Politics

Mike Waltz has returned from the shadows of Signalgate to try his hand at a nomination for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and the hearing is just as spicy as you’d imagine.  The former national security adviser, who managed to include the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic in an unsecured group chat discussing war plans, was grilled across the board Tuesday, for his missteps of handling classified information.  ​​“I have no questions for you, sir,” Sen. Cory Booker said, adding that Waltz showed “profound cowardice” for not taking responsibility for his failures around Signalgate.   “I have nothing but deep disappointment in what I consider a failure of leadership on your part.” Sen. Cory Booker to Mike Waltz: “You were involved in the sharing of sensative information about imminent military operations…You said [Jeffrey Goldberg] intentionally infiltrated your Signal chain. You said that he was ‘sucked in.’…It shows profound cowardice.” — The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) 2025-07-15T16:15:49.495Z Then again, if you ask Waltz or Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—who texted times and dates of weapons deployments before a pending strike on a terrorist group in Yemen—they both agree that no classified information was shared.  However, Sen. Chris Coons wasn’t buying that.  “This was demonstrably sensitive information,” he said to Waltz.  WALTZ: The use of Signal was not only authorized, it’s still authorized, and highly recommended COONS: Would you recommend the use of Signal for classified information? WALTZ: There was no classified information shared — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-07-15T15:37:54.452Z Despite the intense scrutiny brought about from Waltz and Hegseth’s mishandling, no disciplinary action was taken against them, Waltz confirmed to Coons. Not only did he get away with less than a slap on the wrist, but Waltz has managed to keep his cushy annual salary of $195,200 throughout all of this despite being let go from his previous role in March. But Waltz isn’t just raising eyebrows over his Signal controversy or his salary for doing … nothing. The potential new ambassador to the UN is also echoing President Donald Trump’s potentially anti-UN approach. According to Waltz’s opening remarks, the former green beret plans to make the UN “great again,” echoing his boss’ favorite slogan.  “We should have one place in the world where everyone can talk—where China, Russia, Europe and the developing world can come together and resolve conflicts,” he said “But after 80 years, it’s drifted from its core mission of peacemaking.” He went on to push the idea that the UN promotes antisemitism, agreeing with the popular Trump stance of pulling funding that doesn’t fit their narrative. The UN has been outspoken against Israel’s role in the Gaza conflict and has condemned their harm toward the Palestinian people.  But while the UN as a whole works to ensure peace and the upkeep of human rights across cultures worldwide, Waltz and the Trump administration maintain that giving funding is more so “America last.” “The U.S. must ensure that every foreign aid dollar and every contribution to an international organization, particularly the UN, draws a straight and direct line to a compelling U.S. national interest, one that puts America first, not last,” he said.  Trump just continues to put the least-qualified candidates up for the job. 

