President Trump announced Sunday that the United States will impose a sweeping blockade of the Strait of Hormuz beginning at 10 a.m. EDT Monday, vowing to halt what he called Iran's "WORLD EXTORTION" of global shipping through the critical waterway. Tehran fired back almost immediately, warning that any military vessels approaching the strait would violate the existing cease-fire and draw a "strong and forceful response."
The announcement marks a dramatic escalation in the standoff between Washington and Tehran, and the most aggressive American naval posture in the Persian Gulf in decades. Trump promised to stop "any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave" the chokepoint until oil is allowed to flow freely without Iranian obstruction or tolls.
Speaking to reporters after landing at Joint Base Andrews, Trump did not sound like a president bracing for a prolonged standoff. He sounded like one who believes the regime in Tehran is running out of options.
As the New York Post reported, Trump told the press pool plainly:
"I think Iran is in very bad shape. I think they're pretty desperate."
He followed that assessment with a reference to extensive deliberations inside his administration.
"We had a meeting that lasted 21 hours. We understand the situation better than anybody, and Iran's in very bad shape."
The Strait of Hormuz is the narrow passage between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Roughly one-fifth of the world's petroleum passes through it on any given day. Control of the strait has been a flashpoint for decades, and Iran has repeatedly threatened to close it during past confrontations with the West.
Trump's announcement flips that script. Instead of Iran threatening to choke global energy markets, the United States is now the one imposing the chokepoint, aimed squarely at Tehran's ability to extract payments or leverage from commercial shipping.
What the president did not detail publicly is the specific military mechanism for enforcing the blockade. He did not name which naval assets would be deployed, how commercial vessels from allied nations would be handled, or how long the blockade would remain in effect. The 21-hour meeting he referenced suggests serious planning took place, but Trump did not identify the participants or the scope of the discussions.
Those gaps matter. A naval blockade of the world's most important oil chokepoint is not a tariff or an executive order. It is, by any historical standard, one of the most consequential military actions a president can order short of direct combat. House Republicans recently blocked a Democratic effort to restrict Trump's Iran war powers, a vote that now looks prescient given the scale of Sunday's announcement.
Iran's response was swift and pointed. Tehran warned that military vessels approaching the strait would violate what it called the "fragile cease-fire" and would be met with a "strong and forceful response." The source of that warning, whether it came from Iran's foreign ministry, its military command, or its supreme leader's office, was not specified in reporting.
The invocation of a cease-fire is itself significant. It confirms that some form of de-escalation agreement was in place between the two nations before Sunday's announcement. Trump's blockade order now tests whether that agreement can survive direct confrontation over the strait.
For months, critics on the left have argued that Trump's posture toward Iran risks spiraling into open conflict. Nancy Pelosi went so far as to demand Trump's Cabinet invoke the 25th Amendment over his Iran remarks, a move that gained no traction but illustrated the pitch of Democratic opposition.
What those critics have not reckoned with is the alternative. Iran has spent years leveraging its geographic position to extort tolls, threaten shipping lanes, and destabilize the region, all while enriching a regime that funds proxy militias across the Middle East. Trump's language about "WORLD EXTORTION" is blunt, but it describes a real pattern of behavior that previous administrations tolerated or tried to manage through diplomacy alone.
Trump's mention of a 21-hour meeting stands out. Presidents do not typically cite the length of their national security deliberations unless they want the public, and the adversary, to know the decision was not impulsive.
That detail serves a strategic purpose. It signals to Tehran that the blockade is not a social media bluff or a negotiating gambit. It signals to allies that the administration weighed the consequences. And it signals to domestic critics that the decision followed extensive internal debate.
Whether the meeting involved the Joint Chiefs, the National Security Council, intelligence officials, or some combination remains unstated. But the duration alone suggests a level of deliberation that contradicts the caricature of a president acting on impulse. Trump recently rebuked Tucker Carlson over nuclear-war claims tied to the Iran conflict, making clear he views the situation as serious but manageable, not apocalyptic.
The blockade is set to begin Monday morning. That leaves a narrow window for diplomacy, back-channel communication, or Iranian capitulation, none of which appeared imminent as of Trump's remarks at Joint Base Andrews.
Global energy markets will react. Allies in Europe and Asia, many of whom depend on Gulf oil transiting the strait, will have to decide quickly whether to support, oppose, or quietly accommodate the American action. And Congress will face pressure to weigh in on the legal authority underpinning a peacetime blockade of international waters.
The legal and constitutional questions are real. A blockade is traditionally considered an act of war under international law, and the War Powers Resolution gives Congress a role in authorizing sustained military operations. The Supreme Court has repeatedly sided with the administration on emergency executive actions, but a naval blockade of this magnitude would test those boundaries in ways no recent case has.
None of that changes the core calculation. Iran has exploited the strait for leverage, extracted payments from commercial traffic, and threatened global energy security, all while pursuing a nuclear program that most Western intelligence agencies regard as a threat. Trump's blockade is a bet that Tehran's position is weaker than its rhetoric suggests.
His own words at Andrews were plain: "I think they're pretty desperate."
If the blockade holds and Iran blinks, Trump will have accomplished what no president before him managed, breaking Tehran's stranglehold on the world's most important oil corridor without firing a shot. If it escalates into a military confrontation, the consequences will be measured in lives, oil prices, and the durability of American alliances.
The administration appears to believe the former is more likely than the latter. Trump's assessment that Iran is "in very bad shape" is not just rhetoric. It is the stated basis for a policy that puts American naval power directly in the path of Iranian threats.
The political risks for Trump and his team are real, and his opponents will use every available lever to challenge the decision. But the question voters will ultimately ask is simpler: Was Iran allowed to keep shaking down the world, or did someone finally call the bluff?
Monday morning at 10 a.m., we find out whether the bluff was Tehran's all along.
President Donald Trump conceded Sunday that gas prices could rise even higher before the November midterm elections, telling Fox News that the short-term economic pain from the war with Iran is the unavoidable cost of keeping Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
In an interview on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, Trump acknowledged that fuel costs have already jumped sharply since the conflict began on Feb. 28. But he framed the spike as temporary and argued the alternative, a nuclear-armed Iran, would be far worse for markets and for American security.
The comments came the same morning Trump announced on Truth Social that the U.S. Navy would begin blockading the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most consequential chokepoints in global energy. The strait carries roughly 20 million barrels of oil per day and about one-fifth of the world's liquefied natural gas, Fox News reported. Shutting it down, or even restricting traffic through it, sends a direct signal to every energy market on the planet.
AAA said gas prices averaged $4.15 a gallon nationwide on Friday, up from $2.98 before the Iran war started on Feb. 28. That is an increase of $1.17 per gallon in roughly six weeks, a hit that lands hardest on working families, truckers, and small businesses that run on tight margins.
Trump did not promise immediate relief. Asked whether prices would come down before the midterms, he said they could stay "the same, or maybe a little bit higher." But he predicted a sharp decline once the conflict ends, as the Washington Examiner reported:
"Eventually, it's going to be lower. No, it might not happen initially, but it's going to, it's going to go down when this is all over."
He added a prediction about the war's duration that will be tested soon enough.
"I think this won't be that much longer. They're wiped out."
Those are bold words. Whether they match the operational reality in the Persian Gulf is something voters, and markets, will judge for themselves.
Trump's Truth Social post left no ambiguity about the scope of the action. He wrote that the U.S. Navy would "begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz." He also said he had instructed the Navy to "seek and interdict every vessel in international waters that has paid a toll to Iran."
That second directive targets a specific Iranian practice. Iran has allegedly attempted to charge ships a $1-per-barrel toll to pass safely through the strait, backed by threats, drones, missiles, and mines, the New York Post reported. Trump called it "WORLD EXTORTION" and declared that "Leaders of Countries, especially the United States of America, will never be extorted."
