Republicans Plan to Ditch Trump’s Birthday Military Parade

Congressional Republicans aren’t sticking around to watch Donald Trump blow millions of taxpayer dollars on himself this weekend.

Just seven of 50 surveyed GOP lawmakers are planning to actually attend the president’s birthday festivities over the weekend, reported Politico.

Trump’s 79th birthday coincides with the Army’s 250th anniversary. To celebrate, the president is throwing himself—and the U.S. military—a parade and festival that Army officials estimate could cost up to $45 million, with millions in damages to the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Those sticking around include some of Trump’s most stalwart MAGA supporters: Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (who told Politico “of course” she’d be there), Byron Donalds, and Elise Stefanik are all planning to celebrate. Representatives Cory Mills, Rich McCormick, John McGuire, and Lisa McClain are also expected to be in attendance.

But the list of those planning to skip is much longer. Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Majority Whip John Barrasso won’t be in town, nor will House Majority Leader Steve Scalise. Senator Tommy Tuberville excused himself to continue his campaign for Alabama’s gubernatorial race, while Senator Markwayne Mullin said the date coincides with his anniversary, reported Politico. Speaker Mike Johnson’s office wouldn’t comment.

Notable veterans are also planning to sit this one out. Senator Lindsey Graham said he’s not planning to attend, and Senators Todd Young, Rick Scott, and Tim Sheehy won’t be there either. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Brian Mast told Politico that he hadn’t made up his mind as to whether he’ll be there.

And the chairs of the House and Senate Armed Services committees, Representative Mike Rogers and Senator Roger Wicker, won’t be around, either. Instead, they’re planning to be at another airshow scheduled for next week in Paris, where defense contractors will gather for an annual conference.

Trump has wanted a military parade for himself since at least 2018, but the idea was quickly shot down by local and military officials who cited enormous estimated damages to Pennsylvania Avenue, torching the hefty price tag involved in dragging heavy equipment through the U.S. capital. The president was reportedly inspired after watching a Bastille Day celebration in Paris in 2017.

“It was one of the greatest parades I’ve ever seen.… We’re gonna have to try and top it,” Trump said at the time, “but we had a lot of planes going over and a lot of military might, and it was really a beautiful thing to see.”

The parade will include 6,600 soldiers who will represent every era of the Army’s history. It will also showcase some 150 vehicles as 50 aircraft, including 26 M1A1 Abrams tanks, 27 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, two World War II Sherman tanks, a World War I–era Renault tank, eight CH-47 helicopters, 16 UH-60 Black Hawks, and four World War II–era P-51 aircraft, Army officials told CBS News.

The plan was not always to have a march that big. In February, the Army put out a press release indicating that it intended to celebrate its anniversary “with a series of commemorations, including leadership engagements, community outreach events and other events showcasing Army units, history, lineage and esprit de corps.” It did not make mention of a parade.

Donald Trump says he’s finally cracked a tentative deal with China—but why doesn’t it sound any good?

Trump announced on Truth Social Wednesday morning that a long-awaited trade deal had finally materialized, though it was still subject to “final approval” by Chinese President Xi Jinping and himself, and indicated that the U.S. would impose a 55 percent tariff on Chinese goods, while China would impose a 10 percent tariff.

While these numbers are significant deescalations from the whopping 145 percent tariff Trump had levied on Chinese exports and the 125 percent tariff rate on U.S. exports China imposed in response, Trump’s deal still leaves something to be desired.

Before Trump entered office, China and the U.S. both had roughly 20 percent tariffs on exports from each other’s countries. In an initial agreement last month, the U.S. had agreed to lower rates to 30 percent and China had lowered to 10 percent, before Trump blew up the deal.

So while the U.S. will still have to pay more for Chinese goods—a policy that will ultimately raise prices for American consumers—it seems that China has struck a deal to pay even less for American goods than it did before Trump was in office.

Meanwhile the other terms of that deal seemed to provide assets both countries had before Trump’s ridiculous trade war.

“FULL MAGNETS, AND ANY NECESSARY RARE EARTHS WILL BE SUPPLIED, UP FRONT, BY CHINA,” Trump wrote.

