MAGA Desperately Scrambles to Claim Minnesota Assassin Is a Democrat

Vance Boelter allegedly shot and killed Democratic Minnesota state Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Saturday. Hours later, conservatives were twisting Boelter’s political ideology to shield MAGA, claiming that the suspected cop/masked killer was a deranged leftist seeking violent retribution.

In reality, Boelter was a Trump supporter who voted for Donald Trump in November, his best friend David Carlson told reporters Saturday. Boelter was a longtime conservative who was a registered Republican when he and his wife lived in Oklahoma in the early 2000s. He was against abortion rights but “never mentioned any particular anger with the lawmakers who were shot,” Carlson told CNN.

None of that seemed to faze conservatives, however, who spent the aftermath of the attack skewing Boelter’s beliefs to frame the other side of the aisle.

Long after reports spilled out that Boelter was a conservative, Elon Musk took to X to claim that “the far left is murderously violent,” quote tweeting a self-described MAGA Trumper lumping Boelter into the left, which she said had become a “full blown domestic terrorist organization.”

Saturday night, far-right influencer Laura Loomer told her followers that the media was trying to “gaslight” Americans into believing that the “shooter in Minnesota is a Trump supporter.” Loomer also decried local organizers of the nationwide “No Kings” movement, and called for their detention alongside Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s 2024 vice presidential pick.

Podcast host Alec Lace questioned if Hortman was “fearful” that “her base would become unhinged,” after she sided with Republicans as the lone Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) party member to repeal state health care for undocumented immigrants.

“Was her vote the motive?” posited Lace.

The tune had still not changed by Sunday, when Fox News contributor Paul Mauro described Boelter’s political background as “murky” while advancing the conspiracy that Hortman had been assassinated for her vote, rejecting Carlson’s recollection of his friend by claiming that he had not offered enough details to qualify Boelter as a conservative.

“The political backdrop of this is, again, murky. Going to the roommate, yea, [Boelter] voted for Donald Trump, but he was not engaged in local politics,” Mauro said. “And I didn’t know anything — that he even knew these local politicians, he didn’t seem to be very engaged in all of that. He says the only thing that [Boelter] seemed to be engaged with politically was that he was anti-abortion. That seems to be the only solid thing that the roommate can point to.”

Mauro then claimed that Boelter had “associations” with Walz and had received money from the governor.

Boelter “stalked his victims like prey” and “shot them in cold blood,” acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Joseph Thompson said during a press conference Monday, likening Boelter’s alleged crime to “the stuff of nightmares.” The 57-year-old reportedly approached the Hortman residence and the home of Minnesota Senator John Hoffman dressed as a cop in tactical gear and a hyper-realistic silicon mask.

Hortman also owned a police-styled SUV with a license plate that read “police.” The car “looked exactly like an SUV squad car,” equipped with emergency lights, according to Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley. It was convincing enough that it fooled an officer who was dispatched to conduct a wellness check on a politician in the city of New Hope after Boelter allegedly attacked Hoffman and his wife. Upon seeing the vehicle near the lawmaker’s home, the officer pulled up alongside Boelter’s car, believing that he was another cop who had beaten them to the scene, before allowing Boelter to slip away, according to Thompson.

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials reportedly told an Australian writer who was detained and deported upon his arrival in Los Angeles that he was being removed for writing about pro-Palestinian protests on his personal blog, according to The Guardian.

In a thread of posts on X Sunday, Alistair Kitchen said he had just landed back in Australia after 12 hours in detention and a 30-hour round trip. “They just came out and said it: ‘We both know why you’ve been detained … it’s because of what you wrote about the protests at Columbia,’” Kitchen recounted.

Kitchen, who lived in New York for six years before moving back to Australia in 2024, had written about the campus protests at Columbia University opposing Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza for his Substack blog Kitchen Counter. Kitchen was a master’s student in creative writing at Columbia at the time.

In his thread, Kitchen said that officials were waiting for him when he got off the plane and seemed to already have a file containing information about him, despite a social media sweep he’d conducted ahead of his trip just to be safe. “If you are deleting social media ~48hrs before your flight to the US, *it is already too late,*” Kitchen warned in another post.