Elon Musk might have left his job running the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, but he and DOGE remain entangled with the government. Now DOGE is leaking data, and a Musk-owned AI is set to run wild at the Department of Defense, all while the right-wing billionaire continues to line his pockets with your tax dollars.  On Monday, independent security researcher Brian Krebs reported that a DOGE worker accidentally posted a private Application Programming Interface for xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, on GitHub, a public repository for code. APIs let computers talk to one another and transfer data easily. Because of this, literally anyone could access over four dozen of xAI’s large language models, including Grok, which you may know from its integration on X.  Which big-brained genius did this? Marko Elez.  Thousands of protesters gather at the Washington Monument on April 5. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because earlier this year, Elez resigned after his history of racist online posts surfaced, but he was reinstated by Musk and Vance because they are racists too. Elez is the same dude who “mistakenly” got full access to sensitive Treasury Department data, then reportedly emailed a spreadsheet with unencrypted private data to officials at the General Services Administration. So this racist 25-year-old continues to have expansive access to government data but can’t take basic security precautions.  Of course, Elez isn’t the only DOGE employee who is now burrowed into the government as a regular employee. Nineteen-year-old Edward “Big Balls” Coristine is still around, as is Ethan Shaotran, who publicly whined about how people ostracized him because of his work with DOGE. Yeah, buddy, people tend not to like it when you wreck their government.  On top of this, the Department of Defense gave Musk a sweetheart contract on Monday that could net his xAI up to $200 million. To be scrupulously fair to Musk, three other companies—Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI—are also eligible for $200 million each.  It’s exceedingly vague what xAI and the rest of these companies will do. The government announcement is full of language about leveraging technology, mission areas, and supporting warfighters, but it features no information about what those private companies are required to do with their $200 million.  It was definitely odd timing for the government to give Musk $200 million to “address critical national security challenges” with his xAI technology. The award was announced mere days after Musk had to shut off Grok, his chatbot, for going full Nazi, with posts praising Adolf Hitler and detailing violent rape fantasies. This was a result of Musk reportedly changing Grok’s prompt to “not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, so long as they are well substantiated.” President Donald Trump, left, and Elon Musk depart the White House on March 21. It seems bad that Musk’s changes turned Grok into a 4Chan poster, basically. Never fear, though. Musk has an explanation of how that’s not his fault: He made Grok too eager to please users.  Per Musk, when Grok received a racist prompt from an X user, those users were “manipulat[ing]” Grok into giving racist answers. This explanation probably does not make you feel better about Musk’s chatbots being turned loose in the Department of Defense. If you’d like to feel even worse, recall that Musk also programmed Grok to check in with him before answering questions.  It’s likely that xAI and other tech companies will net more than their initial awards. The award announcement goes on about it at length, saying that DOD is implementing a “commercial-first approach to accelerating DOD adoption of AI” and “leveraging commercially available solutions.” But what the announcement is clear about is that the government is planning on streamlining its own ability to give Musk and other tech bros money by making it easier for the government to purchase private AI tools through the General Services Administration. xAI also announced on Monday that it is developing Grok for Government, which will bring “strong reasoning capabilities with extensive pretraining models.” Buddy, Grok went full fascist in front of God and everyone just a few days ago and is not displaying any “strong reasoning capabilities.” Overall, the Trump administration’s approach to accelerate the use of AI in the government is to pay private companies vast sums to do a thing that the government was already doing until Trump shuttered 18F, the agency tasked with making government digital services more efficient. That team had created a National Security and Intelligence Portfolio nearly six years ago, helping defense agencies get new digital solutions. But they had to get wiped out so private companies could take their place.  Now your private data is at risk thanks to the incompetence of DOGE, and Musk is going to make a ton of money shoveling that data into his racist chatbot. Totally normal way to run the government, yes indeed.

A cartoon by Pedro Molina. Related | Kristi Noem is getting roasted for FEMA flop after Texas floods

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is so freakin’ weird. On Monday, the official Department of Homeland Security X account posted an image of a painting, along with the caption, “Remember your Homeland’s Heritage. New Life in a New Land – Morgan Weistling.” If you grew up playing the video game “Oregon Trail,” you know what this evokes: dysentery. The National Park Service estimates that 30,000 settlers died from it—nearly 10%—on the Oregon Trail alone. That’s 10-15 deaths per mile. But maybe that’s on brand for today’s conservatives. After all, they’re bizarrely excited to bring back measles, too. But dysentery was just the beginning. Gun mishaps, hypothermia, wild animals, drowning during river crossings, rightly hostile Indigenous tribes—this was a death gauntlet. It’s just plain weird to romanticize one of the most brutal chapters of American expansionism. And that baby in the painting? That poor, nameless baby? In the mid-1800s, one-third of children didn’t make it to their 5th birthday according to this study from Our World in Data. Other estimates suggest that infant mortality was closer to 40-45 during this era and likely even higher on the trail. Parents often waited a full year before naming their children because survival was far from guaranteed, so this little anchor baby likely didn’t have a name yet. Related | Measles cases have surged to scary new heights under Trump and RFK Jr. Yes, anchor baby. The Morgan Weistling painting, which was incorrectly labeled by DHS as “New Life in a New Land,” is titled “A Prayer for a New Life.” Sounds pretty immigration-y, right? But that’s odd, considering that conservatives absolutely hate people looking for a better life somewhere else. Why didn’t these immigrants just stay home? Meanwhile, Trump’s ancestors hadn’t even made it to America yet. Neither had most of his wives’. It sure ain’t their “homeland heritage.” And stepping back, what does this painting even have to do with DHS? Are they trying to police vibes now? It’s just all so weird. These Trumpists aren’t “tough.” They’re just strange.

