JD Vance Just Got Himself a Starring Role in Russian Propaganda

Vice President JD Vance is so good at saying exactly what Moscow wants him to say that he’s earned a starring role in state propaganda.

During an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham Wednesday night, Vance described his positive impression of Russia’s leader.

“So, I have never actually met [Vladimir] Putin. The president did that meeting. I have talked to him on the phone a number of times. You know, it’s interesting, he’s more soft-spoken than you would necessarily expect. You know, the American media has a particular image of him,” Vance said. “He’s soft spoken, in a certain way. He’s very deliberate. He’s very careful.

“And I think fundamentally he is a person who looks out for the interests, as he sees it, of Russia,” Vance continued. “And I think one of the reasons he respects the president of the United States is because he knows the president looks out for the interests of the American people.”

That soundbite of Vance’s interview was then shared on X by Russia Today, the Russian state-controlled television network that has been banned in the U.K., EU, and Canada. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in November 2022, RT suspended its activities in the U.S., as well.

Despite what Vance has claimed, Putin isn’t a gentle altruist—he’s a dictator who hopes to acquire Ukrainian territory by force—and Vance knows that. “The Ukrainians want security guarantees. The Russians want a certain amount of territory,” Vance told Ingraham. “The Russians want certain pieces of territory, most of which they’ve occupied, but some of which they haven’t.”

But the Kremlin also hopes to block Ukraine’s long-awaited NATO membership. President Donald Trump claimed earlier this week that if Ukraine could agree to give up Crimea and its dreams of joining the military bloc, then the war would immediately end.

During a meeting with European leaders Monday, Trump portrayed an unearned optimism about Putin making a deal “for him,” after dragging out negotiations for months. The White House then appeared to walk back claims that it had actually assured a bilateral meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Russia has yet to confirm any such agreement.

Lindsey Halligan, the White House official leading President Donald Trump’s overhaul of the Smithsonian, thinks its museums overemphasize slavery when they should be emphasizing “how far we’ve come since slavery.”

Halligan appeared on Fox News Wednesday to discuss her effort to make the Smithsonian’s content align with the president’s version of history ahead of the U.S. Semiquincentennial.

So far, it remains unclear which specific content will be targeted for removal and replacement, but a March executive order claimed that the Smithsonian is overrun by “a divisive, race-centered ideology,” citing an exhibit that described race as a social construct (rather than promoting the fringe notion that it is “a biological reality”). In a Tuesday Truth Social screed, Trump lamented that the museums focus too intently on “how bad Slavery was.”

Halligan expressed similar sentiments on Fox, saying the institution has become a “platform” for “ideological narratives,” whereas it should be a (presumably somehow nonideological) means of representing “our country in a positive way.”

Asked by Fox anchor John Roberts whether she believes America’s “checkered past” should be minimized in museums, Halligan replied that, while slavery was “awful,” she believes the museums exhibit “an overemphasis on slavery, and I think there should be more of an overemphasis on how far we’ve come since slavery.”

Espousing a feel-good version of history that would please Orwell’s Big Brother, Halligan continued, “We should be able to take our kids, our students through the Smithsonian and feel proud when we leave.”

American history, she concluded, is “both positive and negative, but we need to keep moving forward” and “focus on all the positive as we approach America’s 250th birthday.” It’s a suspicious credo for an official tasked with radically transforming the world’s largest museum system.

Another slew of New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s allies will likely face charges, which are expected to include multiple counts of bribery, according to The New York Times.

The defendants will probably include the mayor’s former chief adviser Ingrid Lewis-Martin; her son Glenn D. Martin; Adams’s friend and local official Jesse Hamilton; two businessmen; and supporters Gina and Tony Argento, who are siblings and whose company donated over $20,000 to Adams.

They all plan to plead not guilty, according to sources from the Times.

Lewis-Martin, who has described herself as Adams’s “sister ordained by god,” and her son allegedly tried to impact city policy by accepting favors from the other defendants. Lewis-Martin is already dealing with corruption charges from last year, in which prosecutors claim to have caught her via wiretap accepting $100,000 from the aforementioned two businessmen. She is also alleged to be the catalyst behind almost every corruption charge linked to the Mayor’s office, the Times reported.

Adams has attempted to wash hands of this.

“Mayor Adams was not involved in this matter and has not been accused of or implicated in any wrongdoing,” his spokeswoman, Kayla Mamelak Altus, said. “He remains focused on what has always been his priority—serving the 8.5 million New Yorkers who call this city home and making their city safer and more affordable every single day.”

Altus also noted that Lewis-Martin does not work for Adams anymore, without mentioning that she resigned just days before she was indicted last year.

These are just the latest developments in the scandal plaguing the administration of Eric Adams, who is in the midst of an underwhelming mayoral campaign, trailing solidly behind Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani and independent candidate Andrew Cuomo.

