Nancy Pelosi Expertly Drags Chuck Schumer for His Cowardice

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tore into Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer over his backing of Republicans’ government spending bill last week.

In scathing remarks during a Tuesday news conference at a children’s hospital in San Francisco, Pelosi said she believed that Senate Democrats should have negotiated harder for Republicans to make concessions.

“I myself don’t give away anything for nothing,” Pelosi said. “I think that’s what happened the other day.”

Pelosi said that Democrats could have offered “a third way” forward, one that avoided a government shutdown while also allowing Democrats to abstain from co-signing the bill, staving off a complete government closure while negotiations continued.

“They may not have agreed to it, but at least the public would have seen they’re not agreeing to it—and that then they would have been shutting [the] government down,” Pelosi said.

The spending bill approved by a total of nine Senate Democrats and one House Democrat may serve as a sort of blank check for the Trump administration, which has already announced its intention to withhold funds allocated to programs it doesn’t support. While the bill will keep the lights on until September, it will also slash funding for health care and boost spending on mass deportations.

Ultimately, Pelosi said she supported Schumer’s leadership of the party—but not everyone feels that way. Widespread outrage has led to many calling for Schumer to be removed and replaced with someone willing to fight Trump’s agenda, such as New York Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.

But Senator Bernie Sanders said it wasn’t as simple as replacing Schumer. During an interview on CNN Tuesday night, the Vermont independent said that the issue demonstrated by Schumer’s surrender went beyond just him and was a structural problem within the Democratic Party.

“I know, everyone’s beating up on Chuck [Schumer], and I strongly disagree with him. Strongly. No one is in the caucus more critical of Schumer than I am. But it’s not Schumer, it’s the caucus, it’s not the caucus, it’s the Democratic Party,” Sanders said.

Sanders said that the Democratic Party had been taken over by billionaires and guided into the ground by consultants.

Schumer has continued to defend his choice, and his seat, saying that he is still the best person to lead the Senate and the best at winning Senate seats.

Trump is freezing $175 million in funding to the University of Pennsylvania in an effort to further vilify transgender athletes.

“Promises made, promises kept,” the White House said in an X post on Wednesday, sharing a Fox Business report on the news.

“President Trump has promised to protect female athletes. He has threatened to rip federal funding away from any university that defies his executive order banning biological males from infiltrating women’s sports, and he is doing it,” a Fox Business contributor said. “We are the first to report that President Trump has paused $175 million in federal funding from the University of Pennsylvania over its controversial policies.”

A senior Trump official told Fox Business that “this is just a taste of what could be coming down the pipe for Penn.”

Trump’s Education Department opened up a Title IX investigation into Penn earlier this month because Penn had a trans woman, Lia Thomas, on its swim team in 2021. The National Collegiate Athletic Association announced its trans ban shortly afterward. Three of Thomas’s former teammates also filed a separate lawsuit citing Title IX violations.

The Trump administration also recently cut $400 million in funding from Columbia University over allegations of antisemitism.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. thinks that the bird flu should be allowed to spread unchecked to identify birds that could be immune.

Kennedy said in a recent Fox News interview that farmers “should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify the birds, and preserve the birds that are immune to it,” an idea that experts say would be dangerous and hurt the poultry industry.

“That’s a really terrible idea, for any one of a number of reasons,” Dr. Gail Hansen, a former state veterinarian for Kansas, told The New York Times.

Every new infection of the H5N1 virus is a chance that it will mutate and become more powerful and spread further, although it still hasn’t been proven to spread between people. But if it were allowed to spread through millions of birds, “that’s literally five million chances for that virus to replicate or to mutate,” Hansen said.

While Kennedy’s department doesn’t have any regulatory powers over farms, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins agrees.

“There are some farmers that are out there that are willing to really try this on a pilot as we build the safe perimeter around them to see if there is a way forward with immunity,” Rollins said on Fox News in February.

