anthony Bernal, Ashley Williams and Neera Tanden to appear before the committee. He warned subpoenas would be issued this week if they refused to schedule voluntary interviews.Democrats have called the investigations a distraction from issues with the current administration. In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, the former president Bill Clinton said he believed Biden was mentally sound.“The only concern I thought he had to deal with was: ‘Could anybody do that job until they were 86?’” Clinton said. “We’d had several long talks. I had never seen him and walked away thinking ‘He can’t do this any more.’”With Associated Press More

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      ‘Saying Trump is dangerous is not enough’: Bernie Sanders on Biden, billionaires – and why the Democrats failed

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      ‘I think what Trumpism is about, is an understanding that the system in America is not working for working-class people,” says Bernie Sanders, sitting in the Guardian’s offices in London. “In a phoney, hypocritical way, Trump has tapped into that. His quote-unquote ‘solutions’ will only make a bad situation worse.”View image in fullscreenIn person, Sanders’ 83 years read differently than in photograph, perhaps because of how conversational he is. His voice is magnetic – a Brooklyn accent that feels both warm and tough. “But what I have been aware of, and I’ve talked about it for years, is that in America, the very richest people are doing phenomenally well, while 60% of our people live paycheck to paycheck.”Later, he will say the same thing to an audience in London – only with more emphasis and passion. “Sixty per cent. Six-zero. Do you know what paycheck to paycheck means?” It’s exhilarating to hear Sanders speak to a crowd: his zeal is reflected back in their faces, his moral clarity is such a relief, set against the cynicism and resignation of most of the Democratic party’s opposition to Trump and his administration. Class war is as old as time, but it’s a peculiarity of this age that you rarely hear a politician name it. “I do,” he tells me. “There is a class war going on. The people on top are waging that war.”It’s a look at what could have been. Sanders ran, of course, to be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, and again in 2020. The first time, there was a real sense, in the US and abroad, that something incredible might happen: that someone with “almost no name recognition,” he says, a senator from the small state of Vermont, might successfully challenge Hillary Clinton, whom the party had already anointed. We all know how that worked out. Was it the greatest disappointment of his political life? “Well, you’re too busy to feel things,” he says. “You’re just working very hard.”What is absolutely unequivocal is his criticism of the Democrats. The party, he thinks, lacks any real progressive promise. “What they say is, ‘The status quo is working pretty good, and we will tinker around the edges’, and that is not a message that resonates with working people”. He refuses to indulge in any personal ill-will towards Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. The most he’ll voice is a weary resignation about 2020, when his campaign “won the first three states, primary states, in terms of popular votes. Then the Democratic establishment made sure the other candidates dropped out, and they rallied around Joe Biden. You know, that’s the world that we live in. We are taking on not just the Republican leadership, we are taking on a Democratic establishment which is tied to elements of corporate America.”During the 2024 election, he “worked very hard to see that Kamala Harris was elected. I was all over the country and was one of her major surrogates. We begged our campaign to start talking about the needs of working people. But their consultants and the money people behind them thought of another strategy, showing that she was more conservative, that she worked with people like Liz Cheney, worked with Republicans, had billionaires going out and saying that she’s wonderful. They thought that was the right approach. I did not think that was the approach, and I was public about that.” He pauses, and not for effect: it’s hard to relive November 2024. “But my voice did not carry,” he says.Sanders started his political life in 1981, when he was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont. His brother, Larry, is 90 and lives in Oxfordshire. He stood as a Green candidate in David Cameron’s old parliamentary seat in 2016. In a speech that year, supporting Sanders as the Democratic nominee, Larry gave a brief portrait of their parents. “Eli Sanders and Dorothy Wexford Sanders. They did not have easy lives, and they died young,” he said. Dorothy was born in New York, to Jewish immigrant parents fleeing Russian pogroms. Eli arrived in the US in 1921, most of his family remaining in what is now Poland and what was then Austrian Galicia, to be “wiped out by Hitler,” Sanders has said in the past. Eli worried constantly about providing for his family and both he and Dorothy were political, Larry said in the speech: “They loved the New Deal of Franklin D Roosevelt, and would be especially proud that Bernard is renewing that vision.”View image in fullscreenSanders’ charge to the Democrats now is twofold. “Their weakness is, I think, that their credibility is now quite low. And they don’t have much of a message for working people, other than to say Trump is dangerous. I think that’s just not enough.” He point blank refuses to get into Trump’s administration – its excesses, surprises, non-surprises, without first walking through everything that was already wrong with the US. “What the Democrats have to absolutely make clear is this: we’re going to take on the billionaire class. They’re going to start paying their fair share of taxes. We’re going to have healthcare for all people as a human right. We’re going to have a strong childcare system that every American can afford. We’re going to make public colleges and universities tuition-free. We’re going to create millions of jobs transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel. We’re going to build housing – boy, housing is like it is here, just a huge crisis. We’re going to build millions of units of low-income and affordable housing. Do Democrats say that? No.”That Sanders will not be drawn on every new Trump calumny, instead focusing on an economic reality that’s been worsening for decades, does help him keep on course. And it definitely doesn’t stop him giving Trump both barrels. “We don’t usually have presidents suing the media, threatening the media if they write bad stories about them. We don’t usually have presidents threatening to impeach judges. We don’t have presidents suing law firms. You add all that together, it is a movement for authoritarianism.” Is it worse than he predicted? I was thinking specifically about the extrajudicial detentions and deportations, students dragged off campus and held for weeks, perfectly legal migrants sent to El Salvador, when they weren’t even from there. “First