Today’s edition of quick hits.

* In France: “French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday voiced the public’s ‘anger’ and ‘shame’ over rioting and looting during nationwide protests against rising living costs and poor conditions in schools. At least 1,800 people have been arrested.”

* On a related note: “French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu says he has instructed prefects to impose ‘very limited’ and ‘localized’ curfews in cities to prevent more rioting and looting, after this weekend’s violence targeted city halls, other public buildings and hundreds of businesses across the country.”

* In Ukraine: “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged supporters Saturday to speak out in defense of new U.S. sanctions against Russia, hours after President Donald Trump signed an executive order pausing a sweeping package of restrictions targeting the Russian economy.”

* On a related note: “Zelenskyy also said Saturday that Moscow had carried out a massive strike on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, targeting more than 15 sites across the country. ‘The sheer scale and unrelenting pace of Russia’s strikes, specifically against our energy sector, are unfortunately having severe consequences,’ he said.”

* The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo “has reached an eighth province in the country’s north, authorities said on Sunday as the spread of the world’s fastest-growing outbreak of the disease on record continues to outpace response efforts.”

* Weather forecasting matters: “The Trump administration’s cuts to weather satellites will set the country back nearly a decade, experts say. The loss of data used to observe, forecast and research extreme weather could prevent the country from making major advances in weather prediction in the coming years. This finding comes from a new report released Friday from the Government Accountability Office, and a letter sent to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Monday from Democratic lawmakers.”

* A committee of judicial investigators found there’s a “reasonable basis” to believe U.S. District Judge Ada Brown suffers from a mental condition: “A committee of judicial investigators said that a federal judge in Dallas abandoned her role and recommended she be temporarily stripped of her docket, according to internal court documents shared with Bloomberg Law. US District Judge Ada Brown of the Northern District of Texas is facing a judicial misconduct proceeding over several allegations, including the mishandling of her docket and treating other judges and court staff ‘in a demonstrably egregious and hostile manner,’ those documents state.”

* Dan Scavino discloses a windfall: “President Donald Trump’s longtime White House social media guru scored a seven-figure payday last year from the president’s social media company, according to a new federal financial disclosure.”

See you tomorrow.

The post Monday’s Mini-Report, 10.19.26 appeared first on MS NOW.

In a planning document released last month, the National Park Service conceded that the “triumphal arch” that President Donald Trump is desperate to build would cause “adverse effects” to nearby historic properties and monuments if construction advances as planned.

But, the administration added, the wildly unnecessary and legally dubious project is moving forward anyway.

A week later, the campaign to build one of the president’s many vanity projects took a rather farcical turn when Trump said, in apparent seriousness, that he planned to convert the 250-foot project into a “top grade military complex” to house drones. In case that wasn’t quite laughable enough, the Republican — who claimed to be acting in response to a “strong request” from unnamed Armed Forces personnel — added that the arch would also feature snipers on the roof, along with “large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage.”

Democratic Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia, whose congressional district includes the area in question, called the president’s latest argument “stupid” and “idiotic,” adding, “Trump clearly expects to lose a lawsuit and therefore wants to set up a pretext to argue that the arch is tied to national security.”

And therein lay the point. When Trump was worried about the litigation surrounding the White House ballroom vanity project, he shifted his rhetorical focus to pretend the project had a national security component. It wasn’t the case, but someone apparently explained to him that federal courts have traditionally given presidents wide latitude to pursue national security priorities, giving him the apparent idea of trying to pull the same trick twice.

At least, that was the plan. The Washington Post reported:

The Trump administration on Friday released final plans for President Donald Trump’s 250-foot-tall triumphal arch that do not include drones, snipers or other features of the “military complex” that Trump said he would add to the project.

The National Capital Planning Commission, a federal panel that reviews major construction projects, posted new renderings and accompanying documents provided by the Interior Department, which is overseeing the controversial project. None of the new documents mentions a military purpose for the arch, with officials instead offering information on planned tourist visits and other ceremonial functions.

So, is that it? If the final plan excludes the absurd “military complex” elements, is it safe to say that even the Trump administration has moved on from this nonsense?

