Raw Story

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) slammed President Donald Trump's move to "rebrand" the Department of Defense to the Department of War, taking a shot at Trump's "peace through strength" slogan.

"If we call it the Dept. of War, we'd better equip the military to actually prevent and win wars. Can't preserve American primacy if we're unwilling to spend substantially more on our military than Carter or Biden. 'Peace through strength' requires investment, not just rebranding," McConnell posted on X.

The 83-year-old senator and longest-serving Senate party leader has criticized Trump and the growing MAGA wing of the Republican Party.

He warned earlier this week that America was slipping into a time reminiscent of the 1930s, with a similar slogan, "America First," that poised the United States to enter an isolationist period. He has previously warned that it could put the U.S. in a "dangerous" global situation.

The phrase "America First" originated in the 1850s nativist American Party. It was used by President Woodrow Wilson during World War I. And in the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan adopted the slogan.

The president intends to sign an executive order changing the agency's name to the Department of War, which it had been called from 1789 until its 1947 reorganization.

Other critics have called the president's rebrand "a sign of weakness."

"The name 'Department of War' conveys a stronger message of readiness and resolve compared to 'Department of Defense,' which emphasizes only defensive capabilities," the executive order says.

“It’s a much more appropriate name, especially in light of where the world is right now,” Trump said. He called the previous name "woke," according to The Associated Press, adding that it "just sounded better."

The conservative group behind the Project 2025 is about to propose a sweeping change to domestic economic policy to explicitly encourage married heterosexual couples to have more children.

The right-wing Heritage Foundation will ask lawmakers to steer money away from Head Start and other child care programs to fund government-seeded savings accounts specifically meant to encourage parents to stay home and raise children, reported the Washington Post.

“For family policy to succeed, old orthodoxies must be re-examined and innovative approaches embraced, but more than that, we need to mobilize a nation to meet this moment,” states a draft of the paper, which was sent to Heritage police experts by the think tank's domestic policy vice president, Roger Severino.

A five-page summary of the forthcoming position paper titled “We Must Save the American Family" calls for “Manhattan Project to restore the nuclear family,” which represents a major break away from its longstanding ideals of limited government and free-market conservatism and toward the "pronatalist" movement supported by Vice President JD Vance and Heritage President Kevin Roberts.

"I want more babies in the United States of America," Vance said in his first public speech in office.

“It’s time for policymakers to elevate family authority, formation, and cohesion as their top priority and even use government power, including through the tax code, to restore the American family," Roberts wrote in the introduction to Project 2025, which has served as a blueprint for President Donald Trump's second term.

The apparent shift in priorities has caught some at the institute off guard, with one person comparing the policies to "eugenics" and another calling the policies "'social engineering' that would reverse a half century of progress toward gender equality."

“That paper is not a compromise between the limited government folks and the big government folks,” said that person. “It is an outright steamrolling of the limited government folks.”

“Going back 50 years?” the person added. “I wouldn’t want to go back 50 years.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) accused President Donald Trump of having dementia because he keeps repeating the same lie over and over again.

The conspiracy theory is that Newsom somehow wasn't releasing a flood of water that could be used to extinguish the wildfires in Southern California. Somehow he was sitting on tons of water that could be used to fight the fires that comes from snow runoff.

According to Trump, the entire wildfire in Southern California would never have happened to begin with due to sprinklers.

"You wouldn't have had the fire because all the sprinklers would've worked in the houses," said Trump.

Homes don't have fire suppression sprinkler systems. Large structures do.

"Forty-six states have completely removed the sprinkler requirements for one- and two-family homes," said the National Association of Home Builders.

As one fact-check, from CNN, explained, "This is false. Newsom has never refused to sign a 'water restoration declaration.' In fact, there is no such document, as Newsom’s office said on social media on Wednesday and experts on California water policy confirmed."

Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow in the Water Policy Center at the Public Policy Institute of California think tank, told CNN in January, “At no time was water scarcity in general an issue. Rather, there were local shortages of water during the firefight, principally due to infrastructure constraints. But Southern California has plenty of water in storage right now, so this was not a limiting factor."

