Trump Lost It at Alina Habba After Learning About Her $50 Million Deal

President Donald Trump reportedly flew into a rage once he learned that Alina Habba Mildon got a $50 million contract to secure a pardon for a billionaire family.

The New York Times reports that Mildon, Trump’s former personal lawyer who has held multiple jobs with his administration, inked the lucrative deal with a company started by the daughter of Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan national who was looking for a presidential pardon. Trump was angered by the size of Mildon’s contract, and said that she should donate some of that money to his presidential library or another entity related to him, according to the Times.

Trump even told one of his confidants that the Herrera family shouldn’t pay out the rest of their contract with Mildon, the Times reported. He later called Mildon, but it’s not known if he directly told her to make a donation.

What Trump seems to be mad about is that he has created a pay-to-play pardon procedure for his administration, where individuals seeking pardons arrange a way for the president to personally benefit in some way in exchange for forgiveness for the crimes they’ve committed. Trump basically admitted as much earlier this month, expressing disappointment over Representative Henry Cuellar staying loyal to the Democratic Party after Trump pardoned him for corruption charges.

Trump has issued many pardons to people who successfully lobbied his administration, spending millions to get the ear of White House lawyers and the president himself. He also reportedly promises pardons to White House staffers, including “anyone who comes within 10 feet” of the Oval Office, according to a Wall Street Journal report from April. It seems he’s mad if anyone close to him is making money off of pardons without giving him a cut.

A group of senators was briefed on what the next phase of the Trump administration’s war on Iran will look like. One of them thinks it’s “insane.” 

Democratic Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, offered those remarks at a Middle East Institute panel on Wednesday. 

“I will just say this: Their plan is insane.... It will lead to devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law,” Murphy said. “There’s been open reporting as to what we may be planning, and the civilian infrastructure that we may be targeting.... They have been asked by the president to develop a plan. Whether they believe it will work or not, I do not know. But the plan that they have developed will lead, in my view, to a prolongment and an escalation of this war that will be devastating for our security interests.” 

President Trump is expected to ramp up operations against Iran after the midterm elections, with anonymous sources saying the U.S. has already begun warning its allies about a renewed military campaign. Last week, Israeli sources told ABC News that they discussed intensifying the blockade on Iranian oil exports and bombing petrochemical sites with the United States. Murphy’s comment seems to be confirmation that there is an escalation in the works. 

That would likely result in more Iranian civilians dying, more of their infrastructure being destroyed, more U.S. soldiers dying and being wounded, and continued high fuel prices. It would also further expose Trump’s false promises about the conflict, which appears to be developing into our next forever war. And the primary goal of destroying Iran’s nuclear capability does not seem to have actually been achieved.  

President Trump personally helped failed right-wing Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro flee to the United States, according to a new report in The New York Times.

Bolsonaro, who would have faced multiple criminal investigations if he stayed in Brazil, landed in Miami Wednesday after losing Brazil’s presidential election to incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. But he wouldn’t have made it without the Trump administration’s help.

Bolsonaro and his family were able to come to the United States on a special kind of parole usually reserved for “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit,” after he apparently showed Homeland Security an expired diplomatic passport. His next step will be applying for a green card, a process which an administration official said will be fast-tracked in a manner similar to his brother Eduardo, who was granted permanent residency last year.

Bolsonaro flew from Argentina to Ecuador before finally landing in Miami—and he did it all on a private jet handled by Jason Miller, a White House communications official, an unnamed administration official told the Times.

Brazil’s Supreme Court had ordered Bolsonaro to hand over his passport by Monday given that he was under criminal investigation for a massive money-laundering scheme. The senator was reportedly convinced that he would be arrested following his election loss. His father, Jair Bolsonaro, is currently serving out house arrest in Brazil for attempting his own version of January 6. He also fled to Florida in late 2022 briefly before his arrest.

