Broadsheet

The biggest story in the country, today and always, is that the president of the United States is mentally unwell.

Over the course of three hours last night, he posted on social media fifty-five times. Those posts accused a number of those Trump considers his personal enemies, including former president Barack Obama, of treason; claimed that investigations of the ties between his 2016 campaign and Russian operatives were an attempt to damage Trump; insisted the 2020 presidential election was stolen; reposted a fake quotation from Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) accusing Obama of making a personal fortune of $120 million from the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare; labeled Obama and others “traitors” and called for their arrest; and demanded to know why acting attorney general Todd Blanche hadn’t indicted any of those people yet.

This morning, he started in again with a long screed attacking the New York Times for its coverage of his alterations to the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and insisting that Democratic presidents Obama and Joe Biden had “botched” renovations that he was now fixing for “a ‘tiny’ fraction of the cost!” He posted an AI image of Obama, Biden, and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) apparently swimming in a filthy version of the reflecting pool with the caption: “Dumacrats Love Sewage.” Then he posted an image of himself on the $100 bill. And then he was back to calling House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) “Low IQ.”

After posting a number of AI images showing the U.S. military destroying the Iranian military, Trump posted: “When the Fake News says that the Iranian enemy is doing well, Militarily, against us, it’s virtual TREASON in that it is such a false, and even preposterous, statement. They are aiding and abetting the enemy!”

Then he posted an image of a map with Venezuela overlaid with the U.S. flag. The caption read: “51st State.”

Trump seems to be comforting himself by lashing out at his perceived enemies and insisting he is competent and popular. Before he left for China today, he claimed: “We have Iran very much under control. We’re either going to make a deal or they’re going to be decimated. One way or the other, we win.”

Mosheh Gains, Courtney Kube, and Monica Alba of NBC News reported today that if Trump decides to restart major combat operations against Iran, military leaders are considering renaming the operations with a new name, like “Operation Sledgehammer,” to suggest those operations would be different than the current “Epic Fury.” They argue that renaming the military operation would restart the clock of the 1973 War Powers Act that requires congressional authorization to continue it after sixty days, a deadline that ran out on May 1.

War Powers Act expert Brian Finucane, who was a lawyer for the State Department, commented: “Nope. Changing the name of the authorized war with Iran does not alter the application of the War Powers Resolution’s 60-day clock.”

In the meantime, there is no apparent movement toward opening the Strait of Hormuz, even as numbers released today by the Department of Labor show that inflation in April hit its highest level since 2023. Trump’s own intelligence agencies assessed earlier this year that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon and that Iran’s leader had not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003. An assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency said that Iran would not be able to reach the U.S. with an intercontinental ballistic missile until 2035.

Nonetheless, the administration and its supporters appear to have settled on the idea that the cost of the war has been worthwhile because the U.S. was under imminent threat of nuclear attack by Iran. When a reporter asked Trump today, before he left for China, to what extent Americans’ financial situation is motivating him to make a deal with Iran, he answered:

“Not even a little bit. The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran—they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing—we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.”

A CNN/SSRS poll released today shows that 70% of Americans disapprove of the way Trump is handling the economy.

Trump is, however, thinking about his own financial situation. Tonight Andrew Duehren and Alan Feuer of the New York Times reported that the Department of Justice is in talks to settle Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service for damages after a contractor during Trump’s first term leaked tax information, including his, to the media.

The judge in the case has ordered Trump’s lawyers and the Department of Justice to file briefs by May 20 explaining why this is a true case in which the two sides are opposed when Trump both is the plaintiff and runs the agency that is the defendant. If they settle before then, the judge will not be able to say much about whether the case was valid in the first place.

Duehren and Feuer note that the Department of Justice has fought similar cases brought because of the leak, arguing that the government can’t be held liable for something a contractor does. The government settled a case with hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin in 2024 by making a public apology.

The New York Times journalists report that one of the options for settling with Trump would be for the IRS to drop any audits of Trump, his family members, or his businesses. Since 1977, IRS policy has been to conduct a mandatory audit of the sitting president every year, although it failed to audit Trump’s taxes for his first two years in office during his first term. Clearly, he would like for it to fail to audit his taxes this time around as well.

