Trump Threatens to Bomb an Entirely Different Middle Eastern Country

After campaigning on a promise of “no new wars,” President Donald Trump just threatened to bomb yet another country.

During a Cabinet meeting Wednesday, a reporter asked Trump whether he would accept a short-term deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz that would allow Iran and Oman to control the essential passageway for global trade. Trump claimed that “nobody” would control the Strait of Hormuz, but that the U.S. would “watch over it.”

“It’s international waters, and Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow ’em up,” Trump said. “They understand that, they’ll be fine.”

The so-called peace president’s remarks were shockingly violent, and at odds with other reports.

The U.S. and Iran are reportedly finalizing a draft “memorandum of understanding” that would require the U.S. military to withdraw its forces from the region and lift the blockade on Iranian ports, according to a report on IRIB, Iranian state television. In return Iran, in cooperation with Oman, would restore trade through the Strait of Hormuz to prewar levels within one month.

The White House pushed back against the report Wednesday morning, calling it “a complete fabrication.”

A Democratic House candidate running in Texas raised eyebrows when she promised to turn an ICE detention facility into a “prison for American Zionists.” It turns out she was bankrolled by a major GOP fundraiser.

Maureen Galindo’s candidacy was anything but normal: the sex therapist faced national criticism for her antisemitic remarks, which involved pledging to turn ICE centers into “castration processing” facilities “for pedophiles which will probably be most of the Zionists.”

Galindo nonetheless shocked state Democrats when she placed first in the March 3 primary—although not by enough to avoid a runoff.

Shortly afterward, Galindo’s small campaign—which had just a few thousand dollars in the tank—was infused with nearly $1 million from a mysterious super PAC, Lead Left, which was formed on April 24. The enormous donation forced Democrats to contend with the possibility that Galindo could actually win the Democratic nomination in Texas’s 35th Congressional District, which was recently gerrymandered in order to heavily favor Republican candidates.

Lead Left went to great lengths to conceal the identities and political affiliations of its backers, though it proudly announced on its website that it “stands against MAGA extremists who will infect our country with Donald Trump’s agenda.” New reporting, however, reveals that’s not so likely.

Galindo’s windfall came by way of Caleb Crosby, the treasurer of the Congressional Leadership Fund, which serves as the primary super PAC of the House Republicans, Judd Legum reported via his Popular Information substack Wednesday. Crosby also serves as the treasurer of the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC for Senate Republicans.

Several details ultimately tie Crosby to the fundraising venture: some of his other entities, connected to his political compliance firm Crosby Ottenhoff Group, share the same address as Lead Left, according to Legum.

Nebraska Public Media also found that the original Lead Left website included a snippet of code that linked out to WinRed, the predominant Republican fundraising website.

But the race to fill the Texas House seat isn’t the only campaign where Lead Left has inserted itself. The secretive super PAC also intervened in Democratic primaries in critical races in Nebraska and Pennsylvania, and has spent more than $2.4 million to date on political ads targeting Democratic primary races across the country.

Earlier this month, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) accused Lead Left PAC of violating federal reporting rules by funneling its money through two newly formed shell companies, Piruzi LLC and OTG Media LLC, in what the CLC claimed was an attempt to “conceal the actual vendors” and undermine “crucial electoral transparency for voters.”

President Trump’s America 250 celebrations on the National Mall will feature military demonstrations, a 110-foot ferris wheel, and a slew of performers who are questionable at best.

Flo Rida, Milli Vanilli, Martina McBride, and Vanilla Ice will headline the “Great American State Fair” in Washington, D.C., which runs from June 25 to July 10. Young MC, the Commodores, C+C Music Factory, Morris Day and the Time, and Bret Michaels will all also perform.

Flo Rida, Milli Vanilli, and Vanilla Ice are not people who come to mind when considering which artists would best represent American art, history, and culture on its 250th birthday. But those people—from Stevie Wonder, to Bruce Springsteen, to Taylor Swift, to Beyoncé—probably wouldn’t be caught dead performing for this administration. We’ll have to wait and see who the next wave of performers brings.

