​The FBI moving to interview six Democratic military veterans over a video about refusing illegal orders says far more about presidential power than the video ever did.The lawmakers at the center of this standoff—many of them former military or intelligence professionals—say the bureau’s outreach began after President Trump publicly declared they should be jailed. Their message in the video was straightforward: troops swear an oath to the Constitution, not to any individual, and illegal orders must be rejected. Five of the six confirmed Tuesday that federal agents now want a chat. That’s not exactly subtle.In a joint statement, Reps. Jason Crow, Maggie Goodlander, Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan didn’t mince words: “President Trump is using the FBI as a tool to intimidate and harass members of Congress. No amount of intimidation or harassment will ever stop us from doing our jobs and honoring our Constitution.” Sen. Elissa Slotkin went further, noting that the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division was involved—because apparently reminding service members of basic military law now raises national-security alarms.Slotkin, a former CIA analyst and Pentagon official, explained why they recorded the video in the first place: “The President directing the FBI to target us is exactly why we made this video.” Meanwhile, the Pentagon has launched its own review into Sen. Mark Kelly, the only participant still subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Secretary Pete Hegseth wants that wrapped by Dec. 10, just in case this moment wasn’t tense enough already.What really lit the fuse? The lawmakers spoke directly to active-duty troops as National Guard forces were being sent into Democratic-led cities and as the administration ramped up lethal maritime operations in international waters—operations the U.N. has warned constitute extrajudicial killings. Trump responded with his trademark clarity, accusing the six of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL” and demanding they be “ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL.”Slotkin says the backlash has been immediate and frightening: waves of death threats, a bomb threat at her home, and harassment directed at her family. She’s not backing down. And even some Republicans—Sen. Lisa Murkowski among them—are calling the investigations “reckless and flat-out wrong.” When the list of “enemies of the state” grows to include lawmakers reminding troops not to break the law, you have to wonder who’s next.Source: UPIEditor: This whole saga is a reminder that when leaders start calling basic constitutional guidance “sedition,” the problem isn’t the guidance—it’s the leader.A leaked U.S.-backed peace proposal that once mirrored key Kremlin demands has now forced Western leaders into an urgent diplomatic sprint to regain control of the process.At a meeting of the “coalition of the willing” on Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer—joined by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio—agreed to create a joint task force aimed at accelerating security guarantees for Ukraine. It’s a needed counterweight at a moment when Moscow is pressing for legal recognition of all the territory it has seized, and Kyiv is refusing to surrender its sovereignty in exchange for a ceasefire dressed up as “peace.”Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has made the core obstacle painfully clear: Putin wants Ukraine to legitimize Russia’s grab of Donetsk, Luhansk, Crimea, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Moscow insists on a full Ukrainian withdrawal from the east—demands that no Ukrainian government could ever sell to its citizens. After leaked reporting on the initial peace draft, which included Ukraine agreeing not to join NATO, ceding territory it still holds and even shrinking its military, it became obvious why European leaders balked. Those concessions read like they were lifted straight from Putin’s wish list.Rubio, meanwhile, has been scrambling to put political distance between Washington and the first draft. Before talks in Geneva, he publicly emphasized that the document was indeed “authored by the U.S.” after senators claimed he’d suggested it was effectively a Russian proposal. Zelensky later declared the revised version “the right approach” after pushing for changes that removed the worst giveaways. And Trump—who had originally urged Ukraine to accept the plan quickly—now claims the original draft “was just a map…a concept,” as though he hadn’t been trying to speed-run diplomacy.Adding more fuel to the fire, Bloomberg published a transcript of an October call allegedly between Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and Putin adviser Yuri Ushakov. Witkoff reportedly discussed how Moscow should engage Trump and floated the land-for-peace notion again. Asked about it, Trump dismissed the whole thing as “a very standard form of negotiations.” Of course he did.Europe and Ukraine may have managed to claw the peace process back from the edge, but the episode underscores a persistent danger: if you let Moscow shape the opening terms, you’ll spend the rest of the negotiation undoing the damage.Source: My Daily Grind NewsEditor: Amazing how fast a “concept” becomes a crisis when someone leaks it—especially when the concept looks like it was drafted in Moscow’s guesthouse—because it was!The Trump administration can’t seem to say what its new health-care plan is—only that whatever you’ve heard is probably wrong.On Monday, the White House insisted that President Trump is still hammering out a proposal to address the coming spike in Obamacare premiums, even as officials dodged basic questions about timing and content. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt delivered the message with her trademark shrug: reports about the plan may “not always be true,” and the president will reveal the real version whenever he feels like it. Translation: the leak wasn’t flattering, so now everyone’s pretending it was just a rumor.The muddle comes after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said over the weekend that an announcement would land this week. But when asked whether that was still the plan, Leavitt waved it off. Meanwhile, Capitol Hill Republicans—already split over anything resembling an Obamacare patch—have pushed back hard enough that Trump reportedly shelved a Monday rollout. Health-care stocks noticed, pulling back once investors realized the White House was improvising again.The leaked details, for what they’re worth, showed a plan that would extend the enhanced ACA subsidies created under Biden, while adding income caps and requiring every enrollee to pay at least a small monthly premium. Those Biden-era subsidies expire at the end of the year, threatening higher costs for more than 20 million Americans. A normal administration would’ve led with that urgency instead of vibes-based messaging, but here we are.Leavitt insisted the president is “very much involved,” which is usually Washington-speak for “don’t expect coherence.” Congress is already bracing for another fight: the last government shutdown stemmed from Democrats demanding a subsidy extension in exchange for funding the government. Lawmakers eventually kicked the can with a promise to hold a vote next month—the same vote Trump’s undefined plan is now crashing into.The bottom line is simple: millions of Americans face higher premiums, Wall Street is jittery, and the White House is arguing with its own shadow over whether the proposal even exists. Hard to fix the system when you can’t describe the fix.Source: Bloomberg via Yahoo FinanceEditor: Nothing inspires confidence in a major health-care overhaul like an administration insisting its own leaked plan is imaginary until further notice. “It’ll be here in two weeks. It’ll be bigly.”The National Park Service just rolled out “America-first entry fee policies,” and they’re exactly what they sound like—higher costs for foreigners, status quo for U.S. residents.Beginning Jan. 1, international visitors to 11 of the country’s most iconic national parks—Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite and more—will pay an extra $100 at the gate. Their annual parks pass will also jump to $250, while Americans still pay $80. This is the latest in a string of moves following a Trump executive order demanding steeper entry fees for non-U.S. tourists, and the messaging isn’t subtle: the White House announced the change with a post ending in “AMERICANS FIRST.”Interior Secretary Doug Burgum framed the policy as simple fairness, saying U.S. taxpayers deserve affordable access while foreign tourists “contribute their fair share.” It’s a tidy political slogan, but here’s the real backdrop: massive budget cuts, staff reductions and lost revenue from the recent shutdown have left the Park Service broke, battered and desperate for cash. Instead of fixing any of that, the administration has decided to plug the hole by squeezing the people least likely to vote in a U.S. election.Advocates are already bristling. Kati Schmidt of the National Parks Conservation Association said there’s “a lot to unpack,” which is Washington-speak for “this is going to be a mess.” One big wrinkle: those new “resident-only patriotic fee-free days.” Next year, even Veterans Day—once a universal free-entry day—will be for U.S. residents only. So much for the earlier Interior promise that public lands should be accessible to “everyone, no matter their zip code.”International tourism has long been a major revenue engine for the parks. Yellowstone says 15% of its 2024 visitors came from abroad, down from 30% in 2018. Nationally, the U.S. Travel Association counted more than 14 million foreign visitors in 2018 alone. Shrinking that audience with punitive fees isn’t just bad hospitality—it’s bad economics. But the administration seems convinced visitors will keep coming no matter how many toll booths it sets up.Whether this cash grab actually helps fund maintenance and upgrades, as Interior claims, or simply papers over deeper structural problems remains to be seen. But if the goal was to send a message, it’s loud and clear: welcome to America’s national parks—bring your passport and your wallet.Source: NPREditor: Charging foreigners extra to see the Grand Canyon won’t fix the Park Service’s budget problems, but it will absolutely make America look like it’s running a souvenir-stand foreign policy.Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem personally authorized the continued transfer of detained Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison—even after a federal judge ordered the removals halted.A new Justice Department filing reveals that back in March, Noem allowed two flights carrying migrants designated under the Alien Enemies Act to proceed despite U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s temporary freeze. The filing claims she acted after receiving legal advice from DOJ and DHS officials and insists her decision “was lawful and was consistent with a reasonable interpretation of the Court’s order.” That’s one way to phrase “We kept going anyway.”Boasberg has now resumed his criminal contempt inquiry to determine who in the Trump administration ignored—or simply steamrolled—his order. The probe had been paused for months due to an emergency stay from an appeals court, but the judge made clear last week that he intends to “find out what happened on that day.” He won’t have to dig far: DOJ has now put Noem’s name squarely in the middle of it.The migrants in question were flown to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison, a facility infamous for its abusive conditions and mass incarceration tactics. They ended up spending months there before being released as part of a prisoner swap with Venezuela, according to CNN. That international footnote doesn’t make Washington’s decision-making look any cleaner.The Justice Department’s filing goes out of its way to argue that the legal advice Noem received “did not violate the Court’s order, much less constitute contempt.” That’s a bold defense—especially when the whole controversy centers on flights that took off after the judge said stop. When an administration starts parsing the word “before” like it’s arguing a parking ticket, you know the situation is ugly.Noem hasn’t commented publicly yet, but the filing suggests the administration plans to argue technical compliance rather than accountability. It’s a familiar pattern: treat court orders like speed bumps, move quickly, and hope the facts look blurrier months later. Judge Boasberg, to his credit, doesn’t seem inclined to squint.Source: NewsNationEditor: Amazing—migrants get shipped to a mega-prison, and the government’s defense boils down to “Well, technically the plane door was already shut.” That’s not a legal argument; it’s an excuse you’d expect from a teenager—which is 100 percent appropriate, given Kristi Noem’s persistent adolescent behavior.A Washington Post columnist is warning that Trump’s economic agenda has pushed the cost-of-living crisis into “perilous” territory—and that the danger was entirely avoidable.Ramesh Ponnuru argues that Trump’s tariffs and broader economic strategy have boxed the country into a corner, describing his approach as “a maze of paradoxes” that only worsens inflation instead of easing it. The idea is simple enough: the economy in late 2024 was strong enough that policy choices could have steered the country away from entrenched inflation. Instead, they deepened it. Or as Ponnuru put it, “this danger could have been avoided.”According to Ponnuru, voters aren’t looking for slow price growth—they want prices to fall back to pre-inflation levels. That goal, he notes, is “practically unattainable,” because falling overall prices usually signal real economic distress. And Trump’s strategy doesn’t solve that bind; it exacerbates it. Chief economist Gregory Daco, speaking to the Wall Street Journal, warned that some regions may suffer “permanent damage,” particularly small businesses that rely on day-to-day spending that evaporated during the shutdown.The shutdown’s ripple effects still haven’t cleared. Federal employees delaying purchases may catch up eventually, but bars, restaurants and services that depend on foot traffic may never recoup their losses. As much as 20% of the economic hit “will be permanent,” Daco estimates. That’s not the kind of recovery any administration wants to defend heading into an election cycle, but it’s the one this administration created.Inside the GOP, Trump’s insistence on tariffs—and his promise to tame inflation through brute-force trade policy—has already caused fractures. And the columnist’s warning that the administration’s goals are “unattainable” won’t help. When expectations of high inflation “become more entrenched—harder to roll back,” as Ponnuru writes, the choices become sharper: either accept 3% as the new inflation floor or risk a recession to bring prices down.The hard truth is that no amount of political branding can mask an economic strategy that isn’t delivering affordability. Americans feel the crunch every day—and the data increasingly agrees with them.Source: RawStoryEditor: If your economic plan requires both impossible price rollbacks and magical tariff math, it’s not a plan—it’s a wish list stapled to a bullhorn. But what’s new—that’s the entirety of the Trump Regime’s “policies”. 

