White House Is in Full Panic Mode as Trump Doubles Down on Iran War

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles summoned dozens of Republican political consultants from across the country for a meeting Monday at the Waldorf Astoria, a person familiar with the plan told Politico’s Playbook.

The gathering of Republican operatives comes as the White House is developing its strategy and aligning the broader party apparatus to face November’s midterm elections amid Donald Trump’s rather unpopular “excursion” to the Middle East.

Former deputy chief of staff James Blair, who departed the White House earlier this month in order to run the president’s political operation, was also involved in organizing the meeting at the Waldorf.

“Taken together, the sessions underscore growing urgency inside the White House about the midterms and concerns around energy prices and cost of living exacerbated by the Iran war,” Politico reported.

Trump’s overall approval rating has hit a new low of just 37 percent, according to an NBC News poll Monday. Two-thirds of Americans disapproved of Trump’s handling of inflation and the Iran conflict, which has upended global trade and sent energy prices skyrocketing.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright admitted Sunday that gas prices may not come back down until next year, leaving Republicans in a tough spot when it comes to seeking reelection in November. It seems that strategists in the White House are aware that there’s only so much spin they can do.

“The rhetoric around this stuff matters way less than the reality,” one person close to the White House told Politico’s Dasha Burns Monday. “It either will be or it won’t be. If we don’t see the $3 gallon of gas, we’re gonna get killed.”

Republicans are fighting over expelling some of their own members of Congress.

Representative Cory Mills, under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over allegations of assaulting women, soliciting sex workers, lying about his military service, and profiting from federal contracts as a member of Congress, has drafted a resolution to expel his colleague, Representative Nancy Mace, from Congress after she tried to expel him and three other members of Congress last week.

A source told NOTUS, which first reported the news, that the resolution would highlight an incident at Charleston International Airport in South Carolina, last year, in which Mace yelled at TSA agents and security officers, calling them “fucking incompetent.”

The resolution could bring up any other number of Mace’s scandals. The South Carolina representative is also facing her own House Ethics Committee investigation over allegations that she collected $12,000 in congressional reimbursement funds that she wasn’t eligible for, and ordered her staff to buy her alcohol late at night, clean her house, and promote her on forums as one of the “hottest women in Congress.”

The congresswoman took to X after news of Mills’s resolution broke, posting that he “lied about his military service, has been accused of beating women, has a restraining order against him, and has allegedly been stuffing his own pockets with federal contracts while sitting in Congress. As a survivor, I will always stand up and right the wrongs of others. He is only coming after me because he knows he’s next.”

Mace last week also targeted Democrat Eric Swalwell and Republican Tony Gonzalez, who ended up resigning rather than face expulsion resolutions from Congress. Swalwell faced numerous allegations of sexual assault and misconduct, while Gonzalez sent sexually explicit messages to two aides and had an affair with one who later committed suicide.

The fourth representative in Mace’s crosshairs is Democratic Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, who faces an expulsion vote this week over allegedly misusing Federal Emergency Management Agency funds.

For now, the infighting in the Republican caucus undermines their already razor-thin control of the House and makes it appear that petty squabbling is taking precedence over serious ethical issues.

The man who just committed the deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. in the past two years had a previous weapons conviction—so how did he get his hands on another gun?

Shamar Elkins, a 31-year-old father, shot and killed his seven children and their cousin Sunday in Shreveport, Louisiana. The victims’ ages ranged from three to 11, CNN reported. He also critically injured two women: his wife and the mother of the eighth child.

But in March 2019, three years after he finished a seven-year stint in the Louisiana Army National Guard, Elkins was arrested for firing a 9-millimeter handgun 300 feet away from the fence line of a school where children were playing outside, KTBS reported.

Elkins was charged with illegal use of weapons and carrying a firearm on school property. He pleaded guilty to the illegal weapons charge, and the second, more serious charge was dismissed. Elkins was placed on probation for 18 months but walked away without a permanent firearms ban.

Elkins was also charged with driving while intoxicated in 2016, CNN reported.

The state of Louisiana has a 10-year ban on firearm possession after certain felonies—crimes of violence, sex crimes, drug crimes, burglaries, for example—but not all felonies. The crime to which Elkins pleaded guilty sat beneath this legal threshold.

