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- ‘I’d Like To Report a Known Fraudster’: Congresswoman Pounces on JD Vanceâ...
AP Photo/Matt Rourke Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) jumped on comments by Vice President JD Vance, who decried politicians who “steal” from Americans. Vance made the comments during a speech on Monday, shortly after the Department of Justice announced it is establishing a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who were supposedly unfairly targeted by the DOJ under former President Joe Biden. The fund is being created in exchange for President Donald Trump dropping his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, where in 2019 and 2020, a contractor leaked the president’s tax returns. The $1.8 billion has not been appropriated by Congress, and critics worry that at least some of it will be paid to people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Indeed, a lawyer representing more than 400 Jan. 6 defendants has said his clients will seek payments. Speaking in Kansas City, Missouri on Monday, Vance reiterated the administration’s refrain about people who defraud the government. “There’s a simple principle I have,” the vice president said. “If you are committing fraud against the American people, you oughta go to prison. If you are a public official not fighting against fraud, you oughta have your money taken away because you should not be able to steal from all of you and give it to fraudsters.” In a post on X, Stansbury pounced. “Hard agree! I’d like to report a known fraudster who stole over $1.7 Billion from federal taxpayers today,” she wrote. Hard agree! I’d like to report a known fraudster who stole over $1.7 Billion from federal taxpayers today… https://t.co/OPXbUKNNi5 — Rep. Melanie Stansbury (@Rep_Stansbury) May 19, 2026 The Trump administration has touted a wide-ranging fraud scandal in Minnesota involving Somali Americans. In a stunning rant in January, Trump said the “only thing” that Somalis are good at is “pirating ships.” Despite the president’s pledge to target fraudsters, he has granted clemency to more than 70 allies who were convicted in fraud cases.The post ‘I’d Like To Report a Known Fraudster’: Congresswoman Pounces on JD Vance’s Comments About Politicians Who ‘Steal From All of You’ first appeared on Mediaite. [TheTopNews] Read More.58 mins ago - Newspaper Deletes Column Comparing the Oklahoma City Thunder to Israel
Screenshot via The Oklahoman on X. It would be reasonable to expect The Oklahoman, a daily newspaper headquartered in Oklahoma City, to cover the Oklahoma City Thunder’s quest for a repeat NBA championship. A now-deleted op-ed comparing the basketball team to Israel was a bit more surprising. The Thunder won their first NBA title in 2025 since the team was sold, relocated from Seattle, and renamed, and are currently battling the San Antonio Spurs for the Western Conference title. (The Thunder lost Game 1 shortly before publication.) On Monday, the Thunder’s hometown paper published a “curious comparison” between the team and the state of Israel in an op-ed written by guest columnist Eitan Reshef, reported Sean Keeley at Awful Announcing. “Always find the local angle, we suppose,” wrote Keeley. According to Keeley’s report and screenshots he shared, the op-ed was headlined, “Like Thunder, Israel is an underdog that has become hated” and shared with an image of a basketball bearing the design of the Israeli flag, white with blue stripes and a Star of David. Screenshot via X. “The op-ed went viral on social media and not, perhaps, in the way the author intended (or maybe exactly how the author intended, who knows),” Keeley added. “It was pulled down from The Oklahoman’s website shortly thereafter.” The link to the op-ed on The Oklahoman’s website now has a 404 “page not found” error, and the Internet Archive did not manage to capture it before it was deleted, but several websites that syndicate the newspaper’s content still have it live, including MSN. The Oklahoman did not comment on Reshef’s column or why it was deleted. According to the op-ed as it was syndicated at MSN.com, Reshef, the author, is “a native Oklahoman and “a Chicago-based entrepreneur, investor and former advertising agency CEO.” “As both a fiercely proud Oklahoman and a Jew,” wrote Reshef, “the parallels between the Thunder and the nation of Israel are difficult to ignore. Neither was supposed to become what it is.” Reshef goes on to argue he has found “something strangely familiar abrew between the online keyboard warriors and the voices of punditry as they respond to the continued dominance of the Oklahoma City Thunder,” noting the team’s newbie status in the NBA and the resentment that the young team’s sudden success had invoked. “The greater the Thunder’s success becomes, the more critics seem determined to diminish it… [TheTopNews] Read More.1 hour ago - Congressman Says Trump Aims to Fund Own ‘Private Militia’
