Tucker Carlson Apologizes for Endorsing Trump Amid Massive Fallout

Donald Trump appears to have finally lost one of his most influential supporters.

Ex–Fox News host Tucker Carlson disavowed the president Monday night during an interview with his brother, Republican operative and speechwriter Buckley Carlson, telling his audience that he was “sorry for misleading people” and that he regretted supporting the MAGA leader over the last decade.

“You wrote speeches for him, I campaigned for him. I mean, we’re implicated in this, for sure,” Carlson said to his brother on The Tucker Carlson Show. “It’s not enough to say, ‘Well I changed my mind,’ or like, ‘Oh this is bad, I’m out.’ It’s like in very small ways, but in real ways, you and me and millions of people like us are the reason this is happening right now.

“So I do think it’s like a moment to wrestle with our own consciences. You know, we’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be, and I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people, and it was not intentional. That’s all I’ll say.”

Carlson was once the largest figure in conservative media, ranking head and shoulders above his competitors during his primetime evening slot at Fox. But his sympathies for Trump after the 2020 election—and his penchant for demeaning women and minorities—cost him his throne. Carlson was fired by the network in 2023, shortly after Fox settled a historic $787.5 million lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for spreading baseless conspiracies that the company had rigged the election in favor of Joe Biden.

Trump has broken up with several major MAGA acolytes in recent weeks over their unfavorable responses to the Iran war, including Alex Jones, Candace Owens, and another famous former Fox News host, Megyn Kelly.

The president boosted a video on his Truth Social account over the weekend that urged viewers to stop questioning his decisions. His disavowed media supporters—Carlson included—were plastered all over the clip, framed as individuals that need to “shut the fuck up.” It was the second time that Trump had shared the video; he previously posted it to his account in January. Nonetheless, it has taken months of repeat public abuse for his supporters to question their loyalties.

President Donald Trump’s addiction to social media posting is hurting negotiations with Iran.

Talks last weekend seemed to be going well, with a deal close to being reached. But then, Trump went online and claimed that Iran had agreed to specific provisions, such as handing over all of its enriched uranium, making similar comments to reporters over the phone. Iranian negotiators then publicly denied those claims and announced they weren’t preparing for more talks, saying that the U.S. was unserious.

Unnamed Trump administration officials told CNN that Trump’s posts and statements to the media have had a negative effect on efforts to end the war with Iran, fueling mistrust from the Iranian negotiators.

“The Iranians didn’t appreciate POTUS negotiating through social media and making it appear as if they had signed off on issues they hadn’t yet agreed to, and ones that aren’t popular with their people back home,” one person who was familiar with the negotiations told the news outlet.

Trump’s remarks in the press didn’t help, either. To Bloomberg, he claimed that Iran had agreed to an “unlimited” suspension of its nuclear program, and he told CBS News that Iran had “agreed to everything” and would remove its enriched uranium with help from the U.S. In an interview with Axios, he said, “I think we will get a deal in the next day or two,” with another meeting “probably” coming on the weekend.

Whether any of these details were true or not, airing them out in public before an agreement was reached was not wise, and probably gave the Iranian government less of a reason to take the U.S. in good faith. But don’t expect the president to change anytime soon. On Tuesday, he threatened to resume bombing Iran, just as Vice President JD Vance was expected to leave for peace talks in Pakistan.

“I expect to be bombing. The military is raring to go,” Trump said on CNBC, setting a deadline for a peace deal to be reached in the next 24 hours.

Donald Trump’s scandal-plagued labor secretary resigned Monday, the White House announced.

“Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer will be leaving the Administration to take a position in the private sector. She has done a phenomenal job in her role by protecting American workers, enacting fair labor practices, and helping Americans gain additional skills to improve their lives,” White House spokesman Steven Cheung said on X.

Deputy Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling will take over as acting department head, according to Cheung.

Chavez-DeRemer’s tenure was brief but tumultuous. The secretary was accused of having an affair with a member of her security detail, asking staffers to buy her alcohol at all hours of the day, and misusing government funds—including to throw herself a birthday party.

Chavez-DeRemer also reportedly specifically asked younger female staffers to keep in touch with her husband and father. People familiar with an investigation by the department’s inspector general told The New York Times that Chavez-DeRemer told the young women to “pay attention” to the men.

Her husband was banned from Labor Department grounds after he allegedly assaulted two female staffers.

The writing may have been on the wall for Chavez-DeRemer. After unceremoniously firing ex–Attorney General Pam Bondi, Trump was apparently on the warpath against his own Cabinet. An administration official anonymously told Politico at the start of the month that Trump was “very angry” with his advisers and was looking to move some of them around or even ax them entirely.

Chavez-DeRemer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick were at risk of losing their jobs “imminently,” three anonymous sources told Politico at the time.

As of publication, Chavez-DeRemer has not commented on her resignation. She is now the third woman to hit Trump’s chopping block, after Bondi and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Chavez-DeRemer was also one of the few people of color in Trump’s Cabinet.

Both Bondi and Noem were replaced by men: Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has taken over the Justice Department for the time being, and former Senator Markwayne Mullin was sworn in as the Homeland Security chief in March.

This story has been updated.

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.”