Trump Bans Flag Burning in Direct Threat to First Amendment

President Trump on Monday signed an executive order instructing the U.S. attorney general to pursue criminal charges against anyone caught burning the American flag, blatantly violating basic freedom of speech and expression laws.

“Flag burning. All over the country they’re burning flags. All over the world they burn the American flag,” Trump said at his press conference, where he signed another executive order revoking cashless bail in Washington, D.C. “What happens when you burn a flag is, the area goes crazy. If you have hundreds of people they go crazy…. When you burn the American flag it incites riots at levels that we’ve never seen before.”

“If you burn a flag, you get one year in jail, no early exits, no nothing. You get one year in jail,” Trump said. “You don’t get 10 years, you don’t get one month, you get one year in jail. And it goes on your record. And you will see flag burning stopping immediately.”

The president claimed the Department of Justice would “investigate instances of flag burning” in situations where “prosecution wouldn’t fall afoul to the First Amendment.” But the order does exactly that. In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that flag burning is a protected right under the Constitution.

Trump also made unsubstantiated claims that flag burning is a rampant practice in America right now (it is not) and that anyone doing it is being paid by the “radical left.”

It’s extremely unclear how exactly the administration can throw American citizens in jail for burning a piece of fabric without “running afoul” of the Constitution. This is a move that would be relentlessly vilified if someone like Russian President Vladimir Putin or North Korean leader Kim Jong Un did it. Instead, Trump is using this despotic tactic to crack down on protesters and further push his dark MAGA agenda.

The Covid vaccine could be off the shelves in a matter of months.

Despite the coronavirus shot saving millions of lives during the pandemic, the Trump administration is planning to nix nationwide access to the vaccine “within months,” a close associate of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told the Daily Beast.

Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist who has repeatedly claimed, contrary to scientific evidence, that the vaccine has more ramifications than the disease it is intended to treat, told the Daily Beast that people around Kennedy “cannot understand” why the vaccine is still on the market. Malhotra noted that the administration intends to remove it from shelves even if it sows a “fear of chaos,” or sparks major legal consequences.

“It could [happen] in a number of stages, including learning more about the data,” said Malhotra. “But given the increased talk of vaccine injuries in the past few weeks among the administration, it could also come with one clean decision.”

The skepticism stems from a 2022 paper, published in the science journal Vaccine, that examined “serious adverse events” that occurred during clinical trials of Pfizer and Moderna mRNA Covid-19 vaccines. The widely dismissed study found that individuals who had gotten the jab were at a 16 percent higher risk of “excess serious adverse events” than those who did not.

Critics of the paper claimed that the researchers underestimated the benefits of the vaccine, overstated methodological risks, selectively chose data, and ignored the broader public health impacts of the vaccine.

It wouldn’t be the first vaccine that Kennedy has canceled on the grounds of his unscientific doubts. Earlier this month, the health secretary said his agency would divest $500 million from mRNA research, effectively axing 22 mRNA studies since—according to Kennedy—the vaccines “fail to protect” against “upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu.”

Instead, Kennedy said that his agency would shift the funding toward “safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate”—which apparently does not include the latest and greatest medical advances.

The problem with Kennedy’s approach is twofold: It will result in a sacrifice of time and money. Traditional vaccines injected a weakened or dead version of a virus, triggering the body’s immune response and the development of antibodies. Researching and developing these vaccines is a “lengthy and costly” process that becomes further complicated when researchers have to respond to mutations in the virus, according to Penn Medicine.

mRNA technology, meanwhile, employs a synthetic genetic code that instructs the body to produce proteins akin to the viral protein, training the body’s immune system without ever actually exposing the individual to the disease. Once the response is initiated, the synthetic genetic sequence breaks down in the body, according to Medline Plus. The result is a “plug-and-play” vaccine technology that offers rapid development times at a lower cost to traditional vaccines.

In the years since mRNA technology debuted on the U.S. market, biomedical researchers have also framed mRNA as a potential cancer treatment. But its sudden emergence in the U.S. prompted suspicion from anti-vaxxers, including Kennedy.

After Kennedy took the reins at HHS, he replaced independent medical experts on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel with vaccine skeptics. He also warned against the use of the MMR vaccine during Texas’s historic measles outbreak, recommending that suffering patients instead take vitamins. And he founded his new directive for America’s health policy—the “Make America Healthy Again” report—on studies generated by AI that never existed in the real world.