In the past few weeks, Adams has had his former chief Muslim community liaison charged with fraud for instructing witnesses to lie to the FBI, a loyal Turkish businessman and donor convicted for making illegal donations to him, and four of his former police officers sue him for corruption. In the suit, they accused him of running the NYPD like a “criminal enterprise.”

Yet Adams’s campaign still chugs on. He seems intent on ignoring hit after hit to his reputation and legacy, instead choosing to post his way through it all. It seems clear that not even the de facto pardon from President Trump can help save him now.

You may recall that the president has a meme coin, $TRUMP. Days before his second inauguration, the president—who told Fox News in his first term that he was not “a big fan” of cryptocurrencies, which he deemed possibly “fake”—made his own foray into crypto.

The meme coin’s value quickly rocketed to around $75. It dropped shortly thereafter but saw a bump in April when Trump announced “the most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION in the world”: for the top 220 investors in $TRUMP coin to enjoy a private dinner with the president at his Virginia golf club.

Since then, the Trump coin’s value has slumped again, to $9, having sunk 88 percent from its January high.

You may also recall—if you strain your memory further—that the first lady, Melania Trump, is in the meme coin business as well. Her $MELANIA coin has followed a similar trajectory to her husband’s coin, seeing a precipitous, 98 percent decline in value from its $8.50 peak in mid-January.

In May, the Financial Times published an investigation into Melania Trump’s meme coin, revealing that a coterie of traders reaped nearly $100 million by buying $MELANIA coin minutes before it was publicly announced, before off-loading most of their holdings after its value spiked following the announcement.

The first lady’s meme coin is now worth less than a quarter of a dollar.

Six Republican-led states are sending a collective 1,200 National Guard troops to assist Donald Trump’s crackdown on crime in Washington, D.C. But the states those troops came from have higher crime rates than the nation’s capital.

As Washington’s residents brutally resist the president’s authoritarian takeover of local law enforcement and deployment of federal troops, other states would do well to remember the old proverb: Doctor, heal thyself!

To compare, The New Republic has evaluated the FBI’s national crime data for 2024 alongside state populations, focusing on available data documenting violent and property crime rates in major cities in Ohio, Tennessee, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and West Virginia.

FBI data showed that in 2024, for every 100,000 Washington residents, 926 were victims of violent crime and 3,588 were victims of property crime. In 2024, the nation’s capital saw roughly 25 murders for every 100,000 residents.

Ohio

Cleveland, Ohio, experienced higher rates of both violent crime and property crime than Washington did in 2024, according to Cleveland.com. For every 100,000 Clevelanders, 1,550 were victims of a violent crime and 4,446 were victims of property crime. Cleveland also had a higher homicide rate than Washington in 2024, with 35 homicides for every 100,000 residents, according to the office of the Cuyahoga County medical examiner.

Columbus, which is Ohio’s most populous city, has a comparatively smaller crime rate. It saw marked decreases in violent and property crime in 2024, according to the Columbus Division of Police.

Tennessee

Tennessee’s violent crime rate in 2024 was higher than the national average at roughly 597 violent crime incidents per 100,000 residents, according to FBI data compared to population. While that alone is not higher than the violent crime rate in Washington, that number doesn’t tell the whole story.

In 2024, the state’s own capital, Memphis, had a murder rate of 48 per 100,000 residents, according to The American Prospect—a number significantly higher than D.C.’s homicide rate.

Meanwhile, Nashville, the state’s most populous city, which was home to an estimated 704,963 people in 2024, experienced 8,473 violent crimes and 31,902 property crimes, according to the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department. That means that for every 100,000 Nashville residents, roughly 1,202 were the victims of violent crimes and 4,525 were the victims of property crimes, which are both higher than Washington’s crime rates.

Still, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee is set to send roughly 160 guard members to Washington this week.

Mississippi

For every 100,000 Mississippians, 118 were the victim of a violent crime and 751 were the victims of property crime, according to FBI data. The American Prospect reported that in 2024, Jackson, Mississippi, had the highest murder rate of any city in the country, experiencing a rate of 77 homicides per 100,000 residents, which was more than three times the homicide rate in Washington.

Louisiana

For every 100,000 Louisianians, 406 were the victim of a violent crime and 1,758 were the victim of a property crime. But state capital Baton Rouge had a murder rate of 36 per 100,000 in 2024, and New Orleans had a murder rate of 31 per 100,000—both of which are considerably higher than Washington’s homicide rate.

