MAGA Republicans Aren’t Done Punishing Al Green Yet

Only one Democrat had the gall to call Donald Trump out for preaching endless falsehoods during his address to a joint session of Congress—and House Republicans are planning to punish him as a result.

Ten Democrats joined Republicans Thursday in voting to censure Representative Al Green after the Texas Democrat momentarily halted Trump’s speech.

But that was apparently not penalty enough. Hours later, the House Freedom Caucus announced it would be filing a resolution to strip Green from his committee assignments.

“We expect @SpeakerJohnson to bring it to the House floor for a vote next week,” the caucus chairman, Representative Andy Harris, posted to the extremely conservative coalition’s official X account. “Green was censured in a bipartisan vote but he needs real consequences to demonstrate that no one gets to disrupt the People’s business in lame attempts to derail President Trump’s agenda.”

When Trump claimed during his Tuesday night speech that he had been given a “mandate” by the American people to radically reimagine the federal government, Green interrupted the president by yelling, “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid!”

That got Green ousted by House Speaker Mike Johnson, who called on the sergeant of arms to remove the 77-year-old from the chamber against a backdrop of jeers from Republicans.

“I did it from my heart, and I will suffer whatever the consequences are,” Green told reporters the next day. “But truthfully, I would do it again.”

Senate Republicans are working to pass a budget that even party members have recently admitted will result in a $880 billion cut to Medicaid, much to the chagrin of their own constituents. The multibillion-dollar cut is a trade-off for conservatives who were tasked by Donald Trump to extend his 2017 tax plan, which will overwhelmingly benefit corporations and is projected to add as much as $15 trillion to the national deficit.

Green’s protest was practically the only noticeable rejection of Trump’s agenda that Democrats could muster Tuesday night. Other liberal lawmakers were torched for flipping paddles that read “False,” “Musk Steals,” “Save Medicaid,” in a silent protest in the face of the administration’s apparent oligarchy and its systemic dismantling of the federal government.

And viewers watching live at home would never have known that a handful of Democrats stood up and walked out of the chamber in protest, as TV cameras never bothered to pan to their mute, “dignified” spectacle. Others, such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Patty Murray, opted to not show up at all.

A CNN Poll released this week found that just 39 percent of Americans felt the country was moving in the right direction, as opposed to 45 percent who believed it was moving in the wrong direction.

Even Republicans don’t seem to believe in the “mandate” decree coming from the White House. In Tennessee over the weekend, an angry town hall before Representative Diana Harshbarger screamed, “No!” when the Republican lawmaker asked if there had been a “mandate to the president from the American people,” who she claimed “overwhelmingly” voted Trump in.

“We’re giving the billionaires tax cuts!” a man shouted at Harshbarger.

The United States’ new alignment with Russia is causing some of our longest allies to question if they should continue to share military intelligence with Washington.

Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the four other members of the Five Eyes spy alliance—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom—are reportedly examining how they could revise their current protocols with Washington in order to safeguard foreign assets, according to four sources and a foreign official that spoke with NBC News.

“Those discussions are already happening,” one source with direct knowledge of the conversations told NBC. No actions have been taken as of yet.

“Every intelligence agency treats its commitments to foreign agents as sacrosanct, pledging to keep agents safe and shield their identities,” NBC reported. “Anything that jeopardized that obligation would violate that trust, former officials said, and that could lead some spy services to hold back on some information sharing with Washington.”

Decisions over whether to continue to include America in international intelligence alliances come part and parcel as countries around the globe question their economic, military, and diplomatic cooperation with Washington.

Droves of world leaders have denounced the U.S. in the weeks since Donald Trump was inaugurated. They have condemned his administration’s decision to backtrack on international treaties, his aggression toward the U.S.’s longstanding alliances, and his willingness to throw Western nations into a reckless trade war, and have cast aspersions on his seemingly warm relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

While withholding intelligence from the Pentagon would prove to be a drastic shift in world relations, it would also be little more than a reflection of Trump’s own foreign policy approach that has thrown the Western world into tumult in a matter of days.

Following a disastrous meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday, in which Trump and Vice President JD Vance effectively challenged the U.S.’s strongest alliances while ceding the world stage to America’s adversaries, the White House has ordered a pause on military aid and intelligence sharing with Kyiv in its ongoing war with Russia. That alone is expected to devastate Ukraine’s ability to target Russian forces in its fight against the dictator-led superpower.

Trump has repeatedly ducked reporters’ questions as to whether his administration’s actions have aligned U.S. policy with Moscow.

Several of Trump’s former advisers have criticized Trump’s approach to ending the war, including two of his first term national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton.

