Breaking News
Breaking News
from Washington and beyond

Trump Spirals as Supreme Court Strikes Down Limits on Mail-In Voting

Donald Trump also freaked out about the other major losses the Supreme Court has dealt him.

Donald Trump holds up a finger while speaking
Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

President Donald Trump majorly crashed out Tuesday after the Supreme Court killed his efforts to restrict mail-in voting ahead of the midterm elections. 

In a lengthy tirade on Truth Social, Trump raged against “another bad decision” from the Supreme Court. 

“It is a big loss for Republicans, and America itself, and makes cheating by the Radical Left ‘Dumocrats,’ on Mail-In Ballots, a much easier thing to do—And now they have an open field to do so!” Trump wrote. “The Supreme Court has really let our Country down!”

The president continued to rant about the Supreme Court’s previous decisions to undo his disastrous “Liberation Day” tariffs and block his efforts to scrap birthright citizenship. 

“The damage done to America is incalculable, and they know this, just as everyone else does—It is an irreparable and unrecoverable harm!” Trump wrote. “The Court’s inability and unwillingness to do the right thing for our Country will go down, in a very negative way, in the annals of History.”

Trump claimed that certain justices were “petrified of these craved and depraved Democrats” and had been “cajoled by the Radical Left.”

“These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves, a Court that is costing the United  States Trillions of Dollars with shockingly bad rulings that are of such magnitude that it won’t be easily possible for our Country to recover or heal,” Trump wrote, referring to Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neil Gorsuch, all of whom Trump saw appointed to the bench. 

Kavanaugh wrote a brief concurring opinion, noting that “there is at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service’s statutory authority.” But he said that “applying the rule in the 2026 elections would be arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act because state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections.”

Trump claimed that “it is not easy for me to write this criticism of the United States Supreme Court—it will likely cost me dearly for years to come—but I feel it my obligation and duty, as President, to do so for the America we love!” 

Of course, it is easy for the president, who has spent months railing against the Supreme Court, including its conservative justices. 

Read more about Trump’s attacks on mail-in voting:

There’s a Reason We Haven’t Heard McConnell’s Voice for 92 Days

Senator Mitch McConnell has finally returned to Capitol Hill, but the public still hasn’t heard what he sounds like.

Senator Mitch McConnell speaks to the media, looking super frail.
Senator Mitch McConnell speaks to the media as he arrives at the U.S. Capitol on September 14.
Pete Kiehart/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Senator Mitch McConnell speaks to the media as he arrives at the U.S. Capitol on September 14.

What would you think if your senator went nearly 100 days without speaking publicly? 

It’s been over three months since we have heard Senator Mitch McConnell’s voice, after he was found unconscious in his D.C. home in June and spent all summer collecting a paycheck while offering few updates on his health. His team kept that streak going after he finally returned to Capitol Hill on Monday for a vote, ensuring he appeared in a corridor in which press is banned from recording video—probably a strategic move given that McConnell still does not look lucid or coherent. Of course,  that would be easier to determine if he could just address the public—one of the most basic tenets of his job. 

“Reporters aren’t allowed to film in the hallways outside the Senate chamber, which is where this pic is, except for at weekly leadership press conferences held here,” HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery wrote Tuesday on X. “In other words, you can lose your credentials over this.... My best guess is his staff is avoiding all press in the halls and using more private ways into and out of the building.” 

Various GOP colleagues have claimed to have spoken to McConnell since June. But while rumors of his demise swirled, he released just two photos of him and his wife along with two press statements, none of which offered evidence that his language and cognition were adequate—something you might worry about with an 80-year old senator with years of health problems who was found passed out on the floor.

X screenshot Andrew Desiderio
@AndrewDesiderio
Some more photos of McConnell as he returned to the Senate for the first time in three months following a fall at his D.C. home

Reporters were barred from recording video

(photos of Mitch McConnell on a wheelchair speaking, looking out of it, as his aides stand around him)

McConnell did apparently speak off camera. CNN’s Manu Raju described him as looking “frailer and his voice slower.” 

“I must admit, after two years, two decades, actually dodging your questions, I wasn’t sure how many of you would be here today, but I’m glad to see you,” the longtime senator reportedly said. “Time to get back to work, finish the job for this Congress. I’m here to work on the farm bill.... As I think you know, I have an ongoing issue in NATO and backing up our good friends who are totally in the fight against the Russians.” He didn’t take any questions. 

McConnell does look frail and spaced out in the few videos we do have of him.

McConnell’s speechless return was even panned by the far right. 

“Absolutely wild that after 3 months of being near death, one of the first things Mitch McConnell says he’ll now focus on is pushing for more war in Ukraine,” hardline MAGA commentator DC Draino wrote. “Not lowering prices for middle class Americans. Not deporting illegals. Nope, he wants more foreign wars. Evil man.”

MAGA Senator Secretly Begged Trump for a Break From Signature Policy

Senator Katie Britt publicly praised Donald Trump—and privately tried to escape consequences.

