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Trump commandeers Cabinet members to campaign in midterms, ordering them to drop or mute controversial stances
President Donald Trump is drafting Cabinet members and top aides – at least those who haven’t been fired or about to be let go – for a targeted new strategy aimed squarely at the midterms.
Key members will be criss-crossing the country, particularly in Republican districts, trying to minimize the party’s losses in November.
In: The more popular parts of the Trump agenda.
Out: The more controversial aspects of the Trump agenda that have suddenly become politically inconvenient.
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It’s an uphill climb. Trump has acknowledged that the president’s party usually gets shellacked in its sixth year. Some Trump loyalists privately acknowledge that the GOP will definitely lose control of the House, and possibly even the Senate.
If Hakeem Jeffries becomes speaker, that will trigger endless investigations that are certain to make Trump seem even more of a lame duck than he is under the Constitution.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the classic example. He has spent most of the last year crusading against vaccines, in keeping with his lifelong anti-vax campaign that is not supported by scientific evidence. Kennedy has branded his movement Make America Healthy Again.
He has fired the CDC director (who said RFK ordered her to rubber-stamp his policies without evidence), ousted other agency officials, and still hasn’t come up with a permanent director.
But as Politico reports, Kennedy has “been told by the White House to stay away from some of the more polarizing parts of the MAHA agenda, like vaccine skepticism, and focus instead on issues like nutrition.”
The campaign must reengage the roughly half of MAHA supporters who say that Trump and Kennedy haven’t done enough to make America healthier, the website says. RFK is a lifelong Democrat, and his party sees a chance to influence voters interested in goals long identified with the left, such as battling unprocessed foods and shrinking chemicals in the environment.
Trump is hardly the first president to utilize his Cabinet in the runup to the midterms. Jimmy Carter, in 1979, fired his health secretary, treasury secretary, energy secretary, transportation secretary and attorney general. It didn’t help. And when Iran seized 52 American hostages later that year, he was toast.
“Cabinet members will be urged to focus on several things Trump has done since taking office,” including tax cuts, Axios reports.
He is also considering removing FBI Director Kash Patel and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, according to media reports, but has dropped plans to dump national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard after discussing it with aides.
The president took a hard shot at one of our longtime allies yesterday:
“We rebuilt Germany. How about Germany telling us, Germany telling that, well, it’s not their war. ‘We had nothing to do with it.’ They wanted me to go and tell them everything I was doing. ‘We didn’t know anything about it.’ Well, if I would have told them, they would have leaked it, and we wouldn’t have been nearly as successful, possibly, right?”
He also blamed the media for disclosing the disclosing there was a second crew member missing from the F-15 that Iran shot down, though that seemed to come out almost immediately.
“We didn’t talk about the first one for an hour. And then somebody leaked something, which we’ll hopefully find — that leaker. We’re looking very hard to find that leaker. And talked about there’s somebody missing. They basically said that we have one and there’s someone missing. Well, they didn’t know there was somebody missing until this leaker gave the information. So whoever it was, we think we’ll be able to find it out, because we’re going to go to the media company that released it, and we’re gonna say national security — give it up or go to jail. And we know who — and you know who we’re talking about.”
Amit Segal, a reporter for Israel’s Channel 12, posted this on X at 11:19 a.m Friday: “Western source: One of the American crew members was successfully rescued.”
CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST SAYS DONALD TRUMP HAS LOST THE COUNTRY. IT’S COMPLICATED.
A New York Times report on deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, architect of the hardline mass deportation campaign, is revealing:
“He faces questions about how aggressively he can continue to drive the deportation campaign, and how much appetite his party and the country have for tactics that proved successful in helping to boost arrests of immigrants but reignited a polarizing debate over what it means to be American…Miller even pulled back his public appearances for a time.”
So he’s pushing all the same policies, even against immigrants with no criminal record, but… quietly.
“Rather than Mr. Miller seeing his power recede, he has moved to apply it in other ways, seeking policies that would pressure undocumented immigrants to leave on their own.”
Oh, and one more thing.
You might have the impression that there will be a huge blue wave in November.
But Charlie Cook, a seasoned and utterly nonpartisan political analyst, explains why that’s not the case.
While the Democrats are virtually assured of taking the House, “Only three Republicans were elected in 2024 in districts that Kamala Harris won. Among independents nationally, Trump’s approval ratings typically are down in the high 20s and low 30s, but gerrymandering and political self-sorting by the population has shrunk the number of purple districts, thus diluting independents’ power. There are very few Republican-held seats anywhere in that much peril.”
With Republican approval of the president in the 80s, “MAGA voters are so in love with him and trust him so thoroughly that nothing—not the Epstein files nor the attacks on Venezuela and Iran—are peeling them off. So Democrats have their work cut out for them to flip many red districts.”
That brings us to the math. “Only 17 GOP seats are rated as Toss Up or worse. Adding in the next level of competitive seats (‘Lean Republican’) brings only three more GOP seats to the competitive pile—still well below the post-World War II average midterm outcome of a 26-seat loss for the president’s party…Democrats could run the table, hold on to all their own vulnerable seats, and still fall short of their pickups in 2006 or 2018.”
