‘There’s a literal civil war’: GOP candidate pushes Trump to use Insurrection Act
Don Brown, a North Carolina Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, argued that President Donald Trump should use the Insurrection Act to fight what he said was "literal civil war on the streets."
During a Monday interview on Real America's Voice, host Jake Novak asked Brown about Trump's decision to deploy National Guard troops in Portland.
"I just feel like we're in a civil war here in America," Novak said. "I wish, I mean, I'm not trying to be hysterical here, but I don't know what else to call it. It's becoming kinetic. People are dying, literally. I wonder if you're as alarmed as I am?"
"You've nailed it on the head," Brown agreed. "There is a literal civil war on the streets."
The candidate argued that Trump had a duty to "ensure domestic tranquility."
"The President of the United States has the authority to send in the National Guard to these cities where domestic tranquility and rampant crime have taken over, with or without the request from the local authorities," he said. "You look into the Insurrection Act. And when Americans' constitutional rights and liberties are being threatened, the president can go ahead and send in troops."
"The president has the authority to do it. And these local leaders who are soft on crime and pro-crime and just want to kiss up to antifa and all these communist left-wing groups that are intent on unraveling civil society, they're not relevant," he added. "So I'm going to encourage the president to do what he needs to do."
A lawsuit filed by Oregon and the city of Portland asserted that Trump did not have the authority to deploy National Guard troops in response to "small" protests near an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
"There is no insurrection or threat to public safety that necessitates military intervention in Portland or any other city in our state," Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek (D) said in a statement.
Trump announces major tariff in effort to make crucial swing state ‘great again’
President Donald Trump announced Monday that he will be imposing “substantial” tariffs on any country that does not purchase American-made furniture, presumably in addition to his sweeping so-called “reciprocal tariffs” already placed on hundreds of nations.
“In order to make North Carolina, which has completely lost its furniture business to China, and other Countries, GREAT again, I will be imposing substantial Tariffs on any Country that does not make its furniture in the United States,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “Details to follow!!! President DJT”
The North Carolinian furniture industry has indeed suffered significant losses due in large part to China, which has increased its exports of cheap furniture to the United States. Between 1999 and 2009, the furniture manufacturing industry in North Carolina lost more than half of its jobs, one of the many sectors that suffered following the adoption of the NAFTA trade agreements.
Whether Trump’s pledge would boost domestic furniture manufacturing remains to be seen, though the pledge comes just shortly after the president declared war on foreign films in a similar online post in which he announced he would be imposing a 100% tariff on all foreign films.Trump’s Air Force One ruse revealed war’s end is ‘further away than ever’: analyst
President Donald Trump's use of a decoy plane in Turkey and escape via a catering truck, with journalists none the wiser, was detailed in a new analysis for Slate by Ian Prasad Philbrick.
The plan, intended to avert an assassination threat, was basically "something out of a spy movie," Philbrick wrote.
"The catering truck, which typically loads in-flight meals, parked on the right side of Air Force One, partially shielded from media cameras," he wrote. As part of the ruse, Trump "crossed to the other side of the presidential plane after boarding and stepped into the truck’s elevated container," after which the catering truck lowered the container, drove to a military jet, and offloaded its human cargo to be routed home through the United Kingdom — without journalists or even some White House officials any the wiser.
One of the most shocking aspects of the whole affair, wrote Philbrick, is that the Trump administration was essentially using all the journalists who thought they were flying with the president "as bait" for any would-be assassination plot without letting them know.
Furthermore, he noted, after the flight, "asked why reporters had had to close their window shades when leaving Turkey, Trump failed to mention that he had switched flights. 'I’m No. 1 on their list,' he said, referring to Iran. 'But if I go, you go. Right?' As it turns out, maybe not."
Decoy flights are not completely unheard of for the president, Philbrick wrote — but it's still extremely uncommon.
"Officials were vague about George W. Bush’s whereabouts immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, and Bill Clinton took an unmarked plane from India to Pakistan in 2000," wrote Philbrick. However, in these cases, "even Bush had reporters with him, and Clinton’s staff told at least one journalist about the switch beforehand."
Philbrick also took the ruse as a sign that Trump's war against Iran is not going well.
"In short, lasting peace seems further away than ever," he wrote.
Trump officials at each other’s throats over ‘sickening’ report on boat strikes: ‘A joke’
Trump administration officials are slamming their colleagues in the Pentagon after a new report downplayed casualty counts from recent military strikes, per a new report.
The Department of Defense turned over an annual report to Congress with a tally of civilian casualties from military strikes in 2025, and one anonymous Trump administration official called it "a f------ joke," according to reporting by The Intercept.
The report addresses allegations of civilian harm during 2025 military attacks in Somalia and Yemen, as well as boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, where the Pentagon insists it's fighting drug trafficking, The Intercept reported.
However, the report asserts that U.S. attacks killed no civilians during military boat strikes, despite reports that those strikes killed more than 120 civilians, according to The Intercept. A second Trump administration official called the report "a total whitewash" and "sickening," adding that the Pentagon has "absolutely no credibility."
The Intercept noted that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gutted civilian harm mitigation and response programs in the Pentagon. Although the report, which has only been released to Congress but not to the public, denied civilian deaths from the boat strikes, it found that U.S. attacks in the Middle East likely killed or wounded hundreds of civilians, The Intercept reported.
However, the second official said that the report offered "lowball numbers" for civilian casualties from U.S. attacks in Yemen. The report estimated U.S. air and naval strikes in Yemen killed 153 civilians and wounded almost 250, but the Yemen Data Project estimated that 238 civilians were killed and 467 were injured by U.S. attacks.
Both anonymous officials also pointed out that the Pentagon is still reviewing 15 cases of attacks on civilians in Yemen and that the 10-person civilian harm mitigation team at CENTCOM has been reduced to one person. The first official said it "doesn't bode well for the war in Iran," adding, "How will they get through hundreds of cases for Iran if their one civilian harm person still hasn't finished in Yemen?"
