Pete Hegseth Refuses to Answer One Easy Question About L.A. Protests

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth clumsily dodged a question about where he’d draw the line on the use of federal forces against protesters.

During a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee Wednesday, Senator Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii, pressed Hegseth on whether he would carry out an order from the president “to shoot peaceful protesters in the legs.”

“Senator, as I’ve said before, of course I reject the premise of your question,” Hegseth replied. “And the characterization that I would be given or are given unlawful orders, it’s all meant as an attempt to smear the commander in chief, and I won’t fall for it.”

Hirono pointed out that the question was anything but hypothetical: “Considering that the president, in his first term, actually ordered such a thing, it’s not a premise that you can reject,” she replied.

During the widespread protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, Donald Trump had been enraged at the demonstrators and reportedly inquired to his Cabinet whether they could “just shoot them in the legs or something?” Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper called the president’s startling inquiry “a suggestion and a formal question.”

Hirono said that Trump might do the same to quell other protests, such as those in Los Angeles opposing sweeping immigration raids. “I think you would just follow what the president wants you to do,” she surmised.

Hirono also directly asked Hegseth whether he would remove federal forces from Los Angeles if a court ordered him to do so. Last week, he’d pushed back on the idea that “local judges” (read: federal judges) could interfere with the president’s plans.

“If a court says this deployment of troops into our cities is not legal, would you follow that court’s order?” Hirono asked.

Hegseth said that the issue was still pending, before doubling down on his statement attacking the courts. “I don’t believe district courts should be determining national security policy. When it goes to the Supreme Court, we’ll see,” he said.

“I take it that you don’t consider district court decisions to be legitimate,” Hirono summarized.

This has become a common defense for lawlessness by the Trump administration, which has argued that the courts have no place in challenging practically any aspect of the president’s agenda, from deportations to tariffs. As desperate as members of the Trump administration are to dismiss federal judges as so-called “local,” the courts remain a crucial pillar in the country’s checks and balances as set out in the U.S. Constitution.

Team Trump clearly hopes to send every decision up the pipeline to the conservative-majority Supreme Court, which more regularly sides with Trump.

On Tuesday, an appeals court seemed inclined to allow Trump’s federalization of the National Guard in Los Angeles, according to The New York Times.

President Trump took time on Wednesday to reaffirm his unwavering support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wars.

“I said, ‘Keep going.’ What do I say?” Trump said when asked about his recent conversations with Netanyahu. “I speak to him every day. He’s a good man … been very unfairly treated by his country, I think. Very unfairly.”

“Have you given him any indication that you may seek to aid them more than you have already?” a reporter asked.

“No.”

At this point in the Israel-Iran conflict, the U.S. has offered Israel intelligence and helped shoot Iranian missiles out of the air. Trump has also left the door open for further U.S. military intervention, a development that would make Netanyahu’s job that much easier.

Trump doesn’t seem willing to budge on his support for Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran under the guise of some potential nuclear threat, even as many in his own base oppose it in the name of “America First.” If anything, this war offers Netanyahu some temporary reprieve from attention on his genocide in Gaza.

If Trump believes Netanyahu is being treated unfairly even as he commits genocide in Gaza and provokes all-out war with Iran, all while failing to both eliminate Hamas and free all the Israeli hostages, then Trump is even more blindly committed to the prime minister than initially feared.

President Trump is reportedly furious with Tulsi Gabbard after the director of national intelligence posted a professionally produced, three-minute-long X video last week referencing past nuclear disasters. Gabbard’s post went mostly unnoticed at the time, but now seems like a clear rebuke of U.S. support for Israel’s war on Iran.

“As we stand here today, closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before, political elite warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers,” Gabbard says in the video as ominous music swells in the background. “And perhaps it’s because they are confident that they will have access to nuclear shelters for themselves and for their families that regular people won’t have access to. So it’s up to us, the people, to speak up and demand an end to this madness. We must reject this path to nuclear war and work toward a world where no one has to live in fear of a nuclear holocaust.”

The president was apparently not a fan of Gabbard’s unauthorized rebuke of the direction his administration was leaning on Israel, as multiple war hawks visited Trump just days before Gabbard posted the video.

