Trump’s EPA Head Melts Down When Democrat Catches Him in a Lie

Donald Trump’s administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency threw a tantrum Wednesday when asked to explain how exactly his agency had decided to cancel nearly 800 grants focused on helping decrease the impact of climate change. 

Lee Zeldin lost his cool during a Senate hearing when Senator Sheldon Whitehouse asked him to explain conflicting accounts of the process for approving the cuts to 781 grants. Zeldin had stated in a prior House hearing to have “personally reviewed” each grant that was cancelled—but so had his deputy assistant administrators Daniel Coogan and Travis Voyles.

“It cannot be that Voyles personally, himself, conducted the review of 781, and that Coogan saw to it that it was individually done,” Whitehouse said, arguing that their stories didn’t quite match up. 

“It’s a crazy concept, Senator, but maybe more than one person was individually reviewing these grants. Maybe they were working on it for more than one day, Senator! How about that concept?” Zeldin snapped. 

“When their testimony is that they did it all on one day, no I do not. I do not agree with that,” Whitehouse replied. “He swore in court that he did it on one day. So you can’t now come in and say that that’s false.”

Zeldin ranted that while the decision had been made in one day, the process of “busting your ass” to review the grants had taken much longer, and the two argued over each other as Whitehouse referred to the testimony of Zeldin’s deputy assistants. 

“None of that is what he said, I’m using the facts as your employees stated them,” Whitehouse said.

“I conducted an individual review of everything, and that concept doesn’t work for you,” Zeldin cried. 

“When? When? When? When did you conduct an individualized review of 781 grants?” Whitehouse pressed. “Will you show me your schedule?”

“You don’t care about wasting money, but the Trump administration does, Senator,” the EPA head ranted. When Whitehouse repeated the question, Zeldin replied, “Our schedule is publicly released, we don’t put on the schedule every single moment of the day.”

Zeldin continued to rant, claiming that Whitehouse didn’t care about answering the taxpayers, becoming increasingly exasperated. “I don’t know what to say to you, you’re insisting on the fact—” Zeldin continued.

“I’m insisting on the facts, that’s exactly what I’m insisting on!” Whitehouse snapped. 

Zeldin continued to rant, “The American taxpayers, they put President Trump in office because of people like you, they have Republicans in charge of the House and Senate because of people like you, because you don’t care about 99 percent of this story, you don’t want me to go through the list of the all the waste and abuse—”

“No, what I want you to do is explain why the Department of Justice lawyers representing EPA in court under a duty of candor have said that everything you’ve just said isn’t true. That’s what I want. Get me that answer,” Whitehouse said, before yielding his time back to the chair.  

Donald Trump escalated his threats against Bruce Springsteen Wednesday with a stupid but shocking meme posted to Truth Social.

The eight-second edited video shows the president in a MAGA hat hitting Springsteen with a golf ball, taking the rock star down as he gets onstage. It was posted without a caption but is yet another indication that Trump’s absurd targeting of Springsteen may not be a joke.

On Monday, Trump said in a Truth Social post he planned to launch an investigation into how much money Kamala Harris paid celebrity musicians, including Springsteen and Beyoncé, to endorse her campaign.

“HOW MUCH DID KAMALA HARRIS PAY BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN FOR HIS POOR PERFORMANCE DURING HER CAMPAIGN FOR PRESIDENT? WHY DID HE ACCEPT THAT MONEY IF HE IS SUCH A FAN OF HERS? ISN’T THAT A MAJOR AND ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION? WHAT ABOUT BEYONCÉ? … AND HOW MUCH WENT TO OPRAH, AND BONO??? I am going to call for a major investigation into this matter,” he wrote on Truth Social early Monday morning.

Springsteen’s production company was paid $76,000 by the Harris campaign after he performed at one of her rallies in October. But Trump’s tirade against the 75-year-old singer likely has more to do with Springsteen insulting him at a show in Manchester, England, last week.