Everyone’s favorite federal prosecutor is back in the White House, albeit in a far less important role.

Pam Bondi has been appointed to an advisory committee on AI policy by President Donald Trump, Axios reported on Tuesday.

The committee, officially called the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, includes 13 members, most of them tech billionaires. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen are all part of the club.

Bondi doesn’t appear to have a background in AI policy. Panel co-chair David Sacks—another wealthy white tech bro—wrote on X that she will “advise the President on legal and regulatory barriers” in her new position.

Trump tapped Bondi as attorney general in 2025, but she soon came under extreme criticism for mishandling one of the most important prosecutions of modern times.

After the Epstein Files Transparency Act was pushed through Congress—despite Trump dismissing his friendship with the deceased sex trafficker as a “hoax”—Bondi led a sloppy, incomplete rollout of the files, leading to ongoing accusations that the Department of Justice is covering up Trump’s involvement with Epstein.

First, the DOJ blew past the 30-day deadline it was given to release the files in November, claiming it needed more time after it coincidentally discovered new records. Then Bondi was caught lying about the files. She bragged to Fox News in February that Epstein’s client list was “on her desk,” only for the DOJ to backtrack months later and say the list never existed.

In January, the department released approximately three million files. Great—except nearly 100 victims’ names and nude pictures were mistakenly left visible, while key information on the criminals was redacted. The DOJ withdrew thousands of files, blaming the mistake on “technical or human error.”

Since the release, no one has been arrested in the U.S. for involvement in Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring. There are also 2.5 million documents that are still under wraps, meaning tons of information about Epstein’s circle continues to be withheld from the public.

Trump fired Bondi in April, though reports suggest this was more because she failed to prosecute enough of the president’s political rivals than it was about the Epstein files.

Axios also reported that Bondi was diagnosed with thyroid cancer shortly after leaving the Trump administration. Bondi herself confirmed this to CNN on Wednesday, adding that she had surgery a few weeks ago and is “doing well, though.”

President Donald Trump can try to pour billions of additional dollars into the U.S. military, but restoring the country’s weapons systems will still take years.

A new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies published Wednesday found that munitions depleted during Trump’s military onslaught against Iran have created a multiyear “window of vulnerability” for the United States in potential future conflicts. 

The study estimated it will take until at least 2030 to replace the more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles the U.S. fired deep into enemy territory. While Raytheon aims to produce more than 1,000 missiles a year, the current production rate is less than 200. It will also take until at least 2029 to restore the interceptors used in U.S. air defense systems, as well as Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, and Patriot missiles, according to the study.  

Earlier this month, the Pentagon estimated that it would cost roughly $24 billion to replace the munitions expended on Trump’s military campaign alone. Trump has moved to deliver a record-breaking $1.5 trillion to the U.S. military for the fiscal year 2027, by sapping taxpayer dollars from other federal agencies. But the report says, “The problem today isn’t money; it’s time.

“It takes time to expand production capacity and to build these complex systems,” the report said. “Thus, there will be a window of vulnerability for several years until inventories return to their previous levels and another several years before they get to the levels that war planners desire. The DOD will need to make plans for dealing with this gap.”

The report warned about potential future conflicts in the Western Pacific, but said that the outlook was “not all bleak.” The U.S. military’s major show of force in Iran and in operations against Venezuela and the Houthis could act as deterrence against China, which has “no recent combat experience.”

The Trump administration is planning to drastically reduce military provisions to NATO allies.

An envoy of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Alexander Velez-Green, shared details of the forthcoming recissions with senior officials of NATO member states during a meeting in Brussels last week, reported German news outlet Der Spiegel.

The proposed plan is much more drastic than European diplomats had predicted: It involves decreasing the number of U.S. fighter jets, warships, drones, and aerial refueling tankers available to the alliance, according to the briefing. The number of available fighter jets, for instance, could be diminished by a third, and the number of strategic bombers halved.

All submarines will be pulled out, and the number of available destroyers will also be cut.