If this plan actually goes into effect, the virus would spread among a larger number of birds, putting more people and other animals at risk of infection. Right now, if a poultry farm has a positive test for the virus, it is reimbursed for culling its flocks to prevent its spread.

If the virus were allowed to spread on purpose, bird flu “infections would cause very painful deaths in nearly 100 percent of the chickens and turkeys,” Dr. David Swayne, a poultry veterinarian and former USDA employee, told the Times, adding that it would be “inhumane, resulting in an unacceptable animal welfare crisis.”

Kennedy isn’t even operating on the right information: He claimed in one interview that the virus didn’t seem to affect wild birds, but there are many documented cases of wild birds dying from H5N1. Kennedy also theorizes that some chickens and turkeys may be immune, but scientists say that poultry lacks the genes needed to resist the virus.

It seems that Kennedy’s pseudoscience is spreading unchecked as well. He’s already been putting his anti-vaccine beliefs into practice at HHS by curtailing multiple vaccine research projects and directing resources toward researching the debunked conspiracy that vaccines cause autism. His latest idea on the bird flu is dangerous and could end up having disastrous consequences for public health and U.S. agriculture.

Donald Trump is planning to nominate troves of loyalist judges to the federal judiciary, and their confirmations will likely go off without a hitch, according to Politico.

Trump is likely to unveil his first round of judicial nominations in the coming weeks, four people familiar with the conversations told Politico Tuesday. During Trump’s first administration, a whopping 234 judges were confirmed, some of whom proved to be fierce loyalists willing to upend Trump’s legal battles—such as Judge Aileen Cannon, who has since been floated for a potential seat on the Supreme Court.

This time, Trump is looking for more judges willing to demonstrate their fealty, according to Mike Davis, who served as the former chief counsel to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley.

“They’re going to be looking for even more bold and fearless judges,” said Davis, who assisted Trump’s first administration in taking fights to the Supreme Court. “Judges who have been battle-tested.”

Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that he expected this round of nominees to be more “ideologically extreme.”

“They will be MAGAs, basically. Given the trend of the end of the last Trump term, we’re heading over a cliff in terms of fringe right wing views. They will have a litmus test on steroids,” Blumenthal warned.

Trump’s plan to reshape the judiciary comes as federal judges have become one of the last stoppages for the administration’s onslaught of unlawful legislation and executive actions.

Trump saw a double whammy of losses on Tuesday, when a federal judge blocked the implementation of his policy that would effectively bar transgender people from serving in the U.S. military. Another federal judge ordered a pause on cuts to the United States Agency for International Development, arguing that Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency’s shuttering of the agency was likely unconstitutional because it had sidestepped congressional authority.

Separately, two federal judges have ruled that DOGE’s blanket dismissal of probationary federal employees was also illegal, setting the Trump administration scurrying to reinstate roughly 24,000 wrongfully terminated employees.

Over the weekend, Judge James Boasberg ordered a pause on Trump’s massive deportations under the Alien Enemies Act—but the administration continued undeterred, sending planefuls of people who the government claimed were gang members out of the country. When Boasberg accused Trump of defying a court order, the president called for him to be impeached. In a rare statement, Chief Justice John Roberts scolded Trump, saying that threatening to impeach judges wasn’t an “appropriate” response to disagreeing with a ruling.

But Trump has already begun to set the stage for outright ignoring the orders of any judges who rule against him, claiming that they must be biased. During an interview on Fox News Tuesday, Trump claimed he didn’t defy anything.

“I never did that, however we have bad judges. We have very bad judges. And these are judges that shouldn’t be allowed,” Trump said. The president claimed that Boasberg was a “lunatic” in any case that involved him.

Trump clearly hopes to flush out the judges who are willing to stand up to his legally dubious activity, while supplying more and more MAGAs to rubber-stamp his every whim.

A federal judge on Tuesday issued a temporary restraining order against Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency, stopping it from eliminating three nonprofit grant agreements made under the Biden administration and seizing back the funding.

