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Self-described moderate Republican Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) had his hands full during a Sunday night town hall in his suburban Hudson Valley swing district, according to reporting inThe New York Times and a variety of videos posted to social media.

Local police expected more than 1,200 constituents to jam the high school auditorium where Lawler was speaking in Rockland County, but first they had to follow Lawler's rules as posted outside the venue: participants were required to provide proof of residency for New York's 17th district; were warned against shouting, screaming, or yelling; and were forbidden from making "audio or video recordings."

But the rowdy constituents ignored those last two directives, as evidenced by cell phone video posted to X.

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In one video, a constituent asked, "What are you doing to stand in opposition to this administration, and what specifically are you doing that warrants the label 'moderate'"?

The question drew whoops and applause from the audience. When Lawler began to answer, saying, "Again, my record speaks for itself. I've been rated the fourth most bipartisan for a reason," the audience laughed and groaned.

In another clip, constituents chanted, "blah, blah, blah" as Lawler tried to justify President Donald Trump's tariffs that have caused the upending of the stock markets.

The article described "shouts, groans and mockery."

Times reporter Nicholas Fandos wrote that, "The congressman got a rare round of applause when he defended the use of vaccines and criticized Mr. Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has cast doubt on the efficacy of vaccination."

But overall, the town hall was both "combative and catty" and looked less like "the kind of respectful town-hall conversation Americans venerate than a shouting match where both sides accuse the other of acting in bad faith," Fandos wrote.

He added that, "For much of the night, acrimony carried the room. Attendees provoked confrontations with fellow attendees, with Mr. Lawler’s staff members and with the police. No one was satisfied, including supporters of the congressman who mostly watched in silence."

Read The New York Times article here,

President Donald Trump's escalating threats have produced chaos and fear across American political and economic life, but that dynamic could ultimately undo his presidency as many of those ultimatums ring hollow.

The president has been threatening to fire Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell over his response to global tariffs, but Trump seemingly backed down after advisers warned the move was legally and financially risky — and political scientist David Faris published a piece for Slate explaining how this "depressingly familiar loop" keeps playing out.

"This loop is now standard operating procedure from the most chaotic White House in American history," wrote Faris, an associate professor at Roosevelt University. "In fact, it seems to be more or less the only move that this iteration of Trump has, one that he is deploying against everyone from Canada to Harvard University. And it is eerily similar to the nuclear strategy concept of 'escalate to de-escalate' — using a shocking act of aggression to convince an adversary to negotiate on your terms."

However, that strategy isn't quite working for Trump because his opponents have taken note of his weakness and his administration's incompetence, so they've essentially rerouted their long-range plans around the United States.

"Trump is fundamentally a weak, lame-duck president, whose paper-thin margins in Congress and embarrassing ineptitude at staffing his administration and carrying out his policies are not kinks that will be ironed out with time but rather inescapable features of his already unbearable and disastrous presidency," Faris wrote.

"That weakness, and the servile paralysis of Congress, is leading him to try the same blunt maneuver over and over again, with predictably diminishing returns."

"Rather than doing the painstaking work of enacting his lunatic agenda through that narrowly divided Congress, Trump has been acting, since Day 1, like a leader who has to resort immediately to vindictive threats and massively escalatory decisions to get what he wants," the political scientist added.

Any parent who's tried escalating threats to coerce good behavior out of a child understands how quickly they learn to call your bluff, but Trump doesn't seem to understand how ineffective that tactic is, Faris wrote.

Also read: 'This is our shot': Dems believe MTG's new job gives 'golden opportunity' to destroy GOP

"If it was a useful tactic, Russia would already have deployed it against Ukraine, Faris wrote, "and China would have come scurrying to the negotiating table to plead with Trump to reduce tariffs."

Voters are already understanding that Trump's tactics aren't working, but he still has nearly four more years left of his term.

"Issuing a never-ending stream of escalatory and often nonsensical threats is also no way to run a country, and voters are fast coming around to the understanding that they made a terrible mistake putting this senescent maniac back in power in November," Faris wrote.

"It is not clear how the United States will even survive another 44 months of this circus with anything resembling the status quo, or our battered psyches, intact," he added. "But if Trump’s incipient authoritarians ever allow another Democrat to be elected president, that person is likely to discover that some of the damage to America’s reputation and interests is irreversible."

Three months into Donald Trump's second presidency, journalists Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer covered a lot of ground with him during a late April interview for The Atlantic — from foreign policy to immigration.

The reporters also addressed embattled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose critics are calling for him to resign over a series of controversies — which include firings at the Pentagon and a security breach in which Hegseth discussed a military operation in Yemen on the messaging app Signal.

Trump not only defended Hegseth during the interview — he also made it sound like Democrats, not members of his administration, are the ones surrounded by chaos.

Trump said of Hegseth, "I think he's gonna get it together. I had a talk with him, a positive talk, but I had a talk with him."

Trump said he told his staff, "Maybe don't use Signal, OK?"

According to Parker and Michael Scherer, Trump "spoke of his opposition with earnest befuddlement, if not actual pity."

Trump told the reporters, "I think that the Democrats have lost their confidence in the truest sense. I don't think they know what they're doing. I think they have no leader. You know, if you ask me now, I know a lot about the Democrat Party, right? I can't tell you who their leader is. I can't tell you that I see anybody on the horizon."

