Raw Story

President Donald Trump defended his administration following reports that White House officials may have tipped off Wall Street executives about a possible upcoming trade deal with India, The Washington Post reported.

Trump made the comments Friday while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, where he admitted it was impossible for him to know for certain, given the thousands of people who work for him.

“I can commit to myself, that’s all I can commit,” Trump said. “You know, I have thousands of people that work for me, but I can’t imagine anybody doing that.”

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

He added: “I have very honorable people, that I can say.”

Trump was en route Friday afternoon to join other world leaders in Rome for the funeral of Pope Francis.

President Donald Trump's so-called "border czar" sent threats on social media following the arrest of a judge.

Tom Homan posted threats on X after the FBI arrested a Wisconsin judge who authorities said helped an immigrant by allowing them to exit a different part of the courtroom. The government alleged it was her way of obstructing justice.

Homan claimed this would continue to be the case for anyone they believe is in their way.

"Nobody should be surprised by the arrest of two judges," Homan wrote. "I have said many times within the past few months, that people can choose to support illegal immigration and not assist ICE in removing criminal illegal aliens from our communities, BUT DON’T CROSS THAT LINE. If you actively impede our enforcement efforts or if you knowingly harbor or conceal illegal aliens from ICE you will be prosecuted. These actions are felonies. More to come…"

ALSO READ: This is not a drill: Trump's new attack on America means no one is safe

He signed the note with his name and role.

Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, "after evidence of Judge Dugan obstructing an immigration arrest operation last week," FBI Director Kash Patel posted on X. He later deleted the post, however.

Sources told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that ICE agents came to Dugan's courtroom the day Eduardo Flores-Ruiz appeared, and the judge allegedly directed the defendant and his attorney to a side door in the courtroom and through a private hallway and into a public area.

The Supreme Court is set to hear an Oklahoma case that will force the justices to choose between allowing more religious control of public schools or "respecting the wishes of the Founding Fathers," according to a new article in The Atlantic.

History professor Adam Laats laid out how, "In 2023, the Oklahoma government approved an application from the Catholic Church to create a virtual charter school. Like other charter schools, this one would be funded by taxpayers. But unlike other charter schools, this one would be explicitly religious, teaching students Catholic doctrine."

Laats wrote that Oklahoma’s state attorney general objected on the grounds that the approval violated the state constitution, as well as the U.S. Constitution.

He explained that the Founding Fathers foresaw "he death of public schooling if schools came under the authority of any specific religious denomination, or even if a school appeared to favor one denomination over another."

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

"Oklahoma’s plan for a public school run by the Catholic Church would...fly in the face of the Founding Fathers’ intentions and go against two centuries of American tradition," Laats wrote. "And it puts the six members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority in a bind. In previous decisions, they have insisted that they will be guided by history, using that rationale to allow for more religion in public schools. In this case, however, if they want to follow their own rules, they must decide in the other direction."

Laats wrote that members of the religious right are "hopeful" about the case that the Supreme Court will hear next week, since SCOTUS has given them "some significant victories in recent years" that were guided by the justices' understanding of history.

"But the case from Oklahoma makes claiming history as a justification harder for the conservative justices," he wrote. "In this case, the history is unambiguous: The Founding Fathers would never have approved of a public school that taught the religious doctrines of one specific kind of Christianity."

Read The Atlantic article here.

Joe Kasper, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's controversial chief of staff, is expected to leave the Pentagon after coming under fire in recent days.

Initial reports said Kasper would step into another role at the Pentagon. But Politico confirmed on Thursday that he would leave the Department of Defense entirely and return to "government relations and consulting." As a special government employee, he will be limited to advising the Pentagon 130 days per year.

Kasper was reportedly behind the firings of three senior officials — Dan Caldwell, Darin Selnick, and Colin Carroll — who had enjoyed regular access to Hegseth.

"Kasper did not like that those guys had the secretary's ear," one person told Politico. "He did not like that they had walk-in and hanging-out privileges in the office. He wanted them out. It was a knife fight."

Hegseth's chief of staff was also recently criticized for what The New York Times described as "pointlessly bawdy" digressions in meetings.

ALSO READ: 'We know where this leads': How Trump’s crackdown puts Jewish people in peril

"One meeting Mr. Kasper led this month, with a group that works with veterans that was offering its services to the Pentagon, devolved into a recounting of an evening Mr. Kasper and a representative of the group spent at a Washington strip club, said a person who took part in the session," the report said.

Hegseth, however, has defended Kasper, calling him a "great American."

"He has done a fantastic job for us at the Defense Department…You make changes over time, and we're grateful for everything Joe's done," the secretary told Fox News.

=Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) will run for governor of Alabama rather than seek a second term in the Senate, reported Yellowhammer News on Thursday.

"Back in state while Congress is in recess, Tuberville told a group of donors at a private event on Wednesday night that his mind is officially made up," reported Grayson Everett. "Rather than seeking re-election to the U.S. Senate, he is ready to run his next race in Alabama, and serve the people of the state in Montgomery instead of Washington."

A former football coach, Tuberville initially wanted to run for governor in 2018, "but decided against it when Kay Ivey chose to run for the office she constitutionally stepped into following Robert Bentley’s resignation in 2017" — which had been triggered by an explosive scandal involving Bentley using government resources to further an extramarital affair.

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

In 2020, Tuberville ousted Trump's former attorney general Jeff Sessions, who held the Senate seat until 2017, in a primary where Sessions was seeking his old office back, and then defeated Democratic Sen. Doug Jones, who had been elected in a massive upset when Roy Moore, the Republican former state chief justice running in the special election to replace Sessions, was accused of inappropriate behavior with children. Moore went on to sue one of his accusers for defamation, but lost that case in 2022.

Since being elected, Tuberville — a steadfast supporter of President Donald Trump — has been at the center of numerous controversies.

He has questioned whether white nationalism is an inherently racist ideology, said that slavery reparations are an attempt to hand out money to "the people that do the crime," and spent months under the Biden administration blocking vital military appointments to try to force the Pentagon to stop giving female servicemembers medical leave for abortions.

A longtime Republican pollster said Thursday that people who voted for Donald Trump last year are already beginning to waver in their support.

Sarah Longwell has been doing focus groups of 2024 voters of Trump, tracking how attitudes are changing and why. The one thing she said is finally starting to "set in" for those voters is "maybe Donald Trump doesn't know exactly what he's doing."

She explained that the caveat is always the "hardcore MAGA people," who will never leave Trump. But another "major slice" of the coalition of people who helped elect Trump were "people who just wanted things to cost less."

Those voters, she said, were "upset about inflation" and "the cost of housing." So, they heard Donald Trump "promise to lower the price of groceries, and that he was going to lower the cost of everything. It was going to be so easy and so fast. And when you listen to voters in focus groups, they say not only are things not getting better, but it feels like they're getting worse."

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

She added they feel uncertain about the economy.

"You get other people, especially people who are cost-constrained, who are at the lower end of the income spectrum, and those people notice every dollar and the way any price that goes up," said Longwell. "And, so, from those voters who heard the promise that Trump was going to lower costs, who thought he was a businessman, who knew what he was doing, and is now watching this chaos and not seeing their prices go down. They are starting to lose faith that he's going to be able to keep the promises that he made to them."

See her comments below or at the link here.

- YouTube www.youtube.com