Election Denier Tina Peters Asks Trump for a Job After She Walks Free

Tina Peters—the Trump-supporting, election-denying former Colorado county election clerk found guilty of tampering with voting machines—is now free.

Peters was freed from prison on Monday after Democratic Colorado Governor Jared Polis granted her clemency and reduced her sentence just weeks earlier.

Peters was originally sentenced to nine years in prison for conspiring to publicize the voting machine records in Mesa County, turning all the cameras off while allowing fellow election denier Conan Hayes to copy, photograph, and download information in an effort to prove President Trump’s absurd claims of election fraud in 2020.

Polis’s decision to cut short her sentence angered his local party, even leading them to censure him. Now, he claims that he “concluded that her sentence was simply too long.” After the backlash, he appeared on a party Zoom call with black tape over his mouth. His fellow Colorado Democrats weren’t amused then, and certainly aren’t now.

“The Governor’s grant of clemency to Tina Peters is an affront to our democracy, the people of Colorado, and election officials across the country,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in a statement. “It sends a dangerous message about accountability for those who would attack elections. Peters’ release also will embolden the election denial movement; since the grant of clemency, she has continued to spread election falsehoods and conspiracies.”

Peters has become something of a political prisoner for those on the MAGA right, especially those in the deepest depths of QAnon. Trump had been pressuring Polis to release Peters for months, and Vice President JD Vance recently suggested that Peters should get a taxpayer-funded payout from Trump’s “Anti-Weaponization Fund” for those who felt wronged or targeted by the Biden administration.

Meanwhile, the first thing Peters did upon her release on Monday was go on Steve Bannon’s podcast, double down on her claims of election fraud, and ask Trump for a job.

“I would like for President Trump—I’d like to be more involved in prison reform,” Peters said, if “that’s the way the Lord leads me.”

This story has been updated.

Iran on Monday suspended all peace talks with the U.S., just hours after President Trump claimed Iran “really wants to make a deal.”

Tehran placed the blame on Israel, which it said violated the trifold ceasefire agreement when Israeli troops captured Beaufort Castle, a twelfth-century Crusader fortress in southern Lebanon, over the weekend.

Israel previously used the castle, also known as Qalaat al-Shaqif, as a military base during its occupation of southern Lebanon between 1982 and 2000. The offensive marked Israel’s deepest incursion into Lebanon in more than 26 years. On Monday, Israel issued an evacuation order to residents in southern Beirut.

Iranian state media reported that “there will be no dialogue” regarding U.S.-Israel-Iran peace efforts until the “aggressive and brutal operations of the Zionist regime’s army in Gaza and Lebanon” is quelled.

Tehran said it would completely close the Strait of Hormuz, as well as another narrow trade route nestled between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula—the Bab el-Mandeb Strait—as a consequence.

Trump optimistically insisted on Truth Social late Sunday that Iran was eager to negotiate, and blamed his negotiating woes on Democrats and dissident Republicans. It is unclear what comes next: Trump casually revealed on Saturday that the U.S. would “finish it off militarily” if he did not reach a good deal with Tehran.

The president repeated that he’s in “no hurry” to negotiate, and that—despite the war’s monumental impact on global gas prices—he believes if he’s in a hurry he’s “not going to make a good deal.”

“And slowly but surely, we’re getting, I think, what we want. And if we don’t get what we want, we’re going to end it a different way,” Trump told his daughter-in-law on Fox News’s My View With Lara Trump.

In the same interview, Trump referred to Venezuela as a “one-day win” and said that the situation with Iran is “a win already,” as the U.S. has “essentially defeated their military.”

But it’s difficult to ascertain exactly what a “win” in the Middle East looks like when the aims of the war were never clear to begin with. While the Iranian regime has suffered major losses over the span of the conflict—including dozens of senior leaders—it has also become more extreme as a result.

Rajan Menon, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, argued in The Guardian late last month that Trump would—at this late stage—be “lucky” to strike a deal similar to former President Barack Obama’s 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which Trump ended during his first term.

The U.S. has so far been at war with Iran for more than 13 weeks and spent an estimated $98 billion in the process. The regional conflict has damaged strategic alliances, stalled global trade, and thrust the world into an energy crisis due to the blockade on the Strait of Hormuz. It has also killed thousands of people.

