Over the span of four days earlier this month, President Donald Trump posted to his Truth Social account about his proposed triumphal arch, ballroom construction, the Iran war, a UFC fight at the White House and Bruce Springsteen’s alleged plastic surgery.
He also posted (and later deleted) an AI-generated photo of himself as Jesus, on the heels of a screed aimed at Pope Leo XIV, who Trump said “should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.”
What’s absent for long stretches in the president’s social media presence and from his discourse more generally of late is the economy — an issue Trump rode to the White House in 2016 and 2024.
“Trump’s original deal with the American people was ‘I’m a boorish lout and kind of embarrassing, but I know how to run the economy.’ And they believed that because they remember the economy being good in 2016,” said Mike Murphy, an anti-Trump former Republican strategist and co-host of the “Hacks on Tap” podcast with David Axelrod.
Critics and concerned Republicans say Trump isn’t making the economy enough of a priority with this year’s election just over six months away, though he has attempted to shift the focus back to cost-of-living issues in the last week.
But even when Trump does bring up the economy, his words often don’t reflect the reality many Americans are feeling. He recently said gas prices — which are 27% higher than a year earlier according to AAA — are “not very high,” and he has called affordability a “Democratic hoax.”
A new national poll found the country's youngest eligible voters are heading into the 2026 midterm elections burdened by deep economic anxiety and grappling with a growing belief that they are unable to effect change.
The Harvard Youth Poll, conducted among 18- to 29-year-olds by the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School, concluded that economic pressure is a defining concern for young Americans. It's a sentiment reflected in months of national polls that surveyed voters across age groups, who have similarly identified cost-of-living concerns, economic mobility and inflation as their North Star issues.
Roughly half of young Americans said that they are affected “a lot” by inflation, and 45% said they are struggling to make ends meet. And over the last five years, fewer young Americans believe they will be better off financially than their parents. In 2021, 38% said they expect to be better off than their parents. In the recent spring poll, 29% said that.
The April 1-15 poll was conducted amid ongoing tensions between Iran and the U.S. and Israel, which have been at war since Feb. 28. The conflict has interrupted commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, driving global oil prices and U.S. fuel costs higher.
Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index has a theoretical range of -100, if all Americans rate current economic conditions as poor and thought the economy was getting worse, to +100, if all Americans rate current conditions as excellent or good and believed the economy was getting better. The all-time-high reading was +56 in January 2000, while the record low was -72 in October 2008.
Americans More Negative About Current Economy and Its Trajectory
Nearly half of U.S. adults, 47%, describe current economic conditions as “poor,” up from 40% in March. Meanwhile, 21% believe the economy is “excellent” or “good,” not meaningfully changed from 23% last month. The last time evaluations were worse was in November 2023, when half rated conditions as poor.
A Houston federal court judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit by FBI Director Kash Patel alleging that former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi defamed him by saying Patel last year had “been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of” the bureau’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
“The Court finds that Figliuzzi’s statement is rhetorical hyperbole that cannot constitute defamation,” U.S. District Court Judge George Hanks Jr. wrote in his decision. “Accordingly, Dir. Patel has failed to state a claim against Figliuzzi, and his lawsuit must be dismissed.”
The dismissal came a day after Patel filed an unrelated $250 million defamation lawsuit in D.C. federal court against The Atlantic magazine over a new article that alleged he has abused alcohol.
At the time, Gabbard also declassified and made public a secret report that cited Russian intelligence material from 2016 that claimed Hillary Clinton suffered from “intensified psycho-emotional problems,” was on a daily regimen of “heavy tranquilizers,” and had schemed to set up the Trump-Russia scandal to distract from her email controversy. But US intelligence analysts and FBI agents had previously judged this Russian material to be unreliable and possibly disinformation. So here was the top US intelligence official deploying unsubstantiated or phony Russian material—over the objections of CIA officials who worried its disclosure could compromise sources and methods—to smear an American politician. It was disgraceful.
[. . .]
