SINCERETALK

On Tuesday President Donald Trump appointed a famous and controversial Harvard theoretical physicist, cosmologist and astronomer to lead a group of scientists to investigate UFOs and whether they pose a national security threat. Dr. Avi Loeb, who led Harvard’s astronomy department until 2020 and is widely respected for his research into black holes, was publicly tapped by the Trump administration on Tuesday, according to a report by the Associated Press . In 2022, Dr. Ethan Siegel , an astrophysicist and science writer who frequently criticized Loeb’s work, told this journalist for Salon that Loeb’s research into a mysterious space object that crashed into the ocean, ‘Oumuamua, was a “travesty.” By contrast, Loeb is very popular among the lay UFO fan community , and more than three dozen scientists co-authored a 2023 paper with him in the scientific publication Journal of Astronomical Instrumentation advocating his recommended methods for learning more about UFOs (unidentified flyi...

Reporters say Republicans are cringing privately when asked their response on President Donald Trump’s effort to upset the November midterms. Semafor reporter Dave Weigel and New York Times reporter Tyler Pager stell MS NOW anchor Katy Tur that Republicans know Trump’s behavior is wrecking their chances in November, but they are powerless to either stop him or distance themselves from him, despite how much damage he does to them in the general election. The problem for Republicans are more centrist voters facing them in the general elections, which are utterly unlike the hyper-conservative minority that delivered them through the Republican primaries. Trump’s most recent example of publicly trashing his own reputation with independent November voters includes his sleepy rejection of the highly popular housing bill, which he has blocked to force a vote on his hyper-partisan SAVE Act , which will impose onerous new restrictions on voters. “I don't know. I think it's so unimpor...

A former assistant United States attorney predicted on Monday that President Donald Trump is going to lose at the Supreme Court when it comes to one of his most important cases. “This all goes back to the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, ratified in 1868 after the end of the Civil War,” CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig told anchor Jake Tapper. “That provision tells us that all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States. Over the past 158 years, we have understood that broadly — in our courts and Congress — to mean if you're born here, you're a citizen regardless of your parents' status.” From there, Honig explained where Trump is attempting to find wording in the text of the Constitution to justify repealing birthright citizenship. “Trump's argument hinges on that one phrase: ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof,’” Honig told Tapper. “What he's saying is it should not apply — the ...

A Republican strategist warned a Fox News host that Iran may try to hurt President Donald Trump during the upcoming midterm elections. “Look, we’re not the only ones who know this. We’re not the only ones paying attention to oil prices,” former President George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove told journalist Paul Gigot on Monday . “Remember, all of these negotiations with Iran need to be completed by the middle of August. The Iranians are not dumb. They know that the fall campaign starts in earnest on Labor Day. I would not be surprised to see them attempt to have an influence on the outcome by creating problems in mid-August, and causing oil prices to rise and uncertainty to grow.” Earlier in the conversation, Rove cited an upcoming poll by The Reagan Institute which found that the American people want the Iran War to result in Iran having limits imposed on its nuclear weapons programs and regime change that is favorable to the United States. Neither of those things have occurred, and alth...

We understand that politics can bring on self-delusion about reality when it flies in the face of ideological goals, but the Supreme Court's purposeful turn away from the racism behind Donald Trump's immigration policies is both absurd and angering. In twin decisions this week, the right-leaning majority on the Court allowed Trump to end "temporary protective status" for Haitians, Syrians and eventually others, including Afghans who helped our war efforts, and to eliminate access to asylum procedures at the border for whomever he chooses. They were bad decisions for a variety of reasons, but what really stung were the arguments offered that simply struck away any racial bias in our immigration policies. Justice Samuel Alito's ruling for the 6-3 majority had to determine legally that race had played no role before removing the humanitarian protections to shield Haitians. His ruling said that Trump's many statements about Haitians were not "overtly racial...

JD Vance said on Friday that the U.S. wins “either way” in negotiations with Iran. “If we make the final deal, then great,” Vance told HBO’s Bill Maher. “If we don’t make the final deal, their nuclear program is still destroyed. They’re still much weaker as a country.” Just hours after Vance’s appearance on HBO, Iran launched attack drones on Bahrain — which hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters, a major logistical base for U.S. military operations. Iran also struck an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, its second attack on a ship since Thursday. So much for Iran being much weaker. Pressed by Maher on whether Iran’s nuclear program has been destroyed, Vance shot back: “What part of it is not destroyed? The thing that you have to destroy is their ability to enrich uranium, which has been destroyed.” In fact, Iran still has a stockpile of 60 percent-enriched uranium, which experts concede could be turned into a nuclear weapon. Vance’s media appearance came two days after he vi...

