The president of war-torn Ukraine looked shocked when Donald Trump described Washington DC as “the most unsafe place anywhere” during a meeting at the White House.
Volodymyr Zelensky was in the Oval Office for talks about bringing an end to Russia’s brutal invasion of his country which has seen civilians bombed on a near-daily basis.
During questions from the press, President Trump began discussing his federal takeover of the capital which he described as “the most unsafe place anywhere” before his unprecedented deployment of the National Guard.
Zelensky looked surprised and shocked by Trump’s words as the Commander-in-Chief began telling a story about a friend whose golfer son now felt “safe” to go out for dinner.
Trump went on to claim restaurants are now booming thanks to his actions. Statistics show restaurants have suffered as much as a 30% drop since troops were deployed.
Tulsi Gabbard may have broken the law by publicly identifying dozens of current and former officials while revoking their security clearances, according to a national security lawyer.
Gabbard revealed that 37 people have been targeted in the clearance purge ordered by President Trump, accusing them without evidence of “politicizing and manipulating intelligence, leaking classified intelligence without authorization, and/or committing intentional egregious violations of tradecraft standards.”
Gabbard made the announcement—which comes after Trump stripped the security clearance of his political opponents—by posting a memo from her office on X. The list of 37 individuals targeted includes intelligence officials who concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, as well as those accused by far-right activist Laura Loomer of lacking loyalty to Trump, according to Axios.
Mark Zaid, an attorney who represents intelligence officers and who is suing the Trump administration to have his own stripped security clearance restored, suggested Gabbard may have landed herself in legal trouble by making the memo public.
“Can you say ‘Privacy Act violation’? I certainly can,” Zaid wrote in a post on X. “Further proof of weaponization and politicization. The vast majority of these individuals are not household names & are dedicated public servants who have worked across multiple presidential administrations.”
Zaid—who previously represented a whistleblower who accused Trump of attempting to extort Ukraine for dirt on former President Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election—told Axios that a person’s security clearance “is maintained in a protected Privacy Act System of records.”
He added the government “cannot simply release that information without written consent from the individual or the existence of a Routine Use, which I do not believe exists for this purpose.”
Those who lost clearances reportedly include officials who signed a letter supporting Trump’s first impeachment trial, when he was accused of threatening to withhold military aid to Ukraine unless President Volodymyr Zelensky agreed to investigate Hunter Biden’s business dealings ahead of the 2020 election.
Others were targeted online by Loomer, an extremist and conspiracy theorist who has taken credit for multiple people being removed from the Trump administration, citing reasons such as their prior service in the Obama or Biden administrations.
“Thank you, Tulsi! MORE SCALPS,” Loomer posted while sharing Gabbard’s memo.
In response to Zaid’s remarks, White House Spokesman Davis Ingle told the Daily Beast: “President Trump promised to end the weaponization of government against American citizens which is why Director Gabbard rightfully directed the revocation of 37 security clearances from current and former intelligence officials who abused their positions of public trust.”
The Trump administration has stripped numerous national security officials and political opponents of their clearances as part of the president’s campaign of retribution.
Those affected include Trump’s 2024 election rival, former Vice President Kamala Harris. New York Attorney General Letitia James—who prosecuted Trump for filing fraudulent financial filings for years—was also targeted, as was former president Joe Biden and his entire family.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/tulsi-gabbards-revenge-purge-immediately-runs-into-a-major-problem
President Donald Trump says the war on woke is not dead yet.
POTUS posted a bizarre screed on Tuesday about museums in Washington, claiming the Smithsonian Institution is “OUT OF CONTROL” and is fixated on the shortcomings of yesteryear, like documenting the horrors of slavery.
“The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE,’” he wrote on Truth Social. “Everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been—Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”
Trump, 79, has vowed to rid museums of the “woke” he claims infests them. In doing so, he has pushed the more vital issues of today—like brokering a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine, or releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files, a pair of campaign promises—to the back burner.
“I have instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities, where tremendous progress has been made,” Trump said. “This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE. We have the ‘HOTTEST’ Country in the World, and we want people to talk about it, including in our Museums.”
It is unclear if Trump intends to bully museums into displaying current matters—like how the U.S. is supposedly the “hottest” country in the world—instead of exhibiting, preserving, and interpreting objects of historical or scientific significance.
Trump did not elaborate on how he intends for museums to display “the future.”
The president’s complaints did not go unnoticed by lawmakers. California congresswoman and Congressional Black Caucus Whip Sydney Kamlager-Dove retweeted Trump’s message with her own, which stated: “Slavery WAS bad, Donald. It’s absurd that this even needs to be said.”
“We don’t whitewash history,” she continued, “we learn from it.” Before adding: “You keep trying to rewrite the past—@TheBlackCaucus won’t let you get away with it.”
Slavery WAS bad, Donald. It’s absurd that this even needs to be said.
We don’t whitewash history; we learn from it.