US Central Command said it would halt maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports while allowing passage to and from non-Iranian ports through the strait. The administration also said the Navy would begin destroying mines in the waterway, a direct challenge to Iran's ability to threaten commercial shipping.
The move followed the collapse of ceasefire talks held in Pakistan. The Washington Times reported that Vice President J.D. Vance said the negotiations broke down over "Iran's refusal to abandon its path to a nuclear weapon." A two-week ceasefire that Tehran and Washington had reached on Tuesday apparently did not resolve the core dispute.
Trump had previously suspended the bombing campaign and offered a ceasefire tied to reopening the strait. Iran's failure to follow through set the stage for the escalation announced Sunday.
The president made no effort to minimize the economic fallout. He acknowledged the stock market has dropped and gas prices have risen. He said the conflict has "caused anxiety, dislocation, and pain to many people and Countries throughout the World."
But he argued the stakes justify the cost. His framing was blunt:
"I gotta stop this country from having a nuclear weapon. You want to see a stock market go down? Let a couple of nuclear bombs be dropped on us, or, frankly, anyplace else, and then you'll see a stock market that goes down."
That is the core of the argument, and it is not an easy one to dismiss. For decades, administrations of both parties talked about preventing a nuclear Iran. Few did much about it. The Obama-era Iran deal paused enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief and pallets of cash, then expired with Iran closer to a weapon than ever. The Biden administration spent four years pursuing diplomacy that produced nothing.
Trump has long accused Iran's regime of deceiving American presidents for decades. Whether the current military and economic pressure campaign succeeds where talk failed is the defining question of this conflict.
Trump also tried to put the market reaction in perspective, noting that the damage so far has been less severe than some feared.
"So the stock market has not gone down very much at all, gone down a little bit, much less than I thought. And frankly, the gas hasn't gone up as much as I thought."
He told Bartiromo he speaks with "major oil chiefs" every day, a sign the administration is working to keep supply lines open and prices from spiraling further.
The pain is not limited to American consumers. Other countries, particularly in Asia, have been hit far worse because they are less energy independent than the United States. The Strait of Hormuz carries roughly 20 percent of the world's petroleum, making any disruption a global event.
That global dimension cuts both ways. On one hand, it means the blockade puts pressure not just on Iran but on every nation that depends on Gulf oil, creating diplomatic leverage. On the other, it means American consumers are absorbing collateral damage from a strategy aimed at a regime thousands of miles away.
The political fallout at home is already building. Democrats have seized on the rising costs and the broader conflict to challenge Trump's judgment. Nancy Pelosi went so far as to demand Trump's Cabinet invoke the 25th Amendment over his Iran remarks, a move that says more about the left's appetite for constitutional overreach than about the president's fitness.
Even some voices on the right have raised concerns. Trump recently rebuked Tucker Carlson over nuclear-war claims tied to the Iran conflict, a sign that the debate within the conservative coalition is real and vigorous.
Trump pressured Iran directly on Sunday, posting on Truth Social that Tehran "promised to open the Strait of Hormuz, and they knowingly failed to do so." He added: "As they promised, they better begin the process of getting this INTERNATIONAL WATERWAY OPEN AND FAST! Every Law in the book is being violated by them."
The blockade is designed to force a choice: negotiate seriously or watch your oil revenue choke. Whether Iran bends or escalates will determine how long American drivers keep paying north of four dollars a gallon.
Several questions remain unanswered. How long will the blockade last? What are the specific rules of engagement if Iran challenges U.S. naval assets? And can the administration keep gas prices from climbing past a political tipping point before November?
Trump told Bartiromo the war "won't be that much longer." Voters will hold him to that. Every week the Strait stays closed, the price at the pump becomes a referendum on whether the strategy is working, or whether Washington asked ordinary Americans to carry a burden that the people in charge underestimated.
Stopping a nuclear Iran is a serious goal. But serious goals require serious execution, and the bill lands at the gas station, not the Oval Office.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is building a governing record that reads like a checklist of progressive experiments, sanctuary enforcement, policing overhauls, racial equity mandates, and now, according to commentary on The Alex Marlow Show, a proposal to inject race into the city's tax code. The question is no longer whether Mamdani will push too far. It's whether anyone with a tax bill will stick around long enough to find out.
Emma-Jo Morris, appearing on the Saturday broadcast of the Breitbart-hosted program, zeroed in on the mayor's latest policy direction and the political fallout it could trigger, not just for Mamdani, but for New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who presides over a state already hemorrhaging high earners.
Morris framed the consequences in blunt terms:
"The biggest victim of this policy is going to be Kathy Hochul when the last living taxpayer just hits the road, and she has to look at this guy and say you had to make a race-based tax system."
That single sentence captures the bind New York's political class has created for itself. A city that already taxes income, property, and commerce at some of the steepest rates in the country now faces a mayor who wants to layer racial classifications on top of the code. For taxpayers who have spent years weighing the cost of staying, this could be the final push toward the exits.
The tax proposal does not exist in a vacuum. Mamdani has governed through sweeping executive action since taking office, stacking one ideological initiative on top of another with little apparent concern for the practical consequences.
His administration has already pushed tax hikes while framing policy around race, signaling that the current proposal is an escalation of an existing pattern rather than a sudden turn.
On immigration, Mamdani signed an executive order reaffirming New York City's sanctuary status and barring ICE from entering city property without a judicial warrant. The Washington Examiner reported that the order directs city agencies to audit their policies involving immigration authorities and creates a committee to respond to immigration-related situations in the city. Mamdani said the order would "protect New Yorkers' private data from being unlawfully accessed by the federal government."
That executive action placed New York squarely in opposition to federal enforcement priorities, a move that fits a broader pattern among blue-state leaders trying to limit local cooperation with immigration authorities.
The mayor has also launched a citywide racial equity plan that prompted the Department of Justice to signal a potential legal review. When the federal government starts asking questions about a city program's legality, most elected officials recalibrate. Mamdani doubled down.
The people who fund New York's government, small business owners, professionals, retirees on fixed incomes, families paying property taxes in the outer boroughs, do not appear anywhere in Mamdani's policy calculus. His agenda treats the tax base not as a constituency to serve but as a resource to extract from, with racial categories determining who pays what.
Morris's warning on The Alex Marlow Show pointed directly at this dynamic. A race-based tax system is not just constitutionally dubious. It is a signal to every productive resident that the city views them through an ideological lens first and as citizens second.
New York has watched this story before. High taxes and hostile governance drove residents and businesses to Florida, Texas, and the Carolinas throughout the pandemic years. The difference now is that Mamdani is adding a new variable, explicit racial sorting, to a fiscal environment that was already driving people out.
Meanwhile, Mamdani has shown no hesitation about spending. His administration created a $1.1 billion safety office designed to centralize policing alternatives under the deputy mayor, a massive new bureaucratic layer funded by the same taxpayers he now proposes to classify by race.
Morris's commentary identified Governor Hochul as the real political casualty. And the logic holds. Hochul does not control New York City's tax code, but she owns the state's fiscal trajectory. Every resident who leaves the five boroughs takes state income tax revenue with them.
New York State already operates with one of the highest combined tax burdens in the country. The governor has spent years trying to balance progressive demands from the city with the economic reality that high earners have options. A mayor who racializes the tax code makes that balancing act nearly impossible.
Hochul would be forced into an uncomfortable position: either publicly oppose Mamdani and alienate the progressive wing of her own party, or stay silent and watch the revenue base erode further. Morris suggested the governor will eventually have to confront Mamdani directly, and by then, the damage may already be done.
