You’ll Never Guess Who Trump Pissed Off With His Abortion Announcement

Donald Trump on Monday publicly announced his long-awaited decision on a potential national abortion policy, satisfying no one and leaving both parties up in arms.

In a video posted to Truth Social, Trump boasted about the Supreme Court ending Roe v. Wade during his term, smeared Democrats as “the radical ones on this issue,” erroneously accused the left of supporting “execution after birth,” and finally staked out a position on an issue he’s said little about publicly. The big reveal: The legality of abortion should be left for the states to decide, with supposed exceptions for rape, incest, or to save the patient’s life. This is, of course, more an acknowledgment of the law as it currently exists post-Roe than a position on a potential federal abortion ban. 

Understandably, the announcement enraged abortion rights activists, who argue that Trump’s endorsement of states’ right to outlaw abortion effectively hands red state governments a blank check to pass the most extreme anti-abortion laws in the country, like those already on the books in Texas, Florida, and Idaho. Advocates have rightly argued that the so-called exceptions for rape, incest, or the patient’s health trumpeted by the Republican presidential nominee are effectively toothless window dressing, since the bans have a chilling effect on doctors who fear legal backlash for performing any abortions. As abortion rights activists also pointed out, the video left unsaid whether Trump would sign a national ban if congressional Republicans successfully brought a bill  to his desk.

But the right is also up in arms. The anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, or SBA, claimed to be “deeply disappointed” in Trump’s position in a press release. In leaving abortion to the states, President Marjorie Dannenfelser argues, Republicans “[cede] the national debate to Democrats.” Republicans who support anything less than a national ban are in bed with the “abortion industry” and want to popularize exceedingly rare late-term abortions, Dannenfelser said, echoing Trump’s false claim.

Trump had been conspicuously quiet on the abortion debate prior to Monday’s announcement, although he privately floated national 16- and 15-week bans. But even as he demurred from publicly supporting the kind of national prohibition favored by groups such as SBA (and faced criticism from other Republicans for refusing to endorse a federal ban), he has consistently taken credit for the state bans passed in the aftermath of Dobbs v. Jackson. 

Now, however, with his official position no longer a secret, and with the brutal implications of Dobbs made evident across the country, Trump can no longer play coy on the issue. And outraged though extremist anti-abortion groups may be with Trump at the moment, it’s clear that the right’s assault on abortion rights is just beginning. 

Between the 4.8 magnitude earthquake that rocked a swath of the Northeast on Friday and the total solar eclipse expected just a few days later, conspiracy theorists are abounding with fodder. But some of the people leading the mass speculation are a little too close to national politics for comfort.

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene—who famously claimed that Jewish space lasers were the cause of the California wildfires–got dangerously religious on Friday, posting on social media that the two geological events should be heeded as an omen from God.

“God is sending America strong signs to tell us to repent,” Greene wrote on X. “Earthquakes and eclipses and many more things to come. I pray that our country listens.”

That claim was quickly amended by the platform’s community notes function, which clarified that “Monday’s eclipse was predicted hundreds of years ago, it will not have been caused by contemporary actions,” and that “earthquakes occur naturally and happen (on average) more than 30 times a day across the world, although many are too subtle to feel.” But flagging the truth didn’t stop Greene’s theory from gaining traction online and circulating through the far-right ecosystem.

Greene did not comment on what it might mean that the earthquake’s epicenter was just a few miles from Donald Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

But Greene isn’t the only major figure of the American right on board with this. Earlier in the week, InfoWars owner Alex Jones argued that Monday’s solar spectacle will be a government “dress rehearsal” for enacting martial law, which he predicts will occur if Donald Trump wins the election in November.

“All this is, is a dress rehearsal,” Jones said on his podcast. “No government in modern times... have ever acted like this for a solar eclipse.”

Eclipses and other seismic phenomena have conjured religious and conspiratorial speculation going back to ancient times, so, in truth, the theories—and the people attempting to profit or materially gain off them—are nothing new.

“There are so many of them,” cult mediation specialist, Patrick Ryan, explained to Salon. “There are the purveyors like Alex Jones, who make money off these, then religious folks, who put together a story that can somehow make sense of the world, and it’s not new.”

Still, it might be time to remind ourselves of the necessity of the U.S. Constitution’s establishment clause: the separation of church and state.

A group of House Democrats came up with the perfect response on Friday to a Republican-backed measure to rename the Washington, D.C.-area Dulles International Airport after Donald Trump.