China’s grip on rare earths had provided it with a lot of leverage in negotiations with the United States. When Trump first levied his astronomically high tariffs on China, Beijing essentially shut down exports, and even after it agreed to a truce, in Geneva last month, Beijing still required companies to purchase special licenses to buy them, placing a particular strain on robotics and defense companies.

In return for resuming the supply of rare earths, the U.S. would allow Chinese students to attend American universities. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced late last month that he would begin “aggressively” revoking the student visas of Chinese students, claiming concerns over national security. As one could probably assume, the purported threat posed by these students was never real but a bargaining chip for the Trump administration.

Trump noted that allowing Chinese students to study at American universities has “ALWAYS BEEN GOOD WITH ME!”

Democracy is “under assault” under Donald Trump’s leadership, according to California Governor Gavin Newsom.

In a nearly nine-minute address to his state and to the nation Tuesday evening, Newsom warned that the president’s choice to manhandle Los Angeles, without any input from the government or people of California, indicates a leader on the verge of authoritarianism.

“If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant, based only on suspicion or skin color, then none of us are safe,” Newsom said. “Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.

“Trump and his loyalists, they thrive on division because it allows them to take more power and exert even more control,” he continued. “And by the way, Trump, he’s not opposed to lawlessness and violence as long as it serves him. What more evidence do we need than January 6?”

Thousands of locals flooded the streets of Los Angeles over the weekend in a stunning visual protest of the president’s agenda. Protesters blocked off a major freeway, trashed Waymos (self-driving cars), and organized outside of City Hall and the Metropolitan Detention Center. In reaction, law enforcement officials shot rubber bullets and fired tear gas and flash bangs into crowds of civilians. The FBI added protesters suspected of throwing rocks at police cars to its Most Wanted list and ominously threatened to intervene in the anti-Trump display without guidance from California or the White House.

California sued the federal government Monday to roll back Trump’s deployment of 4,100 National Guard members that state authorities said had not been authorized or requested to handle the protests—an order that Newsom slammed Tuesday night as “illegal” and a “brazen abuse of power” that “inflamed a combustible situation.”

“When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard. he made that order apply to every state in this nation,” Newsom said. “This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next. Democracy is next.”

In another decision that nobody responsible for overseeing peace in Los Angeles wanted, Trump additionally deployed 700 Marines to the City of Angels, an initiative that Defense officials revealed Tuesday would cost U.S. taxpayers $134 million.

Trump also endorsed threats to arrest Newsom when the California governor began to hit back, telling reporters that he’d “do it.”

“Democracy is under assault right before our eyes; this moment we have feared has arrived. He’s taking a wrecking ball, a wrecking ball to our Founding Fathers’ historic project: three coequal branches of independent government,” Newsom continued.

“The Founding Fathers didn’t live and die to see this kind of moment,” Newsom said, urging Americans to “stand up” to the Trump administration’s aggressive control. “I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress, and fear,” he continued. “But I want you to know that you are the antidote to that fear and that anxiety. What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty, your silence: to be complicit in this moment. Do not give in to him.”

President Trump declared that anyone who protests his military/birthday parade—even peacefully—will be met with “very heavy force.” 

“We’re celebrating big on Saturday … if there’s any protest that wants to come out they will be met with very big force. And by the way, for those people who wanna protest, they’re gonna be met with very big force,” Trump said, repeating himself. “And I haven’t even heard about a protest, but, you know, these are people that hate our country. But they will be met with very heavy force.” 

This is the president saying that he will crush anyone who dares to use their First Amendment right to speak out against a lavish display of power—6,700 soldiers, 50 in-air helicopters, 34 horses, and 28 massive 70-ton M1 Abrams battle tanks—that will cost more than  $45 million in taxpayer dollars. His threats of “very heavy force” are entirely credible, given his gleeful deployment of thousands of National Guardsmen and Marines (who were without rules of engagement at the time) into Los Angeles without the consent of the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, or the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, after protesters interfered with ICE roundups.

As far as protests go, there are at least 1,500 massive “No Kings Day” actions planned for the afternoon of Trump’s parade, June 14, in Washington, D.C. and across the country. There are signs that the president’s bombastic response in Los Angeles is causing the number of those who intend to attend a protest on Saturday to increase.