Mamdani's governing style has already created friction well beyond City Hall. His trip to Washington with a $21 billion wish list for the Trump administration illustrated both his ambition and his disconnect from fiscal reality.
A tax system that classifies residents by race raises immediate equal-protection concerns. The Fourteenth Amendment does not contain an exception for progressive cities, and any scheme that assigns tax obligations based on racial identity would face near-certain legal challenge.
Yet the details of Mamdani's proposal remain thin. The specific policy Morris referenced on The Alex Marlow Show was not laid out in full, and the mayor's office has not provided the kind of legislative text that would allow a precise legal analysis. What is clear is the direction: race as a factor in taxation.
That direction alone is enough to rattle the business community, the real estate market, and anyone making long-term financial plans in New York City. Investors and employers do not wait for final legislation to make relocation decisions. They read signals. And Mamdani is broadcasting loud and clear.
His executive order requiring judicial warrants for ICE already demonstrated his willingness to use mayoral power to override federal priorities. A race-based tax code would represent a far more radical use of that same instinct, turning the machinery of city government into a tool for ideological redistribution.
The people who will bear the cost of this experiment are not the ones making policy. They are the small landlords, the bodega owners, the nurses and teachers and electricians who cannot relocate their lives on short notice. They are the retirees who bought homes in Queens forty years ago and now face a government that wants to sort their obligations by skin color.
The wealthy will leave. They always do. They have accountants and second homes and the mobility that comes with capital. The people left behind will inherit a shrinking tax base, rising rates, and a city government more interested in ideological projects than in keeping the lights on.
Morris's point on The Alex Marlow Show was not complicated. It was arithmetic. You cannot build a tax system around racial categories and expect productive citizens to accept it quietly. Some will fight it in court. Many more will simply leave.
New York has survived a lot, fiscal crises, crime waves, pandemics, political dysfunction. But it has never tried to tell its residents that their tax bill depends on their race. If Mamdani gets his way, the city may discover that even New Yorkers have a breaking point.
The Tennessee Senate passed House Bill 1446 on Thursday, voting 24-8 to require that official state documents refer to the Middle Eastern territory commonly called the West Bank by its ancient names, Judea and Samaria. The bill now heads to Gov. Bill Lee's desk. If he signs it, Tennessee will become the second state in the country to make the change.
The measure had already cleared the Tennessee House by a wide margin, 68-21, making its path through the legislature lopsided in favor. The Center Square reported that the bill's text calls the phrase "West Bank" a "deliberate attempt to erase the Jewish identity of Judea and Samaria, and to obscure the deep historical, religious and legal connections of the Jewish people to the land."
That language is the heart of the legislation, and the reason it drew a spirited floor debate. In a political culture that increasingly treats words as policy, Tennessee's Republican supermajority decided the terminology used in state documents should reflect a historical and religious reality rather than a mid-twentieth-century diplomatic convention.
What made the Senate debate unusual was the sponsor's own candor. Sen. Paul Rose, a Covington Republican, told Nashville Democrat Sen. Charlane Oliver during the floor exchange that he would not claim the bill was a pressing necessity. Rose framed it instead as a matter of principle:
"I don't think it moves the needle for the state of Tennessee, but I think it's a philosophical statement that if you choose to vote for it, that you will make."
That kind of honesty is rare in any statehouse. Rose did not pretend the bill would fix a pothole or lower a tax rate. He argued it was a statement of values, and that legislators were free to accept or reject it on those terms.
Oliver seized on that admission. She argued the General Assembly had more pressing work to do and said constituents in her Nashville district saw the measure as a slight to their own identity.
"And bills like this, as the sponsor said, is not needed. And so I just want to challenge us to get to the real business. The people who elected me feel like legislation like this erases their heritage."
Oliver's objection is a familiar one whenever a legislature takes up a symbolic measure. The counterargument is just as familiar: legislatures handle dozens of bills in a session, and symbolic resolutions do not crowd out substantive ones. The 24-8 vote suggests most Tennessee senators were comfortable making the statement.
Across the country, Republican lawmakers have grown more willing to use legislative language as a tool in policy disputes, whether the subject is border security, foreign affairs, or cultural identity. Tennessee's bill fits that pattern.
Sen. Jeff Yarbro, a Nashville Democrat, offered a sharper critique. He described the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the region as one of the most dangerous disputes on earth, calling it one of the "deadliest and scariest in the world." His objection was not merely procedural. Yarbro argued the bill forces state employees and agencies to adopt a political position through the words they use:
"What we're doing through this legislation, we're forcing people to use language that compels them to take that side. We're requiring everybody else to agree with our philosophy, imposed through the words we speak."
The compelled-speech argument is worth taking seriously on its own terms. But it runs into an obvious problem: governments choose language in official documents all the time. Statutes define terms. Agencies adopt nomenclature. The question is not whether a state may standardize its vocabulary, it plainly can, but whether this particular choice is wise.
Sen. Mark Pody, a Lebanon Republican, said he had traveled to the region and spoken with people who supported the name change. He grounded his vote in history rather than geopolitics:
"It is the history, it is the tradition and I don't think the words matter."
Pody's phrasing was a bit paradoxical, if the words did not matter, there would be no need for the bill. But his broader point was clear: the names Judea and Samaria predate the modern conflict by millennia, and using them is a recognition of that fact.
The growing willingness of red-state legislatures to weigh in on matters typically reserved for the State Department reflects a shift in Republican politics. GOP momentum at the state level has given conservative lawmakers the confidence, and the margins, to advance measures that previous generations might have considered outside their lane.
Tennessee is not blazing this trail alone. Arkansas lawmakers passed a nearly identical bill in 2025, and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed it into law. That made Arkansas the first state to formally ban the term "West Bank" in its official documents.
Florida considered a similar measure, but it never reached a floor vote. The bill died in the Florida Senate's Rules Committee, according to the Florida Senate's own website. The failure in Tallahassee suggests the idea is not a guaranteed winner even in deep-red states, committee politics and competing priorities can still derail it.
The region in question is governed by a combination of Israeli security forces and a Palestinian civil authority, a fact that underscores why the naming dispute carries political weight far beyond Tennessee's borders. Supporters of the bill see the term "West Bank" as a Cold War-era label coined to strip the territory of its Jewish heritage. Opponents view the renaming as an endorsement of Israeli sovereignty claims that remain contested under international law.
That debate will not be settled in Nashville. But the Tennessee Senate decided it did not need to settle the debate to take a side, and it took one.
The bill now sits on Gov. Bill Lee's desk. The Center Square's reporting did not indicate whether Lee has signaled his intentions. Given the lopsided margins in both chambers, 68-21 in the House, 24-8 in the Senate, a veto would be politically unusual and almost certainly overridden.
If Lee signs House Bill 1446, Tennessee will join Arkansas in a small but growing club of states that have decided the language of their own government should reflect a particular reading of history and faith. Democratic officials in other states have taken the opposite approach, framing policy around progressive identity categories rather than historical or religious ones.
Several open questions remain. Which specific Tennessee documents would be affected? Would the requirement apply to educational materials, trade filings, or only narrower categories of official paperwork? The bill's full statutory language has not been published in the available reporting, and those details will matter once agencies begin implementation.
There is also the broader question of whether other Republican-led states will follow. GOP candidates and officeholders across the country have increasingly made support for Israel a litmus test, and a naming bill is a low-cost way to demonstrate that commitment without appropriating a dollar.
Critics will dismiss the Tennessee bill as performative. And in a narrow sense, they are right, changing a name on a state form does not move a single checkpoint in the Middle East. But the critics miss the point. Language shapes assumptions. The left understands this better than anyone; it has spent decades rewriting the vocabulary of immigration, crime, gender, and race to shift the frame before the argument even begins.