time around, Trump was not as well organised. They’ve had four years to get their act together, so to speak. And that’s what this Project 2025 document was about.”Project 2025 was a document published by rightwing thinktank the Heritage Foundation in 2024, offering a terrifying vision for a second Trump term. An outright proposal to dismantle the US government, it was a roadmap to crackdown on immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, abortion rights – as well as being against action on the climate crisis and against vaccines. If it looked like a blueprint for The Handmaid’s Tale and The Road combined, none of the alarm last year could ever have encompassed the reality that would come. Among many other things, the Trump administration would go on to deport people without due process, and then ignore a supreme court ruling that an 18th-century wartime declaration about “alien enemies” was not a proper legal instrument.I ask a question about who funds the Heritage Foundation – as it keeps all donations secret, which raises questions about whose interests Project 2025 is really serving. His reply is impatient: “It doesn’t matter who it is they have. There’s no lack of well-paid, right-wing consultants and intellectuals who can move this country to an oligarchic authoritarian society.” His tone is clear – stop getting lost in detail, stop looking for hidden connections, stop messing around and start fighting.“One of the frightening aspects of what’s going on is the degree to which the establishment-type folks have caved in, and so quickly,” he says. “That was much less the case, during Trump’s first term.” He mentions Jeff Bezos, “who one had assumed was kind of a moderate Democrat”, losing his editorial board because they were going to endorse Kamala Harris. “Same thing in the Los Angeles Times. When you have ABC agreeing to a settlement with Trump; the bogus lawsuit against CBS that Paramount are negotiating right now. When you have major, billion-dollar law firms saying, ‘OK, we plead guilty to having clients who went to court against you and your friends, that was a terrible crime, we’re going to give you millions of dollars.’ Harvard has buckled up a little bit and appears not to be caving in, but a lot of universities have. None of this was the case eight years ago. They are creating the overall mentality that it will be dangerous to be strongly critical of Donald Trump.”View image in fullscreenIn other areas, money is talking so loudly in politics that it’s all you can hear. Sanders has used Gaza as an example when he says that politicians are afraid to speak out on Israel’s actions in case Super Pacs – which can put forward unlimited amounts of money for a candidate – will penalise them at the next election. Today, he says it’s not just Gaza, but a host of other issues. “If you say, ‘Do you really think it’s a good idea to cut Medicaid and give tax breaks to billionaires? Do you really think that climate change is a hoax?” there will be a number, not a majority, but a number of Republicans who would say: ‘No. But if I stand up and vote ‘no’, the next day, Elon Musk would say, “All right, you are going to be primaried [a candidate will be fielded against you], and Trump will support your opponent. I will put unlimited sums of money to elect your opponent.”’ Good luck to you.’”While that pattern is undoubtedly visible across many issues, the example of Gaza is particularly stark – with groups such as Aipac, funded by pro-Israel billionaires, putting tens of millions of dollars against congressional candidates, mainly Democrats, that it did not deem to be sufficiently supportive of Israel in the run-up to 2024. As the atrocities in Gaza leave many in civil society dumbfounded, what is the long game here, I ask. “That’s a difficult question, and I don’t know the answer. I will tell you that the United States has had a long-term relationship with Israel, and there are many people who have intellectually chosen not to understand that Netanyahu does not represent the Israel of 20 years ago. The moderate democratic society is now controlled by right-wing racist extremists who have done, and are doing today, absolutely horrific things to the Palestinian people in violation of American law and international law. They refuse to recognise that.” In Dublin, he was heckled for not using the word genocide, and some US progressives were dismayed, two years ago, when he didn’t call for an immediate ceasefire. He speaks out now, choosing his words carefully; he’s not on the fence.Since the end of March, Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (he always calls her that, never AOC), have been holding campaign rallies all over the US from Arizona to Utah. They are deliberately not skipping the diehard Democratic states – but have been more surprised by the numbers they’ve been getting in red states. “This is not a campaign. This is a political rally, and I think the numbers are almost unprecedented. Large numbers of people, including in conservative areas, do not want to see oligarchy in America, do not want to see authoritarianism, do not want to see massive tax breaks for the rich and cuts to the programmes that working-class people desperately need.” Sure, he and AOC sometimes disagree, “my wife and I disagree on issues! But Alexandria, I think, comes pretty much from where I come from.”View image in fullscreenHe has hope for the future, too. There are a couple of dozen people in the house Progressive Caucus – a 98-strong group of the more left-wing members of the Democratic party in Congress – that are “strong progressives”, he says. “Alexandria is maybe one of the most articulate and charismatic, but there are others there as well.” Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib to name a few.Sanders is clear that he and Ocasio-Cortez are not trying to start a third political party. Instead, they’re “trying to build a grassroots movement of working-class people and young people … If you’re seeing candidates now arising who are progressive, that’s down to a lot of the work that we are doing for the 2026 midterms.”Sanders in person is very much as he is in his book, It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, in which he lays out some principles, among them, “wars and excessive military budgets are not good”; “carbon emissions are not good”; “racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia are not good”; “exploiting workers is not good”. It’s really the sight of him igniting a crowd that’s so hopeful, which holds for him, too – he keeps his optimism because he has the “fortune of being able to go around the country and speak to large numbers of wonderful people”. The message doesn’t change, though – it doesn’t have to be new: it just has to be true.As he leaves to make his way upstairs to the photography studio, he strides on ahead, his wife Jane O’Meara Sanders, an activist herself, making small talk with me in his wake. It’s not that he’s performing vigour in an era where politicians’ ages are relentlessly analysed. It’s just his manner – all this urgent change should have happened yesterday. More

