Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (R) accused President Trump of revoking his invite to the White House' annual picnic, calling the move "petty" and vindictive - although Paul was in fact included.
Paul has been a thorn in Trump's side lately, targeting the "Big, Beautiful Bill" over concerns with deficit spending. The Kentucky senator has called for the funding on immigration enforcement - Trump's signature agenda item - to be slashed by $75 billion.
The libertarian senator, known for his contrarian streak, said he "lost respect" for Trump and accused him of being "petty."
“I like Donald Trump, but when they want to act this way, it’s where they begin to lose a lot of America who just wonders, ‘Why does everything have to descend to this level?’” Paul added.
The exchange marks a new low in the relationship between Trump and Paul, who notably opposed Trump's emergency declaration for his border wall in his first term, with Paul citing small government principles.
“The level of immaturity is beyond words,” Paul told CNN. “It’s just incredibly petty... I’m arguing from a true belief and worry that our country is mired in debt and getting worse. And they choose to react by uninviting my grandson to the picnic. I don’t know. I just think it really makes me lose a lot of respect I once had for Donald Trump.”
The senator suggested the invite might have been revoked without Trump's knowledge, pointing to a "paid influencer campaign" involving immigration hawk Stephen Miller, who has been one of the most vocal defenders of Trump's bill, principally because of its massive hike in immigration spending. Paul's main objection to the bill is its increase in the debt ceiling, although he has raised broader criticisms.
"We can cut the proposed border funding in half, from $150 billion to $75 billion, and still secure our border and protect the American people," he wrote on X this week.
Trump can only afford a few defections on the Big, Beautiful Bill, which narrowly passed the House in May and is expected to face more changes in the Senate.
The president has slammed Paul's opposition to the bill, calling the senator "crazy" and an obstructionist who "never has any practical or constructive ideas."
In a Truth Social post, Trump denied that Paul was uninvited, saying "of course" Paul and his "beautiful wife" were included. Trump said it would not make sense to exclude Paul, since Trump is still trying to win his vote.
“He’s the toughest vote in the history of the U.S. Senate, but why wouldn’t he be? Besides, it gives me more time to get his Vote on the Great, Big, Beautiful Bill, one of the greatest and most important pieces of legislation ever put before our Senators & Congressmen/women,” Trump said.
Another Republican critic of Trump, Rep. Thomas Massie (KY) - who Trump has called a "grandstander" - also said he was not invited to the lunch.
New Jersey Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver was indicted by a federal grand jury for her role in a violent scuffle outside an ICE facility last month.
The lawmaker is facing 17 years in prison if convicted on the charges of "forcibly impeding and interfering" with ICE agents.
The Democrat has denied all wrongdoing. She claims she was conducting legitimate oversight, and her party has claimed the charges are politically motivated.
McIver was one in a group of three House Democrats who were present during a chaotic confrontation at Delaney Hall in Newark on May 9.
The indictment says McIver and Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ) were performing congressional oversight that coincided with an immigration protest.
The charges against McIver revolve around her alleged efforts to forcefully block the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka (D), who was told to leave the facility but refused, and who later had trespassing charges dropped. McIver made two separate attempts to block the mayor's arrest, the indictment says.
"After the Mayor was escorted outside the secured area, law enforcement officers made a second attempt to arrest him. At this time, someone in the crowd yelled 'circle the mayor.' McIver then faced the Mayor and placed her arms around him in an effort to prevent HSI from completing the arrest," the DOJ said.
"During her continued attempts to thwart the arrest, McIver slammed her forearm into the body of one law enforcement officer and also reached out and tried to restrain that officer by forcibly grabbing him. McIver also used each of her forearms to forcibly strike a second officer."
The interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Alina Habba, issued a statement on the charges.
"As I have stated in the past, it is my Constitutional obligation as the Chief Federal Law Enforcement Officer for New Jersey to ensure that our federal partners are protected when executing their duties,” Habba said in a statement.
“While people are free to express their views for or against particular policies, they must not do so in a manner that endangers law enforcement and the communities those officers serve,” Habba said.
McIver has insisted she did nothing wrong, casting blame on ICE for instigating the confrontation. She dismissed the case as "an effort by Trump's administration to dodge accountability for the chaos ICE caused".
"The facts will prove I was simply doing my job", she added.
