SINCERETALK

The New York Times reports President Donald Trump personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads praising him and his presidency, “setting in motion a $20 million contract that used funds from the Department of Homeland Security, according to people familiar with the matter.” “Mr. Trump was eager to see the laudatory ads on the air and told Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to come up with the money from within the government,” said government sources speaking with the Times. They added that Mark Paoletta, the budget office’s counsel, and Will Scharf, the White House counsel, both said it would be legal to use D.H.S. funds. And the president and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, both spoke with Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, about the ads. The ads have hit expensive time slots on Fox News, CNN and MS Now, with football games on Fox and with national newscasts on CBS, ABC and NBC, includin...

Former Stars and Stripes publisher Max Lederer says the Pentagon outright directed him to fire journalists for ‘insubordination’—for daring to use their freedom of speech to report truth. "I was just told, 'do what you're instructed and serve these notices,'" Lederer told an audience during a CSPAN interview, hosted by Military Veterans in Journalism. Stars and Stripes, a US military news publication funded in part by the government, is intended to have editorial independence, but the Washington Post reported in January that new hire applicants were now being asked what they will do in order to forward Donald Trump's "policy priorities," under the second Trump administration. “How would you advance the President’s Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role?" the question reads. "Identify one or two relevant Executive Orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired....

Empower Chief Investment Strategist Marta Norton said she was getting nervous over the amount of debt some of the nation’s richest companies were incurring as a result of rampant investment in AI — the product that is largely driving President Donald Trump’s 2026 stock market growth. Fox Business host Liz Claman, of “The Claman Countdown,” initiated the discussion by bringing up the amount of debt companies are shouldering in their race for AI buildout. “What about that hyper debt scale issuance? They’re shouldering so much debt, and not just the hyperscalers. You know, in June, Nvidia had gone to the market with $25 billion in borrowing and even the best-in-class ones that do have a lot of cash on the balance sheet are very exposed. Do you see any negatives there?” “That is something that I do think we need to watch,” confided Norton. “They’re building a whole new world and they’ve eaten up a lot of their cash flow, which was enviable just a few years ago, and now it’s negligible. ...

A recent study says Americans’ support for political violence fell in 2026, but MAGA supporters remain the most likely to justify it. PsyPost covered the research , which was published as a preprint on SocArXiv and not yet peer-reviewed. But early nationally surveys suggests that American public support for political violence decreased heading into the 2026 midterm elections, contrary to popular fears. “The findings indicate that while partisan tensions remain high, about three-quarters of U.S. adults say political violence is never justified in general, and very few say they would be willing to commit it,” reports Psypost. But those numbers do not necessarily hold true for the MAGA political enclave, say researchers. When researchers examined differences among political groups, they found that MAGA Republicans and MAGA supporters who do not identify as Republicans tended to report higher levels of justification for political violence compared to Democrats and non-MAGA Republicans. ...

President Donald Trump has made at least $1 billion so far promoting his cryptocurrency , a coin that was sold primarily to his own supporters. Those same supporters tended to lose all of their investments as a result of that business venture , which critics describe as a scam, and even Trump backers like right-wing podcaster Joe Rogan are starting to turn on the president as he continues to deregulate the crypto industry and personally profit. Speaking to former President Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser on Thursday, MS NOW host Nicolle Wallace pointed to these developments to make an important point — namely, that Trump actively hates his own supporters. "What's amazing to me, Ben, as someone who's covered Trump most days for a decade — and that's on me — is to see how much he hates his voters," Wallace told Rhodes. "I always thought that Steve Bannon was, for his political views and his contribution to the degradation of our politics, o...

President Donald Trump’s national ad buy featuring himself immediately drew critics over laws against using taxpayer money to fund political advertising. But government sources now tell NBC News that Trump did not even alert administrators that their budgets would be footing the bill. “They didn’t sign off on it,” an official said of CBP leaders. “They were thinking, ‘There’s no way they’re going to try to take the funding from CBP for those ads.’” “Senior leaders at Customs and Border Protection were cut out of the decision to use their agency’s funds for a national ad buy featuring … Trump and learned about it from a news report, according to a Department of Homeland Security official with direct knowledge of the decision-making process,” said NBC reporter Julia Ainsley. CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott and his senior advisers “were not included in several meetings where the idea of spending the agency’s money on the ads was discussed,” the official said. And while CBP leaders were t...

President Donald Trump has long relied on the support of farmers — and yet one of his new policies has quietly sabotaged their economic well-being. "President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday directing the secretary of agriculture and secretary of health and human services to begin exploring options for adding warning labels to food that contain 'significant amounts' of alpha-galactose, a sugar molecule found in most mammals," The New Republic's Edith Olmsted wrote on Thursday . "You may have heard of that substance before because of alpha-gal syndrome, an increasingly common and potentially life-threatening food allergy to red meat that can develop from a tick bite." Olmsted added, "The Trump administration’s new rule was framed as one way of cracking down on tick-borne illnesses—but it may end up hurting the meat industry in the process. The new rule could potentially result in meat processors being forced to slap an allergy alert o...