Vice President JD Vance on Sunday botched World War II history in an attempt to support the Trump administration’s stance on Russia-Ukraine.

On Meet the Press, NBC host Kristen Welker asked Vance whether the administration’s plan to allow Russia to keep illegally seized Ukrainian territory as part of a negotiated resolution to end the war would embolden other countries to invade smaller powers.

Vance replied that territorial concessions would ultimately be up to Ukraine, before rewriting history to suit his narrative.

“Kristen, this is how wars ultimately get settled,” he said confidently. “If you go back to World War II, if you go back to World War I, if you go back to every major conflict in human history, they all end with some kind of negotiation.”

World War II ended with the unconditional surrender of the Axis Powers, following Adolf Hitler’s suicide in Berlin as Soviet forces advanced on the city, and the U.S. atomic bombings of Japan.

Vance’s historical illiteracy was roundly mocked online, with some social media users simply sharing images of historic newspaper headlines from V-E Day and V-J Day.

“Imagine using as your example the biggest example of the exact opposite in the modern era,” wrote English journalist David Aaronovitch on X.

“Just wondering, who negotiated Hitler’s suicide,” tweeted Polish journalist Marek Magierowski.

On Bluesky, Tom Nichols of The Atlantic refuted Vance with iconic images of the execution of Benito Mussolini, the mushroom cloud over Nagasaki, and the Soviet victory in the Battle of Berlin.

“I assume he means this,” Nichols wrote. “Some negotiations are harder edged than others,” joked Josh Marshall of Talking Point Memo in response.

“This guy is the vice president, a venture capitalist, and a Yale Law grad,” journalist Mehdi Hasan said of Vance on X. “And completely ignorant about the basics of World War 2. Sheesh.”

President Trump on Monday signed an executive order ending cashless bail for detained suspects in Washington, D.C. This is yet another aggressive move in his federal takeover of the nation’s capital.

Cashless bail allows people who are suspected of a crime to avoid spending time in a cage before they’ve actually been convicted just because they can’t meet bail. In states with cash bail, having money determines whether or not you’ll be behind bars.

Trump and U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro have framed a cashless bail system, which D.C. has had since 1992, as a “disaster” that leaves hardened criminals running rampant.

“Every place in the country where you have no cash bail is a disaster,” Trump said at his press conference earlier this month announcing the federal takeover of D.C. “That’s what started the problem in New York, and they don’t change it. They don’t want to change it. That’s what started it in Chicago … We’re gonna end that in Chicago. We’re gonna change the statute.”

Pirro echoed Trump’s sentiments.

“I see too much violent crime being committed by young punks who think that they can get together in gangs and crews and beat the [heck] out of you or anyone else,” she said at the same press conference. “We need to go after the D.C. Council and their absurd laws. We need to get rid of this concept of ‘no cash bail … We need to recognize that the people who matter are the law-abiding citizens.”

The numbers don’t support this framing. There is no significant documented increase in violent crimes among arrestees out on cashless bail.

Even still, Trump’s order threatens to revoke funding from D.C. city projects if it doesn’t eliminate cashless bail, and will “work to ensure” that those detained are kept in federal custody instead of local. Trump eventually wants to force this order upon the entire country, banning cashless bail in every single state. D.C. is just the testing ground for this show of federal force.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has yet to comment on the order.

Donald Trump’s crudely covered wound is back in a birthday message to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

The Trump War Room account on X shared a photograph of Leavitt and the president walking through the White House to celebrate her 28th birthday Sunday. A large pale patch was visible on Trump’s right hand, even from a few feet away.

Reporters previously spotted the dismally disguised injury while speaking to the president outside of the White House last month. One reporter zoomed in on the president’s hand, giving the public the plainest view of the painted patch so far. Since taking office, Trump has been spotted with the bruise in at least February, April, June, and July.

It’s still unclear what exactly the makeup is covering. Leavitt has claimed multiple times this year that the president’s hand was simply bruised from all of his meet-and-greets, and taking a lot of aspirin.

“President Trump is a man of the people, and he meets more Americans and shakes their hands on a daily basis than any other president in history,” Leavitt told the Daily Beast in July. “His commitment is unwavering and he proves that every single day.”

