Missing Republican Rep. Sending Out “Creepy and Weird” Newsletters

New Jersey Republican Representative Thomas Kean Jr. hasn’t voted on a single bill since March 5, but his constituents might be none the wiser.

Kean’s office has been blasting out cheery newsletters, written in the congressman’s voice, despite his long-standing absence.

“In Congress, I am focused on delivering real results for our law enforcement and local communities,” read one recent e-letter. “I will always stand with our men and women in blue.”

The letter was quickly called out by other politicos. Aaron Fritschner, chief of staff to Democratic Representative Don Beyer, wrote on X that “Tom Kean’s office is still sending out constituent newsletters like the guy hasn’t vanished off the face of the earth.”

CNN journalist Andrew Kaczynski called the newsletter’s tone “creepy and weird,” given Kean’s inexplicable disappearance.

Kean consultant Harrison Neely fired back, claiming that the charge was “rich” coming from a “‘journalist’ who has called the Congressman’s daughter and family members of staff.”

In return, Kaczynski snarked: “Consultants for Tom Kean are now attacking reporters for inquiring about his whereabouts.”

Kean was missing in action for weeks before he offered any explanation. His meager response was the culmination of a small pressure campaign fronted by journalists, his constituents, and his tristate Republican allies.

Last month, Kean told House Speaker Mike Johnson over the phone that he was dealing with an unspecified “personal health matter.” Neely told Politico that Kean will be “back on a regular full schedule very soon.”

Since then, Johnson has confessed he doesn’t know when Kean will return, while aides to GOP leadership have said they “don’t have any idea what’s going on” with Kean.

Kean was elected to represent New Jersey’s 7th congressional district in 2022, and is months away from being thrust into a contentious midterm reelection cycle. He is currently unchallenged in the Garden State’s Republican primary, scheduled for June 2, but is likely to face tremendous opposition from Democrats come November. Over the last several months, New Jersey’s 7th congressional district has shifted from a “lean Republican” advantage to a total toss-up, according to an analysis by the Cook Political Report.

His absence in the race has apparently inspired his competition: The topic practically consumed his potential competition during a Democratic debate on May 12, according to the Bergen Record.

President Trump’s grasp of the Iran war is becoming more unhinged.

Speaking to the press outside of the White House Tuesday with his prized ballroom under construction behind him, Trump bragged about the economy in his first presidential term, claiming that it was “the best economy we’ve ever had” and that “this term is going to blow it away, I think,” even with the Iran war.

“I thought the market would go down 25 percent, and I was OK with that to get rid of a nuclear potential holocaust. Would have been a nuclear holocaust. So, going down 25 percent’s OK when you get rid of a nuclear holocaust, so, uh, most people agree with me,” Trump said.

Trump went on to brag about how the war is being received by the American people, telling reporters, “Politically, I’m doing good.

“Everyone tells me [the war] is unpopular, but I think it’s very popular. When they hear that it’s having to do with nuclear weapons, weapons that could take out Los Angeles, could take out major cities, very quick, when they hear that—I tell you what, when we explain it to people, I don’t really have enough time to explain to people. I’m too busy getting it done,” Trump said. “I think it’s frankly very popular, but whether it’s popular or not popular, I have to do it, because I’m not going to let the world be blown up on my watch. Not gonna happen.”

In reality, the war is so unpopular that it has brought down Trump’s approval rating to its lowest level ever, according to a recent New York Times poll. The same poll found that most Americans think the war isn’t worth the cost or that the economy is going to improve. Meanwhile, Trump goes back and forth between threatening to break the ceasefire with Iran and claiming a deal is close. It’s little wonder that most Americans lack confidence in the president.

As the Department of Justice launches a $1.776 billion fund to pay damages to the president and his allies, Democrats in Congress are launching an investigation into the man overseeing the whole thing: acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Senators Adam Schiff, Dick Durbin, and Richard Blumenthal want to know whether Blanche, who previously served as Trump’s personal defense attorney, has recused himself from President Trump’s personal civil lawsuits against the government.

