Trump 47

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas called on lawmakers to redraw the state’s congressional maps when they convene in a special session later this month, in a bid to gain Republican seats and help the party keep control of the House in 2026.

 

After voting for Trump's megabill, GOP Sen. Josh Hawley wants to prevent a key provision from going into effect​

HAZELWOOD, Mo. — Four days after President Donald Trump signed his “big, beautiful bill” into law, one of the Republicans who voted for it wasn’t interested in touting the measure’s high-profile tax, immigration or health care provisions.

Instead, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., held an event here Tuesday centered on a less-noticed part of the nearly 1,000-page bill: an expanded fund for victims of nuclear waste, a bipartisan issue he worked for years to get across the finish line.


And when asked about the steep Medicaid cuts in the bill, Hawley continued to criticize them. Hawley said his “goal” is to ensure the provider tax changes, which will limit state reimbursement for Medicaid, don't go into effect in Missouri in 2030 — even as he helped to pass a piece of legislation that will do just that.

It illustrates the challenges Republicans face as they turn their attention to selling to the public the massive bill they’ve been working on for months, ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

“I think that if Republicans don’t come out strong and say we’re going to protect rural hospitals, then, yeah, I think voters aren’t going to like that,” Hawley told NBC News in an interview at St. Cin Park. “The truth of the matter is, we shouldn’t be cutting rural hospitals. I’m completely opposed to cutting rural hospitals period. I haven’t changed my view on that one iota.”

Hawley suggested he would work with Democrats to cut prescription drug pricing, a priority Trump has said he wants Congress to focus on, to pay for the tax cuts made permanent by the new law.

Ultimately, Hawley — who is seen as a potential future presidential candidate — chose to stay in Trump’s good graces and vote for the bill despite his reservations, while managing to score victories for his constituents.

“Gotta take the wins that you can,” Hawley told NBC News when asked about voting for a bill he admitted he didn’t like.
 

If Trump was the True entrepreneur I think he is....This is that Point where you pull the same slick move that Elvis Manager did. When people turned on Elvis, his manager begin making and selling Anti Elvis gear. So regardless if you bought stuff in support of or against Elvis....Elvis was getting paid both ways. He should start a shadow company selling anti Trump stuff now.

MAGA influences encouraging supporters into burning MAGA gear and posting to Social Media as Trump faces major backlash from his own supporters over Epstein fallout.​

MAGA loyalists are calling for the burning of the iconic MAGA cap as anger over the Epstein Files grows, even among Donald Trump's own supporter base.

The Justice Department claimed on Monday that Jeffrey Epstein did not maintain a “client list" and said no more files related to the wealthy financier’s sex trafficking investigation would be made public. This was despite promises from Attorney General Pam Bondi that had raised the expectations of conservative influencers and conspiracy theorists.


The claims have been met with fury from the far-right who claim they have been strung along by the Trump administration. Bondi previously said in a Fox News interview earlier this year that such a document was “sitting on my desk” for review.

Controversial right-wing figure Nick Fuentes wrote on X: "We need to burn our MAGA hats, I think that's a solution. That's the only language Trump will understand. He needs to be abandoned at this point."


Trump came under fire for hosting Fuentes, who has been described as a white supremacist, as a dinner guest at his Mar-a-Lago resort in 2022 as he geared up for the 2024 election.

Fuentes added: "Now he's going to tell us there's no Esptein black book, no client list. The message needs to be this: 'We're done. We don't understand. The radical right is f***ing furious. We are done.'"

He continued: "I'm burning my MAGA hat. I think other people should too."

Another video showed a man who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 burning his MAGA hats over the fact that the Epstein files will not be released.


Burning MAGA hats




Burning MAGA hats


Bondi for weeks had suggested more material was going to be revealed — “It’s a new administration and everything is going to come out to the public,” she said at one point — after a first document dump she had hyped angered President Donald Trump’s base by failing to deliver revelations.


From left, American real estate developer Donald Trump and his girlfriend (and future wife), former model Melania Knauss, financier (and future convicted sex offender) Jeffrey Epstein, and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell pose together at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, Florida, February 12, 2000.


That episode, in which far-right influencers were invited to the White House in February and provided with binders marked “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” and “Declassified” that contained documents that had largely already been in the public domain, has spurred conservative internet personalities to sharply criticize Bondi.


After the first release fell flat, Bondi said officials were poring over a “truckload” of previously withheld evidence she said had been handed over by the FBI.

In a March TV interview, she claimed the Biden administration “sat on these documents, no one did anything with them,” adding: “Sadly these people don’t believe in transparency, but I think more unfortunately, I think a lot of them don’t believe in honesty.”

But after a months-long review of evidence in the government’s possession, the Justice Department determined that no “further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted,” the memo says.

The department noted that much of the material was placed under seal by a court to protect victims and “only a fraction” of it “would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial.”
 

Pete Hegseth Seems to Have Lost Control of One of His Top Defense Department Lieutenants​

Pentagon policy chief’s rogue decisions have irked US allies and the Trump administration​

Even for an administration with a knack for moving fast and breaking things, Elbridge Colby’s moves at the Pentagon have caused frustration and friction.


since joining the second Trump administration as the Pentagon’s top policy chief, [Elbridge] Colby has made a series of rapid-fire moves that have blindsided parts of the White House and frustrated several of America’s foreign allies, according to seven people familiar with the situation. All were granted anonymity to speak freely about Trump administration dynamics.
He prompted last week’s decision, first reported by POLITICO, to halt shipments of some air defense missiles to Ukraine, which caught many Trump allies and lawmakers off guard. This week, President Donald Trump said he would reverse the decision to pause the weapons but claimed he did not know who had approved it. Colby also surprised top officials at the State Department and the National Security Council in June when he decided to review America’s submarine pact with Australia and the U.K. “He is pissing off just about everyone I know inside the administration,” said one person familiar with the situation. “They all view him as the guy who’s going to make the U.S. do less in the world in general.”

“He has basically decided that he’s going to be the intellectual driving force behind a kind of neo-isolationism that believes that the United States should act more alone, that allies and friends are kind of encumbering,” said a person familiar with the Trump administration dynamics.


Colby seems to consider the Indo-Pacific to be an American lake. To that end, he has managed to piss off the British, the Japanese, the Australians, and the New Zealanders. A deal to supply Australia up to five American nuclear submarines is hanging fire pending a Colby-inspired review at the Pentagon. Reports indicate that the US is attempting to get a defense spending increase out of Australia as a price for agreeing to the deal. The review is scheduled to be completed next week.

The AUKUS review surprised some State Department officials who dealt directly with the pact. The department’s immediate guidance on how to respond to media questions about the topic appeared to underscore the lack of coordination, a State Department official said. The instructions told diplomats to say to reporters: “We are not aware of a review of the AUKUS agreement. The secretary of Defense has not requested a review of the agreement from the secretary of State.”“The way that one person from State put it to me is: ‘Who is this f****** guy?’” said a former U.S. official familiar with the policy discussions.
 
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