Whether it was an act of sycophancy or just plain trolling, House Republicans introduced a bill last week to rename the airport to Donald J. Trump International Airport. House Democrats weren’t happy with the measure, the airport’s inducement of misery notwithstanding.

Among them was Representative Gerry Connolly, who said, “Donald Trump is facing 91 felony charges. If Republicans want to name something after him, I’d suggest they find a federal prison.”

On Friday, Connolly, whose Virginia district neighbors Dulles, decided to put his words into action, co-sponsoring a bill with Representatives Jared Moskowitz and John Garamendi to rename Miami Federal Correctional Institution in Florida to Donald J. Trump Federal Correctional Institution.

“When our Republican colleagues introduced their bill to rename Dulles after Donald Trump, I said the more fitting option would be to rename a federal prison,” Connolly said in a statement. “It is only right that the closest federal prison to Mar-a-Lago should bear his name. I hope our Republican friends will join us in bestowing upon Donald J. Trump the only honor he truly deserves.”

The name change would be fitting, considering Trump’s numerous criminal charges. He is on trial in New York for hush money payments, in Florida for mishandling classified documents, and in Fulton County, Georgia, as well as Washington, D.C., for attempting to interfere with the 2020 presidential election. In February, he was ordered to pay the state of New York more than $350 million for bank fraud.

“Everyone knows President Trump loves to write his name in gold letters on all his buildings,” Moskowitz said. “But he’s never had his name on a federal building before, and as a public servant, I just want to help the former president. Help us make that dream a reality.”

Trump’s Florida and Washington, D.C. cases happen to be in federal court, making a federal prison all the more appropriate to bear his name. At the state level, Trump only has a run down, poor excuse for a state park in New York named after him.

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy said Friday that a fundraising email issued earlier in the week that described January 6 rioters as “activists” was an error—but he still believes the events didn’t amount to a “true insurrection.”

“It is quite clear that many of the January 6 protestors broke the law in what may have started as a protest but turned into a riot. Because it happened with the encouragement of President Trump, and in the context of his delusion that the election was stolen from him, many people see it not as a riot but as an insurrection,” Kennedy wrote in a statement. “I have not examined the evidence in detail, but reasonable people, including Trump opponents, tell me there is little evidence of a true insurrection. They observe that the protestors carried no weapons, had no plans or ability to seize the reins of government, and that Trump himself had urged them to protest ‘peacefully.’”

But that’s not true, even from a cursory review of footage from the day. The rioters who ransacked their way through the halls of Congress did indeed wield weapons, including baseball bats, hockey sticks, fence rebar, flagpoles, pepper spray, and bear spray, U.S. Capitol Police Sergeant Aquilino Gonell told CNN in 2021. The rioters also used more deadly force, by way of firearms, knives, stolen police shields, stun guns, fire extinguishers, and even hand-to-hand combat, which sent more than a dozen Capitol Police officers to the hospital.

And despite Kennedy’s insistence that Trump “urged” peace, the former president also ignored pleas from his children and aides to call off the mob, even as thousands of his supporters chanted “Kill them all” while hunting down former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence.

But those details are, apparently, inconsequential to Kennedy, who suggested that prosecuting those who broke the law was tantamount to “harsh treatment” that he would be willing to investigate by way of special counsel if elected president.

“Both establishment parties are using J6 to pour fuel on the fire of America’s divisions,” Kennedy wrote. “Each side claims that a victory by their opponents means the end of democracy. Then, anything is justified to stop them. We run the risk of destroying democracy in order to save it.”

But conservative strategists say this kind of rhetoric is exactly where Democrats should double down. On Thursday, a former senior adviser to President George W. Bush attacked Trump’s own language on the issue, suggesting that the GOP presidential nominee’s staunch defense of the “sons a bitches” should disqualify him from the presidency.

“If [Democrats] were smart, they’d take the January 6 and go hard at it,” Karl Rove told MSNBC. “And they would say, ‘He wants to pardon these people who attacked our Capitol.’ I worked in that building as a young man. To me, the Congress of the United States is one of the great examples of the strength of our democracy and a jewel of the Constitution.”

The Department of Labor released its first-quarter report for jobs in the United States on Friday, and the results were much higher than expected, with nearly 303,000 jobs created. Good news for the country, right? Well, not according to the Fox Business Channel.

In a panel discussion about the report, host Maria Bartiromo wondered aloud if the numbers were too good for cutting interest rates.

And then other members of the panel, such as economist Joseph A. LaVorgna and Steve Moore, a former Trump economic adviser, tried to downplay the numbers by mentioning the growth in government jobs, as well as government spending.