“The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock ’n’ roll, in dangerous times,” Springsteen said. “In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration.”

As he often does with celebrities, Trump insulted Springsteen in a series of Truth Social posts before it became clear he actually wants government agencies to investigate him. Rolling Stone reported Tuesday that Trump’s plans to weaponize campaign finance laws against the pop culture icon could be a legitimate undertaking backed by lawyers and political advisers.

“So this is not something where Donald Trump is just ranting and raving about it all alone out there on an island,” Rolling Stone reporter Asawin Suebsaeng told TNR’s Greg Sargent.

“This is something where heavy hitters in the MAGA elite and in the Republican elite, even if they don’t really believe it on an intellectual level, are willing to give Trump space to cook and to be like, ‘Let’s see how far we can take this.’”

This story has been updated.

Each day, new and worse cuts keep appearing in the Republicans’ budget bill.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued a report Tuesday finding that the GOP’s budget bill would automatically trigger over $500 billion in automatic cuts to Medicare, exposing President Trump for lying that Medicare wouldn’t be touched. The CBO estimates that there would be about $45 billion in cuts in 2026, and $490 billion in cuts between 2027 and 2034.

House Democrats immediately pounced. At a House Rules Committee meeting early Wednesday morning, ranking member Jim McGovern asked Representative Brendan Boyle, the ranking member on the House Budget Committee, whether the bill would trigger cuts to Medicare.

“Look, this is really the breaking news, because when the Budget Committee kicked off this process approximately three months ago, there was a commitment by President Trump that there would be no Medicare cuts in this piece of legislation, and indeed, over the last several months, there has been no discussion of Medicare at all,” Boyle responded.

“Because of the size of the deficits, because of the PAYGO, or Pay as You Go Act, that would trigger sequestration of Medicare, and it would total over $500 billion. The official figure that CBO confirms is $535 billion in cuts to Medicare,” Boyle continued, adding that the bill doesn’t waive statutory PAYGO.

In March, Trump promised that there would be no cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security, with the White House even issuing a fact sheet attacking media reports that he and Elon Musk were open to such cuts. Now, though, the Republican budget bill includes $880 billion in cuts, largely to Medicaid, and Tuesday’s revelation confirms that Medicare cuts will be automatically triggered if the bill passes.

Some House Republicans are probably not going to tolerate Medicare cuts, with so many of the GOP’s elderly supporters depending on the program, and the budget needs almost unanimous Republican support to pass the House. Could these cuts sink the bill? And how will the White House explain that Trump won’t be keeping his promise?

Republicans want to add work requirements to Medicaid, but having to work themselves is apparently a problem.

Representative Ralph Norman was caught falling asleep in his chair late Tuesday as the House Rules Committee discussed the future of a Republican-led reconciliation bill that aims to strip Medicaid coverage from millions of Americans.

Conservative lawmakers have tried to jam the president’s “big, beautiful” bill through the legislature as quickly as possible, forcing themselves and their colleagues to debate its details when the American public isn’t watching, including over the weekend and in the dead of night.

The bill proposes cutting upward of $880 billion from the public health insurance program for low-income Americans in order to afford a multitrillion-dollar tax cut extension for multimillionaires and corporations.

But just a handful of days into the process, it’s clear that Republicans are struggling to keep up with their own terrible timing.

Norman’s siesta was definitely noticed by Democratic Representative Joe Neguse, who accused the tired politician Wednesday of having “snuck out for a little shut-eye” while the committee debated adding work requirements to the public health insurance program during another late-night hearing.

“Obviously, this isn’t reasonable. It does not make sense. It is not transparent to hold meetings at 3 a.m. on a bill of this size, and this scope, and this scale,” Neguse said. “You could just as easily [have] delayed it five hours, let the American public have an opportunity to listen to this debate, and then vote on the bill on Thursday.

“This false sense of urgency for five or six hours makes no sense,” Neguse added.

