Republican Congressman Has Full-Blown Meltdown Over Halal Restaurant

Republican Representative Mike Collins is freaking out over a halal restaurant coming to the cafeteria in the House’s Rayburn building.

The skittish conservative complained on X Friday morning about CHA Street Food, a Pakistani restaurant, replacing Steak n Shake this summer, likening it to a religious war from thousands of years ago.

If Collins knew anything about cuisines, or even cultures, outside of America, he’d know that Pakistan is thousands of miles away from Jerusalem. His own X post includes a screenshot of an email pointing out that CHA Street Food is actually based out of northern Virginia. Not only that, his beloved Steak n Shake is owned by an Iranian American, Sardar Biglari.

If Collins thinks a new halal restaurant in a House cafeteria is like “the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem,” perhaps he should get to know his colleagues. There are currently four Muslims serving in the House: Representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, André Carson of Indiana, and newly elected Lateefah Simon of California. There’s even a congresswoman in his own Republican Party of partial Pakistani descent, Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma.

But Collins is not known for his nuance or tolerance, cheering on racist protesters in Mississippi last year and blaming diversity, equity, and inclusion procedures for train derailments. Maybe the Georgia congressman ought to try out CHA Street Food and its menu of Pakistani street food, which includes burgers and fries. He might actually have his horizons broadened.

Alabama’s “dumbest” senator appears to be running an especially stupid con at the moment.

In a gambit for Alabama’s governorship, Senator Tommy Tuberville is in the midst of trying to prove he actually lives there.

In order to qualify for the race, Tuberville needs to prove state residency going back for at least seven years. That’s a far cry from the minimum public office standards he had to meet to run for Alabama’s Senate seat: The state required Tuberville to prove he lived there for just one day before he could throw his hat into the 2020 election.

You’d think that proving his residence would be remarkably easy—if he actually lived there. The former Auburn football coach has failed to provide evidence for his long-term residency, for instance refusing to make public his income tax returns, according to Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist Kyle Whitmire. Instead, Tuberville has attempted to lean on his wife’s homestead exemption in Auburn, claiming that the residency loophole should be enough to prove he’s resided in the state since 2018.

Except for one small hiccup: Tuberville voted in Florida that year.

The oversight calls into question two major issues—if Tuberville was genuinely living in Alabama, then did he commit fraud by voting in the Sunshine State? Or, alternatively, has the Trump ally been fudging the numbers on his state residency in order to shoehorn his way to the top of Alabama’s executive leadership?

A number of things occurred in 2017 that cast doubt on Tuberville’s residency. In February of that year, Tuberville’s wife registered to vote in Walton County, Florida, where the couple owns a $4.8 million beach house. In July, while recording an advert for ESPN, Tuberville said he had “moved to Santa Rosa Beach” six months earlier, calling it a “great place to live.”

In October 2018, Tuberville’s wife and his son, Tucker, began claiming a homestead exemption on a three-bedroom home in Auburn that Tucker had purchased. The senator, however, did not, reported Whitmire. The following month, Tuberville and his wife both voted in Walton County, Florida.

“If Suzanne Tuberville’s Auburn homestead exemption is proof of where Tuberville lives, then at this point, he’s voting in the wrong state,” reported Whitmire. “She was, too.”

In March 2019, Tuberville registered to vote in Alabama using the address of the Auburn house. In an interview with talk radio host Dale Jackson two months later, Tuberville did not dispute that he had voted in Florida while claiming residency in Alabama.

At a Shoals Republican Club meeting in August, Tuberville referred to himself as “a carpetbagger of this country,” specifying that he “has property’ but is not an “every-day resident of Alabama.”

Years later, after Tuberville lied about what Alabama property he owned during an Alabama Republican Party forum, a 2023 investigation by The Washington Post found that he had “sold all Alabama property in his name, that Susanne Tuberville had continued to work as a real estate agent licensed in Florida but not Alabama, and that campaign records showed him spending extensive time on the Florida coast,” reported Whitmire.

Tuberville himself seems unconvinced as to whether his messy and contradictory residency history will let him squeeze into the gubernatorial race. In an interview with the Alabama Daily News published Tuesday, the former football coach attempted to move the goalposts, claiming that Alabama law does not require him to live seven consecutive years in the Heart of Dixie.

“You can go back to, as long as you’ve had a seven year … I was at Auburn 10 years and so I lived there for 10 years in a row,” Tuberville told the paper. “So it’s not your last seven years.”

Article V Section 117 of the Alabama Constitution requires that the governor and lieutenant governor of the state each be “resident citizens of this state at least seven years next before the date of their election.”

Republican strategist Scott Jennings had to be reminded how the U.S. Constitution works, during an explosive CNN roundtable debate Thursday night.

Jennings, a senior political commentator at the network, argued that a federal judge had overstepped their authority Thursday by striking down Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan nationals the government claims are members of the Tren de Aragua gang.