The Trump Pentagon has been rocked by controversy over a recent spate of firings and blocked promotions , and now, one lawmaker has accused President Donald Trump's defense chief of being motivated by a petty "grudge" as he causes significant damage to the military. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has come under significant fire over the course of his tenure for removing several respected and experienced officers and blocking others from receiving promotions. He most recently took flak for the latter after the already-approved promotions of several Naval officers, most of them being either women or people of color. Critics have put forward various theories for what could be driving this trend, including a desire to punish or remove officers who took part in past diversity initiatives, or a plot to remove non-loyalists who might stand in the way of a 2028 "auto-coup" to keep Trump in power. During a Sunday appearance on CBS News's Face the Nation , Sen. Tim ...

Jimmy Carter’s campaign motto in 1976 was “Why Not the Best!” declaring everywhere he went: “I want to see us once again have a nation that’s as good and honest and decent and truthful and competent and compassionate and filled with love as are the American people.” Dictator Donald Trump wants the opposite and is bringing the worst out of America. Here are a few of his metastasizing initiatives: 1. Championed the worst forms of energy – coal, oil, and gas – and depressing solar energy and wind power with restrictive policies, and even paying ongoing wind project companies nearly a billion dollars in your tax dollars to stop construction! Also, he is using many billions of your tax dollars to subsidize the failing nuclear power companies to build more expensive, unneeded, uninsurable, un-investable (by Wall Street), unsafe, boondoggles while his GOP takes large campaign contributions from fossil fuel and nuclear power corporate welfarists. 2. Encouraged the worst corruption of the Pent...

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth just hijacked more promotions of high-ranking service members, this time blocking career professionals with exemplary records who were on track to become one-star generals and admirals . Not only is Hegseth’s behavior unusual, there is no clear legal authority for what he is doing. Congress entrusted military promotions largely to the respective promotion boards and Secretaries of the Military Departments, not the Secretary of Defense. Although 10 U.S.C. § 629 empowers the President with removal authority, a longstanding executive order limits the Secretary of Defense’s removal authority to grades below colonel or captain, not the general or admiral promotions Hegseth has blocked. The Pentagon’s own regulations restrict grounds for removing an officer from a promotions list to specific circumstances like moral, mental, or professional deficiencies, none of which were present in Hegseth’s removals. It’s obvious that a disproportionate number ...

President Donald Trump's recent speech for America's 250th birthday celebration was riddled with "significant" signs of possible "neurological decline," according to one licensed pathologist , particularly his numerous slurred mispronunciations of certain words and phrases. On Wednesday, Trump delivered a speech at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., as part of the "Great American State Fair" event that has been plagued with controversy in recent weeks . The online discourse after the event was dominated by videos that appeared to show crowds leaving midway through his speech, leading to more speculation about the event's lackluster crowd sizes, but according to one medical professional's observations, Trump's own words indicated that something could be seriously wrong with his cognitive health. Hilary Shae is a licensed speech-language pathologist specializing in concussion recovery, and she has also emerged as a political content ...

MAGA influencer and podcaster Tucker Carlson was happy to laud the hard feelings between President Donald Trump’s digital media manager Alex Bruesewitz and ultra conservative columnist and Fox News pundit Mark Levin on his Friday podcast . In addition to discussions topics about how hard the nation appears to “discriminate” against white people and foreign influences on social media, Bruesewitz and Carlson eventually got around to the topic of Levin, who has criticized Trump’s disastrous invasion of Iran as well as a few other Trump policy disagreements. “Mark Levin hates Trump. He's always hated Trump, has worked against Trump openly for a decade. And then Trump does something that he agrees with and he's [suddenly] the gatekeeper and Trump's best friend,” said Carlson. “Now he hates Trump again and he's attacking Trump. How long does Trump continue to be friends with this guy?” Carlson himself has roundly criticized Trump’s invasion of Iran and warned that the invas...

Dispatch writer Nick Catoggio appears to be feeling more venom than usual. On Friday Catoggio lit into the no-explanations secrecy with which President Donald Trump and his lieutenants conduct business, particularly the quick removal of four-star Gen. Chris Donahue. Donohue was the top Army commander in Europe who led Delta Force in battle against ISIS. As commander of the 82 nd Airborne, Catoggio said he was also famously the last man out of Afghanistan when U.S. troops withdrew in 2021. Before his removal the Atlantic reports he was “leading the service’s effort to take lessons from Ukraine and apply them to future conflict. “Not a man the military would lightly part with, one might think. He must have done something awfully bad for our defense secretary, who famously loves warfightin’ warriors, to send him packing,” said Catoggio. “… Or maybe it simply bugged Hegseth to have someone in the chain of command as universally admired as Donahue is. It’s not just a matter of jealousy ...