The special treatment certain people enjoy in the U.S. that enables them to get around accountability was in the news earlier today, too, as the victims of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein testified before a panel made up of the Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee. The top Democrat on the committee, Robert Garcia of California, began the day by introducing a new report called “The Price of Non-Prosecution.” It explained that the sweetheart deal U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Alexander Acosta—later Trump’s secretary of labor—negotiated with Epstein to protect him from federal prosecution left him able to continue his sex-trafficking operation and to expand it.

The survivors recounted their anger and frustration when they discovered the federal government had made a secret deal with Epstein. One survivor, who identified herself as Roza, detailed how Epstein sexually assaulted her over three years when he was supposed to be serving a jail sentence. She broke down as she recounted how the Department of Justice under then–attorney general Pam Bondi continued that favoritism, exposing her name publicly while leaving the names of the perpetrators’ names redacted.

“I stepped forward along other survivors hoping those who allowed this to happen will be held accountable. I kept my identity protected as ‘Jane Doe.’ I woke up one day with my name mentioned over 500 times. While the rich and powerful remain protected by redaction, my name was exposed to the world. Now reporters from across the globe contact me. I cannot live without looking over my shoulder. I can only imagine the long-term impact this ‘mistake’ will have on my life.”

In Tennessee today, Tennessee House speaker Cameron Sexton removed all the House Democrats from standing committees, saying they had behaved in a way “aimed at disrupting the democratic and legislative processes” as they protested the mid-decade redistricting that broke up Tennessee’s only majority-Black, Democratic district. As Tennessee state representative Justin J. Pearson notes, this decree removed “every Black elected official in the state legislature from any committee we served on” and stripped “nearly 2 million Tennesseans from the representation they deserve” in the Tennessee state legislature.

“We will not stop fighting,” state representative Justin Jones posted. “We will not stop getting in good trouble. We will not go back!”

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Notes:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/inflation-could-hit-4-next-month-and-stay-elevated-for-rest-of-year-economist-warns

https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-israel-uae-iron-dome-f3d5738853111cfc80985c157edab7c3

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-considering-re-naming-iran-war-sledgehammer-ceasefire-collaps-rcna344630

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-us-attack-iran-trump-administration/

https://www.dia.mil/Portals/110/Documents/News/golden_dome.pdf

https://www.factcheck.org/2025/06/trump-gabbard-comments-on-iran-nuclear-capability/

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-not-thinking-american-finances-iran-talk-rcna344785

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28114951-cnn-poll-conducted-by-ssrs-affordability/

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/business/trump-suit-irs.html

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/27/1145579351/why-did-the-irs-neglect-to-audit-trump-during-his-first-2-years-in-office

https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/imo/media/doc/the_price_of_non-prosecution.pdf

https://pro.stateaffairs.com/tn/politics/house-democrats-committee-removal

https://www.actionnews5.com/2026/05/12/multiple-tn-democrats-stripped-all-committee-assignments/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/12/jeffrey-epstein-survivor-palm-beach-hearing

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https://trumpstruth.org/

The story of the Trump Mobile phone seems a microcosm of the Trump administration.

As Judd Legum of Popular Information explains, on June 16, 2025, Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric announced the launch of a new, gold plated, Trump smartphone, “proudly designed and built in the United States.” It would be available in August 2025 for $499. Its website urged customers to “pre-order” the phone by depositing $100 toward it. Don Jr. said the phone would be “American hardware, built in America, without the potential of…[a] backdoor into the hardware that some of our adversaries have installed in there.”

And yet a disclaimer on the website said the Trumps and the Trump Organization were involved only in the branding of the phone; they had nothing to do with the design, development, manufacture, distribution, or sales of the item. As Legum notes, the idea of a superior U.S.-made phone was always a fantasy, and within two weeks the phone’s description changed from “MADE IN THE USA” to “designed with American values in mind.”