But Trump was spotted on Saturday with yet another bruise, this time on his left hand.

79-year-old Trump was recently diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, which can cause swelling in the lower limbs when the legs fail to pump blood to the heart.

Three days after Kilmar Abrego Garcia was freed from pre-trial detention, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained him once again at a Monday immigration check-in.

Shortly after his detention on Monday, the Department of Homeland Security announced on X that the Salvadoran immigrant “will be processed for removal to Uganda,” and repeated disputed, still-unproven accusations of ties to MS-13.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyer Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said that the Maryland resident had been told to report to an ICE office on Monday for a routine check-in.

“As he was leaving the jail in Tennessee on Friday, he was given a notice requiring him to check in at 8 a.m. this morning. The notice stated the reason was ‘interview.’ Clearly that was false,” Sandoval-Mosheberg said. “There was no need for them to take him into ICE detention. He was already on electronic monitoring from the U.S. Marshall Service and basically on house arrest. The only reason that they’ve chosen to take him into detention is to punish him. To punish him for exercising his constitutional rights.”

Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported to El Salvador in March, as the Trump administration scrambled to push allegations of MS-13 membership. After enduring harrowing conditions in a notorious prison, he was returned to the U.S. where he has been slapped with human smuggling charges and detained, with the Trump administration vowing that he’ll “never go free.”

But after a judge ordered Abrego Garcia’s release on bond, this weekend he experienced freedom and was reunited with his family in Maryland for the first time in more than 160 days.

His release Friday came with bad news, however: Immigration officials informed his lawyers that, after Abrego Garcia had rejected a deal to be deported to Costa Rica in exchange for a guilty plea and jail time, they now plan to deport him to Uganda. (Deportation to faraway and unfamiliar countries has become a grotesque hallmark of Trump’s deportation regime.) Monday’s news indicates that the administration is following through on this threat.

This story has been updated.

Charles Kushner—U.S. ambassador to France, father of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, and convicted felon—has drawn the ire of French President Emmanuel Macron over his allegations of rampant antisemitism in France.

Kushner published “A Letter to Emmanuel Macron” in The Wall Street Journal on Sunday. 

“I write out of deep concern over the dramatic rise of antisemitism in France and the lack of sufficient action by your government to confront it,” Kushner wrote. “Antisemitism has long scarred French life, but it has exploded since Hamas’s barbaric assault on Oct. 7, 2023. Since then, pro-Hamas extremists and radical activists have waged a campaign of intimidation and violence across Europe. In France, not a day passes without Jews assaulted in the street, synagogues or schools defaced, or Jewish-owned businesses vandalized.”

Kushner continued, presenting Macron with a call to action. 

“In today’s world, anti-Zionism is antisemitism—plain and simple. President Trump and I have Jewish children and share Jewish grandchildren. I know how he feels about antisemitism, as do all Americans.... I urge you to act decisively: enforce hate-crime laws without exception; ensure the safety of Jewish schools, synagogues and businesses, prosecute offenders to the fullest extent; and abandon steps that give legitimacy to Hamas and its allies.” 

Kushner’s letter came just days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote a similar letter to Macron, condemning him for announcing that France would recognize Palestinian statehood. France refuted Kushner’s allegations just hours after his article was published—and summoned Kushner to appear before Macron and the French foreign ministry. 

“France firmly refutes these latest allegations,” the foreign ministry stated. “The Ambassador’s allegations are unacceptable.” 

Why is the U.S. ambassador to France more focused on lobbying on Israel’s behalf than the United States?  Does he think the so-called French “Hamas allies” are so obtuse that they can’t criticize Zionism two years into a genocide without condemning all Jewish people? Does he know that there are French anti-Zionist Jews who’ve been vocally supporting Palestine since the genocide began? 

Kushner shouldn’t even have this job to begin with—he’s a reverse nepo baby and criminal who spent two years in jail for tax evasion, illegal campaign donations to the Democratic Party, and witness tampering. He even retaliated against his own sister—who was a cooperating witness against him—by paying a sex worker to seduce her husband and film it, likely for blackmail material. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who investigated Charles Kushner as district attorney, described his case as “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes” he’d encountered. Kushner was pardoned by Trump in 2020. 

Kushner shouldn’t be here. He’s just lucky his son happened to marry Trump’s daughter. Now, Kushner’s blatant Israeli agitprop risks further fraying an already strained relationship between the United States and France.

