“I Would Stomp Him”: AOC Laughs About Idea of Running Against JD Vance

Progressive Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez likes her chances in a 2028 general election matchup against Vice President JD Vance—and the numbers are currently backing her up.

“Do you think that you could beat JD Vance in a head-to-head race for president as polling suggests in 2028?” AOC was asked by Migrant Insider’s Pablo Manríquez.

The congresswoman laughed.

“Listen, these polls like three years out are … they are what they are,” she said with a smile. “But, let the record show—I would stomp him. I would stomp him!”

The polling in question is from The Argument/Verasight, and has Ocasio-Cortez edging out Vance 51 percent to 49 percent.

As the congresswoman said herself, there is still so much that can happen between now and 2028 that could deem polls like this completely irrelevant. However, this positive showing from perhaps America’s most popular left-leaning politician demonstrates a desire for populist, antiestablishment, pro–working class politics that Democrats have eschewed and Republicans have misrepresented.

Ocasio-Cortez would join a crowded Democratic primary field that could include the likes of Governors Gavin Newson, JB Pritzker, Andy Beshear, Wes Moore, and Josh Shapiro, as well as Senators Cory Booker, Ro Khanna, Chris Murphy, and former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Donald Trump has been talking to attorney Alan Dershowitz about running for a third term in office, which is prohibited by the Constitution. 

In an Oval Office meeting, Dershowitz gave Trump a draft of a book he is writing called Could President Trump Constitutionally Serve a Third Term? Dershowitz told The Wall Street Journal that the book, due to be published next year, lays out scenarios in which a president could serve a third term, and that Trump said he would read it and wanted to know Dershowitz’s opinion.

“I said ‘It’s not clear if a president can become a third term president and it’s not clear if it’s permissible,’” Dershowitz said. The attorney and Jeffrey Epstein associate worked to defend Trump when he was facing impeachment proceedings in his first term. 

“He found it interesting as an intellectual issue,” Dershowitz added. “Do I think he’s going to run for a third term? No, I don’t think he will run for a third term.” 

But Trump has been discussing the possibility of a third term in office for a while now, telling NBC News in March that “there are methods which you could do it.” He continues to “joke” about the possibility, with his business selling “Trump 2028” hats for $50 each. Meanwhile those close to Trump, like Steve Bannon and Boris Epshteyn, continue to promote the unconstitutional move.  

On Tuesday, at a White House Hanukkah event, Miriam Adelson, one of Trump’s biggest donors, said she had spoken to Dershowitz and believed a third term was possible, as the audience broke out in chants of “four more years.” With that kind of encouragement, these threats need to be taken seriously. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson is conveniently sending Congress home the day before the Justice Department is supposed to release the Epstein files in full. The announcement came Wednesday night.

This looks like yet another instance of Johnson doing every little thing he can either to delay the release of the files or to make it so that his fellow GOPers don’t have to be in town to answer to their complicity in this monthslong campaign to avoid their release—as he did by egregiously delaying the swearing-in of Democratic Representative Adelita Grijalva for weeks.

“Like I said: view all political developments for the rest of the week in light of the fact that the Epstein Files are supposed to be released on Friday,” Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote Wednesday evening on X. “House Republicans just suddenly canceled Congressional session Friday and are sending everyone home Thursday evening.”

While recent releases have produced photos of notable people alongside Epstein—like Bill Clinton, President Trump, Bill Gates, Woody Allen, and Noam Chomsky—it’s unclear what Friday’s drop will reveal. If Johnson has his way, it might not happen at all.

President Donald Trump gave a nonsensical justification Wednesday for his blockade of all “sanctioned oil tankers” coming and going from Venezuela.

Speaking to reporters, Trump appeared to claim that he was simply stealing back oil that already belonged to the United States.

“You remember they took all of our energy rights, they took all of our oil from not that long ago, and we want it back, but they took it, they illegally took it,” Trump said.

At another point, he said, “They took our oil rights. We had a lot of oil there. As you know, they threw our companies out, and we want it back.”

It seems that Trump was referring to when Hugo Chávez ordered the seizure of foreign-owned oil fields in 2007, including land and assets that belonged to U.S. oil companies ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips.

In the intervening 18 years, Chevron struck a deal with Venezuela (that Trump somehow made worse) while ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips entered into a lengthy legal battle that is still ongoing to win billions of dollars from the Venezuelan government.

It seems pretty obvious that oil fields located in Venezuela, even if they were previously owned by U.S. companies, don’t actually belong to the United States—but Trump sees things differently. On Tuesday, he wrote on Truth Social that it was time for Venezuela to “return … the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”

Trump’s blockade is the second major military escalation targeted at Venezuela’s oil industry, after Venezuela accused the United States of piracy because it seized one of Caracas’s oil tankers. This follows months of extrajudicial strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea that the U.S. government claims, but won’t bother to prove, are smuggling drugs. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles indicated that these efforts were about forcing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to step down.

