by Steve Benen | Jun 15, 2026 | Maddowblog, News, Politics
Five months after Donald Trump and his allies tried to force his name onto the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a federal judge made the obvious call: The law says only Congress can change the name of the memorial, and that didn’t happen.
Late last week, the administration made several last-ditch efforts to halt implementation of the ruling before the court-imposed deadline, but to no avail. MS NOW reported:
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has been restored to its original name.
President Donald Trump’s name was officially cleared from the marble façade of the storied cultural institution on Saturday, the Kennedy Center said, after last-minute attempts by the Trump administration to delay a federal judge’s ruling that the name cannot be changed.
There’s still some legal wrangling on the horizon, but at this point, it’s worth pausing to note how exactly the Kennedy Center was restored to its legal name.
On Friday, a crowd assembled to watch crews remove Trump’s name from the wall, and while I wasn’t personally there, by all accounts, the audience was prepared to celebrate a good show. The Washington Post reported, “The atmosphere was festival-like: People brought their dogs, their partners and their children.”
But it quickly became clear that spectators were going to be disappointed.
Crew members spent hours erecting scaffolding for reasons that weren’t altogether clear, at least not at first. It would have been easy enough to simply put someone in a boom lift, elevate them to the offending letters and have them remove the incumbent president’s name.
But it soon became clear why the scaffolding was put in place. The Wall Street
by Steve Benen | Jun 15, 2026 | Iran Tensions, Maddowblog, News, Politics
After far too many instances in which the White House told the world that an agreement with Iran was imminent, only to see those hopes dashed soon after, there actually appears to be something resembling a deal to end the monthslong conflict. MS NOW reported:
Iran and the United States reached a deal Sunday aimed at ending the Middle East war, according to President Donald Trump and Tehran’s deputy foreign minister, marking a major breakthrough after months of conflict and on-again, off-again negotiations.
The statements from Trump and Tehran raised hopes for an end to fighting that has left more than 7,500 dead, most of them in Lebanon and Iran, and rocked the global oil market.
In an item published to his social media platform, the American president boasted, “The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. Congratulations to all!”
Neither Trump nor anyone in his administration has been willing to share any of the details surrounding this apparent breakthrough, which makes it effectively impossible to evaluate it on the merits. That said, a few things stand out.
Trump’s many unmet goals: On Feb. 28, when Trump announced the start of the U.S. offensive in a prerecorded video filmed at his glorified country club in Florida, the president didn’t explain why he’d decided to launch the war, but he did present the public with five objectives.
The Republican’s goals were relatively straightforward: (1) destroy Iran’s missiles and missile industry; (2) annihilate the Iranian navy; (3) sever the ties between Tehran and its proxies in the Middle East; (4) prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon; and (5) create the conditions necessary for regime
by Haris Tarin | Jun 14, 2026 | Opinion, Politics, Sports
FIFA referee Omar Artan flew into Miami on Saturday for the assignment of his career: He was about to become the first Somali to referee in a World Cup. But Artan never made it out of the airport. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reportedly interrogated him for 11 hours then held him in a cell before putting him on a flight back to Istanbul, from where he had caught his connecting flight to the U.S. By Monday, FIFA had dropped Artan from the tournament.
I spent nearly a decade at the Department of Homeland Security working in counterterrorism and civil rights, and I can say with confidence that Artan being denied entry for so-called vetting concerns and being sent away had nothing to do with national security and everything to do with his being born in Somalia. The government is dressing up its religious and ethnic discrimination in seemingly innocuous bureaucratic clothing.
We don’t have to shut out whole countries to keep our country safe.
The U.S. already operates the world’s most exacting traveler-vetting system — officials look at fingerprints, facial scans, multiple watchlists and conduct checks via the Electronic System for Travel Authorization. That system is applied every time someone tries to enter the U.S., and it makes crude nationality bans unnecessary. We don’t have to shut out whole countries to keep our country safe. We have the tools to single out threats and let everyone else through.