“This country doesn’t belong to a king—and we’re not letting him throw himself a parade funded by tens of millions of our taxpayer dollars while stealing from us and stripping away our rights, our freedoms, and the programs our families rely on,” said Indivisible, the organization organizing the actions. “On June 14th, we’re coming together to send one clear message: No Thrones. No Crowns. No Kings.”

Trump is itching to brutalize dissenters, and his history suggests that he is more than willing to send orders to do so, especially in the nation’s capital. Saturday has the potential to be disastrous.

Trump’s trade war won’t just cripple domestic markets—it will slow global gross domestic product growth to its lowest point in 17 years.

The World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects report found that “international discord” surrounding trade has “upended many of the policy certainties that helped shrink extreme poverty and expand prosperity after the end of World War II.”

The report did not name President Trump explicitly, but made it clear that his unprecedented tariffs—a 10 percent tax on imports from the entire world—were the direct cause of the drop in global and domestic economic growth.

“The rise in trade barriers, heightened uncertainty, and the spike in financial market volatility are set to weigh on private consumption, international trade, and investment,” the report stated. “As a result, U.S. growth is expected to decelerate sharply in 2025, to 1.4 percent.” Additionally, global output is expected to slip by 0.5 percent.

The report’s future outlook is also not encouraging.

“In 2026-27, a tepid recovery is expected, leaving global output materially below January projections, the report said. “The outlook largely hinges on the evolution of trade policy globally. Growth could turn out to be lower if trade restrictions escalate or if policy uncertainty persists, which could also result in a build-up of financial stress.… On the upside, uncertainty and trade barriers could diminish if major economies reach lasting agreements that address trade tensions.”

It’s clear that these hits to GDP will impede the growth of the domestic and the international working class, as Trump struggles to make a single trade deal while kneecapping America’s diplomatic legitimacy in the process.

“The world economy today is once more running into turbulence,” World Bank chief economist Indermit Gill wrote. “Without a swift course correction, the harm to living standards could be deep.”

President Trump has yet to comment on the World Bank’s report.

The president’s decision to use the Marines on U.S. civilians in Los Angeles is not sitting well with the public.

A YouGov poll released Tuesday morning indicates that the majority of Americans disagree with Donald Trump’s order sending 700 Marines to break up anti-ICE protests in the city. The number of people against the president’s action eclipsed those who supported it by double digits, with 47 percent of polled Americans saying they disagreed with the order compared to 34 percent who approved.

When it comes to Trump’s decision to send 4,100 National Guard members to one of the country’s most populous cities, Americans were equally unhappy: 45 percent of polled Americans said they disapproved, while 38 percent supported the action.

A shocking percentage of Americans were undecided on both issues. Some 19 percent of those surveyed said they weren’t sure how they felt about Trump sending the Marines to manhandle anti-ICE demonstrators, while 17 percent said they were undecided about the president’s decision to send in the National Guard. Both of those groups were mostly composed of registered independents, according to polling data.

The results are remarkably aligned with Trump’s overall job approval, with 51 percent of Americans disapproving of his job performance while 44 percent approve, as tracked by The Economist.

The YouGov poll was conducted before the Defense Department unveiled the price tag of sending active duty troops into Los Angeles: $134 million, paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

Exactly who is breaking the law in L.A. is in question. Americans have a First Amendment right to protest, as protected by the U.S. Constitution—a document that every sitting president and public official swears an oath to uphold. But Trump has directed the military to squash the protests without California’s authorization, prompting a lawsuit from the state to peel back the order. California Attorney General Rob Bonta told reporters Monday that Trump had “trampled” California’s sovereignty.

Furthermore, Trump’s enforcement of his national agenda directly violates the will of the city of Los Angeles: The Los Angeles City Council unanimously voted in November to establish itself as a “sanctuary city,” prohibiting city resources from being used for federal immigration enforcement. Thrusting the military into the city to help federal agents rip undocumented immigrants out of their communities oversteps what Angelinos voted for.