PoliticusUSA is news you can count on, so please consider supporting us by becoming a subscriber. Subscribe now Donald Trump and his administration have been ignoring the warnings of economists for months that his tariff policy was going to be the fuel that inflation needed to come raging back. In fact, the White House press office has been taking victory laps with each new data drop that showed inflation not rising. Those victory dances ended on Tuesday morning as June’s numbers revealed that inflation is on the rise. The New York Times reported: The Consumer Price Index rose 2.7 percent from a year ago, the swiftest pace since February, data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed on Tuesday. That is slightly higher than expected and is up from an annual pace of 2.4 percent in May. “Core” inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy prices and is seen as a reliable gauge for underlying price pressures, also shifted higher. Those prices were up 2.9 percent from the same time last year. Over the course of the month, prices rose 0.3 percent, a notable pickup from a 0.1 percent increase in May. Core prices rose 0.2 percent. Quietly, it seems that inflation is eating away at the economy, and Trump’s unilateral tariff decision is what is causing the problem. Trump responded to his tariffs causing rising inflation by recommending a move that would crash the economy. Trump said, “Very slight, essentially they were exactly as anticipated, very low inflation. So what you should do is lower the rate. The fed should lower the rate immediately.” Video: Trump’s demand would make inflation worse. It is the wrong thing to do to curb inflation in lower prices. Since Trump has no interest in lowering prices, and his only goal is self-enrichment, he wants lower interest rates because they would be good for him. Donald Trump elected with a mandate to lower inflation. Instead, he is delusionally trying to raise inflation while claiming victory. What do you think about Trump and inflation? Share your thoughts in the comments below. Leave a comment

President Donald Trump’s “golden age of America” has no need for migrant labor. Picking crops? There are 34 million able-bodied American adults on Medicaid who can do that grueling work. Building homes? Native-born Americans will handle those jobs. Meat processing? The country has no use for foreign laborers willing to put in the hours for “slave wages.” When it comes to one of the country’s most sensitive and technically demanding government jobs, however, the Trump administration is quietly humming a different tune. I obtained documents showing that the Federal Aviation Administration is looking into the possibility of hiring foreigners as air traffic controllers. “The FAA is facing significant air traffic controller staffing shortages, and to address this issue, is exploring the idea of recruiting experienced international talent,” states a three-page executive summary of the initiative, which has not been previously reported. “However, this approach must be carefully managed to ensure that the FAA’s high standards for safety and procedures are upheld,” the summary adds, acknowledging a need to “balance the critical areas of safety, training, national security, and immigration law to create a sustainable and effective workforce strategy for the FAA.” A U.S. official involved in the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a matter that had not been made public, told me that the FAA’s security experts are “losing their minds” over the prospect of turning foreign nationals into key nodes of the United States aerospace system. Of particular concern is the access they could gain to radars and communications networks as well as sensitive information about military flight paths, restricted airspace, and air-defense zones. [Dorothy Robyn: The real problem with the FAA] Nathaniel Sizemore, a Department of Transportation spokesperson, told me the FAA is “exploring every available option” to address the strain on the air-traffic-controller workforce but that no final decision has been made about hiring foreigners. Sizemore suggested that the initiative is in some way payback, because “foreign countries routinely steal U.S. controllers, who are rightfully frustrated by outdated tools and crumbling infrastructure.” The initiative responds to staffing shortfalls that have caused ground delays and diminished flight capacity at major airports. More than 90 percent of the country’s 313 air-traffic-control centers are functioning below the FAA’s recommended staffing levels, according to an analysis by the union that represents these workers. Chronic understaffing has contributed to fatigue and mandatory overtime. It may also bear some responsibility for a series of recent crashes and near-misses. Air-traffic-control staffing was “not normal” at the time of the deadly January midair collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, according to a preliminary FAA report. After that crash, which killed 67 people, the Department of Transportation debuted plans to “supercharge” the air-traffic-control workforce. Salaries for new trainees were bumped up by 30 percent. Four months were shorn from the hiring timeline. Controllers I spoke with at the time anticipated that these measures would be insufficient. While bonuses were also made available to existing employees who agreed to put off retirement, skeptical controllers argued that a broader pay increase and greater vacation time were necessary to stem attrition. But Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary (and interim NASA chief), seems uninterested in these changes. Instead, he previously suggested that controllers could work past the legally mandated retirement age of 56. Now he appears to be eyeing not just older controllers, but controllers from outside the United States. [Read: The Trump administration is spending $2 million to figure out whether DEI causes plane crashes] The obstacles are legal as well as political. Most federal jobs are available only to U.S. citizens, and FAA-specific rules state that non-U.S. citizens are not eligible for security clearances. The rules require background investigations to determine whether prospective employees can be trusted with responsibility for sensitive infrastructure, essential safety functions, and emergency-response duties. The FAA executive summary acknowledges the legal challenges. The memo envisions a “need to create a structured pathway for these international recruits that leads to FAA employment and eventual U.S. citizenship.” It indicates that the agency’s analysis drew on the example of “institutions that admit international students.” Yet the Trump administration has taken steps to crack down on international students, recently seeking to bar foreign nationals from studying at Harvard altogether. (A federal judge in Boston has blocked these efforts.) The summary identifies two possible paths, taking as long as 53 or 55 months, or about four and a half years, including language training, a course about weather and “basic phraseology,” and evaluation. It makes brief mention of security concerns, noting, “Foreign nationals would require rigorous vetting and same background clearance process as current ATCs.” It anticipates objections from the union representing air traffic controllers. The memo makes no mention of possible political objections, and the White House did not respond to a request for comment. Among the lavish promises of Trump’s second term is the return of U.S. jobs on a large scale to U.S.-born workers. That’s the rationale for mass deportation. Trump vowed in his inaugural address to “protect American workers.” “How does it help working-class families in our country to have an economy that benefits the foreign‑born more than native‑born American citizens?” J. D. Vance asked on social media last year. But that, apparently, does not apply to at least one job. The median salary for an air traffic controller, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is roughly $145,000.  