Kitchen told The Guardian that CBP officers claimed they’d found evidence of drug use on his phone, despite his responses to an ESTA form. Although he doubted that there was any actual evidence, he admitted to having lied. In his thread, Kitchen said that he regretted giving officers the password to his phone, and allowed himself to be barred from entering the United States.

Earlier this year, Customs and Border Patrol began to increase screenings of immigrants’ phones, computers, cameras, and other devices. In March, a French scientist was reportedly denied entry to the U.S. due to texts criticizing Donald Trump.

Kitchen wrote a blog in March about Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student and lead negotiator for the students’ protest encampment who was detained by ICE despite possessing a green card.

“The goal here is the deportation of dissent,” Kitchen wrote at the time.

“This is a mode of speech suppression that seeks to physically remove the undesirable elements it can, and, through fear, ensure silence in everyone else,” he added, referring to Trump‘s executive order targeting so-called “Hamas sympathizers” with student visas.

Last week, a judge ruled that Secretary of State Marco Rubio could not detain and deport Khalil on the flimsy basis that he threatened U.S. foreign policy interests—but the Trump administration is still intent on keeping Khalil behind bars.

A judge appointed by Ronald Reagan just ruled that President Trump’s cuts to DEI-related equity research grants at the National Institutes of Health were both discriminatory and illegal.

The Trump administration, led by DOGE, cut more than $1.81 billion in National Institutes of Health grants in less than 40 days. The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities got the worst of it, with 30 percent of its grant funding being cut—twice the average. Grants focusing on Black women’s maternal health and HIV were also slashed. The cuts were made on the grounds that “so-called diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) studies are often used to support unlawful discrimination on the basis of race.”

Today Judge William Young, 84, declared those cuts “illegal” and “void.”

“I am hesitant to draw this conclusion, but I have an unflinching obligation to draw it–that this represents racial discrimination. And discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community. That’s what this is. I would be blind not to call it out. My duty is to call it out,” he wrote in his ruling. “It is palpably clear that these directives and the set of terminated grants here also are designed to frustrate, to stop, research that may bear on the health—we’re talking about health here, the health of Americans, of our LGBTQ community. That’s appalling.”

Young continued, clearly upset with the Trump administration’s action.

“I’ve never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable. I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this.... I ask myself, how can this be?” he said. “I have the protection that the Founders wrote into the Constitution, along with imposing upon me a duty to speak the truth in every case. I try to do that. What if I didn’t have those protections? What if my job was on the line, my profession? ... Would I have stood up against all this? Would I have said, ‘You can’t do this?’ You are bearing down on people of color because of their color. The Constitution will not permit that.

“Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?”

Even with Young’s ruling’s spirited proclamation, there is no indication that Trump will actually follow it and reinstate the NIH grants.

The Trump administration is thinking about adding 26 more countries—most of them African—to his travel ban list.

The Washington Post obtained a Trump administration memo that would give the 26 countries listed 60 days to capitulate to State Department demands. Some countries were flagged for having “no competent or cooperative central government authority to produce reliable identity documents or other civil documents,” or “government fraud.” There was also a requirement against “antisemitic and anti-American activity in the United States” by people from the listed countries. Nearly all of the listed countries are in Africa, the Caribbean, or the Middle East.

The added countries are:

Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Ethiopia, Egypt, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, South Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Tonga, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Trump already banned travelers from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen earlier in June.

This is a xenophobic blanket policy that singles out Arab and African countries. And one thing Trump doesn’t seem to care about is how the timing and targets of this ban will impact both the 2026 World Cup in New York, Atlanta, Boston, and more, and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. These events, often massive international draws, could very well turn into ICE outposts, discouraging people from attending entirely. And even if it doesn’t, the reputational hit alone could do further damage to America’s international goodwill.

America’s leader decided to open the international G7 summit with a long complaint, seemingly in support of Russia.

Speaking before the global trade coalition, Donald Trump lamented that the group—which consists of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the EU—would not allow Russia to join its ranks.