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      Democratic party leaders just met for the first time in months. When will they take real action? | Norman Solomon

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      People with the power to change the direction of the Democratic party – the executive committee of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) – met last Friday for the first time in five months.They took no action.The party’s bylaws make the executive committee “responsible for the conduct of the affairs of the Democratic party” between the meetings of the full committee, which isn’t scheduled to gather until late August. But taking responsibility wasn’t on the agenda. Instead, committee members and staff kept praising each other and committee leaders. Many talked about improving the party’s infrastructure and vowed to defeat Republicans. Deliberation, proposals and debate were completely absent. So was a sense of urgency.After so many months without a meeting, you might think that the executive committee would have a lot to talk about. But it was scheduled to meet for only three hours, which turned out to be more than adequate for what anyone had to say. The committee adjourned after an hour and a half.If obscurity was a goal for the national meeting, held in Little Rock, Arkansas, it was a success. The DNC’s website didn’t mention the meeting. Media coverage was close to nonexistent.The committee leadership remains largely within a bubble insulated from the anger and disgust – toward the party – that is widespread among countless Democrats and other Americans. They want the Democratic party to really put up a fight, while its leaders mainly talk about putting up a fight. The Trump regime is setting basic structures of democracy on fire, while Democratic leaders don’t seem to be doing much more than wielding squirt guns.A week ago, the new chair, Ken Martin, received a petition calling for an emergency meeting of the full 448-member committee. The petition, co-sponsored by Progressive Democrats of America and RootsAction (where I’m national director), includes more than 1,500 individual comments. They’re often filled with anguish and rage.The California representative Ro Khanna has joined in the call for an emergency committee meeting. “I’ve supported it, I’ve spoken directly to our chair, Ken Martin, about it,” Khanna said last week. “Look, what’s going on is chilling … They’re banning all international students from coming to Harvard. I mean, think about that – all foreign students banned. They could do this in other universities. They have fired, or let go of, seven of the 18 directors at the NIH, totally dismantling future medical research in our country. They have dismantled the FDA, firing people who approve new drugs. They are systematically firing people at the FAA … They’re openly talking about defying United States supreme court orders, [JD] Vance has said just defy the orders. They’re calling universities ‘the enemy’. This is very chilling.”Khanna then zeroed in on a crucial point that party leaders have so far refused to acknowledge, much less heed: “It’s not enough for us to have individual responses. I’m out there doing my town halls in red districts, Bernie [Sanders] is inspiring the country with his oligarchy tour, but they’re all individual efforts. We need concerted effort, we need a battle plan. And that’s what an emergency DNC meeting would do – it would acknowledge the stakes, and it would say ‘here is our plan’ – to make sure that they’re not degrading and chipping away at every institution of American democracy.”Refusal to call an emergency meeting is a marker of deeper problems, with Democratic party leadership remaining in a political rut – spouting mildly liberal rhetoric while serving the interests of big donors, high-paid consultants and entrenched power brokers. Along the way, such business as usual is a gift that keeps on giving power to the pseudo-populist messages of Maga Republican politicians, who don’t have to go up against genuine progressive populism at election time. No wonder the Democratic party has lost most of the working-class vote.With no Democrat in the White House, the DNC chair is powerful. To his credit, Martin talks articulately about the need to “democratize this party”. Four months into the job previously held by Jaime Harrison, who was Joe Biden’s obedient appointee, Martin is clearly an improvement. How much of an improvement is unclear.After the DNC’s executive committee adjourned, Martin provided a glimmer of hope for ending the chokehold that mega-funders, notably Aipac, have exerted on recent primary campaigns. He was interviewed by my colleague Sam Rosenthal, covering the event for Progressive Hub and apparently the only journalist based outside of Arkansas to make the trek to Little Rock. In response to a question about whether he would “like to see less influence from dark money, removing the influence especially in Democratic party primaries”, Martin said: “Yes. In fact, I’ll be bringing forward a resolution on that, and I will be pushing hard for our party to come up with solutions on this so that we actually have our candidates and campaigns realize that