U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez ruled that TdA’s presence did not constitute an “invasion,” as the president had previously claimed. The first-term Trump appointee wrote that the administration had inappropriately invoked the law, which applies only when the nation is facing an armed, organized attack by an invading country.

CNN host Abby Phillip was forced to step in to give Jennings a humiliating civics lesson.

“Can I just ask a simple question, who gets to decide whether the United States is at war?” Phillip asked.

“The president, in my opinion—” Jennings replied.

“No, no, no, actually—” Phillip continued, but Jennings wouldn’t hear the answer.

“If we’re being invaded, I want the commander in chief—”

“Scott, Scott no. It’s actually the Congress,” Phillip said, calmly.

“You want to call Congress and see if we’re being invaded? We’ll be taken over before they ever get to the committee room!” Jennings said.

Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution specifically grants Congress the sole power to “declare War.” Jennings should be well aware of this fact, but as Josh A. Cohen pointed out in a post on X, “His Bush admin background breaking through like Venom.” (Jennings had previously worked for George W. Bush’s successful 2004 reelection campaign before joining the White House.)

While Jennings may not have sworn any oath to uphold the Constitution, Trump certainly has—and yet the president has continued to attack the checks and balances it established. Trump has repeatedly undermined Congress’s power of purse by directing the withholding of federal funds, and has also begun waging war on the Fourteenth Amendment which established birthright citizenship.

At least 11 federal judges and their families have been threatened and harassed since they ruled against President Trump on issues of deportations, federal funding, and his war on “wokeness.” 

The judges, under anonymity, told Reuters that they had received multiple intimidating calls and emails to their homes and offices. Some have been subject to the disturbing “pizza box” method, in which antagonists will anonymously send a pizza to the home of a judge or their relatives just to show that they know where they live. 

This is only compounded by the countless attacks and doxxing attempts that people like Laura Loomer and Elon Musk have made on X. When U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled against Trump’s illegal deportation of 137 men under the Alien Enemies Act in March, Loomer and Musk shared photos of his daughter, while their army of keyboard warriors called for the execution or arrest of Boasberg and the rest of his family. Loomer did the same to Judge John McConnell after he blocked Trump from freezing education grants, posting a picture of his daughter who had worked for the Education Department. Loomer’s post conveniently omitted that McConnell’s daughter left the department before Trump was even inaugurated.

“The reason why Judge McConnell, a Democrat donor and activist wants Trump to restore funding is because his daughter, Catherine McConnell, is currently employed by the same Department of Education that President Trump and @elonmusk want to audit and DEFUND,” Loomer wrote on X. “She was appointed by Joe Biden and now her Dad is abusing his power to protect her paycheck.”   

Reuters identified more than 600 similar posts on social media and right-leaning message boards since February, targeting family members of judges who ruled against the Trump administration. The commentators attacked everything from their physical appearance to their patriotism. Amplified on X and other platforms by some of Trump’s most prominent allies, including Musk, those posts have been viewed more than 200 million times. At least 70 posts explicitly called for judges’ family members to face violence, retaliation or arrest.

This makes the chilling effect impossible to ignore, as judges could potentially begin to rule more and more in favor of Trump out of fear of MAGA retribution.

“The attacks are not random. They seem designed to intimidate those of us who serve in this critical capacity,” said U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson at a conference on Thursday. “The threats and harassment are attacks on our democracy.”

Donald Trump has just sent Republicans in Congress a budget proposal that cuts nearly everything, and if they don’t like it, he says he’ll withhold cash that they approve, setting up a constitutional crisis.

The budget proposal, released Friday, would slash nearly every federal program by $163 billion, except for defense spending, which would remain flat. Many Republicans are already unhappy with it, but the White House may not heed their concerns. One official in the Office of Management and Budget told Politico that the administration wouldn’t rule out impoundment, or overriding Congress’s decision by withholding funding it has already approved.

“We’re working with Congress to see what they will pass, and I believe that they have an interest in passing cuts,” said the official.

Such a move would violate the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which Trump and his allies have called unconstitutional. The law prevents the president from withholding money allocated by Congress or using it for different purposes. Trump attempting to impound funds in this way would be a direct challenge to the Constitution’s separation of powers, and could result in a legal fight that ends up in front of the Supreme Court.

Trump hinted at bringing back “presidential impoundment authority” while campaigning for president, making his attempt to seize appropriated funds a real possibility, despite the Constitution clearly stating that the authority over government spending lies with Congress. The head of OMB, Project 2025 author Russell Vought, also called the Impoundment Act unconstitutional in his confirmation hearing.

