Republican Town Hall Erupts After Damning Confession on Budget Bill

Nebraska Representative Mike Flood was booed relentlessly at his own town hall Tuesday as he admitted to a roomful of constituents that he had simply not read some parts of Trump’s big, beautiful budget bill.

“Can you please tell us why you voted to approve a budget bill that includes section 703-02, which effectively prohibits federal courts from enforcing contempt orders … which would then allow current and future administrations to ignore those contempt orders by removing the enforcement capabilities?” one attendee asked Flood.

The question is in reference to a deeply biased provision that the GOP slipped in the budget bill to protect President Trump from being held accountable by court orders. Additionally, anyone seeking to file an injunction or restraining order—two things the courts have already levied against the Trump administration numerous times—would be forced to put up a financial bond.

“I do not agree with that section that was added to that bill,” Flood responded, and was booed immediately.

“You voted for all of it!” someone shouted.

“I will tell you this. I believe in the rule of law.… I do believe that the federal district courts, when issuing an injunction, it should have legal effect. In fact I relied upon that when the Biden administration was in place,” Flood responded. Then he confessed: “This provision was unknown to me when I voted for the bill. I am not gonna hide the truth.… We must allow our federal courts to operate and issue injunctions.”

The crowd roared with hostility and disbelief toward their congressman as he admitted that he skipped over reading the entire bill before he voted for it.

Flood was also hit with questions on Medicaid. Trump previously claimed that the party wouldn’t touch it, before it was slashed in the budget bill.

“I was talking to the Nebraska Hospital Association almost every single day … to find out how this would affect Medicaid patients in Nebraska,” Flood continued. “I know that the bill is not perfect, but I believe that in crafting this bill, even a president that maybe most of you disagree with, strictly said … ‘Do not cut Medicaid.’” More jeers erupted. “That doesn’t mean we don’t address waste, fraud, and abuse.”

Trump’s budget bill is expected to leave 13.7 million people without health insurance by 2034, while giving tax cuts to the wealthiest. Flood went on to defend his support of renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, while chants of “You lie!” rained down on him.

This is yet another installment in the GOP’s string of nightmare town halls, as its constituents grow more and more frustrated with the actions of the man—and the party—that they voted for.

Donald Trump is once again begging Canada to become part of the United States—this time, in exchange for military protection.

“I told Canada, which very much wants to be part of our fabulous Golden Dome System, that it will cost $61 Billion Dollars if they remain a separate, but unequal, Nation, but will cost ZERO DOLLARS if they become our cherished 51st State,” Trump wrote in a post Truth Social Tuesday evening. “They are considering the offer!”

Last week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said that the countries were in talks about the U.S. president’s “Golden Dome” space weapons system. When asked how much Carney expected to pay into the massive project, he replied that he wouldn’t “put a price tag on it.”

“We are conscious that we have an ability, if we so choose, to complete the Golden Dome with investments and partnership,” Carney said. Canada had already agreed in 2022 to pour nearly $30 billion over the next 20 years to modernize the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which is a joint air defense system.

Trump has repeatedly expressed an imperialist desire to control Canada, as well as Greenland. Earlier this month, when Carney visited the White House, he pushed back on Trump’s advances to his face.

“As you know from real estate, there are some places that are never for sale,” the recently elected Carney said. “Having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign, it’s not for sale. It won’t be for sale ever.”

Donald Trump’s biggest 2024 donor isn’t too stoked about the administration’s spending habits.

Weeks after exiting his temporary role in the White House, Elon Musk is still speaking his mind on critical Republican affairs. In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, the former government-diminishing task rabbit lamented that the “big, beautiful” bill being deliberated in the Senate would practically undo the Department of Government Efficiency’s work.

“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit—not decrease[s] it—and undermines the work the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said. “I think a bill could be big, or it could be beautiful—I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion.”

Musk’s DOGE was tasked with sizing down the federal government to cut spending. But in a separate interview Tuesday, the world’s richest man said he increasingly felt that his department was being used as a scapegoat for other administration failures.

“DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” Musk told The Washington Post. “So, like, something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.”

But Musk isn’t the only powerful conservative to brush off Trump’s “big, beautiful” bill. Immediately after the House passed the reconciliation package last week, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham shot down some of the cuts included in the bill as “not real,” arguing that the House had done next to nothing to actually bring down federal spending.

Even a $880 billion cut in Medicaid couldn’t offset the gargantuan price tag on extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which are estimated to add somewhere between $3.8 trillion and $5.3 trillion to the national debt. Those numbers have ruffled feathers among congressional budget hawks, who were under the impression that the Trump administration would be sizing down spending rather than beefing it up.