READ MORE:'I just want to reach out and smack him': Lindsey Graham struggles to explain Trump flip-flopping

During a segment on MSNBC on Saturday morning about what the Democratic party needs to do to get back on track with voters, a former GOP House member suggested Donald Trump is giving them a helping hand.

Speaking with the hosts of "The Weekend," ex-Rep Joe Walsh (R-IL) took the side of newly-elected DNC Vice Chair David Hogg who wants to oust some longtime House Democrats with younger candidates in safe districts to shake-up the party.

"That's all inside baseball," Walsh, a harsh Donald Trump critic admitted before adding, "Look, I'm not a Democrat. The Democratic party brand is in the toilet; they need to be shaken up, they need to fight I want to see the Democratic party fight."

ALSO READ:'We’ve made a mistake': Trump’s trade war sends GOP into frenzy

"I want to see new blood," he continued. "Some of this old blood needs to go retire. This is good for the Democratic party. I think what David Hogg is proposing is going to change the change the subject, as it should."

As the segment began to close, he offered a warning to Republicans.

"Look, just one quick final thought," he stated. "Because of the madness and the chaos and the disaster that is Trump, Democrats are going to be competitive in districts and states this year, next year that we can't even imagine right now."

"So doggone it, field candidates, get active, spend money everywhere," he suggested.

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In 2025, the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) is celebrating its 114th anniversary. The organization, founded during Democrat Woodrow Wilson's presidency, was designed to be an alliance of journalists who covered the White House but were independent of it.

The United States has had some controversial presidents since then, from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump. But before Trump, all U.S. presidents attended the WHCA's dinner — an event that goes back to Republican Calvin Coolidge's presidency in 1924.

In an article published Saturday, The Guardian's David Smith describes some of the anxiety surrounding the WHCA's forthcoming 2025 dinner.

READ MORE: Press should stop 'breaking bread' with 'authoritarian' Trump officials: reporter

"It is no laughing matter," Smith reports. "The annual dinner for journalists who cover the White House is best known for American presidents trying to be funny and comedians trying to be political. But this year's edition will feature neither. Instead, the event in a Downtown Washington hotel on Saturday night will, critics say, resemble something closer to a wake for legacy media still trying to find an effective response to Donald Trump's divide-and-rule tactics and the rise of the MAGA media ecosystem."

Smith adds, "Joe Biden's effort to restore norms included the former president giving humorous speeches at the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) annual dinner. But just as in his first term, Trump will not be joining the group he has long branded 'the enemy of the people,' and most of his staff are expected to boycott."

The WHCA invited comedian Amber Ruffin to speak at their 2025 dinner but withdrew the invitation — a move that, Smith notes, is being criticized as an "exercise in capitulation and cowardice" and "a metaphor for the failure of the media to unite around a strategy to push back against Trump's all-out assault."

"Since returning to office," Smith observes, "(Trump) has seized control of the pool of journalists that follows the president, barred the Associated Press news agency from the Oval Office and handed access READ MORE: 'Everybody is on edge': Trump cuts threaten to dismantle 'godsend' program

Author Sally Quinn, widow of the late Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, isn't planning to attend this year's WHCA dinner —which, she laments, is taking place during a very dark time in U.S. history.

Smith quotes Quinn as saying, "Everyone's scared. You're scared you're going to get thrown in jail if you write something (Trump) doesn't like, and that's going to happen very soon. Then you have the owners of these news organizations who keep keeling over and bending the knee. So you've got all these people in the media who are quitting in protest. It's a horrible time to be covering Trump."

Quinn added, "If you're a journalist and you want to be on the story, this is the story to cover. But people are not having fun covering it. It's very intense and very upsetting."

Attorney General Pam Bondi may come to regret approving and then boasting about the arrest of a Wisconsin judge on Friday for allegedly trying to shield an immigrant from being scooped up by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) outside her courtroom.

That is the opinion of ex-U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance who appeared on MSNBC Saturday morning to poke holes in the DOJ's case against Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan, with Vance calling the arrest outrageous and unlikely to lead to a conviction.

Speaking with the hosts of MSNBC's "The Weekend," Vance lambasted Bondi for running to Fox News to hype up the arrest where she told hosts, "We are going to prosecute you, and we are prosecuting you. I found out about this the day it happened. We could not believe, actually, that a judge really did that. We looked into the facts in great depth… You cannot obstruct a criminal case. And really, shame on her. It was a domestic violence case of all cases, and she's protecting a criminal defendant over victims of crime."

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According to Vance, the arrest, with the judge photographed being taken into custody in handcuffs had little to do with "protecting a criminal defendant" than it did as a warning to other judges to not buck Donald Trump's policies.

Noting that the DOJ report on the arrest was at odds with what Bondi was claiming, the former prosecutor claimed it will likely come back to haunt the attorney general doing Trump's dirty work.

"This is all in violation of very clear DOJ policy," Vance accused. "You're not permitted in a case of an indictment or a complaint to go to the press and talk about anything that's not in the four corners of the document, because it prejudices the defendant's rights."

"We will probably see a motion to dismiss this case outright," she then asserted before continuing, "If this was a normal Justice Department. Pam Bondi, [FBI director] Kash Patel, anybody else who was talking about this case on national TV would be referred to the Office of Professional Responsibility for disciplinary action"

"This is not a functional Justice Department," she added. "So the dirty laundry will come out in the wash in these proceedings, where the facts just don't add up."

You can watch below or at the link.

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