Trump Team Panics Over July 4 After Tiny Fair Crowd Sent Him Raging

White House staff are reportedly concerned that Donald Trump’s Fourth of July rally is a recipe for disaster—one that will send the president into yet another meltdown. 

The remarkably low turnout for Trump’s Great American State Fair has sparked serious worries that the president’s massive rally planned for Saturday will also be a dud, multiple sources told CNN Wednesday.  

The rally is scheduled to take place outside on the National Mall, as temperatures in Washington are forecast to reach a stifling 100 degrees. 

One official familiar with the event told CNN that there would likely be large groups of people who reserved tickets for Trump’s address but don’t end up attending. Empty seats means that viewers are likely in for another presidential temper tantrum—a sorry sight given it will be the country’s 250th anniversary. 

The rally will be punctuated by a massive fireworks display, currently scheduled to begin at 11 p.m. Unlike in past years, attendees will not be able to bring coolers to help beat the heat. 

“I do not understand why we are doing this so late,” one White House official told CNN, adding there were still ongoing efforts to fix the timing. “I’m really not sure who thought this was a good idea.”

So far, Trump’s Great American State Fair has been supremely underwhelming and beset by technical difficulties, lame programming, and disappointing weather delays. Trump has raged in the face of bad reviews and lied about the visibly low attendance.

Internally, those in Trump’s orbit have begun pointing fingers about the president’s own Fyre Festival (except people actually went to the Fyre Festival). “The mistake here was not driving attendance,” one person close to the White House told CNN. “It was an ‘if you build it, they will come’ mentality that failed.”

The MAGA-verse has begun to attack pregnant women in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 5–4 ruling to uphold the birthright citizenship clause of the Constitution, which holds that nearly anyone born on U.S. soil is an American citizen, regardless of where their parents are from.

Their new suggestion: Ban all pregnant foreigners from entering the country.

“If you have birthright citizenship, it means if a person comes here nine months pregnant to go look around at some things, in a couple of weeks that is the mother of a lifetime American citizen—and a direct line into American cash and welfare for the rest of that child’s life,” White House adviser Stephen Miller hollered at Jesse Watters on Fox News Tuesday evening.

“Mr. Miller, are we banning pregnant women from America? Are we banning foreign pregnant women?” Watters asked with a laugh.

“Well, what I’m saying, Jesse, is that you have to now think very carefully about who you let into your country, even on a temporary basis, because the possibility [for] birth tourism … when people come here just to have babies on American soil.”

“Everybody should agree that it’s a violation of our laws if your intent in coming here if you’re pregnant is to have a child to become a United States citizen,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Wednesday, calling birth tourism a “booming industry.”

“Just saw a pregnant Haitian woman at the grocery store. Called ICE immediately,” right-wing content producer Matt Morse wrote. “Can’t take any chances, these days.”

“The State Department should IMMEDIATELY cease to give out visas to pregnant applicants,” MAGA Representative Lauren Boebert said. “Sorry, Birth Tourism cannot continue.”

Some took the suggestion to an even more extreme level, calling for sterilization of all foreign visitors.

“Several ways forward here  given the choice of Roberts/Barrett to nullify the 14th Amendment and extra-constitutionally replace it with their own language,” The Federalist co-founder Sean Davis wrote on X. “Deny entry to all pregnant foreigners.… Deny entry to all female foreigners.… Require sterilization of all foreign visitors prior to entry.”

The same party that harangues single women about the low birth rate is now threatening any pregnant woman in this country who isn’t a citizen—the consequences of which could be devastating.

Former CIA Director John Brennan is suing the Trump administration, claiming that their investigation into him is a vindictive prosecution.

Brennan, who is under investigation by the Justice Department, is seeking to make sure the administration preserves all records pertaining to that investigation. In the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court, he expressed concern that the DOJ wouldn’t preserve records and communications that would allow him to take legal action in the future if the administration decides to prosecute him.

“Administration officials from the Acting Attorney General to the FBI Director and the Counselor overseeing the Brennan investigations have been publicly declaring Director Brennan a criminal, not only before securing a conviction in court but even before a full investigation and an indictment,” Brennan’s attorneys wrote. “And, certain officials in the Department of Justice are engaging in demonstrably irregular prosecutorial activity in order to gin up a case that will satisfy the President’s direction.”

Brennan wants President Trump, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, federal prosecutors in Miami who have investigated him, and intelligence officers to preserve any records related to him. The Southern District of Florida U.S. Attorney’s Office is reportedly involved in investigating Brennan and has hired John Yoo, a former DOJ official from the Bush administration famous for legally defending torture after 9/11, to consult on a case that may concern Brennan.