Several conservative senators have indicated they won’t vote for the bill if it includes a debt limit increase, including Senators Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, and Rick Scott. The growing coalition of budget-conscious naysayers is threatening enough to potentially keep the bill from reaching the president’s desk, as Republicans grapple with their narrow majority in the Senate.

On Sunday, Johnson told CNN that he believes there’s enough opposition within the caucus to stall its advancement.

“We have enough to stop the process until the president gets serious about spending reduction and reducing the deficit,” Johnson told the network.

America’s national debt is currently more than $36.9 trillion, as of the time of publishing.

Donald Trump is pleading with the Supreme Court to make it easier to deport immigrants to countries they aren’t from, like South Sudan.

The president on Tuesday filed an emergency application to the Supreme Court, asking them to stay a lower court’s injunction last week that prevented the government from deporting a group of immigrants not from South Sudan to the country. U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy said that the White House provided “plainly insufficient” notice to the immigrants.

“It was impossible for these people to have a meaningful opportunity to object to their transfer to South Sudan,” Murphy ruled last Wednesday.

The Trump administration was not happy with the ruling,

“Many class members are aliens who have never been admitted into the United States,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the Justice Department’s filing to the Supreme Court. “Thus, they do not have due-process rights to any additional removal procedures beyond the ones the political branches have provided.”

“Those judicially created procedures are currently wreaking havoc on the third country removal process,” Sauer added. “In addition to usurping the Executive’s authority over immigration policy, the injunction disrupts sensitive diplomatic, foreign-policy, and national-security efforts.”

Murphy castigated the administration Monday evening for “manufacturing the very chaos they decry” by deporting the immigrants from Vietnam and Myanmar to South Sudan, which Murphy said violated his injunction.

“The court recognizes that the class members at issue here have criminal histories,” Murphy said. “But that does not change due process.… The court treats its obligation to these principles with the seriousness that anyone committed to the rule of law should understand.”

This point seems particularly difficult for Trump and the rest of his administration to understand: Immigrants they wish to deport still have the right of due process, and the judiciary has the ability to rule on the president’s decisions. Trump can claim “foreign policy” all he wants, but the immigrants residing on U.S. soil, who in many cases aren’t the criminals the president claims they are, are still subject to protections under U.S. law. Now he’s trying to convince the Supreme Court to give him what he wants.

Tension is bubbling in Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon.

The defense secretary’s senior advisers are falling further apart, causing rifts and scandals that are attracting the ire of the White House despite attempts to reset Hegseth’s team, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

“There’s a cold war that exists in between flash points,” one anonymous source told the Post while recounting flaring tempers on Hegseth’s team. “It’s unsettling at times.”

One of the more prominent rifts is between Eric Geressy, Hegseth’s former mentor, and Ricky Buria, a junior military assistant whom Hegseth tried and failed to morph into his chief of staff.

Shortly after The Atlantic revealed that its editor in chief had been included in a Signal chat where top Trump officials—Hegseth included—discussed sensitive war plans regarding the imminent bombing of Yemen, Geressy expressed frustration at the administration’s decision to rely on the unsecured and unclassified communication app.

Geressy has also voiced “disgust” at White House reports describing Buria as “self important” and willing to ostracize other officials in order to snag more time with Hegseth or the White House, according to the Post.

“Friction between the two senior advisers remains palpable, those familiar with the situation say, and is emblematic of the instability that reigns at the Pentagon as Hegseth attempts to regain his footing after several scandals that irked the White House, alarmed Congress and left the former Fox News personality on the defensive,” the Post reported, noting that several current and former defense officials weren’t sure how long Hegseth could survive in the role amid the searing divisions.

The story followed more bad news for Hegseth Tuesday, after The Guardian reported that the White House had “lost confidence” in his investigation into leaked details regarding U.S. military options to claim the Panama Canal.

Hegseth had used the press leak to justify expelling three top aides last month, but Trump’s advisers raised flags after claims emerged that information of the leak had been obtained via a blatantly unconstitutional National Security Agency wiretap—a scandal considerably worse than the initial leak.

That claim fueled a “breakdown in trust” between the Pentagon and the White House, The Guardian reported, with Trump advisers suggesting that they “no longer have any idea about who or what to believe,” with at least one adviser interpreting the botched investigation as a way to nix defense aides that had reportedly been involved in infighting with Hegseth’s first chief of staff, Joe Kasper.