“I don’t care what she said,” Trump stated on Tuesday when asked about Gabbard’s video on Air Force One. “I think they were very close to having a weapon.”

“I don’t think he dislikes Tulsi as a person.… But certainly the video made him not super hot on her … and he doesn’t like it when people are off message,” a senior administration official told Politico.

The beef between Trump and Gabbard shows that the MAGA split between blind military support for Israel versus “America First” anti-interventionists, like Gabbard, is much more than just an online spat. There is a real ideological schism on display with regard to Trump’s deference to Israel’s wars, and even die-hard Trump supporters have begun raising their voices against another endless war in the Middle East—something Trump promised to stop during his campaign.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor gave a scathing dissent of the Supreme Court’s decision Wednesday upholding Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary teenagers.

“Tennessee’s ban applies no matter what the minor’s parents and doctors think, with no regard for the severity of the minor’s mental health conditions or the extent to which treatment is medically necessary for an individual child,” Sotomayor wrote of the decision in United States v. Skrmetti, which was 6–3 along ideological lines.

Sotomayor asserted that “intermediate” judicial scrutiny was called for in making any decision where “the rights of ‘discrete and insular minorities’ are at stake.”

“The majority contorts logic and precedent to say otherwise, inexplicably declaring it must uphold Tennessee’s categorical ban on lifesaving medical treatment so long as ‘any reasonably conceivable state of facts’ might justify it,” she wrote.

She added, “Thus, the majority subjects a law that plainly discriminates on the basis of sex to mere rational-basis review. By retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most, the Court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims. In sadness, I dissent.”

Tennessee passed its ban on gender-affirming care in 2022, but the law was blocked in court before it could go into effect on July 1 the following year. Presiding Judge Eli Richardson, a Trump appointee, noted at the time that the defendants’ case for banning gender-affirming treatments was based entirely on the testimony of one doctor “who seems never to have treated an individual for gender dysphoria.”

But there is ample evidence, Richardson noted, that gender-affirming care “lowers rates of depression, suicide, and additional mental health issues” faced by trans and nonbinary minors.

In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the equal protections clause did “not resolve” the disagreements over “fierce scientific and policy debates about the safety, efficacy, and propriety of medical treatments in an evolving field.” This decision set a new precedent for reviewing bans and other restrictive laws under the lowest standard of judicial review—meaning such laws will more likely be upheld.

Roberts argued that Tennessee’s ban on hormone blockers to treat so-called “gender dysphoria” did not constitute discrimination, because it would not permit them to be prescribed to any sex for that purpose—which is, of course, still blatant discrimination.

The Supreme Court’s latest decision, which will undoubtedly endanger the lives of transgender and nonbinary people across the country, comes as the Trump administration has announced that it plans to shutter the suicide and crisis hotline specifically for LGBTQ+ youth within the next 30 days.

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump has reportedly given White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller one of his patented uninspired nicknames. 

In an interview on The Daily Beast’s podcast Fire and Fury, biographer Michael Wolff revealed that the president has a juvenile nickname for the ghoulish man behind Trump’s inhumane immigration crackdown. 

You’ve heard Crooked Hillary, Sleepy Joe, and Laughing Kamala, but now get ready for … Weird Stephen.

“There is an awareness that Stephen Miller is a problem,” Wolff explained. “And even Trump calls him ‘Weird Stephen.’ Because he is weird, by the way. I mean, you can’t spend a moment with him and not say, ‘Oh, something’s off here.’”

“He doesn’t make eye contact. And then he talks to you in this monotone voice, and it feels very revvy, you know, the engine of his voice keeps going, and you kind of step back,” Wolff said.

Miller has made several off-putting appearances on television to defend the president’s lawless immigration agenda, attacking habeas corpus and birthright citizenship. Miller often goes off the rails during these interviews, unable to keep his cool and getting more agitated the longer he speaks. 

Crucially, Miller isn’t just “weird”—he’s a white nationalist. And while maybe “Ethnostate Stephen” doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, it might cut more to the heart of things.  

A White House spokesperson responded to the claims that Trump has a lame nickname for Miller with a shocking amount of vitriol.

“Michael Wolff is a lying sack of shit, and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination—only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain,” the spokesperson said. 