But during this second Trump administration, the government is restricting visits from nationals of 39 countries. Four World Cup teams — Haiti, Iran, Senegal and Ivory Coast — are on that list, and the administration has only given the tournament a narrow carve-out. Players
by Steve Benen | Jun 12, 2026 | 2026 election, elections, Maddowblog, News, Politics
The Trump administration’s highly aggressive efforts to obtain state voter rolls has, at least so far, failed spectacularly, losing in eight out of eight court fights.
But as such federal efforts continue, there’s apparently a new twist on the broader gambit related to state voter rolls. The New York Times reported:
The U.S. Postal Service has proposed a new rule that would allow it to refuse to deliver mail ballots in states that don’t turn over voter rolls to the federal government.
The rule, proposed last week, is vaguely written but appears to establish broad authority for the agency to intervene in the mail voting process. It calls on states to compile lists of mail voters that Postal Service employees would use to screen ballots for eligibility. If states refuse to comply, the agency could refuse to send their mail ballots.
Pointing to the proposed rule, published in the Federal Register last week, the Times added, “Screening mail ballots for voter eligibility … would amount to an unprecedented, and potentially unconstitutional, involvement of the federal government in the administration of elections.”
For Donald Trump, that might very well be the point.
In March 2025, just two months into the president’s second term, the Republican signed a radical executive order intended to impose sweeping changes on the nation’s system of elections. Trump, however, lacked the legal authority for such a power-grab, and his policy was rejected throughout the judiciary.
One year later, in March 2026, the president nevertheless did it again, signing another order in which he purportedly gave himself sweeping authority over the country’s elections systems. As part of the radical scheme, hatched to address a problem
by Steve Benen | Jun 11, 2026 | elections, Maddowblog, News, Politics
As this week got underway, the public saw Donald Trump abruptly end his latest “Meet the Press” interview when NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked the president whether he had evidence to support his election conspiracy theories. “You’re either crooked or you’re stupid,” the Republican told the host instead of answering the question like an adult who wasn’t making stuff up.
Unprompted, Trump returned to the subject Wednesday at an unrelated White House event, telling reporters:
They rigged the election, the second election, as you probably heard and probably know, most of you know, that happened and now it’s been proven, and it will be proven as time goes by, even more so. We have things that you won’t believe. When we release the full files, you’re not going to believe how crooked the second, the 2020 election was.
He made the comments while surrounded by congressional Republican leaders, who simply nodded along.
Trump: “They rigged the election. Now it’s been proven, and it will be proven even more as time goes by even more so. We have things that you won’t believe. When we release the full files, you won’t believe how crooked the 2020 election was.”— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-06-10T16:04:29.518Z
There’s probably no point in rehashing what reality-based observers already know: The election wasn’t rigged; it hasn’t been “proven”; Trump and his team haven’t found “things”; there is no “they”; etc.
What I found notable about this, however, was the idea that there might still be people out there who are willing to believe that the president might yet uncover and release some evidence of a conspiracy that did not and does not exist.
Six months
by Jarvis DeBerry | Jun 11, 2026 | Opinion, Politics
President Donald Trump’s penchant for characterizing pretty much any Black person who disagrees with him as “low IQ” hasn’t been called out enough as the nasty, unrepentant bigotry it is. Many Americans have come to tolerate all sorts of insults from Trump, but it’s important that we as a country condemn this racist filth, if only for the sake of Black children growing up during Trump’s presidency.
Trump expressed doubts about the intelligence of ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith after the commentator, a huge New York Knicks fan, correctly predicted that his team would lose Monday’s NBA Finals game at Madison Square Garden against the San Antonio Spurs if Trump showed up. After the game, a reporter, who mentioned that Smith has flirted with the idea of running for president in 2028, asked Trump about his comments. The president replied, “I think he’s a nice guy. You need a certain aptitude to run for president. You need a high IQ. I’m not sure that Stephen has that. I don’t think he does, actually.”
You need a certain aptitude to run for president. You need a high IQ. I’m not sure that Stephen has that.President donald trump on ESPN’S stephen a. smith
Trump has called Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson “a low-IQ person.” In a May 1 social media post, he stacked up racist tropes when he wrote, “Low IQ Democrat Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, is nothing but a THUG, and he is a danger to our Country!” Speaking about Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, Trump said, “This is a low IQ person who I can’t even believe is a congressperson.” And Trump said then-Vice
