MAGA hammers Trump for ‘humiliating’ assault on states’ rights
President Donald Trump was hit by pushback from some MAGA Republicans —including "War Room" host Steve Bannon — for an executive order limiting states' ability to regulate artificial intelligence technology.
The Hill's Alexander Bolton on Tuesday wrote, "Trump is trying to avoid an open fight with Republicans who want to rein in the titans of AI by reaching out to GOP lawmakers to make the argument that state regulation of the industry could cripple its growth. But Republicans who warn that unregulated AI poses a serious threat to intellectual property, American jobs and children's safety aren't happy the president did an end-run around Congress — even if they're holding back from criticizing the president directly."
Bannon is being especially outspoken.
Although the "War Room" podcaster — who served as White House chief strategist in the first Trump Administration in 2017 — is a major Trump ally, he is often critical of the president's alliances with Silicon Valley tech bros. And he isn't shy about attacking Tesla head Elon Musk.
In a statement, Bannon said of Trump's AI executive order, "After two humiliating face plants on must-pass legislation, now we attempt an entirely unenforceable EO — tech bros doing upmost to turn POTUS MAGA base away from him while they line their pockets."
Outgoing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is another MAGA Republican who is critical of Trump's tech alliances.
The Georgia congresswoman recently resigned from the U.S. House of Representatives, effective early January 2026, and believes that Trump has betrayed his America First agenda during his second presidency.
In a post on X, Greene declared, "I will NOT vote for any bill that destroys states' rights and lets AI run wild for the next 10 years. AI will replace jobs, especially in the press. This is not a left or right issue. It's about humanity. I'll go to the mat on this. If you kill federalism, I'm out."
Data guru startled as ‘ballooning’ numbers show GOP ‘on track to lose’
Republicans are on the wrong track for holding onto their congressional majorities, according to a new data analysis.
CNN's Harry Enten crunched the numbers on a series of new polling that found Americans are concerned about the direction the country is headed, and the data analyst said they seem to be in the mood for a change in leadership heading into next year's midterm elections.
"I like going traveling, we all do," Enten said. "Look, you know what it was, the NBC News poll came out this weekend, and I saw this wrong track number, and it just kind of jumped out to me because it was 66 percent, and one of the things I always like to look at is, you know, Donald Trump historically has done better than his polling suggested. But these right track-wrong track numbers have generally tracked with what actually the country is feeling. We see 66 percent there, more than three in five Americans who say the country is on the wrong track. Ipsos, 61 percent, MU, Marquette University Law School, 64 percent, Gallup, 74 percent of Americans say they are dissatisfied with the state of the nation."
"You see it on your screen right there, and all of these numbers, all of these numbers that I could find were the highest percentage who said that the country was on the wrong track since Donald Trump took office," Enten added. "It's not just Trump's poll numbers, it's disapproval that's going higher and higher and higher. It's the wrong track numbers that are going higher and higher, as well."
That's quite a turnaround from the start of Trump's second term, Enten said.
"Yeah, it's a huge change – it's a huge change," he said. "Think that the country is on the wrong track or the right track, you go back to April, May – look, the clear majority of Americans thought that the country was on the wrong track, at 58 percent, but you see 38 percent, a 20-point difference here. Look at that: What we've seen is a ballooning of this, a ballooning. Now you take the average of the polls, right, and now we're talking well north on average."
"Two and three Americans say that the country is on the wrong track now," Enten added. "Less than three in 10 Americans say that the country is on the right track, and when we look at this back in the going into the 2024 election, right, the election in which the Democratic Party was pushed out of power, this number looks a whole heck of a lot. This right track number looks a whole heck of a lot what it looked like going into 2024 election. This 66 percent looks a whole heck of a lot like that number going into the 2024 election."
That's an ominous sign for Republicans heading into next year's election, he said.
"President's party didn't lose House seats, midterms since 1978, percentage said the country was on the wrong track, 46 percent in 2002, 38 percent in 1998," Enten said. "The 66 percent now, the 66 percent, a lot of numbers on the screen right now who say the country is on the wrong track? This doesn't look anything like those midterms where the president's party didn't lose. The Republican Party is on track to lose the House of Representatives if the wrong track numbers look anything like they do right now."
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Epstein girlfriend’s diary reveals rare glimpse of disgraced billionaire: ‘A little boy’
Jeffrey Epstein's former girlfriend revealed a rare glimpse inside the late financier and convicted child offender's life — and how he manipulated women "for connections, for money and for social capital."