House Representative Mark Green (R-TN) is quitting Congress to join the private sector, further shrinking Republicans' narrow majority.
Green, who represents Tennessee's 7th District, said he will resign after the House votes again on President Trump's reconciliation package, also known as the "Big, Beautiful Bill."
"It is with a heavy heart that I announce my retirement from Congress. Recently, I was offered an opportunity in the private sector that was too exciting to pass up. As a result, today I notified the Speaker and the House of Representatives that I will resign from Congress as soon as the House votes once again on the reconciliation package," Green said.
An Army vet, Green initially said he would retire in February of 2024, but President Trump dissuaded him from stepping aside.
Green's retirement from his reliably Republican seat is not expected to impact the balance of power, although it will temporarily cost Republicans a vote.
“Though I planned to retire at the end of the previous Congress, I stayed to ensure that President Trump’s border security measures and priorities make it through Congress,” the congressman said Monday.
“By overseeing the border security portion of the reconciliation package, I have done that. After that, I will retire, and there will be a special election to replace me.”
The retirement comes after Green filed for divorce from his wife, Camilla, who accused him of having an affair in a September group text to lawmakers.
“I have offered reconciliation, and he wants nothing of it and has insisted on a divorce,” she wrote. "Satan has rewritten our marriage in his mind."
A woman later told Politico that she was involved with Green, whose wife had wrongly identified a different woman as his lover.
As chair of the Homeland Security Committee, Green led the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over the Biden border crisis.
Green also shaped House Republicans' marquee border bill during the Biden era, HR2, or the Secure the Border Act.
The House passed Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill," which includes billions in new spending on immigration enforcement, by only one vote last month.
The bill, the product of delicate negotiations between different factions in the party, is expected to face further changes in the Senate.
The House will need to vote again if the Senate makes revisions. Trump wants the bill on his desk by July 4th.
Joe Biden's former press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, is ditching the Democrats, further dividing the party at a time when its approval is in the gutter.
As the chief propagandist for the White House during most of Biden's term, Jean-Pierre was at the center of an effort to cover-up Biden's cognitive decline. Now, she's looking to cash in as she attempts to redefine herself as a generic "independent."
“I think we need to stop thinking in boxes and think outside of our boxes and not be so partisan,” she said last week.
A teaser for her upcoming book promises "revelatory" insight on the "broken" two-party system, as well as an insider's account on the Democratic party's "betrayal" of Biden during a tumultuous three-week period last summer.
Joining the White House in 2022, Jean-Pierre became notorious for her clumsy, inept efforts to spin the news in favor of the administration. She vehemently insisted that Biden was fit to be president as questions mounted about his cognitive health, describing him as "sharp as ever" in the aftermath of his pivotal, career-ending debate performance last June.
Like CNN's Jake Tapper, a former Biden defender and co-author of a new book attacking the former president and his inner circle, Jean-Pierre is also facing criticism for her cynical shift in allegiances.
Her shocking defection from the Democratic party has emboldened former colleagues to trash her (anonymously) to the media, with critics calling Jean-Pierre an incompetent communicator who was coddled on the job, as well as a relentless self-promoter.
“The fact that she feels like she can distance herself from the Democratic brand is laughable,” a Democratic strategist told The Hill. “Democrats are trying to distance themselves from the Biden White House but here we have Karine trying to distance herself from a pissed off Democratic Party. She’s part of the problem. Does she not realize that?”
Jean-Pierre is the latest prominent figure to flee the historically unpopular Democrats, who continue to be seen as out of touch by most Americans. Recent polling from left-wing CNN shows that voters trust Republicans more than Democrats to deal with the economy, despite the turbulence of Trump's tariff agenda.
As Democrats flounder, the Biden family is scrambling to defend his tarnished legacy from newly emboldened Republicans and Democrats who want to blame their current woes on Biden and his disastrous re-election bid.
But some argue the Democrats are scapegoating Biden and his family to avoid confronting deeper problems with the party's brand. Indeed, the fact that someone as incompetent as Jean-Pierre rose to such a prominent position within the Biden administration is a sure sign that the party's rot runs much deeper than many Democrats want to acknowledge.
Months after President Trump's historic comeback, Democrats still do not agree on whether they are too "woke" or not woke enough, and no identifiable leader has emerged to rally them.