South Carolina

In 2024, for every 100,000 South Carolinians, only about 438 were the victim of a violent crime and 1,985 were the victim of a property crime. However, North Charleston, one of the state’s most populous cities, had a murder rate of 26 per 100,000 residents in 2024, according to The American Prospect. This places it on par with the homicide rate of Washington. South Carolina’s Republican Governor Henry McMaster ordered 200 troops to be deployed to the nation’s capital.

West Virginia

For every 100,000 West Virginians, 234 were victims of violent crime and 1,051 were victims of property crimes in 2024, in keeping with the state’s trend of being generally below the national average.

But the state’s most dangerous city is Beckley, which has a similar violent crime rate to Washington. With a population of 16,234, Beckley experienced 147 violent crimes in 2023, which equates to a rate of 905 violent crimes per 100,000.

By comparison, property crimes were off the charts. In 2023, there were a whopping 836 property crimes, so for every 100,000 Beckley-ians (again, there aren’t really that many), 5,149 would be a victim of a property crime, a rate significantly higher than that of Washington.

On Tuesday, Texas Representative Nicole Collier chose to sleep on the floor of the state House rather than be subject to draconian 24-7 state trooper surveillance if she were to leave.

Now, on Wednesday, she shared that she was threatened with a felony
unless she exited a bathroom while on a DNC call with Senator Cory Booker, Governor Gavin Newson, and other Democrats.

This comes as some Texas Democratic officials remain under the watch of law enforcement, a move GOP House Speaker Dustin Burrows and Texas Republicans levied after more than 50 state Democrats left Texas two weeks ago in response to the Republican Party’s blatantly political effort to reshape voting districts to gain more GOP House seats in the 2026 midterms elections.

While the redistricting vote is likely to occur now that they’re back in the state, Texas Democrats are still looking to exhaust any options they have in regard to delaying or obstructing the power grab of a vote.

They’ve even floated an amendment that would block the redistricting vote until the Epstein files are released, an issue that has fallen from the public eye after weeks of dominating the news cycle due to a well-orchestrated campaign of distraction by the Trump administration.

“That is outrageous,” Cory Booker said live as Collier updated the call about her situation. “What they’re trying to do right there is silence an American leader, silence a Black woman. And that is outrageous. And I hope everybody took note of that. The fact that she can’t even let her voice be heard is frickin’ outrageous.”

The Trump administration should just unseal the Epstein files on its own, a judge determined Wednesday.

Manhattan-based U.S. District Judge Richard Berman threw out the Justice Department’s third attempt to unseal the grand jury records related to Jeffrey Epstein’s case. Berman argued in a 14-page decision that it would make much more sense for the government to make its “trove” of Epstein-related documents available to the public instead of petitioning the court to release the limited grand jury materials that are protected by law.

“A significant and compelling reason to reject the Government’s position in this litigation is that the Government has already undertaken a comprehensive investigation into the Epstein case and, not surprisingly, has assembled a ‘trove’ of Epstein documents, interviews, and exhibits,” Berman wrote. “And, the Government committed that it would share its Epstein investigation materials with the public.”

Berman further disregarded the DOJ’s appeal for the grand jury materials as little more than a “diversion” from the “breadth and scope of the Epstein files in the Government’s possession.”

“The grand jury testimony is merely a hearsay snippet of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged conduct,” Berman argued.

The order follows a similar decision last week by another Manhattan-based judge, Paul Engelmayer, who denied a DOJ request to unseal grand jury testimony related to Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s girlfriend and longtime accomplice. Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence for abducting and grooming underage girls for Epstein’s abuse, though her decision to comply with the Justice Department earlier this month earned her a sudden transfer to a minimum-security prison.

Engelmayer wrote in his decision that the administration’s argument that the grand jury materials “​​would bring to light meaningful new information about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes is demonstrably false.”

Much to Donald Trump’s chagrin, the botched rollout of the Epstein files has continued to plague his administration. The president has tried dozens of strategies since the beginning of July to peel attention away from the base-shattering issue, including suggesting that the FBI should expend resources to prove his invented claim that the entire case against Epstein is actually a Democratic “scam.”

A reminder that prior to his death, Epstein described himself as one of Trump’s “closest friends.” The socialites were named and photographed together and partied at casinos together with underage girls. Trump penned a salacious letter to Epstein for the sex trafficker’s 50th birthday, and was quoted in a 2002 New York magazine profile as saying that he had, at that point, known Epstein for 15 years, referring to him as a “terrific guy.”

Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had to hear just how much Washington, D.C., hates them as they attempted a friendly photo op with Donald Trump’s federal forces Wednesday.

As Vance, Hegseth, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller walked through Washington’s Union Station, surrounded by a gaggle of photographers and guards, it was immediately clear that they were unwelcome there.

“Oh look, it’s couch-fucker!” one person shouted in a video shared to X by HuffPost reporter Arthur Delaney. “You gonna fuck a couch, buddy?”

