FEMA Caught Blocking Grants to States That Didn’t Vote for Trump

FEMA has been deliberately delaying grants to blue states, putting American citizens and Indigenous tribal land at risk in order to carry out President Trump’s petty and vindictive agenda.

On Friday, The Washington Post reported that FEMA significantly decreased the amount of hazard-mitigation grants to Democratic-led states last year. From February to June 2025, the agency awarded $91 million per month, before reducing that to just $3 million a month for the rest of 2025. While the agency appeared to reverse course,  approving grants worth $760 million in March after facing legal scrutiny, Colorado and California have still received barely any money since last summer. 

California has only received $830,000 from FEMA since July 2025. Colorado has not received anything, according to the Post’s analysis.

Experts say this is a deliberate and targeted decision. 

“There’s a pattern—a state like Colorado is repeatedly being denied FEMA aid and others like California are waiting on FEMA money that’s already been approved,” the Carnegie Endowment’s sustainability, climate, and geopolitics research assistant Debbra Goh told the Post. “Hazard-mitigation funding is designed to help communities prepare for the next disaster. Without it, communities are rebuilding into the same risk.” 

Much of this funding delay is also due to former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s aggressive policy requiring that she personally sign off on any FEMA aid over $100,000.

“Communities still have damaged park facilities, fenced-off trailheads, and patched-up roadways that wash out in heavy rain because permanent work cannot move at full speed without the promised federal reimbursement,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said last month. “Schools still wait for dollars to rebuild facilities and classrooms that burned or were heavily damaged.​”

Colorado Representative Joe Neguse noted that the delays also come in the face of evolving environmental issues. 

“Climate change is a five-alarm fire—literally—for our state.… We’ve already had a number of fires, and I anticipate this year could be the most difficult fire season we’ve had in some time. And unfortunately, right now, we find ourselves at a time when the administration has no regard for the communities that it is supposed to serve,” Neguse said. “[Colorado is] entitled to the same relief that folks in Kentucky and South Carolina and other Republican states have been able to access.”

While the Trump administration claims there is “no politicization to the president’s decisions on disaster relief,” its past actions would suggest otherwise, as Trump denied disaster aid to blue states last October.

President Trump is planning to fire Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary over disagreements relating to flavored vapes and other policy decisions, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Trump’s displeasure with Makary has been well documented. Last week, the Journal reported that the president became frustrated with the commissioner because he refused to approve blueberry, mango, and menthol vape flavors from manufacturer Glas because they’d be too marketable to young and underage users. This complicated Trump’s campaign promise to “save vaping,” as well as his effort to win back the youth vote.

Recent polling shows Trump sitting at a dismal 24 percent approval rating with Gen Z, having lost virtually all of the gains he made with that bloc in 2024.

Makary is a top MAHA advocate, but many conservative lobbyists will be happy to see him gone. Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the anti-abortion organization Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, has been calling for Makary’s firing since December, citing his decision not to impede the approval of a generic abortion pill. Former Senator Rick Santorum last week lamented that Makary “immediately fired the best leaders at the FDA, replaced them with anti-Trump leftists who hollowed out FDA, harmed patients, stifled innovation & drove bio-tech to China then lied about it.”

Trump has yet to publicly comment on Makary’s job status.

This story has been updated.

ABC is fighting back against President Trump’s Federal Communications Commission, accusing the agency of violating its First Amendment rights.

In a filing Friday, the TV network said that the FCC’s latest probe into the TV show The View created a “chilling effect” on free speech by punishing political content the Trump administration disagrees with.

“Some may dislike certain—or even most—of the viewpoints expressed on ‘The View’ or similar shows. Such dislike, however, cannot justify using regulatory processes to restrict those views,” ABC said in the filing.

The FCC set its sights on The View after a February episode with Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico of Texas. The agency questioned whether the show was exempt from the equal time rule, which requires news broadcast stations to give equal time to political candidates. According to ABC’s filing, the FCC ordered the company’s Houston station KTRK-TV to file a request with the agency asking if the show qualified for an exemption from the equal time rule.

The network claimed that this went too far; The View received an exemption in 2002 which had not been challenged once in the following 24 years. It called the demand to file for a new exemption “unprecedented, beyond the Commission’s authority and counterproductive to the Commission’s stated goal of encouraging free speech and open political discussion.”

Two weeks ago, the FCC asked to review the broadcast licenses of eight ABC stations years before they are set to expire, after late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about Trump and first lady Melania Trump that angered the president. While the network’s Friday filing doesn’t mention that, it seems to have influenced their new posture against the administration.

