Many from the first batch he brought over ended up going home from what I read. The US was too violent for them.

More: The donation, which came through a Reynolds subsidiary and brings to $8 million the total donated by the subsidiary to MAGA Inc., the Trump-backed super PAC, was revealed in a campaign finance report filed Wednesday night.

The donation came on April 30.

Two days later, a top executive at Reynolds and two lobbyists who represent the company had lunch with Mr. Trump at his golf club in Jupiter, Fla. Also attending were two executives from Altria, another tobacco company.

At the lunch, the tobacco industry representatives expressed dissatisfaction with the way the Food and Drug Administration was regulating the industry, as The New York Times reported last week.

Mr. Trump interrupted the conversation to call Dr. Marty Makary, the F.D.A. commissioner.

When Mr. Makary did not answer, the president dialed Dr. Makary's boss, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and another top health official, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The president complained to the men about the F.D.A.'s regulation of e-cigarettes, according to three people briefed on the meeting who were not authorized to discuss it.

Less than one week later, the F.D.A. issued new guidance that could pave the way for major tobacco companies to begin selling flavored vapes and to snare a chunk of the $6 billion e-cigarette market away from illegal Chinese competitors.

More: Among those who must comply with Bates' order are White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the National Security Council, Council of Economic Advisers and employees working within the Executive Office of the President. Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance are not covered by the judge's directive. The injunction takes effect at 9 a.m. on May 26.

The decision stems from a memorandum opinion issued by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel last month that claimed the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional because it exceeds Congress' power. The office said Mr. Trump therefore didn't need to comply with it.

Two historical and government oversight groups, the American Historical Association and American Oversight, as well as the Freedom of the Press Foundation, sued to invalidate the Justice Department's opinion. They asked the judge to order White House officials to comply with the Presidential Records Act and preserve records.

In his decision granting that request for relief, the judge wrote that the Presidential Records Act is "likely constitutional," splitting from the Justice Department's determination.

"To adopt the government's position that the Act is unconstitutional would disable Congress and future Presidents from reflecting on experience, in defiance of the very words engraved on the National Archives Building in Washington: 'What is past is prologue,'" Bates wrote. "And while the presidency is a singularly important institution, that gravity does not free it from modest constraint. Quite the opposite. Each branch of government derives its authority from the trust placed in it by the People, and Congress has validly determined that this Act helps to maintain that trust by shining some light on the activities of the President and his aides."

The judge noted that there has not been another Watergate-level scandal since President Richard Nixon, which "suggests that the sunshine disinfectant of the Records Act is working as intended."

"It is not for this Court, [the Office of Legal Counsel], or the White House to second guess Congress's lawful determination " made pursuant to at least two different enumerated powers " that citizens ought eventually to have access to these records of presidential activities carried out in their name," Bates wrote.

That's nice and all but it'll never get past the House. MAGA Mike probably won't even let it get a vote.

Tillis is such a disappointment. He's been a senator from my state for 11 years+ now and spent all but the last few months or so rubber stamping Republican extremism. He could have voted no on confirming Hegseth and saved us a lot of trouble but he lacked the spine.

Does the Navy not wear all their ribbons on their service uniform? Dude has fewer ribbons as an admiral than I had as a corporal.

Expansion of the surveillance state.

Yeah. So he didn't "drop" the case. He "settled" it. (Ordered the DOJ to pay him)

Yeah they weren't reporting the settlement was actually happening when I first posted the article.

More: The dismissal came on the heels of controversy over reports that the Department of Justice was negotiating a settlement with the president that could see the federal government pay $1.7 billion toward a fund to compensate allies of Trump who allege wrongful treatment by the Biden administration.

Democratic members of Congress said that would be a "slush fund."

CNBC has asked the DOJ if Trump's dismissal of the suit is being made in conjunction with a settlement by the government of his claims outside of court.

The court filing on Monday said Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and The Trump Organization were voluntarily dismissing the lawsuit against the IRS "with prejudice."

"With prejudice" means the plaintiffs can not renew the same claims in another civil complaint.

The notice of dismissal came two days before a deadline set by U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Williams for the DOJ and Trump's attorneys to answer whether a "case and controversy exists in this matter so as to establish the Court's jurisdiction."

Williams' question suggested that because Trump is suing "entities whose decisions are subject to his direction," there might not be enough actual adversity between the parties to satisfy a constitutional requirement that federal courts only adjudicate cases or controversies.

The filing on Monday said Trump's dismissal means "no judicial analysis is appropriate, and any "subsequent order purporting to dismiss all claims' . . . [would be] a nullity."

#3,

Don't believe it.