To top it all off, the panel even found a way to credit Donald Trump in a roundabout way, wondering “if maybe the market is pricing in a little bit, and employers too, the idea that maybe we’re going to get a new president in November,” Moore said.

For much of Joe Biden’s presidency, his administration has been fighting an uphill battle trying to win over voters on the status of the economy, which conservative outlets like the Fox Business Channel certainly haven’t helped. These latest jobs numbers are further proof that Biden has been better for the economy than Trump, no matter how many conservative media talking heads try to pretend otherwise.

At around 10:23 a.m. Friday morning, a magnitude-4.8 earthquake rattled the Northeastern United States from Maine to Virginia, including wide swaths of New Jersey and New York City.

But perhaps more surprising than the earthquake was the precise location of the epicenter: Tewskbury, New Jersey, less than six miles from Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

And soon, the internet was all shaken up. Some commenters pointed out that Donald Trump’s late first wife, Ivana, was buried at the club in July 2022.

It gets weirder: One poster even discovered that Chubb Insurance, which backed Trump’s bond in his defamation case, has an executive office in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, also within a six-mile radius of the epicenter and the golf club. Alina Habba, one of Trump’s attorneys, also has offices nearby.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene saw religious and political significance behind the earthquake.

There’s no word on what she thinks of Trump being so closely tied to the epicenter.

Representative Jamie Raskin’s office slammed House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer on Friday, demanding that he explain why the leaders of the impeachment probe are failing to share evidence with other members of the committee.

Two weeks ago, Comer and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan accused the CIA of obstructing a criminal investigation by “intervening” in an interview with Hunter Biden’s attorney, Kevin Morris, conducted by the Department of Justice—but according to Raskin, the two lawmakers are refusing to share details.

“Your March 21 letter looks like yet another episode in the Committee’s gullible campaign to amplify the vacuous claims of shadowy Trump World figures and foreign disinformation and propaganda operators,” Raskin wrote in a letter obtained by The New Republic.

What’s more, “you have completely ignored my staff’s requests to be allowed to review the information that you say prompted your letter and upon which your letter is putatively and entirely based. This refusal to share Committee material with the Minority creates the unavoidable implication that this information—like so many self-collapsing precursor tips in this Sisyphean quest for a scandal—cannot withstand even the most cursory scrutiny by the Committee’s Democratic Members,” Raskin said, arguing that the claims “directly collide” with the testimony of an Internal Revenue Service special agent and Morris himself, both of whom said the attorney cooperated with authorities.

But Comer’s troublingly opaque accusation earned more suspicion when Russian state media scooped up the claim—the second such instance of Russian intelligence involving itself with the GOP’s impeachment inquiry.

Raskin noted that the “perfectly punctual and unquestioning” article published in Sputnik, a Russian-owned outlet, included statements supporting the dying impeachment inquiry from “two discredited Trump World figures”—Rudy Giuliani associate Bradley Birkenfeld and former psychiatrist and Fox News contributor Keith Ablow.

“One can only regard with amazement how quickly Sputnik identified these Trump World commentators to support this new story!” Raskin said.

Comer, meanwhile, has already admitted that the impeachment was a dud. Last week, the Oversight chair confessed that criminal referrals were the most accountability that the meritless, wayward probe was going to achieve. That is, of course, a far cry from its original goal, which was to remove Joe Biden from office.

“It’s clear that Democrats will choose their party over their country and the truth at every turn. They should be ashamed of themselves,” Comer wrote in a fundraising email in March. “That’s why I am preparing criminal referrals as the culmination of my investigation.”

So far, Republicans have failed to provide any witnesses or concrete evidence that prove criminal wrongdoing by the president. The committee’s former star witness, Alexander Smirnov, served as the singular source for claims that Biden had profited millions off of his son’s connection to Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. But that angle, which House Republicans had believed was their best bet at nabbing Biden, completely blew up in their face in February when Smirnov was indicted by the Department of Justice for lying to the FBI. Since then, Smirnov has reportedly admitted to law enforcement that top Russian intelligence officials were involved in the smear campaign against the sitting president.

Meanwhile, all of the other witnesses that Republicans have called, claiming that their testimony will blow the case wide open, have instead debunked every single accusation against the Biden family.

With social media, location services, tracking cookies, and all kinds of personal identifiers on the internet these days, it can be hard to protect your privacy. But you’d think a national security professional would know better. As it turns out, one of Israel’s top spy chiefs does not.