In December 2024, ABC paid Trump a $16 million settlement after he sued the network for defamation. Now they appear to be gearing up for a long court battle against the administration that could go to the Supreme Court. ABC is retaining experienced Supreme Court litigator Paul D. Clement, who served as solicitor general under President George W. Bush. It appears that they won’t give in to the Trump administration any more.

Federal immigration agents held a teenage boy at gunpoint Wednesday and bloodied him up, before they realized they had the wrong person.

Jeury Concepcion, 19, told NBC New York he’d been victim of a violent wrongful immigration arrest in the Bronx’s Norwood neighborhood earlier this week. In a video of the incident, a masked federal agent can be seen running up behind Concepcion with his gun drawn. Concepcion stopped and appeared calm, as more masked agents pulled up in an unmarked car.

Two federal officers then pushed him to the ground, and a third rushed over to help place him in handcuffs as he struggled facedown on the sidewalk. Another agent, wearing an “ERO” (Enforcement and Removal Operations) vest, kept bystanders at bay. Cellphone video showed that Concepcion was bleeding out of his head as ICE agents put him in their vehicle.

During the ride, the officers finally asked Concepcion to show ID and his cellphone. Only then did they realize they had arrested the wrong person. Concepcion said he was born and raised in New York.

Concepcion said he was dropped off at a park he was unfamiliar with and was later reunited with his mother, who took him to the hospital where he needed four stitches. Concepcion has visible cuts and bruises on his face, and is also suffering from a concussion, he told the outlet.

Another man was arrested as part of the ICE investigation in Norwood. A separate video shows agents chasing and tackling the man, who the agency claims is an undocumented immigrant.

This is the kind of wanton violence that President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement crackdown has unleashed on citizens and noncitizens alike. Speaking at a security conference in Phoenix Tuesday, White House border czar Tom Homan threatened to “flood” New York City with ICE officers, while New York Governor Kathy Hochul promised to pass new protections for immigrants.

State Secretary Marco Rubio’s meet and greet with Pope Leo XIV didn’t squash the White House’s beef with the Vatican—instead, it seemed to emphasize it.

Rubio told reporters in Rome Friday that his meeting with the pontiff was “very positive,” but mentioned that they did discuss the Iran war and America’s point of view.

“We had a very good meeting,” Rubio said, according to CNN’s Alejandra Jaramillo. Rubio also said he expressed to Leo “the danger that Iran poses to the world.”

Donald Trump revealed Thursday evening that he had instructed Rubio to bring up the matter, apparently uninterested in settling a boiling feud between his administration and the Catholic Church.

“I just said, tell the pope very nicely, very respectfully, that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. “Also tell the pope that Iran killed 42,000 innocent protesters who didn’t have guns, who didn’t have weapons. Tell that to the pope.”

The Chicago-born pontiff upset the president and a number of Trump’s underlings when he advocated for world peace earlier this year. The Pentagon reportedly threatened a Holy See ambassador in January, days after the pope made antiwar remarks during his State of the World address.

Leo has brushed off Trump’s remarks, claiming that he has “no fear” of the Trump administration or of “speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel,” though the Vatican did reject a White House invitation to host the pope for America’s 250th anniversary on July 4.

Rubio’s meeting with Leo ended in an awkward gift exchange that seemingly left the pope speechless. In a not so subtle gesture, the pope gave the Trump administration representative a pen made of olive wood as a de facto olive branch, dubbing it a “plant of peace.” Rubio, in turn, gave the pope a tiny crystal football while acknowledging that the pope—a well-known Chicago White Sox fan—is more of a “baseball guy.”

The Vatican put out a statement after the meeting, referring to the talks as “cordial” but noting that “there followed an exchange of views regarding the regional and international situation, with particular attention to countries marked by war, political tensions, and difficult humanitarian situations, as well as to the need to work tirelessly in support of peace.”

Virginia’s leadership is preparing to fight its state Supreme Court ruling Friday overturning Democrats’ redistricting referendum.

In a statement, Democratic state Attorney General Jay Jones called out the court’s decision as “putting politics over the rule of law.”

“This decision silences the voices of the millions of Virginians who cast their ballots in every corner of the Commonwealth, and it fuels the growing fears across our nation about the state of our democracy,” Jones said. “My team is carefully reviewing this unprecedented order and we are evaluating every legal pathway forward to defend the will of the people and protect the integrity of Virginia’s elections.”

Senator Tim Kaine criticized the timing of the state’s Supreme Court ruling, saying, “If the Virginia Supreme Court had legitimate concerns about this referendum, the time to stop it would have been before three million Virginians cast their ballots.