Because Elkins’s 2019 conviction for illegal weapons use only resulted in probation, his record fell short of the legal threshold for a permanent firearms ban under U.S. federal law, according to the International Business Times. Elkins was able to legally own a firearm again after his probation ended.

Republican Representative Chip Roy is taking aim at free speech and freedom of religion, introducing a bill that would target immigrants who support “socialism, communism, Chinese communism, Marxism, or Islamic fundamentalism.”  

Roy calls his assault on the First Amendment to the Constitution the “MAMDANI Act,” after New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who was elected last year on a platform of democratic socialism. The legislation would make any “alien” who supports or has supported those ideologies “inadmissible, deportable, denaturalizable, and ineligible for naturalization.”

“By targeting the Red-Green Alliance, this legislation deploys new tools to fight back against the Marxist and Islamist advance that has devastated Europe and has now arrived on our doorstep, especially in my home state of Texas,” Roy told Breitbart. 

His office reportedly provided the right-wing website with a one-page summary of the bill, which cites “the very presence of Zohran Mamdani and those like him who champion Marxist ideologies” as enabling “the mass importation of Marxists and Islamists.”

Roy, who is running for Texas attorney general, has a long history of bigotry against Muslims. Late last month, Roy posted “No more Muslims” on X, drawing backlash from Muslims throughout his state. He has vocally opposed the East Plano Islamic Center’s planned housing development in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, joining other Texas Republicans who warn of a “Sharia law” conspiracy. 

With Republicans having an ever-narrowing majority in the House, the bill is likely just symbolic, but it still shows the level of bigotry and Islamophobia present in the Republican Party and in Texas, even though the state has an estimated 400,000 Muslim residents. Roy will likely face zero consequences for his prejudices, as Republicans are increasingly embracing bigoted conspiracies and opposing constitutional rights.

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a new religious rights case that could challenge a landmark 1990 decision.

Parents within the Catholic Archdiocese of Denver, which runs 34 preschools across Colorado’s capital city, have challenged a state mandate requiring church-affiliated preschools to admit children of same-sex couples in order to receive public funds. The church has claimed that the law oversteps its First Amendment rights, as it does not recognize same-sex relationships or transgender identities.

The legal precedent at stake was set during Employment Division v. Smith, in which the high court ruled that Oregon could deny unemployment benefits to a Native American fired for using peyote (a hallucinogenic plant illegal in the state), even though it was used for religious purposes.

Three of the court’s conservative justices have already said that the 1990 decision should be overturned, The Hill reported. The Supreme Court declined to directly take up that question, but is reportedly open to narrowing the precedent set nearly four decades ago.

Colorado’s mandate requires that preschools ensure “an equal opportunity to enroll and receive preschool services regardless of race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity, lack of housing, income level, or disability.”

“The rulings below give hostile states a playbook for leveraging their vast and growing government funding programs to pressure religious schools and other ministries to abandon their religious practices or else be excluded from the arena,” the archdiocese’s lawyers at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty wrote in court filings.

The Trump administration has already chimed in. Without hearing the preschools’ challenge, the admin filed an amicus brief in support of the church, urging the nation’s highest judiciary to take up the case. Trump officials wrote that the U.S. government holds a “substantial interest in the preservation of the free exercise of religion” and in the “enforcement of rules prohibiting discrimination by government funding recipients.”

It’s at least the second instance in which the ultraconservative Supreme Court has agreed to hear a challenge to Colorado’s LGBTQ protections since Donald Trump returned to office. In March, the judiciary sided with a therapist who claimed that the state’s conversion therapy ban discriminated against her based on her views.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the lone dissenter, and wrote at the time that the majority’s opinion “could be ushering in an era of unprofessional and unsafe medical care administered by effectively unsupervised healthcare providers.”

The Trump administration is considering a bailout for the United Arab Emirates over economic losses sustained as a result of the U.S. war with Iran.

The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that UAE officials are speaking with the White House about providing financial relief, such as a currency swap, if their economy takes an even bigger hit during the war. Khaled Mohamed Balama, governor of the UAE’s central bank, raised the issue in meetings with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last week. UAE officials reportedly have said their finances are OK for now, but they could need help in the future.