EPA head Lee Zeldin tried to eliminate the programs as part of his attack on Biden’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which Congress established in the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. Zeldin posited that the program, like every other one the Trump administration doesn’t like, was a source of waste and fraud. But Judge Tanya Chutkan viewed these claims as “vague and unsubstantiated assertions,” according to Reuters.

The ruling affects $13.97 million of grant funding awarded to Climate United, Coalition for Green Capital, and Power Forward Communities. Chutkan’s temporary restraining order prevents Citibank from transferring the grant money out of their accounts, despite the EPA order.

While this certainly isn’t over, Chutkan’s ruling offers the environmental nonprofits temporary respite.

Donald Trump is planning to ramp up his ill-advised tariffs and place them on “trillions” of dollars in imports.

The Washington Post reports that most U.S. imports will get hit with the new fees on April 2, on a day Trump is calling “Liberation Day.” The news is causing shock waves among congressional Republicans and economists. Even White House officials are concerned, with discussions taking place involving Vice President JD Vance, aide Peter Navarro, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

“We don’t know exactly what they’re going to do, but from what they’re saying, it sounds functionally like new tariffs on all U.S. imports,” Joseph Politano, an economic policy analyst, told the Post.

The past few weeks of tariffs have upended the U.S. economy, hurting businesses and sending the stock market plunging. This new round of tariffs “seriously could make all of that look like a tempest in a teapot,” Politano said.

“It’s a liberation day for our country because we’re going to be getting back a lot of the wealth that we so foolishly gave up to other countries, including friend and foe,” Trump said on Monday.

Trump has pressed ahead with his tariffs despite criticism from the right, including his normal cheering section at Fox News. The network’s Maria Bartiromo snapped at Bessent in an interview on Tuesday, pointing out how businesses are upset with Trump’s economic decisions. Even Republican Senator Rand Paul has been trying to rally the rest of his party to come out against the tariffs. But none of that seems to be convincing the president, which means the worst is still yet to come for America’s economy.

Nebraska Representative Mike Flood was excoriated by the crowd at his own town hall on Tuesday for basically every position he took. When he told his constituents he supported Elon Musk, he was booed mercilessly.

“What makes Elon Musk a better person to audit our government for waste, fraud, and abuse than the inspectors general that Donald Trump fired?” one constituent asked Flood. “Elon Musk gets $40 billion a year in funding from the federal government. What makes you think he has no conflict of interest? … Do you think he would cut that before he would cut our Medicare, or our Social Security, or our jobs?”

“I support Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency,” Flood replied with a shrug before being overpowered by the voices of his enraged constituents. 

Flood also took serious heat for the GOP’s 180 on Ukraine, cozying up to Russia in a historic role reversal. 

“I do wanna say: shame,” one woman said to Flood. “Shame for your comment … that you said ‘President Zelenskiy’s approach today was disrespectful to President Trump and undermines the goal of bringing peace.’ … Shame on that.” The crowd roared in support. 

“I do believe that that White House meeting was a disaster, and I believe that President Zelenskiy should have signed that agreement,” Flood replied, to immediate boos.

The deep-red state crowd also began chanting, “Tax the rich.”

This is yet another installment in the string of tense, confrontational town halls that have occurred as Republicans have to answer for the actions of Trump and DOGE—actions that are directly hurting the people who put them in office.    

Trying to usurp Canada is becoming less and less of a joke to Donald Trump.

In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, the president claimed that the reason he’s so tough on America’s northern neighbor is because it’s “meant to be our fifty-first state.”

“You’re tougher with Canada than you are with our biggest adversaries. Why?” asked Laura Ingraham.

“Only because it’s meant to be our fifty-first state,” Trump said, when Ingraham attempted to interject. “No, no but listen to this for a second.”

“We need their territory. They have territorial advantage. We’re not going to let them get close to China, right?” pressed the Fox host.

“Look, I deal with every country—directly or indirectly. One of the nastiest countries to deal with is Canada,” Trump said about the longtime U.S. ally.

