Trump Declares Moon Base a Priority—as Everything Else Falls Apart

Donald Trump is about to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to make Elon Musk’s fantasies a reality.

Speaking on Fox News Tuesday, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman formally announced that the agency was planning to go back to the moon. “But this time, when we go back, we’re gonna go back to stay,” he said. “We’re going to build President Trump’s moon base.”

At NASA’s “Ignition” event on Tuesday, Isaacman outlined the agency’s multistage plan to enact Trump’s lofty space policy. In an executive order signed in December, Trump demanded astronauts return to the moon by 2028 and establish a lunar outpost by 2030 in order to “enable the next steps in Mars exploration.”

“The moon base will not appear overnight,” Isaacman said. “We will invest approximately $20 billion over the next seven years and build it through dozens of missions.”

Isaacman, a billionaire private astronaut, is a close ally of Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX who served a short stint at the White House in the hopes of manifesting his science fiction pipe dreams, which included colonizing Mars.

Isaacman was originally nominated to serve as NASA’s administrator last year, but his nomination was withdrawn amid internal MAGA beef that saw Musk tossed from the White House. Isaacman’s nomination was revived in November, just two weeks after interim NASA administrator Sean Duffy suggested he’d invite other companies to compete with Musk’s SpaceX for contracts to build a lunar lander.

Speaking to hundreds of representatives from commercial aerospace companies, Isaacman put out a call for proposals to supplant the NASA-run Space Launch System rocket as well as Orion, the capsule astronauts use to fly to the moon. NASA is hoping to contract at least two companies for that task, according to The New York Times.

While NASA gears up to spend billions of dollars on a program that will not improve the lives of most Americans, the Trump administration has slashed the budgets of essential federal programs and uprooted health care subsidies.

The president’s newly confirmed Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has “no problem” with physically punishing his children, according to a newly resurfaced video.

“I’ll tell you right now, I do spank, I have no problem with that,” the Oklahoma senator said in a 2023 speech to the City Elders, a group dedicated to “governing the gates of every city in America to establish the kingdom of God.”

Mullin is the father of six children, including two twin girls, whom he described as unimaginably “loving” even after they were spanked.

“I can spank them and I’m still upset and they’ll come and crawl on my lap two minutes later and just hug on me,” he went on, before diving into a disturbing story about one of his daughters pleading for mercy before he hit her.

“‘No, Daddy. No, Daddy. No, Daddy! No! I’m sorry, Daddy, I’m sorry, Dad,’” Mullin told the crowd, animatedly imitating his child. “She’d just get madder and madder and she just couldn’t bring herself to even bend over for me to bust her butt.”

In the same address, the diehard MAGA loyalist and former MMA fighter also recounted threatening to hit his daughter’s boyfriend if he kissed her, and reminisced fondly about his own childhood beatings.

“If I ever see you kiss her in front of me, I’m dragging your face across the asphalt,” Mullins reportedly told the teenager, whom he said was a “good kid.”

“I was raised by the fear of a belt,” Mullin said of his own father’s discipline tactics, which he claimed taught him respect and discipline. “We got to discipline people. That doesn’t mean you gotta discipline with hatred, you can discipline with love.”

Mullin was nominated earlier this month after former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was fired from her position. He was confirmed as Homeland Security Secretary on Monday.

Along with his promotion of childhood abuse, the man who will be in charge of leading Trump’s volatile immigration crackdown has also tried to physically fight a union leader, covered Trump from Epstein files scrutiny, and mistaken Pete Hegseth as the president of the United States—twice.

Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is reportedly pressuring President Donald Trump to intensify his unpopular and unauthorized war in Iran.

Multiple sources who were briefed on the conversations told The New York Times that the prince sees the conflict as a “historic opportunity” to reshape the Middle East.

“Prince Mohammed has argued that the United States should consider putting troops in Iran to seize energy infrastructure and force the government out of power,” the Times reported. Saudi officials deny the claim that the prince wants the war to continue.

Trump has shown all 79 years of age in his comments about the war. He has claimed he can end things pretty much whenever, that the U.S. needs NATO allies to help, that we actually don’t need NATO at all, and that we have already won the war. On Monday, Iran flatly denied Trump’s claims that the two countries had held “productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities.” In short, the president is waffling at a level that would make IHOP proud.

And now MBS is in Trump’s ear, reportedly telling him to escalate. Saudi Arabia sees even a debilitated Iran as a “a grave and direct security threat,” according to the Times. If Trump pulls out without completely destroying Iran’s government and military, the Saudis worry that Iran will retaliate against them.

The Saudis specifically fear strikes on their oil infrastructure. Iran has already struck Saudi refineries and siphoned off the Strait of Hormuz, crippling the global oil market.