“Since last year, the Department has systematically dismantled the agency’s internal guardrails, gutting both the career ethics staff and the Office of Professional Responsibility, and has refused to provide any answers to Congress about these egregious actions,” the senators wrote in a letter to Assistant Attorney General for Administration Jolene Lauria.

The letter contains 10 questions about whether Blanche has recused himself from Trump’s cases, as well as whether he has received ethics advice about his past representation of Trump in personal matters. The senators are also asking, “What is the last date that Mr. Blanche provided personal legal advice to Donald Trump or served as his personal attorney?”

The letter cites CNN’s report last week that Blanche was told in March 2025, after he joined the DOJ, that he had to recuse himself from Trump’s personal cases against the government by Joseph Tirrell, the top ethics lawyer in the department.

“Recent public reporting revealed that in March 2025, less than two weeks after assuming the role of Deputy Attorney General, Mr. Blanche was explicitly and formally advised by the Department’s top career ethics lawyer that his recusal from legal cases involving President Trump in his personal capacity was necessary,” the letter said.

A DOJ spokesperson told CNN that Blanche “is recused from many cases before DOJ. In any cases that are still ongoing where he previously represented someone, he is recused.”

“To the extent DOJ is investigating something related to the President for which Todd was previously representing him, then hypothetically yes, he would recuse,” the spokesperson said, but added that this remains a “hypothetical.”

That’s not particularly reassuring, considering that Trump now has a slush fund to compensate his supporters whom he thinks were unfairly punished, and this could include anyone from January 6 insurrectionists to election deniers. On top of that, Tirrell was fired in July, and he’s currently suing the DOJ. Are ethics no longer a concern at the DOJ?

The Senate parliamentarian is a nonpartisan referee for the legislative branch, a role that has quietly existed for almost a century. So of course Donald Trump is mad at the current one.

Trump pressured Senate Majority Leader John Thune in a private phone call Monday to fire Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, according to reporting by Semafor and NOTUS. Two days earlier, MacDonough ruled against Senate Republicans allocating $1 billion for the president’s ballroom project in their budget reconciliation bill.

Despite Trump claiming for months that his ballroom would be entirely funded through donations, his cronies in the Senate have tried to sneak in an extra billion for “securing” the space (which is not even built yet). The proposed reconciliation bill also funds the Department of Homeland Security through 2028.

MacDonough, the first woman to be appointed parliamentarian, has served in the role since 2012. One of her jobs is to review all reconciliation bills and cut provisions the Senate cannot make a good case for. While her cuts aren’t technically binding and can be overruled with a majority vote, ignoring her would be a huge break from precedent—and we all know the Senate loves precedent.

Thune was dismissive of the idea of firing MacDonough, according to NOTUS.

“No,” the majority leader told NOTUS when asked if he would consider the idea. “We’re going through a process that we go through every time we have a reconciliation bill and the people on both sides are mad at the parliamentarian. That’s been true.” Thune also let things slide in 2025 when Trump moaned to him about MacDonough’s rulings on Medicaid provisions.

The phone call represents yet another attempt to influence the legislative branch from our current commander in chief, who routinely decries people and policies that don’t benefit him on social media.

Republicans are not expected to take out this “security” allotment but instead adjust the clause’s language and potentially ask for less money. If MacDonough clears the new version, the bill could go to the Senate floor for a vote in the next few weeks.

Just one lone Republican has spoken out against President Trump’s corrupt “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy—who was just defeated in a primary against Trump-endorsed Representative Julia Letlow and state Treasurer John Fleming—sounded off in opposition to the slush fund.

“We are a nation of laws; you can’t just make up things.… It is as if somebody sued themselves and agreed upon a settlement with themselves that’s going to be funded by the rest of us,” Cassidy told NBC’s Sahil Kapur Monday night. “Now if that’s the case, what? Wait a second! I just came off the campaign trail. People are concerned about making their own ends meet, not about putting the slush fund together without a legal precedent.”

Cassidy’s right. Trump created the slush fund as part of a settlement after suing his own IRS, setting aside nearly $1.8 billion of taxpayer money for anyone who felt unfairly targeted by the Biden administration— from January 6 rioters to right-wing think tanks, to the president’s own super PAC. The fund’s guidelines also note that once a recipient has received their money, the Trump administration has “no liability whatsoever for the protection or safeguarding of those funds, regardless of bank failure, fraudulent transfers, or any other fraud or misuse of the funds.”