Yossi Sariel has accidentally revealed himself as the commander of Israel’s Unit 8200, one of the most sensitive roles in the country’s military, heading up a powerful surveillance agency. He left his identity exposed online thanks to publishing a book on Amazon, The Guardian reported.

When publishing the book, Sariel accidentally tied it to a private Google account in his name. The Google account came with a unique ID, as well as links to calendar profiles and maps.

In its report, The Guardian was able to confirm with multiple sources that Sariel wrote The Human Machine Team, which is about the use of artificial intelligence in military operations. Sariel had published the book using the pen name “Brigadier General YS.”

The book, released in 2021, discusses the A.I. systems currently in use by the Israel Defense Forces in their brutal war in Gaza. The system was described in November by one former intelligence officer as creating a “mass assassination factory,” and a more recent report detailed a lack of oversight and lax protections against casualties.

It’s more bad news of late for Unit 8200, which has been compared to Britain’s GCHQ and America’s National Security Agency. The organization was criticized for failing to predict and thwart Hamas’s October 7 attacks on southern Israel, which killed nearly 1,200 Israelis and led to 240 hostages being taken. Since then, Israel has conducted a full-scale massacre of Palestinians in Gaza, killing more than 33,000 people, including 13,000 children, and has come under recent criticism for its bombing of a World Central Kitchen convoy that killed seven aid workers.

A rare, 4.8 magnitude earthquake struck New Jersey on Friday, rattling denizens all the way from the Garden State to Massachusetts. But shortly after the tremors settled, New Yorkers had just one thing on their minds: What the hell was Mayor Eric Adams going to say about this?

“The first thing I thought of was how scary it is that Eric Adams is the Mayor while there was an earthquake. Because if we need that man to put together a plan or a response or anything we are all doomed,” wrote PodSavethePeople host DeRay Mckesson.

Other New Yorkers used the opportunity to rag on their mayor for his reliance on hiring more cops as a supposed answer to all of the city’s problems.

“Eric Adams about to send 500,000 cops to the earth’s core,” posted Maysles Documentary Center’s guest programmer, Kazembe Balagun.

“Eric Adams sending 1,000,000 more cops to the subway stations to deal with this earthquake as we speak,” wrote comedian Otto Fernandez.

Or for his tangential and repetitive speeches that have recently turned to using the same proverbial crutch of comparing the city to … pretty much anywhere else that’s suffering.

“Eric Adams is like New York City is the San Andreas Fault of America,” wrote Politico’s Jeff Coltin.

“Stowing myself for what our insane mayor will say about the earthquake,” posted journalist Rebecca Fishbein. “Eric Adams: ‘That’s what I love about New York. You wake up every day and a new small business could open or the magic crystals underneath us could get angry and shake the whole city.’”

Or for his reported nightlife habit.

“Eric Adams still at the club, thought the earthquake was heavy bass,” wrote entertainment editor Marlow Stern.

In actuality, the city issued a delayed response, notifying New Yorkers that little damage had occurred inside the city during the historic geological event.

“Our preliminary reports do not indicate major life safety or infrastructure issues from the earthquake. We are performing thorough inspections of critical areas,” Adams posted to his personal account more than an hour after the quake occurred, warning New Yorkers about the effects of aftershocks—after the period in which they’re most likely to happen ended.

At his Wisconsin rally on Tuesday, Donald Trump taunted President Joe Biden with an empty lectern on stage, claiming he’s been “trying to get him to debate.” But his allies don’t seem to have a very good idea of what Trump could actually attack him on.

In a Newsmax interview on Thursday, Trump’s daughter-in-law and co-chair of the Republican National Committee, Lara Trump, decided the best way to conjure Biden for another one-on-one with Trump would be to levy such a wildly vague accusation that she said … pretty much nothing.

“Joe Biden needs to be asked multiple questions about a whole host of different things going on in this country and around the world. He has a lot of answers to give the American people,” Trump said on Newsmax Thursday. “I can only assume he doesn’t have the answers to the questions that he will be asked.”

Donald Trump has so far refused to participate in any debates this election cycle. In fact, he often tried to upstage Republican primary debates with counterprogramming of his own.

Trump hand-picked Lara Trump and former North Carolina GOP Chairman Michael Whatley to replace former RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel last month. The pair have proven the final nail in the coffin for a GOP MAGA makeover.

And their help comes at a critical juncture for the Republican presidential nominee, who is struggling to pay for a legal comeuppance that so far includes more than half a billion dollars in judgments and mountains of cash for his four upcoming criminal trials.