The Republican bill proposes kicking 8.6 million Americans off Medicaid over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, though that figure could be the tip of the iceberg if the caucus successfully adds work requirements to the public health insurance program.

Such a move could eventually strip upward of 36 million Americans of their health coverage—half of Medicaid’s 72 million enrollees, according to a February report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which warned that eligible Medicaid recipients could get strung up in the bureaucracy of increasingly frequent eligibility checks, potentially lapsing coverage for individuals who are entitled to the benefit.

But tampering with the third rail of American politics comes at Trump’s behest, as his acolytes in Congress work to make an enormously expensive tax cut—that won’t add any noticeable benefit for the majority of Americans—more palatable to their base. Trump’s bill is estimated to add somewhere between $3.8 trillion and $5.3 trillion to the national debt.

Despite the pressure, Norman might have felt it kosher to doze off since he had, apparently, made up his mind on the votes days ago.

The South Carolina lawmaker was one of four Republicans to oppose the bill on Friday, when for a brief moment it appeared that the massively expensive tax extension wouldn’t pass muster with conservative budget hawks. But by Monday, Norman had changed his tune, telling Politico that he would advance it to the chamber floor during the committee’s Wednesday vote.

“Unless something changes,” Norman said, “the body has a right [to consider it].”

The Congressional Budget Office has reported that Trump’s “big, beautiful” spending bill will continue the longtime Republican tradition of giving tax cuts to the wealthy while spiting the poor. 

A CBO estimate Tuesday found that the GOP bill would decrease household resources for the poorest 10 percent in America, with households expected to lose 2 percent of their income by 2027 and 4 percent of their income by 2027 through the loss of programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. 

In contrast, the top 10 percent of Americans would see their income increase by  4 percent for households by 2027 and 2 percent by 2033, “mainly because of reductions in the taxes they owe.”

The CBO also noted that Trump’s bill would add $3.8 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. 

“The nonpartisan CBO’s unprecedented analysis has confirmed what Democrats have known to be true—the GOP Tax Scam will hurt working families the most while delivering massive tax breaks for billionaires like Elon Musk,” Democratic Senate Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement. “Any claims otherwise are intentionally deceptive regarding the Republican plans to rip health care away from nearly 14 million Americans and take food out of the mouths of millions of people, including children and seniors.… For a party that claims to be for the working class, this analysis indicates the opposite.”

The Republicans are dismissing the report entirely. 

“The CBO score is wrong, the CBO has been wrong repeatedly, it was wrong when it projected budget surpluses with the Inflation Reduction Act, the Green New Deal,” GOP Representative Andy Barr claimed on CNN Wednesday morning. “It was wrong when they scored the first Trump tax cuts, they were wrong by over a trillion dollars. Why? Because the CBO doesn’t do this scoring dynamically, and what we know about this bill, it’s jet fuel for this economy.” 

“Congressman, you say the CBO is wrong, but you have—your fellow Republicans are concerned because the CBO is the only nonpartisan scorekeeper that Congress has,” CNN anchor Kate Bolduan replied.

It’s ironic that Barr brought up Trump’s 2017 bill, which also contained massive tax cuts for the rich that the GOP claimed would pay for themselves. They lied then too.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has attempted to expand its influence beyond agencies within the executive branch to distant corners of the federal government, and then some.

NPR reported Tuesday that it had identified nearly 40 organizations that DOGE had attempted to access—some of which were outside of the bounds of the federal government.

Employees at the Office of Government Accountability, or GAO, received a message from a DOGE staffer last week, asking to discuss having a team from Musk’s non-agency assigned to work with them. The offer was quickly rebuffed, as the GAO works for Congress, not the executive branch. It also happens to function as the investigative arm responsible for reporting on the president’s compliance with the Impoundment Control Act—which Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to violate.