“The G7 used to be the G8,” Trump said. “Barack Obama and a person named Trudeau didn’t want to have Russia in, and I would say that that was a mistake, because I think you wouldn’t have a war right now if you had Russia in,” he added, referring to the former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The seven other members of the then G8 suspended Russia’s membership in 2014 as punishment for Moscow’s annexation of Crimea. But Trump doesn’t seem to have as many qualms about Russia’s efforts to seize neighboring territories.

“And you wouldn’t have a war right now if Trump were president four years ago, but it didn’t work out that way,” he continued, referring to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “But it used to be the G8, and now it’s, I guess, what’s that, nine years ago? Eight years ago? They threw Russia out, which I claimed was a very big mistake even though I wasn’t in politics then. I was very loud about it.

“You spend so much time talking about Russia, and he’s no longer at the table, so it makes life more complicated, but you wouldn’t have had the war,” Trump added.

As Trump’s rant continued, the summit’s leadership stepped in to intervene.

“I’m going to exercise my role, if you will, as G7 chair,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said as reporters continued to shout questions at the U.S. president about the escalating Iran-Israel conflict.

The U.S. has played a weaker and weaker hand in its game against Russia since Trump’s inauguration. On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of returning to power—but that hasn’t been the case.

Instead, Trump’s aggression toward Ukraine (which included scolding and mocking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a livestreamed White House meeting) and his repeated concessions on Russia’s enduring violence have been interpreted by Kremlin propagandists as a massive win for Russian President Vladimir Putin, resulting in televised laughter on Russian programs at the downfall of American power.

In the months since he took office, Trump has claimed that Russia has come ready and willing to reach a peace deal, even though many of its demands—such as staking a Russian flag in Crimea—reverse long-standing U.S. policy.

Following a deadly airstrike on Kyiv last month, European leaders urged Western countries to enact sanctions on Moscow as a way to reel Putin back to the negotiating table. But Trump responded by wringing his hands, claiming that applying pressure on Russia would “hurt” a deal.

Just about everyone in the U.S.—including Trump’s own party—wants the White House to act. By late May, Senate Republicans resorted to begging Trump to take a stand against Russia while they mulled over the possibility of going over his head to enact the internationally recommended sanctions. Senate Majority Leader John Thune announced last week that the upper chamber would begin work on a sanctions bill sometime this month.

Those realities pushed Senator Mitch McConnell into a terse exchange with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week, in which the high-ranking Republican questioned the Cabinet official regarding which side the White House actually wanted to win.

Health care professionals at the Department of Veterans Affairs can now discriminate against Democrats, and it’s all thanks to Donald Trump’s anti-trans executive order.

While medical staff are still required to treat patients regardless of race, color, religion, or sex, new rules at the VA have explicitly removed protections based on political party affiliation, martial status, and national origin, The Guardian reported Monday.

Similarly, health care professionals can now be banned from working at the VA over their political affiliation, marital status, and union membership, according to documents obtained by The Guardian.

The new rule changes apply to professionals across disciplines, including doctors, certified nurse practitioners, psychologists, dentists, chiropractors, optometrists, podiatrists, licensed clinical social workers, and speech therapists.

Dr. Arthur Caplan, founding head of the division of medical ethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, told The Guardian that the VA’s new rules were “extremely disturbing and unethical.”

“It seems on its face an effort to exert political control over the VA medical staff,” Caplan said. “What we typically tell people in healthcare is: ‘You keep your politics at home and take care of your patients.’

“Those views aren’t relevant to caring for patients. So why would we put anyone at risk of losing care that way?” Caplan added.

VA press secretary Peter Kasperowicz told The Guardian that the changes were just a “formality” made in order to comply with Trump’s executive order “defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government.”

Trump’s executive order attempting to redefine the government’s definitions of gender and sexuality has already upended essential medical care for transgender patients across the country and opened the door for a sweeping crackdown on LGBTQ+ rights throughout the federal government.

The Trump administration has also taken part in a disturbing trend of targeting Democrats with violence and chaos. On Sunday, the president threatened to expand his inhumane immigration enforcement efforts to areas where voters support Democratic candidates. On Saturday, two democratic lawmakers in Minnesota and their families were assassinated.

These new rules are also spurred by a Republican leadership that has embraced the nuclear American family in its desperation to cling to some invented past, sought to punish divorced people, and undermined programs that help single parents.