Last week, she released a handful of documents that she asserted exposed “a coordinated effort by elements within the Intelligence Community (IC), including a former Inspector General (IG), to manufacture a conspiracy that was used as the basis to impeach President Trump in 2019.” She insisted these records show that Atkinson “did not follow standard IG procedures and relied upon politicized, manufactured narratives” and that he took “actions to weaponize the Whistleblower process and exceed his statutory jurisdiction.”
Once more, she insisted that Trump was the victim of a nefarious cabal: “Deep state actors within the Intelligence Community concocted a false narrative that was used by Congress to usurp the will of the American people and impeach the duly-elected President of the United States.”
Yet again, Gabbard is pulling a big con. The materials she released do not back up the charge that Atkinson mishandled this case, and they certainly don’t prove a narrative was manufactured. In fact, the whistleblower’s complaint was largely confirmed when the Trump White House, under pressure, released a summary of his call with Zelenskyy. And that summary played a more critical role in the impeachment proceedings than the whistleblower’s complaint. During the Trump-Ukraine controversy, Maguire testified that the whistleblower “did the right thing.” Maguire also testified that Atkinson’s handling of the whistleblower complaint was done “by the book” and consistent with the law.
While Trashy Garbage wastes her time on these conspiracy threads, who is doing her job? Who is going through the international information and protecting the country from perceived and from real threats?
We are in the midst of a war, after all. And then there's Pete Hegseth. The Secretary of Defense keeps running through staff in the midst of a war. Army Chief of Staff Randy George was only the most recent until yesterday. Adam Mockler weighed in on yesterday's departure.
Greg Jaffe, Eric Schmitt and Helene Cooper (NEW YORK TIMES) report:
Navy Secretary John Phelan was fired on Wednesday after months of infighting with senior Pentagon leaders and disagreements over how to revive the Navy’s struggling shipbuilding program.
Mr. Phelan is leaving the Pentagon and the Trump administration effective immediately, wrote Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, in a terse statement.
In his role leading the Navy, Mr. Phelan had championed the “Golden Fleet,” a major investment in new ships including a “Trump-class” battleship. But Mr. Phelan’s leadership was marred by feuds with senior leaders in the Pentagon, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, Pentagon and congressional officials said.
Mr. Phelan is the first service secretary to leave the administration, though he is the second one to clash with the defense secretary. Mr. Hegseth also has butted heads with Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll over promotions and a host of other issues. Mr. Hegseth fired the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Randy George, earlier this month.
Any of the firings are eye brow raising but to fire the Secretary of the Navy when the US is battling over the Strait of Hormuz is especially shocking.
Hegseth is out of control. Again, the Republicans who voted for these nominees -- which also include the now departed Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi and Lori Chavez-DeRemer -- will have to answer for what they did. They didn't confirm qualified nominees. They confirmed unqualified people for posts that were beyond their abilities and experience and did so because these were MAGA wack jobs. These were people like Robert Kennedy Junior who should be nowhere near a Health and Human Services cabinet let alone the Secretary of it.
At THE NEW REPUBLIC, Laura Weiss observes:
It’s hard to overstate the damage that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has done to the public health infrastructure of the United States in his first year as head of the Department of Health and Human Services. An exhaustive list of these crimes could—and likely will—fill books.
Though he promised otherwise in his confirmation hearings, Kennedy has decimated the country’s vaccine and public health infrastructure. Last June, amid a historic measles outbreak that he has consistently downplayed, Kennedy abruptly fired all 17 expert members from the Centers for Disease Control’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, days before the panel was set to meet, only to stack it with vaccine skeptics largely without expertise in the subject matter. He went on to restrict access to vaccines for Covid-19 and other diseases.
Under his leadership, HHS has cut millions of dollars from mRNA vaccine research. He has also defunded research into cancer, a bird flu vaccine, and future pandemic threats. He has spread misinformation and stigma about autism and reduced the number of childhood vaccine recommendations from 17 to 11. He tried to conduct a highly unethical study in Guinea-Bissau that would put the tiny country’s population—which has among the highest rates of hepatitis B in the world—at a much higher risk of contracting the disease.
