Ukranians Praise “Agent Melania” for Trump’s Sudden Russia Pivot

Ukrainians have begun to credit First Lady Melania Trump for her husband’s 180 on support for Russia and President Vladimir Putin in their all out war on Ukraine.

“My conversations with [Putin] are always very pleasant. I say, isn’t that a very lovely conversation? And then the missiles go off that night,” Trump told reporters on Monday while describing his frustration with Putin. “I go home. I tell the first lady, you know, ‘I spoke with Vladimir today. We had a wonderful conversation.’ She said, ‘Oh, really? Another city was just hit.’”

Putin is making Trump look incredibly foolish for supporting him for so long, and Trump says Melania helped him realize it. Ukrainians have picked up on this.

“Agent Melania Trumpenko,” one user wrote over a picture of the First Lady in her infamous inauguration hat with a Ukrainian military insignia edited onto her shirt.

In recent days, Trump has announced the United States will funnel new weapons to Kyiv and threatened secondary sanctions on Russia. While Melania’s input likely isn’t the only reason Trump has switched up on Ukraine, it seems to have played a role. This isn’t the first time Melania, who was born in Slovenia (a strong ally of Ukraine), has expressed support for Ukraine.

“It is heartbreaking and horrific to see innocent people suffering. My thoughts and prayers are with the Ukrainian people,” she wrote in February 2022, days after Russia invaded. “Please, if you can, donate to help them [at the] International Committee of the Red Cross.”

Asked whether Attorney General Pam Bondi told him his name is in the Epstein files, President Trump doubled down on the far-fetched notion that the whole thing is the product of a Democratic conspiracy against him.

Speaking to reporters, the president revealed that he’d received “a very quick briefing” on the files from Bondi, leading one to ask whether his own name appears in them. (Trump, after all, had a storied relationship with the deceased sex criminal.)

“No, no, she’s given us just a very quick briefing,” Trump replied, before venturing the paranoid notion that the Epstein affair is actually a Democratic plot to take him down.

“In terms of the credibility of the different things that they’ve seen, and I would say that, you know, these files were made up by [former FBI Director James] Comey. They were made up by Obama. They were made up by the Biden inf—you know.”

He then deferred to Bondi, who he said has handled the situation “very well.”

“It’s going to be up to her,” he continued. “Whatever she thinks is credible, she should release.” Bondi responded shortly thereafter, telling reporters, “Today, our memo speaks to itself, and we’ll get back to you on anything else. I haven’t seen all of [Trump’s] statements today.”

Meanwhile, House Republicans have blocked Democrats’ attempts to force the release of the files, and MAGA rancor over the matter is going nowhere.

Over the past week, Trump has been enduring a revolt from his political base over a recently released Justice Department memo that deflated conspiracy theories (that his own top officials had previously elevated) about elite figures’ ties to Epstein.

The memo found that Epstein had maintained no “client list” and stated that no more information related to his case would be released. Trump’s supporters predictably objected, with many turning against Bondi.

The president over the weekend pleaded with his “boys” and “gals” to drop the subject. On Truth Social, he suggested, as on Tuesday, that the true Epstein conspiracy is that a slew of his adversaries, such as Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden, had created Epstein-related, “Radical Left inspired Documents” in order to undermine him.

This new tack—that a MAGA cause célèbre was, in reality, a left-wing conspiracy all along—seems unlikely to dissuade the countless people, across the political aisle, who are now hungrier than ever for answers about Epstein’s death and connections.

Even after President Donald Trump publicly gave her the go-ahead, Attorney General Pam Bondi desperately skirted questions about the release of additional files on Jeffrey Epstein.

Last week, the Department of Justice published a two-page memo declaring that the alleged sex trafficker kept no “incriminating ‘client list,’” despite Bondi previously claiming that she’d been in possession of such a document. After months of being promised answers on Epstein’s clients, Trump supporters are outraged, with some even calling for Bondi to resign.

During a press conference Tuesday about steps the agency was taking to combat drug trafficking, Bondi refused to answer questions about Trump’s statement saying that the attorney general should release “whatever she thinks is credible” from the files.