“Vladimir Putin couldn’t be happier,” McMaster told 60 Minutes on Sunday, sizing up the events of Trump’s explosive meeting with Zelenskiy “Because what he sees is all of the pressure on Zelensky, all of the pressure on Ukraine and no pressure on him.”

McMaster then went on to describe Putin as a “master manipulator” who had successfully worked Trump to Russia’s advantage.

The government email address of powerful unelected bureaucrat Elon Musk is now publicly available.

The Intercept reports that Musk has been assigned the email address erm71@who.eop.gov, due to his status with the White House Office and the Executive Office of the President. Erm71 refers to Musk’s full initials and his 1971 birth year and is different from other email addresses in the EOP, which usually include the employee’s full first and last name. 

The publication has already filed multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for Musk’s emails to his pet project, the Department of Government Efficiency, as well other agencies that have worked closely with DOGE, such as the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management. In addition, the Intercept filed FOIA requests with several agencies in DOGE’s crosshairs.  

The Trump administration has tried to classify DOGE, and by extension, Musk, under the EOP to claim that its administrator reports to the White House chief of staff, and therefore, White House lawyers argue, isn’t subject to FOIA. The administration has also argued in court that Musk is not in charge of DOGE, but merely is a senior adviser to the president, which President Trump has repeatedly contradicted publicly. 

Given DOGE’s massive reach within the federal government and its efforts to decimate federal agencies through mass purges of employees, its attempts at subterfuge are facing numerous legal challenges. Now that Musk’s apparent government email address is public, the lawsuits from government employees and watchdog organizations trying to exact some transparency and accountability over DOGE just got some new ammunition.

The Republican Party isn’t even pretending not to be racist now.

The National Republican Congressional Committee published an atrocious social media post Wednesday calling Hispanic Caucus Chair Adriano Espaillat an “illegal immigrant,” after the New York Democrat gave a Spanish-language rebuttal to Donald Trump’s address to Congress.

Espaillat accused Trump of fostering an “environment of fear among the immigrant community” during his Tuesday night speech, and told a story about a U.S. citizen who had been wrongfully detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as part of Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

The NRCC, which once posted a wildly xenophobic ad showing A.I.-generated images of immigrants flooding U.S. national parks, issued a new installment in its catalogue of extremely racist posts, this time targeting Espaillat.

“Democrats literally chose an illegal immigrant to give their response to President Trump’s address,” the NRCC wrote on X. “Predictably, this radical called Trump’s presidency a ‘reign of terror.’ Democrats couldn’t be more disconnected from the American people.”

Espaillat has been a U.S. citizen for more than 40 years and is the first formerly undocumented immigrant to serve in Congress. When his family first immigrated to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic roughly 60 years ago, they briefly overstayed their tourist visa but obtained green cards within the year, according to HuffPost.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus released a statement hitting back at the Republican group’s attack on its chairperson.

“This xenophobic rhetoric from Trump Republicans proves that you can follow the law, get your papers, become a citizen, get elected to Congress—swear multiple oaths to protect and defend the Constitution—and all you will ever be to Trump Republicans: an ‘illegal immigrant,’” the group wrote in a post on X Wednesday.

Since entering office, Trump has made clear that legal protections for all immigrants—not just those who are undocumented—are subject to rescission. It’s clear from the NRCC’s attack on Espaillat that Republicans are taking Trump’s rhetoric of targeting individuals based on their race, or skin color, to heart.

Just two days after he started a global trade war, Donald Trump is already walking back some of the tariffs he implemented—again.

In a Truth Social post Thursday, the president announced Mexico will not pay tariffs on any products that comply with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, until April 2.

On Tuesday, Trump implemented 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, a disastrous move that plummeted financial markets and prompted retaliatory actions from both American trading partners.

Following the news, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum took a measured approach to dealing with the reactionary American leader. She promised to safeguard Mexico’s interests and announced she would implement tariffs of U.S. goods, but not until Sunday, giving her and Trump enough time to negotiate a deal. It worked.

“After speaking with President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico, I have agreed that Mexico will not be required to pay Tariffs on anything that falls under the USMCA Agreement.” Trump wrote on Truth Social Thursday. “I did this as an accommodation, and out of respect for, President Sheinbaum.”

It’s just the latest walkback from Trump, who is endlessly flip-flopping on a decision that would spur economic catastrophe across the U.S. and abroad.

He first threatened to impose tariffs on February 1, but later agreed to a 30-day pause after widespread backlash. After finally beginning the tariffs on Tuesday, he’s already granted a one-month exemption to U.S. automobile companies, and now to USMCA products.