we have to live our values; we can’t just say we want dark money out of politics and then have candidates and their campaigns accepting all types of support from these shadow groups. We actually need to reverse course.”That reply might indicate that Martin is now willing to move away from the position that he took while running for DNC chair in January, when he said: “There are a lot of good billionaires out there that have been with Democrats who share our values and we will take their money, but we’re not taking money from those bad billionaires.”With June under way, the Democratic party is no closer to operating with urgency to vigorously oppose the daily Trump attacks on basic rights, the rule of law, and the economic interests of most Americans. The party’s terrible approval ratings in polls – with disdain for its congressional leaders – make the need for drastic changes in the party all too clear.But when the DNC and allied party organizations do outreach urging people to “get involved”, routinely the only involvement urged or offered is to give money. It’s a formulaic approach that reveals just how little the national party is really seeking participatory democracy.Millions of usual (and all-too-often former) Democratic voters see party leaders as asleep at the switch, while the Trump regime is hard at work enriching the already rich and demolishing structures of democracy. As usual, if genuine change for the better is going to come, it won’t be handed down from on high. People at the grassroots will have to fight for it.

      Norman Solomon is the director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His latest book is War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine More

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      Philadelphia paper warns Fetterman to take Senate job seriously – ‘or step away’

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      The Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial board has issued a sharp rebuke of Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman in a new opinion piece, urging him to take his job “seriously” and writing that “it’s time for Fetterman to serve Pennsylvanians, or step away.”In a strongly worded piece published on Sunday, the editorial board of the Philadelphia Inquirer, which endorsed Fetterman during his 2022 Senate campaign, said the first-term Democrat “has missed more votes than nearly every other senator in the past two years” and “regularly skips committee hearings, cancels meetings, avoids the daily caucus lunches with colleagues, and rarely goes on the Senate floor”.The editorial board also wrote that six former Fetterman staffers told an Inquirer reporter that Fetterman was frequently absent or spent hours alone in his office, avoiding colleagues and meetings.“Being an elected official comes with public scrutiny,” the board wrote. “If Fetterman can’t handle the attention or perform his job, then in the best interest of the country and the nearly 13 million residents of Pennsylvania he represents, he should step aside.”“Being an elected representative is a privilege, not an entitlement,” it added. “Being a US senator is a serious job that requires full-time engagement.”Fetterman responded to the piece and allegations on Monday during a Fox News debate with Republican senator David McCormick.“For me, it’s very clear, it’s just part of like this weird – this weird smear,” Fetterman said. “The more kinds of, left kind of media continues to have these kinds of an attack, and it’s just part of a smear and that’s just not … it’s just not accurate.”He continued: “I’ve always been there, and for me, if I miss some of those votes, I’ve made 90% of them, and we all know those votes that I’ve missed were on Monday. Those are travel days and I have three young kids and … those are throwaway procedural votes that … they were never determined if they were important. That’s a choice that I made.”Fetterman also reportedly claimed senators Bernie Sanders and Patty Murray had missed more votes than he has.“Why aren’t the left media yelling and demanding them and claiming they’re not doing their job?” Fetterman said.In response, a spokesperson for Murray told Politico that most of her missed votes occurred during a vote-a-rama when her husband was hospitalized.A spokesperson for Sanders did not immediately respond to request for comment from Politico, but the outlet pointed out that according to data from GovTrack.us, a government transparency site, Sanders has missed 836 of 6,226 rollcall votes since 1991, or about 13.4%. Murray has missed 290 of 11,106 rollcall votes since 1993, or roughly 2.6%.By comparison, Politico reported that Fetterman has missed 174 of 961 rollcall votes, approximately 18.1%, in his first term, according to GovTrack.us.The editorial on Sunday comes as last month, New York magazine published an article on Fetterman which quoted several former and current Fetterman staffers who expressed concerns about the Senator’s mental and physical health, and his behavior.In response, Fetterman dismissed the piece, calling it “a one-source story, with a couple anonymous sources” and labeling it a “hit piece from a very left publication”. More