So, will the president try to impound funds, and will Republicans stand up for their own constitutional authority if he does? The GOP has not shown much, if any resolve, in standing up to Trump, and Democrats have little they can do as the minority in the House and Senate. It seems that if Trump tries to seize funds, the courts may be the only check on his power.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller may be up next for a new position in Donald Trump’s administration: Axios reported Friday that he’s a top candidate to replace Mike Waltz, Trump’s departing national security adviser.

Miller, the ghoulish white nationalist behind the president’s anti-immigrant crusade, is already serving as the president’s adviser on Homeland Security; reportedly he runs the Homeland Security Council “like clockwork.”

Miller has already been working with the National Security Council, running what The Atlantic reported was the “most active and well-staffed” section on homeland security, which at times operated entirely independently from the leadership office previously run by Waltz. It worked so well that Alex Wong, Waltz’s deputy, expressed concerns about the perceived split between the two factions.

It’s unlikely that Miller’s work as a homeland security adviser would stop him from taking on an additional role: Right now, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has four. The secretary is also serving as the head of what remains of the United States Agency for International Development and the acting archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration—and in doing so, has found himself leading both an agency that has violated the Federal Records Act and the one that is meant to ensure that doesn’t happen.

Two White House sources told Axios that Miller’s work with Rubio made him well suited for the role. Another said that the fiery advocate had already expressed his interest in taking on the job, and another said that “if Stephen wants the job, it’s hard to see why Trump wouldn’t say yes.”

In recent weeks, Miller has been a fierce advocate for the Trump administration’s immigration policies—sometimes too fierce—and has set off on unhinged rants during multiple television interviews and addresses.

Conscience, a Freedom Flotilla aid ship aiming to break Israel’s two-month siege on Gaza, was struck by drones off the coast of Malta in the early hours of Friday. There were no casualties as a nearby tugboat helped put out the fire.

Footage shows smoke, flames, and massive, gaping holes in the ship’s hull. “Conscience has been bombed two times [just] a few minutes ago in 14 miles to the Maltese port,” one of the flotilla workers said through coughs as smoke filled his lungs.

“Armed drones attacked the front of an unarmed civilian vessel twice, causing a fire and a substantial breach in the hull,” the Freedom Flotilla Coalition said in a statement. And while the coalition stopped short of directly blaming Israel, they demanded that “Israeli ambassadors be summoned and answer to violations of international law, including the ongoing blockade and the bombing of our civilian vessel in international waters.”

“Our Flotilla is challenging not only that blockade that has kept all of the food and water and everything out of Gaza now for almost a month and a half, on the genocide that the U.S. is complicit [in]. The Israeli genocide of at least 55–60,000 Palestinians in Gaza,” said Ann Wright, a former U.S. Army colonel and diplomat who now works for the Freedom Flotilla. “Right here, we are in Malta dealing with a brutal attack on an innocent ship, a ship that was anchored or outside of territorial waters, waiting for us, the activists to come on board so that we could then head toward Gaza to say to the world, ‘Here are some citizens who are willing to take action where our government has failed to act.’ … While we cannot yet identify the source of the drones, there is no doubt in my mind that there’s a history of violence that has been directed toward the flotillas from the state of Israel.”

In 2010, Israel raided six Freedom Flotilla ships in the Mediterranean Sea, killing 10 people and wounding dozens.

Donald Trump, who saw an increase in support from rural voters in the 2024 election, is now seeing huge defections, according to a new PBS/NPR/Marist poll.

The poll taken last week found that only 40 percent of rural voters approve of Trump’s job performance, down from 59 percent in February, according to Newsweek. Forty-five percent of respondents said they disapproved of Trump’s performance in April, which is up from 37 percent who said they disapproved in February.

In the weeks between polls, Trump has unveiled a slate of policy directives that threaten the livelihoods of rural voters, including his sweeping “reciprocal tariff” policy that has undermined essential trade with America’s top trading partners.

Last month, the European Commission agreed to levy tariffs of up to 25 percent on cigarettes from Florida, beef from Kansas and Nebraska, chicken from Louisiana, car parts from Michigan, and most importantly, soybeans—of which the European Union bought $2.43 billion’s worth in 2024. Trump responded with his own insipid optimism, counseling everyone to “BE COOL!”

Farmers were also hurt by Trump’s dismantling of USAID, which lost them $2 billion, and the administration’s upending of programs for farms to provide produce for schools and food banks lost them at least another $1 billion.

Farmers aren’t the only rural residents hurt by Trump—workers and small businesses have also been impacted by shrinking consumer confidence and fears about an impending economic recession caused by roiling markets. Some believe it’s already begun.

But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. The president’s massive cuts to disaster preparedness programs threaten vulnerable rural regions that could be hit by the oncoming hurricane season. After Trump floated eliminating FEMA altogether, the agency stopped paying for temporary housing for more than 1,200 families displaced by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina.

As recently as Friday, Trump’s directive to slash federal funding at NPR and PBS would also disproportionately impact rural areas, which receive the most of the sliver of money granted by the government for educational and cultural programming.