“This today is about fentanyl. This is about a wall of people right outside this room who have died from—I appreciate your question—but this today is about fentanyl overdoses throughout our country, and people who have lost loved ones to fentanyl. That is the message that we’re here to send today,” Bondi replied to a reporter asking if she would release more files.

“Nothing about Epstein. I’m not going to talk about Epstein,” Bondi said.

She continued to urge reporters to ask questions “only on topic.”

Yet another reporter asked about Trump’s comment. “The president said today you would release credible files related to Epstein. Are you prepared to do that, and when would you do that?” they asked.

“Our memo—today our memo speaks for itself,” Bondi said. “We’ll get back to you on anything else. I haven’t seen all of his statements today.”

“How do you respond to the MAGA base that has expressed a lot of frustration about Epstein?” the reporter pressed.

“We’re going to fight to keep America safe again and we’re fighting together as a team. That’s what’s so important right now,” Bondi said.

Meanwhile, Trump has taken to bullying his allies into line.

House Republicans on Tuesday blocked a Democratic attempt to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files, with zero Republicans supporting the measure. The final vote was 211 to 210. One Republican with a spine would have tipped the scale and given the American people greater transparency on the Epstein saga.

Democrats tried to force a vote on releasing the files, after Republicans struck down an amendment in the House Rules committee on Monday evening. The procedural maneuver, which would have triggered a vote on the amendment requiring Trump’s Justice Department to release the Epstein files within 30 days, was rejected yet again, with all 211 opposing votes coming from Republicans. Nine Republicans abstained from the vote.

The nine Republicans who chose not to vote were: Andy Ogles (TN), Michael McCaul (TX), Thomas Massie (KY), Barry Loudermilk (GA), Wesley Hunt (TX), Morgan Lutrell (TX), Mark Green (TN), Monica De La Cruz (TX), and Buddy Carter (GA).

Even Republicans who have been particularly vocal about the Epstein files, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, voted against allowing debate on the amendment.

Democratic Representative Mary Gay Scanlon offered the motion to trigger the vote on the amendment, which was first introduced by Democratic Representative Ro Khanna.

The Epstein files have become a major point of contention within the MAGA movement, as the base expresses anger and frustration towards the Trump administration for dismissing a case that has fueled their political actions for years now.

Republicans have decided that protecting the president and his friends is more important than fulfilling promises they made to their most loyal voters, and the American people at large. The House GOP had a real chance to take a stand and demand that the Epstein files be released to the public. They chose not to.

This story has been updated.

Mike Waltz at his Tuesday Senate confirmation hearing faced scrutiny for retaining his six-figure White House salary despite being ousted from his post as national security adviser.

Trump in May removed Waltz from his role at the National Security Agency and announced his nomination as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Waltz had by then been embroiled in scandal for months over the “Signalgate” fiasco, in which he created a Signal group chat to discuss classified planned military strikes in Yemen and accidentally added Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg.

And yet, according to the Associated Press, Waltz has remained on the White House payroll, receiving a $195,200 annual taxpayer-funded salary.

Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada brought this up as Waltz testified before the Senate Tuesday, and the Trump nominee hit back with a tried and true Trumpism: fake news.

“Despite being removed from your role as national security adviser in May—removed from your role, right, not working—surprisingly, you’ve been on the White House payroll for the last few months,” Rosen said. “Throughout this hearing, you’ve made assertations that, if confirmed, you would root out waste and unnecessary overhead at the U.N. So, can you confirm for us whether you’ve been receiving a salary from the White House since being let go at the NSA?”

Waltz held that he “was not fired” and was “kept on as an adviser transitioning a number of important activities.”

“So you’re saying that you were not dismissed as was publicly reported?” Rosen asked.

“The reporting, senator, is fake news, which shouldn’t surprise anyone,” Waltz said.

Indeed, a White House official told the AP that Waltz stayed on to “ensure a smooth and successful transition,” and, per Politico, his title was changed to merely “adviser.” It’s unclear exactly what Waltz has been doing for the past few months, yet his six-figure salary has remained unchanged—a situation in which the nominee, who’s promised to bring Trump’s mission against purported “waste” to the U.N., apparently sees no irony.