When Tennessee says "Judea and Samaria," it is doing exactly what progressive institutions do when they say "undocumented" instead of "illegal," or "gender-affirming care" instead of "experimental hormones." It is choosing the words that reflect its values.
The difference is that Tennessee put it to a vote, won by a three-to-one margin, and did it in the open. Not every political body can say the same about its language choices.
If the left wants to argue that governments should never standardize terminology, it will need to explain a long list of its own mandates first. Until then, Tennessee's bill stands as a straightforward exercise: a state legislature decided what its own documents should say, voted on it, and won.
That is not compelled speech. That is self-government.
President Donald Trump has discussed granting sweeping preemptive pardons to members of his administration before leaving office, a move that would shield aides and allies from investigations Democrats have openly promised to pursue. The Wall Street Journal reported the discussions, which include the possibility of issuing anticipatory or even blanket pardons before any formal charges are brought.
No specific names have surfaced publicly. No pardon documents have been drafted or issued, as far as current reporting shows. But the conversations are real, and the political context makes the reasoning plain enough.
Democrats have spent months signaling they intend to scrutinize Trump's administration the moment he leaves the White House. Party leaders and allied groups have pointed to a range of issues they say warrant further investigation. Some Democratic lawmakers and legal analysts have questioned U.S. strikes on Iranian infrastructure, arguing that certain actions could raise legal concerns. Trump rejected those criticisms, insisting the military campaign is necessary and lawful.
If the idea of preemptive pardons sounds familiar, it should. Before Trump returned to office, Biden's own White House was openly weighing the same tool, for the same reason, in reverse. National Review reported that press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to rule out preemptive pardons for Biden allies, even though none of the people under discussion were under investigation or facing charges at the time.
The names floated by Biden's team were not obscure. Former Rep. Liz Cheney, Sen.-elect Adam Schiff, and Dr. Anthony Fauci were all reportedly under consideration, Just the News reported, citing Politico. The rationale, according to Biden advisers, was that Trump's incoming team could pursue investigations or prosecutions against his critics.
Jean-Pierre framed the urgency in stark terms. "Recently announced Trump appointees for law enforcement have said on the campaign that they were out for retribution," she said. She also cited "changed circumstances" when explaining Biden's decision to pardon his own son, Hunter Biden, a pardon that covered an almost eleven-year period from 2014 to 2024.
That timeline matters. Biden's sweeping pardon of Hunter Biden set a concrete precedent for broad, time-spanning clemency actions. If a president can pardon a family member for conduct spanning more than a decade, much of it not yet charged, the legal architecture for doing the same for administration officials is already in place.
The political irony here is thick. Democrats who now object to the idea of Trump issuing preemptive pardons were, just months ago, urging Biden to do exactly the same thing. Sen. Ed Markey said publicly that if "revenge" was Trump's intention, he would recommend Biden provide preemptive pardons, "because that's really what our country is going to need." Rep. Brendan Boyle went further: "This is no hypothetical threat. The time for cautious restraint is over." Both statements were reported by the Washington Examiner.
Trump himself pushed the issue into the open well before his second term began. In a December 2024 appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," he said Biden could pardon Democrats and January 6 Committee members, and suggested maybe he should.
"Biden can give them a pardon if he wants to. And maybe he should."
That comment, reported by Breitbart, came alongside Trump's accusation that the January 6 Committee had deleted and destroyed more than one hundred files before Republicans took control of the House. He called the destruction "illegal and unprecedented."
White House lawyers under Biden reportedly studied preemptive pardons for a wide circle of allies, including Cheney, Pelosi, Kinzinger, Gen. Mark Milley, FBI Director Christopher Wray, DOJ lawyers, and even members of the Biden family. The groundwork was laid. Whether Biden ultimately acted on every name is a separate question, but the principle was established, by Democrats, before Trump ever had to consider the same move for his own people.
Legal experts cited by the Journal described the potential move as "largely unprecedented." That framing deserves some scrutiny. Presidential pardon power under Article II of the Constitution is broad and has been exercised aggressively by presidents of both parties. Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon before any charges were filed. Biden's pardon of Hunter Biden covered uncharged conduct. The mechanism is well-established; the scale Trump is reportedly considering is what would be new.
There remains genuine uncertainty about whether a preemptive pardon for individuals not currently facing criminal charges would survive legal challenge. Just the News noted that question explicitly. But the Biden precedent, pardoning Hunter Biden for a sweeping range of conduct over more than a decade, moved the goalposts considerably.
Trump has already issued clemency to large numbers of allies and supporters during his current term, often bypassing traditional Justice Department vetting processes. That pattern, reported by the Journal, suggests the administrative machinery for broad pardons already exists within this White House. The question is scope, not capability.
Meanwhile, Democrats continue to position themselves for post-presidency confrontation. The same party that demanded Trump's Cabinet invoke the 25th Amendment over his Iran remarks is now signaling it will pursue his aides through investigations and potential prosecutions the moment he steps aside.
Trump allies see the pardon discussions as a reasonable response to what they describe as politically driven probes. The president himself has framed the potential investigations as politically motivated prosecutions. Whether one agrees with that characterization depends largely on whether one trusts the institutions preparing to launch those probes.
The track record offers reasons for skepticism. Democrats have spent years weaponizing oversight and investigative authority against political opponents. Rep. Eric Swalwell, for instance, threatened to sue over the release of Chinese spy files after years of demanding transparency on Trump, a contradiction that captures the selective nature of the left's commitment to accountability.
The broader political environment reinforces the point. Trump-backed candidates continue to win elections, as Clay Fuller's Georgia special election victory demonstrated. Democratic leadership, meanwhile, faces internal fractures, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez drew backlash from her own socialist base over moderate endorsements. A party struggling to hold itself together may not be the most credible vehicle for post-presidency legal crusades.
Several important details remain unknown. Which specific administration members are being considered for pardons? Which investigations are being anticipated? Were any pardon documents drafted? The Journal's reporting established that discussions are happening but did not name individual beneficiaries or describe the precise legal mechanisms under review.
It also remains unclear how far Trump would go. A narrow set of pardons for officials involved in specific policy decisions, like the Iran strikes Democrats have questioned, would be one thing. A sweeping blanket covering the entire senior staff would be another. The political and legal calculus differs sharply depending on the answer.
Strip away the outrage, and the underlying dynamic is straightforward. Democrats built the playbook for preemptive pardons when they feared Trump would investigate their allies. Biden's team studied it, floated names publicly, and Biden himself issued the broadest personal pardon in modern memory for his own son. Now Trump is reportedly considering the same tool to protect his people from the same kind of politically charged legal exposure.
The constitutional authority is clear. The precedent was set, by the other side. And the threat Trump's aides face is not hypothetical. Democrats have stated their intentions openly and repeatedly.
When the left built the weapon, they assumed only their side would ever pick it up. That assumption, like so many others, was wrong.
The Department of Homeland Security on Friday ordered every furloughed employee back to work, ending a staffing standoff that left the nation's largest security agency short-handed for nearly two months while Congress failed to pass a funding bill. The recall notice told all sidelined workers to report on their next regularly scheduled workday, Monday for most, and pointed to a White House emergency order covering their lost pay.
The move came after President Trump signed an April 3 memo authorizing the equivalent compensation and benefits that DHS employees lost during the partial government shutdown. A Trump administration official separately confirmed the directive and said it orders that every DHS worker be paid, the New York Post reported.
DHS employs roughly 270,000 people. That workforce spans border agents, airport screeners, immigration officers, cybersecurity analysts, and disaster-response teams. Leaving any meaningful share of them idle, or working without pay, while illegal border crossings and homeland threats persist is the kind of governing failure that falls hardest on the public, not on the politicians who caused it.