Alas, no. The White House told the Post that Trump’s plans hadn’t changed, and information related to a national security component for the arch may yet be released at a later date.

Whether that’s true is unclear, although in the meantime, a group of U.S. military veterans is moving forward with legal efforts to prevent work on the project from getting started in earnest. Watch this space.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post Trump’s own team hedges on ‘military complex’ component of ‘triumphal arch’ appeared first on MS NOW.

In January 2017, with only a couple of days remaining in Barack Obama’s presidency, the Democrat held a White House press conference in which he explained his vision of occasional political intervention.

“There’s a difference,” the outgoing president explained, “between that normal functioning of politics and certain issues or certain moments where I think our core values may be at stake.”

In other words, Obama was sending a signal to the public: If people were looking to him to condemn everything Donald Trump did on a near-daily basis, they were likely to be disappointed. Once in a great while, however, the former president might feel the need to step up and defend fundamental American principles.

Obama has largely kept that pledge, steering clear of the day-to-day political arena, but over the weekend, he made the latest in a series of exceptions. MS NOW reported:

Former President Barack Obama issued a rare statement Sunday rebuking the Trump administration for targeting the president’s political enemies, namely for launching a federal investigation into Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

“It is a basic principle of American democracy that the government can’t selectively target individuals simply because of their political beliefs or what they say,” Obama said in a lengthy statement shared on social media. “But that’s exactly what the Trump Administration is doing to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.”

Obama’s online statement went on to characterize the Republican administration’s crusade against Omar as “appalling.” He added, “The full weight of the federal government is being brought down on a law-abiding elected official because she has dared to criticize the president. And it’s not the first time this has happened. Under President Trump, the Justice Department has repeatedly gone after those he considers his political enemies — from the Attorney General of New York, to the former head of the FBI, to members of the Federal Reserve.

“In those cases, the prosecutions either stalled or were dismissed for having no basis in law, and the same is likely to happen in this case. But not before Congresswoman Omar’s life has been turned upside down, her legal bills have piled up, and she’s been forced to spend time fighting unsubstantiated charges instead of serving the people of Minnesota.

“The fact that any president, or any administration, is willing to engage in such transparent efforts to intimidate someone should outrage all Americans, regardless of how they feel about Congresswoman Omar’s political views. Because if this becomes the new normal, there’s no reason to believe it will stop with her — or that future presidents, in either party, won’t do the same.”

Or put another way, Team Trump’s radical offensive against the congresswoman represents a clear example in which “our core values may be at stake.”

There’s overwhelming evidence to bolster the former president’s case.

Federal investigators, acting at Trump’s behest and ignoring the 60-day “blackout period” before the election, seized the laptop, cellphone and passport of a sitting member of Congress as part of an apparent campaign to strip Omar of her citizenship and ultimately deport her in response to evidence that does not appear to exist.

Throughout history, there have been countless clashes between presidents and members of Congress, but there is no modern precedent for an incumbent chief executive trying to misuse the levers of federal power in the hopes of kicking a sitting elected lawmaker out of the country.

The New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg added in her latest column, “This is more than just another persecution of one of Trump’s political enemies. Rather, his government is tacitly declaring the citizenship of all foreign-born people provisional, their Americanness something that can be revoked. It’s a frontal attack on the idea of constitutional equality. As Hannah Arendt wrote — a quote that the writer John Ganz reminded me of — ‘One is almost tempted to measure the degree of totalitarian infection by the extent to which the concerned governments use their sovereign right of denationalization.’”

Hours after Goldberg’s column ran, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin appeared on conservative media outlet Real America’s Voice and said the Republican administration is considering a possible “RICO case” against Omar, referring to the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which has traditionally been used against organized crime figures.

For what it’s worth, The Washington Post reported last week that in 2019, Team Trump also ordered an investigation into Omar’s immigration records, though the “investigation was eventually abandoned” for lack of evidence.

Seven years later, the sequel to this abuse is ongoing — and significantly worse.

The post Why Obama felt compelled to condemn Team Trump’s crusade against Ilhan Omar appeared first on MS NOW.