Inconvenient truths don’t go unpunished in the Trump administration.

It’s a lesson that Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse learned the hard way on Friday, as The Washington Post reported that he’s been fired from his position as chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The DIA under Kruse was responsible for the classified preliminary report about America’s June strike on Iran, which gave President Donald Trump much grief once it leaked to the press, as it painted a starkly different picture of the attack than his administration had.

Though the report expressly acknowledged its preliminary nature, its findings—that the strike set Iran’s alleged nuclear program back by only a few months, at most—put a damper on Hegseth’s and Trump’s insistence that they had totally decimated their targets. The president had referred to the attack as “one of the most successful military strikes in history,” comparable to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Hegseth axed Kruse for “loss of confidence,” per the Post.

The ouster is just the latest example of the Trump administration shooting the messenger. After the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued a troubling July jobs report, the president fired BLS chief Erika McEntarfer, appointing in her place a MAGA partisan who just happened to have been at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

If another country were to bomb an American-owned factory on foreign soil, one might expect—at the very least—harsh condemnation from the sitting U.S. president.

The anticipated response from a president who enjoys a reputation as both a champion of American business and a tough guy on the world stage would be even fiercer.

But President Donald Trump fell far short of such expectations on Friday, when he was asked about Russia’s strike on the Ukrainian branch of the American electronics manufacturer Flex.

The president mustered only five words—and none very forceful.

“I told [Putin], ‘I’m not happy about it,’” the president said, before immediately changing the subject. “I’m not happy about anything having to do with that war.”

Overnight, Russia hit the factory with two missiles, injuring at least 15, according to Ukraine. About 600 workers had reportedly been at work but took cover prior to impact as air raid sirens sounded. An estimated third of the plant burned down, per the Ukrainian military.

In a statement on X, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia had “practically burned down an American company producing electronics—home appliances, nothing military. The Russians knew exactly where they lobbed the missiles. We believe this was a deliberate attack against American property and investments in Ukraine.”

Andy Hunter, the president of the Ukrainian affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, described the strike as “not only an attack on Ukraine” but “an attack on American business,” which he said is being “destroy[ed] and humiliat[ed]” by Russia.

As Trump quickly changed the subject Friday, he resorted to his oft-repeated lie about having ended several wars during his second term. The president had previously said he ended six of them. Recently, he added a mysterious seventh conflict to that claim.

“I settled seven wars,” Trump continued Friday, before loosening the criteria for the tally in order to bolster the figure. “Actually, if you think about pre-wars, add three more, so it would be 10.”

President Donald Trump doesn’t just want federal control of Washington, D.C., he wants aesthetic control as well—and knowing the president’s garish style, it probably won’t be pretty.

On Friday, Trump said the administration was “looking at doing something very exciting” to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, a part of the White House campus that was constructed in the late 1800s. “It’s such a beautiful building, but it doesn’t look it,” Trump said. “I think it’s just incredible, but you have to get past the color, because the stone they used was a really bad color.”

And it won’t stop at the White House: Trump also said that he’s giving out a contract to “beautify” the city, repaving streets and updating lampposts within a three-mile radius of the Capitol Building. “It’s gonna be beautiful, all those lightbulbs—you see the poles, they’re rusting and they’ve got different lenses on top, if you look.… We’re going to have this place beautified,” he said.

This redecoration would require about $2 billion from Congress, according to the president.

Meanwhile, House Republicans still haven’t restored the $1 billion in city funding they blocked earlier this year, holding taxpayer dollars hostage unless the new bill prohibits D.C. residents from spending their own money on things that don’t align with the conservative agenda, like abortion services or reparations.

But gold lampposts (which, if the past is any evidence, could conceivably be part of Trump’s plan) are definitely worth the money! On Thursday, as well, Trump said he wants D.C.’s parks to look like his golf courses.

“I’m very good at grass because I have a lot of golf courses all over the place,” he bragged. “I know more about grass than any human being, I think, anywhere in the world, and we’re going to be re-grassing all of your parks … it’ll look like Augusta. It’ll look like, more importantly, Trump National Golf Club—that’s even better,” he said, referring to Augusta, Georgia, where the Masters Tournament is held.

It seems that the president won’t stop until the whole District has been transformed into Mar-a-Lago.