Former national security adviser Mike Waltz took a page out of Donald Trump’s handbook Tuesday as he presented a wild scapegoat for his involvement in the Signalgate scandal.

During his confirmation hearing to become the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Waltz was asked about the fallout of mistakenly adding the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic to a Signal group chat where several high-ranking Trump Cabinet members openly discussed highly sensitive war plans.

“Were you investigated for this disclosure of sensitive operational information on Signal?” asked Connecticut Senator Chris Coons, who noted that it was common wisdom that the app was “not an appropriate, secure means of communicating highly sensitive information.”

“Thank you Senator, and that engagement was driven by and recommended by the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency, by the Biden administration CISA guidance,” Waltz stammered, peppering his response with several “uhs” that have been removed for clarity.

“I’m sorry,” Coons cut in. “Was the use of secure information on Signal—”

“The use of, no excuse me, the use of Signal is not only—as an encrypted app—is not only authorized, it was recommended in Biden’s, the Biden era CISA guidance,” Waltz continued, somehow finding a way to blame former President Joe Biden for his own egregious gaffe.

CISA best practices guidance released in December 2024 recommended the use of Signal for “highly targeted individuals” seeking “end-to-end encryption” and protection against cyber attacks. It doesn’t note how to prevent adding journalists from top secret group chats. A 2023 memo from the Department of Defense, however, prohibited the use of Signal and other “unmanaged apps” to discuss “non-public DoD information.”

New Jersey Senator Cory Booker took Waltz to task over another of his weak attempts to pin his enormous fumble on Goldberg. Waltz had previously claimed that the editor’s phone number had been “sucked in” to his phone by “somebody else’s contact.” Waltz also claimed he didn’t know Goldberg and called him “the bottom scum of journalists.”

“You said this journalist intentionally infiltrated that Signal chain. You said that he was ‘sucked in.’ You denied, deflected, and then you did something that really, to me, really lacks integrity, is that you sought out to demean and degrade that very journalist in crass and frankly cruel ways that made him a target,” Booker said. “That’s not leadership, when you blame people that tell the truth. That’s not leadership when you can’t say the words, ‘I made a mistake.’”

Lara Trump called for “more transparency” on the government’s disastrous investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.

Last week, the Justice Department’s memo declaring that Epstein kept no “incriminating ‘client list’” led to widespread outrage from Donald Trump’s supporters, who’d waited with bated breath for the administration to release a list of names.

During an appearance on conservative YouTuber Benny Johnson’s show, Trump’s daughter-in-law tried to walk the line between siding with the president and appeasing the fuming MAGA crowd he’d promised answers to.

“Well, I do think that there needs to be more transparency on this, and I think that that will happen,” she said.

Trump tried to defend her father-in-law’s pathetic response to the outrage. “As for the links to the president, I know that this is probably not the number one thing he’s focused on,” she said.

“I don’t know that this was top of mind for him, but he hears all the noise, and he hears all of the consternation out there, and I think he’s gonna want to set things right as well,” Trump continued. “So I believe that there will probably be more coming on this, and I believe anything that they are able to release that doesn’t, you know, damage any witnesses or anyone underage or anything like that, I believe they will probably try to get out sooner rather than later.”

To those who were upset by the DOJ’s findings, she assured them there was no greater conspiracy at work. “There’s no, like, great plot to keep this information away—that I’m aware of,” she said. “I do just believe that maybe it’s been slow rolled for reasons that hopefully we understand down the line.”

But the president doesn’t seem the slightest bit interested in providing more answers. Instead, he’s fighting conspiracy theories with more conspiracy theories. Last week, he took to Truth Social to insist that the Epstein files are “Radical Left inspired Documents” created by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden, and that the administration ought “not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.”

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier—the “brains” behind the so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention camp—threatened to strip state funding from Florida airports that fail to submit monthly reports on the “geoengineering and weather modification activities” at their facilities.

Uthmeier sent a crankish letter to Florida public airport operators on Monday, in which he vowed to enforce a piece of legislation signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis earlier this month that prohibits (and requires airports to report) the introduction of substances into the Florida atmosphere “for the express purpose of affecting the temperature, weather, climate, or intensity of sunlight.”