Who knows what the next move will be in Trump’s relentless pursuit to implement tariffs, and rid the U.S. of its allies while he’s at it.

Donald Trump may introduce a new travel ban similar to the “Muslim ban” from his first term, possibly as soon as next week.

Reuters reports that the order would bar people from Afghanistan and Pakistan from entering the United States, based on a government review of security and vetting risks, citing three anonymous sources, who also said that other countries could be included.

In his first term, Trump used a series of executive orders that infamously banned visitors from the Muslim-majority countries of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Iraq was initially included, but later dropped after the country promised to improve vetting for its own citizens. Despite several legal challenges, the Supreme Court ultimately approved the ban in 2018, and Trump later added six more countries with large Muslim populations to the list.

If Trump’s new ban becomes a reality, it will complicate efforts to resettle tens of thousands of Afghans cleared to come to the U.S. as refugees or on “special immigrant visas” because they worked for the U.S. and fear retribution after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan.

According to one of the sources, the State Department Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts is trying to get an exemption for special immigrant visa holders, “but it’s not assumed likely to be granted,” especially since that office was told to plan for its closure by April.

While campaigning for president in 2023, Trump floated the idea of reinstating and expanding the “Muslim ban,” calling for a “strong ideological screening of all immigrants to the United States” and saying he would ban immigrants from Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, “or anywhere else that threatens our security.”

In Trump’s first term, the travel ban caused a lot of confusion and chaos, with thousands of people, including immigration lawyers, gathering at airports to protest the move. If the ban comes back, Trump will have a more compliant judiciary. The question is whether protesters will show up in the same numbers with support from Democratic politicians.

Democrats’ so-called resistance to Donald Trump is getting bad reviews among voters.

A new survey from Blueprint, a liberal research firm, found that registered voters have lost the plot on what—if anything—Democratic lawmakers are doing to oppose Trump’s sweeping agenda to shrink the federal workforce, slash essential government programs, and roll back regulations and rights.

A whopping 40 percent of respondents said that the Democratic Party doesn’t have any strategy at all for responding to Trump. Meanwhile, 24 percent of respondents said that the party did have a strategy but that it wasn’t working, and only 10 percent of respondents said that it had a good strategy.

The poll of 1,383 registered voters was conducted between February 16 and 17. Since then, the Democrats’ means of resistance have only gotten more confused.

Ahead of Trump’s address to Congress Tuesday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries urged his party to take a measured approach and have a “strong” and “dignified” presence at the president’s Capitol appearance. Still, Democratic lawmakers protested in several increasingly small ways. Some lawmakers, such as Florida Representative Maxwell Frost and Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett, walked out of Trump’s address. Others held up small signs with slogans such as, “Musk Steals,” “False,” and “Save Medicaid.” A small contingent wore pink, a failed signal of unity and a devastating blow to absolutely no one.

Only Texas Representative Al Green managed to do any actual protesting, waving his cane and crying out that Trump had “no mandate” to cut Medicaid. Green was escorted out of the chamber, and on Thursday, he was formally censured by his colleagues—including 10 Democrats.

Evan Roth Smith, Blueprint’s top pollster, told Politico that voters had “correctly identified that the Democratic Party has lost its way.”

“The Democratic response [Tuesday] night was more or less a continuation of what we’ve seen from Democrats so far,” Smith explained. “Which is, there was nothing overtly wrong about it, but it didn’t actually do anything to ameliorate this core issue Democrats face, which is voters aren’t quite sure what we stand for and would like us to get back to the basic principles of the party.”

Sixty-five percent of respondents agreed with the statement that the Democratic Party “needs to get back to basics” of protecting Social Security and Medicare, reproductive freedom, and workers’ rights. Sixty-five percent of respondents also agreed with the statement that “no one has any idea what the Democratic Party stands for anymore, other than opposing Donald Trump. Democrats have no message, no plan of their own, and no one knows what they would do if they got back into power.”

Ten Democrats joined the Republican-led House in censuring Representative Al Green for disrupting Donald Trump’s speech to Congress on Tuesday and protesting the president’s aggressive cuts to Medicaid.

“You have no mandate to cut Medicaid!” the Texas Democrat yelled while waving his cane. Green was later removed from the chamber, becoming the first member of Congress to be removed during a presidential address.

“I did it from my heart and I will suffer whatever the consequences are,” he told reporters the next day. “But truthfully, I would do it again.”

Republican Representative Dan Newhouse quickly introduced a censure against Green, which Democrats failed to block Wednesday.