Senator Katie Britt speaks to reporters
Senator Katie Britt
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images
Senator Katie Britt

Alabama Senator Katie Britt praised President Donald Trump’s tariffs in public, but behind closed doors, the Republican lawmaker begged for relief, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

In an email sent to the U.S. trade representative in April 2025, shortly after Trump announced his so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs, Stephen Newton, the legislative director for Britt’s office, requested tariff “exclusions” for “specific Alabama manufacturers.”

Those companies included TNT Fireworks, which could not source fireworks of the same “quality and safety” as those produced in China; Novelis, an aluminum company that relies on imports from Canada, South Korea, and Brazil and could no longer complete construction on a new plant in Alabama; Kronospan, a wood panel maker that required “highly specialized equipment that is not available from domestic manufacturers;” and Airbus, the aircraft manufacturer, which could no longer afford to complete production on its third final assembly line in Mobile.

It’s not clear that any of these companies received exemptions, as the USTR “does not have an exemption process at this time,” the agency told Journal.

But months later, Britt struck a different tone in a social media post following the Supreme Court’s decision to undo Trump’s disastrous tariffs.

“What the media won’t tell you is that President Trump’s tariffs work, and that’s why even the Biden Administration left them in place,” Britt wrote on X.

If there’s that much daylight between Britt’s public-facing comments and her actual politicking, one has to wonder what other hard-line Trump administration policies the MAGA mouthpiece secretly knows are bullshit? And how many other Republicans feel the same?

Jared Kushner Is Making Bank Off of Iran Negotiations

Donald Trump’s son-in-law has fundraised billions of dollars for his investment fund.

Jared Kushner holds a microphone and speaks into it
Jared Kushner
Maxym Marusenko/NurPhoto/Getty Images
Jared Kushner

President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who serves as a special envoy for peace in the Trump administration, has made billions of dollars for his investment firm from donors in the Middle East at the same time.

The New Yorker reports that during peace negotiations with Iran earlier this year, Kushner managed to raise $5 billion for his group, Affinity Partners. When America’s attacks on Iran restarted, some observers became suspicious that Kushner’s business activities were linked to his work for the Trump administration.

“My sense is that he thinks he was killing two birds with one stone—he was helping the Arabs defeat the Iranians, and he wanted to be paid for it,” an unnamed American source with extensive ties to leaders in the Middle East told the magazine.

With the U.S. left with no good options as Iran maintains control of the Strait of Hormuz, Kushner and Trump’s other special envoy Steve Witkoff haven’t been active in peace talks. The latest round of negotiations over the summer were led by Vice President JD Vance. The leaders of Arab Gulf states are reportedly disappointed in Kushner for failing to end the war.

“They were investing money in him. They thought that would bring them some influence that would protect them, and it did the opposite,” a former senior U.S. official told The New Yorker. “Their whole business model was stability. And now it’s gone.”

Kushner’s firm was built off of investments in and from the Middle East. Using money from Saudi Arabia, Affinity put $110 million into the car-leasing Shlomo Group, and nearly $300 million into Phoenix Financial, an insurance company. Both are Israeli companies, according to The New Yorker.

All of this raises massive conflict of interest concerns. When Kushner jets off to Pakistan or Qatar, is he seeking the best outcomes for the American people or for his investment firm? Are Israel and the Gulf states trying to coerce him into specific outcomes by dangling lucrative business deals? Kushner has already caused upheaval in Albania thanks to his real estate project there. What if he puts the U.S. at risk trying to make a buck in the Middle East amid a quagmire with Iran?

Trump’s Voter Fraud Quest Is Turning Illegal, Whistleblower Says

Investigators are illegally accessing state voter rolls—and likely flagging U.S. citizens as “unlawful voters” in a rushed attempt to meet their quotas, a whistleblower warns.

Donald Trump speaks to reporters while Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stands behind him and listens
President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin

A whistleblower has alleged that federal investigators violated state law in a desperate attempt to find proof of President Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud.

Agents at the Department of Homeland Security have been posing as voters, entering people’s personal voting information (like Social Security numbers and dates of birth) into public-facing state websites, and using that to determine if they are eligible to vote or not—all in about 12 minutes thanks to their 40-person-a-day quota. Many states have laws indicating that only the actual person voting may input their own information into said public-facing sites, making the agents’ actions potentially illegal.

These questionable tactics make the “Unlawful Voter Initiative” launched by Trump two weeks ago an extremely tenuous endeavor.

In the report, compiled by the government watchdog group the Democracy Defenders Fund, the whistleblower also alleges that the agents’ rushed data collections may be rife with inaccuracies. The “alien identification numbers” of people who entered the U.S. as noncitizens are still listed on their records—even if they became a full citizen years ago. The hasty nature of DHS’s efforts may result in people who are well within their right to vote as citizens are flagged as “unlawful voters.” The report also notes that some of the agents themselves began to grow concerned about using people’s personal data, and hesitated to identify individuals as unlawful voters.

DHS in a statement argued that it is well within its rights to peruse the intimate voter data of millions of Americans because, “It’s not rocket science; it’s an easy step to secure our elections.”

“I do think the American people value keeping their personal information private,” said Senator Alex Padilla, who the report was delivered to on Sunday. “The other thing that’s concerning here, that the American people who would be offended by, is the knowing inaccuracy of what they’re doing, whether it’s the data or their sham analysis. It’s going to produce false positives.”