The “Trump Phone” is coming this fall.

President Trump’s son Eric Trump went on Fox Business’s Mornings with Maria to discuss how the new phone can be used to “correct” a political sphere they think is unfairly targeting them.

“More and more we’re using technology as a company to correct the problems. Obviously Truth Social was to correct freedom of speech, right? I mean, he lost his throughout the political process. Obviously crypto—we’ve got the biggest projects in crypto—was to correct another problem, the fact that they were debanking all conservatives. I was the most cancelled person probably in the country,” the president’s second son said. “And now we’ve got Trump Mobile, and Trump Mobile is going to revolutionize, kind of, cell phones, mobile calling.”

“We’re going to do it better, we’re going to do it safer, we’re going to have more functionality, more features. And the coolest thing about all these ventures is that we’re doing it right here in the United States. You’re not calling up call centers in Bangladesh, you’re doing it right out of St. Louis, Missouri. You’re gonna have phones that are made right here in the United States of America.… It’s gonna be cheaper, 47 bucks a month, you’re gonna have more international dialing for free, hundreds of countries.… It is the biggest bang for the buck, and we’re really excited to get into this space.… Obviously real estate’s always been our bread and butter but … I really believe we’re gonna have one of the great kind of tech platforms as part of the Trump organization.”

The phone drops in September for $499 (preorder for $100 down) and we still don’t even know what it really looks like, if it’s waterproof, or if it will actually be made in America, as no notable smartphone is. All we know it that it’s Trump’s, and that will very well be enough for some people. The Verge’s David Pierce noted that it would be “utterly unfathomable” for the Trump Organization to produce a good, working phone at that price, with multiple contradictory specs, in the next three months.

This family just cannot stop coming up with these modern snake oil salesmen side hustles that likely work on a good chunk of their base. From the Trump Gold Card, to pawning his influence to the highest crypto buyer, to even the sneakers—these guys will stop at nothing to make a buck. All while we’re forced to take them at their word over questions about conflicts of interest with the Trump Organization and President Trump.

The possibilities are endless here. Will the phones be some kind of Google Pixel or Samsung dupe? Will they have spyware? Will they actually carry out any of the features Eric Trump described above? Only time will tell.

The president is mulling over the possibility of throwing the United States into war with Iran.

Speaking with ABC News Sunday, Donald Trump refused to answer whether the U.S. would wade into the conflict. He said that American forces were not currently involved in the conflict but that they “could get involved.” Trump also mentioned that he had spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli officials about the boiling situation.

“We’re not involved in it. It’s possible we could get involved,” Trump said. “But we are not at this moment involved.”

Israel and Iran traded missiles for the third straight day Sunday in an escalating conflict that has so far killed 224 people in Iran and 14 people in Israel. Some of the Iranian casualties were military targets: Two regional sources told Reuters that 20 senior commanders had been killed, as well as six of the country’s top nuclear scientists.

On Thursday, Iranian officials announced their intentions to expand their nuclear program, despite facing censure from a U.N. nuclear watchdog for failing to uphold nonproliferation obligations. Iran has argued that it is seeking uranium for peaceful purposes. But the nation walked back plans of a weekend discussion to negotiate their nuclear program in the wake of Israel’s attack.

Speaking with ABC, Trump downplayed concerns that the nuclear talks—which were in the sixth round—had collapsed.

“There’s no deadline,” Trump said. “But they are talking. They’d like to make a deal. They continue to talk.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly asked Trump to consider a strike on Iran’s Fordo nuclear facility. Israeli missiles hit Iran’s Natanz fuel enrichment plant site Friday, but satellite imagery indicates only minor damage at the Fordo facility.

As the two Middle Eastern nations traded missiles late last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted that the U.S. was “not involved in strikes against Iran.” But that information was immediately contradicted by Israeli and senior U.S. officials, who all confirmed America’s involvement in the emerging conflict.

But why the U.S. is embedded in a new global conflict is unclear. Trump earned national support in part due to his isolationist campaign promises and his pledge to swiftly end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Six months into his second term, he has not only failed to do either but has seemingly embroiled the U.S. in a dire situation in the Middle East.

