The GOP’s majority in the House is only 5 votes, 217 to 212. Thanks to a significant handful of GOP representatives taking days off, the House has had a Democratic majority on numerous occasions. So far, the Democrats haven’t exploited this, but it is now on their radar, as politicsususa, a progressive content marketer, has noticed as well.
02b U.S. Politics – Progressive
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CBS News failed to correct a false claim that Karmelo Anthony, the black teenager who was convicted of murdering white teen Austin Metcalf at a track meet in Frisco, Texas, was convicted by an “all-white jury” during an interview with Anthony’s family.
While speaking with the outlet after the verdict, Anthony’s father, Andrew Anthony, stated that what stood out to him was “the all-white jury.”
Court records and reporting indicate that the final 12-person jury included no black members. The final panel of 18 (including six alternates) had greater diversity, however, with courtroom reporters noting minorities such as Asian and Indian individuals among the jurors and alternates.
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Chuck Schumer has served as a punching bag for angry Democrats for more than a year — taking flak on everything from his 2026 recruiting to his handling of government funding talks.
But with about five months until the midterm elections, the Senate minority leader is gently starting to punch back — pointing out how some of his bets are paying off as his party moves within striking distance of taking back the majority in November.
“There’s no victory lap to take in June,” he said in an interview in his Capitol office suite.
Reality star Spencer Pratt out of L.A. mayor’s race as progressive Nithya Raman advances– www.cbc.ca
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The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
Progressive city council member Nithya Raman has advanced to a November runoff against Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, setting up an unexpected matchup between two Democrats and former political allies to run the struggling city of nearly four million people.
The outcome means Spencer Pratt, a Republican and former reality television personality from The Hills, is out of the running. His candidacy had drawn national attention because of his celebrity and willingness to challenge liberal governance in a city dominated by Democrats, but the buzz did not translate into enough votes to make the runoff.
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On Sunday, CNN’s State of the Union hosted Representative Veronica Escobar (D-TX) and seemed to have either forgotten about or ignored the defamation lawsuit that befell ABC and Good Morning America/This Week co-host George Stephanopoulos when he falsely accused President Trump of rape. Escobar did just that.
Thankfully, Congresswoman Nancy Mace (R-SC), who was there when Stephanopoulos committed his expensive faux pas, was not having any of it.
Co-host Dana Bash began by playing a clip of Platner responding to “new accusations from former girlfriends” alleging “unsettling behavior.” Since both Platner and Escobar are in the same political party, Bash asked Escobar for her reaction to the accusations.
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David Flippo, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who earned President Donald Trump’s support, won the GOP primary to replace retiring Nevada Rep. Mark Amodei.
The race in Nevada’s 2nd District was a proxy war between Trump and prominent state Republicans, many of whom backed former state Sen. James Settelmeyer, including Amodei and GOP Gov. Joe Lombardo. Flippo ended up emerging victorious on Wednesday from a crowded, 13-person Republican field.
The victory continues Trump’s 2026 hot streak in GOP primary endorsements, marred only by a hiccup in last week’s Iowa gubernatorial primary. Trump backed Flippo in a Truth Social post in late May, less than two weeks before Election Day.
Flippo campaigned as a hardliner on immigration and transgender issues, and he slammed Settelmeyer as a “woke liberal” in ads. But Settelmeyer’s opponents took issue with Flippo, a longtime Las Vegas resident who only recently purchased property in Reno, attempting to run the state’s lone safely Republican district.
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Congressional Republicans returned to the Capitol on Monday, and CNN’s Manu Raju has been tracking them down to ask if they have any proof to support Trump’s claim that the primary election in California was rigged.
When Raju asked the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson said:
I, look, I don’t… Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream, it is impossible to prove, but I think everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here, and that’s a concern. We need people to believe in the integrity of our election system. It is critical to maintain a constitutional republic. We’re gonna keep working to pass the Save America Act because it requires, as you know, proof of citizenship and a photo ID to vote.