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said President Donald Trump aims to fund his own “private militia” with a $1.8 billion fund for his allies. This new fund, announced by the Justice Department on Monday, is designed to compensate people who claim to have been targeted by former President Joe Biden‘s Justice Department and Democrats as victims of “weaponization and lawfare.” Democrats have slammed the move as a taxpayer-backed slush fund clearly created for a target audience: Trump’s allies. The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” is part of a settlement Trump and the Justice Department reached, with Trump agreeing to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS for his leaked tax returns. MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow asked Raskin on Monday night, “Is there anything else like this in U.S. history?” “Nothing like it,” he said. “It’s thoroughly illegal and unconstitutional. Of course, Congress never voted to set up a $1.776 billion political slush fund for the president, and we never would pass such a thing. So it’s a complete violation of Congressional appropriations powers. Moreover, even if Congress wanted to do such a thing, which we never would, it would be unconstitutional, because the 14th Amendment says that money cannot be spent out of the federal fisc for the purposes of repaying people for insurrection or rebellion against the United States.” Raskin called Trump’s entire administration “corruption, highway robbery every day,” slamming The Board of Peace for which Trump is “chairman for life” with “unchecked financial control.” He also blasted the new Anti-Weaponization Fund as an “outrageous expropriation of the tax dollars of the people for political purposes to give to Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, rioters and insurrectionists, the people who beat up police officers” before adding, “It’s about funding or pre-funding Donald Trump’s private militia.” The money for Trump’s new fund is set to come from a “special, unlimited account available to the Justice Department for settling lawsuits,” and the department will have “the authority to make monetary settlements without needing approval from Congress,” according to The New York Times. “That is for actual judgments, verdicts, damages levied by a court against the United States or an honest, good faith settlement of claims that would have won in court,” Raskin told Maddow of the “judgement fund” as he continued, “And of course, like everything else, we’ve never had a problem with this up until Donald Trump, because he sees a pot of money and the dollar… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 hours ago - Trump Is Reportedly Trying To Badger Senate Leader Into Firing Official Who Nixe...
AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib President Donald Trump is so incensed about funding for his ballroom project being dropped from the budget bill that he is trying to badger Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) into firing the Senate Parliamentarian, according to several media reports. The ballroom has been a pet project for the president, who boasted last September that it would be “absolutely magnificent construction” and “one of the best anywhere in the world,” but it has sparked significant controversy, chiefly Trump’s broken promise that the construction “won’t interfere with the current building” and would be “near [the East Wing] but not touching it.” Very soon after Trump said that, the façade was demolished, then an additional major section, and eventually the East Wing was demolished in its entirety. The president also initially touted projects as being funded by private donors, but the specifics remained murky, and the endeavor has raised ethical questions about conflicts of interest. After the attempted shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Trump and other Republicans pushed for taxpayer funding for the ballroom. The budget reconciliation bill, which is being pushed forward on a party-line vote by the GOP majority, includes $1 billion in funding for the Secret Service, with several hundred million dedicated to “modernization” and security upgrades to the ballroom project. However, on Saturday, this plan hit a snag when the Senate Parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, made a determination that the budget rules blocked this $1 billion from being included in this bill. It’s rare for the parliamentarian to attract any media attention. It’s a nonpartisan gig responsible for keeping track of the Senate’s myriad and arcane rules, and issuing determinations on their interpretation and application. On Saturday, MacDonough ruled that Trump’s ballroom budget ran afoul of the “Byrd Rule,” which says non-budget items cannot pass with a simple majority. Republicans do not have enough of a majority in the Senate to beat a filibuster. Senate Republicans said they would try again and revise the provision to comply with the Byrd Rule. That is not enough to satisfy the president, who is pushing for MacDonough to be fired, and called Thune about it, according to a report by Burgess Everett and Shelby Talcott at Semafor. Taylor Giorno and Al Weaver at NOTUS confirmed the Semafor report with their own sources, citing three people familiar with the request. Trump called Thune “to express his frustrations with [MacDonough’s]… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 hours ago - Hannity Tells Embattled Kash Patel, ‘Obviously, You’re Doing an Incredible J...Fox News host Sean Hannity praised FBI Director Kash Patel on Monday night, telling him, “Obviously, you’re doing an incredible job.” Patel has come under scrutiny after reports about his alleged excessive drinking and use of the FBI’s jet. Last month, The Atlantic published an explosive report saying Patel had thought President Donald Trump fired him after he believed he had been locked out of an FBI computer system. That report also stated that “members of his security detail had difficulty waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated, according to information supplied to Justice Department and White House officials.” In one instance, members of the detail called for “breaching equipment” because Patel was unavailable behind locked doors. The report came on the heels of a controversial viral video of Patel chugging beer in the U.S. men’s hockey team’s locker room after winning the gold medal. Patel is suing The Atlantic for $250 million. The director appeared on Monday’s Hannity, just hours after two gunmen opened fire at a mosque in San Diego, killing three. Police say the gunmen, two teenagers, later killed themselves. The host briefly mentioned the mosque shooting during his show, but when interviewing Patel, he asked why churches and synagogues are being attacked. “Director, I know a lot of pastors, I know a lot of rabbis around the country,” Hannity said. “Without exception, they have all upped their security level to the highest levels they’ve ever had to before. Why does it appear that churches and synagogues are being targeted like never before?” “Because these people are pure evil,” Patel replied. “These people wish to target Americans based on their faith because they are intolerant of the way America operates. They are jealous of the American democracy that we have here, and they choose to be cowards and target us from afar based on our institutions and our houses of worship and our faith. And that’s what separates America from the rest of the world.” “Americans deserve law and order and safety and security,” Hannity replied. “Obviously, you’re doing an incredible job. The numbers do speak for themselves.” Last week, it was reported that Patel had gone on a “VIP snorkel” excursion at the USS Arizona, which sank during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Watch above via Fox News.The post Hannity Tells Embattled Kash Patel, ‘Obviously, You’re Doing an Incredible Job’ first appeared… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 hours ago
- Paramount Considering Yanking Some Control From Bari Weiss to Give To ‘More Ex...
Daniel Paik via AP Paramount seems to be running out of patience with how Bari Weiss is running CBS News, with the parent company considering taking some control away from her to hand over to a “more experienced” television executive, according to a report by Puck’s Dylan Byers. Skydance CEO and founder David Ellison was reportedly courting Weiss for a key role even before his company’s merger with Paramount was completed, and quickly bought her media company and named her CBS News editor-in-chief. Weiss had written for The New York Times for years before launching The Free Press, but had no broadcast journalism experience. Many observers have characterized Weiss’ tenure so far as rocky. SCOOP: Paramount leadership has had informal discussions about changing Bari Weiss’s mandate at CBS News (and, eventually, CNN) in ways that would give her less control over TV. New tonight at @PuckNews: https://t.co/SRvm2zX4iD — Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) May 19, 2026 Weiss has thus far “endured her role as media punching bag with relative aplomb,” Byers wrote, and has had the support of Ellison and other top Paramount execs. “But there are signs that the dynamics are starting to shift,” Byers added, sharing conversations he had had about people on Paramount’s senior leadership team having “informal discussions about changing Bari’s mandate at CBS News—and, eventually, CNN—in ways that would give her less control over the linear product.” Instead, wrote Byers, “Paramount would look to bring in an executive who could manage that business.” Nothing has been decided or formalized yet, but “sources with knowledge of the conversations” told Byers that Weiss “would likely cede day-to-day control over Evening News, CBS Mornings, and 60 Minutes to this more experienced, as-yet-unnamed executive, shifting her focus to the news division’s digital growth while maintaining broad editorial influence across all the company’s platforms.” The motivation, reported Byers, is a sense among Paramount’s top brass that Weiss “was given too broad a mandate for someone without previous experience in television, as well as some irritation with the ceaseless barrage of negative press,” and sources inside CBS News “complain[ing] that Bari is drastically overstretched, and lacks the experience and managerial skills necessary to run the network.” Byers commented that it was “entirely unfair to pin this misadventure” of CBS News’ woes totally on Weiss, as the merger created an “unprecedented situation” and Ellison “may have been working through his own… [TheTopNews] Read More.3 hours ago
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