You keep trying to rewrite the past— @TheBlackCaucus won’t let you get away with it. https://t.co/CoVc7LqY5b— Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove (@RepKamlagerDove) August 19, 2025The president’s threat to unleash lawyers on American museums is akin to how he went after U.S. universities, like Harvard, which refused to bend to his demands and axe programs he deems problematic, like diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Harvard, as a result of its defiance, has been cut off from federal funding. Trump will likely try to do the same to D.C.’s popular Smithsonian museums if changes are not made—though it is unclear what, exactly, the president is upset about.
Trump announced last week that the Smithsonian Institution, which is funded by the federal government, was being put under review to make sure its exhibitions are in line with MAGA’s view of American history.
The White House’s pressure on the Smithsonian is already being felt. It ordered the institution to erase references to Trump’s first-term impeachments in the exhibit “A Glorious Burden” last month.
The National Museum of American History briefly removed Trump from its impeachment exhibit, but told USA Today it did so to improve its appearance, not because the administration ordered it to. The paper reports that references to the impeachments have since been returned to the exhibit.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-79-tells-smithsonian-to-stop-saying-how-bad-slavery-was
CNN analyst Aaron Blake said President Donald Trump is now leading Republican party in its assault on states’ rights.
“[Trump] has spent much of his second term attempting to chip away at states’ rights — or at least, the ones he doesn’t like,” said Blake, adding that Trump more recently referred to states as subservient to the federal government in a pitch to get rid of mail-in voting and voting machines.
“Remember, the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes,” the president posted on Truth Social. “They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, for the good of our country, to do.”
This was not Trump’s first reference to states as “agents” of the federal government, but it was one of the first that referenced himself personally as more powerful.
“This is a rather novel take on the Constitution, to put it mildly,” said Blake, explaining that the Constitution says the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections … shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.” Congress may tweak regulations, but there is no role for the president.
“And Trump isn’t saying that Congress should outlaw mail-in voting or voting machines, mind you. Instead, he’s saying the states ‘must’ get rid of them because he tells them to — apparently because he was elected president and because he has determined it’s “for the good of the country,” said Blake. “This is merely the latest in a long line of drastic Trump claims to power.
Trump claimed during his first term that the Constitution gave him absolute power, even when out of office, reports Blake. He’s “floated terminating portions of the Constitution, while repeating his false claims that the 2020 election was rigged.” Earlier this year, Blake notes Trump suggesting his actions “couldn’t be illegal as long as he was acting to ‘save’ the country.”
These things are inconsistent with decades of conservative orthodoxy, which holds that the federal government should be small and that states should lead the way, said Blake. The 2016, Republican Party platform devoted an entire section to states’ rights, arguing “Every violation of state sovereignty by federal officials is not merely a transgression of one unit of government against another; it is an assault on the liberties of individual Americans.”
But since then, Blake says Trump has issued executive orders targeting state and local governments’ “sanctuary” policies, and he’s directed the DOJ to block states from enforcing their own pollution laws. He’s also dispatched troops to Los Angeles without the consent of the governor and federalized the police in Washington, DC. He also tried unsuccessfully to block funding to New York for trying to curb traffic congestion and threatened other state’s funding over transgender rights.
Blake said “if nothing else,” Trump’s latest Truth Social post “has finally said how he really feels about the concept of states’ rights.”
After his meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska on August 15 and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House Oval Office three days later, U.S. President Donald Trump talked foreign policy when he called into Fox News’ morning show, “Fox & Friends,” early Tuesday morning, August 19. And he appeared to forget the name of an ocean.
Trump told the hosts, “You know we have an ocean that’s separating us, right? A thing called…. an ocean. A big, beautiful ocean. And, uh, they don’t, they’re right there. So it’s a different kind of a thing for them.”
Trump, the Daily Beast’s Jack Silvers notes, “appeared to be referring to the Pacific Ocean, the largest body of water on Earth.”
Silvers explains, “The coast of Alaska, where Trump and Putin met last Friday, is separated by 55 miles of ocean from the eastern coast of Russia…. Famously, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said that ‘you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska’ in 2008, providing fodder for a viral ‘SNL’ spoof starring Tina Fey.”
Trump’s comments are generating some discussion on X, formerly Twitter.
The Daily Beast tweeted, “Trump appeared to have another senior moment as he rambled to Fox News about ‘a thing called… an ocean’ while discussing his meeting with Zelensky.”
Journalist Aaron Ruper said of the Daily Beast’s reporting, “This headline is incorrect. Trump was clearly referring to the Atlantic Ocean, not the Pacific.”
X user Terp Sitone posted, “Clearly a masterclass in geography.”
Another X user, Annie van Leur, wrote, “TRUMP CAN’T REMEMBER THE NAME OF THE OCEAN.”
Van Leur, in a separate tweet, commented, “If not for the Republicans in Congress, he’d be in an assisted living community somewhere. Donald Trump is a ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ president.”
The White House slammed New Jersey Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver on Monday after she argued that President Trump’s “Liberation Day” mantra is code for “white power.”
McIver — who was hit with federal charges in June accusing her of assaulting and interfering with immigration officers outside a New Jersey detention center — leveled the accusation as she railed against Trump’s crime crackdown in Washington, DC, which she fears “will start a civil war” if he tries it in other Democrat-run cities.