The shouting built to a crescendo, and it became difficult to make out the jeers of individual onlookers. But one sentiment was clear: “Go fuck a couch, JD Vance!” the first heckler shouted.

The Team Trump trio had arrived to deliver burgers (bought at the Shake Shack in Union Station) to National Guardsmen hanging around the train station, well within the sights of their own photographers. Six red-led states have mobilized roughly 1,200 additional troops to join the 800 already unleashed on Washington’s streets, tasked with stopping crime—the rate of which was already down.

The group took a few questions from the press, shouting their answers over the chants of dissidents. Miller tried to dismiss the demonstrators as “elderly white hippies.”

Vance strained to hear a question over the sounds of people in the train station. The question was: “Polls show that a majority of D.C. residents don’t support the guard here. So what’s your message to the majority of D.C. residents?”

“I’m highly skeptical that a majority of D.C. residents don’t want their city to be—to have better public safety and more reasonable safety standards within Washington, D.C.,” Vance said over the shouting. “I don’t know what poll you’re talking about, maybe the same poll that said that Kamala Harris would win the popular vote by 10 points.”

Vance then ended the question session, clearly irritated.

In fact, a recent Washington Post-Schar School poll found that 65 percent of D.C. residents did not think that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard would make the city safer.

As Vance glad-handed National Guard troops, chants of “Free D.C.” could be heard in the background.

Another video shared by HuffPost reporter Igor Bobic showed the trio departing the station while deafening boos echoed off the high ceilings, the large hall bristling with contempt.

“Boo! Get out of here,” cried one onlooker.

It seems that the residents of D.C. have spoken—and they want Trump’s cronies gone.

Fewer and fewer Americans are choosing to be Democrats.

With just over a year until midterms, one of America’s two main parties is hemorrhaging voters, losing registered voters in all 30 states that track registration by political party. The change has been observed in blue, red, and swing states alike.

In total, some 2.1 million voters ditched the Democrats in favor of alternative politics between 2020 and 2024, The New York Times reported Wednesday. The drop has resulted in more registered independents, but it has also become a boon for the GOP, which gained 2.4 million new voters over the same period.

Last year marked the first time since 2018 that more Americans checked “Republican” on their voter registration forms than “Democrat.” The downward trend has sparked serious concern among Democratic strategists, who have identified it as a “hidden-in-plain-sight crisis” that needs a solution before the next presidential election.

“I don’t want to say, ‘The death cycle of the Democratic Party,’ but there seems to be no end to this,” Michael Pruser, who tracks voter registration closely as the director of data science for Decision Desk HQ, told the Times. “There is no silver lining or cavalry coming across the hill. This is month after month, year after year.”

The most contentious battleground states have also experienced the liberal erosion. Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania all saw support peel away from Democrats over the last four years.

“In North Carolina, Republicans erased roughly 95 percent of the registration advantage that Democrats held in the fall of 2020, according to state records as of this summer,” reported the Times. “In Nevada, Democrats suffered the steepest percentage-point plunge of any state but West Virginia between 2020 and 2024.”

Meanwhile, Republicans are working overtime during Trump 2.0 to minimize future turnout at the voting booth. Since Inauguration Day, the administration has tried and failed to force Americans to show proof of citizenship at the voting booth and has attempted to take away the option of mail-in ballots.

Donald Trump and his allies have also made a target of voting software designed to identify potential voter fraud, advanced a Homeland Security agenda that has made immigrants fearful to legitimately participate in the American electorate, and generally undermined trust and confidence in the country’s process to elect its leaders.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday night confused Armenia with another, somewhat similar-sounding nation, leading him to mistakenly claim he’d brokered peace between Azerbaijan and Albania.

The gaffe, which occurred while he was calling in to conservative commentator Mark Levin’s eponymous radio show, is only his latest geographical flub.

The president raved on air about his peacemaking efforts, repeating his false claim about having ended six wars during his second term.

“It’s, you know, a lot of amazing, amazing things,” Trump said, before attempting to mention his recently arranged Azerbaijan-Armenia peace declaration, which moved the countries toward peace—but did not fully end their 37-year-long conflict.

“You saw the Azerbaijan. That was a big one going on for 34, 35 years with, uh, Albania. Think of that,” the president said.

Not only did Trump incorrectly call Armenia “Albania,” but he also hesitated uncertainly while stating the name of Azerbaijan. He ultimately bungled the country’s pronunciation (“the Aber … baijan,” he said), so much so that The Mark Levin Show’s transcript of the episode, as of this writing, has him as saying “Arab or Bhaijaan.”

In a recent Fox News appearance, Trump puzzlingly added an extra seventh war to his already misleading list of six accomplished peace deals. Perhaps the mysterious seventh was this fictional conflict between Armenia and Albania.