“Nobody, including President Biden’s minister of propaganda, wants to be a Democrat anymore. Their policies and brand are toxic,” Trump pollster Jim McLaughlin said.
Meanwhile, Biden's circle of defenders is shrinking as President Trump escalates an investigation into the last administration's use of an autopen.
"I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false,” Biden said in a statement last week.
President Donald Trump has experienced a string of victories at the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court at the same time federal judges across the nation seem to be working overtime to hamstring his policies at every turn.
According to USA Today, the three liberal justices on the high court are concerned that Trump is getting preferential treatment by the conservative majority of justices, especially Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Jackson warned that she believes the high court is sending a "troubling message" by siding with the president as much as it has in recent months.
She also believes the conservative justices are "undercutting" federal judges across the nation by overruling the decisions -- the decisions that just happen to overwhelmingly go against the president and his administration.
In a recent statement, Brown Jackson explained why she believes the high court is doing damage to itself with its favorable decisions for the Trump administration.
“It is particularly startling to think that grants of relief in these circumstances might be (unintentionally) conveying not only preferential treatment for the Government but also a willingness to undercut both our lower court colleagues’ well-reasoned interim judgments and the well-established constraints of law that they are in the process of enforcing,” she wrote.
The statement came in a dissent from a recent case involving former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk.
USA Today noted:
Jackson was dissenting from the conservative majority’s decision to give Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency complete access to the data of millions of Americans kept by the U.S. Social Security Administration.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined in the dissent with Brown Jackson, writing, "this Court dons its emergency responder gear, rushes to the scene, and uses its equitable power to fan the flames rather than extinguish them."
Brown Jackson also wrote a similar complaint after a May decision that sided with the Trump administration.
That decision came down on May 30, which said that "the administration can revoke the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans living in the United States."
Brown Jackson held nothing back in her dissent, claiming the high court "plainly botched" the decision.
Clearly, Brown Jackson and Sotomayor are not happy with being unable to join their federal counterparts in stopping Trump.
Meanwhile, Trump is enjoying the fruits of his three Supreme Court picks.
Democrats rushed to defend Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an illegal alien deported by President Donald Trump’s administration after he was accused of being an MS-13 gang member, human smuggler, and domestic abuser.
According to Breitbart, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) was one of those Democrats, however, he's now seemingly changing his tune and reportedly distancing himself from the accused MS-13 gang member.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi recently announced serious charges against Garcia, and his fanbase in the liberal media and the Democratic Party ranks are suddenly pretty quiet about him.
Garcia will be extradited back to the United States to face charges.
Bondi's Department of Justice released a bombshell, 10-page indictment detailing the serious charges Garcia faces, most of which are disgusting patterns of sick behavior, including abuse and human smuggling.
Breitbart noted:
In Bondi’s announcement on Friday, she detailed the charges against Abrego Garcia — accusing him of being part of a massive human smuggling network that runs from Mexico well into the interior of the United States.
“This is especially disturbing … Garcia, is also alleged with transporting minor children. The defendant traded the innocence of minor children for profit. There are even more disturbing facts that the grand jury uncovered,” the statement read.
The indictment papers got even worse, detailing Garcia's various illegal activities.
"The defendant abused undocumented alien females, according to co-conspirators who were under his control while transporting them throughout our country. This defendant trafficked firearms and narcotics throughout our country on multiple occasions," it read.
Van Hollen might try to downplay his involvement, but he was deeply involved in attempting to return Garcia back to the United States.
Van Hollen released a statement on social media after the charges saying it's not "about the man," rather it's about the "constitution."
After months of ignoring our Constitution, it seems the Trump Admin has relented to our demands for compliance with court orders and due process for Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
This has never been about the man—it’s about his constitutional rights & the rights of all.
Full statement: pic.twitter.com/q28RLNEj2S
— Senator Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen) June 6, 2025
Social media users also slammed Van Hollen.
"Great job Chris! Now your party will be defending in the midterms your choice to advocate tirelessly for the return of a soon to be convicted human trafficking, wife beater to the United States. Best of luck!" one X user wrote.
As a dramatic rift widens between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, one pundit is urging Trump to "fire, investigate, and prosecute" Musk's DOGE team.