A DHS spokesperson told the Federal News Network that DHS chief Markwayne Mullin "will be utilizing available funding to recall the entire DHS workforce" and that "paychecks are now being processed." The statement placed blame for the partial shutdown squarely on Democrats in Congress, though the spokesperson did not name specific lawmakers.
Trump himself framed the action as relief for families caught in the crossfire. AP News reported that the president said of DHS employees:
"Their families have suffered far too long."
The president had already used a similar executive maneuver earlier in the shutdown to restore pay for TSA employees after staffing shortages triggered airport delays. That precedent made Friday's broader recall a logical next step, and an implicit rebuke of Congress for letting the impasse drag on.
Lawmakers have yet to agree on a fiscal 2026 funding measure for DHS. The partial shutdown, now approaching the two-month mark, has persisted because neither chamber could reconcile competing priorities over immigration enforcement spending.
Republican leaders and Trump aligned around a two-step plan: fully fund most of DHS first, then address Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol funding through separate legislation. Trump signaled confidence in the approach on social media, writing that "Republicans are UNIFIED, and moving forward on a plan that will reload funding for our FANTASTIC Border Patrol and Immigration Enforcement Officers." The strategy reflects a political reality, Democrats have resisted funding Trump's immigration crackdown, especially the expanded use of ICE agents.
That resistance has real consequences. While House Republicans have blocked Democratic attempts to curtail executive authority on multiple fronts, the DHS funding fight shows how the same obstructionist impulse can leave federal workers in limbo and border security understaffed.
For nearly two months, thousands of DHS employees either worked without pay or sat at home on furlough. These are not abstract budget-line items. They are customs officers, intelligence analysts, and Coast Guard personnel whose missed paychecks meant late rent, skipped bills, and mounting stress, all because elected officials could not do the most basic part of their job.
Trump has defended his broader approach to DHS by arguing that his actions aim to improve domestic security and curb illegal immigration. Critics, mainly Democrats and some rights groups, have pushed back, particularly on the administration's use of ICE in enforcement operations. Federal agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens earlier this year in Minnesota, an episode that drew scrutiny and fueled the political debate around immigration enforcement tactics.
But the shutdown itself was never about whether ICE should exist. It was about whether Congress would fund the department responsible for protecting the homeland. On that question, the legislative branch failed, and the executive branch stepped in.
The president has shown a willingness to act unilaterally when he believes the situation demands it. That pattern extends well beyond domestic policy. Trump recently suspended military operations and offered a ceasefire in the Iran conflict, demonstrating the same preference for decisive executive action over prolonged institutional stalemate.
The recall gets bodies back to their desks and paychecks into bank accounts. It does not, however, resolve the underlying funding dispute. Congress still has not passed a fiscal 2026 DHS appropriation. The two-step Republican plan remains a work in progress, and Democrats show little sign of dropping their objections to robust immigration enforcement funding.
Open questions remain. What "available funding" DHS is tapping to pay 270,000 recalled workers is unclear. Whether that funding can sustain full operations for weeks or months without a congressional appropriation is equally uncertain. And the political dynamics that produced a two-month partial shutdown have not changed just because the president signed an emergency order.
Trump's willingness to confront institutional resistance head-on has drawn both praise and criticism throughout his presidency. His blunt assessments of foreign adversaries and his domestic policy moves share a common thread: impatience with delay and a belief that executive authority exists to be used.
In this case, that impatience served the 270,000 men and women who keep the country's borders, airports, and coastlines secure. They did not create the funding impasse. They should not have been the ones paying for it.
Democrats who blocked DHS funding to protest immigration enforcement made a political choice. The people who bore the cost of that choice were not politicians. They were federal employees and the communities that depend on them, the same people Washington always claims to champion and always leaves holding the bill.
When Congress won't govern, someone has to. This time, the president did.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) laid out a governing vision on April 6 built on two pillars: higher taxes on top earners and a racial equity framework that explicitly centers city policy on outcomes for "black and brown New Yorkers." The combination amounts to something familiar in American urban politics, a race-conscious political machine dressed in the language of social justice, funded by other people's money.
Mamdani's remarks, delivered as part of what his office called a "Preliminary Racial Equity Plan," did not mince words about who should pay and who should benefit. The mayor cited a yawning wealth gap, median white household wealth in the city exceeding $200,000 versus less than $20,000 for black households, and cast higher taxes as the obvious remedy.
Breitbart News reported on the mayor's remarks and the broader political dynamics at play. What Mamdani described is not merely a budget proposal. It is a framework for redistributing wealth along racial lines, wrapped in the rhetoric of affordability and corporate competitiveness.
The mayor framed the affordability crisis as universal but its effects as racially targeted. In remarks tied to the release of the equity plan, Mamdani stated:
"We know that these effects are not applied evenly: So often it is black and brown New Yorkers who are hit the hardest. This Preliminary Racial Equity Plan is the first in developing a whole-of-government approach to tackling that reality... to solve decades of neglect and discrimination."
That phrase, "whole-of-government approach", deserves attention. It signals not a single program or pilot but a systematic reorientation of city services, hiring, contracting, and spending around racial categories. Mamdani went further, framing the wealth gap as a matter requiring active government correction.
He told listeners:
"The wealth of a median white household in the city is more than $200,000, while that of a black household is less than $20,000... We are reckoning with the long history of racism here and starting to act upon a framework that puts equity right at the center of it."
The statistics are real enough. But the leap from describing a disparity to building an entire governing apparatus around racial categories is a political choice, not an inevitability. And it is a choice with consequences for every New Yorker who does not fit neatly into the mayor's favored demographic boxes.
On the revenue side, Mamdani made no effort to hide his target. He wants higher earners and profitable businesses to foot the bill for expanded city services, services he frames as necessary to keep working- and middle-class residents from fleeing.
"Amidst being in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we already see an exodus of working and middle-class New Yorkers. So I don't have a hesitation in asking those who make the most amount of money in the city or the most profits in the city, to pay a little bit more so that everyone can actually stay in the city."
Notice the framing. The exodus of the middle class is real, and it accelerated under years of progressive governance, rising crime, pandemic lockdowns, and already-high taxes. Mamdani's answer is not to address the policies that drove people out. It is to tax those who remain even more heavily.
He also made a corporate pitch, arguing that sky-high childcare costs, more than $20,000 a year, by his own figure, make it harder for companies to recruit talent. The pattern of Democratic governance in cities like New York has long followed a familiar loop: taxpayers fund the machine, the machine expands, costs rise, and the next round of tax hikes is justified by the problems the last round failed to solve.
Mamdani put the corporate case this way:
"Is also something, not just about justice or the ability for working-class people to live here., is also actually about ensuring that corporations can continue to attract the top talent to the city because in a city where child care costs more than $20,000 a year, I've heard from corporate leaders about how difficult it is for them to attract individuals who would work at their companies but [also] want to raise a family, because you could be making $300,000 a year, and you will feel that $20,000 a year because of the fact that we have allowed for the absence of affordable child care to become reality here in this city."
The logic is circular. The city's cost of living is crushing. The mayor's solution is more government spending. The spending requires more taxes. The taxes raise the cost of doing business. And the cycle continues.
Mamdani's racial equity framework did not escape federal attention. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon responded directly after the mayor's remarks, posting on X: "Sounds fishy/illegal. Will review!"
That is not an idle comment from a minor official. Dhillon sits at the Department of Justice, and her willingness to flag the plan publicly suggests the administration sees potential legal exposure in a city government organizing policy explicitly around race.
Trump's deputies have set up a task force under Vice President JD Vance, and the administration may file lawsuits if Mamdani's race-based policies cross the line into illegal discrimination. The Supreme Court's 2023 decision striking down race-conscious college admissions has already shifted the legal landscape. A city government openly building a "whole-of-government" racial framework invites the kind of scrutiny that Dhillon signaled.