Trump has been close with the Bolsonaros, both personally and politically. On Monday, he claimed without any proof that the election had been “rigged” against Bolsonaro. “It looked like another rigged election, frankly,” he told reporters. “Elections have to be indisputable, and it looked very bad to me.”

Bolsonaro has yet to concede the election to Lula, and declared himself the leader of Brazil from the United States in a letter on Wednesday.

Starlink’s Ukraine gambit might have been part of an attempt to force the war-torn country to cough up more cash.

Earlier this month, Starlink’s satellite-supplied internet service suddenly dropped its connection over Ukraine as Russia barraged Kyiv with missiles. Starlink founder Elon Musk initially blamed the lapse on the recent decisions of the U.S. military and President Donald Trump, but then Trump also refused to take responsibility. Musk finally confessed Saturday to slowing down the region’s Starlink connection, claiming in an X post that Ukraine had violated Starlink’s terms of service by using the internet connection to attack Russia.

But a report published by The Atlantic Thursday indicates that there could have been another reason that Musk’s company decided to pull the plug. U.S. officials told the magazine that when Washington inquired about the outage, Starlink “advised switching to an upgraded contract to restore Ukraine’s access.”

The blunder has put both Ukraine and Starlink in a fraught position. The company’s apparently unreliable connection has jeopardized the safety and sovereignty of tens of millions of Ukrainians as they attempt to fend off Russia’s invasion, while also displaying for the entire world that Starlink’s services aren’t all they were chalked up to be. It has also revealed that the fate of entire nations rests in the hands of the world’s first trillionaire.

Contrary to Musk’s position, Ukraine’s actions were anything but offensive. Russian ballistic missiles slammed two plants supplying heat and electricity to Kyiv and damaged a residential building in the capital city. At least nine people died in the attacks, Ukraine’s State Emergency Services shared in a Telegram statement.

Ukrainian officials suggested that the strikes could have been prevented if they received the proper intelligence—but there was only radio silence. Multiple sources familiar with the matter told CBS News that U.S. officials claimed their defense systems had failed to detect the missiles because of “bad weather,” but Kyiv did not buy the excuse.

The intelligence error occurred days after Trump brokered an eyebrow-raising deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to buy diesel from Moscow, effectively offering the country an economic lifeline that would allow Russia to continue the war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was publicly critical of the arrangement, sparking a multiday harassment campaign in which the Trump administration called Kyiv and other European capitals, threatening to cut off military intelligence sharing and weapons deliveries unless Ukraine stopped attacking Russian oil refineries.

The story behind Vivek Ramaswamy’s vile attack ad just keeps getting worse and worse. 

Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton’s long-estranged mother, Donna Arthur, reportedly appeared mentally unwell while filming a campaign video for her daughter’s opponent, sources told Zeteo. Those sources described Arthur as “far gone” and “in bad shape.”

Court filings obtained Thursday by NBC News gave a startling further look into Arthur’s mental health struggles in recent years. In 2022, she faced animal neglect charges after she hoarded 20 cats in her sedan where she lived, and one kitten died in her care in 2021. According to court transcripts, Arthur exhibited a belief that animal rescue workers were conspiring to abduct her cats, and accused a humane society officer and an animal rescue worker of “stalking” her in order to steal her pets.  

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Acton said, “It’s very clear that our mother—who I have not seen since I was 12, my brother was nine—is not well, and I do hope she gets the things she needs.”

“I think this was exploitive to do that to someone in her condition,” Acton added of the ad.

Ramaswamy moved forward with the ad spot against the advice of his own team, and ignored publicly available information that Arthur had abandoned her children in order to skip town with her husband, who was indicted for allegedly raping Action when she was less than 13 years old. 

The 62-year-old biological daughter of Cledith “Bud” Arthur, Acton’s stepfather and alleged abuser, said Wednesday that she believes Acton’s story and claimed that he had also raped her late sister Christine years before he married Acton’s mother.