Trump’s order also violated the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law dating back to 1878, that forbids the government from using the military for law enforcement purposes. The White House could have bypassed the military doctrine by invoking the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to utilize the military during periods of rebellion or mass civil unrest, but had not done so by the time of the order. (Trump has openly discussed leveraging the nineteenth-century law to enact his agenda since his inauguration but has still not invoked the Insurrection Act as of the time of publishing.)

A month before the presidential election, the Brennan Center for Justice referred to the Posse Comitatus Act as “too flimsy a guardrail” to genuinely protect the nation from the White House, explaining that the principle within the act is protected “more by norms and historical practice” than the law itself. “Unfortunately, we’ve entered an era in which we can no longer rely on tradition to constrain executive action,” Joseph Nunn, a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, wrote at the time.

House Speaker Mike Johnson got draconian as he upped the ante on the Trump administration’s threats against California Governor Gavin Newsom.

During a press conference with House Republican leadership Tuesday, Johnson was asked whether he believed Newsom should face legal consequences, after Donald Trump said it would be “great” if acting ICE Director Tom Homan had him arrested for obstructing immigration enforcement operations in Los Angeles.

“That’s not my lane, I’m not gonna give you legal analysis on whether Gavin Newsom should be arrested, but he ought to be tarred and feathered, I’ll say that,” Johnson said.

“He’s standing in the way of the administration and carrying out of federal law. He is applauding the bad guys, and standing in the way of the good guys,” Johnson said, calling the governor a “participant and an accomplice” in the assault on federal officers.

“Do your job, stop working on your rebrand and be a governor,” Johnson added, likely referring to Newsom’s newfound centrist politics.

Newsom swiftly responded to Johnson’s comment, which seemed to sit somewhere between counseling ridicule and mob violence.

“Good to know we’re skipping the arrest and going straight for the 1700’s style forms of punishment,” Newsom wrote in a post on X. “A fitting threat given the @GOP want to bring our country back to the 18th Century.”

All of this started over the weekend when Homan was asked whether he would consider arresting Newsom or Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass if they got in the way of the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration enforcement. Homan said that no one was above the law but did not specifically threaten to arrest Newsom. On Monday, Trump said that he thought arresting Newsom would be a great P.R. stunt for the Democrat, but Newsom hit back saying that Trump’s green light was “an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism.”

Newsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit Monday against the Trump administration alleging that the president had overstepped his authority by deploying the National Guard to Los Angeles in response to protests opposing several ICE raids last week.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth revealed that the president’s plan to use the military against U.S. citizens will cost taxpayers a jaw-dropping sum.

Testifying before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense Tuesday, Hegseth initially refused to address how exactly his department’s overstretched budget would afford the sudden deployment of 700 Marines to Los Angeles—until he was backed into a corner. In the end, persistent questioning from the committee forced Hegseth to turn to his acting comptroller, Bryn Woollacott MacDonnell, to provide a figure for the unpopular deployment: $134 million.

MacDonnell said the sum would come from the department’s operations and maintenance accounts, though Hegseth seemed to have little idea how the money would actually be reshuffled.

“What is the current cost for what is taking place in California, and how is it going to affect this budget?” asked Representative Betty McCollum. “How much are these deployments going to cost, for both the Marines and the National Guard? And what training or duties are not taking place because of these deployments? Where in your limited budget, sir, are you going to find—in the remainder of this fiscal year—are you going to pull the money to cover these deployments? What holes are being created?”

After jotting a note to himself, Hegseth appealed to McCollum’s shared background in Minnesota, where he claimed that protests had been “improperly” handled in 2020.

“So in Los Angeles, we believe that ICE—which is a federal law enforcement agency—has the right to safely conduct operations in any state and any jurisdiction in the country, especially after 21 million illegals have crossed our border under the previous administration.” (Fact checks indicate that stat—which has been touted by Trump since he was on the campaign trail to stoke fear—is tangibly untrue. Approximately eight million undocumented immigrants crossed the U.S.-Mexico border during the Biden administration.)

“I asked a budget question. Could the secretary please address the budget? Thank you,” said McCollum.