Newsom even published comments on the governor's website from water agencies, water contractors, and a metro water district dispelling Trump's myth.

Newsom replied to Trump's post with a screen capture in which he asks the AI site Perplexity whether it's a sign of dementia to repeat the same "crazy conspiracies" over and over again.

People with dementia often repeat the same statements, questions, and sometimes false or mistaken beliefs, primarily because of memory loss and impaired reasoning. This repetitive behavior can include everyday concerns, but may also involve delusions of persistent falsehoods, such as believing people are stealing from them or thinking they are in danger—sometimes leading to repeated expression of these ideas," Perplexity wrote, according to Newsom's screen capture.

See the clip of Trump below or at the link here.

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President Donald Trump suggested that a press conference being held by survivors of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was a "Democrat hoax."

As the survivors were speaking outside the Capitol on Wednesday, a reporter asked Trump if his Justice Department was "protecting any friends or donors."

"So this is a Democrat hoax that never ends," the president complained. "You know, it reminds me a little of the Kennedy situation. We gave him everything over and over again, more and more and more, and nobody's ever satisfied."

"But it's really a Democrat hoax because they're trying to get people to talk about something that's totally irrelevant to the success that we've had as a nation since I've been president," he continued. "So what they're trying to do with the Epstein hoax is, get people to talk about that instead of speaking about the tremendous success, like ending seven wars."

"I ended seven wars. Nobody's going to talk about because they're going to talk about the Epstein, whatever."

Trump argued that his government had "given thousands of pages of files" about Epstein to Congress.

"And I think it's, I think, really, I think it's enough because I think we should talk about the greatness of our country and the success that we're having," he insisted. "And that's what I want to talk about. That's what we should be talking about. Not the Epstein hoax."

Watch the video below from Fox News or click the link.

President Donald Trump has teamed up with a surprising character in his bid to help rebuild the Gaza Strip, according to reports.

Axios reported on Thursday that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been working with Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, on a plan to rebuild Gaza after Israel's war with Hamas ends. Trump has previously described the Gaza Strip as a prime real estate location, and Kushner has been linked to several real estate deals since leaving the White House during Trump's first administration.

News that Blair is being considered as a partner on the rebuilding plan shocked Emma Vigeland, co-host of "The Majority Report," and Brendan James, host of "The Blowback Show." They discussed the plans on a new episode of The Majority Report on Sunday.

"Blair being attached is never a good sign," James said.

The Washington Post reported on Sunday that at least part of the Gaza rebuilding plan involves the U.S. administering the state for a decade. The plan also envisions forming public-private partnerships to build electric vehicle plants, data centers, luxury resorts, and high-rise apartments.

James argued that the plan seems disconnected from the reality of the war in Gaza.

"The idea that anything in the near term could produce the conditions, again putting aside the just evil of the proposition, that could produce what Kushner or Trump or Blair would be aiming to do is ridiculous," James said. "People would get blown up every single day trying to build the Cracker Barrel or whatever. So I don't see that happening."

Watch the entire clip below or by clicking here.

One of President Donald Trump's biographers revealed on Sunday that the president may have a difficult time getting rid of one of his cabinet secretaries because they play an important role in his relationship with the MAGA base.

Michael Wolff, who has written four books on Trump, discussed the latest controversy surrounding Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the latest episode of The Daily Beat's podcast, "Inside Trump's Head." Wolff's comments come just a few days after Kennedy instigated the firing of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director over vaccine policies.

Reports about Kennedy's involvement in the CDC director's firing led some to speculate whether Trump would get rid of him.

"I think it might be problematic to get rid of him at this point," Wolff said. "Certainly, know voices inside the white House, you know, continue to be very worried about this particular issue."

Wolff added that Kennedy is an important figure in the Trump world because of his views on vaccines. Kennedy has routinely spoken out against the efficacy of vaccines, including the COVID-19 vaccine that the first Trump administration developed. Kennedy's decision to join the Trump administration gave Trump credibility with MAGA on vaccines, Wolff argued.

"They're worried that Donald Trump is weak on the anti-vax issue," Wolff continued. "So, therefore, RFK Jr. is their protection against Trump's weakness on that issue."

Watch the entire clip below or by clicking here.