In an interview with CNBC Monday morning, Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, said that while he hadn’t spoken directly with Bessent about it, if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed and continues to hurt the UAE’s economy, the Trump administration would be willing to provide help.

“The UAE has been an incredibly valuable ally throughout this effort, and I am sure that the treasury secretary will make every effort to help them out should that be necessary,” Hassett said.

President Trump and his family have extensive business ties with the UAE. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, took in about $200 million from the UAE’s sovereign wealth fund for his investment firm, Affinity Partners, in 2023. The next year, Kushner’s firm secured $1.5 billion from Abu Dhabi-based firm Lunate and Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund.

Last year, the UAE invested $2 billion into World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency venture run by Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr. Trump happened to lift export restrictions on computer chips at the same time. The Trump Organization is also building a luxury hotel in Dubai.

It’s interesting that administration officials are quick to say they would help out the UAE when other countries who have been hurt economically by the war and the Strait of Hormuz’s closure have been told that they’re on their own. It seems that Trump is certainly willing to help out those who are paying him.

Donald Trump’s administration has quietly transformed the agency overseeing legal immigration into yet another arm of the president’s mass deportation scheme.

An internal agency document reviewed by The New Yorker’s Jonathan Blitzer revealed that the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency that manages visas, green cards, naturalizations, and other aspects of the legal immigration process, has created a new “Tactical Operations Division.”

The roughly 80-person division consists of teams focused on denaturalization, “refugee re-vetting,” fraud detection and national security, and LPR operations, where officials are tasked with finding cases where they can rescind legal permanent residency status, according to Blitzer.

The division is overseen by Danny Andrade, who was selected to run the newly opened USCIS field office in Nashville.

Sarah Pierce, a former policy analyst for USCIS, wrote on X Monday that the restructuring comes as the agency “lost thousands of employees last year.”

“Its application backlog is at a record high—nearly double its 2020 level. And its Fraud Detection division is larger than ever. Yet [USCIS Director Joseph Edlow] keeps finding new ways to shift agency resources from adjudication to deportation,” Pierce wrote.

UCIS’s workforce shrank 11 percent last year, as the agency has become a site for immigration arrests. In September, the Trump administration passed a new rule allowing USCIS to hire special agents for the purpose of making arrests. And the agency’s latest job listings are in search of so-called “Homeland Defenders.”

Negotiations between the U.S. and Iran have hit more turbulence in the wake of a tense weekend that has apparently sent Donald Trump spiraling.

The two countries were close to brokering a new peace agreement late last week as the deadline on the two-week ceasefire drew closer. But that fell apart after the U.S. seized an Iranian cargo ship over the weekend. Trump, however, had other things on his mind.

The president was firmly cemented in la-la land by Monday morning, littering his Truth Social feed with surveys from pro-Trump pollsters that claimed Americans overwhelmingly supported the offensive (they don’t), and Newsmax stories that declared he had “already won the war.”

In at least one post, Trump decried widespread reports that Israel had convinced the White House to partake in its siege against Iran.

“Israel never talked me into the war with Iran, the results of Oct. 7th, added to my lifelong opinion that IRAN CAN NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON, did,” Trump wrote. “I watch and read the FAKE NEWS Pundits and Polls in total disbelief. 90 percent of what they say are lies and made up stories, and the polls are rigged, much as the 2020 Presidential Election was rigged. Just like the results in Venezuela, which the media doesn’t like talking about, the results in Iran will be amazing.”

“And if Iran’s new leaders (Regime Change!) are smart, Iran can have a great and prosperous future!” Trump added, openly boasting about influencing foreign governments.

U.S. involvement in the war was arranged following an auspicious February 11 meeting between Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and several U.S. and Israeli officials in the White House Situation Room, The New York Times reported earlier this month.

It was Netanyahu’s direct influence—and the ensuing pressure campaign—that thrust America into the war. U.S. military commanders advised Trump that components of Netanyahu’s plan to attack Iran were “farcical,” but by that point, Trump had already been inspired to overthrow Tehran’s theocratic regime.

It’s likely that Netanyahu continues to hold the reins. Last month, Trump told The Times of Israel that the decision to end the Iran war will be a “mutual” decision he makes with the Israeli leader.