“You asked about the situation in Los Angeles, and we believe that ICE agents should be allowed to be safe in doing their operations. We have deployed the National Guard and the Marines to protect them in the execution of their duties, because we ought to be able to enforce immigration law in this country, unlike what Governor [Tim] Walz did in 2020,” Hegseth continued, before going on about the “defund the police” movement that took root that year.

“Mister Chairman, if the secretary is not going to [answer] the budgetary questions, I will yield back my time if the secretary refuses to ask the budgetary questions put before him. They’re important,” McCollum said. “What training missions aren’t happening, where are you pulling the money from, and how are you planning this moving forward? These are budget questions that affect this committee and the decisions we’re going to be making in a couple of hours.”

Despite MacDonnell finally providing the estimated cost, questions remain about what will happen when the Marines finally step foot in Los Angeles. Despite the defense secretary’s pledge that the Marines are arriving in L.A. fully trained, Pentagon officials are reportedly still working to draft guidelines for soldiers who have never been tasked with engaging the public.

Trump’s order violated the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law dating back to 1878 that forbids the government from using the military for law enforcement purposes. The White House could have bypassed the military doctrine by invoking the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to utilize the military during periods of rebellion or mass civil unrest, but had not done so by the time of the order. (Trump has openly discussed leveraging the nineteenth-century law to enact his agenda since his inauguration but has still not invoked the Insurrection Act as of the time of publishing.)

The Marines are joining 4,100 National Guard members that Trump similarly tasked with disassembling the protests, against the wishes of local government officials. On Monday, California sued the Trump administration to roll back the National Guard’s deployment, citing logistical challenges that L.A. and state officials said would make it more difficult to safely handle the protests.

Senator Bill Cassidy promised the American people that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would not make any changes to the vaccine advisory committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when he cast his decisive confirmation vote for the health and human services secretary. But on Monday, RFK Jr. scrapped the board entirely, leaving Cassidy scrambling to explain himself and his vote. 

“Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion,” Cassidy posted on X after Kennedy explained his rationale in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “I’ve just spoken with Secretary Kennedy, and I’ll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case.”

When asked what he said specifically to Kennedy to “ensure” that the immunization advisory committee wouldn’t be run by anti-vaxxers, Cassidy went mum. 

“I’d rather just characterize it as: we had a conversation,” he told Semafor’s Burgess Everett on Tuesday. When Burgess asked if Cassidy was “still comfortable” with voting to confirm RFK Jr. in February, Cassidy replied, “I’d rather not comment on that.” 

During the confirmation process Cassidy explicitly guaranteed that “if confirmed, [RFK Jr.] will maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without changes.” Either Cassidy was lying, or RFK Jr. was lying to Cassidy.

Now all of the other promises that Cassidy made on RFK’s behalf—like not making false claims about vaccines causing autism, or even appearing before Congress on a quarterly basis—are moot. Cassidy claimed that he studied his decision to confirm Kennedy “exhaustively” and took it “very seriously.” It’s clear that Cassidy’s words meant nothing as Kennedy guts a key institution of our national health apparatus.  

Police in Philadelphia are searching for a man who robbed a business while masquerading as a Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, according to Fox 29.

A man wearing a tactical vest with the words “Security Enforcement Agent” entered a car repair business Monday afternoon and detained a 50-year-old woman from the Dominican Republic using zip-ties, before making away with roughly $1,000, according to police.

“He kept saying he is immigration officer,” the woman told Fox 29’s Steve Keeley.

Crimes like these are the inevitable result of the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on undocumented immigrants, as part of the government’s massive deportation efforts.

During recent ICE raids across the country, agents have declined to show identification or a warrant, often detaining people while wearing face masks to hide their identity, meaning that it’s not difficult to pretend to be an ICE agent and enact racialized violence and mayhem. The Trump administration’s escalating rhetoric targeting immigrants has already emboldened several ICE imposters who have been hit with charges such as kidnapping, assault, and of course, impersonating a federal officer.

The Trump administration’s decision to empower an extrajudicial enforcement agency that is not accountable to the citizens it purports to protect will likely continue to sow chaos across the country—particularly as the Trump administration has moved to increase the number of daily ICE arrests.