The broader pattern of Democratic officials directing public resources through politically favored channels is not new. What Mamdani adds is the explicit racial architecture, not as a side program, but as the stated organizing principle of city government.
Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told Breitbart News that Mamdani's approach fits a well-worn pattern in American cities where large-scale immigration reshapes the electorate and creates opportunities for ethnic coalition-building.
"When you have large-scale, ongoing immigration, you're going to have this kind of thing. There's no real way around it. No appeal to ethnic neutrality is going to prevent it. You're going to have politicians who are going to appeal to this [ethnic] impulse [because they] see it as a way to build coalitions, and some are going to win elections and do this kind of thing."
Krikorian drew a historical comparison. Tammany Hall dominated New York's Democratic Party from 1854 to 1932. In Boston, Mayor James Curley intermittently ran the city from roughly 1914 to 1950, building a political machine that benefited immigrant Irish voters at the expense of the old Yankee establishment. The mechanics change; the incentive structure does not.
He also noted how the scope of race-based politics has expanded far beyond its original boundaries. When Democratic officials face accountability questions, the defense often leans on identity rather than substance, a pattern Krikorian sees as structurally embedded in the current political landscape.
"Affirmative action, whatever you think of it, was a relatively manageable issue when it applied to 10 percent or so of the population. Now, with the expansion of the 'victim groups,' partly through immigration, and also just sort of [progressive] mission creep, [the race-based politics covers] a large share, certainly in New York City, of the population."
Krikorian offered a counterpoint to the inevitability of ethnic machine politics: assimilation works, but only when immigration pauses long enough to let it happen.
"We have pretty strong assimilationist [cultural] forces that can bring immigrants, and especially their children and grandchildren, into becoming part of the majority population."
He pointed to the period from 1925 to 1965, when Congress sharply restricted immigration and previously distinct ethnic groups, Sicilians, Armenians, and others, gradually became part of mainstream American life. Krikorian noted that his own Armenian cousins in California own houses that still carry old restrictive covenants against selling to Armenians. "They're now seen as Anglos," he said.
The point is not that discrimination was acceptable. It is that time, cultural integration, and reduced immigration flows allowed groups once treated as outsiders to become insiders, not through government-mandated racial frameworks, but through the ordinary process of becoming American. That process is precisely what ethnic machine politics works to prevent, because assimilated voters are harder to organize along racial lines.
Krikorian argued that Trump has shown this dynamic in action, successfully appealing to Hispanic legal immigrants as Americans rather than as members of a separate ethnic bloc. That, he said, is what Democrats fear most, "that the people they pretend to represent will just kind of shrug [off ethnic politics] and become Americans."
What Mamdani is building in New York is not subtle. He has told the city, in plain language, that he intends to organize government around racial categories, raise taxes on high earners to fund the project, and frame the entire effort as a matter of historical justice. The growing scrutiny of Democratic officials who blur the line between public service and political self-dealing makes the timing particularly notable.
The mayor's office released the equity plan through official city channels, with transcripts posted on the NYC Mayor's Office website. This is not back-room dealing. It is announced policy, which makes the legal and political questions all the more pointed.
No specific tax rate or legislative vehicle has been identified. No lawsuits have been filed yet. But the trajectory is clear: a mayor who sees racial categories as the organizing principle of city government, funded by taxpayers who are already leaving, defended by a political coalition built on identity rather than shared civic interest.
Boston's political machine is being rebuilt by Michelle Wu along similar lines, and the pattern extends to Democratic power brokers across the country who use government authority to reward favored constituencies while demanding that everyone else pay the freight.
New Yorkers who still believe in colorblind governance, manageable taxes, and a city that works for everyone, not just the mayor's preferred demographic coalition, should pay close attention. The machine is being assembled in broad daylight. The only question is whether anyone will stop it before the bill comes due.
House Democrats showed up to a pro forma session Thursday and tried to force through a resolution limiting President Trump's authority to conduct military operations against Iran. They failed. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), presiding as speaker pro tempore, gaveled the brief session closed without recognizing the Democrat who sought the floor, and that was that.
The move lasted minutes. The political theater around it will last longer.
Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) attempted to win recognition on the House floor to pass a war-powers resolution from Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The measure would have limited Trump's ability to conduct military operations in Iran. Ivey tried to advance it by unanimous consent, a procedural route that requires no objection. Smith simply ended the session before that could happen, as The Hill reported.
Several Democrats present on the floor yelled in objection. Reps. Don Beyer (Va.), Sara Jacobs (Calif.), Mary Gay Scanlon (Pa.), Madeleine Dean (Pa.), James Walkinshaw (Va.), and Suhas Subramanyam (Va.) were among those who protested the gavel.
Pro forma sessions are perfunctory by design. They last mere minutes. Congress was not in full session, and the maneuver had no realistic chance of succeeding. Democrats knew that. They came anyway, and then marched to the House steps to hold a news conference.
The timing tells you everything. On Tuesday, President Trump announced a ceasefire deal. The same day, he posted on Truth Social warning that Iran's "whole civilization" could face elimination if it did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Democrats seized on the post as the predicate for their push.
Rep. Jacobs spoke to reporters after the session and framed the effort in the most dramatic terms available. She said Republicans should demand both impeachment and invocation of the 25th Amendment:
"Our Republican colleagues know, they know that threatening genocide is not acceptable. I urge them to come back. And all options should be on the table. They should come back. They should realize that their president is putting us in harm's way, is making us less safe. And they should also be demanding impeachment. They should also be demanding the 25th Amendment. They should be here with us on behalf of the American people."
Set aside the overheated rhetoric for a moment. A ceasefire was announced the same day as the social-media post Democrats are citing. The resolution Democrats tried to pass would restrict the president's war powers at the very moment diplomacy produced a result. That sequence matters, even if Democrats prefer to ignore it.
More than 70 Democrats in both chambers have now called for Trump's removal through impeachment or the 25th Amendment. Rep. Dean acknowledged the obvious problem with that strategy on the House steps Thursday.
"As you all know, we are in the minority, so bringing forward impeachment right now, while he is guilty of a litany of high crimes and misdemeanors, I don't think it is a best use of our time. Let us get into the majority."
Read that again. Dean declared the president "guilty", her word, and then admitted her party lacks the votes to do anything about it. The candor is useful. It confirms what the exercise really was: a messaging operation aimed at midterm voters, not a serious legislative effort.
Dean also asked reporters: "How much farther into the dark corners of this president's mind must we go before leaders stand up?" It is the kind of line designed for a cable-news clip, not a floor debate.
Democrats have struggled with internal divisions over leadership and strategy for months. Impeachment talk from the minority is cheap. It costs nothing, commits nothing, and changes nothing, except the subject.
This was not the first time Democrats pushed a war-powers resolution on Iran. The House defeated a similar measure in early March. That resolution would have forced Trump to terminate military operations against Iran until the administration obtained congressional approval.
The March vote revealed fractures on both sides. Two Republicans supported the measure. Four Democrats opposed it. Since then, three of those four opposing Democrats have expressed openness to supporting the resolution if it comes up again.
House Democrats are expected to force another vote on the matter. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday that the Senate will also vote again on a resolution to limit Trump's war powers. Congressional Democrats in both chambers plan to focus their criticism of Trump's management of the Iran conflict next week.
The narrow GOP majority in the House makes every vote count. Recent shifts in the chamber's composition mean Republican leadership cannot afford many defections on any high-profile measure.
Thursday's gambit fits a broader pattern. Democrats have repeatedly used procedural flashpoints to generate confrontation and media attention, even when the underlying votes are not there. The strategy is familiar: show up, get gaveled down, walk outside, hold a press conference, and let the clips circulate.