GAO wasn’t the only organization to push back against DOGE’s overreach. Late last month, Trump attempted to fire three board members at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, an independent nonprofit that disburses taxpayer funds to public stations for educational and cultural programming, but the president’s request was denied.

Shortly after, Trump signed an executive order directing the CPB to stop allocating funds to PBS and NPR. The CPB disburses $535 million in taxpayer funds, an amount that is apportioned by Congress, placing the funding outside of Trump’s realm of control. But the Trump administration wasn’t done: A message arrived with the other two board members from DOGE asking to discuss bringing in a team of cost-cutters.

Crucially, CPB is not part of the executive branch or even the federal government. And funnily enough, DOGE didn’t even send its request to the right email addresses.

Other nongovernmental organizations where DOGE attempted to assign teams include Legal Services Corporation, a nonprofit established by Congress in 1974 that funds 130 legal aid organizations, and NeighborWorks America, which provides grants, training, and assistance to community development groups and was created by Congress in 1978.

The laws creating those organizations state that “the corporation shall not be considered a department, agency, or instrumentality of the Federal Government.”

DOGE also reached out to the Vera Institute of Justice, a private nonprofit that was not created by Congress.

Republicans are forcing through the president’s “big, beautiful” reconciliation bill despite opposition from within their party, and despite opposition from the American public.

While debating the details of the Medicaid-slashing tax cuts late Tuesday, Massachusetts Democratic Representative Jim McGovern pointed out that the lawmakers in the room were not elected to strip away public services from their constituents.

“I wasn’t sent here to vote for trash like this,” he charged.

The bill proposes $880 billion in Medicaid cuts in order to afford an extension to Donald Trump’s 2017 tax plan, which would overwhelmingly benefit multimillionaires and corporations.

“If I am understanding the numbers correctly, the latest version of their tax scam, the top 0.1 percent stand to gain $255,000 on average in 2027 alone,” McGovern said before the committee. “That is $700 a day every day.

“The people who make over $1 million a year will also get their pockets lined. On average, these millionaires will have an additional $81,500 per year but pennies for everybody else,” the Massachusetts lawmaker continued. “For those earning less than $50,000 a year, the average benefit is $265, less than one dollar per day.

“And that’s laughable when you begin to look at the gaps that are going to be created by these cuts in other programs,” he added.

The Republican bill would kick 8.6 million Americans off of Medicaid over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, though that number could be much larger considering some of the stipulations the GOP hopes to add to the program to limit eligibility, such as adding work requirements to the public health insurance program.

That could eventually strip upward of 36 million Americans of their health coverage—half of Medicaid’s 72 million enrollees, according to a February report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which warned that eligible Medicaid recipients could get strung up in the bureaucracy of increasingly frequent eligibility checks, potentially lapsing coverage for individuals who are entitled to the benefit.

But tampering with the third rail of American politics comes at Trump’s behest, as his acolytes in Congress work to make an enormously expensive tax cut—that won’t add any noticeable benefit for the majority of Americans—more palatable to their base. Trump’s bill is estimated to add somewhere between $3.8 trillion and $5.3 trillion to the national debt.

“This is not a governing philosophy. It is a scam,” McGovern said. “For the life of me, I cannot understand why you are doing this. Why the hell did you choose a career of public service just to do this? Just to rip away the health care and food assistance and security of working- and middle-class Americans.

“I don’t understand this, I don’t understand the cruelty,” McGovern added.

Eric Trump on Wednesday broke ground on a $1.5 billion golf course in Vietnam. The deal will “focus on developing 5-star hotels, championship-style golf courses, and luxurious residential estates and unparalleled amenities” near Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi, according to a statement in October.

Eric Trump will also meet with Vietnamese officials on Thursday to discuss plans for a skyscraper in the southern business district.

“Vietnam has tremendous potential for luxurious hospitality and entertainment,” said Trump, who serves as senior vice president of his father’s Trump Organization. “We are incredibly excited to enter this dynamic market.”