CNN commentator Van Jones said Trump should go after what's left of DOGE "if he's smart," suggesting Trump needs to purge his administration of Musk's loyalists.
"Those DOGE employees are very dangerous. If Donald Trump is smart, the first thing he’s going to do is fire, investigate and prosecute all of Elon’s people who are all throughout government with their laptops downloading data right now," Jones said.
Jones explained, "Listen, I don’t think that what they’re doing is legal... A lot of them don’t have the proper clearances. And I think that if you investigate, you’ll find they’ve uploaded data into servers that are that are the wrong, the wrong thing to do. So I think there should definitely be an investigation there."
The blowup between Trump and his former campaign benefactor has led to speculation about a potential divide emerging within the GOP.
Some have questioned whether Musk could use his fortune against Trump and his Republican allies in the midterms next year, although Musk's political influence has come into question after he bungled a Wisconsin Supreme Court race earlier this year.
In the meantime, Jones suggested that DOGE's continued presence in the White House gives Musk leverage over Trump.
"If Donald Trump is smart, the leverage that Elon has is he left, his kids didn’t. They’re still in there. So this fight, if it’s going to be a fight that Donald Trump prevails on in the short term, go after DOGE. Long term, he’s got to steal the Republican Party to deal with an Elon Musk that’s promising to spend money now in a decade from now,” Jones opined.
The drama erupted Tuesday when Musk, just days after departing the White House, called Trump's sweeping legislative agenda a "disgusting abomination" and urged Republicans to scuttle it.
Things escalated on Thursday as Musk, in a span of hours, called for Trump to be impeached, took credit for his re-election victory and all but called him a pedophile, claiming without any evidence that Trump is "in the Epstein files."
For his part, Trump has handled the situation with restraint, although he was beginning to show signs of impatience as Musk spiraled on Thursday.
After admitting he was "disappointed" in Musk for trashing his "Big, Beautiful Bill," Trump threatened to terminate the tech billionaire's government contracts and confirmed that he asked Musk to leave the White House because he was "wearing thin."
“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump wrote. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”
While Musk appeared to calm down by the end of the day on Thursday, his erratic behavior has clearly impacted Trump's view of him, and not for the better.
"You mean the man who has lost his mind?" Trump told ABC News on Friday, adding dismissively that he is "not particularly interested" in talking to him.
An accomplice in the recent bombing of a fertility clinic in Palm Springs was arrested by FBI agents at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York.
Daniel Park, 32, was taken into custody after being deported from Poland. He is accused of supplying ammonium nitrate to the 25-year-old primary suspect, Guy Edward Bartkus, who died in the blast on May 17.
Park, of Kent, Washington, spent months plotting the attack with Bartkus, traveling to his California home for about two weeks to experiment with bomb-making materials in his garage, United States Attorney Bill Essayli said.
Park shipped another 90 pounds of ammonium nitrate, a chemical that can be used to make bombs, just days before the attack, and used an AI chatbot to assist with building the device.
FBI officials called the explosion an act of terrorism and possibly the largest bombing in Southern California's history. No human embryos were damaged at the American Reproductive Centers, which provides services like in-vitro fertilization (IVF) to help couples struggling to conceive children.
The blast injured four people and damaged the fertility clinic and other buildings in the vicinity. A cellphone at the crime scene linked Park to the attack.
A search of Park's home uncovered a large volume of explosive materials and handwritten chemical equations, including "an explosive recipe that was similar to the Oklahoma City bombing,” FBI Assistant Director in charge Akil Davis said.
Park is charged with providing and attempting to provide material support to a terrorist. He appeared at a federal court in Brooklyn on Wednesday, where he waived a probable cause hearing until his prosecution in California.
He was arrested in New York following his deportation from Poland, where he had fled four days after the bombing.
"Bringing chaos and violence to a facility that exists to help women and mothers is a particularly cruel, disgusting crime that strikes at the very heart of our shared humanity," Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.
"We are grateful to our partners in Poland who helped get this man back to America and we will prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law."
The two suspects met on the internet, where they exchanged nihilistic, anti-natalist views calling for humans to be wiped out.
"They don't believe that new life should be created, [or] that it should not be created without consent," Essayli said. "That is the reason that we believe they likely targeted the location that they did. That's why we're calling this a terrorist attack. The location was not a coincidence."