Rep. Walkinshaw captured the intended tone in a single line: "End the war. Let us vote." Rep. Ivey added: "The Congress needs to consider this. The time has come."
These are slogans, not arguments. The ceasefire announced Tuesday is either real or it isn't. If it holds, the urgency Democrats claim evaporates. If it doesn't, Congress will have ample opportunity to weigh in. Either way, a pro forma session stunt was never going to change the trajectory of American foreign policy.
The broader dynamic mirrors what Americans have seen in other recent standoffs. Schumer's Senate Democrats have clashed with House Republicans repeatedly over funding and oversight, often choosing confrontation over compromise. The Iran war-powers push is the foreign-policy version of the same playbook.
Rep. Emily Randall (D-Wash.) was also present at the news conference, though no remarks from her were reported. The presence of multiple members from Virginia, Pennsylvania, California, and other states suggests a coordinated effort to project geographic breadth.
Jacobs and others invoked the 25th Amendment, the constitutional provision allowing the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to declare a president "unable to discharge the powers and the duties of his office" and transfer authority to the vice president as acting president. The suggestion that Trump's social-media rhetoric warrants removal from office under that standard is a stretch by any honest reading of the text.
The 25th Amendment was designed for incapacity, physical or mental inability to serve, not for policy disagreements or provocative public statements. Using it as a political weapon cheapens the constitutional framework Democrats claim to be defending.
When Democrats have stalled on funding critical government operations, they rarely frame their own obstruction as a constitutional crisis. The standard shifts depending on who holds the gavel.
Democrats say they will keep pushing. Schumer has promised a Senate vote. House Democrats are expected to force another floor vote when Congress returns to full session. The three Democrats who flipped from opposing the March resolution to expressing openness to supporting it could narrow the margin.
But the math still favors Republicans. And the political landscape has shifted since early March. A ceasefire is in place. The president's negotiating posture, however blunt, produced a tangible diplomatic outcome. Democrats now face the awkward task of arguing the president's approach is reckless at the same moment it appears to have worked.
The broader pattern of Democratic confrontation and delay on everything from DHS funding to foreign policy has not translated into legislative wins. It has produced press conferences, cable hits, and social-media clips. What it has not produced is results.
When your party's own members admit they can't pass what they're proposing, the exercise isn't governance. It's audition tape.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday urged members of President Trump's Cabinet to strip him of his powers under the 25th Amendment, citing his remarks about wiping out Iran's civilization. The California Democrat posted her demand on X, escalating a pattern of confrontation she first attempted during Trump's first term, and one that carries no more constitutional plausibility now than it did then.
Pelosi framed the call as a matter of national safety. In a post on her SpeakerPelosi account, she wrote:
"Donald Trump's instability is more clear and dangerous than ever."
She followed that with a second demand aimed at congressional Republicans:
"If the Cabinet is not willing to invoke the 25th Amendment and restore sanity, Republicans must reconvene the Congress to end this war."
The remarks that triggered Pelosi's outburst centered on Trump's threat to wipe out a "whole civilization" if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened. House Democrats had warned that the president's plans to bomb infrastructure in Iran could constitute war crimes if carried out. But Pelosi went further than most of her colleagues, reaching for the most dramatic constitutional remedy available, one that requires the vice president and a majority of the sitting Cabinet to declare a president "unable to discharge" his powers and duties.
The 25th Amendment was designed for genuine incapacity, a president in surgery, in a coma, or otherwise physically unable to govern. Pelosi's use of it as a political weapon is not new. She previously pushed for the same remedy during Trump's first term, touting support from other lawmakers at the time. That effort went nowhere.
This time, the odds are even longer. There are no signs that anything resembling a 25th Amendment effort is underway inside Trump's Cabinet. The vice president would need to agree, and a majority of Cabinet secretaries would need to sign on. Even then, if the president objected, which any functioning president would, Congress would have to vote, and a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate would be required to sustain the removal of presidential powers.
In a Congress where Republicans hold the majority in both chambers, that threshold is not a long shot. It is a fantasy. Pelosi knows this. The call is not a serious constitutional proposal. It is a messaging exercise, and one that tells voters more about the Democratic opposition's posture than about any genuine threat to the presidency.
Pelosi's recent public appearances have drawn their own share of criticism, but she remains one of the most visible figures in the Democratic caucus and clearly intends to stay that way.
The backdrop to Pelosi's demand is an active and fast-moving standoff with Iran. Trump set an 8 p.m. EDT deadline on Tuesday. Around midday, Pakistan asked for an extension on that deadline. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president had received Pakistan's proposal and would respond soon.
It was not clear as of Tuesday evening whether Trump would proceed with more intense bombing of Iran. The uncertainty itself has fueled anxiety on Capitol Hill, not just among Democrats, but among some Republican lawmakers as well. GOP members of Congress have been growing more anxious over the Iran conflict, though they appear unlikely to force Trump's hand.
That anxiety is real, and it deserves honest debate. But honest debate is not what Pelosi offered. She offered a constitutional shortcut that does not exist, wrapped in language designed for cable news and social media engagement. The 25th Amendment is not a vote of no confidence. It is not a policy disagreement tool. And treating it as one cheapens the document it comes from.
Pelosi has spent the post-speakership phase of her career positioning herself as a senior party voice willing to make the sharpest possible attacks on the Trump administration. She has endorsed candidates and inserted herself into primaries across the country, maintaining influence even without the gavel.
Her willingness to invoke the 25th Amendment, twice, across two different Trump terms, raises a question about whether the Democratic leadership has any tool in its kit besides escalation. When every policy disagreement becomes an existential crisis, the language of genuine crisis loses its meaning.
She is not alone in the tendency. Some Democrats have openly admitted their party has failed the moment and called for new leadership. Whether Pelosi's approach represents that failure or simply illustrates it is a question her own party will eventually have to answer.
Pelosi's fallback demand, that Republicans reconvene Congress to end the Iran conflict, acknowledges, implicitly, that the 25th Amendment gambit is performative. If she believed the Cabinet would act, she would not need a backup plan in the same sentence.
Republican lawmakers face a genuine tension. Some are uneasy about the scope of military action against Iran. But unease is not the same as opposition, and GOP members have shown little appetite for a public break with the president on foreign policy. Occasional bipartisan friction on national security questions has surfaced in recent months, but it has not translated into the kind of organized congressional pushback Pelosi is demanding.
The two-thirds threshold in both chambers makes Pelosi's ask a nonstarter even if a handful of Republicans broke ranks. She is asking for something she knows will not happen, then blaming Republicans for not delivering it.
Meanwhile, Pelosi continues to shape Democratic primary contests behind the scenes, a reminder that her influence operates on multiple tracks at once, some visible, some less so.
For readers unfamiliar with the mechanics: the 25th Amendment allows the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to transmit a written declaration to Congress stating that the president is unable to discharge his powers and duties. The vice president then immediately assumes acting presidential authority.
If the president disputes the declaration, which he may do by sending his own written statement to Congress, the vice president and Cabinet have four days to reassert their claim. Congress then has 21 days to vote. A two-thirds majority in both chambers is required to keep the president sidelined. Anything short of that, and the president resumes his powers.
The amendment was ratified in 1967, in the shadow of the Kennedy assassination and concerns about presidential succession. It was not designed as a partisan override mechanism. Pelosi's repeated attempts to repurpose it as one reflect a broader Democratic instinct to treat constitutional tools as political levers when the normal democratic process does not deliver the result they want.
There are legitimate debates to be had about the scope of presidential war powers, the proper role of Congress in authorizing military action, and the strategic wisdom of any given foreign policy. Those debates matter. They deserve serious legislators making serious arguments grounded in law and strategy.