In his interview with the Beast, Wolff also said that Trump had taken Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to task over the soldiers’ jovial performances during his underwhelming military birthday parade. 

Tucker Carlson exposed Senator Ted Cruz’s complete deference to Israel by asking him some very basic questions about Iran. Cruz was unable to answer, falling into one rhetorical trap after another until he snapped. The moment, a preview of Wednesday’s The Tucker Carlson Show, quickly went viral. 

“How many people live in Iran by the way?” Carlson asked the Texas senator.

“I don’t know the population,” Cruz replied. 

“At all?”

“No, I don’t know the population” 

“You don’t know the population of the country you seek to topple?” Carlson replied, clearly surprised. 

“How many people are living there?” Cruz asked.

“92 million.… How could you not know that?”

“I don’t sit around memorizing population tables.” 

“Well, it’s kind of relevant because you’re calling for the overthrow of the government.” 

Cruz grew continuously frustrated, calling Carlson’s line of questioning “cute,” while Carlson expressed alarm over the fact that a sitting Republican senator didn’t know very simple information about the country he’s calling for a U.S.-orchestrated coup in. Then, Cruz proceeded to slip.  

“You don’t believe they’re trying to murder Trump because you’re not calling for military strikes against them in retaliation,” Carlson said. 

“We are carrying out military strikes today—”

“You said Israel was,” Carlson replied, his ears perking up. 

“Right, with our help. I said ‘we.’ Israel is leading them; we’re supporting them.”

“Well, this, you’re breaking news here because the U.S. government last night denied, the National Security Council spokesman Alex Pfeiffer denied, on behalf of Trump, that we were acting on Israel’s behalf in any offensive capacity.” 

“We’re not bombing them, Israel’s bombing them,” Cruz replied, splitting hairs. 

“You just said we were.… This is high stakes, you’re a senator. If you’re saying the United States government is at war with Iran right now, people are listening.” 

Cruz tried to clean up his mess after-the-fact and stuck to the same talking points.

“Did a long interview w/ Tucker. He released a snippet playing a ‘gotcha’ on the population of Iran. I declined to play that silly game,” he said. “WATCH the full 2-hr interview, where Tucker ATTACKS Trump, attacks the ‘AIPAC lobby,’ & falsely claims Iran is NOT trying to assassinate Trump.”

“Why does @TuckerCarlson refuse to acknowledge indisputable truth? Facts don’t care about your feelings Tucker, and they certainly won’t bend to your narrative,” he said again, almost pleading with his followers. “Watch the FULL interview tomorrow where I call him out.”

The clip set off shockwaves throughout the political sphere, as it completely encapsulates the conflict between the MAGA right and the people like Cruz, who they refer to as “neocons.” To Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Alex Jones, and other classic Trump folk, the U.S. intervention in the conflict between Israel and Iran, which could very well result in a full-scale U.S. invasion of the latter, is an example of the endless wars Trump promised to stop. 

Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” would increase the total U.S. deficit by nearly $2.8 trillion over the next decade, according to a new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.

Previous estimates suggested that the massive spending bill would add $2.4 trillion to the national deficit over the next 10 years, but a “dynamic” estimate published Tuesday takes into account how the legislation would affect the U.S. economy—and things got even  more dire.

The CBO projected that an increase in economic output would decrease the primary deficit by $85 billion over the 2025–2034 period, while also significantly boosting interest rates, which would push the federal debt to a whopping $441 billion. 

“Incredible—CBO says the House-passed GOP bill pays for only 3.5% of itself,” Bobby Kogan, the senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, wrote on X Tuesday. 

Despite previous damning reports, MAGA Republicans backing the bill have continued to claim that the CBO is biased, rather than make any concessions, and have claimed that the CBO’s evaluations of the legislation’s cost don’t take the revenue from Trump’s sweeping global tariffs into effect. 

In a letter to Democratic lawmakers earlier this month, the CBO projected that Trump’s tariffs, as they were in mid-May, could decrease the deficit by $2.8 trillion—but said any projection came with some uncertainty, as Trump’s tariffs are ever-vacillating.

The newest analysis suggests that the costs will only go up after taking the economy into account. The CBO estimated that over the next decade, the legislation would affect the economy by increasing gross domestic product by an average of 0.5 percent, increasing the interest rates on 10-year Treasury notes by 14 basis points, and increasing inflation “by a small amount” through 2030, but not afterward. 