FBI power plays, shaky Ukraine diplomacy, a muddled health-care fix, “America-first’’ park fees, Noem’s migrant flights, and Trump’s perilous economy collide. All in a day's “work” in Trumplandia!

FBI Pushes to Question Democratic Veterans After Oath-to-Constitution Video

The FBI moving to interview six Democratic military veterans over a video about refusing illegal orders says far more about presidential power than the video ever did.

A leaked U.S.-backed peace proposal that once mirrored key Kremlin demands has now forced Western leaders into an urgent diplomatic sprint to regain control of the process.

At a meeting of the “coalition of the willing” on Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer—joined by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio—agreed to create a joint task force aimed at accelerating security guarantees for Ukraine. It’s a needed counterweight at a moment when Moscow is pressing for legal recognition of all the territory it has seized, and Kyiv is refusing to surrender its sovereignty in exchange for a ceasefire dressed up as “peace.”

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has made the core obstacle painfully clear: Putin wants Ukraine to legitimize Russia’s grab of Donetsk, Luhansk, Crimea, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Moscow insists on a full Ukrainian withdrawal from the east—demands that no Ukrainian government could ever sell to its citizens. After leaked reporting on the initial peace draft, which included Ukraine agreeing not to join NATO, ceding territory it still holds and even shrinking its military, it became obvious why European leaders balked. Those concessions read like they were lifted straight from Putin’s wish list.

Rubio, meanwhile, has been scrambling to put political distance between Washington and the first draft. Before talks in Geneva, he publicly emphasized that the document was indeed “authored by the U.S.” after senators claimed he’d suggested it was effectively a Russian proposal. Zelensky later declared the revised version “the right approach” after pushing for changes that removed the worst giveaways. And Trump—who had originally urged Ukraine to accept the plan quickly—now claims the original draft “was just a map…a concept,” as though he hadn’t been trying to speed-run diplomacy.

Adding more fuel to the fire, Bloomberg published a transcript of an October call allegedly between Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and Putin adviser Yuri Ushakov. Witkoff reportedly discussed how Moscow should engage Trump and floated the land-for-peace notion again. Asked about it, Trump dismissed the whole thing as “a very standard form of negotiations.” Of course he did.

Europe and Ukraine may have managed to claw the peace process back from the edge, but the episode underscores a persistent danger: if you let Moscow shape the opening terms, you’ll spend the rest of the negotiation undoing the damage.

Source: My Daily Grind News

Editor: Amazing how fast a “concept” becomes a crisis when someone leaks it—especially when the concept looks like it was drafted in Moscow’s guesthouse—because it was!

White House Scrambles as Trump’s Obamacare Premium Plan Slips Into Confusion

The Trump administration can’t seem to say what its new health-care plan is—only that whatever you’ve heard is probably wrong.

On Monday, the White House insisted that President Trump is still hammering out a proposal to address the coming spike in Obamacare premiums, even as officials dodged basic questions about timing and content. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt delivered the message with her trademark shrug: reports about the plan may “not always be true,” and the president will reveal the real version whenever he feels like it. Translation: the leak wasn’t flattering, so now everyone’s pretending it was just a rumor.

The muddle comes after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said over the weekend that an announcement would land this week. But when asked whether that was still the plan, Leavitt waved it off. Meanwhile, Capitol Hill Republicans—already split over anything resembling an Obamacare patch—have pushed back hard enough that Trump reportedly shelved a Monday rollout. Health-care stocks noticed, pulling back once investors realized the White House was improvising again.