About a month ago, JD Vance appeared on a conservative podcast and assured the hosts and their listeners that the Trump administration is “serious” about reducing the budget deficit.

Like so much of what the vice president tells the public, his rhetoric was discredited by reality. The New York Times reported:

The United States budget deficit approached $2 trillion in the 2026 fiscal year, its highest level since the pandemic, as spending on the military, safety net programs and interest on the debt dwarfed the Trump administration’s cost cuts, Treasury Department figures showed on Friday.

The widening gap between what the government spends and what it collects in taxes and other revenue comes at a critical moment. Investors are nervous about America’s surging debt load, along with stubborn inflation, and have driven up borrowing costs.

Roughly three weeks after the end of the 2025-2026 fiscal year, the Treasury Department reported that the government spent $1.99 trillion more than it took in. That massive deficit reflected an increase of roughly $217 billion from a year earlier.

There’s no great mystery as to why this happened — among other things, Republicans approved massive tax breaks last year and began financing the war with Iran in late February — and there’s no reason to believe the nation’s fiscal health will improve anytime soon.

As the public considers the implications of this, here are a handful of things to keep in mind:

The economic circumstances suggest deficits this enormous shouldn’t happen. When the nation is facing a crisis, such as responding to a pandemic or an economic crash, it makes sense for the government to take on more debt. But there was no actual crisis during the last fiscal year, making the roughly $2 trillion annual deficit that much more difficult to defend.

The problem is getting worse faster than anyone expected. When the nation’s overall debt reached $40 trillion a couple of months ago, The Washington Post reported that we’re racking up debt faster than earlier independent analyses thanks almost entirely to the cost of GOP tax breaks, the war with Iran and the White House’s failed tariffs agenda. The article added, “The faster accumulation of debt comes at a perilous moment. An array of concerns, including inflation, the war in Iran and rising debt levels around the world, are driving investors to dump government bonds.”

Trump promised voters a very different outcome. As a candidate in 2016, the Republican told voters he had unique expertise in budgetary issues that would enable him to eliminate the deficit and start paying down the debt. Trump delivered the opposite results, adding nearly $7.8 trillion to the national debt in just one term, and most of that total was racked up before the Covid-19 crisis. As a candidate in 2024, he repeated his earlier promises, before again delivering the opposite results: Trump has added nearly $4 trillion in debt since returning to the White House early last year.

Eight years ago, Trump appeared on Sean Hannity’s radio show and reflected on the nation’s fiscal health. “We have $21 trillion in debt … a number that is unthinkable,” the president said in July 2018. “But that will go down very quickly.” Eight years later, the debt has nearly doubled.

Trump and congressional Republicans are to blame. For those concerned about the deficit and the debt, there’s no point in seeing this as a “both sides” issue. Republican policies made this happen.

Trump and congressional Republicans don’t seem to care. For decades, Republican officials have expressed hysterical concerns about “fiscal responsibility” every time there’s been a Democratic president. Indeed, younger readers might find this difficult to believe, but in the not-too-distant past, Republicans treated the budget deficit as one of the single-most important crises facing the country. The gap between what the government spends and what it takes in, GOP officials said, threatened to bankrupt the nation, crash the economy and ruin the lives of our children and grandchildren.

But as last year’s deficit nearly reached the $2 trillion mark, and the debt passes the $40 trillion mark, those same Republicans are silent on the issue.

Trump and congressional Republicans aren’t even pretending to have a plan to address this. It’s not as if the GOP has a bad plan to get the nation’s fiscal house in order; it’s that the party isn’t even trying to address the issue at all.

Earlier Republican warnings suddenly look ridiculous. Throughout Barack Obama’s presidency, GOP officials said that if the national debt eclipsed the size of the overall economy, it would spell immediate doom. For the first time since World War II, the national debt has now eclipsed the size of the overall economy as Republicans pretend that the economy has reached its “golden age.”

Remember 1998? Around this time 28 years ago, Bill Clinton proudly declared that the deficit was officially gone, and record surpluses soon followed. At the time, the United States was on track to do the unthinkable: to pay off its national debt. Republican governance soon followed, which set us on a path to $40 trillion in debt.