This news comes as Vietnam is in the midst of an attempt to avoid Trump’s 46 percent retaliatory tariffs on the country. Vietnam has made multiple concessions to the White House already, including a deal with Elon Musk’s Starlink and a pledge to crack down on counterfeit goods. President Trump also just made a massive arms deal with Saudi Arabia and accepted a $400 million luxury jet from Qatar.

The Trump administration is deporting immigrants to countries they aren’t from and refusing to tell judges where exactly, claiming that the information is classified.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy ordered the government to maintain its custody of immigrants on a plane that the immigrants’ attorneys said was headed to South Sudan, and said that authorities might be violating an injunction he issued in late March. The judge’s order came after a hearing in which administration officials refused to say where the flight was or even where it was going.

Lawyers for the immigrants told Murphy that at least two of them were told they were being sent to South Sudan, a country with instability, violence, and political unrest that the State Department warns Americans not to visit. One Justice Department lawyer told Murphy that a Vietnamese man was deported, but refused to provide any details about the flight, including how many other immigrants were on it.

“Where is the plane?” Murphy asked DOJ lawyer Elianis Perez.

“I’m told that that information is classified, and I am told that the final destination is also classified,” Perez responded, claiming that no court order was violated because the man wasn’t afraid of deportation.

But then Murphy asked Perez the authority the government was invoking to classify the location of the flight.

“I don’t have the answer to that,” Perez responded.

Murphy had ordered the government in March not to deport immigrants to countries they aren’t from without allowing them time to challenge their removal in court. He warned the administration that any government official who took part in Tuesday’s flight and knew about the order, including the pilots, could face criminal penalties.

“Based on what I have been told,” Murphy said, “this seems like it may be contempt.”

On multiple occasions, the administration has sent immigrants to countries they aren’t from, all over the world, including Rwanda, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Panama. The administration has resisted any attempts at oversight, and even judicial orders to stop or slow their actions, refusing to turn planes around. Secretary of State Marco Rubio even claimed he doesn’t have to listen to court orders.

Weeks after a judge ordered the government to allow immigrants some recourse to challenge their deportations, Trump officials still won’t listen. Will the courts have to enforce criminal sanctions against government officials to compel this administration to follow the law?

Earlier this month, the Trump administration’s own intelligence agencies found that Venezuela does not control the Tren de Aragua gang, directly contradicting Trump’s justification for invoking the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport immigrants. But instead of admitting their mistake, they decided to lie.

“We need to do some rewriting … so this document is not used against the DNI or POTUS,” said Joe Kent, Tulsi Gabbard’s chief of staff, according to leaked emails viewed by The New York Times. Kent, along with former acting National Intelligence Council head Michael Collins, largely rewrote the memo together. 

The original memo stated, “While Venezuela’s permissive environment enables TDA to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States,” according to the Times.

Trump has been claiming the exact opposite since he invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 in March to detain and deport Venezuelan immigrants without basic due process.

To support Trump’s use of the wartime powers act, Kent began to piece a story together in the hope that it’d make Trump’s actions look more reasonable.

“Flooding our nation with ‘migrants’ and especially ‘migrants’ who are part of a violent criminal gang is the action of a hostile nation, even if the gov of Venezuela isn’t specifically tasking or enabling TDA’s operations,” Kent wrote, in an email obtained by the Times. 

“Let’s just come out and say [Tren de Aragua] leaders are given sanctuary in Venezuela as their gang members commit horrendous crimes in America, then we can provide the context about our exact knowledge of relationship between TDA and the Venezuelan government,” he continued. Kent even went so far as to say that Tren de Aragua didn’t need logistical support from the Venezuelan government because former President Joe Biden had given it to them in his first term, another lie. 

This is clearly an administration that is making up justifications for its draconian policies as it goes. Whether it’s habeas corpus or birthright citizenship, this administration will look Americans in the eye and lie, over and over again, until their version of events is taken as truth.