The phone never shipped, and on April 6, Trump Mobile updated its terms to say the $100 deposit was not actually a deposit for a pre-order, but rather “a conditional opportunity if Trump Mobile later elects, in its sole discretion, to offer the Device for sale.” It went on to say the deposit “does not lock in pricing, promotions, service plans, taxes, fees, shipping costs, or other commercial terms” and that “[e]stimated ship dates, launch timelines, or anticipated production schedule are non-binding estimates only.”

A new phone has recently gotten clearance from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and Trump Mobile executives say they are waiting for approval from T-Mobile, the company whose network Trump Mobile wants to use. Legum points out that T-Mobile relies on the federal government for approval for business activities, creating an enormous conflict of interest.

Donald Trump has always ridden to power by projecting an image of dominance. He could maintain that image thanks to the people who covered for him: his father, Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, and in his first presidential term—as Sidney Blumenthal reminded readers in The Guardian today—Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who filtered the options Trump received; chief of staff General John Kelly, who made a pact with Mattis that one of them would always stay in the country to stand in the way of Trump’s impulses; and National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, who stopped Trump from signing disastrous executive orders, sometimes going so far as to steal them off his desk.

In Trump’s second term, though, those people who curbed his worst impulses have been replaced with yes-men, and there is no one to protect him from the fallout.

Over the weekend, Trump took to social media to complain bitterly about the demise of his tariffs, about Iran, and about political opponents; to boast about his changes to the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and about the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) mixed martial arts event he plans to host in front of the White House on his 80th birthday; and to try, once again, to project dominance.

Trump complained twice that in its decision declaring his “Liberation Day” tariffs of April 2025 unconstitutional, the Supreme Court had not included a sentence saying, “Any money paid to the United States of America does not have to be paid back.” That sentence, he insisted, “would have saved America 159 billion Dollars!” He complained about his Supreme Court appointees Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett and suggested he should “PACK THE COURT! I’m working so hard to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, and then people that I appointed have shown so little respect to our Country, and its people. What is the reason for this? They have to do the right thing, but it’s really OK for them to be loyal to the person that appointed them to ‘almost’ the highest position in the land, that is, a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.”

He warned them to vote his way on the question of birthright citizenship because “A negative ruling on Birthright Citizenship, on top of the recent Supreme Court Tariff catastrophe, is not Economically sustainable for the United States of America!”

On Saturday morning, the president’s social media account posted AI images of exploding Iranian drones beside an image of blue butterflies with the caption “Drones Dropping Like Butterflies.” Then it posted another AI image of a U.S. vessel shooting down drones with the caption “Bye Bye, Drones.” Then it showed a flotilla of ships with Iranian flags on the surface of the ocean under the caption “Obama/Biden” beside an image of those ships on the bottom of the ocean under the caption “Trump.” Then it showed an AI image of Trump on the bridge of a ship watching Iranian ships exploding. Then it showed another image of “Iran’s Navy” on the ocean floor.

The account posted a long screed about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 agreement between Iran and the U.S., United Kingdom, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the European Union to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for relief from sanctions. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the JCPOA in 2018, and this weekend Trump rehashed false right-wing talking points about the deal to claim that former president Barack Obama was “a weak and stupid American President” who worked for Iran.

Trump’s account posted an AI image of Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker gorging on junk food under the caption “JB is too busy to keep Chicago safe!” It posted two clips of former FBI director James Comey, whom the Department of Justice under Trump has criminally charged for posting a photograph of seashells spelling out “8647.” Trump called him “A Dirty Cop!!!” He went after California representative Ro Khanna and warned: “The Radical left Dumacrats must fail—our Country is at stake!”

Trump’s account posted two AI images of a UFC fight surrounded by a stadium-style audience in front of the White House. Then it posted five images of the Washington, D.C., reflecting pool colored electric blue, one of which claimed Trump had renovated it in a week for just $2 million. A number of posts championed his proposed ballroom on the site where he bulldozed the East Wing of the White House.