That, those are also 90%-plus issues in public opinion, and 70% of Democrats understand that’s, that’s necessary. We have to have free and fair elections-
Johnson seemed to be claiming that there is no proof that the California primary election was rigged because Democrats in the state are “diabolical.”
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Social Security’s trustees said in their annual report released Tuesday that the New Deal program will be unable to pay out full benefits by the end of 2032—a quarter earlier than projected last year—in the absence of congressional action, a finding that advocates said underscores the destructive impact of President Donald Trump’s policy agenda and the need to make the rich finally pay their fair share into the system.
“This is the first Social Security trustees report that begins to take Donald Trump’s second term policies into account: A tax bill that largely benefited the wealthy, economy-wrecking tariffs, a needless war with Iran, and hostility to immigrants,” said Nancy Altman, the president of Social Security Works. “All of these have reduced the amount of money going into Social Security, weakening the system’s finances.”
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Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) endorsed South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson (R) in the Palmetto State’s GOP gubernatorial primary after she lost the initial primary Tuesday. “I want you to know that I’m going to endorse Alan Wilson for governor,” Mace told supporters after polls closed. “I want a law-and-order governor, and that law-and-order governor is going to…
An Elon University/YouGov America 250 National Survey showed 55% of Democrats would rather live in another country, 38% of Independents also chose to live in another country, while only 10% chose another country.
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Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) on Sunday said Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Bill Pulte is “not qualified” to permanently serve as Director of National Intelligence pointing to his lack of experience in the realm of national security. “He’s not qualified for the long-term position, that’s been clear on this. He has no national security...
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At least four of them lost reelection bids after anti-abortion groups and key party allies backed their challengers instead. Two others — a state representative from North Dakota and a state senator from Tennessee — face contested primaries.
If Eric Murphy loses his primary election on June 9, he believes he already knows one reason why.
Last year, the North Dakota state representative, a Republican, tried to expand the window of pregnancy in which women could access abortion. The state legislature had banned it for almost everyone from the moment of conception.
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Rep. Jay Obernolte has an aggressive timeline for getting his new bipartisan Artificial Intelligence proposal taken up in the House — and a path for getting a congressional hearing on a major part of the plan.
In an interview Monday night, the California Republican said he hoped to turn the draft framework he unveiled last Thursday into multiple bills, with the first expected to be introduced in the coming weeks. Each bill would be considered by its committee of jurisdiction.
“One of the challenges that we have is that the bill crosses so many different policy committee jurisdictions,” he said. “So I think we’ve got to divide it up into different titles that are in the jurisdiction of various policy committees and hear those individually.”
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Candidate Nithya Raman in the Los Angeles mayoral race came in third place on election night, June 2, so far behind second place finisher Spencer Platt that she essentially conceded the election in a tearful farewell. And then, miracle of miracle, over the next few days as more and more mail-in ballots kept rolling in, Raman suddenly surged in the votes, often exceeding first place Karen Bass in some counts and doubling the percentage of her election day returns to the extent that by Sunday she surpassed Pratt in the vote, thus apparently landing a spot in the November runoff elections.
Oh, and for those of you who expressed skepticism about this electoral miracle in the midst of a questionable vote count of the mass ballot mailings in which voter identification requirements were at best laughable, Politico has written off your concerns as “baseless.”
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Shortly before abruptly ending his “Meet the Press” interview, President Donald Trump wrongly pointed to California’s ballot counting pace as evidence of “a rigged election.”
When Trump said the state was still counting ballots days after the June 2 election, host Kristen Welker said, “That’s how they count the votes in California.”
Trump said: “Do you know why they’re doing that? Because they’re cheating on the election.”
Welker asked Trump for his evidence that the election was rigged.
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One year ago, Los Angeles was stormed by federal immigration agents as part of President Donald Trump’s pursuit to meet a lofty deportation goal. And the repercussions of that invasion are still felt.