At SALON, former Governor Howard Dean writes:
In the first three months of 2026, America logged roughly 1,600 measles cases — nearly as many as the total number for all of 2025, which was by far the worst year we’ve seen for the highly infectious virus in decades. In fact, because we’ve had more than 12 straight months of continuous measles spread, the nation should soon lose the measles elimination status we achieved back in 2000.
I say “should” because Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was granted a delay of the April 13 meeting of the Pan American Health Organization, where officials were expected to reach that embarrassing conclusion, until its annual meeting, which is scheduled for after the midterm elections. A coincidence, no doubt.
It’s disgraceful and dangerous that instead of acting to prevent the spread of preventable diseases like measles, the secretary and his cadre of mad scientists are playing politics and spreading misinformation — and putting American lives at risk.
As Kennedy faces rounds of congressional hearings, including before two Senate committees that include four Republican doctors, measles cases are still rising across the country. During an appearance before a House committee on Tuesday, he declined to support the vaccine guidance of Dr. Erica Schwartz, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who is an advocate for immunizations.
Kennedy also rebuffed Democrats’ claims that he bore responsibility for the country’s ongoing measles outbreak. There have already been 17 separate outbreaks in 2026. South Carolina has reported around 670 cases of the virus that have forced hundreds to quarantine or isolate. In Utah, nearly 600 people, most of whom are children, have been diagnosed since an outbreak began last summer.
Measles cases are spiking because the share of Americans who’ve received the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine — which protects 97% of people from getting the virus when exposed to it — has declined below the critical threshold recommended for community protection. Under the vaccine skeptic Kennedy’s leadership, vaccination rates for other diseases are also trending downward, and could soon fall below their own respective thresholds, opening the door for all sorts of previously eliminated diseases to make a dangerous comeback.
Our public health system isn’t ready for these infectious diseases. Experts are already sounding alarms about underreporting, inconsistent data collection and delayed responses due to a lack of coordination between government centers and agencies, and weakened surveillance systems.
Junior's not qualified to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services and his time in the office has harmed the country -- and will continue to harm it for many years to come.
These are Chump's nominees, his picks, and they are a disaster for this country. That's before you get to the Howard Lutnicks who hung out with Jeffrey Epstein and before you get to the Linda McMahons accused of their own sexual impropriety (see the Ring Boy Scandal for which is still moving through the courts and for which she is accused of participation). We've had Kristi Noem and her boy toy Corey, all of this scandal, non-stop. And then there's racist Pete Hegseth.
Jen Psaki addressed him last night on MS NOW.
The video shows Senator Cory Booker speaking on the floor of the Senate.
Senator Cory Booker: And what is this body doing? Nothing. Republican leadership? It's called no open hearings, no sufficient accountability, no substantive oversight. They are kowtowing to a president and allowing him into a reckless war with grave consequences and a shredding of our Constitutional attention by our founders.
Cory then joins her to speak of the firing of the Navy commander with Cory saying of Hegseth, "Today is just another testament to his incompetence."
A top United Nations official on Tuesday warned that there is a real risk of a global food crisis if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed to shipments of fertilizer.
Jorge Moreira da Silva, executive director of the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS), said in an interview with UN News that roughly one-third of global fertilizer shipments flow through the Strait of Hormuz, and its closure has caused “a massive disruption in the supply chain of fertilizers,” and “clearly we are seeing a crisis emerging” in the agricultural industry.
The UN official also emphasized the need for a fast resolution to the crisis to prevent catastrophic food shortages as tensions continued to escalate in the strait in recent days, with both the US and Iran seizing vessels in the area.