Trump then went on to take another jab at Canada’s former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, even though Trudeau was succeeded by Mark Carney last week.

“Now, this was Trudeau—good old Justin. I call him ‘Governor Trudeau.’ His people were nasty, and they weren’t telling the truth. They never tell the truth,” Trump said. “You know, they’d say, ‘We don’t charge,’ and they do, they charge tremendous.”

Trump’s tariff plans aren’t going over well with the American public. Instead, they have sparked fears that the country—which just last year had a strong economy—could be en route for a recession. Trump’s foreign policy, which involves a global trade war, has instigated unrest with some of America’s longest allies.

Trump has even admitted that his tariffs will destabilize the economy. Last week, he floated that the “little disruption” caused by his aggressive trade policies could go on for quite a bit longer, suggesting that Americans should model their economic projections on a 100-year model—like China—rather than assess his performance on a quarterly basis.

The market continued to tumble last week as Trump’s 25 percent levy on all steel and aluminum imports took effect, as well as our global allies’ retaliatory efforts.

In his exit message, Trudeau pleaded with the American public to see past Trump’s divisive agenda, which he argued was dropping America’s Western allies in favor of a rocky relationship with Russia.

“What do the American people think?” Trudeau said earlier this month. “How do Americans feel about jettisoning one’s friends and allies in favor of a country that has never wished Americans well, and continues to act in ways that harm the global economy and, specifically, the American economy and American values and principles?”

Feeling more paranoid because of the Donald Trump administration? Don’t worry, Elon Musk is feeling it too.

The billionaire bureaucrat stopped by Fox News’s Hannity Tuesday on a victory lap from the successful return of two astronauts in a SpaceX capsule. But Musk got sidetracked whining about his Tesla dealerships being vandalized and alleging that he was the victim of a larger conspiracy—one led by people who wish to see him dead.

“It’s really come as quite a shock to me that there is this level of, really, hatred and violence from the Left,” Musk told Sean Hannity. “I always thought that the left, that Democrats were supposed to be the party of empathy, the party of caring, and yet they’re burning down cars, they’re firebombing dealerships, they’re firing bullets into dealerships, they’re just, you know, smashing up Teslas.

“Tesla is a peaceful company. We’ve never done anything harmful,” Musk said. “I’ve never done anything harmful. I’ve only done productive things.”

Musk claimed that the perpetrators must have a “mental illness thing going on here, because this doesn’t make any sense,” before suddenly claiming that all the acts were connected.

“I think there are larger forces at work as well. Because, I mean, who’s funding and who’s coordinating it? Because this is crazy. I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said.

Hannity surmised that Musk was being wrongly targeted and that his only crime was being aligned with Trump and identifying troves of supposed government waste, fraud, and abuse.

“It turns out when you take away people’s, you know, the money that they’re receiving fraudulently, they get very upset,” Musk said. “And they basically wanna kill me because I’m stopping their fraud and they wanna hurt Tesla, because we’re stopping the terrible waste and corruption in the government. And, well, I guess they’re bad people. Bad people do bad things.”

Unfortunately for Musk, Tesla is not just a “peaceful” company but the customer-facing branch of his corporate takeover of the U.S. government, which has seen essential lifesaving programs slashed and thousands of people out of work. And customer feedback can be harsh. Trump has even called it domestic terrorism.

Musk has managed to insulate himself from any criticism thus far by clinging to his so-called “productivity.” But in many cases, Musk’s productivity isn’t even real. The Department of Government Efficiency’s website claims $115 billion in savings from slashed government spending—but a closer look revealed that only $35.1 billion was actually listed in the itemized cuts, with only $12.6 billion of that being verifiable. Of the scores of federal workers his organization saw terminated, many are currently being reinstated because the way he fired them was illegal.

What Musk also fails to see is that it doesn’t matter how productive you are, if you’re not actually working toward anything good. In any case, Musk’s limp concerns for his personal safety as the grand vizier in the face of an angry mob pales in comparison to those who are actually vulnerable to state violence.