One DOJ prosecutor who expressed doubts about the investigation into Brennan, Maria Medetis Long, was removed from the case in April. Long is chief of the national security section for the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami, and would normally be involved in a case concerning intelligence. This suggests that Brennan may have a point about the DOJ’s interest in him having to do with Trump wanting to punish anyone he perceives as an enemy.

The White House will not renew the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, effectively ending the country’s trilateral economic pact with its closest neighbors and allies.

“The United States did not agree to renew the USMCA in its current form,” U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement Wednesday, the deadline to renew the 16-year arrangement. Greer added that, despite the lapse, the USMCA would remain “in force pending resolution of these issues or until the Agreement’s termination.”

“The United States will continue to engage with Mexico and Canada to address the Agreement’s shortcomings and our trade deficits with these countries,” he said.

The USMCA will automatically expire July 1, 2036, unless all three member countries come to a new agreement.

Donald Trump initially lauded the deal when it was negotiated under his first administration in 2018 as a replacement for the North American Free Trade Agreement. It went into full effect on July 1, 2020, and was designed to assist North American workers, farmers, ranchers, and businesses by creating a “more balanced, reciprocal trade” that would support job growth across the continent, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Since then, the U.S. has exported trillions of dollars worth of goods and services through the arrangement, though that was apparently not enough to prevent Trump from souring on the trinational accord.

Trump opted instead to impose unprecedented duties and tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods after he returned to office in 2025, tearing the deal to shreds in the process. On June 10, the president insisted that the U.S. should have a more level playing field with its trade partners, claiming that America doesn’t need its neighbors’ goods and services.

“We don’t need anything that Canada has. We don’t need anything that Mexico has, but they need everything that we have,” Trump told reporters at the time. “And they have to treat us better.”

Canada and Mexico are two of America’s top trading partners, cumulatively accounting for about a third of all U.S. exports, per the U.S. Census Bureau’s Foreign Trade statistics. Annually, the deal has provided the infrastructure for roughly $2 trillion in annual trade, according to data obtained by The Wall Street Journal.

But the lapsed trade agreement sets the stage for a larger debate over American economic relations that some economists estimate could take a long time to pin down. In the meantime, regional economies are expected to suffer from the lingering uncertainty.

Kelly Ann Shaw, who served as deputy director of the National Economic Council during Trump’s first term, told the Journal that the U.S. will likely morph the deal into something that could look much different from the USMCA.

“That process will carry on throughout the rest of the summer, if not into the end of this year,” she said.

Small towns hoping to put on celebrations for America’s 250th anniversary have had to cancel or scale back their plans after the Trump administration cut their funding.

NOTUS reports that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency slashed funding for humanities nonprofit councils in states and territories across the country, many of which planned to use those federal funds on history projects for the upcoming semiquincentennial. These official nonprofits were created by Congress to help make history and literature accessible to the American public.

Humanities councils in Ohio, West Virginia, Alabama, and Washington state all had to axe or scale back their anniversary plans, their leaders told NOTUS, and it had a ripple effect down to local historical organizations.

Musk’s DOGE initiative left these state organizations with just enough money to stay afloat last year. President Trump shifted millions from DOGE cuts toward his “triumphal arch” and “Garden of American Heroes,” preventing further funds from going toward local 250th anniversary projects.

Congress tried to remedy the shortfall by restoring funding for the state humanities councils to their normal levels for the 2026 fiscal year. But the Trump administration has refused to disburse that money, giving the councils less than half of what was appropriated, and told them not to expect any more.

That’s having a real impact in towns across America.

“It means that we are not able to do things that are extra, things that are bigger projects. A lot of humanities organizations would have had some incredible projects that none of us have been able to complete,” said Jessica Cyders, the executive director of the Southeast Ohio History Center. Her organization could have been a candidate for a 250th anniversary grant from Ohio Humanities, which distributes federal grants to the state’s local historical societies and community groups.

“There’s not really a lot of cultural infrastructure in West Virginia. Where most of the cultural work is done is in regional centers, community centers, small museums, county historical associations. So the people who really got hurt were those small organizations across the state,” Eric Waggoner, the head of the West Virginia Humanities Council, told NOTUS. They had planned to send their 250th anniversary funding to West Virginia University, local libraries, and small museums.

“I’m sad to say we had to scrap it,” Waggoner said. “Since we’re the only organization that does this kind of grant-making in West Virginia, without us, there’s really not much.”

“This is a pretty significant national event,” Cyders said. “Look, I’m probably not going to be alive for the 300th anniversary.”

Trump also took funding from America 250, the federal bipartisan organization that was supposed to be planning the semiquincentennial celebrations, and redirected it toward his own pet Freedom 250 projects. The president seems to have ruined what could have been amazing celebrations for the entire country with his ego, and who knows what could have been going on at the National Mall instead of a tacky “Great American State Fair.”