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The White House has literally elevated Donald Trump to “king” status.While King Charles of Britain delivered an address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday, the Trump administration was cooking up a P.R. photo to exploit the royal leader’s fleeting visit.“TWO KINGS,” the official White House account posted on X, paired with a crown emoji as well as a photo of the king and Trump outside the Oval Office.Charles was visiting Washington ahead of America’s 250th anniversary to encourage diplomatic relations. In a concise speech, the king spoke beyond America’s current political divide, asserting to Americans and their representatives that a U.S.-U.K. partnership is “more important” than ever and that the “challenges we face are too great for any one nation to bear alone.”Directly addressing House Speaker Mike Johnson, Vice President JD Vance, and the present members of Congress, Charles said that “America’s words carry weight and meaning, as they have since Independence.” “The actions of this great nation matter even more,” he continued. “President Lincoln understood this so well, with his reflection in the magisterial Gettysburg Address that the world may little note what we say, but will never forget what we do.”But the MAGA movement—and its leader—has rarely taken care of its verbiage, let alone fretted about the consequences of its actions. The captioned image of Trump and the king is just one example that is likely to be portrayed as a joke among Trump’s political acolytes—but his allies have not shied away from opportunities to humor the alleged bit and its rhetorical attack on American democracy.Trump referred to himself as a king in February—an odd inclusion amid a string of rants attacking New York City’s locally popular midtown congestion-pricing policy. Moments later, White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich posted an AI-generated picture of Trump wearing a jeweled crown and fur-trimmed cape. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also elevated the disturbing quip at the time, resharing Trump’s kingly comments after rubber-stamping them with a “100” emoji.Earlier this month, Trump circulated another controversial AI-generated image on his Truth Social that painted him as Jesus Christ, cloaked in red and white robes and surrounded by light. The blasphemy seemed to be the first major instance in which the president spurred searing bipartisan backlash for his actions, prompting him to delete the post and do an about-face on the meaning of the image. He later claimed to reporters that he believed it depicted him as a doctor.

Daniel Bessner, Derek Davison On American Prestige: Derek speaks with Danny and Mike Brenes about Cold War liberalism, its shaping of the American empire, and more from their new co-edited volume. The post Cold War Liberal Empire—With Michael Brenes appeared first on The Nation.

Ana Vračar for Peoples Dispatch Israeli authorities are reportedly pursuing another six-month extension to the imprisonment of Palestinian pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, taken by Israeli occupation forces from Kamal Adwan Hospital over two years ago, ahead of a hearing announced for Tuesday, April 28. Dr. Abu Safiya has been held in administrative detention – a status that allows Israeli authorities to imprison […]

President Donald Trump called for Netanyahu to be pardoned in a request to Israel’s president late last year.

As the president considers a government lifeline for the struggling airline, a wide swath of his party wants no part of it.

The CDC’s most recent vaccine recommendations are not based on science, critics say.

The Palestinian Information Center The “Spring 2026 mission,” part of the Global Sumud Flotilla, set sail on Sunday from the Italian island of Sicily, aiming to break the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip and deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians. According to flotilla sources, the vessels had arrived in Sicily on 23 April after departing […]

The Trump administration’s various projects to reshape the government—even the symbolic ones—are costing U.S. taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.In its latest legislative proposal, the Department of Defense has formally asked Congress to codify its rebrand as the “Department of War,” assuring it that the name change would have “no significant impact” on future spending. Yet the military agency also acknowledged that it has already spent some $50 million in implementing the new title. The vast majority of that price tag, roughly $44.6 million, was tied to the agency’s enterprise systems, infrastructure, and administrative support, reported Inside Defense Tuesday.That money was potentially spent in vain. While Donald Trump declared the identity switch via an executive order in September, the department’s name remains unchanged by law. Ultimately, Congress alone is responsible for the redesignation.However, the $50 million already spent could turn out to be just a fraction of the overall cost to cast a more aggressive identity on America’s military agency. In January, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that renaming the DOD could cost as much as $125 million or more if the title was used across the entire agency.“Costs would be at least a few million dollars if DoD phased in a minimal implementation, but they could be as large as $125 million if the name change was implemented broadly and rapidly throughout the department,” the CBO wrote at the time. “A statutory renaming could cost hundreds of millions of dollars depending on how Congress and DoD chose to implement the change.”Despite Trump’s repeat campaign pledges to slash government spending, practically all of the MAGA leader’s sweeping government reforms have come with hidden fees. This week, Republicans began pushing their congressional colleagues to sign a $400 million check to construct Trump’s White House ballroom. Led by South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, the cohort has claimed that the space needs to be built expeditiously as a matter of national security. Citing the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner Saturday, Republicans have argued that the president is not safe without the proposed 90,000-square-foot dance hall and the attached underground military complex. None of them have yet explained how the Secret Service—which also manned security at the Saturday night dinner—would have hypothetically fared differently at the White House location.

The ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis—and then called her a “fucking bitch” moments before she died in her car—has been transferred to a different state to continue his work with the agency, as the FBI continues to supress an investigation into him. PunchUp, The Daily Beast’s new Substack, reported that Jonathan Ross, who was only placed on three days of administrative leave for shooting Good in the arm, head, and chest, is back in both an administrative and investigative capacity, facing virtually no consequences for killing an innocent woman in broad daylight. Department of Homeland Security officials told the outlet that ICE’s internal affairs can’t conduct its own investigation until the FBI probe ends—meaning Ross could avoid accountability for a long time to come.The FBI’s investigation into Ross has been delayed and marked by a series of controversial moves. Six senior Justice Department officials quit in January over the department’s handling of the case, as did an FBI supervisor in the Minneapolis field office who was pushed to discontinue her civil rights probe into Ross. And while the DOJ claims that the investigation is ongoing, the only thing that’s come out of it is Ross returning to work.