The leaked details, for what they’re worth, showed a plan that would extend the enhanced ACA subsidies created under Biden, while adding income caps and requiring every enrollee to pay at least a small monthly premium. Those Biden-era subsidies expire at the end of the year, threatening higher costs for more than 20 million Americans. A normal administration would’ve led with that urgency instead of vibes-based messaging, but here we are.

Leavitt insisted the president is “very much involved,” which is usually Washington-speak for “don’t expect coherence.” Congress is already bracing for another fight: the last government shutdown stemmed from Democrats demanding a subsidy extension in exchange for funding the government. Lawmakers eventually kicked the can with a promise to hold a vote next month—the same vote Trump’s undefined plan is now crashing into.

The bottom line is simple: millions of Americans face higher premiums, Wall Street is jittery, and the White House is arguing with its own shadow over whether the proposal even exists. Hard to fix the system when you can’t describe the fix.

Source: Bloomberg via Yahoo Finance

Editor: Nothing inspires confidence in a major health-care overhaul like an administration insisting its own leaked plan is imaginary until further notice. “It’ll be here in two weeks. It’ll be bigly.”

National Parks to Charge Foreign Tourists $100 More While Reserving Free Days for Americans Only

The National Park Service just rolled out “America-first entry fee policies,” and they’re exactly what they sound like—higher costs for foreigners, status quo for U.S. residents.

Beginning Jan. 1, international visitors to 11 of the country’s most iconic national parks—Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite and more—will pay an extra $100 at the gate. Their annual parks pass will also jump to $250, while Americans still pay $80. This is the latest in a string of moves following a Trump executive order demanding steeper entry fees for non-U.S. tourists, and the messaging isn’t subtle: the White House announced the change with a post ending in “AMERICANS FIRST.”

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum framed the policy as simple fairness, saying U.S. taxpayers deserve affordable access while foreign tourists “contribute their fair share.” It’s a tidy political slogan, but here’s the real backdrop: massive budget cuts, staff reductions and lost revenue from the recent shutdown have left the Park Service broke, battered and desperate for cash. Instead of fixing any of that, the administration has decided to plug the hole by squeezing the people least likely to vote in a U.S. election.

Advocates are already bristling. Kati Schmidt of the National Parks Conservation Association said there’s “a lot to unpack,” which is Washington-speak for “this is going to be a mess.” One big wrinkle: those new “resident-only patriotic fee-free days.” Next year, even Veterans Day—once a universal free-entry day—will be for U.S. residents only. So much for the earlier Interior promise that public lands should be accessible to “everyone, no matter their zip code.”

International tourism has long been a major revenue engine for the parks. Yellowstone says 15% of its 2024 visitors came from abroad, down from 30% in 2018. Nationally, the U.S. Travel Association counted more than 14 million foreign visitors in 2018 alone. Shrinking that audience with punitive fees isn’t just bad hospitality—it’s bad economics. But the administration seems convinced visitors will keep coming no matter how many toll booths it sets up.

Whether this cash grab actually helps fund maintenance and upgrades, as Interior claims, or simply papers over deeper structural problems remains to be seen. But if the goal was to send a message, it’s loud and clear: welcome to America’s national parks—bring your passport and your wallet.

Source: NPR

Editor: Charging foreigners extra to see the Grand Canyon won’t fix the Park Service’s budget problems, but it will absolutely make America look like it’s running a souvenir-stand foreign policy.

DOJ Says Kristi Noem Approved Migrant Transfers to El Salvador Mega-Prison Despite Court Order

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem personally authorized the continued transfer of detained Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison—even after a federal judge ordered the removals halted.