The historical pattern is worth remembering. Despite the conventional wisdom about which party has credibility on fiscal issues, budget deficits have grown by massive amounts under every Republican administration (Reagan, Bush 1, Bush 2 and Trump), while shrinking under every Democratic administration (Clinton, Obama and Biden).

The next Democratic president needs to be prepared. Time will tell who prevails in the 2028 presidential election, but if it’s a Democrat, they need to understand that they’re inheriting a severe budgetary mess, which will be met by a new round of GOP hysterics about the mess that Republicans themselves created.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post Massive budget deficit adds to growing list of Trump’s broken promises appeared first on MS NOW.

It was about a month ago when MS NOW reported on a Russian disinformation campaign targeting the U.S. midterm elections, featuring doctored selfie videos of Hollywood celebrities. The project — one of the first documented Kremlin-backed operations of this year’s election cycle — was specifically designed to undermine support for Democrats and to boost Republicans.

With only about two weeks remaining before Election Day, the efforts are apparently intensifying. Bloomberg News reported:

Russian disinformation operators are deploying an army of bots to inflate view counts of fictitious posts about celebrities and Democratic candidates ahead of the US midterm elections.

AI-fabricated video clips of well-known actors and musicians — including Robert De Niro, Julia Roberts and Cher — attacking Democrats began appearing on X in early September, some urging people to join a campaign dubbed #AllDemocratsAreCriminals. Scores of other clips have made false allegations of corruption and improprieties by Democratic candidates.

A related report in The New York Times noted that “an online influence operation backed by the Russian government has been stepping up its attempts to sow division in the United States.” The report added that the project has targeted Democrats “with negative content,” becoming “the latest effort by Russia to harm the party and support President Trump.”

It’s an important detail, not just because Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime appears desperate to help Republicans, but also because of the familiarity of the circumstances.

In 2016, Russia targeted U.S. elections. There used to be a bipartisan consensus on this obvious, uncontested fact.

In 2018, Russia targeted U.S. elections. Though Trump, for reasons that have never been explained, rejected his own country’s intelligence on the matter, the United States’ top national security officials made it categorically clear that Russia took deliberate steps to interfere in the midterm cycle.

In 2020, Russia targeted U.S. elections. In fact, intelligence officials told Congress about evidence that showed Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign for the express purpose of trying to secure a second term for Trump.

In 2022, Russia targeted U.S. elections. In fact, The Wall Street Journal reported a few years ago, “The Russian government and its proxies attempted to denigrate the Democratic Party and undermine voter confidence ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.”

In 2024, Russia again targeted U.S. elections, specifically in the hopes of electing Republicans who would oppose American military aid to Ukraine.

And in 2026, it’s happening once again.

In each instance, Moscow wasn’t simply trying to sow chaos. As this unsubtle pattern unfolded, Russian operations specifically tried to help one party (Republicans) and hurt the other (Democrats).

Two year ago, Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, appeared on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” and said that there’s “plenty of reason to be concerned” about Russia trying to interfere in another American election.

Sullivan added, “[T]his is not about politics. This is about national security. It is about a foreign country — a foreign adversary — seeking to manipulate the politics and democracy of the United States of America.”

Two years later, the current White House national security adviser, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has invested far less time and effort into denouncing the Kremlin’s operations, and congressional Republicans tend to have effectively nothing to say about Russian intervention.

For its latest report, the Times spoke to a senior researcher at Graphika, a threat analysis company, who said the Russian tactics “give us a glimpse of what their objectives are,” adding, “They’re not targeting Republican candidates in the same way.”

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post As Election Day nears, Russia steps up efforts to boost Republicans appeared first on MS NOW.

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.

* With just two weeks remaining in the election cycle and early voting underway in much of the country, the latest Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos survey offered Donald Trump another round of bad news: The president’s approval rating has reached a record low of 33% in this poll. But for Republicans, that’s not necessarily the worst part.

The same results included a generic congressional ballot and found Democrats with an eight-point advantage over the GOP, 52% to 44%. As recently as July, the same outlet showed Democrats with a three-point edge.