“The U.S. Supreme Court eviscerates the Voting Rights Act in a lawsuit brought by a January 6 extremist and Southern states race to craft backroom deals disenfranchising minority voters and candidates. Meanwhile Virginia voters choose to stand up against national disenfranchisement only to see their votes cast into the trash by a 4–3 ruling,” Kaine added.

Meanwhile, Republican-led states across the country continue to gerrymander following President Trump’s demand for mid-decade redistricting and the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act last week. Most of those actions took or are taking place without state referendums, basically forcing through new congressional maps that disenfranchise Democrats and Black Americans.

One polling expert, Zachary Donnini of VoteHub, projects that barring any more court orders, nine Republican-led states will have successfully redrawn their maps this year, as opposed to one Democratic-led state. Thanks to a conservative-controlled Supreme Court, the GOP is stacking the deck and denying Black people representation.

Trump-endorsed GOP Representative Max Miller has been accused of physically abusing his ex-wife Emily Moreno—daughter of GOP Senator Bernie Moreno—for years. Miller has denied the allegations.

Court filings obtained by the Daily Mail revealed that Emily is attempting to change their custody situation due to Miller’s “dangerous physical behavior” while their 2-year-old daughter was present. Moreno stated that Miller hit her during a custody exchange with their daughter in February, bruising Moreno’s arm and torso, as shown in photos obtained by the Mail. Moreno also claims that Miller threw a pot of boiling water on her in 2024 while their daughter was present.

Moreno also told the court that Miller “regularly speaks to me in an inappropriate, aggressive and demeaning manner, which is not in the best interest of our child.”

Miller and Moreno separated in 2024 and divorced in 2025.

Miller has faced similar accusations in the past. His ex-girlfriend, former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, 49, alleged that he pushed her against a wall and slapped her after she accused him of cheating in 2020.

Miller blames his congressional colleague and former father-in-law for his current legal issues, and is framing his ex-wife as “malicious” due to her alleged bipolar diagnosis.

“It is unfortunate that @berniemoreno continues to fund and enable his daughter’s malicious campaign to ruin my life despite his knowledge of her mental health issues,” he wrote Friday on X. “Bernie, this must be distracting from your job. These antics harm your own grandchild. Anytime you want to put a stop to this, you can.”

Senator Moreno has yet to publicly respond.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito relied on misleading data to support his ruling decimating the Voting Rights Act, The Guardian reported Friday.

In the court’s majority opinion, Alito claimed that the kind of racial discrimination that had prompted the creation of the Voting Rights Act no longer existed.

“Black voters now participate in elections at similar rates as the rest of the electorate, even turning out at higher rates than white voters in two of the five most recent Presidential elections nationwide and in Louisiana,” Alito wrote.

He was citing a friend-of-the-court brief submitted by the Department of Justice, which relied on a statistical methodology that is not preferred by experts in determining statewide voter turnout. The brief calculated Black and white voter turnout in Louisiana as a proportion of the total population of each racial group over the age of 18. This is generally considered a suboptimal method because it includes people who can’t vote, including noncitizens and people with felony convictions.

Experts typically prefer to consider voter turnout as a proportion of the citizen voting age population, or the eligible population. Using this methodology, The Guardian determined that Black voter turnout in Louisiana only exceeded white voter turnout in the 2012 presidential election.

Using the DOJ’s data, Alito also elided the fact that the racial voter gap is actually widening. In the three most recent presidential elections since Barack Obama was on the ballot, Black voter turnout has trailed white voter turnout, according to The Guardian’s analysis. In Louisiana, the disparity grew wider between 2016, 2020, and 2024.

Kevin Morris, a researcher at the Brennan Center for Justice, said that Alito’s claim is “simply not factual,” and that the turnout gap had “exploded” over the last three years.

Michael McDonald, a leading expert on voter turnout who teaches at the University of Florida, told The Guardian that relying on this “misleading” methodology was purposeful. “If I wanted to manipulate the numbers in a way that was favorable to the government’s interest, I would be using voting age population,” McDonald said.

“They had to fudge how they’re calculating the turnout rate to get there, and they’re not even taking into account margin of error, and all these other methodology issues about the current population survey to arrive at that number,” he said. “Someone knew what they were doing.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has opened the door for redistricting efforts across the country, as Republicans rush to redraw Democrat-led districts, many of which have majority-Black populations.

Donald Trump either can’t or won’t face the music.

The president exploded at a Black female reporter Thursday who dared to question why he was so focused on his expensive Washington vanity projects while the rest of the country struggles to fill their gas tanks, deriding the query as “stupid” and the reporter who bothered to ask as a “horror show.”