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      Republican senator criticized for mock apology after saying ‘we all are going to die’

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      Senator Joni Ernst triggered fierce criticism after making light of voters’ fears that Republican Medicaid cuts could prove fatal, telling a town hall audience “we all are going to die” and then filming a mocking response video over the weekend.The Iowa Republican, who is facing a possibly challenging re-election battle in 2026, was explaining at a Friday town hall how the Republican immigration and tax package would affect Medicaid eligibility when an audience member shouted that people could die if they lost coverage through the proposed cuts.“Well, we all are going to die,” Ernst responded as the crowd groaned. “So, for heaven’s sakes. For heaven’s sakes, folks.”Rather than clarify or apologize, Ernst channeled Trump-era defiance in her response on Saturday with an Instagram video that appeared to be filmed in a graveyard.“I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this earth,” she said. “So I apologize, and I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well.”She concluded by telling viewers: “For those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my Lord and savior Jesus Christ.”The controversy comes as Senate Republicans prepare to tackle the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill”, which passed the House and would slash social safety net spending by more than $1tn over a decade. Congressional Budget Office projections suggest the measure could strip Medicaid coverage from 8.7 million people and leave 7.6 million more Americans uninsured.On Monday afternoon, the White House defended the legislation with a “mythbuster” statement dismissing claims that the bill would cause deaths as “one of Democrats’ most disgusting lies”.The White House argued the bill would actually “strengthen and protect the social safety net” by removing what it claimed were 1.4 million undocumented people from Medicaid rolls and implementing work requirements for able-bodied adults.“By removing at least 1.4 million illegal immigrants from the program, ending taxpayer-funded gender mutilation surgeries for minors, and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse, the One Big Beautiful Bill will ensure Medicaid better serves the American people,” the statement read.Senate Republicans acknowledge the House-passed bill will undergo significant revisions, with several Republican senators seeking changes to the Medicaid provisions. Ernst’s comments have also provided Democrats with potent ammunition for their argument that Republicans prioritize tax cuts for wealthy Americans over healthcare for ordinary citizens.Iowa Democratic state senator JD Scholten told Politico on Monday he is launching a campaign to unseat Ernst, saying the senator “disrespected” its residents.The Democratic National Committee chairperson, Ken Martin, said Ernst had “said the quiet part out loud”, arguing Republicans don’t care “whether their own constituents live or die as long as the richest few get richer”.Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut told CNN on Sunday that the Republican bill “is about life and death”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Everybody in that audience knows that they’re going to die. They would just rather die in old age, at 85 or 90, instead of dying at 40,” Murphy said. “And the reality is that, when you lose your healthcare, you are much more at risk of early death.”In Iowa, the stakes are notably high, with roughly one in five residents relying on Medicaid coverage, including half of all nursing home residents, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.Ernst attempted damage control during Friday’s town hall, insisting Republicans would “focus on those that are most vulnerable” and protect people who meet Medicaid eligibility requirements.The senator faces several primary challengers as she seeks a third term, with the Medicaid controversy potentially complicating her political positioning in a state where healthcare access remains a key voter concern. In December, she was attacked from her right flank for being a “Rino” after initially hesitating on confirming the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth.When asked for comment, her office stayed the path.“There’s only two certainties in life: death and taxes,” a spokesperson for Ernst said, “and she’s working to ease the burden of both by fighting to keep more of Iowans’ hard-earned tax dollars in their own pockets and ensuring their benefits are protected from waste, fraud and abuse.” More