This dovetailed with the latest NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll, which showed Democrats with a 10-point lead over Republicans on the generic ballot, 55% to 45%.

* Artificial intelligence-generated campaign advertising has become an intensifying problem in this year’s election cycle, but it’s not altogether a bipartisan problem: A New York Times analysis found that more than 80% of the ads created by AI “were produced by Republican campaigns or Republican-aligned political action committees.”

* In Ohio’s closely watched statewide races, the latest Bowling Green State University poll found former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown leading incumbent Republican Sen. Jon Husted, 48% to 42%. A month ago, the same pollster showed Brown ahead by three points.

As for the state’s gubernatorial race, the same survey data found Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee, leading Vivek Ramaswamy by the same six-point margin, 50% to 44%.

* In Nevada, retiring Republican Rep. Mark Amodei continues to tear into his own party’s would-be successor. The outgoing congressman reiterated over the weekend that he would “absolutely not” vote for David Flippo in Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District, adding that, as far as Amodei is concerned, his seat is “at risk” for flipping from red to blue.

* In Massachusetts, Shawn Oliver, the Republicans’ lieutenant governor nominee, suspended his candidacy over the weekend. One day earlier, he was arrested for allegedly driving under the influence and striking five parked cars. According to local police, Oliver also allegedly flipped his own car during the incident.

* House Speaker Mike Johnson said during an interview over the weekend that independent news organizations are secretly conspiring with independent polling firms to release deceptive survey data as part of a plot to “discourage” GOP voters. The Louisiana Republican did not appear to be kidding.

* The president held a campaign rally in Georgia late last week, where he insisted that Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff was “never elected” despite his 2020 victory. Trump added that the results were fraudulent, an absurd claim for which he offered no evidence.

* Though the U.S. Senate race in Mississippi continues to look like a real reach for Democrats, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock is doing his best to rally support for local prosecutor Scott Colom in his race against incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.

* And in Maryland, where Republican Rep. Andy Harris threatened to have a student journalist arrested last week for recording him at a public Q&A, the far-right congressman was offered an opportunity late last week to apologize for his bizarre antics. Harris refused.

The post Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 10.19.26: Generic ballot polls offer Democrats more good news appeared first on MS NOW.

The question isn’t whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is failing, since the evidence of his incompetence is overwhelming. Rather, the question is whether the Pentagon chief’s failures have affected his standing.

The answer is readily available. A CNN poll released less than a month ago found Hegseth with a 34% approval rating, suggesting that the former Fox News host was as unpopular as Donald Trump — the president who chose him for the Cabinet. The same survey found Hegseth’s support among Republicans is lower than other prominent administration officials.

These results came on the heels of a related poll from Quinnipiac University, which found only 32% of Americans approved of how the defense secretary was handling his job, while 57% disapproved. To put that in context, a month before the war with Iran got underway, Hegseth’s net approval was 9 points underwater, but by mid-September, he was 25 points underwater.

With this in mind, and as Hegseth becomes something of a national joke, some Democrats appear to be taking advantage of the secretary’s faltering public support. The New York Times reported:

In the final weeks of a midterm congressional battle in which voters’ opposition to the war with Iran has become a major issue, Democrats are increasingly making Mr. Hegseth a main character in their campaign messaging.

It is an effort to turn one of President Trump’s most recognizable cabinet officials — and one who has been an unapologetic and visible cheerleader for a war that polls show is deeply unpopular — into a liability for Republicans’ fighting to keep their seats.

This is not to say every Democrat is incorporating Hegseth into their midterm messaging, but it’s happening enough to get noticed. Indeed, just last week, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries declared at a campaign rally, “One of the first things we’re going to do in the majority, we’re going to run Pete Hegseth out of town.”

The Times’ report added that Hegseth has been of particular interest to Democratic candidates who served in the military, running in districts with deep ties to the armed forces. From the article:

Leela Gray, a retired Army brigadier general challenging Representative Anna Paulina Luna in Florida, has called Mr. Hegseth an “unqualified frat boy.” Cait Conley, an Army combat veteran challenging Representative Mike Lawler in a competitive New York district, has called him a “disgrace.” And JoAnna Mendoza, a retired Marine running against Representative Juan Ciscomani in Arizona, has criticized his treatment of women in the military.