At the time, despite the city’s protections for undocumented immigrants, videos quickly began dispersing online last year of agents across Los Angeles raiding Home Depot parking lots, food carts, and more. Many Angelenos witnessed federal agents ushering men and women into vans on the side of the street.
In response, locals flooded the streets to protest what was happening to immigrant families in their own backyard.
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President Donald Trump stormed out of a taped interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” after being pressed on his controversial “weaponization” fund and on evidence of his persistent claims of election fraud.
Trump sat with NBC’s Kristen Welker for a taped interview on a Wisconsin farm that touched on the Iran war, potential interest rate hikes and the $1.776 billion “weaponization” fund that could financially compensate convicted violent rioters who attacked police officers on Jan. 6, 2021. Thousands of people stormed the Capitol that day, attempting to disrupt the certification of former President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
The president said he would like to see the weaponization fund proceed despite setbacks that prompted acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to say it was permanently halted.
“If it was up to me, I’d pay them the kind of money that they deserve,” Trump said of the fund. “People have been destroyed. Lives have been destroyed. Many suicides, think of it.” The president has repeatedly made such claims without providing evidence.
Trump Battles ‘Crooked’ Welker Before Bolting From Wild NBC Interview– www.newsbusters.org
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Last Friday, President Trump made time during his trip to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin for an extended sit-down interview with NBC’s Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker, but was derailed several times by pounding rain on the roof of the facility, heated exchanges, and a premature ending as Trump abruptly walked out because he was tired of dealing with such a “crooked” network.
Welker pressed Trump on the war with Iran, and asked if he broke his promise of no new wars, which grew a bit confrontational.
TRUMP: No. I had to stop a country, very powerful, very dangerous country, from having a nuclear weapon because they’d use it. They’d blow up the world. They’d blow up the Middle East. They’d blow up Israel. They’d come here. They’d blow up Europe. They’re nuts, okay?…It’s America first. I’m doing our country a service.
(….)
WELKER: So, you’re saying you didn’t break your promise. And yet, Mr. President, in your first term, you held to that promise, and it was so fundamental to who you were as a candidate, to a first-term president. What changed? Because you insisted “no new wars.”
TRUMP: Well, well. First of all, I didn’t guarantee no war. Why would I have built the strongest military in the world? I built our military. I inherited a terrible military. We had no equipment. We had nothing. I built a tremendous military. Biden gave a lot of it away, but it’s still a relatively small portion compared to what I built.
WELKER: But you said it over and over again, Mr. President.
TRUMP: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Why would I build a military — Now, I didn’t want to use this, but I’m doing you and everybody else a big favor….I know you, you’re a big liberal, a big progressive.
WELKER: No!
TRUMP: But we were —
WELKER: I’m just a journalist.
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US President Donald Trump has sparked alarm as a physical therapist makes worrying claims about his health after “mumbling” on live TV. The concerns were raised after an appearance in the Oval Office, where the 79-year-old addressed reporters during an event focused on environmental policy and “clean coal”.
A healthcare professional who specialises in geriatrics has since shared a detailed analysis of the footage, claiming Mr Trump displayed what he described as “stroke-like” symptoms. However, there is no official evidence that the President has suffered a stroke, and the White House has dismissed speculation about his health.
Adam James, a physical therapist who posts online under the name @epistemiccrisis, analysed footage from the June 4 event and shared his views on Instagram.
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On Friday evening, the US vice-president, JD Vance, blamed Henry Nowak’s murder on the “mass invasion of migrants” and said the “only response” was “righteous anger”, prompting a rebuke from Downing Street which hit out at “people trying to interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division”.
The UK justice secretary and deputy prime minister, David Lammy, revealed to Sky News’ Trevor Phillips that he spoke to Vance yesterday following his intervention. Lammy, who is rumoured to be good friends with the vice-president, said:
I spoke to the vice president yesterday, and I wanted to emphasise a number of things.
The first is that our democratic process is working well. This young man has been convicted. There is an investigation into the police by the Independent Police (Conduct)Authority.