What they do not need is a former Speaker reaching for the constitutional equivalent of a fire alarm every time she disagrees with the commander-in-chief. The 25th Amendment is not a policy tool. Treating it as one does not constrain the president. It only reveals how little the opposition has left to offer.
The Minneapolis City Council is preparing to consider a package of ordinances that would legalize and regulate venues where consenting adults engage in sexual activity, a move that would reverse the city's 38-year-old ban on such establishments and create a new licensing framework for adult sex clubs and bathhouses.
Mayor Jacob Frey is already on board. A spokesperson for the mayor told Fox News Digital he is "in favor of continuing to explore the issue." City Council President Elliott Payne said the plan would be modeled after San Francisco's regulatory approach, with rules focused on safety and public health.
If this sounds like a fringe proposal from a fringe city, consider the scope. The council is not debating a single zoning tweak. It is weighing four separate ordinances that would rewrite sections of the city code, the zoning code, the health and sanitation code, and the miscellaneous offenses code, all to carve out legal space for businesses that facilitate sexual activity between adults.
The first ordinance would add an entirely new chapter to the Minneapolis city code devoted specifically to adult sex venues. It would establish licensing requirements and business regulations for any establishment that facilitates sexual activity between consenting adults.
A second ordinance would update definitions and standards in the city's zoning code for sexually oriented uses. A third would amend health and sanitation provisions related to contagious diseases. The fourth would rewrite the city's miscellaneous offenses code to create exceptions for licensed venues permitted to host consensual sexual activity.
Taken together, the ordinances would strip what advocates call "stigmatizing language" from existing law and replace it with "new definitions to be inclusive of establishments where sexual activity between consenting adults may be facilitated." That language comes directly from the proposed ordinance text.
In other words, Minneapolis would not merely tolerate these venues. It would build an entire regulatory apparatus around them, licensing, zoning, health rules, and criminal-code carve-outs, to make them a permanent part of the city's commercial landscape.
The original ban dates to 1988, when Minneapolis passed an ordinance prohibiting businesses that facilitate "high-risk sexual conduct." The law defined that term to include fellatio, anal intercourse, and vaginal intercourse for pay. It arrived during the height of the AIDS crisis, when cities across the country were grappling with how to slow the epidemic's spread.
The last adult bathhouse in Minneapolis, the 315 Health Club, actually closed its doors in 1988 before the ban even took effect. The club had shuttered its "orgy rooms" two years earlier. The ban, in effect, codified a reality the market had already imposed.
Brian Coyle, the first openly gay member of the Minneapolis City Council, helped pass the 1988 law. He said at the time that many members of the LGBTQ+ community supported the ban. Coyle had been diagnosed with HIV in 1986 but did not publicly acknowledge it until 1991. He died that same year of AIDS-related complications at age 47.
That a gay council member who was himself living with HIV championed the original ban is a fact worth pausing on. It suggests the 1988 ordinance was not born from bigotry but from a public health emergency that the community closest to the crisis took seriously. The people now seeking to undo Coyle's work frame it differently.
The driving force is the Safer Sex Spaces Coalition, an advocacy group that in 2023 successfully lobbied to change the language of the 1988 ordinance. Now the coalition wants the law gone entirely.
The coalition argues that the original ban targeted same-sex partnerships and individuals with HIV and AIDS, discouraged public health outreach, and drove gatherings into what it calls "unsafe and inaccessible spaces." It claims the Minneapolis Health Department agrees the old ordinance is outdated.
The coalition laid out its case in a statement:
"The Minneapolis Health Department and other public health organizations acknowledge this ordinance is no longer the tool needed to promote public health. Social science research tells us that commercial sex spaces, like gay saunas, are important for promoting safer sex practices, enhancing HIV prevention, and increasing access to testing and treatment."
The group went further, casting these venues as community institutions. It is a familiar pattern in progressive governance: reframe a policy debate as a matter of identity, belonging, and emotional well-being, and the practical questions, about public health enforcement, neighborhood impact, and the basic wisdom of city-licensed sex clubs, get pushed to the margins.
The coalition also stated that these spaces "enhance feelings of identity, camaraderie, authenticity, and belonging" and are places "where people overcome isolation and develop a sense of community and pride." Those are real human needs. Whether city-licensed bathhouses are the appropriate vehicle for meeting them is another question entirely, one the council seems uninterested in asking.
Council President Elliott Payne said Minneapolis would model its approach on San Francisco's regulatory framework for bathhouses. That city has long permitted such establishments under its own licensing and health codes. For many Americans, the choice of San Francisco as a governance model is not exactly reassuring. The city's well-documented struggles with public disorder, open drug use, and quality-of-life decline have made it a cautionary tale, not a template.
Minneapolis, for its part, has faced its own governance challenges in recent years. The city became the epicenter of the 2020 "defund the police" movement, and its political leadership has leaned steadily leftward. This latest proposal fits a pattern: Minnesota Democrats have not been shy about pushing the boundaries of what government should normalize and institutionalize.
The mayor's willingness to "continue to explore" the idea, rather than simply say no, tells you where the political center of gravity sits in Minneapolis today. There is no visible opposition from city leadership. No council member is quoted raising concerns about enforcement, neighborhood effects, or whether taxpayers should be in the business of licensing sex venues.
Several questions remain unanswered. No specific date has been set for the council to vote on or formally consider the ordinances. The exact ordinance numbers and full text have not been made publicly available in the materials reviewed. And the mayor's spokesperson offered only a vague expression of support without detailing what guardrails, if any, the administration would insist upon.
There is also no public accounting of what enforcement would look like. If the city licenses adult sex venues, who inspects them? How often? What happens when violations occur? The four proposed ordinances touch the health and sanitation code, but the specifics of contagious disease provisions, the very concern that motivated the 1988 ban, remain unclear.
Meanwhile, Minnesota's Democratic establishment has shown a pattern of dodging accountability on issues that matter to ordinary residents. Whether it is questionable campaign donations or sweeping social experiments, the instinct is to push forward first and answer hard questions later, if at all.
The coalition's claim that the Minneapolis Health Department backs repealing the ban is presented as settled fact, but it comes from the coalition itself. No direct statement from the Health Department has been made public in the reporting reviewed. That is a significant gap. If the city's own health officials truly believe the ban is obsolete, they should say so on the record, with data, not through the filter of an advocacy group.
Minneapolis has a knack for making national headlines with proposals that most American cities would never entertain. This is the same political ecosystem that produced calls to dismantle its police department, and the same state where Governor Tim Walz has presided over a series of progressive experiments that have drawn sharp national scrutiny.
The bathhouse proposal is not about tolerance. Nobody is proposing to criminalize private conduct between consenting adults. The question is whether a city government should actively license, zone, and regulate commercial establishments whose primary purpose is facilitating sexual activity, and whether that represents a sound use of municipal authority and taxpayer-funded oversight.
Advocates frame this as a civil rights issue. But Brian Coyle, a gay man, an HIV-positive man, and a champion of his community, looked at the same question in 1988 and reached the opposite conclusion. He did so with the support of the community he served. The coalition now dismisses his judgment as a relic of stigma.
Progressive cities have a habit of treating the hard-won decisions of previous generations as obstacles rather than lessons. Other Democratic-led cities have shown similar instincts, prioritizing ideological signaling over the practical concerns of residents who have to live with the results.
The Minneapolis City Council has not yet voted. But with the mayor supportive, the council president citing San Francisco as a model, and no visible opposition from any elected official, the direction is clear. The only question is how fast the city moves, and whether anyone in a position of authority bothers to ask whether this is what Minneapolis residents actually want.
When your model city is San Francisco and your idea of progress is city-licensed sex clubs, you have stopped governing and started performing.