Earlier this week, Trump manufactured the perfect excuse to invade Venezuela, by ordering fentanyl to be classified as a weapon of mass destruction. For anyone thinking, “I recognize this tune,” it’s because Trump’s newest tactic is just an echo of the U.S. government’s lie that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction as justification for its invasion of Iraq. It seems that history is repeating itself, as there is reason to believe that America’s growing interest in Venezuela is not about drugs at all: It’s actually about oil.

To President Donald Trump, a picture is apparently not worth 1,000 words. It’s important to get some real words in there too, in case things aren’t clear.

As if Trump’s new hallway of presidential portraits wasn’t enough of an eyesore, he’s now added long, rambling plaques summarizing the accomplishments of each of our past leaders. And they are just as petty, biased, and indelicate as you would expect.

Under Joe Biden’s “portrait”—which is just a picture of an autopen signing Biden’s name—the plaque begins, “Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst President in American History.” The plaque features a number of totally accurate and not at all exaggerated “facts” about Biden’s tenure, including blaming him for both Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

For Barack Obama, the plaque reads that he was “one of the most divisive presidents in American History,” and credits him with passing the “‘Unaffordable’ Care Act, resulting in his party losing control of both Houses of Congress.”

Even George W. Bush is catching strays: “President Bush created the Department of Homeland Security, but started wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which should not have happened.”

But, like a shining city on a hill, one president remains above criticism: Ronald Reagan. “Ronald Reagan won the Cold War, and transformed American politics and the Conservative Movement,” the plaque reads. “He was a fan of President Donald J. Trump long before President Trump’s Historic run for the White House. Likewise, President Trump was a fan of his!”

Was this true? The Washington Post seems to think not, as Trump reached out to the Reagan White House with invitations at least six times back in the 1980s, and each time was ignored or rejected. But what does truth have to do with anything when you’re the man who, as Biden’s plaque reads, would “get Re-Elected in a Landslide, and SAVE AMERICA”?

Thank goodness this man isn’t in charge of the Smithsonian—oh, wait.

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, Kash Patel’s woefully underqualified No. 2,  is finally headed for the exit.

The former talk radio announced Wednesday that he will leave his position next month, the AP reported. Bongino reportedly told confidants that he was not planning to return to FBI headquarters at all this year, eight people told MS NOW.

Donald Trump also confirmed Bongino’s exit while speaking to reporters Wednesday. “Dan did a great job. I think he wants to go back to his show,” the president said.

Bongino, who had no prior experience working for the FBI, previously spread conspiracy theories about the bureau where he would later manage day-day-operations. He once claimed that the plot to plant pipe bombs at the Democratic and Republican National headquarters on January 6, 2021, reeked of an “inside job.” 

Patel also reportedly granted Bongino a waiver to bypass getting a key security clearance, but the deputy director was still given access to highly classified information, such as the president’s daily brief, which collates essential information from the intelligence community.

News of Bongino’s potential exit comes after another report that Trump was considering removing Patel, as the hapless leader’s blunders start to pile up. The report also comes amid the FBI’s ongoing manhunt for a mass shooter at Brown University. 

This story has been updated.

The Federal Communications Commission website no longer reflects that the FCC is an “independent” agency after FCC Chair Brendan Carr testified to Congress on Wednesday that he didn’t consider it to be one.

Axios’s Sara Fischer caught the change, and posted about it on X: “This is INSANE. I took this screenshot of the @FCC website at 11:52 a.m. ET where it explicitly states the FCC is an independent agency. 25 minutes later, it has been removed following Carr’s comments during this hearing! See before and after screenshots below.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, there is no mention of the FCC being an “independent agency” on its website, only a “U.S. agency.” (The last publicly available confirmation of the word “independent” appearing on the site was October 1.)

During the hearing, Carr was pressed on whether he considered the FCC to be an independent agency: Though he had previously said himself that the agency was “long ago determined” by Congress to be independent, he claimed on Wednesday that his position had changed, and he now believes it to no longer be independent, since its members are subject to for-cause removal by the president.

One senator even read from the FCC’s website. New Mexico’s Ben Ray Luján said, “Just so you know, Brendan, on your website it just simply says, man, the FCC is independent.... This isn’t a trick question.”

Unluckily for Luján—and for the American people—it doesn’t say that anymore. Whether the change was the Trump administration’s attempt to protect Carr from appearing to lie during congressional testimony, or just a mask-off moment about the sad state of the FCC, it’s clear that the agency can no longer be trusted to act independently of the president.