President Donald Trump’s approval rating among Latino voters is in free fall, as they realize that no one is safe from his evil deportation agenda. A YouGov poll released Monday found that Trump is a massive 27 percentage points underwater among Hispanic voters, with 62% disapproving of the job Trump is doing as opposed to the 35% who approve. That’s a massive change from less than a month ago, when NPR/PBS News/Marist released a poll finding 49% of Latino voters disapproved of the job Trump is doing in office, as opposed to 44% who approved. And the change is likely due to Trump’s handling of immigration, which voters are now overwhelmingly opposed to as he works to make good on his promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. “The word to describe Trump’s net approval on immigration ‘oof.’ Ranging from ‘horrible’ (-27 pt) to ‘bad’ (-7 pt), he’s lost a ton of ground on what was his best issue. Could be a reason Trump’s overall net approval among Hispanics has fallen: -2 pt in Feb to -26 pt in June,” CNN’s Harry Enten wrote in a post on X. The precipitous drop comes after Tom Homan, Trump’s immigration czar, admitted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is racially profiling Latino people as they seek to meet White House aide and racist sociopath Stephen Miller’s goal of arresting 3,000 undocumented immigrants per day. “People need to understand ICE officers and Border Patrol, they don’t need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them,” Homan said on Fox News, adding that he says ICE agents can detain people “based on … their physical appearance.” YouTube Video Trump is also cheering on the creation of “Alligator Alcatraz,” a temporary prison facility in the Florida Everglades where detained immigrants—most of whom either have no criminal records or minor traffic violations—are being housed in open-air cages under tents in the sweltering Florida heat. The Associated Press reported that the internment camp has squalid conditions, with wastewater on the floor, worms in the food, no access to showers, and those detained can only speak with attorneys by phone. “There are really disturbing, vile conditions and this place needs to be shut the hell down,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) told reporters on Sunday after she visited the facility. Trump also disturbingly fantasized about immigrants at the facility being eaten by alligators if they tried to escape its inhumane conditions. YouTube Video After Trump won in 2024, Republicans were ecstatic that he made gains among Latino voters, with Republicans bragging that it could be a permanent realignment.  But many of those voters have now turned on Trump, after realizing that he was never going to spare them his cruelty—even though it’s long been clear that he’s a racist. Now, it looks like Republicans are at risk of squandering their gains with Latino voters as they cheer on Trump’s immigration agenda, and gave him billions to make mask-wearing ICE goons the largest federal police force.

A cartoon by Mike Luckovich. Related | The Texas flash flood is a preview of the chaos to come

House Republicans on Monday night voted against a measure introduced by Democrats that would have compelled the government to release information on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including a rumored client list of his. The move potentially protects powerful people from being implicated in Epstein’s crimes, even as Republicans have touted themselves as being for “law and order.” The measure was introduced by Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California during a meeting of the House Rules Committee as it debated a cryptocurrency-related bill. If the vote had passed, the amendment would have been attached to the bill, and if the bill were enacted, it would have required the Department of Justice to compile and publicly release all of its records on Epstein, who died in 2019 in prison. The vote failed 5 to 6, with only one Republican—South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman—joining all Democrats in voting in favor of the amendment. “This is about trust. Republicans said, ‘Trust us. Vote for us and we will release these files.’ Well here we are—they’re backtracking,” Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts said, chiding Republicans for their obstruction. Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, chair of the committee, defended the party’s vote. “I think most of us believe what’s appropriate will be released when it is time for the president to release it,” she said. A still of a video of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein attending a party at Trump’s estate in the early 1990s. But in recent days President Donald Trump and his administration have been accused of covering up on behalf of Epstein, who sex-trafficked underage women. For years, Trump and other Republicans invoked the Epstein issue to cast aspersions on their political opponents, whom they implied—without evidence—were clients of Epstein. In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi even invited right-wing influencers to the White House to purportedly release Epstein-related data, much of which was already public. Now the Trump administration has claimed that the alleged client list doesn’t exist, and Trump has demanded that his MAGA supporters stop bringing up the issue. Pro-Trump media outlets like Fox News quickly fell in line. The network severely curtailed its mentions of Epstein shortly after Trump’s edict. Trump’s decision to pivot away from revealing Epstein-related information also raises questions about his own relationship with the convicted criminal. The two men were friends for decades, and Epstein was seen on multiple occasions partying with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump is an admitted serial sexual assailant and was found liable for sexually abusing columnist E. Jean Carroll. Trump financier Elon Musk has previously claimed that Trump’s name was in Epstein’s files, but with the administration obfuscating on the details, the full truth has not come out. Republicans in Congress have now made it more difficult to know the true extent of Epstein’s crimes and which powerful people, if any, may have been complicit.