“I think there’s an ultimate agenda of this administration to do these types of things,” the congresswoman said of the president’s decision to take control of DC’s police department and deploy federal law enforcement and National Guard troops in the nation’s capital, during an interview on the “Defending Democracy with Marc Elias” podcast last week.
“Sic the military on the very people that they’re supposed to be protecting in these cities and then expect a certain response so that it can escalate — I truly believe that that’s what the president hopes for,” McIver argued, before calling the effort — and Trump’s “Liberation Day” for DC label — “racist.”
“When he says, ‘Oh,’ you know, ‘it’s Liberation Day,’ and all of these things, those are, you know, ways of him saying, ‘Oh, it’s white power,’” McIver said.
“Those are racist remarks,” she argued. “His number one targets are cities that are led by black mayors.”
McIver went on to moan that Trump’s “number one targets are sanctuary cities that, you know, support immigration.”
The New Jersey Democrat charged that Trump’s push to clean up DC and end sanctuary city policies “show us each and every day how much of a bigot he is.”
The White House brushed off McIver’s allegations, mocking her “attempted catfight” outside the Newark ICE facility that landed her in trouble with the feds.
“LaMonica McIver, whose claim to fame was assaulting federal agents, is an unserious person whose comments are nothing more than a political stunt, much like her attempted catfight in front of an ICE facility,” White House spokesman Harrison Fields told The Post.
“Congress would be better off if she left, and the people of New Jersey would benefit greatly if she pursued her apparent passion for street fighting,” he added.
McIver’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
The congresswoman has pleaded not guilty to three counts of assaulting, resisting, impeding and interfering with federal officials related to her alleged role in the ICE facility dustup.
A new report has revealed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued in a federal court filing in 2016 that the Constitution guarantees citizenship to nearly all children born in the United States regardless of their parents’ immigration status when he was a Republican senator running for president, a position that now stands in sharp contrast to the executive order issued by Trump in January which seeks to restrict birthright citizenship.
Rubio’s 2016 filing responded to a lawsuit challenging his eligibility to run for president on the grounds that, as the son of Cuban immigrants who became U.S. citizens only after his birth, he was not a “natural born citizen.”
As The New York Times points out, the court dismissed the case, but Rubio’s arguments went further than necessary, affirming that the 14th Amendment was designed to ensure that “all persons born in the United States, regardless of race, ancestry, previous servitude, etc., were citizens of the United States.”
Rubio went on to say that the amendment, the common law on which it was based and the leading Supreme Court precedent all confirmed that “persons born in the United States to foreign parents (who were not diplomats or hostile, occupying enemies) were citizens of the United States by virtue of their birth.”
Trump’s executive order, by contrast, states that children born in the U.S. are not automatically citizens if their mothers were either unlawfully present or only in the country on a temporary basis and if their fathers were neither U.S. citizens nor lawful permanent residents. The order has been blocked in lower courts, but the administration has asked the Supreme Court to take up the issue this fall.
Peter J. Spiro, a citizenship law expert at Temple University, told the NYT that Rubio’s earlier arguments remain significant and that “there’s no reason why the argument he put to work in 2016 couldn’t be put to work today against the Trump executive order.” Rubio, now secretary of state, oversees the implementation of immigration and passport laws.
Tommy Pigott, a State Department spokesman, dismissed the focus on Rubio’s past filing, saying he is “100 percent aligned with President Trump’s agenda,” and claiming that “it’s absurd the NYT is even wasting time digging around for decade-old made-up stories.”
Rubio has faced backlash for his contrasting stances on issues affecting immigrants in the past few months, especially Latinos. A group called Keep Them Honest erected signs in May accusing him of betraying Venezuelans after supporting the administration’s move to end Temporary Protected Status. Rubio, once a leading Republican advocate for TPS, has recently called the designation harmful to U.S. interests and linked it to security threats.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has declined to oppose a Texas gerrymandering effort that could maintain Republicans’ control of Congress. Still, he has insisted that a similar move by Democrats in California was an “illegal power grab.”
“Gavin Newsom’s latest attempt to disenfranchise millions of California voters was written in the dark of night by the DCCC—more than 2,700 miles away from Sacramento in Washington,” Johnson wrote in a Monday post on X. “This is a slap in the face to Californians who overwhelmingly support the California Citizens Redistricting Commission.”
“Gavin Newsom should spend less time trampling his state’s laws for a blatant power grab, and more time working to change the disastrous, far-left policies that are destroying California,” he continued.
Johnson accused Newsom of using redistricting to launch a presidential campaign.
“Democrats across the nation have played politics with redistricting for decades, and this is just the latest example,” he argued. “Republicans who are following state and federal laws will not be lectured by people who abused the system.”
“I have instructed the NRCC to use every measure and resource possible to fight the California Democrats’ illegal power grab,” he added. “I will continue to lead efforts to defend our House Republican incumbents and grow our majority so that we can continue to deliver on our commonsense, America First agenda.”
A spokesperson for Johnson told The Washington Post that the speaker had “no involvement” in Republicans’ “development of national redistricting strategy.”
https://www.rawstory.com/mike-johnson-california-redistricting