“Mr. President, you are here against the backdrop of war in Iran. Why focus on all these projects right now when gas prices soar?” asked ABC News’s Rachel Scott.

“You know why? Because I want to keep our country beautiful and safe. Beautiful also,” the 79-year-old said.

Trump then went on to complain about the state of the nation’s capital, claiming that several iconic monuments—such as the Washington Monument and the Reflecting Pool—are “disgusting” and covered in dirt. Cleaning the landmarks, Trump said, would cost approximately $2 million.

“You probably don’t see dirt, but I do,” Trump told the reporter. “And that’s not what our country is about. Our country is about beauty, cleanliness, safety, great people. Not a filthy capital.

“Such a stupid question, if you ask me,” Trump continued. “We are fixing up the Reflecting Pond at the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, and you say, ‘Why are you fixing it up?’ Because you can understand dirt, baby, better than I can, but I don’t allow it.

“This is one of the worst reporters—she’s with ABC Fake News, and she’s a horror show. She’s saying, ‘Why would you bother fixing this up?’ Why would I bother taking 11 or 12 truckloads of filth out of the water in front of the Lincoln monument?” Trump said, turning to his entourage to mock the reporter while misstating the name of the site. “A question like that is a disgrace to our country.”

Elsewhere in Washington, Trump is building a “Triumphal Arc,” destroying some 13 historic buildings on the grounds of former psychiatric hospital St. Elizabeths in order to expand facilities for the Department of Homeland Security, and constructing a 90,000-square-foot ballroom that is likely going to cost taxpayers $1 billion (against his initial promises that it wouldn’t cost more than $200 million, and that it would be entirely funded by private donations).

Meanwhile, the cost of oil and gas is through the roof due to the ongoing war with Iran, which is costing the U.S. roughly $1 billion per day, according to initial estimates by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The average cost of gas nationwide is $4.54 per gallon, with large swaths of the country pushing $5 a gallon, according to the AAA’s price tracker. That’s about 50 percent higher than prices were before the war started. In some areas of California, such as Mono County, fuel costs are well above $7 per gallon.

Analysts have predicted that the high prices are probably here to stay, at least through the end of 2026, as the war in Iran drags on. Last month, Energy Secretary Chris Wright posited that costs could climb even steeper before midterms.

Iran war hawks are furious at the peace deal President Trump says is on the table. 

Commentators across the conservative spectrum expressed their distaste for reports of a one-page plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and enforce a temporary 30-day peace agreement until a larger deal is reached. 

“This would be a terrible deal. I hope the terms of any deal would be significantly stricter: No enrichment, ever. HEU to us stat. No more proxies. Turn on the internet,” said Hugh Hewitt, the conservative commentator who called the disastrous invasion of Iraq “one of the wisest” decisions made by former President George W. Bush. “President Trump never gives up leverage. Why would he start now with #Iran on the ropes?”

“If this regime remains in place, they will do all they can to continue moving forward with their agenda, funding terrorism, developing nukes and ballistic missiles,” Zionist Organization of America head Morton Klein told The Hill. “And if they’re so desperate for a deal, as President Trump keeps saying, why are we in a position to dictate to them what the deal has to be? I really don’t understand this.”

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board felt similarly. 

“It will be essential for Mr. Trump to hold firm, knowing that Iran has no need for domestic enrichment other than for a bomb, and that he can’t count on a change in regime behavior over time, a mistake Mr. Obama made,” they wrote on Wednesday. “He also can’t trust a future President to reimpose strict limits later. Mr. Trump has been unique in his willingness to confront Iran. The task in any deal is to secure full nuclear dismantlement while Mr. Trump is still in office. If Iran won’t do it, the President will have to make good on his threats.”

“If the Axios report is close to accurate, the Iranian regime will survive, the Iranian people will face even more extensive brutality, and the Israeli government could fall in the October election.  A disastrous result,” pro-Israel neoconservative and Fox News host Mark Levin wrote on Wednesday, making no mention of the death and displacement that this U.S.-Israeli war has already brought to thousands of Iranian and Lebanese civilians. “I also know that future presidents will not take military action to enforce an agreement, based on our past history and internal opposition, which will only grow worse given the evolving nature of the Democrat Party and the influences of the Marxists-Islamists.” 

While this supposed peace deal could certainly be another bluff to settle the markets, it’s also wholly possible that Trump has realized—as prices soar, civilians die, and Iran comes no closer to surrendering—that this war was a grave mistake. Yet this cadre of conservative voices would rather see even more violence than any kind of peace.