While the Republicans maintain their complete radio silence on the president’s self-enrichment scheme, Democratic senators have launched a separate probe into Assistant Attorney General Todd Blanche and whether he’s actually recused himself from the president’s personal legal matters given that he used to be Trump’s personal lawyer.

Bari Weiss might soon be forced to hand over the reins to CBS News.

As Paramount closes in on its potential deal with Warner Bros. Discovery, executives at the networks are considering avenues to remove Weiss from her position overseeing CBS News.

The top brass is reportedly having informal discussions about changing Weiss’s mandate, particularly as the groups look ahead to a potential merger with CNN. Instead, they would bring in a new, more experienced executive to run the department, giving Weiss “less control over the linear product,” reported Puck News Monday.

It’s unclear how formal the talks to reorient Weiss have been, but she would likely lose day-to-day control over several major CBS properties, including Evening News, CBS Mornings, and 60 Minutes. Weiss would maintain broad editorial influence but would largely be shifted to oversee the news division’s digital growth.

A spokesman for Paramount told Puck that “Bari has the full support of Paramount and David Ellison as the editorial leader overseeing CBS News and 60 Minutes. Reports suggesting otherwise are inaccurate.”

Weiss, the founder of the pro-Israel blog The Free Press and a former New York Times opinion columnist, was tapped as the newsroom’s newest chief late last year, despite the fact that she had never worked in broadcast, lacked traditional reporting experience, and had also never run a major news operation.

Her tenure has so far lasted seven months, but her business decisions atop the news giant have unequivocally and single-handedly divorced CBS News from its decades-long place within America’s prestige news media circuit.

What was once crowned the “gold standard” of broadcasting, and the home of some of journalism’s most venerable names, such as Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, has since devolved into a graveyard for journalism ethics.

Under Weiss’s stewardship, CBS News has killed critical stories in order to save face for the Trump administration. In December, Weiss pulled the plug on a 60 Minutes segment investigating the result of Donald Trump’s mass deportation program, focusing on Venezuelan immigrants who had been deported to El Salvador’s notoriously brutal CECOT mega-prison.

The network has also lost a cadre of veteran journalists, whom Weiss replaced with the likes of Peter Attia—who was ousted from his role as an on-air contributor shortly after his hiring was announced due to his various ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

Yet Weiss’s appointment was merely the cherry on top of a large portion of recent chaos at CBS. In the last year, parent company Paramount undermined itself by settling multimillion-dollar lawsuits with Trump over CBS’s fair and accurate coverage (in an apparent bid to butter up the administration ahead of a multibillion-dollar merger with SkyDance). That resulted in the loss of two storied showrunners, including 60 Minutes producer Bill Owens and CBS News chief Wendy McMahon, who rejected Paramount’s approach to handling the groundless lawsuit.

While meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping last week, President Trump suggested that China, the U.S., and Russia work together to fight the International Criminal Court.

The Financial Times reports, citing unnamed sources, that Trump himself raised the idea. The White House didn’t mention the proposal in its fact sheet about Trump’s visit, and its spokespeople declined to comment. But Trump has railed against the ICC in the past, demanding in December that it change its founding document to guarantee that it wouldn’t charge himself or any other American officials.

Trump, along with his Republican allies in Congress, has also blasted the ICC’s decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. In February 2025, the White House imposed sanctions on the court itself, and last August, Secretary of State Marco Rubio went further by sanctioning the court’s judges.

Russia has its own concerns about the ICC, as the court has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes committed during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Trump probably thinks that with this potential alliance, he could nullify possible ICC charges against the U.S. and Israel, and curry favor with Russia in the process.

The U.S. has a law on the books, the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act, which allows it to use “all means necessary and appropriate” to free any members of the U.S. military and “covered allied persons” who are detained by the court. As egregious as this law is, apparently it does not go far enough for Trump, who thinks he and Israel are unbound by any international laws.

The U.S. Treasury’s highest-ranking lawyer quit just hours after President Trump announced his “Anti-Weaponization Fund”—a brazen attempt to dole out $1.8 billion of taxpayer money to his allies, supporters, and himself.

Treasury General Counsel Brian Morrissey resigned shortly after the fund was approved on Monday, according to The New York Times. Morrisey has yet to publicly comment. He served for only seven months.

The fund—created by Trump in exchange for dropping his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS—allows anyone who feels they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration to seek damages. This includes, but is not limited to, January 6 rioters, right-wing think tanks, and the president’s own super PAC. While Trump claims he “wasn’t involved in the whole creation of it,” he controls who sits on the board of the fund.

There’s also a massive disclaimer that states that once the funds are disbursed, his administration has “no liability whatsoever for the protection or safeguarding of those funds, regardless of bank failure, fraudulent transfers, or any other fraud or misuse.” The move preemptively dodges any future legal issues that may arise from awarding funds to people who went to jail for assault and sedition (and have committed other crimes since).

The outcry has been swift and widespread, with Senator Elizabeth Warren calling the slush fund an “insane level of corruption—even for Trump.” California Governor Gavin Newsom said it was “waste, fraud, and abuse in the flesh.” Maybe those same feelings about this blatant self-enrichment scheme got to Morrissey.

President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency wants Americans to keep guzzling “forever chemicals” in their water.

The agency offered a formal proposal Monday to repeal Biden-era regulations on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, a.k.a “forever chemicals,” because they linger in the environment for hundreds or even thousands of years.

If finalized, the proposal would rescind protections against GenX, PFHxS, PFNA, and PFBS, four of the six PFAS outlined in the Biden restrictions, and delay a requirement to filter out PFAS by 2029 until 2031.

David Andrews, chief science officer for the Environmental Working Group, told The Washington Post that the decision was “a betrayal of public health and the mission of making America healthier. Safe and clean drinking water should be a right for everyone in this country.”

“Slow-walking this is really just going the wrong direction,” he added.

In addition to infuriating environmental advocates, the move is also sure to inflame the Make America Healthy Again sect of Trump supporters, who have criticized Zeldin’s willingness to allow chemical companies to dictate policy.

Thousands of Maryland residents will be receiving new mail-in ballots due to a vendor error. Yet Donald Trump has interpreted the state’s attempt to correct the switch-up as some kind of fraud.

“In Maryland, they sent out 500,000 Illegal Mail In Ballots, and they got caught!” Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday afternoon. “So now, they’re going to send out 500,000 more Mail In Ballots, but nobody knows what’s happening with the first 500,000 they sent.”

“In addition, many of these Ballots went to Democrats, so any Republican running in Maryland doesn’t have a chance! This was done by the Corrupt Governor of the State, Wes Moore. He allowed this to happen in order to make sure that Democrats win.”

Officials with the Maryland State Board of Elections shared Monday that they believed a small number of local voters had received incorrect forms. In an attempt to ensure the “integrity and security” of the vote, state officials opted to reissue all requested mail-in ballots instead of just a few.

“Mail-in voting is an integral facet of the electoral process. With over 500,000 voters requesting mail-in ballots, we want to eliminate any doubt in its integrity or accuracy.… That is why I have arranged the sending of replacement ballots,” said the Maryland state administrator of elections, Jared DeMarinis.

Nonetheless, Trump has demanded a federal investigation into the mail-in ballot switcheroo.

“It never made sense to me that Maryland was considered an automatic Democrat State, but now I see why,” Trump continued in his social media post. “I’m sure this has gone on for years. I’m going to ask the Attorney General of the United States, and the DOJ, to bring an immediate investigation into this situation.”

It’s the latest attempt by the president and his allies to seed doubt and distrust into America’s electoral process. Despite large-scale investigations that extensively debunked the MAGA movement’s initial conspiracy about the 2020 election, the Trump administration still has not let go of the pipe dream that Trump actually won his second presidential race.

Over the weekend, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche claimed that there was a “ton of evidence that the [2020] election was rigged.”

“We’re very focused on finding out whether the right people voted,” Blanche told Fox News Sunday morning.