by Steve Benen | Jun 29, 2026 | Maddowblog, News, Politics
At this point two weeks ago, Senate Republicans appeared eager to advance a specific plan. Days earlier, Donald Trump announced his plan to nominate Jay Clayton to succeed Tulsi Gabbard as the next director of national intelligence, and GOP leaders said the federal prosecutor was so uncontroversial that they hoped to confirm him by the end of the week, in a rare display of congressional efficiency.
The president, however, didn’t want the Senate to confirm his own DNI nominee. Instead, Trump wanted his other choice — Bill Pulte, the highly controversial director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency — to take the reins as the acting DNI.
He didn’t go into a lot of detail as to why Pulte’s appointment was such a priority, though Trump did recently declare that he expects Pulte to use his new office to perhaps “find out some things about the rigged elections,” reinforcing obvious concerns about the unqualified housing official playing the role of a partisan weapon in pursuit of Trump’s conspiracy theories.
So, how was Pulte’s first week on the job? Painfully predictable.
As last week got underway, The New York Times and NBC News separately reported that the acting DNI had already begun firing intelligence officials. Soon after, MS NOW’s David Rohde reported that Pulte, instead of trying “calm the unease and confusion inside the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,” had instead created what top officials described as “chaotic” new conditions.
Days later, Pulte installed Christina Norton, a former Republican National Committee official with a background in elections issues, as his chief of staff. MS NOW’s Rohde explained:
[Pulte] has stirred fear by choosing as his
by Michael Tisserand | Jun 27, 2026 | Opinion, Politics
There was a time when President Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans didn’t think House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., had a sufficient understanding of who his enemies ought to be. But in remarks he made Wednesday at a Capitol Hill event sponsored by Ralph Reed’s Faith & Freedom Coalition, Emmer did his best to signal that Trump’s enemies are his enemies, too.
Emmer’s 11-minute talk, during which he expressed racism and transphobia and railed against abortion, also served as yet another contrast to the memory of what Republicans in Minnesota used to be. The name of the state party used to be Independent-Republicans, and the late U.S. Sen. Dave Durenberger used to describe the state party’s worldview, without irony, as progressive Republicanism.
Emmer’s talk served as yet another contrast to the memory of what Republicans in Minnesota used to be.
That party is long gone. At Wednesday’s event, Emmer theatrically dismissed a few sheets of paper he said were his talking points and proclaimed, Trump-like, that he was going rogue. He took aim at transgender youth (“there’s a reason why Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed”), at “elite radical lefties,” at “evil Marxists,” at the media, called his state’s abortion laws “as bad as North Korea” and called the state itself the “People’s Republic of Minnesota.”
But Emmer earned some of the most enthusiastic applause in his racist rant against the state’s large Somali American population. “Sometimes Minnesotans are so afraid that you’re going to call us a racist, you’re going to call us an Islamophobe,” he said, before saying, “But I’m done being careful. Even the least bit careful.”
He said, “I don’t really care
by Garry Pierre-Pierre | Jun 27, 2026 | Opinion, Politics
One of the first people, and the very first doctor, to publicly receive a Covid-19 vaccine in the United States was Dr. Yves Duroseau, the chair of emergency medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan.
At a time when fear had emptied city streets and refrigerated trucks were lined up near hospital loading docks, that son of Haiti was a face of hope.
For Haitians, that image carried a deeper resonance. Ours is a community that America has often noticed only in moments of crisis. For once, the country was looking at a Haitian because he represented hope.
Ours is a community that America often noticed only in moments of crisis.
That memory from five and a half years ago is one reason the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday allowing the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians hit me so hard. Not with anger, but with deep sadness.
When I took the oath of citizenship decades ago, I believed America rewarded commitment with belonging. I still want to believe that. Thursday’s ruling suggests that, for some immigrants, the word “temporary” didn’t just describe their legal status but the nature of America’s welcome.
The first TPS recipients from Haiti arrived after the magnitude 7 earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and killed hundreds of thousands of people in 2010. Today, Haiti faces a different catastrophe. Armed gangs control much of the capital, thousands have been killed or displaced and the State Department continues to warn Americans not to travel there.
For many TPS holders, the country they fled has not recovered. In many ways, it has become even more dangerous.