Patricia Schmidt, who was a 23-year-old working at Bear Stearns, shared pages from her diary with The New York Times Magazine and, for the first time, spoke publicly about her relationship with Epstein. Schmidt first interacted with Epstein after her boss sent her to his home in 1987.
The diary contains descriptions of her life, the couple's interactions and moments together from the 1980s.
In one remembrance, Epstein had apparently confused Schmidt's mother, whose maiden name was Arlene Dahl, with a former Hollywood starlet with the same name. But that wasn't actually the case and Schmidt never corrected him. In May 1987, he apparently found out and then called her at work to chastise her over it.
"It was terribly awkward," she said. "He sort of felt played."
By February 1988, Schmidt arrived at Epstein's apartment at 1 a.m. where he was on the phone with Eva Andersson, his longtime girlfriend that friends have said "was the love of his life." He lied to Andersson, telling her that he was receiving work materials and passed the phone to Schmidt to try and "back him up."
"Schmidt perceived it as a power play by Epstein, who was seeking not only to appease Andersson but also to show Schmidt that she was not his top priority — and that he was in control of both," according to The Times.
The dynamics between the two and diary entries show the unique ways Epstein attempted to use this "relationship for his advantage."
"On a number of occasions, Schmidt described in her diary how she and Epstein had sex. But other times, she noted his preference for cuddling or kissing on the cheek. 'He was like a little boy almost,'" she said.
In July 1989, Schmidt told Epstein that a married colleague said he liked her. She initially told him in an effort "to remind him of my value" and that another man was interested in her.
But that backfired.
"His response was that Schmidt was being naïve if she thought the man was looking for anything other than sex," according to The Times. "In the diary, Schmidt berated herself for having hurt Epstein."
"In the end, though, she was the one feeling guilty — a sign that Epstein still had the upper hand," The Times reported.
Red state candidate vows to turn ICE centers into prisons for ‘American Zionists’
A controversial Democratic candidate in Texas has proclaimed she would use Immigration and Customs Enforcement centers for a new purpose — to round up "American Zionists."
According to the San Antonio Current, Maureen Galindo, a sex therapist running for Texas' newly-redrawn 35th Congressional District consisting of eastern San Antonio and the exurbs around it, posted to Instagram that she will "turn Karnes ICE Detention Center into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking." She added that "it will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles, which will probably be most of the Zionists.”
In her Instagram post, which spanned several pages and ranted against "billionaire Zionists that control San Antonio," she also accused her Democratic primary opponent, Bexar County Sheriff's Deputy Johnny Garcia, of "want[ing] Mexicans and Jews in warehouses." She has previously claimed, with no evidence, that Garcia is part of a human trafficking operation on behalf of Zionists.
Galindo has repeatedly faced accusations of being antisemitic, which she denies, claiming that she supports "the Indigenous Jews (The Semites) of the Middle East" over "the Fake Jews" committing genocide against them.
All of this comes as mainstream Democratic figures in Texas and around the country line up behind Garcia's candidacy.
It also comes as a mysterious PAC with ties to the GOP has worked behind the scenes to boost Galindo to voters in the 35th District, which has been made significantly more Republican-leaning as a result of Texas lawmakers' MAGA-ordered mid-decade redistricting.
Republicans made a ‘tacit admission’ about midterms — and it could blow up in their face
A conservative columnist warned on Monday that her Republican colleagues just made a "tacit admission" about the 2026 midterms that could blow up in their face.
S.E. Cupp, a columnist for CNN, said during a segment on "The Source" with host Kaitlan Collins that Republicans have all but admitted that they don't stand a chance during the midterms with their push for mid-cycle redistricting. While those efforts seem to have paid off so far, Cupp warned that they could energize the Democratic base in a way that thwarts all the time Republicans spent trying to rig the election in their favor.
"Here's the thing that I think is important to point out if you care about democracy," Cupp said. "The republicans have done what they've done because they've been allowed to. But it's also a tacit admission that they know they cannot win without rigging it. They're out of ideas. They're not even attempting to win new voters or win back the voters that they've been losing since gaining them in 2024."
Several Republican states from Texas to Louisiana and Tennessee have adopted new election maps ahead of the midterms in an effort to preserve the Republican majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Cupp warned that voters can see through the Republicans' plans, and that may cause them to backfire in November.
"So this is the giddiness and the crowing I'm seeing from republicans about the state of the redistricting math and how it's helping Republicans," she said. "What they're not saying out loud is what I think a lot of voters can see, which is you had to rig it to make yourself competitive. And I don't even know if this will still make them competitive. They might actually be handing Democrats an advantage by really ginning up that base, firing them up to go and vote."