In South Carolina, Nancy Lacore, a retired three-star Navy admiral whom Mr. Hegseth removed as chief of the Navy Reserve last year without publicly explaining why, has made his leadership of the Pentagon an issue in her congressional campaign.

We’ll learn soon enough whether these campaign tactics are effective, but I’m struck by the historical oddity of the circumstances. Indeed, looking back at Hegseth’s recent predecessors — Lloyd Austin, Mark Esper, James Mattis, Ash Carter et al. — these secretaries, during their tenures, were not widely known to the American mainstream. There wouldn’t have been any point to including them in attack ads.

But in 2026, Hegseth’s public profile is much higher — and not in a good way.

The post As Hegseth’s public standing sinks, Democrats make him part of their midterm message appeared first on MS NOW.

As 2026 got underway, national polling didn’t just show that Donald Trump’s approval rating had sunk to embarrassing lows, it also showed a more specific problem: Roughly two-thirds of Americans were convinced the president simply had the wrong priorities.

Last month, we saw fresh evidence that this impression had actually intensified. A CNN poll found that 76% of Americans — a record high — agreed that Trump hadn’t paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems. This dovetailed with a Quinnipiac poll that found that 68% of Americans believed he was not focused enough on “addressing the problems most Americans are facing.”

With roughly two weeks remaining before the midterm elections, and with early voting underway across much of the United States, it’s tempting to think the Republican Party’s leader and most powerful voice would be eager to disprove these impressions. Instead, Trump is doing the opposite.

The Associated Press reported:

President Donald Trump on Sunday announced plans to close a historic public golf course in the nation’s capital for 15 months and redevelop it despite a court challenge to his long-sought renovation.

Trump posted on social media about his intent to shutter the East Potomac Golf Course, not far from the White House, starting Nov. 15 to make it “one of the Best and Most Spectacular Golf Courses anywhere in the World.”

If the underlying story sounds at all familiar, it’s probably because the ongoing legal fight has generated a lot of headlines. Indeed, as recently as last week, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes ordered the administration to stop its tree-cutting efforts at the golf course until Oct. 26. As MS NOW reported, that order came one day after a nearly four-hour hearing in which Reyes slammed the Trump administration for defying her previous order to give the court notice before taking down more than 10 trees.

On Sunday, the president nevertheless published a pair of items to his social media platform, explaining in some detail how excited he was to overhaul the golf course. Trump followed up with a third post early Monday morning, writing, “The United States Department of Interior wants to take a terrible and very unsafe golf course, and make it into a great, safe, and prestigious golf course. They have an absolute right to do so. It’s as simple as that! … Work is scheduled to begin IMMEDIATELY!”

In the same missive, the president described the judge in the case as “a crazed lunatic” who, in his estimation, might be “insane.”

The list of problems is not short. For one thing, the White House appears to be in the midst of a rather brazen move to circumvent a federal court case. For another, Trump’s preferred plan is itself misguided. As The Washington Post reported:

The rendering Trump released alongside the announcement depicts a dramatically remade Hains Point, with a single 18-hole championship course stretching nearly from shoreline to shoreline. It bears little resemblance to the existing course — or to the more modest historic-restoration plan that government attorneys have cited in court.

The design also appears to eliminate Ohio Drive, the roadway that loops around Hains Point, a century-old grove of cherry trees and a historic miniature golf course. If implemented as depicted, the plan would reshape space used daily not only by golfers, but also by thousands of cyclists, runners, walkers, anglers, birdwatchers and other visitors.

What the president wants, in other words, effectively eliminates all of the things many local residents actually like about the East Potomac Golf Course, transforming it instead into yet another vanity project tied to Trump’s ego.

But let’s also not lose sight of the broader circumstances. Amid rising inflation, a stagnant job market and an ongoing war in the Middle East that Trump started but doesn’t know how to end, the president wants Americans to know that he’s investing time and energy into a priority that apparently matters to him: overhauling a public golf course.