On Thursday, the House voted 224 to 198, with 10 Democrats joining the GOP in punishing one of their own. Green and Democratic Representative Shomari Figures voted present.

The following Democrats voted to censure Green:

1. Ami Bera—California
2. Ed Case—Hawaii
   
3. Jim Costa—California
4. Laura Gillen—New York
5. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez—Washington
   
6. Jim Himes—Connecticut
7. Chrissy Houlahan—Pennsylvania
   
8. Marcy Kaptur—Ohio
   
9. Jared Moskowitz—Florida
10. Tom Suozzi—New York

Donald Trump is planning to give Israel everything it needs in order to “finish” Gaza.

In a harrowing post to Truth Social Wednesday, the president threatened Hamas, as well as the Palestinian public, to release the hostages—or be “dead.”

“‘Shalom Hamas’ means Hello and Goodbye—You can choose,” Trump wrote. “Release all of the Hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you. Only sick and twisted people keep bodies, and you are sick and twisted!

“I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job, not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don’t do as I say. I have just met with your former Hostages whose lives you have destroyed,” Trump continued. “This is your last warning! For the leadership, now is the time to leave Gaza, while you still have a chance. Also, to the People of Gaza: A beautiful Future awaits, but not if you hold Hostages. If you do, you are DEAD! Make a SMART decision. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW, OR THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY LATER!”

Trump then signed the message: “DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.”

Hamas has been in direct talks with U.S. presidential envoy for hostage affairs Adam Boehler to release several American-Israeli dual citizens who were taken hostage during the October 7 attack, Axios reported Wednesday. It’s the first time the U.S. has backtracked on its unofficial mantra of not dealing with terrorists. The U.S. designated Hamas as a terrorist organization in 1997.

“This saves time and effort and minimizes obstacles. Talks are not going very easily, but this is positive,” a Hamas official told NPR, adding that the U.S. had asked the militant group to remain quiet about the deal.

There are currently 59 hostages remaining in Gaza. Fifty-eight of them were abducted during the October 7 attack, while one more was captured before that.

But Trump’s interest in pushing Gazans out of their homeland isn’t so altruistic. Last month, the president said he was “committed to buying and owning Gaza.”

“We’re committed to owning it, taking it, and making sure that Hamas doesn’t move back,” Trump said at the time. “There’s nothing to move back into—the place is a demolition site. The remainder will be demolished. Everything’s demolished.”

The real estate mogul then added that he intended to make it a “very good site for future development.”

That somebody could be Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has been eyeing the region for potential real estate projects since at least the beginning of last year. In March 2024, Kushner praised Gaza’s waterfront beachfront property as “very valuable,” advocating at the time for the same plan that Trump touted last week: ethnic cleansing.

Meanwhile, American culture seems misaligned with the new mission. On Sunday, No Other Land—a film about an Israeli and a Palestinian who work in tandem to rebuild homes and communities in the West Bank’s Masafer Yatta after they are systemically claimed and destroyed by Israeli soldiers and settlers—won best documentary feature film at the Oscars.

Elon Musk is claiming that the Department of Government Efficiency isn’t actually behind the sweeping cuts to the federal workforce, instead placing the blame on the agency heads who order the firings.

Republican Representative Derrick Van Orden told CNN that during a private meeting with GOP lawmakers Wednesday, Musk told the group that the recently announced elimination of more than 70,000 jobs at the Department of Veterans Affairs “wasn’t a DOGE decision.”

The Wisconsin Republican said that Musk had told lawmakers that the “individual departments” had made their own plans to cut positions and that DOGE had made the “assumption” that those departments intended to “reward the people that are being productive.”

The billionaire bureaucrat has claimed this defense to his organization’s cost-cutting measures before, saying that DOGE simply makes recommendations for cuts to agency heads, and then it’s up to those heads to execute them. It’s unclear what fate would befall the agencies that failed to act in accordance with DOGE directives or the Trump administration’s mission to shrink the federal workforce.

However, Musk privately acknowledged that he’d made some massive missteps, and that he “can’t bat a thousand all the time,” four people familiar with his remarks told Politico. But when Musk misses a swing, people lose their livelihoods.

Republican Representative Russell Fry told CNN that Musk promised to make things right. “He said, like, you know, there’s going to be mistakes along the way. He has said that publicly before too. And then when those are identified, they will be corrected,” Fry said.

Already, Musk-directed massive firings have been rescinded. The Trump administration’s Office of Personnel Management, which has been attempting to manage the entire federal workforce even though it lacks the authority to do so, issued a memo Tuesday instructing federal agency heads that they did not have to comply with instructions to fire probationary employees who have held their jobs for one year or less.