Raw Story

Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-MT) went out of his way to "play hardball" with the White House to get President Donald Trump to back down from his position of pulling Jared Isaacman's nomination for administrator of NASA, Semafor reported on Thursday.

Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur and commercial astronaut, is a close friend of tech tycoon Elon Musk, and Trump's initial withdrawal of his nomination was a big factor in the two men falling out spectacularly in public earlier this year. But according to the report, Musk was not the only figure rankled by the change of plans.

Sheehy, per the report, "tried unsuccessfully in May to get President Donald Trump to reconsider his withdrawal of Isaacman’s nomination to lead the space agency. After months passed with still no permanent NASA nominee, Sheehy, a longtime friend of Isaacman, identified a key piece of leverage: the confirmation of a close Trump ally."

Specifically, said the report, "In order to get outgoing personnel chief Sergio Gor quickly approved as US ambassador to India, the president needed all 53 GOP senators to go along. But Sheehy suggested he wouldn’t view Gore’s job of staffing the administration as complete as long as the NASA role was vacant. So Sheehy put a hold on Gor’s nomination in September, a move that has not been previously reported. It didn’t take long to get a response from the White House."

Ultimately, Trump went into talks with Sheehy over the hold on Gor, one of his closest allies. And Trump eventually agreed to re-nominate Isaacman for the NASA position.

This comes after reporting that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, currently overseeing NASA on an acting basis, has been maneuvering to try to get the job permanently himself, an issue that caused bitter divisions in the White House.

A Trump administration top housing official has referred a fourth Democratic official and "vocal critic" of President Donald Trump to the Justice Department over allegations of mortgage and tax fraud, according to reports Thursday.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) — now the fourth Democratic official to face mortgage fraud allegations in the last several months — could be under a potential federal criminal probe over his Washington, D.C. home, according to NBC News.

In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday, Trump attack dog and housing finance director Bill Pulte — who oversees the U.S. mortgage market and also runs Fannie Mae and brother firm Freddie Mac, taking over both company boards and making himself chairman of both organizations — wrote that Swalwell may have made false or misleading statements on his loan documents. The agency's acting inspector general is also reportedly investigating.

Swalwell released a statement to NBC News, explaining he is the latest opponent to face attacks from the Trump administration.

"As the most vocal critic of Donald Trump over the last decade and as the only person who still has a surviving lawsuit against him, the only thing I am surprised about is that it took him this long to come after me," he said.

Trump has repeatedly urged the prosecution of his political opponents, both on social media posts and in speeches.

“Like James Comey and John Bolton, Adam Schiff and Lisa Cook, Letitia James and the dozens more to come — I refuse to live in fear in what was once the freest country in the world,” Swalwell said. “Of course, I will not end my lawsuit against him. And I will not stop speaking out against the President and speaking up for Californians.”

Each of the accused Trump opponents have denied any wrongdoing.

Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.

A woman has come forward to tell her story after the House Ethics Committee determined that then-Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) sexually abused her when she was just 17.

Laura B. Wolf, an attorney for the girl, spoke to The New York Times about the ordeal. The paper got in touch with Wolf after a federal judge in Florida unsealed court documents that described the victim as "a then-homeless 17-year-old high schooler."

Wolf said her client was living with a parent in a homeless shelter and trying to save up enough money to buy braces to fix her teeth when she falsely advertised herself as an 18-year-old on a "sugar daddy" dating website in 2017.

"The vulnerable circumstances most crime victims face are rarely known to the public," Wolf told the paper. "Although my client's circumstances were revealed outside of her control, I hope it helps for the public to see a fuller and more human picture of her than the press has reported on to date."

"Power imbalances can be age, but they can also be financial. My client had little economic security, which allowed for financial leverage over her," she added.

The girl was later introduced to Gaetz through his friend Joel Greenberg, who had sex with her seven times, paying $400 on each occasion.

She would later testify that Trump fundraiser Chris Dorworth witnessed her having sex with Gaetz on a pool table or air hockey table at a party at his home. She also told investigators that she witnessed Gaetz using cocaine that night. She said she was paid $400 for having sex with Gaetz twice that night.

According to the report, the girl eventually saved enough money from the encounters to afford braces.

For his part, Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing.

Republicans are facing their next crisis after getting thrashed in elections last week — voters are seeing slow growth in their paychecks, making President Donald Trump's blindspot on affordability more startling and creating a larger problem for the GOP ahead of midterms.