Washington also intends to substantially scale back its previous commitments to NATO’s “Force Model,” which was agreed upon in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The model stipulates which units the Supreme Allied Commander Europe is allowed to directly access from NATO member states in defensive strategies. 

European countries are expected to fill in the resulting gaps themselves, Der Spiegel reported.

Donald Trump has been threatening such an action for weeks, specifically since the European continent refused to support his invasion of Iran and the subsequent blockade in the Strait of Hormuz.

Last month, Trump claimed he was open to the idea of pulling troops from Italy, Spain, and Germany, accusing NATO members of being “cowards” and “terrible” for refusing to assist in his Middle East war.

At the time, the sudden Oval Office announcement stunned the Pentagon as much as it did America’s allies.

The Defense Department “was not expecting it and has not been planning any kind of drawdown,” a congressional aide familiar with the situation told Politico. “But we have to take him seriously because he was serious about it during his first administration.” 

In July 2020, Trump proposed pulling 12,000 troops out of Germany in order to punish Berlin for its low defense spending. That order was never implemented.

But the president has been on the offensive against NATO since the early days of his first term in office. He regularly baselessly insists that other members have failed to pay their dues and argues that the U.S. has been shortchanged by other NATO countries, even though that’s not how the alliance operates.

It is unclear who in the Western world benefits from the dissolution of NATO. John Bolton,  Trump’s first-term national security adviser and a policy hawk who also served under Ronald Reagan’s administration, has said that the consequences of exiting the alliance could be dire. A U.S. withdrawal from the pact could effectively be the death of NATO, leaving behind a fractured and significantly weakened European alliance, while devastating America’s international credibility as an ally.

President Trump is publicly fuming after former President Joe Biden sued the Justice Department in an attempt to block the release of audio and transcripts from his interviews with his memoir ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer in 2016 and 2017. The president called his predecessor a “Crooked Politician!!!” Wednesday on Truth Social.

The interviews in question were used in the 2023 special counsel investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents. That investigation concluded there was no criminal wrongdoing, but that Biden was a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Biden’s attorneys argue that the interviews were private conversations that should not be released retroactively by the Trump DOJ.

“Every American, including a sitting or former Vice President, has a right to privacy in the personal conversations he has within his own home,” Biden’s attorneys wrote. “And when the U.S. Department of Justice obtains that private information through a criminal investigation, the Department bears a particular responsibility to protect it from disclosure.”

They also noted that the DOJ spent two years properly protecting these transcripts in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act, until they switched up in February, telling Biden they’d be releasing them “without any formal explanation.”

Texas attorney general and MAGA rabblerouser Ken Paxton won the Republican Senate primary on Tuesday over incumbent John Cornyn. Paxton now advances to the November general election, where he will face Democrat James Talarico.

While the idea of Senator Paxton is terrifying to Democrats, establishment Republicans were perhaps even more upset. Conservative groups who backed the slightly less extreme Cornyn were forced to scrub their social media of statements attacking Paxton, presumably while a kind of metaphysical angst washed over them.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee deleted at least eight critiques of Paxton, including a July 2025 statement released after Paxton’s wife, Angela Paxton, filed for divorce on “biblical grounds.”

“What Ken Paxton has put his family through is truly repulsive and disgusting. No one should have to endure what Angela Paxton has, and we pray for her as she chooses to stand up for herself and her family during this difficult time,” read the statement.

Another deleted post bore the headline “Ken Paxton’s Lies and Incompetence Keep Piling Up.” This statement cited an Associated Press article that found that Paxton and his then wife were listing three different homes as “primary residences” so they could take advantage of lower interest rates.

Paxton’s primary win was aided by a late endorsement by President Donald Trump. Some expected that Trump might back the more electable Cornyn, but fealty matters more than anything with our president, and Paxton has given the president lavish, consistent support over the years.

Paxton was “very loyal to your favorite President, ME,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday. “Ken’s opponent was VERY disloyal to me.”