But by far the most frequent postings on the president’s social media account over the weekend were praise for Trump himself. In addition to posting “Excellent Poll Numbers. Thank you!” he reposted stories saying that he had delivered “remarkable leadership” and is “Master of the Deal,” that he is one of the top three presidents in U.S. history, or “WITHOUT A DOUBT THE GREATEST PRESIDENT WE HAVE EVER KNOWN.” A number of posts called him “The Greatest of All Time.”

But just as with Trump Mobile, the clock is running out and the advertising isn’t working.

On May 7, Catherine Rampell of The Bulwark called Trump “an economic serial killer, whacking firms left and right.” She noted that Trump’s tariffs, along with deportations of farm workers and cancelling of foreign food aid programs, led farm bankruptcies to rise 46% in 2025 from the previous year, and now higher costs for diesel, fertilizer, and other products because of the Iran war are putting farmers under even more pressure.

Similarly, tariffs have cut into manufacturing jobs, and corporate bankruptcies last year were at their highest level in more than a decade. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is paying almost $2 billion to stop wind projects and has cancelled or stalled dozens of other renewable energy products. Customs and Border Protection is supposed to issue tariff refunds beginning on May 12, but the money will not go to consumers. It will go to the “trade community.”

Trump’s war on Iran, undertaken alongside Israel, has not delivered the fast regime change Trump promised, either. Instead, it has mired Trump in a war Iran appears to have little interest in permitting the U.S. to leave, at least not without confirming a new global order that benefits Iran.

In The Atlantic yesterday, neoconservative foreign policy scholar Robert Kagan ranked the Iran debacle as worse than Vietnam. There will be no going back to a world in which the Strait of Hormuz is open, he writes. Iran is now a key player in the region, China and Russia are strengthened, and the U.S. is “substantially diminished.” Anyone can see that “just a few weeks of war with a second-rank power” drastically reduced American weapons stocks, opening the way for aggression from China or Russia, while “the conflict has revealed an America that is unreliable and incapable of finishing what it started.”

Last week, the U.S. proposed a one-page memorandum to establish a framework for later talks on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, offering to lift sanctions and release billions in Iranian funds in exchange for opening the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranians responded over the weekend, reiterating their determination to control the strait and calling for reparations for damages caused by the war, in addition to an end to the naval blockade and the unfreezing of Iranian assets. On Sunday afternoon, Trump posted: “I have just read the response from Iran’s so-called ‘Representatives.’ I don’t like it—TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!”

Today Trump told reporters the Iran proposal was a “piece of garbage” and warned that the ceasefire is on “massive life support where the doctor walks in and says ‘Sir, your loved one has approximately a 1% chance of living.’” And yet Trump is relying on that ceasefire to justify his refusal to ask Congress for authority to continue his war on Iran. Under the 1973 War Powers Act, Trump had 60 days to get congressional approval after informing Congress of the attack, and that period ran out on May 1.

Gas prices have jumped more than 50% since the war began and now average more than $4.50 a gallon. Although Trump has downplayed concerns about higher prices, today Nancy Cordes of CBS News reported that he is planning to suspend the federal gas tax to bring down the cost of gasoline. But, Cordes notes, doing so would require Congress to agree and would cost the federal government about a half a billion dollars a week in revenue at a time when the national debt is skyrocketing. It crossed $39 trillion in March just five months after hitting $38 trillion and is on track to hit $40 trillion before the midterm elections.

On Saturday, Julian Borger reported in The Guardian that tensions between Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu are high. Former Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas noted that Trump stopped mentioning Netanyahu by the end of March and left Israel out of the loop on ceasefire negotiations in April. Pinkas noted that if Trump lashes out at Netanyahu, he will look like he was manipulated into going to war, while Netanyahu has tied himself to Trump at a time when the prime minister must hold an election before October. “This affects Netanyahu politically and this affects Trump politically,” Pinkas told Borger. “In other words, they have screwed each other pretty badly.”

Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post noted last week that, apparently determined to convince Americans all is going well, Trump is putting words in our mouths. Around Washington, D.C., signs are appearing that show Trump in a hard hat near construction scaffolding and read: “Thank you, PRESIDENT TRUMP.”

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Notes: