MTG Erupts as Democratic Congresswoman Says Kings Have No Place Here

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene flipped out after her Democratic colleague Representative Melanie Stansbury referred to Donald Trump as a “king” Wednesday.

During a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, Stansbury called out Trump’s actions in his second term, referencing his recent social media post calling himself a king. The New Mexico Democrat compared the president to England’s King George III, who was defeated in the American Revolution to found the United States.

“Let me say this to you, Mr. Trump. Two hundred fifty years ago, the people of this great nation rejected a reckless, abusive king, and we won’t go back,” Stansbury said, while also giving a pep talk to federal workers and others around the world impacted by Trump’s “reckless and heartless and harmful and disgusting cuts.”

Evidently, calling Trump a king crossed a line for committee Chair Greene, who, upon recognizing herself for closing remarks, said, “Threats against the president of the United States will not be tolerated by anyone.”

Last week, Trump posted “LONG LIVE THE KING” in a Truth Social post in which he declared the end of congestion pricing in New York, and Republicans happily went along with it. Perhaps Greene sees Trump as a monarch and sees rejection of that as a threat. Meanwhile, Trump has continued to “joke” about running for a third term as president, showing that he wants to be president for life and in effect be crowned king. That seems like a greater threat to the country than anything Stansbury said.

Donald Trump might as well set up a merch booth in the Oval Office.

The president, accompanied by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, decided to hawk some new MAGA merch near the end of an executive order signing session on Tuesday.

“Gimme those, gimme all of ’em!” Trump said, as Lutnick dutifully grabbed a stack of hats that read “TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING.”

“Look, see that? ‘Trump was right about everything.’ Just came in!” he said, gleaming as he showed the hats to the audience of reporters. “This was sent in by a fan; I said, ‘I think we should make some of them.’ … You want one?” he asked, gesturing to NBC’s Garrett Haake.

“No, I’ll pass for now,” Haake said.

“Are you allowed to take one?”

“Probably not.”

“He’ll consider.… He’s sort of a stiff.”

“Mr. President, I’ll take one!” chimed in Brian Glenn, the chief White House correspondent for conservative outlet Real America’s Voice.

“Brian you’re not a stiff,” Trump told Glenn before tossing a hat to him, frisbee-style. “[Haake] will take other things but not a free hat.”

“Always say yes to the president, always say yes to the president,” Lutnick said with a grin.

An unvaccinated child in west Texas died of measles on Wednesday, marking the first time that someone has died from the viral illness in the U.S. in a decade.

So far, 18 people have been hospitalized for the disease around Lubbock, Texas, where a measles outbreak has infected at least 124 people, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. Most of those infected are children.

The number of hospitalizations is rising, however—Dr. Lara Johnson, a pediatrician and the chief medical officer at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, told NBC News Wednesday that the state’s data was already out of date and that her team had already cared for “around 20” kids with measles so far.

But over in Washington, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seemed relatively unconcerned by the spread of the disease.

“It’s not unusual,” Kennedy said of the contagion, when pressed by reporters. “We have measles outbreaks every year.”

“We are following the measles epidemic every day,” Kennedy said, before suggesting that there was another unreported death. “Mainly we’re told that the Mennonite community—there are two people that have died, but we are watching it, and there are about 20 people hospitalized, mainly for quarantine.”

“Incidentally, there have been four measles outbreaks this year. Last year there were 16,” he added.

The last person to succumb to the disease died in 2015 during a less severe outbreak in Clallam County, Washington state, in which a couple dozen people were infected. Measles was identified as the cause of death for the unidentified woman during an autopsy, which found that she had “several other health conditions and was on medications that contributed to a suppressed immune system,” the Health Department said at the time.

Kennedy’s nonchalant approach to managing the spread of the disease is particularly alarming, as the virulent conspiracy theorist has made millions of dollars off his dangerous anti-vax rhetoric, tying autism rates to the jab. His cash flow has stemmed from anti-vax-related speaking fees, dividends from his vaccine lawsuits, and leading Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy’s anti-vax nonprofit.

Children’s Health Defense—under Kennedy’s stewardship—has had its own questionable history with measles. Preceding a deadly measles outbreak on Samoa in 2019, the nonprofit spread rampant misinformation about the efficacy of vaccines throughout the nation, sending the island’s vaccination rate plummeting from the 60–70 percent range to just 31 percent, according to Mother Jones. That year, the country reported 5,707 cases of measles as well as 83 measles-related deaths, the majority of which were children under the age of 5.

Last week, Trump himself seemed to buy into the already thoroughly debunked vaccines-cause-autism conspiracy, suggesting the Pennsylvania Dutch’s simplistic and unvaccinated lifestyle could be used as a potential model to avoid the disorder.

As a reminder: Since their invention, vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. The medical shots are so effective at preventing illness that they have practically eradicated some of the worst diseases from our collective culture, from rabies to polio and smallpox—a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat for the average, health-conscious individual.

Amid a flurry of backlash against Republicans, Elon Musk desperately sought to temper the mood at Donald Trump’s first Cabinet meeting Wednesday.

“We will make mistakes, we won’t be perfect,” Musk said of the Department of Government Efficiency’s assault on federal spending and waste. Since Trump took office, DOGE has laid off thousands of federal workers and gutted funding for a number of federal agencies and programs.

The billionaire’s plan is still backed by Trump, but backlash against Musk and DOGE is rising across the GOP’s base as lawmakers face their own angry constituents and legal challenges arise.

His response? Oops, we’ll do better next time.

To reassure Trump’s Cabinet, Musk, who is not a Cabinet member himself, gave the example of DOGE “accidentally” canceling Ebola prevention as part of the stunning 90-day freeze on international aid and shutting down of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

“I think we all want Ebola prevention,” Musk said with a smirk. “So we restored the Ebola prevention immediately and there was no interruption.” Nobody’s perfect, Musk reminded his colleagues.

Democrats, as per usual, aren’t buying Musk’s shtick. “An average person who did something as incompetent as ‘accidentally cancelling Ebola prevention’ wouldn’t be applauded, they’d be fired,” Representative Don Beyer wrote on X. “Musk is failing up in this administration because he didn’t earn his job, he bought it. It’s corrupt, and risks Americans’ health and safety.”

But Musk doubled down on DOGE’s move-fast-and-break-things approach to achieving a trillion-dollar deficit reduction by 2026.

“We do need to move quickly,” Musk told the Cabinet. “But we can do it, and we will do it.”

Donald Trump is preparing for “large-scale” mass layoffs for the federal workforce.

The Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management sent out notices on Wednesday to federal agencies telling them to prepare for staff reductions. Close to 30,000 federal employees have already lost their jobs since Trump took office last month, and these coming layoffs could dwarf that number.

The administration is ordering agencies to submit “Phase 1” reductions in force and reorganization plans by March 13, detailing the number of full-time employees that can be cut and how much money that would save over the next three years. The plans should also include “a significant reduction” in full-time employees, according to the memo, first obtained by Axios.

The notices follow Trump’s executive order strengthening Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency more than two weeks ago, which allowed agencies to only rehire one worker for every four people who leave the workforce. It seems that after last week’s federal court ruling allowing Trump’s federal employee purge to continue, Trump is about to ramp up the firings.

Over the weekend, Musk issued an ultimatum to federal workers through an OPM email and his X account asking them to provide five accomplishments or lose their jobs, which was heavily mocked before the White House backtracked and deemed it optional. Soon, it seems that no ultimatums will be necessary for large numbers of federal employees to lose their jobs. In fact, the layoffs may even be automated.