“Because airports are most likely to catch those who seek to weaponize science in order to push their agenda, your compliance with these reporting obligations is essential to keeping our state safe from these harmful chemicals and experiments,” Uthmeier wrote. “In Florida, we don’t jeopardize the public health so that we can bend the knee to the climate cult.”

Under the new law, public-use airports will be required to file monthly reports with Florida’s Department of Transportation starting in October.

Asked about the new mandate by the Orlando Sentinel, a spokeswoman for the operator of the Orlando International Airport and Orlando Executive Airport replied, somewhat shruggingly, that the airports would comply. However, she noted, “Neither airport performs any geoengineering or weather modification activities, nor are we … aware of any activity on airport properties that must be reported at this time.”

Uthmeier’s letter also supported baseless conspiracy theories attributing the deadly flooding in Texas over the July 4 weekend to weather modification—a claim that the director of Texas A&M’s Center for Extreme Weather has called “complete nonsense” and which even Republican Senator Ted Cruz dismissed as bunkum.

“I can’t help but notice the possibility that weather modification could have played a role in” the disasters in Texas, Uthmeier wrote, adding that “Florida’s new law seeks to prevent something like that from ever happening.”

Conspiracy theories about weather modification have become increasingly common on the right, with prominent figures like Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia elevating them amid extreme weather events.

Like much of Trump’s base, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is tired of watching the president align with the more traditional “neocon” wing of the Republican Party, particularly on the “end” to endless wars.

“It’s not just Ukraine; it’s all foreign wars in general and a lot of foreign aid,” Greene told The New York Times on Monday after Trump announced he’d be selling a large amount of weapons to NATO countries, which would then give the weapons to Ukraine. “This is what we campaigned on. This is what I promised also to my district. This is what everybody voted for. And I believe we have to maintain the course.”

“I said it on every rally stage: ‘No more money to Ukraine. We want peace.’ We just want peace for those people,” she continued. “And guess what? People haven’t changed.”

“Without a shadow of a doubt, our tax dollars are being used,” she added, refuting Trump’s claim that the latest weapons shipment would not cost taxpayers.

Taylor Greene is one of many MAGA hardliners left confused by the president’s switch up on Ukraine, especially just months after he and Vice President JD Vance verbally accosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

“No one’s walking around thinking about Ukraine. No one’s walking around thinking about Russia. They’re just not,” she said. “They walk around and all they think about is their bills, their problems and the road that may look like crap in front of their house—or they can’t buy a house…. We’re opening the door for younger generations to turn to radical leaders.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has declared undocumented immigrants ineligible for bond hearings, thus opening the door to the indefinite detention of millions of immigrants while their deportation proceedings are underway.

Previously, an immigrant facing detention who did not have a serious criminal history could request a hearing in which an immigration judge would consider various factors, such as flight risk and potential danger to the community, before deciding whether to release them on bond while their case progressed.

But now, in a stark departure from precedent, the agency will suspend bond hearings, per a July 8 memo obtained by The Washington Post.

In the memo, ICE acting Director Todd Lyons ordered the detention of undocumented immigrants “for the duration of their removal proceedings”—potentially months or years. Lyons justified the change in policy in light of Trump’s Justice and Homeland Security departments having “revisited [their] legal position on detention and release authorities” and determining that such immigrants “may not be released from ICE custody” barring rare exceptions.

Already, the American Immigration Lawyers Association informed the Post of denied bond hearings in over a dozen DOJ-run immigration courts in states such as New York, Virginia, Oregon, North Carolina, Ohio, and Georgia.

The new policy is based on a peculiar interpretation of a law stating unauthorized immigrants “shall be detained” after their arrests, which has, per the Post, historically been applied only to immigrants who’d recently crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, rather than—as it now will—to those who have lived and worked in the country for decades, many of whom have children who are U.S. citizens and may have strong legal cases against deportation.

As such, Lyons acknowledged in the memo that he fully expects the policy to face legal challenges, writing, per Reuters, that the change is “likely to be litigated.”

If this new policy stays in effect, it will staggeringly balloon the population of immigrants detained under inhumane conditions at ICE facilities across the country.