There is an investigation into Hampshire Police by the inspectorate. The (attorney general) is looking at the sentencing in relation to this. The national police chiefs are looking at the guidance in relation to this.
The second thing was I disagree with him. This has got nothing to do with mass migration. This young man was a Brit. Let’s be clear about that. And I said, ‘look, Mr vice president, you’re wrong about this’.
And it’s also the case that actually murder is coming down in the United Kingdom. So we had an agreeable conversation. But we disagree.
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Scott Pelley spent 37 years at CBS News, only to be fired last week after coming into conflict with Free Press founder Bari Weiss, who took control of the network last October. In a New York Times sit-down interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro published Sunday, Pelley said Weiss personally interfered with the network’s coverage of the ICE officer who killed Renée Good in Minneapolis.
Pelley told Garcia-Navarro that, hours before an episode of 60 Minutes on the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti was set to air, Weiss sent an email to his boss asking for changes to the episode. “Two of the things in the email include, can we make the protesters look more violent? Now, I’m paraphrasing. I don’t have the quote, but that’s what was communicated to me. And the other thing, Renee Good’s car. You need to describe her as driving toward the officer.”
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Rep. Madeleine Dean tore apart the unconscionable number of redacted files in the Epstein files. She proved that Trump lied about being on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane while sycophant acting AG Todd Blanche looked on.
DEAN: When will you comply with the law and release all of the files?
TODD: As I said to you when we spoke before, we have complied with the law.
DEAN: There are 3 million more documents, and you know what you said to me? They’re all duplicative, and they include another guy named Epstein.
Blanche Dubois claimed he never said it, but you know he did.
After the Chairman interrupted, Dean let Blanche have it.
What is true is that the president has lied about being on Epstein’s plane, and the unredacted files prove that.
There’s a lot in here. I am shocked at this.
There’s also this set of files in the file. This is investigation into the potential co-conspirators of Jeffrey Epstein. I almost used up all the blank ink in the hallway, because it’s all covered up. It’s all covered up.
The American people are not stupid.
They know that when members of Congress have to go in and actually unredact, try to find the truth for these victims, something is corrupt.
Something is corrosive. You were paid $10 million to represent the president. You hang a 30-foot banner of the president’s menacing face over the entrance to the Department of Justice.
You said that if you were terminated or not moved forward as attorney general, you would say to the president, I love you, sir.
So I have one question for you.
Is your obligation to the victims and survivors of Epstein’s heinous crimes and all his perpetrators, or is your first obligation to the president of the United States?
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Scott Pelley, one of the most well-known journalists on the CBS News roster, revealed that the pro-Trump management now leading the network has pressured him to inject bias and lies in news stories. On Tuesday night, Pelley was fired from CBS.
In a statement released via social media, Pelley said the current management of CBS is casting the “legend” of CBS News aside, “apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.”
Pelley said management has “instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story.” He added that he was “told to include assertions that are unverified.”
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Senate Republicans launched debate on their party-line immigration enforcement bill Wednesday — a major step after nearly two weeks of delay — but they are facing lingering internal concerns over a proposed “Anti-Weaponization Fund” that could still scuttle the legislation.
Senators voted 53-46 on party lines to advance the bill, which would provide roughly $70 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other Department of Homeland Security agencies.
An updated bill released Wednesday omits $1 billion in Secret Service security funding that had been included in an earlier draft and could have been used for President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project. POLITICO first reported the decision to drop the funding last month.
It also strips out Justice Department funding unrelated to the controversial settlement fund — a move that GOP leaders made in hopes of making it harder to include language restricting or eliminating the fund. Top Republicans have warned that adding such language could threaten to tank the overall bill.
“Right now, the goal is to get the base bill across the finish line, and so hopefully all of our members who have amendment ideas will … keep in mind the need that we’ve got to keep the bill together and make sure we’ve got 50 votes for it at the end,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said.