Another day, another Supreme Court ruling that shows the court’s conservatives are 100% down with whatever President Donald Trump wants to do. This time, they gave Trump the green light to functionally destroy the Department of Education.  Monday’s no-explanation order in McMahon v. New York allows Trump to execute his plan to fire almost 1,400 Education Department employees. When you combine these cuts with the probationary employees Trump fired earlier this year and employees who resigned, the department will be about half the size it was when Trump took office in January.  It’s basically the same big treat that the court gave to Trump last week, allowing him to fire over 1,300 State Department employees. And unlike the administration’s inability to swiftly execute tasks like bringing one man home from Salvadoran prison, it took only three days from the court’s ruling to the mass firings at the State Department. So you can expect they will purge the Education Department as quickly as they can.  Also the same as last week’s ruling? The court couldn’t be bothered to explain itself. Apparently, to the court’s conservatives, letting Trump illegally and unconstitutionally dismantle Cabinet-level agencies created by Congress is such a nothingburger that it didn’t even warrant a mention.  Secretary of Education Linda McMahon Giving Trump this vast authority over the Department of Education sure is a different vibe than the conservative majority had about that agency when Joe Biden was president. There, the notion that Biden relied on an existing law allowing for student loan relief to expand the scope of student loan relief was the most outrageous thing a president could possibly do. In fact, Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion said Biden had engaged in an “exhaustive rewriting of the statute” by expanding student loan relief.  This time around? When no statute authorizes Trump to dismantle an agency created by Congress? Or when the only thing the administration relies upon for gutting departments is a series of Trump executive orders—which are very much not law—saying he can do it? Totally fine, totally cool, totally constitutional, go right ahead.  Actually, we have no idea what the court’s conservatives think about the underlying claim that Trump has the authority to dismantle departments because he feels like it. Monday’s ruling—as with last week’s State Department ruling and with the horrific ruling that the administration can deport immigrants to countries they are not from—does not address the merits of the case.  In other words, the court isn’t ruling that Trump can gut the Education Department. They’re just saying it’s so important that Trump gets to start gutting the Education Department immediately that he can’t wait for this case to be fully litigated. So, maybe someday, they tell themselves, when this case comes back to the court, they might determine Trump never had the authority to do these things, but hey, no harm, no foul. Surely, it’s no big deal to have been illegally fired if, a couple of years from now, the court says that shouldn’t have happened, right? Or for migrants that the administration sent to South Sudan? They can probably come back here super easily, and they definitely will not have suffered by being imprisoned or tortured in whatever random country the administration sent them to, right? Right? The emergency appeal route is Trump’s preferred method for getting matters in front of the court, and the conservatives are happy to pretend that everything Trump wants is a genuine emergency, but they’re turning the concept of emergency relief on its head. Trump not being able to do something ASAP is an emergency, but people who are going to get deported without due process are not facing an emergency. Sure.  They’re also happy to grant Trump’s every wish. Since April 4, out of 17 emergency applications filed by the administration, they’ve ruled in favor of Trump 15 times. As bad as that statistic is, it’s actually worse. Three of the birthright-citizenship cases were combined, so Trump is batting a thousand. And only three of those 15 rulings included a majority opinion.  Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor In her dissent in McMahon v. New York, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called this what it is: the court enabling the illegal behavior of the administration. “When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it,” she wrote. “The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave.” Sotomayor is coming in hot here, and it’s completely warranted, but she’s pulling her punches a bit by giving the majority a bit of an out here by speculating that perhaps they’re just naive and don’t understand the implications of what they’re doing. But the truth is that she knows that’s not what’s going on here, and we know that’s not what’s going on here.  There’s no credible explanation or legal justification for the court’s actions here. The only rational explanation is that they are wholly aligned with Trump’s project of turning himself into a king. They’re just as lawless as Trump, and they don’t care.