The prince has a lot of influence over Trump, having already convinced him to announce the U.S. would take action in Sudan in 2025. But the Iran war is a different matter. The conflict is unpopular and confusing to Americans, and Trump is facing increasing pressure from his base to end things.

Oil traders wagered bets worth $580 million just minutes before Trump announced he had “productive conversations” with Iran to end the war, suggesting that the president’s announcement was nothing more than a ploy to manipulate markets.

Fifteen minutes before the president’s unexpected announcement at 7:04 a.m. Monday, about 6,200 Brent and West Texas Intermediate Futures contracts changed hands, the Financial Times reported Tuesday. Trading volumes for the two benchmarks skyrocketed at the same time, and the S&P 500 share went up shortly after the trade.

“The well-timed trades echoed the flurry of large highly profitable bets made on prediction market Polymarket on the timing of the US’s attacks in recent months on Iran and Venezuela,” the Financial Times wrote.

After pledging Saturday to destroy Iran’s power stations and energy infrastructure unless Tehran reopened the Strait of Hormuz, the president swiftly changed course and announced Monday he would postpone all U.S. strikes on such infrastructure for five days, following “very good and productive conversations” between the two countries.

“BASED ON THE TENOR AND TONE OF THESE IN DEPTH, DETAILED, AND CONSTRUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS, WHICH WILL CONTINUE THROUGHOUT THE WEEK, I HAVE INSTRUCTED THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR TO POSTPONE ANY AND ALL MILITARY STRIKES AGAINST IRANIAN POWER PLANTS AND ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE FOR A FIVE DAY PERIOD, SUBJECT TO THE SUCCESS OF THE ONGOING MEETINGS AND DISCUSSIONS,” he wrote on Truth Social.

Tehran denied Trump’s claim, however, stating there had been “no direct contact with Trump,” since the U.S. began bombing Iran almost a month ago, raising serious concerns that the president is saying whatever he wants to prevent gas prices from going up amidst soaring costs nationwide.

Trump’s announcement came just hours before U.S. stock markets opened, and the supposed pause is due to last until the end of the energy sector trading week. The president’s decision caused skyrocketing oil prices to dip almost immediately, though they have risen since then.

The president’s seemingly fake talks with Iran and the newly revealed market chaos likely means his goal of reopening the Strait of Hormuz is—and always has been—out of reach.

An oil executive accused of being a “Never Trump” Republican will be filling Markwayne Mullin’s Senate seat in Oklahoma.

On Tuesday, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt announced that Alan Armstrong, executive chairman of the board of natural gas pipeline firm Williams Companies, will replace Mullin as the latter assumes his position as secretary of homeland security.

Armstrong has been called a “Never Trump” Republican by those on the far right, mostly due to his large donation to the campaign of former GOP Representative Adam Kinzinger following the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection. Kinzinger had criticized President Trump over his lies about the 2020 election being stolen and served on the House January 6 investigative committee with fellow Trump nemesis Liz Cheney. Later, Kinzinger endorsed Joe Biden for president in 2024.

“Has anyone told President Trump that the Governor of Oklahoma is bringing a Never Trumper who donated to a rabid anti-Trump Congressman who voted to impeach him after J6 to meet with him?” right-wing talking head Laura Loomer posted Sunday on X. “Hey @SenMullin what do you think about your Never Trump replacement? Now would be a good time for you to speak up!”

Armstrong is expected to be sworn in Tuesday afternoon.

This story has been updated.

With betting apps—sorry, “prediction markets”—like Kalshi and Polymarket, it’s easier than ever to profit off of deadly conflicts.

An anonymous user made nearly $1 million on Polymarket with dozens of eerily accurate bets about the ongoing Iran war, CNN reported on Tuesday.

The user bet with 93 percent accuracy on topics such as when U.S. and Israeli airstrikes would occur in 2024, 2025, and 2026.

This is not the first time that people who appear to have inside information have used sites like Polymarket to profit from violent acts.

A few days before the U.S. kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a raid, a user created a Polymarket account and wagered tens of thousands of dollars that Maduro would be in U.S. custody by the end of the month. They won more than $400,000.

Gambling, once tightly regulated in the U.S., has become easier to access than ever with the rise of betting apps. It has rapidly invaded sports, politics, and culture. Even CNN, which broke the Polymarket story, has a deal with rival group Kalshi to use its data in its news coverage.

Both Kalshi and Polymarket ostensibly ban insider trading, but with anonymous accounts and plausible deniability, the apps make it easy for those in the know to profit.

Sometimes the sites will even let slip that they’re fine with the practice. In November, Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan told Axios it was “super cool” that his app “creates this financial incentive for people to go and divulge the information to the market.”

While some lawmakers and government watchdogs are looking to regulate the addictive, often unethical apps, Kalshi and Polymarket have an advocate in the president, a former casino owner. The Trump administration closed active investigations into the sites at the start of Trump’s second term, and Donald Trump Jr. has been hired as a board member of Polymarket and a “strategic adviser” of Kalshi. The war profiteering will continue until further notice.