Americans are feeling pessimistic over their economic futures and concerned over their own financial health, Politico reports Tuesday.

Economists also predict mass layoffs, climbing unemployment, a dip in job opportunities and hesitation among employers to hire new workers and potentially offer raises for current employees.

As wage growth has fallen and inflation rises, it's hitting lower- and middle-income families even harder since the beginning of 2025, according to the Bank of America Institute. These are the slowest rates of income growth seen since the early 2010s, when the economy was bouncing back from the Great Recession (2007-2009) and the unemployment rate was nearly double what it is now.

“We’re clearly going through a soft patch now,” Gary Schlossberg, an economist and global strategist for the Wells Fargo Investment Institute, told Politico. “Households are going to be feeling some pain. [And] if you’re focused on the trajectory of wage inflation, I think it will be slower next year.”

This presents a "serious risk to Republicans" and exposes the weak point the GOP will face in 2026 as they refine their approach and message to address economic woes for Americans.

And while Trump claims inflation is declining, voters don't agree. Since his second term, he is losing the historic advantage he previously had over Democrats, Politico reported.

Only 34% of voters approve of the president's handling of the economy, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll. This figure matches President Joe Biden's polling results during the end of his administration.

Although Trump's administration has argued he will shift his attention to the economy — even offering potential $2,000 checks for low and middle income Americans with tariff revenue — he's also attempting to lower drug prices and suggesting that 50-year mortgages could help reduce costs for people each month.

Tax cuts promised by the Trump administration could bring some relief, but it's expected that those cuts will help the wealthy and give them better purchasing power.

It still won't change that inflation is rising or how Trump's aggressive immigration crackdown could hit wage growth for lower-income jobs often done by immigrants, Recruitonomics Chief Economist Andrew Flowers told Politico.

The reality is that inflation is “worse today than it was at the start of the year, or a year ago,” Flowers argues.

Although President Donald Trump is confident in his redistricting battle designed to keep the Republican House majority, insiders say Republicans are fretting that last Tuesday's election results gave Democrats an opening to counterstrike, NBC reports.

While one anonymous Republican strategist tells NBC that “The president understands intuitively, in a way that other Republicans don’t … that Democrats are always assaulting us, always, and mostly much of the Republican Party never fights back."

“The redistricting fight is proof that they are not that way. So this is in his DNA in a way that is not in other Republicans’ DNA,” the strategist added.

Two other strategists described as close to the White House say they don't necessarily agree, telling NBC "there are growing concerns in the party that the political war is not going as planned — that the juice may not have been worth the squeeze and could, in a nightmare scenario, result in a net gain for Democrats."

"Misgivings" about Trump's strategy heightened after California voters overwhelmingly approved Governor Gavin Newsom's Prop. 50 plan to redraw the state’s congressional districts in a manner that Democrats hope will flip five House seats in their direction.

“For a few weeks now, he’s had the understanding that they were going to lose Prop 50,” a Republican operative close to the White House tells NBC, adding that Trump "has been planning to sue California over the ballot measure while believing it was a bad idea to get involved in the fight."

"The stakes couldn't be higher," NBC explains, noting that Trump's legislative agenda will be "imperiled by a Democratic takeover of the House," and "also his administration would surely face myriad investigations and he could be impeached for a third time."

“With a narrow majority heading into a midterm, they need more seats for a buffer in order to hold the House. If they can ultimately net five or six seats, then it will be the story of the midterms of success for Republicans,” a GOP strategist tells NBC. “If the whole thing here was to net one seat across the country, then it will not have been worth it.”

In the wake of "strong Democratic showings in predominantly Hispanic areas of Virginia and New Jersey," Erin Covey, a nonpartisan election analyst who is the House editor at The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, says there’s “uncertainty” as to whether Hispanic voters will show up for the GOP next year like they did for Trump in 2024, particularly in states like Texas.

“That does not bode well for Republicans banking on Hispanic voters to help them keep their majority next year — but it doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll see Republican incumbents who would be in safe seats suddenly look vulnerable all of a sudden,” she said.

Another anonymous Republican with close ties to the president agrees and is raising the red flags, especially on Texas.

“I think ‘concern’ is a fair way to say it," they tell NBC.

GOP consultant and data scientist John Eakin puts it more bluntly,

“Nobody wants to go against Trump in this district map because they fear him. They’ve pushed the envelope and it’s going to come back to bite them in the ass,” he said. "They’re high as a f—— kite off of 2024."