Why bother with good policies that help Americans when you can gerrymander your way to victory? -Republicans

More: Technically, officially, Mr. Hegseth's $1.5 trillion was a budget request, and it had thousands of pages of figures and line items to go with it. But what's even more astonishing than its size is that it wasn't really a budget, not in the way you or I would think of it.

The word "budget" ordinarily implies picking among options, living within your means. Earlier military budgets, even the most gigantic ones, made trade-offs " canceled weapons programs, deferred maintenance, smaller fighting forces, to name a few. Mr. Hegseth's plan avoids those choices almost entirely.

It would funnel more money to the traditional military contractors that Mr. Hegseth previously called out for feasting on a wasteful, bloated system. It would bankroll President Trump's weirdly retro military wish list. On top of all that, Mr. Hegseth has asked Congress for $350 billion that would come with far less oversight or accountability than the rest of the sum. And that's before the bill for the Iran war comes due; the Pentagon estimates it has cost $29 billion so far, up from an estimate of $25 billion a few weeks ago.

"They're just doing an all-of-the-above approach," says Todd Harrison, a military budget expert at the traditionally right-of-center American Enterprise Institute, so that they "don't have to make difficult choices."

Mr. Hegseth's team says it needs flexibility in order to keep up with the head-snapping pace of change in technology but promises the budget will be "fiscally responsible." Angus King, the usually hawkish independent senator from Maine, said that a quarter of the budget was "essentially a slush fund." It's a giant blank check with "Trust me" penciled in. So let me ask you: How much do you trust Pete Hegseth?

"we would do it in our politics the same way we do it in our church structure," he told me recently.

Religion is evil.

If only they had been warned. Repeatedly.

Good read. Trump's DOJ will just ignore this though.

#9, I'd agree completely if the Clinton years weren't after Reagan. You can't ignore the success of his fiscal policy, his administration had us in the black and GWB et al. screwed that all up.

Reagan and his policies were terrible for our country but we had a balanced budget not long after his and GHWB's disastrous presidencies. We were cheated out it of by SCOTUS's coronation of GWB.

While I do agree the 70s were peak America, I think it's more correct to say the decline started in earnest in GWB's administration. Say what you want about Bill Clinton, but he had us on the right path before SCOTUS appointed Jr and he screwed it all up.

#3, How many hundreds of percent is that in Trump math?

During a "60 Minutes" interview Sunday, Gov. Jeff Landry (R) was pressed about what would happen to the roughly 45,000 ballots that were cast prior to the high court's decision.

"This country has held elections during the Civil War, during two world wars, elections still went on," correspondent Cecilia Vega said.

"We'll have an election, and we're actually gonna have an election on election day," Landry responded.

"But voting was already happening," Vega said, cutting Landry off. "As we sit here right now, more than 45,000 ballots have been returned. What happens to those?"

"Oh, those ballots are discarded," Landry said. "And those people will vote again in November."

Vega seemed to take issue with the cavalierness of the governor's response.

"You say that like it's not a big deal," she said.

"Well, it's not a big deal," Landry responded. "It's not my fault. If anyone has a grievance, take it to the United States Supreme Court."

More: China increasingly casts itself not as a fading civilization trying to catch up to the West but as a superpower poised to surpass it. Chinese nationalists and state-linked commentators say they have Mr. Trump to thank. America under his rule, they say, validates Mr. Xi's worldview centered on "the rise of the East and decline of the West."

For decades, many Chinese viewed the United States with a mix of admiration, envy and resentment. America represented wealth, technological sophistication and institutional confidence. Even critics of Washington who reviled the American system often assumed that it worked.

Mr. Trump's ascent and his volatile second term shattered that image.

In January, a nationalistic Beijing think tank affiliated with Renmin University published a triumphant report about Mr. Trump's first year back in office. The report argued that his tariffs, attacks on allies, anti-immigration policies and assaults on the American political establishment had inadvertently strengthened China while weakening the United States. Its title: "Thank Trump."

The report called Mr. Trump an "accelerator of American political decay," with the United States sliding toward polarization, institutional dysfunction and even "Latin American-style instability." His hostility toward China, the authors argued, was a "reverse booster" that unified the country and helped bring about its strategic self-reliance.

"At this turning point in history," the authors wrote, "what we hear is the heavy and haunting toll of an empire's evening bell."

Such language, once confined largely to nationalist corners of the Chinese internet, has increasingly entered mainstream political discourse.

More: The consumer price index rose at a seasonally adjusted 0.6% for the month, putting the one-year pace at 3.8%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday. The monthly rate was as forecast, but the annual rate was 0.1 percentage point above the Dow Jones consensus.

Excluding food and energy, core CPI increased 0.4% and 2.8% respectively, keeping inflation well above the Federal Reserve's 2% goal.

The annual headline inflation rate was the highest since May 2023 and was up half a percentage point from March. Core inflation rose 0.2 percentage point annually.