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President Donald Trump's effort to overhaul the federal government now features a retired Navy captain and twice failed Congressional candidate who surmised that witches had "taken over" Monterey, California.

Hung Cao lost his 2022 bid for the House of Representatives in Virginia's 10th Congressional District, then lost his Senate campaign last year to incumbent Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine.

A staunch ally of Trump, Cao was rewarded Thursday with a top position in the Navy.

"I am pleased to announce that Hung Cao will be our next United States Under Secretary of the Navy," Trump said on his Truth Social account. "Hung is the embodiment of the American Dream. As a refugee to our Great Nation, Hung worked tirelessly to make proud the Country that gave his family a home. He went to our amazing United States Naval Academy, and later earned his Master’s Degree in Physics. Hung served in combat as a Special Operations Officer for twenty five years. With Hung’s experience both in combat, and in the Pentagon, he will get the job done."

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Cao has a long history of peddling conspiracy theories and outright falsehoods, many of which became the focus of attacks by Democrats in his failed campaigns. This includes accusations he denigrated NATO employees as "lazy" and compared abortion to the horrors of the Holocaust.

"The Nazis did this. They’ll take Jewish babies and just take the legs and just smash the babies and kill them. You think that can’t happen in this country?" he said at a campaign rally, according to The Washington Post.

Additionally, he said witches have taken hold in Monterey, California.

"There’s a place in Monterey, California called Lovers Point. The original name was Lovers of Christ Point, but now it’s become, they took out the ‘Christ,’ it’s Lovers Point and it's really, Monterey is a very dark place now, with a lot of witchcraft and the Wiccan community has really taken over and we can’t let that happen in Virginia,” Cao said.

The stark possibility of President Donald Trump potentially ignoring a court order sparked by his administration’s foreign aid freeze could explode into a full-on constitutional crisis — “and effectively end the republic,” Rachel Maddow said Thursday night as she delivered an ominous warning to viewers.

“They have been joking about this and making, you know, macho sounding bluffs about this for a long time now – particularly from the vice president – J.D. Vance,” Maddow said Thursday. “How is the Supreme Court going to deal with it now that it's real?”

The MSNBC host delved into possible scenarios in the opening minutes of her top-rated show that could develop depending on how the Supreme Court weighs in on the very real prospect that Trump could openly defy a court order – what she described as a “very scary issue.”

The high court, whose ultra-conservative majority was hand selected by Trump, is set to take up the case Friday at the request of government attorneys eager to find a way out of U.S. District Judge Amir Ali’s order to unfreeze funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.

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“Do they try to give him what he wants from the courts so that Trump doesn't break that glass? Doesn't, you know, smash through the brightest bright line that we have and effectively end the republic?” she pondered. “Do they appease him because they – ‘oh, he's so scary, we better not make him defy a court order – we better make sure all court orders go his way.’”

She continued to preview the impending Supreme Court showdown by imagining an alternate situation where the justices use the opportunity “to make clear to him that his powers as president actually don't allow him to defy the court.”

“Do they tell him that if he does try to defy the courts, he is effectively declaring war on the United States of America? We'll see,” she added.

Maddow told viewers to keep their “eyes wide open on that and take it with all the seriousness it deserves.”

Watch the clip below or at this link:

Like many Americans who voted for Donald Trump, Jason Rouse hopes the president’s return will mean lower prices for gas, groceries, and other essentials.

But Rouse is looking to the federal government for relief from one particular pain point: high health care costs. “The prices are just ridiculous,” said Rouse, 53, a retired Michigan firefighter and paramedic who has voted for Trump three times. “I’d like to see a lower cap on what I have to pay out-of-pocket.”

Government regulation of health care prices used to be heresy for most Republicans. GOP leaders fiercely opposed the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which included government limits on patients’ costs. More recently, the party fought legislation signed by former President Joe Biden to cap prescription drug prices.

But as Trump begins his second term, many of the voters who sent him back to the White House welcome more robust government action to rein in a health care system many Americans perceive as out of control, polls show.

“That idea that government should just keep its hands off, even when things are tough for people, has kind of lost its sheen,” said Andrew Seligsohn, president of Public Agenda, a nonprofit that has studied public attitudes about government and health care.

“We’re wandering around the country with a set of old, outdated frameworks about what ordinary Democrats and ordinary Republicans like,” he said.

Republican voters strongly back federal limits on the prices charged by drug companies and hospitals, caps on patients’ medical bills, and restrictions on how health care providers can pursue people over medical debt.