President Donald Trump wants to pretend like he’s not crippling the economy, but job growth in 2025 has dropped by more than half, and it’s all his fault. 

Only 499,000 jobs were created between February and November 2025, according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, down from 1.57 million new jobs during the same period last year—or a nearly 68 percent decrease year over year. 

Although the job market started off strong, job creation began to falter in April, around the same time that Trump announced his “Liberation Day” reciprocal tariffs. CNN reported that 2025 has shown the weakest job-growth levels since the pandemic, and before that the Great Recession. 

The BLS reported Tuesday that unemployment rose to 4.6 percent in November, the highest rate in four years.

The Trump administration has touted the addition of roughly 687,000 private-sector jobs (while shedding 188,000 government jobs), claiming that 100 percent of the job growth can be attributed to “native-born Americans.” However, the jobs report does not faithfully record workers’ nationality or legal status, so its claims about who exactly is getting these jobs are pure fiction.  

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr admitted that he sees President Donald Trump as his boss, during a congressional hearing Wednesday, and refused to say that it would be wrong to do the president’s bidding as the chairman of what is supposed to be an independent agency.

Senator Andy Kim came at Carr with a targeted line of questioning about the FCC’s independence. Carr claimed that, contrary to what he had himself said to Congress in the past, the FCC isn’t technically independent because it isn’t protected from for-cause removal, meaning the president can fire FCC commissioners whenever he wants.

Kim followed up: “I’m just trying to get a sense from you: If you don’t think that the FCC is independent, then is President Trump your boss?”

“President Trump has designated me as chairman of the FCC; I think it comes as no surprise that I’m aligned with President Trump on policy,” Carr meandered, until Kim pressed him again.

“The president designated me as chairman,” said Carr. “I can be fired by the president, the president is the head of the executive branch.”

“So he’s your boss,” Kim responded. After Carr attempted to shift responsibility for his actions onto the other two members of the FCC, Kim asked, “You swore an oath when you came into your job. Does the oath have the word ‘president’ in it?”

Carr wouldn’t answer the question.

In response to Carr’s either feigning confusion or genuine perplexity about why anyone would care whether the president of the United States has influence over the media’s governing body, Kim decided to switch to a more direct line of questioning.

“Have you ever had a conversation with the president or senior administration officials about using the FCC to go after critics?” Kim said.

“First of all, senator, I don’t get into the specifics of conversations that I have,” Carr said.

“OK, let me reframe it then. Would it be appropriate for the president or senior administration officials to give you direction to pressure media companies?”

Carr, apparently committed to no longer answering questions, responded, “I’m sorry, I’m not gonna get into hypotheticals.”

Kim, looking exasperated, said, “The easy answer is, ‘No.’ It’s not a hypothetical. It’s literally just trying to determine whether or not you are understanding your job belonging to the American people. Trump is not your boss. The American people are your boss,” Kim continued.

As Kim, Carr, and many of us know, Kim’s questions aren’t about a hypothetical situation. Trump has repeatedly threatened to revoke the licenses of news networks, and Carr and the FCC have been all too happy to enforce the president’s desire to muzzle late-night hosts and media outlets.

“He did intentionally try to pressure you. This is real,” Kim said.

Former special counsel Jack Smith defended his investigations into President Donald Trump in a closed-door hearing with the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday, pushing back against Trump’s repeated attempts to delegitimize and undermine Smith’s findings.

“If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether the President was a Republican or Democrat,” Smith said in his opening statement, according to multiple news organizations who received copies of the remarks.

“The decision to bring charges against President Trump was mine, but the basis for those charges rests entirely with President Trump and his actions, as alleged in the indictments returned by grand juries in two different districts,” he continued.

Smith, like anyone else who’s ever tried to hold Trump to account, has been facing a pressure campaign from the president. Recently, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt shared a story from Fox News claiming that the FBI initially doubted that there was probable cause for the Mar-a-Lago raid, something that might matter if a federal judge hadn’t signed off on the search warrant, and if over 100 classified documents weren’t indeed found all over Trump’s estate.

And Republicans snuck a petty provision into the shutdown deal allowing Senate Republicans who had their phone records accessed by Smith—in order to see who may have been involved with Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election—to sue the Justice Department for millions.

Republicans rejected Smith’s request to testify publicly about his investigations into Trump’s mishandling of classified documents and his plot to overturn the election. But in Wednesday’s closed-door hearing, Smith still refused to let the Trump administration undermine his findings.

“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power,” Smith said in his remarks. “Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a bathroom and a ballroom where events and gatherings took place.

“He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents,” Smith added.

According to Smith, no matter what Trump claims, the cases against him are rock solid.