Elon Musk is lashing out at President Trump's “Big, Beautiful" bill in anger after getting "fired," commentator Bill Kristol speculated.
In his most forceful criticism to date of Trump's policies, Musk labeled the sprawling bill, which encompasses Trump's major legislative priorities, a "disgusting abomination."
While Musk has cited concerns with the bill's impact on the federal deficit, some see a personal side to his sudden change in tone since leaving his White House role last week.
During his time as the leader of DOGE, Musk largely avoided blasting Trump directly, even as he voiced strong opposition to Trump's tariff plans.
Kristol, a longtime Trump critic, said Musk's sudden attack on the Big, Beautiful Bill looks like an indirect shot at Trump.
Kristol said he doubts Musk has read the sprawling legislation, given the aggressive, sweeping approach DOGE deployed to downsize the government.
"The attack on the bill is entirely an attack on Trump," he told MSNBC's The Beat.
"Elon Musk has not studied the, you know, 1,000-page House bill, how it changes in the Senate. He didn’t study any of the agencies he’s ruined, USAID and others, but he’s done a lot of damage to the country. He didn’t even bother to study for that. He’s not studying some 1,000-page bill with complicated Medicaid cuts, tax provisions, and so forth. It’s his way of attacking Trump.”
Musk's resignation from his role as a "special government employee" was presented by Musk and the White House as a scheduled departure, but there have been some reports that Musk expected to stay on longer.
The Tesla CEO is also reportedly upset that the bill does not have an electric vehicle tax credit that he lobbied for, Axios reported.
"Don’t you think his reaction suggests Trump fired him? This talk about you mentioned a breakup. True enough, he was going to go back to his business. He’d only 120 days and all that nonsense. He wanted to stay. He loved it there. I think Trump just said at some point, no, sorry, goodbye. Because I just think the ferocity," Kristol said.
Trump has refrained, so far, from reacting to Musk's criticism even as Musk doubles down on attacking the president's agenda.
"KILL THE BILL," Musk wrote in a post on Wednesday.
“The president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said a day earlier. "It doesn’t change the president’s opinion."
The campaign for California Democrat Maxine Waters agreed to pay over $68,000 in fines over a litany of campaign finance violations.
Citizens for Waters, her 2020 re-election campaign, was caught making false financial reports, "knowingly" taking excessive contributions and distributing prohibited cash disbursements, according to a settlement agreement with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
In addition to paying the fine, Waters' campaign must send its treasurer, David Gould, to attend a training on campaign finance.
"Respondent shall submit evidence of the required registration and attendance at such event to the Commission," the document said.
The Waters campaign accepted "excessive contributions from seven individuals totaling $19,000 that were not refunded, reattributed, or redesignated within the permissible timeframe," the FEC found, while noting the contributions were eventually returned "untimely."
The campaign also "understated $262,391 in receipts and $256,164 in disbursements" and "made four prohibited cash disbursements that were each in excess of $100, totaling $7,000."
"The Committee contends that it began using new software to prepare campaign statements immediately following the 2019-2020 cycle and has filed amendments to Further, the Committee contends that it has retained legal counsel to provide advice and guidance to the Treasurer and implemented procedures to ensure the financial accuracy of reports," the FEC's report says.
The news was first reported by OpenSecrets, which noted that an attorney for the Waters campaign blamed the discrepancies on "limited staff availability and resources" during the COVID pandemic.
The FEC settlement is the latest financial scandal involving Waters, who has a long history of blatant self-dealing through her campaigns.
Waters' campaign has consistently paid thousands of dollars to a company run by Waters' daughter for slate mailer services. Since 2003, Karen Waters has received $1.2 million in cash from her mother's campaigns.
With that in mind, a $68,000 fine is a slap on the wrist. But it's a rare instance of accountability, however small, for one of the most brazenly corrupt members of Congress.
At the ripe old age of 86, it appears unlikely that Waters will ever change her ways. After all, voters in her overwhelmingly Democratic district have consistently re-elected her since she entered Congress in the 1990s. She has been the top Democrat on the powerful House Financial Services Committee for more than a decade.
Her political durability has no doubt convinced her that she is above the law. We can predict that this probably won't be the last time we hear about Maxine Waters breaking the rules.