It is not clear exactly what the war in Iran has accomplished. Together, the U.S. and Israel have killed thousands of Iranian civilians and obliterated Iranian civilian infrastructure. Meanwhile, 13 U.S. soldiers have died. The war also spiked the cost of living for people around the world, agitated international relations—particularly between the U.S. and longtime allies in the Western hemisphere—cost American taxpayers over $50 billion, and sparked a political rejection of MAGA ideology across the U.S.

Trump has previously stated that his primary objective in the war was to erase Iran’s nuclear capabilities, but his administration’s current battle assessments have stood in contrast to other attacks they boasted about as recently as last year.

Prior to the war—which never obtained congressional approval—Trump ordered strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear sites, hitting Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan on June 22. At the time, the Trump administration claimed that the one-off air raid had set Iran’s program back by “years.”

Ex-National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent sparked a maelstrom in Washington when he resigned over the issue last month. Kent argued in his resignation letter that he could not “in good conscience” support the war in Iran. “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” he wrote at the time.

The Trump administration was rebuffed by the state of Michigan Sunday after it tried to demand Detroit-area ballots from the 2024 election.

Last week, the Department of Justice sent a letter, signed by Assistant Attorney General ⁠Harmeet Dhillon, to the clerk of Wayne County, where Detroit is located. The letter demanded election ballots, ballot receipts, and ballot envelopes from the last presidential election, according to Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel.

In a joint statement with Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Nessel called the request “as absurd as it is baseless.”

“Once again, President Trump is weaponizing the Justice Department in an attempt to sabotage our democratic process and turn it into his own personal agency to interfere in state elections,” Nessel said in the statement. “If this administration ​wants to bring this circus to our state, my office is prepared to protect the people’s right to vote.”

It’s the latest of many attempts by the Trump administration to demand voter and election information from states across the country, ostensibly to look for evidence of fraud. Administration officials have sought election data from every state and Washington, D.C., suffering legal setbacks in Rhode Island, California, Massachusetts, and Oregon.

President Trump continues to insist that the 2020 election was stolen from him, despite a lack of evidence and multiple court losses. FBI Director Kash Patel claimed in a Fox News interview Sunday that arrests over the 2020 elections are coming “this week,” a sign that Trump’s underlings are trying to drum up a justification for him to mess with the midterms in November and possibly beyond that.

FBI Director Kash Patel filed a $250 million defamation suit against The Atlantic Monday, after a sweeping report detailing his excessive drinking and unexplained absences.

In a 19-page filing, lawyers for Patel alleged that The Atlantic had published an “article replete with false and obviously fabricated allegations designed to destroy Director Patel’s reputation and drive him from office.”

The Atlantic’s Sarah Fitzpatrick reported over the weekend that Patel was known to drink in excess, routinely delayed meetings and time-sensitive operations, and was often unreachable, raising concerns about the potential for foreign coercion and other national security risks. His behavior had also grown increasingly erratic as he became worried he might lose his job.

The article referenced Patel’s “alcohol-fueled nights” in Washington and Las Vegas, which resulted in rescheduled meetings. The director’s “spotty attendance” in the office caused delays in time-sensitive decision-making. His “delays resulted in normally unflappable agents ‘losing their shit,’” Fitzpatrick wrote. Patel’s rather elusive behavior even prompted a request for actual “breaching equipment,” normally used by SWAT teams, because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors.

The article also described a “freak out” earlier this month when, unable to log into his work computer in the morning, Patel made frantic phone calls claiming he’d been fired. In fact, it was a routine technical issue that was quickly resolved.

Patel had responded to the story by simply saying: “Print it, all false, I’ll see you in court—bring your checkbook.”

The lawsuit pointed to the reliance on anonymous sources who were merely “partisans with axes to grind,” as well as a lack of primary documentation, arguing that the article was “a deliberate and malicious smear.” Of course, the filing of his massive lawsuit now invites extensive discovery into Patel’s conduct.

In a statement Monday, The Atlantic said: “We stand by our reporting on Kash Patel, and we will vigorously defend The Atlantic and our journalists against this meritless lawsuit.”

This story has been updated.