Former Republican and current Bulwark podcaster Tim Miller showed no mercy to MAGA podcaster Megyn Kelly after her attack on Haitians this week. “I think you're kind of nice to Megyn Kelly there because what Megyn Kelly is doing is she's being a rancid b——,” Miller said on his Friday afternoon Bulwark podcast with guest host Jane Coaston. “That's what she's doing. I'm sorry but, like, that is all she's doing.” The former NBC daytime talk host took to her SiriusXM “Megyn Kelly Show” and denigrated Haitian immigrants living in the U.S. “And half of you people, more than half, you won't assimilate. We don't want you,” Kelly said. “We don't care if you're offended. Get out. Go home. Go back to f—— Haiti. Sorry. I'm just I'm thinking about our friends in Ohio who've been dealing with these … Haitians for years now. Drunk driving all over their towns and killing people.” “This is the whole cats and dogs thing,” Kelly then added, citing a ...

MS NOW analyst Steve Benen says House Speaker Mike Johnson dropped an unexpectedly corruption-friendly reason for protecting the House’s GOP majority against its near inevitable collapse in the November midterms. “If we lose the midterms, these Democrats will turn every committee of Congress into an investigative body, and they'll go after the president's family, the cabinet, his donors, friends, half of you in this room will be targeted,” Johnson said — and then added out loud that “I run the protection program. We’ll take care of you.” In the final two years of Joe Biden’s presidency, there was a Republican Congress and a Democratic president, said Benen, and Republicans “put aside any legislative ambitions and spent 2023 and 2024 … investigating all sorts of perceived controversies related to the Democratic administration.” But after President Donald Trump returned to the White House, the GOP-led Congress completely switched gears and clanked the Congressional vehicle int...

MAGA is still very much a power player in Republican primaries, but Zeteo reports Trump’s culty foundation is crashing out with the rest of America, particularly voters. The news comes as Fox News published stunning poll results for the Senate race in red-state Ohio with Democrat Sherrod Brown leading GOP incumbent Jon Husted, 53 percent to 45 percent. “In an era of metronomic partisan polarization, that eight-point Democratic margin in Ohio almost defies belief,” said Zeteo writer John Harwood. “But an intra-Republican fracture explains it: Only 4 percent of those aligned with Donald Trump’s MAGA movement backed Brown, but 31 percent of ‘non-MAGA’ Republicans crossed party lines to support the Democratic candidate.” “That snapshot reflects an emerging 2026 picture that does not resemble a familiar face-off between evenly-matched Republican and Democratic two parties,” said Harwood, a former White House correspondent for CNN. “Instead, the midterm elections increasingly pit the MAGA...

RADAR Online confirmed source information from a new book that President Donald Trump likes to wander around the White House gluing goldish bits and gewgaws onto walls — but it doesn’t sound much better the way anonymous White House sources frame it. Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump , a book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, claims Trump has been personally decorating the White House by using a tube of super glue to jam gold ornamentation over the historic building. But RADAR’s sources say Trump’s little glue pen is nothing new. "A source familiar with the White House told Radar the episode reflected Trump's highly personal approach to the presidency rather than an isolated incident,” reports reporter Aaron Tinney. "People around him understand that if he has an idea about how something should look, he's likely to carry it out himself. It has become part of the way the White House operates under this administ...

An MS NOW panel had to warily admit that President Donald Trump has sandblasted his Republican Party so hard against the wall that even Fox News can’t seem to repair the damage. Polls suggest Trump’s popularity is at a career low , and he’s dragging his Republican Party into the pit with him. But there’s more than just polling, said John Heilemann with Puck News. The enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans is also apparent in recent elections. “[D]emocrats are overwhelmingly enthusiastic about voting for non-Republican candidates this November and we have seen this not once, not twice, not in an outlier way, but in a consistent way,” Heilemann told MS NOW anchor Nicole Wallace . “Democrats are showing up and they're showing up in large numbers by the standards of off-year elections and the standards of special elections, and they're not just exceeding [Trump’s margins from 2024] but blowing them out of the water.” “That's not a poll. That is not a focus group. ...