May 11, 2026 at 7:48 PM EDT
Trump biographer: Epstein joked about his legal troubles while orchestrating defense

A bestselling author has detailed the indifference Jeffrey Epstein displayed toward the criminal charges pursued against him between 2006 and 2008. In a new column for his Substack, HOWL, Michael Wolff described how "unconcerned" and "uncaring" the disgraced financier was about the investigation. The years-long investigation began after a report was filed with Palm Beach police regarding alleged abuse at his Florida residence.

May 11, 2026 at 7:29 PM EDT
Mark Kelly: Hegseth 'doesn't want to be held accountable' for Trump's failures

President Donald Trump's defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is in potentially hot water because he "doesn't want to be held accountable" for the failures of his wars, according to a senator currently in Hegseth's crosshairs. "I think it comes down to the fact that he doesn't want to be held accountable," Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) said to MS NOW's Jake Tapper in response to a question about why Hegseth is investigating him. "They've expended an enormous amount of munitions, and I think the only investigation we need -- the one we need right now -- is: after 15,000 strikes, all we got out of this is 13 dead Americans. We have the Strait of Hormuz closed, gas prices in Arizona are $4.80 a gallon and seem to be heading up."

May 11, 2026 at 7:09 PM EDT
Trump appoints controversial PA election denier to ambassadorship

State Senator and former GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano (R-Franklin) has been nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Slovakia. Mastriano said in a post on the social media site X that he will continue to serve in the Pennsylvania Senate until a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing.

May 11, 2026 at 6:11 PM EDT
Republicans silent over key issue they once obsessed over

In 2022, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Republicans attacked then-President Joe Biden relentlessly over gas prices. Biden was a vehement critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and many Republicans blamed his foreign policy when gas prices went up. But two and one-half months into his war against Iran, President Donald Trump is arguing that higher gas prices are a small price to pay for preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon. And according to NOTUS reporters Daniella Diaz and Al Weaver, many other Republicans avoiding the subject of gas prices altogether.

May 11, 2026 at 6:10 PM EDT
GOP Rep caught on tape backing racist remark about top Dem

A Republican lawmaker has been caught on tape agreeing to a racist remark directed at House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, in which he was referred to as having "cotton-picking hands." Jeffries, the House Minority Leader since taking over from Nancy Pelosi, has been outspoken in response to the Virginia Supreme Court's latest ruling, shooting down a new congressional map designed to create four new Democratic seats. The effort, approved by the state's voters in a special ballot measure, was undertaken in order to counteract gerrymandering campaigns done in red states at the behest of President Donald Trump, with the aim of rigging the 2026 midterms in their favor.

May 11, 2026 at 5:37 PM EDT
CNN's MAGA pundit backed into corner over Pentagon's latest attack on senator

Scott Jennings, the resident MAGA Republican pundit at CNN, was backed into a corner during a Monday panel discussion, getting pressed about the Department of Defense's latest attack against a Democratic senator while attempting to attack said lawmaker as publicity-seeking. Over the weekend, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called for a renewed investigation into Sen. Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat, for allegedly disclosing classified information during a televised interview with CBS News's Face the Nation , where he said it was "shocking" how deeply the U.S. military has depleted its munitions amid the ongoing war with Iran. This marks the second time the Pentagon has attempted to investigate Kelly, a leading candidate for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, with the last effort getting shot down in court.

May 11, 2026 at 5:27 PM EDT
Justice's own words prove Supreme Court 'a bunch of partisan hacks': legal scholar

The conservative justices on the Supreme Court have gotten notably defensive in the wake of their growing list of rulings in President Donald Trump's favor, but despite their protests, a legal scholar argued for The Hill that one justice's own words revealed that they are, in fact, "a bunch of partisan hacks," only interested in rulings that "Make Republicans win." Steven Lubet is a professor emeritus at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. On Monday, he published an op-ed for The Hill highlighting past comments from Trump-appointed conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, arguing that, by her "own definition," the court is behaving like unabashed political actors.

May 11, 2026 at 5:23 PM EDT
White House 'knife fight' as Trump commerce officials battle national security aides

According to new reporting from the Washington Post, officials in President Donald Trump's administration are "sharply split" over who will control the future of artificial intelligence security. The fight pits officials from the Commerce Department against those in national security in what one insider described as a "knife fight" over which part of the government will oversee a technology that could have profound implications for the economy and global security. The argument ramped up recently as the White House grapples with emerging cybersecurity threats posed by new advanced AI models that will make hackers more dangerous than ever.

May 11, 2026 at 11:40 AM EDT
Data analyst drops bombshell: GOP still can't win the House

After what unfolded in Virginia's redistricting battle, the Democratic Party's chance of winning the 2026 midterm election isn't what it once was, CNN data analyst Harry Enten said on Monday. Speaking to host John Berman, Enten said that it's still possible, but it's a heavier lift.

May 11, 2026 at 11:36 AM EDT
Foreign officials face 'new imperative' thanks to 'reckless' Trump

For a time, some argued that there was a method to President Donald Trump's madness. This was in reference to the so-called "madman theory," in which a head of state acts with intentionally erratic belligerence to force concessions from opponents. But increasingly, writes the Atlantic foreign affairs reporter Vivian Salama, "allies and rivals alike are less likely to give the president what he seeks" as they've gone from viewing him as "unpredictable" to "unreliable."

May 11, 2026 at 11:29 AM EDT
Trump official raked over coals for bonkers claim he's 'fixing every problem on earth'

During a time of widespread angst over the economy, National Economic Council (NEC) Director Kevin Hassett appeared on CNBC's "Squawk Box" and aggressively defended President Donald Trump's record on inflation. When told that inflation has increased, not decreased, since former President Joe Biden left office, Hassett argued, "The bottom line is inflation is going down at the microeconomic level by a million things that we've done, like fix the avian flu so egg prices are down, change beef imports so that beef prices go down, make drug prices more affordable with TrumpRX". But at the macroeconomic level right now, the driving force right now is the temporary increase in the price of gas."

May 11, 2026 at 11:22 AM EDT
Deep-red state Republican facing surprise midterms wipe-out

A Republican Senator serving in a solid red state is contending with an unexpected threat to his seat in the upcoming midterm elections, per The Hill, as President Donald Trump's agenda hits his state in particularly brutal fashion, and the Democrats field a notably strong opposition candidate Dan Sullivan is a two-term Republican senator for Alaska, seeking reelection to a third in the 2026 midterms. While Alaska is far less staunchly conservative than places like Florida and Alabama, it has still consistently elected Republicans to statewide office in recent years, and Sullivan's seat might have once been seen as safe from an upset -- until, that is, Trump returned to office.