Embattled Senator John Fetterman continues to express his bloodlust on behalf of Israel.

Fetterman told Fox News that he would oppose Senator Tim Kaine’s Resolution to Prevent War With Iran, which states that, “It is not in our national security interest to get into a war with Iran unless that war is absolutely necessary to defend the United States.”

Fetterman responded sharply, “I’m going to vote it down.… I really hope the president finally does bomb and destroy the Iranians,” he said.

This comment from Fetterman, who has emerged as one of Israel’s staunchest loyalists in the Senate, is reminiscent of his call for the slaughter of “all” Palestinians, saying that you “can’t reform sour milk.” Those comments, like his Iran ones, come as Israel acts as the clear aggressor toward both countries. These troubling statements make it impossible to ignore his tumultuous mental health, as he has taken a sharp diversion from the progressive policies he ran on.

Fetterman tried to clarify his statement in the replies: “To be perfectly clear: destroying the Iranian regime,” he wrote. “Free the Iranian citizens from this cancerous, repressive, and authoritarian regime.”

It’s hard to imagine how to destroy the regime without killing many Iranians as well.

Masked ICE agents detained New York City Comptroller Brad Lander Tuesday. But rather than focus on the fact that federal agents are targeting American citizens, government accounts worked to add their own spin to the situation, trying to make Lander appear guilty of a crime that didn’t seem to occur.

Lander was dragged from Federal Plaza by immigration officers after he tried to escort a defendant out of immigration court, according to his wife, Meg Barnette. The tense situation was thoroughly documented as Lander was strong-armed down a hallway, calmly asking agents if they could display their warrant as he was manhandled.

“You don’t have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens,” Lander said. “I’m not obstructing, I’m standing right here in the hallway. I asked to see the judicial warrant.”

Yet within hours, the official X account for the Department of Homeland Security claimed that Lander had assaulted law enforcement officers.

“New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer,” the account wrote. “Our heroic ICE law enforcement officers face a 413 percent increase in assaults against them—it is wrong that politicians seeking higher office undermine law enforcement safety to get a viral moment.”

Videos leading up to Lander’s arrest depict him gripping the individual ICE was trying to detain but did not show the comptroller assaulting anyone.

Yet DHS claimed, “No one is above the law, and if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will face consequences.”

Lander’s arrest summoned immediate local backlash, with a wave of politicians and protesters descending on 26 Federal Plaza in the aftermath of the comptroller’s seemingly groundless detention. Included in the mix was mayoral front-runner Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, who recently joined arms with Lander in their ranked-choice race to Gracie Mansion.

As the protest continued, Barnette posted an update on her 55-year-old husband: “Brad is still in ICE custody.”

It is not clear if Lander will face charges.

“This is profoundly unacceptable. Arresting Comptroller Lander for the simple act of standing up for immigrants and their civil rights is a shocking abuse of power,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James, calling the affair a “grotesque escalation of tensions.”

Good news: Bullying works.

Senator Mike Lee has deleted his three horrific social media posts mocking the assassination of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband, and the attempted assassination of another Democratic state lawmaker and his wife.

The Huffington Post’s Jennifer Bendery confirmed Tuesday that Lee had deleted three posts on his X account addressing a gunman’s violent spree Saturday that claimed the life of state Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark.

Lee told journalist Matt Laslo that he’d decided to remove his posts after speaking with Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar. “It was important to her that I take it down,” Lee reportedly told Laslo. “We’re good friends. I took it down.”

The Utah Republican had suggested that’s just what happens when “Marxists don’t get their way.” The alleged shooter, Vance Boelter, has since been confirmed as a staunch Trump supporter.

“Nightmare on Waltz [sic] Street,” Lee posted again, referring to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

The disgusting tweets have summoned a tidal wave of criticism against Lee, who was seen fleeing from reporters attempting to ask him about them.

Minnesota Senator Tina Smith’s deputy chief of staff eviscerated Lee in an email to his office Monday, questioning whether his posts about Minnesota felt like a “successful day of work on Team Lee?” The senator herself cornered Lee on Capitol Hill that evening, telling him he had been “brutal and cruel.”

This story has been updated.