The only group of voters, between those in urban, suburban, and rural areas who reported an increase in support for the president, were small-town voters, with 53 percent approving of his job performance, in an increase from 46 percent in February.

In the 2024 presidential election, a whopping 62 percent of rural voters supported Trump, while only 36 percent backed Kamala Harris, according to AP VoteCast. This demonstrated a 4 percent increase in rural support for Trump compared to 2020.

CBS’s flagship news magazine show 60 Minutes is upping the ante in its fight against Donald Trump. The show’s upcoming Sunday segment will focus on how the Trump administration has targeted law firms in an apparent quest to punish those who dared to challenge him when he was out of office, according to an online listing for the episode.

“On the campaign trail, President Trump vowed to wield the power of the presidency to go after his perceived enemies,” the listing reads. “Now in the White House, Trump is using executive orders to target some of the biggest law firms in the country that he accuses of ‘weaponizing’ the justice system against him.”

The show has had a tumultuous year covering the MAGA leader, who has continued to dedicate significant attention to a sit-down interview that aired on 60 Minutes prior to Election Day with former Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump has repeatedly argued that a version of Harris’s answer regarding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the broadcast had essentially “defrauded” the American public, since two of the network’s shows—60 Minutes and Face the Nation—cut and aired different portions of her 21-second answer on different days.

Trump sued CBS for $20 billion after the interview, claiming that the different clips amounted to “election interference” and that Harris should drop out of the presidential race over the GOP-baked scandal.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg: Trump and his allies have also insisted that CBS should lose its broadcasting license for what they view as selectively editing Harris’s answer. And on Wednesday, the president attempted to rope The New York Times into the affair, protesting online that the newspaper’s decision to quote individuals who described the case as “baseless” is tantamount to “tortious interference.”

An independent review by the Federal Communications Commission showed that the two answers were in fact cut from the same longer response. Editing answers for time is considered general practice in television news and regularly happens.

The mounting pressure from the lawsuit forced out the show’s chief producer, Bill Owens, last week, shocking employees who described the 24-year show runner’s exit as akin to pulling a “pin from his last grenade.” Owens had refused to apologize or admit wrongdoing in handling Harris’s interview. CBS’s parent company, Paramount, is reportedly moving to settle the lawsuit.

“It’s clear now, in a quest to sell the company, Shari Redstone and others will bow to presidential pressure,” one unidentified 60 Minutes employee told CNN, referring to the non-executive chairwoman of CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global. “60 Minutes is one of the crown jewels of American broadcast journalism, and they have no problem crushing it in their race to make a deal and make themselves richer.”

But regardless of Trump or executive perspectives, the media industry has continued to recognize the value of 60 Minutes’ programming. On Thursday, the show’s controversial Harris segment was nominated for an Emmy.

Senator John Fetterman isn’t in good shape—and could be a danger to himself and those around him.

New York magazine reports that Fetterman, who suffered a stroke in 2022 one month before being elected to the Senate, is unrecognizable to his past and present staff, prone to “conspiratorial thinking” and “megalomania.” His former chief of staff, Adam Jentleson, wrote his concerns in a May 2024 letter to Dr. David Williamson, the neuropsychiatrist who oversaw Fetterman’s treatment at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C.

“We do not know if he is taking his meds and his behavior frequently suggests he is not,” Jentleson wrote, adding that Fetterman was avoiding the recommended regular checkups with his doctors. He also wrote that the senator was driving his car recklessly, often speeding while texting, making FaceTime calls, and reading entire news articles behind the wheel.

One month after the letter, Fetterman got into a car accident, driving home from the airport after an early morning flight well over the 70-mph speed limit on I-70. His wife in the back seat suffered a pulmonary contusion and spinal fractures, and Fetterman told one of his staffers that he had fallen asleep while driving.

In an incident earlier this year, Fetterman was filmed on a flight to Pittsburgh arguing with the pilot about wearing his seat belt correctly.

“If you want to go to Pittsburgh, it’s simple,” the pilot told him. “You’re going to have to follow our instructions or be asked to get off the airplane.”

In another instance in 2023, one of his staffers reported hearing from a journalist that Fetterman had walked into the street and was nearly hit by a car. A short time later, a Senate doctor called Fetterman’s office to report that the senator walked into a group of people and nearly knocked them over near the underground trolleys running between the Capitol and congressional office buildings.

Fetterman insists that he is in good health, despite these reports, and chalks up the disturbing reports to disgruntled staffers. But other accounts show increased black-and-white thinking on issues such Israel’s massacre of Gaza, which has alienated many of his staffers, and an inexplicable show of support for certain Trump administration polices, drawing a backlash from liberal supporters. It seems that Fetterman’s health is raising the question of if he’s fit to continue serving in politics.