This story has been updated.

Physicians have noted large omissions from a medical report on President Trump’s most recent visit to Walter Reed Medical Center, his third in a little over a year.

In a three-page memorandum released by the White House late Friday, Trump’s physician, Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella, told the public that the president “remains in excellent health, demonstrating strong cardiac, pulmonary, neurological and overall physical function.” But as medical experts told The Wall Street Journal, the report lacked specificity where it mattered.

Barbabella’s report noted that there was “no arterial obstruction or structural abnormalities” in Trump’s heart or important blood vessels—which only meant there isn’t a blockage at the moment. There was also no mention of what his internal plaque buildup looked like.

“If I was creating a report to send to another physician, I would have mentioned a little bit more about the carotid ultrasound,” Texas surgeon Dr. William Shutze told the Journal. “What amount of plaque there is going to be—because almost all of us are going to have some buildup there.”

The report also noted that Trump’s swollen legs had improved, with no mention of what happened to trigger said improvement. His cholesterol was also nearly perfect—raising eyes given his age, visible bruising and swelling, his frequent on-camera naps, and the fact that he is an 80-year-old man who insists that he’s the healthiest person alive.

“That report is almost too good to be true for somebody of his age,” Shutze continued. “This seems to be a filtered narrative.”

The war in Iran has not been the unequivocal success that Donald Trump has claimed it to be.

Tehran has damaged at least 20 regional U.S. military sites since the war began in late February, according to satellite imagery reviewed by the BBC. The damages have destroyed air defense systems, radars, and aerial refueling planes, costing the U.S. millions of dollars.

The Pentagon, on the other hand, claimed in early April that it hit more than 13,000 targets in Iran within just 38 days of combat operations.

Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has tried to rally attention toward the attacks. Last week, Khamenei wrote 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.”

The reality is obviously a far cry from the Trump administration’s public declarations, which have involved claims as far back as June 2025 that Iran’s nuclear ambitions were obliterated and its military sites damaged beyond any scope of immediate repair.

A peace plan does not seem to be on the table, despite a preliminary agreement that was drafted early last week. Iran on Monday suspended talks with the United States over continued Israeli attacks on Lebanon, which they say violate the ceasefire.

That’s not likely to please Trump, who spent the weekend ranting about congressional opposition to his war.

“Iran really wants to make a deal, and it will be a good one for the U.S.A. and those that are with us,” the president wrote on Truth Social late Sunday. “But don’t the Dumocrats, and various seemingly unpatriotic Republicans, understand that it is MUCH tougher for me to properly do my job and negotiate, when political hacks keep negatively ‘chirping,’ at levels never seen before, over and over again, that I should move faster, or move slower, or go to war, or not go to war, or whatever.

“Just sit back and relax,” Trump concluded. “It will all work out well in the end—It always does!”

Three Democratic senators introduced a bill Monday to kill Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund.

Senators Adam Schiff of California, Mark Kelly of Arizona, and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan introduced the “Drain the Fund Act,” which they said would block taxpayer dollars from being funneled to Trump and his allies, including individuals convicted in connection with the January 6 riot, public figures who spread election misinformation, and the leader of a violent hate group.

“As Republicans return to Washington to provide further funding for this and other mistaken priorities, we’re going to hold them accountable,” Schiff said in a statement. “And as Senators who have actually seen their government weaponized against them, we want to make it clear: We will not allow a single payout from this so-called weaponization fund to be paid.”

The bill would also ban settlements stemming from suits brought by the president or the vice president, and be retroactive to January 20, 2025. That would functionally undo the recent settlement for Trump’s failing $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Services that produced the fund, and blocked the president from future audits.

Last week, a federal judge issued a restraining order to ensure that no taxpayer dollars would be “irreversibly disbursed” from the fund before the legal battle could play out.

But the bill is only part of the plan. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Monday that Democrats would introduce an amendment to their $72 billion budget reconciliation bill in order to shut down the fund. “If they try to bury the issue, we will force them to the Senate floor. If they try to sneak behind appropriations, we will fight them there, too. There will be no escape hatch. No fake guardrails or backroom promises to hide behind,” Schumer said.