Chump has spent more time in office trying to bury The Epstein Scandal than he has pondering the needs of the American people. Chump and Epstein go back to the 80s when they first hooked up. Epstein of course died in jail awaiting trial for his predatory actions -- this followed his 2008 conviction. He was Chump's buddy and Chump boasted of him to the press. Chump also hung around with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's right hand who procured women and girls for him and who engaged in sex with them. As The Epstein Scandal heated up throughout last year, Chump sent Deputy AG Todd Blanche to speak with Ghislaine Maxwell and, shortly afterwards, she was transferred to a lower level security prison -- a Club Fed of prisons -- in Bryan, Texas. Chump takes cares of his friends.
Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell sent a mystery USB drive to the Justice Department days after Melania Trump sought to distance herself from the pair’s heinous sex crimes.
The disgraced former socialite sent the USB on April 16 in a fresh attempt to quash her criminal conviction and 20-year jail sentence for helping Epstein recruit and abuse women and girls.
While the details of the electronic files are not known, the timing of it—seven days after the first lady delivered a surprise statement about Epstein and Maxwell—raised eyebrows across Washington.
In her April 9 statement, Melania Trump denied any ties to Epstein’s crimes and demanded that “lies” being spread about her must end.
Reading from prepared remarks at the White House, she told reporters that she went to the same parties as Epstein “from time to time, since overlapping in social circles is common.”
Ongaro
also alluded in various now-deleted social media posts that she has
information on President Donald Trump and Melania Trump relating to
Epstein. Both the president and first lady have denied any nefarious
involvement with Epstein.
Meanwhile, Epstein's interest in fashion was not in the business itself, but in leveraging the industry to gain access to young women who were hoping to grow their modeling careers.
Lisa Phillips was introduced to Epstein at age 21 while on a modeling shoot near his island. She endured years of abuse that she says she did not fully recognize until she was introduced to other survivors.
"The modeling industry was like, it was like a foundation of Epstein's orbit," Phillips told Scripps News.
The press has followed The Epstein Scandal and has unearthed many details that the Dept of Justice has attempted to hide. Henry Giardina (QUEERTY) notes the work of Bekah Day:
Since the second Epstein files release in January, we’ve discovered so many bombshells that have exposed sinister networks, powerful figures, and deep corruption across the worlds of finance, politics, modeling, and even retail.
For most citizens, the continuing fallout is exhausting. But for poster Bekah Day, who has been tirelessly sifting through every last file to make sure no details go unnoticed, it’s all in a day’s work.
Day’s peerless detective work around the Epstein files has beaten several major publications to the punch lately, including the story about Brazilian model (and ex-Melania bestie) Amanda Ungaro, whose Paolo Zampoli connection has put Tr*mp in hot water in recent weeks.
But as usual, the mad king has managed to find enough distractions to keep him busy… until now. Day just discovered a set of photos that put Tr*mp at the scene of a very scandalous gathering devoted to celebrating Epstein’s 50th birthday party… which allegedly took place at Mar-a-Lago.
That’s right! Remember last year when the Wall Street Journal discovered a Tr*mp doodle solicited by Ghislaine Maxwell as part of a tribute book for Epstein’s 50th? And remember how Tr*mp denied the whole thing and said that he never draws things and then everyone started sharing Tr*mp’s many, many doodles online? Yeah, well that was apparently just the tip of the iceberg, according to Day’s findings.
Pulling up a file set labeled “JE 50 Bday” Day shows us a series of photos featuring Epstein surrounded by the usual cadre of young girls, as well as Ghislaine Maxwell and some other big players. As usual, of course, the photos are heavily redacted, in some cases to protect Epstein survivors, in other cases… definitely not for that reason. But we can see plenty of victims on display in these photos, and we can also very clearly see Mar-a-Lago’s gilded interiors in the background.
“If we are to believe that all of the redacted figures are victims,” Day says, “the number of known survivors of [Epstein] that went through Mar-a-Lago…keeps growing.”
Curiouser and curiouser, especially considering that all the photos labeled “JE 50th bday” show Mar-a-Lago’s very recognizable interior.
Members on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are divided over whether President Donald Trump should pardon Jeffrey Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell in exchange for her cooperation in the panel’s Epstein investigation, Chair James Comer said in an interview Wednesday.