Even Medicaid, the state-federal insurance program that Republican congressional leaders are eyeing to dramatically cut, is viewed favorably by many GOP voters, like Ashley Williamson.

Williamson, 37, a mother of five in eastern Tennessee who voted for Trump, said Medicaid provided critical assistance when her mother-in-law needed nursing home care. “We could not take care of her,” Williamson said. “It stepped in. It made sure she was taken care of.”

Williamson, whose own family gets coverage through her husband’s employer, said she would be very concerned by large cuts in Medicaid funding that could jeopardize coverage for needy Americans.

For years, Republican ideas about health care reflected a broad skepticism about government and fears that government would threaten patients’ access to physicians or lifesaving medicines.

“The discussions 10 to 15 years ago were all around choice,” said Christine Matthews, a Republican pollster who has worked for numerous GOP politicians, including former Maryland governor Larry Hogan. “Free market, not having the government limit or take over your health care.”

Matthews and fellow pollster Mike Perry recently convened and paid for several focus groups with Trump voters, including Rouse and Williamson, which KFF Health News observed.

Skepticism about government lingers among rank-and-file Republicans. And ideas such as shifting all Americans into a single government health plan, akin to “Medicare for All,” are still nonstarters for many GOP voters.

But as tens of millions of Americans are driven into debt by medical bills they don’t understand or can’t afford, many are reassessing their inclination to look to free markets rather than the government, said Bob Ward, whose firm, Fabrizio Ward, polled for Trump’s 2024 campaign.

“I think most people look at this and say the market is broken, and that’s why they’re willing for someone, anyone, to step in,” he said. “The deck is stacked against folks.”

In a recent national survey, Fabrizio Ward and Hart Research, which for decades has polled for Democratic candidates, found that Trump voters were more likely to blame health insurers, drug companies, and hospital systems than the government for high health care costs.

Sarah Bognaski, 31, an administrative assistant in upstate New York, is among the many Trump voters who say they resent profiteering by the health care industry. “I don’t think there is any reason a lot of the costs should be as high as they are,” Bognaski said. “I think it’s just out of pure greed.”

High health care costs have had a direct impact on Bognaski, who was diagnosed four years ago with Type 1 diabetes, a condition that makes her dependent on insulin. She said she’s ready to have the government step in and cap what patients pay for pharmaceuticals. “I’d like to see more regulation,” she said.

Charles Milliken, a retired auto mechanic in West Virginia, who said he backed Trump because the country “needs a businessman, not a politician,” expects the new president to go even further.

“I think he’s going to put a cap on what insurance companies can charge, what doctors can charge, what hospitals can charge,” said Milliken, 51, who recently had a heart attack that left him with more than $6,000 in medical debt.

Three-quarters of Trump voters back government limits on what hospitals can charge, Ward’s polling found.

And about half of Trump voters in a recent KFF poll said the new administration should prioritize expanding the number of drugs whose price is set through negotiation between the federal Medicare program and drug companies, a program started under the Biden administration.

Perry, who’s convened dozens of focus groups with voters about health care in recent years, said the support for government price caps is all the more remarkable since regulating medical prices isn’t at the top of most politicians’ agenda. “It seems to be like a groundswell,” he said. “They’ve come to this decision on their own, rather than any policymakers leading them there, that something needs to be done.”

Other forms of government regulation, such as limits on medical debt collections, are even more popular.

About 8 in 10 Republicans backed a $2,300 cap on how much patients could be required to pay annually for medical debt, according to a 2023 survey by Perry’s polling firm, PerryUndem. And 9 in 10 favored a cap on interest rates charged on medical debt.

“These are what I would consider no-brainers, from a political perspective,” Ward said.

But GOP political leaders in Washington have historically shown little interest in government limits on what patients pay for medical care. And as Trump and his allies in Congress begin shaping their health care agenda, many Republican leaders have expressed more interest in cutting government than in expanding its protections.

“There is oftentimes a massive disconnect,” Ward said, “between what happens in the caucuses on Capitol Hill and what’s happening at family tables across America.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is expressing concern over President Donald Trump’s border policies as his threats of tariffs against Mexico and Canada inch closer to becoming reality.

And that could spell trouble for the Texas economy, according to Cruz. The Lone Star State has traditionally enjoyed a strong trade relationship with both Canada and Mexico, becoming the latter’s number one trading partner for over a decade – factors that appear to not be lost on Cruz.