“Trump started an illegal war, prices are through the roof, Americans are hurting, and yet he lays awake thinking about how to screw our D.C. neighbors and take over their public parks,” Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland wrote via Bluesky over the weekend. “Out of touch doesn’t even begin to describe it.”

The post As midterms approach, Trump focuses on closing D.C. golf course for 15-month renovation appeared first on MS NOW.

Though the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act suffered from some important flaws, its central purpose was sound: The proposal was created to impose sanctions and other economic penalties against Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia and its trading partners. It cleared Capitol Hill with relative ease, and two days later, Donald Trump signed it into law, despite the Republican president’s record of weakness toward Moscow.

Late Friday — a time politicians frequently use to release information they hope will go unnoticed — the American president halted implementation of the law he had signed almost exactly one month earlier. The Associated Press reported:

President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order that puts on hold a sweeping new sanctions package targeting the Russian economy, telling Congress the pause was in the national interest.

Trump personally signed the legislation just last month and his move came just two days before a deadline set in the law itself for its implementation.

In a written statement, the Republican said he had decided to block implementation of the law because, according to the White House, it’s in “the national interests of the United States.”

Trump made no effort to explain why, exactly, it was in the United States’ interest to waive sanctions on Russia.

The condemnations from Democrats were immediate. “Trump just gave Putin the best birthday gift he’ll get this year,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said. “By giving the Russian economy life support, Trump’s deal with the devil keeps getting dirtier. There’s nothing America First about Trump caving to Putin and exempting Russia from U.S. sanctions.”

The New York Democrat added, “Americans need relief from skyrocketing prices. Instead, Trump is aiding and abetting a dictator who has helped Iran target U.S. troops in the Middle East.”

The backlash, however, wasn’t limited to the president’s critics. On the contrary, several prominent congressional Republicans, as well as former Vice President Mike Pence, slammed the move and publicly urged Trump to reconsider.

Predictably, he ignored the calls. In fact, on Sunday afternoon, the American president published a defense of his policy to his social media platform, insisting that he was “in the process of negotiating Peace,” and that he believed implementing U.S. law and penalizing Russia would likely drive Putin’s government “away from the bargaining table.”

The same statement slammed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and former U.S. President Joe Biden, but it included no comparable criticism of Putin, whom the missive didn’t refer to at all.

At face value, Trump’s written rationale is difficult to take seriously. Indeed, to an almost cartoonish degree, he’s been showering Putin with unearned gifts for quite a while — offering sanctions relief for Russian diesel fuel, echoing Kremlin talking points, pumping billions of dollars into the Russian economy, peddling false accusations against Ukraine, ignoring existing U.S. laws that ban Russian oil imports, looking the other way on Russia aiding Iran during the ongoing U.S. war, delivering diplomatic victories for Moscow, etc. — and getting nothing in return except more deadly attacks.

The benefits Trump is delivering to his Russian counterpart, in other words, have not advanced the peace process in any way.

But if Trump’s stated reason doesn’t make sense, what’s the actual reason for his humiliating weakness toward Putin? The Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait recently ran through some of the possible explanations, ranging from Putin running a successful flattery campaign to the Republicans’ general sympathies for authoritarian dictatorships to potential corruption.

Let’s also not forget that as recently as 2020, former Republican Sen. Dan Coats, who served as Trump’s director of national intelligence during his first term, conceded in an interview with Bob Woodward that he spent much of his tenure as DNI wondering whether Putin had something on Trump — a concern that intensified over time — that somehow compromised the American president.

“How else to explain the president’s behavior? Coats could see no other explanation,” Woodward wrote.

Looking ahead, a possible Democratic majority in Congress could launch a meaningful investigation into alleged Russian influence campaigns and Putin’s influence in Washington. But in the meantime, The Wall Street Journal reported that Putin is proposing some kind of summit between Russia, China and the United States, which would apparently decide Ukraine’s future.

Ukrainian officials, under Putin’s proposed plan, would not be welcome at the discussion about their own country’s future.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post Trump’s latest pro-Putin move prompts bipartisan backlash and awkward questions appeared first on MS NOW.