Maxwell, who was deposed by the Oversight Committee as the sole convicted accomplice in the Epstein sex trafficking scheme, previously invoked her Fifth Amendment right in declining to answer the panel’s questions. Her lawyer has said that she would only speak if granted clemency — a power available solely to Trump, who has not ruled out the prospect of a pardon.
When asked whether he believed it was a favorable deal to issue a pardon in return for Maxwell’s testimony, Comer said, “A lot of people do.”
“My committee’s split on that,” he added, declining to name who on the panel supported granting a pardon. “I don’t speak for my committee.”
[. . .]
Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the Oversight panel’s top Democrat, emphasized that committee Democrats unanimously opposed a pardon for Maxwell.
“That would be a huge step backwards, and, quite frankly, so disrespectful to the survivors,” he said in an interview. “She is a known abuser. She is a known liar.”
“If the DOJ or Oversight Republicans are out there trying to negotiate some sort of pardon that is … not only a huge slap in the face to this investigation, to anyone, to the American public,” he added. “It’s a part of a massive cover up.”
Murray: “The budget that was sent to us is not MAGA budget. It is not a MAHA budget. It is a war budget—no one can call it anything other than that.”
ICYMI: Senator Murray on President Trump’s FY27 Budget Request
***WATCH: Senator Murray’s remarks***
Washington, D.C. — Today, at a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing on the FY27 budget request for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), a senior member and former chair of the HELP Committee, grilled HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on cuts to important HHS functions, and broken promises and lies to Congress.
[MURRAY SLAMS RFK Jr. FOR GUTTING CDC AND BREAKING PROMISES]
MURRAY: Yesterday when we talked, you went on a very long tangent about how you were just cancelling woke grants. But I want to for the record put the numbers here: you cancelled 17, at least 17 maternal health grants, $4 million—because apparently any research involving women is woke. You cancelled 58 grants for vaccine research, $94 million. 59 for Alzheimer’s research, that was $33 million dollars. And a whopping 108 cancer research grants—$29 million dollars’ worth!
I just have to say cancer is not woke. Neither is Alzheimer’s, or
women who die in childbirth. These are deadly issues, they deserve
serious research. I am appalled that it was tossed in the shredder. And
meanwhile as I said, we are shoveling money on war spending.
So, I
just want to be clear: that the budget that was sent to us is not MAGA
budget. It is not a MAHA budget. It is a war budget—no one can call it
anything other than that
Why on earth would we take from researchers, and rural health
care, and maternal health care. You justified these cuts because of a
need to reduce the debt yesterday, this budget actually proposes to
increase the debt for more war.
So, we’re shoveling more money at Defense contractors, but we’re slashing NIH by more than five billion dollars, fewer patients getting life-saving treatment. Cutting CDC by a third so we can’t respond to dangerous outbreaks. Slashing investments in mental health and addiction treatment, people will fall through the cracks. And not investing in child care, families will have to decide between child care, and health care, and putting food on the table.
So, I know my time is almost up. And Mr. Chairman, for the record, I
am concerned about the promises that have been broken. And I have some
items that I do want to submit for the record, and I ask unanimous
consent to include these articles:
“RFK Jr. breaks promise to senators, guts CDC vaccine panel of independent experts.”
“RFK Jr. Breaks His Promises About the CDC on Vaccines and Autism.”
“Firing of CDC’s vaccine advisers puts spotlight on RFK Jr.’s promises to Cassidy.”
I have one that is titled: “RFK Jr. Made Promises in Order to Become Health Secretary. He’s Broken Many of Them.”
“Bill Cassidy extracted a promise from RFK Jr. Now he sees what that promise is worth.”
Two more: “A Republican Senator Who Voted for RFK is Airing His Concerns. It’s Too Late Now.”
And an article that is entitled: “GOP Senator Refuses to Face Reality About RFK Jr. After Being ‘Lied’ To.”
I yield back.
###
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