They believed something
by Steve Benen | Jun 26, 2026 | immigration, Maddowblog, News, Politics, Supreme Court
Around this time 10 years ago, when Florida was still seen as a competitive battleground state, Donald Trump campaigned in Miami and spent some time at the Little Haiti Cultural Center, stressing the “common values” he shared with Haitian Americans.
“Whether you vote for me or not,” the then-candidate said at the time, “I really want to be your biggest champion.”
A year later, he scrapped temporary status protection for Haitians who were allowed entry to the U.S. following a devastating earthquake in 2010.
A year after that, the Republican hosted a White House meeting and referred to Haiti as a “s—hole” country.
Six years after that, Trump based part of his 2024 presidential campaign on racist and false claims about Haitians in Ohio eating household pets.
And two years after that, a full decade after he stressed the “common values” he shared with Haitian Americans and vowed to be the community’s “biggest champion,” the Republican took steps to eliminate temporary status protection for hundreds of thousands of Haitians currently living legally in the United States.
The move sparked a court fight, culminating in a predictable ruling from the high court’s conservative majority. MS NOW’s Jordan Rubin explained:
The Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority sided with the Trump administration over Haitians and Syrians on Thursday in a ruling on the administration’s attempt to end humanitarian safeguards under the Temporary Protected Status program.
Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion curbed the power of courts to review government decisions to terminate protections under the TPS program. For this case, the majority said that means Haitians and Syrians aren’t entitled to orders keeping their protections in place while their litigation proceeds, even though
by Steve Benen | Jun 25, 2026 | Maddowblog, News, Politics, White House, World
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said relatively little about the Trump administration’s recent deal with Iran to end the war despite his role as the nation’s chief diplomat, though it would be an overstatement to suggest the Florida Republican has been disengaged.
On the contrary, Rubio has met this week with leaders of several Middle Eastern countries, ostensibly to extend some reassurances to U.S. partners in the region.
The New York Times, however, reported on a detail from one of those meetings that stood out. From the article:
Mr. Rubio began his travels on Wednesday by meeting with the Emirati leader, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, in Abu Dhabi. The two spoke about Iran and commerce between the United States and the Emirates, the State Department said in a summary. Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Michael Boulos, a businessman with no official government position, sat beside Mr. Rubio at the meeting.
“He was just there to see me and catch up,” Mr. Rubio said. When asked whether Mr. Boulos was involved in policy discussions, the secretary said, “No, no.”
The secretary apparently wasn’t embarrassed by any of this: Rubio posted a photograph via social media showing him meeting with the United Arab Emirate’s president, with Donald Trump’s son-in-law seated just to Rubio’s right.
Met with UAE’s President @MohamedBinZayed in Abu Dhabi, where we discussed President Trump’s MOU with Iran, efforts to secure full and safe transit through the Strait of Hormuz, and regional stability. I thanked the UAE leadership for their unparalleled support, praised their… pic.twitter.com/J3u6bAKR2W— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) June 24, 2026
Ordinarily when we think about one of Trump’s sons-in-law having access and attending important meetings, the
by Steve Benen | Jun 24, 2026 | Congress, Maddowblog, News, Politics
Three weeks ago, the U.S. House took a step that hardly seemed possible: The Republican-led chamber adopted a war powers resolution, reasserting Congress’ authority over the war. The 215-208 vote featured four GOP members joining all Democrats in support of the measure.
The vote was a stinging setback for Donald Trump, who condemned the developments with predictable rage, castigating the vote as “unpatriotic” and telling the four Republicans who backed the resolution that they “should be ashamed of themselves.”
Twenty days later, the Republican-led Senate did the same thing. NBC News reported:
The Senate on Tuesday approved a war powers resolution previously passed in the House that rebukes President Donald Trump by calling for an end to the U.S. war against Iran.
The resolution passed 50-48, with four Senate Republicans joining almost all Democrats in support of the measure. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., opposed the resolution, and two Republicans did not vote. The nonbinding measure is Capitol Hill’s sharpest symbolic pushback on the war yet.
The resolution “directs the President to remove U.S. Armed Forces from hostilities against Iran unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or a congressional authorization for use of military force against Iran.”
In recent months, the Senate voted on war powers resolutions nine other times, and in each of those instances, Democratic proponents picked up some GOP support, but not enough to succeed. This week, the 10th time was the charm.
White House officials quickly downplayed the significance of the developments, emphasizing the fact that the nonbinding resolution won’t go to the president’s desk and has no force of law. That’s true, but it doesn’t mean that the votes were irrelevant.
Democratic