"No state has paid the price more for the invasion over the last four years than Texas,” said Cruz, chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. “That being said, trade with Mexico and Canada is enormously important to the Texas economy, and so I'm hopeful we will not see the tariffs go into effect — because Mexico and Canada will be actively assisting in securing the border."

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But Cruz still made clear he supports Trump’s MAGA agenda on immigration to reduce the flow of illegal entries into the United States and fentanyl at the border.

“The President uses tariffs for multiple purposes, one of them is as an incentive to cause other nations to work with the United States and advance our interests,” Cruz said. “With Mexico and Canada, the president has explicitly conditioned those tariffs on those two nations actively assisting and securing the border. That is incredibly important.”

Cruz’s mounting anxiety comes as Trump doubled down on his proposed 25% tariffs against Canadian and Mexican imports, now saying they would go into effect next week despite efforts by both countries to improve border security to prevent the flow of fentanyl into the U.S.

Trump's waffling has “created confusion on the timeline for the tariffs,” which were originally supposed to go into force on Feb. 4,” Politico noted Thursday.

And Cruz isn’t the only person worried about their potential impact.

“Trade and industry experts have expressed concern that the tariffs could drive up prices in the U.S., disrupting an integrated North American economy that moves everything from auto parts to cucumbers to energy across borders,” the publication added.

It could also spark a trade war with the two neighboring countries, which have both already “developed lists of U.S. goods to target for retaliatory tariffs if the U.S. duties go into effect,” Politico said.

President Donald Trump's claims on Ukraine aid and the economy are completely wrong, CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale told anchor Phil Mattingly following the president's joint news conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

The news conference had several standout moments, including Trump backtracking on his claim Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was a "dictator," and mistakenly referring to Starmer as the Prime Minister of "Great Britain and Ireland" in an informational email update.

"What stood out to you?" asked Mattingly.

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"It wasn't the barrage of false claims we had at the president's cabinet meeting yesterday," said Dale, a frequent analyst of Trump's fabrications. However, he added, there are "two significant things to fact-check nonetheless."

"First of all, the president keeps using a fictional figure for how much aid the U.S. has provided to Ukraine during this war," said Dale. "He said today, it's $300 billion to $350 billion. Simply not true. A European think tank that closely studies this issue puts it at about $125 billion. The U.S. government has used a higher figure, as high as $185 billion, but still nowhere close to what the president says."

The other claim relates to tariffs, which experts often sparred with Trump over.

"He was asked about his claim earlier today that it's foreign countries, not Americans, who paid tariffs, and he stood by it," said Dale. "He said that, you know, in the first term he put tariffs on China, took in hundreds of billions of dollars. Study after study, including one from a bipartisan United States government commission, found that it is Americans who paid those tariffs, and it is American importers who literally make the tariff payments. So importers in this country make the payments and very often pass on those costs to American consumers."

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Rep. Jasmine Crockett, the increasingly popular Democratic lawmaker from Texas, mocked attempts by her Republican colleagues in the House who have been pushing for ways to honor Donald Trump instead of serving their constituents at home.

Deep in a report from the Wall Street Journal on conservative lawmakers' efforts to boost the re-elected president's profile –– as well as their own –– by making his birthday a national holiday or putting his face on Mt. Rushmore, the blunt-talking Crockett dismissed their efforts as a waste of time.

With the Journal using Rep. Claudia Tenney's (R-NY) proposal to make Trump's birthday into a holiday as an example, the Journal is reporting, "Congressional Republicans’ message this session is rare for the volume and limited focus of one category of proposals: unabashed adulation for the 47th president and his agenda, even if some of the bills are more performative than realistic."

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Another proposal from freshman Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) would rename Dulles Airport in the president’s honor, with the far-right conservative also asserting, "Voters across the U.S. 'would love to rename their state ‘The State of Donald Trump.’ ”

According to the report, none of the bills have drawn near enough signatures to be taken seriously enough for a vote despite a Republican majority.

What's more, the Journal notes, "Democrats are snickering at the loyalty exercises—and using them as an opportunity to criticize their Republican colleagues for straying from campaign promises to reduce inflation," with the always quotable Crockett leading the charge.

“At this point, House Republicans should stop filing these desperate, pointless bills that do nothing to bring down the cost of rent or groceries, and just rent one of Elon’s rockets to write ‘Love me Donny’ in the sky in front of Mar-a-Lago,” she joked. “It would be faster.”

You can read more here.