Paxton is also an outsider with a long history of scandal. He was impeached by the Texas House of Representatives on corruption charges in 2023. That, plus the adultery, may be why Trump saw himself in him and blessed him with an endorsement.

The official financial fund set up for Donald Trump’s Board of Peace has received exactly zero dollars—but that doesn’t necessarily mean that cash isn’t flowing into the president’s slush fund run by war criminals.

Four months after Trump launched his preposterous pet project for Gaza, the group’s official fund set up by the World Bank and approved by the United Nations has yet to see a drop of the billions promised to the board, four people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times Wednesday.

“Zero dollars have been deposited,” one person told the FT.

Rather than rely on the official fund, Trump’s Board of Peace has decided to receive donations through its JPMorgan account, which has no transparency or reporting requirements.

A Board of Peace official told the FT that contributors were offered a number of options for paying, and had at this point “opted to use other options.” The board would report its financials to its executive board—which includes classic Trump cronies such as Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff—“at a time deemed appropriate,” the official said.

Ten countries pledged billions of dollars to carry out Kushner’s master plan to turn Gaza into a strip of luxury hotels, but so far, barely any of that money has materialized.

Morocco has contributed $20 million to fund the office of Nickolay Mladenov, the Bulgarian diplomat serving as the “high representative” for Gaza, plus salaries for the slate of technocrats who will oversee the enclave. The United Arab Emirates also provided $100 million to train new police in Gaza, but the program has yet to begin and the funds are frozen, two people told the FT.

Trump has previously pledged $10 billion in taxpayer money to his slush fund. The State Department has offered $50 million to keep the board running, which has yet to be allocated. The State Department has also promised to reallocate $1.2 billion in aid spending to the Board of Peace’s myriad projects, but apparently that money isn’t headed for the board at all.

“None of that money [has gone to the board]. None of that money is being managed by the Board of Peace. And State tells us there’s no intent to have any of that money managed by the Board of Peace,” one congressional aide told the FT.

GOP Representative Mike Flood had yet another disastrous town hall in Norfolk, Nebraska, on Tuesday, as his constituents drowned him out with grievances regarding the war on Iran, the White House ballroom, Jeffrey Epstein, and President Trump’s “anti-weaponization” slush fund.

“Iran war, White House ballroom, security for the White House ballroom, immigration enforcement, Trump arch … the reflecting pool renovation, slush fund for crooks, and the farm bill. How do we pay for all this?” said one Nebraskan, according to CNN.

“I know you’re a lawyer. You’ve taken an oath as a congressman to support the laws of this land. A million Epstein files have still not been released, and … the Epstein Transparency Act you signed, the Senate signed, Trump signed, yet we still have millions of files that still have not been released,” Fremont resident Kim Stabbe asked Flood. “We know that Trump is in them tons of times; why do you continue to protect the pedophiles and Trump’s DOJ as they continue to break the law?”

“We have passed a law to release the Epstein files,” Flood replied. “Do you think that under President Joe Biden’s four years in the White House, if President Trump was in the Epstein files, it would have been released?” He was met with boos and jeers. Flood toed a hawkish line on Iran, conceding that “everything costs too much,” while in the same breath maintaining support for the war that is making everything cost so much, stating, “I also don’t want Iran with a nuclear weapon.”

The only thing Flood seemed to fully agree with the crowd on was Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund—a shameless plan to direct billions of taxpayer dollars to Trump’s supporters who felt wronged or targeted by the Biden administration—even those who attacked Capitol Police on January 6.

“I do not think we should be creating a fund for people that commit physical violence against law enforcement,” he said. “The Senate is opening an oversight effort. And we in the House have to determine whether we do the same in the Judiciary Committee or in the Oversight Committee. I clearly think Congress needs to have an oversight role in this before I can sign off or support this.”

The hostilities Flood was met with aren’t just local to Norfolk. Americans nationwide are fed up with blatant corruption, another pointless and expensive war in the Middle East, and worrying about how much it’ll cost to fill their tank.

Watch the full town hall here.