RFK Jr. Pisses Off Anti-Vax Allies in Effort to Contain Hantavirus

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is facing fire from his own people.

The U.S. health secretary has angered anti-vax activists by extending liability protections to drugmakers working on a hantavirus vaccine.

Kennedy signed a Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness, or PREP, Act declaration late last week, giving pharmaceutical companies additional legal coverage as they work on experimental treatments—such as favipiravir—during the public health crisis.

“This action helps remove barriers to research and response efforts while we continue monitoring the recent outbreak linked to the South Atlantic cruise ship,” Kennedy wrote on X earlier this month.

The expanded legal protections permit the companies to treat passengers possibly exposed to the Andes hantavirus strain, or individuals who were in close contact with people on board the M/V Hondius cruise ship.

But acolytes of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda were not swayed. One such skeptical supporter was Kennedy’s former campaign communications director Del Bigtree, who questioned whether Kennedy was sticking to his guns on corporate accountability.

“Bobby, I remember so many inspiring strategy discussions during your campaign. Providing liability protection to corporate interests for a virus that killed three people out of seven billion was not one of them,” Bigtree wrote.

Kennedy, however, was undeterred.

“Don’t believe Internet fearmongers. [The Department of Health and Human Services] defends public health AND supports medical freedom—period,” Kennedy wrote in a separate post over the weekend, underscoring that the latest HHS action doesn’t pave the way for a new mRNA vaccine or offer Big Pharma limitless protections from liability.

More than 40 people in the U.S. are currently being monitored in connection to a hantavirus outbreak aboard a Rotterdam-bound cruise ship last month. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that there are currently no cases in the U.S. and that risk to the general public remains “extremely low.” So far, the rare disease has caused 11 confirmed infections and three deaths in connection with the ship.

A Dutch couple were identified by the WHO as the first passengers infected with the virus. It is believed that they were exposed to the virus while birdwatching at an Argentinian landfill. Both the husband and wife died as a result.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has been embroiled in a yearlong lawsuit with two former clients who have accused him of malpractice and forgery.

Vanity Fair reported that twin brothers Adam and Daniel Kaplan, both New York financial advisers, sought Blanche’s services through the Cadwalader, Wickersham, & Taft law firm in 2021 over concerns they would soon be prosecuted for fraud by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. The brothers claimed that Blanche told them they’d receive a massive discount from the firm, and that he “did not want to make money on the representation.”

Yet just a year later, the Kaplans owed Blanche and Cadwalader over $1.65 million. Blanche pulled his representation in 2022 over the debt, and the Kaplans sued the following year, accusing him of forging their signatures on an engagement document and misleading them regarding the fees. Blanche and Cadwalader denied all allegations, and countersued the twins for their debt of more than $1 million in 2023—the same year Blanche became Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and just two years before Blanche became the most powerful prosecutor in America.

The Kaplans were later convicted on 16 counts of money laundering and wire fraud, in July 2023, one month after they filed their lawsuit. But they still haven’t dropped their suit, which raises serious questions about the attorney general’s ethics. The case is expected to continue through the year.

White House staffers are losing their minds over media coverage pointing out that the president often falls asleep on camera. 

The Trump administration’s Rapid Response 47 X account spent much of Tuesday attacking CNN with photos and short videos of the network’s hosts blinking or looking down, facetiously claiming that they were sleeping or showing signs of decline. 

The schoolyard taunts began just after 12:30 p.m., taking aim at CNN personalities including Kate Bolduan, Kevin Liptak, Dana Bash, Jake Tapper (calling him FAKE TAPPER), and Brianna Keilar, posting photos of all of them with story chyrons about Trump’s health. Even guests who don’t work for the network but were interviewed about Trump’s sleeping habits, such as The Wall Street Journal’s Josh Dawsey and Harvard Medical School’s Dr. Jeremy Faust, were targeted.

Earlier in the day, President Trump went to Walter Reed for his third medical checkup in 13 months. CNN has been covering the event, pointing to past incidents that raise concerns about the president’s health. Trump said Tuesday that “everything checked out PERFECTLY” at his visit, but did not offer more details.

The White House press office has often resorted to trolling in the past, including using “your mom” taunts against reporters it disagrees with. White House communications director Steven Cheung has basically made hurling insults at reporters his full-time job, and called Democratic Senate staffer Rachel Cohen a “retard” last month.  

It also does little to combat the indisputable evidence of Trump’s visible cognitive decline and his issues staying awake. At nearly every televised meeting during his second term as president, Trump can be seen dozing off as someone else speaks, whether it’s a member of his Cabinet or even a foreign leader. White House staffers can make all of the sarcastic social media posts they want, but all of us can plainly see Trump’s physical condition every time he’s on camera. 

South Carolina has decided not to get involved in President Donald Trump’s redistricting war.

The state Senate voted 24–20 Tuesday to leave their House districts alone for the upcoming midterm elections. Twelve Republicans broke ranks to join all Democrat state senators in the decision, which will likely save the state’s one blue seat held by Representative James Clyburn.

A few Republican legislators, such as state Senator Richard Cash, changed their votes due to timing. Early voting in South Carolina primaries began on Tuesday.