A new Justice Department filing reveals that back in March, Noem allowed two flights carrying migrants designated under the Alien Enemies Act to proceed despite U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s temporary freeze. The filing claims she acted after receiving legal advice from DOJ and DHS officials and insists her decision “was lawful and was consistent with a reasonable interpretation of the Court’s order.” That’s one way to phrase “We kept going anyway.”

Boasberg has now resumed his criminal contempt inquiry to determine who in the Trump administration ignored—or simply steamrolled—his order. The probe had been paused for months due to an emergency stay from an appeals court, but the judge made clear last week that he intends to “find out what happened on that day.” He won’t have to dig far: DOJ has now put Noem’s name squarely in the middle of it.

The migrants in question were flown to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison, a facility infamous for its abusive conditions and mass incarceration tactics. They ended up spending months there before being released as part of a prisoner swap with Venezuela, according to CNN. That international footnote doesn’t make Washington’s decision-making look any cleaner.

The Justice Department’s filing goes out of its way to argue that the legal advice Noem received “did not violate the Court’s order, much less constitute contempt.” That’s a bold defense—especially when the whole controversy centers on flights that took off after the judge said stop. When an administration starts parsing the word “before” like it’s arguing a parking ticket, you know the situation is ugly.

Noem hasn’t commented publicly yet, but the filing suggests the administration plans to argue technical compliance rather than accountability. It’s a familiar pattern: treat court orders like speed bumps, move quickly, and hope the facts look blurrier months later. Judge Boasberg, to his credit, doesn’t seem inclined to squint.

Source: NewsNation

Editor: Amazing—migrants get shipped to a mega-prison, and the government’s defense boils down to “Well, technically the plane door was already shut.” That’s not a legal argument; it’s an excuse you’d expect from a teenager—which is 100 percent appropriate, given Kristi Noem’s persistent adolescent behavior.

Trump’s Economic Plan Seen as “Perilous” as Inflation Expectations Harden and Shutdown Damage Lingers

A Washington Post columnist is warning that Trump’s economic agenda has pushed the cost-of-living crisis into “perilous” territory—and that the danger was entirely avoidable.

Ramesh Ponnuru argues that Trump’s tariffs and broader economic strategy have boxed the country into a corner, describing his approach as “a maze of paradoxes” that only worsens inflation instead of easing it. The idea is simple enough: the economy in late 2024 was strong enough that policy choices could have steered the country away from entrenched inflation. Instead, they deepened it. Or as Ponnuru put it, “this danger could have been avoided.”

According to Ponnuru, voters aren’t looking for slow price growth—they want prices to fall back to pre-inflation levels. That goal, he notes, is “practically unattainable,” because falling overall prices usually signal real economic distress. And Trump’s strategy doesn’t solve that bind; it exacerbates it. Chief economist Gregory Daco, speaking to the Wall Street Journal, warned that some regions may suffer “permanent damage,” particularly small businesses that rely on day-to-day spending that evaporated during the shutdown.

The shutdown’s ripple effects still haven’t cleared. Federal employees delaying purchases may catch up eventually, but bars, restaurants and services that depend on foot traffic may never recoup their losses. As much as 20% of the economic hit “will be permanent,” Daco estimates. That’s not the kind of recovery any administration wants to defend heading into an election cycle, but it’s the one this administration created.

Inside the GOP, Trump’s insistence on tariffs—and his promise to tame inflation through brute-force trade policy—has already caused fractures. And the columnist’s warning that the administration’s goals are “unattainable” won’t help. When expectations of high inflation “become more entrenched—harder to roll back,” as Ponnuru writes, the choices become sharper: either accept 3% as the new inflation floor or risk a recession to bring prices down.

The hard truth is that no amount of political branding can mask an economic strategy that isn’t delivering affordability. Americans feel the crunch every day—and the data increasingly agrees with them.

Source: RawStory

Editor: If your economic plan requires both impossible price rollbacks and magical tariff math, it’s not a plan—it’s a wish list stapled to a bullhorn. But what’s new—that’s the entirety of the Trump Regime’s “policies”.

 ​Read More