President Donald Trump has once again voted by mail while railing against so-called “mail-in cheating.”

Trump, who has staunchly opposed mail-in voting as part of his delusions of mass voter fraud, voted by mail in a special election in Florida, according to The New York Times. The website for Palm Beach County’s Supervisor of Elections listed Trump’s voter status as “by mail ballot.”

Trump previously voted by mail in 2020.

Trump’s latest vote comes as the president has rejected a bid from his own party to end the partial government shutdown in order to pass the SAVE America Act, which would prohibit universal mail-in voting. Under the new legislation, voters would have to submit an application to receive a mail-in ballot.

In a statement, the White House pretended that the president’s mail-in ballot wasn’t at odds with his own legislation. “The SAVE America Act has common-sense exceptions for Americans to use mail-in ballots for illness, disability, military, or travel—but universal mail-in voting should not be allowed,” the statement said. “As everyone knows, the President is a resident of Palm Beach and participates in Florida elections, but he obviously primarily lives at the White House in Washington, D.C.”

Between naps at a crime-fighting task force in Memphis, Tennessee, Monday, Trump had claimed mail-in ballots were a threat to democracy. “Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating,” he ranted. “I call it mail-in cheating, and we got to do something about it all.”

The Supreme Court appeared poised Monday to reject a Mississippi law that allowed ballots to be counted after Election Day, a decision that could further upend the democratic process. Last year, Trump signed an executive order banning ballots that were not “cast and received” by Election Day.

Former Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino—the man who oversaw President Trump’s violent immigration crackdown and thinks Latino immigrants are “scum,” “filth,” and “trash”—identifies as Native American. His family is Italian American, and he is not in any official tribal registry.

In several interviews with Bovino ahead of his retirement, The New York Times reported that Bovino listed his race as “Native American” on legal documents with Cherokee as his tribe, even gifting agents tomahawks as prizes for good work. Bovino told the Times that he has called himself Cherokee since he was 8 years old.

Bovino’s statement is tenuous at best, and the families he relentlessly brutalized and surveilled for over a year have a much more legitimate claim to American indigeneity than he does. The former Border Patrol chief continues to double down on all of the policies that led to federal agents killing two Americans in the street and his eventual firing, telling the Times he wanted “total border domination.”

“When you use terms like that, perhaps it scares some of the weaker-minded people. Domination. I want you to dominate that border. I’m not going to ‘control’ it. We’re going to dominate the hell out of that damn place,” Bovino said, and thinks that “all illegal aliens are criminals.”

Bovino oversaw the occupation of Minneapolis that led to the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and had the gall to claim Pretti planned to “massacre” federal agents. Now he’ll be retiring to hunting and shitposting.

President Donald Trump was spotted struggling to stay awake even while his sycophants showered him with praise.

While attending a crime-stopping task force Monday aimed at curbing crime in Memphis, Tennessee, Trump appeared to doze off.

The 79-year-old president tried desperately to keep his eyes open while hearing about the rates of gunshot victims.

While Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ranted about Trump steering the United States off of a “perpetual course of decline,” the president’s eyelids fluttered and closed.

When he wasn’t drifting off into a dreamless daze, Trump’s remarks ranged from incoherent to problematic.

At one point, Trump joked about moving to Tennessee. “I love it. You never know what that is, you know, you just have a relationship with a state. It’s a lot safer than relationships with other things, I can tell you as a politician,” he joked. Earlier, Trump suggested that it had been Hegseth’s idea to wage war against Iran.

Trump has repeatedly been spotted dozing off during press conferences and signings, and even admitted that he’d grabbed some shut-eye during Cabinet meetings because they were “boring as hell.”

President Trump is already trying to throw Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth under the bus for the fruitless war on Iran.

“I called Pete, I called General Caine, I called a lot of our great people … and I said, ‘Let’s talk. We got a problem in the Middle East. We have a country … that for 47 years has been a purveyor of terror. And they’re very close to having a nuclear weapon. We can keep going and get that 50,000 up to 55 and 60, there’s no end. Or we could take a stop and make a little journey into the Middle East, and eliminate a big problem,’” Trump said Monday at an event in Memphis.

“Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up,” Trump continued. “And you said, ‘Let’s do it.’ Because you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.”

“Hegseth about to give his next briefing from under the bus,” liberal podcaster Jon Favreau wrote on X.

This quick comment is magnified by the chaos of Monday morning, which saw Trump announcing a five-day pause on bombing Iranian energy sites while claiming that he was close to a deal with the Iranian government. The Iranian government then denied speaking to him in any capacity at all, sparking rumors that Trump was engaging in market manipulation. And if the war is going as badly as it appears to be, Hegseth may be in trouble.