In a phone call with ABC News’s Jonathan Karl Friday morning, the president referred to the Israeli attacks as “excellent,” remarking that Iran “got hit hard, very hard,” and that there was “a lot more” to come.

Senator Rand Paul slammed Donald Trump’s pathetic military birthday parade as un-American.

During an appearance on NBC News’s Meet the Press Sunday, the Kentucky Republican revealed that he was “not a big fan” of Trump’s outrageous military parade.

“I’ve just never liked the idea of the parade, because I grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, and the only parades I can remember are Soviet parades for the most part, or North Korean parades.”

Rand explained that, historically, American parades haven’t been about demonstrating military might, but about celebrating peace, safety, and victory.

“We were rejoicing the end of war, we were rejoicing our soldiers coming home, and that absolutely ought to be commemorated, discussed every year—Memorial Day, Veterans Day—but just, we never glorified weapons so much,” he said.

“I know [Trump] means well, I don’t think he means for any of this to be depicted in another fashion, but I’m just not a big fan,” Paul continued.

Paul also noted the cost seemed especially inappropriate while the country was “two trillion in the hole.” The festivities have reportedly run up a whopping $40 million price tag.

The Kentucky senator’s practically peacenik turn extended into comments on the Middle East, and he chastized Senator Lindsey Graham for his barbaric response to Israel’s strike on Iran.

“Well, his initial response was, ‘Game on,’ and I don’t consider war to be a game,” Paul said. He added that he hoped Trump’s “instincts” to not get involved in war would prevail despite pressure from Graham and other Republicans.

Last week, Paul took a shot at Trump over the annual White House picnic, from which the Republican claimed his family had been disinvited over his opposition to raising the debt ceiling to fund Trump’s “big beautiful bill,” which will add $2.4 trillion to the national deficit over the next decade. Trump stepped in, assuring the senator he was invited and calling him the “toughest vote in the history of the U.S. Senate.”

Paul told NBC News that while speaking to Trump at the parade, he’d told the president that he was “not an absolute no.”

“I don’t have as much trouble with the tax cuts. I think there should be more spending cuts, but if they want my vote, they’ll have to negotiate,” Paul said, but doubled down on his concerns about raising the debt ceiling.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement may not have the cash to carry out Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda.

The agency is already $1 billion over budget and could run out of funds as soon as next month, Axios reported Monday. The task force’s dwindling bank account has sparked concerns among lawmakers on both sides of the aisle that the president might look to cannibalize other agencies or sources of revenue in order to keep hunting and forcing people out of the country.

Some lawmakers warned that ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, could be in violation of the law if it continues to spend at its current rate.

“Trump’s DHS is spending like drunken sailors,” Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy told Axios.

Trump has tasked ICE to “do all in their power” to create the “single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.” That includes expanding its efforts to specifically target Democratic-led cities around the country, including Chicago and New York.

“These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday night, continuing to elevate an election conspiracy that failed to collect evidence and was thoroughly disproven in the wake of the 2020 election. “These Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities—And they are doing a good job of it! There is something wrong with them.”

Trump and his allies have continued to apply pressure on future U.S. elections by advancing executive orders that would require citizens to display additional documentation before they are allowed to drop their ballot at the voting booth. Last week, a federal judge blocked portions of one such order, writing that adding barriers to the voting process would only harm eligible voters. That is, especially given the fact that it is illegal and impossible for noncitizens to vote in U.S. elections.

“That is why they believe in Open Borders, Transgender for Everybody, and Men playing in Women’s Sports—And that is why I want ICE, Border Patrol, and our Great and Patriotic Law Enforcement Officers, to FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role,” the president continued in his post. “You don’t hear about Sanctuary Cities in our Heartland!”

But exactly how ICE is supposed to meet Trump’s demand is becoming increasingly unclear. The agency has already required assistance from other law enforcement services—such as the FBI, the DEA, and the ATF—in order to help meet its White House-imposed quota of 3,000 immigration-related arrests per day, CNN reported last month.

The demand has placed even more pressure on Congress to pass Trump’s “big, beautiful” bill, which would allot $75 billion to ICE over the next five years.