“Neither my conscience nor my common sense will allow me to stop an election that is already underway,” Cash said.

The state Senate will now recess until June 10. State primaries take place a day prior, eliminating GOP hopes of gerrymandering before the midterms.

Mid-decade redistricting was a rarity until Trump broke precedent in July 2025, when he called on Texas Governor Greg Abbot to redraw his state’s maps in order to benefit Republicans. The dutiful Abbot and Texas’s MAGA majority approved the change, kicking off a gerrymandering war. Republicans got an additional boost in April after the Supreme Court struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act, allowing states to meddle with majority-Black and Latino House districts.

Missouri, Florida, Tennessee, Ohio, and North Carolina have approved maps expected to create new red seats, while California and Utah have done the same on the blue side. Virginia voters approved a Democratic gerrymander before their state Supreme Court overturned it on May 8.

South Carolina’s decision is a surprise rebuke to Trump. On May 14, Governor Henry McMaster called a special session to redistrict while under pressure from the Trump administration; it was widely accepted Clyburn’s seat would disappear. Republicans who voted to keep the maps as is may now find Trump endorsing their primary challengers in future elections, as the president continues to rage against anyone who dares advocate for fair elections.

This story has been updated.

President Trump wants federal workers to sign nondisclosure agreements, a move that would place even more constraints on a disgruntled workforce that has been targeted by this administration.

The Office of Personnel Management released a draft NDA Tuesday that could be used by federal agencies.

“The form is intended to document Federal employees’ acknowledgment of, and agreement to comply with, current legal obligations to safeguard non-public, confidential, or proprietary information, created or obtained through their official duties, while expressly preserving the right to make disclosures authorized by law,” the OPM notice reads. “OPM believes that a governmentwide NDA form will promote consistency across Government, better protect confidential information, and better inform Federal employees of their rights and obligations regarding confidential information.”

The OPM also keeps the definition for what constitutes “confidential or proprietary information” extremely broad, including “information relating to internal agency operations, personnel matters, procurement processes, or any sensitive, pre-decisional or deliberative material that is not currently publicly available.” Agencies can choose whether to implement the NDAs, and whistleblowers are still protected under federal law if calling out waste, fraud, and abuse.

Either Donald Trump himself wrote the Justice Department’s latest court filing, or whoever did is a big fan of his writing style.

MeidasTouch correspondent Scott MacFarlane flagged the strange similarities between Trump’s syntax and a Sunday filing submitted to a Washington, D.C., district court regarding his presidential ballroom.

The four-page document is littered with the unnecessary capitalization of terms such as “Project” and “Top Secret.” Trump, too, loves capitalizing random words in his social media posts.

The document contains multiple run-on sentences full of commas, another Trumpian quirk of grammar. The best example of this is an almost Joyceian line on page three:

This meritless Lawsuit has been a great attack on our Country in that the Military, Secret Service, and Law Enforcement are not happy that all of these Top Secret features have been revealed to potential enemies, criminals, and all others, including the fact that there will be a major drone port and Government sniper facilities on the heavily secured roof of the Ballroom, all for the sake of an unhappy passerby, a woman with absolutely no standing, represented by the “National Trust,” which was defunded by Congress due to a total lack of respect for them.

Just as striking as the syntax is the document’s claims about the ballroom. The filing boldly asserts that “without the construction of this great Project, the President cannot safely conduct the business of the United States.” It also contains wild architectural specifications, such as that the ballroom roof “be hermetically sealed to prevent malign forces from contaminating the circulating air.”

Finally, the document suggests that that construction is somehow “under budget,” despite the Senate’s recent request for $220 million in taxpayer money to go toward ballroom “security.” The White House had initially claimed the ballroom would be funded with $200 million from Trump and “other patriot donors,” before that number later doubled to $400 million.

The filing was submitted by three members of the Justice Department: Stanley Woodward Jr., R. Trent McCotter, and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

While it’s a fun theory, The New Republic is doubtful that Trump himself wrote the filing. First of all, the president would never put effort into doing something and then not take credit for it. Second, despite the dozens of errors, the prose still reads better than most of the president’s Truth Social rants.

President Trump may soon have his name on the busiest train station in the country.

Newly released design renderings of a renovation project for New York’s Penn Station, first reported by Gothamist, show a large presidential seal with Trump’s name, along with gold railings, columns, and escalators in Trump’s signature style.

The federal government took over the renovation project from the regional Metropolitan Transportation Authority last year, with Amtrak overseeing it. Trump wants work on the station to start by the end of 2027, and the bidding process has already drawn flak from New York elected officials for its lack of transparency. Amtrak and the U.S. Department of Transportation last week announced Penn Transformation Partners as the project’s “master developer,” a group of private companies including real estate developers and engineering firms.

The new designs have a big glass entrance on Eighth Avenue that would let in natural light, but require the destruction of the Theater at Madison Square Garden and part of the garden’s facade. A large plaque with “President Donald J. Trump” would be inscribed in marble inside the southwest corner of the Eighth Avenue entrance next to a presidential seal, according to images obtained by Gothamist.

The White House had floated renaming the station “Trump Station” in February, but the renderings show the existing name remaining. New York Governor Kathy Hochul joked in April 2025 that she would be open to renaming Penn Station after the president if he came up with the funds for renovation.

Donald Trump is preparing to meet several key administration officials at Camp David on Wednesday as Iranian peace talks fall apart.

The impromptu presidential retreat will include every Cabinet member, including outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the New York Post reported Tuesday.

Inclement weather could alter the plans at the eleventh hour, however. Trump typically flies to the 125-acre Maryland compound via helicopter, but heavy rain battering Washington could challenge his route and ultimately change the meeting location.

Trump’s twelfth visit to the Catoctin Mountain park will focus on “recent successes of the administration including economy and small business wins, Task Force to Eliminate Fraud highlights, and foreign policy updates,” a White House official told the Post.

The crumbling prospect of peace with Iran, however, is expected to dominate the conversation.

The U.S. attacked Iranian boats and missile launch sites late Monday, according to U.S. Central Command, violating the ceasefire mere hours after Iranian officials arrived in Qatar for discussions to end the war. The boats were reportedly attempting to lay more mines along the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway between Iran and Oman.

Iranian state media confirmed that some of the attacks hit Bandar Abbas, an Iranian port city that is home to the country’s key naval and air bases. State media reported that explosions occurred in other cities, as well.

CENTCOM characterized the strikes in southern Iran as defensive, saying they were intended “to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces.”

Shortly afterward, Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei threatened American military bases in the Middle East, writing in Farsi on his official X account that “America will no longer have a safe haven for mischief and the establishment of military bases in the region.” Khamenei further vowed that the phrases “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” would remain the rallying cry of the Islamic community and “the oppressed of the world, especially the youth.”

New Jersey GOP Representative Tom Kean—who has been missing from Congress and his own neighborhood for nearly three months—is still finding time to make money trading stocks.

NOTUS reported on Tuesday that Kean submitted an electronic signature on Friday disclosing that he’d traded stocks personally in April—a move that would raise questions about insider trading even if anyone knew where he was. This is the second time Kean disclosed his trades even as he’s missed a whopping 90 House votes.

“Call me old-fashioned, but I think it should be a bigger story that a sitting Republican member of Congress is missing, nobody knows where he is, yet he’s somehow still insider trading,” political commentator Mike Nellis wrote on Tuesday.

Nearly five weeks ago, Kean told the public he was absent due to a “personal health matter,” and would return shortly. He did not elaborate on the health matter.

“You couldn’t make up a better avatar of the 119th Congress than a Congressman who misses all floor votes but still trades stocks,” political scientist Alex Garlick said.

Aside from the stock trading, Kean has also continued to send out newsletters, signed off on travel expenses to Las Vegas for staff, and himself used Amtrak and rideshare apps in San Francisco—far away from his home district, and well into his mysterious absence. Kean’s condition may very well be serious. But if he’s going to be sending newsletters, catching Ubers, and trading stocks, he’ll need a more detailed explanation for his sabbatical.

The Iran war continues to divide Donald Trump’s social media cultists.

After reports that the Trump administration was finally getting around to ending its incredibly expensive and pointless military campaign, Republican Senator Ted Cruz criticized the peacemaking on X.

“I am deeply concerned about what we are hearing about an Iran ‘deal,’” Cruz wrote Saturday. “If the result of all that is to be an Iranian regime—still run by Islamists who chant ‘death to America’—now receiving billions of dollars, being able to enrich uranium & develop nuclear weapons, and having effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, then that outcome would be a disastrous mistake.”

MAGA influencer Alex Bruesewitz jumped on Cruz for daring to question Dear Leader: “Cool, Ted. No one asked you, bro. Stop trying to undermine the President and his administration.”

“Hush, child,” Cruz replied. “The adults are talking. I’m not your ‘bro.’ And young political grifters pushing Iran appeasement are not remotely helping the President.”

Bruesewitz, a 29-year-old Trump adviser who helps the administration post memes on social media, was ready with a fittingly immature reply.

“Sorry you’re still salty that I prevented you from getting a picture with Nicki Minaj after you came running after her like a school girl,” he wrote. “You’re going to get wiped out in 2028, clown.”

Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo received similar treatment on Saturday after he mused that “the deal being floated with Iran seems straight out of the Wendy Sherman–Robert Malley–Ben Rhodes playbook: Pay the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] to build a [weapons of mass destruction] program and terrorize the world. Not remotely America First.”

This time, it was White House spokesman Steven Cheung who “clapped back,” or whatever.

“Mike Pompeo has no idea what the fuck he’s talking about,” Cheung said. “He should shut his stupid mouth and leave the real work to the professionals. He’s not read into anything that’s happening, so how would he know.”

The fact that this is how the White House communications director speaks to people is both shocking and kind of funny. While Cruz’s and Pompeo’s neoconservative bloodlust is despicable, it’s hard to see Bruesewitz’s and Cheung’s ridiculous fealty to Trump as any better. Their insistence that Trump knows what he’s doing in Iran is also provably false. One supposes the silver lining here is that the MAGA coalition is sadder and more dysfunctional than ever.