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What’s more, says Charlie, in the last eight years, “the party that lost seats in the House actually gained in the Senate. With just a third of the Senate up every two years and only a handful of seats competitive in most years, the upper chamber’s results tend to be more idiosyncratic.”
Trump is deploying the Cabinet because he’s looking at serious losses in November. But it may not be the blowout that most prognosticators are expecting.
Dave McGinnis, a former Arizona Cardinals head coach and Tennessee Titans assistant coach, died on Monday. He was 74.
The Titans announced the death of McGinnis, who died after being hospitalized for an illness in early March. The Titans’ news release said that he passed away at Ascension St. Thomas Midtown Hospital with his family by his side.
“My heart aches with the loss of Coach Mac, who was so much more than a coach and broadcaster – he was family,” Titans owner Amy Adams Strunk said in a statement.
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Cardinals owner Michael Bidwell also released a statement on McGinnis.
“As Dave often said, he was a ‘ball coach’ through and through, and no one ever filled that role with more passion, enthusiasm and charisma,” Bidwell said. “Coach Mac truly loved the game and everything – and everyone – associated with it, especially his players. He was one of a kind and will be greatly missed.”
McGinnis found himself in an interim head coaching role during the 2000 season with the Cardinals, the team for which he served as defensive coordinator in 1996. He was retained in the head coaching post from 2001-03.
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In 57 career games, McGinnis went 17-40 with the Cardinals, ultimately being fired after a 4-12 season in 2003.
After he was fired, McGinnis landed with the Titans as a linebackers coach under head coach Jeff Fisher. He would become a mainstay in Nashville, holding that role and eventually being promoted to assistant head coach until 2011.
“Coach Mac gave so much of himself to this organization over the years, and his passion, loyalty and love for the Titans never wavered,” Strunk added. “He cared deeply about the people around him, and that kindness and authenticity left a lasting impact on everyone who knew him. He held a very special place in our family, and his presence in our lives and within this franchise will never be forgotten. We will miss him dearly, and we will always be grateful for the legacy he leaves behind.”
McGinnis’s coaching career began in 1973 when he was an assistant with TCU. He also held posts with Indiana State, Missouri and Kansas State until the 1986 season when he broke into the NFL with the Chicago Bears.
McGinnis served as linebackers coach for Chicago from 1986-95 before getting a promotion with the Cardinals. He also held roles with the St. Louis/Los Angeles Rams before leaving coach after the 2016 campaign.
McGinnis returned to Nashville to join Titans Radio in 2017, where he served as a color announcer for games.
“I love Dave McGinnis, and I don’t know that I’ve met anybody who was created for football, and a football life, more than Coach Mac,” said Burke Nihill, president and CEO of the Titans. “He just loved the game. Obviously, he played it for a long time and coached it for longer, and with everything he has done for us over the years as color commentator and a Titans personality. He lived such a special football life. He was such a special guy.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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US military kills 2 suspected cartel operatives in latest Eastern Pacific lethal strike, SOUTHCOM says
The U.S. military carried out another lethal strike targeting suspected cartel operatives in the Eastern Pacific on Monday, killing two individuals believed to be involved in narcotics trafficking, according to U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM).
“Applying total systemic friction on the cartels,” SOUTHCOM said in a post on X. “On April 13, at the direction of #SOUTHCOM commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations.
“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” the post continued. “Two male narco-terrorists were killed during this action. No U.S. military forces were harmed.”
The strike comes two days after SOUTHCOM conducted similar operations against two other suspected vessels operated by designated groups.
US, ECUADOR LAUNCH JOINT OPERATIONS TARGETING NARCO-TERROR GROUPS: SOUTHCOM
Officials said intelligence confirmed those vessels were traveling along known drug trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and were actively engaged in narcotics operations.
Two men were killed in the first strike and three in the second, while one individual survived the initial attack.
SOUTHCOM said it immediately called on the U.S. Coast Guard to conduct search and rescue operations for the lone survivor. No U.S. forces were injured in either operation.
The operations are part of a broader U.S. military effort to disrupt cartel-linked trafficking networks at sea, with officials increasingly describing such groups using terrorism-related designations.
The strikes were carried out under Joint Task Force Southern Spear, an ongoing mission focused on targeting transnational criminal organizations operating along key maritime drug routes in the region.
The Eastern Pacific remains a major corridor for narcotics trafficking, where cartels frequently rely on small, fast-moving vessels to transport drugs north toward the U.S. and Central America.
US KILLS 11 IN 3 STRIKES ON ALLEGED DRUG-RUNNING BOATS
The use of the term “Designated Terrorist Organizations” reflects a more aggressive posture by the Trump administration, which has expanded the use of military force against suspected narcotics traffickers beyond traditional law enforcement approaches.
SOUTHCOM has not released additional details about the identities of those killed or the specific groups involved.
The command is responsible for military operations in Central and South America and the Caribbean, including counter-narcotics missions aimed at disrupting drug trafficking networks that threaten U.S. interests.
The U.S. has carried out dozens of strikes on suspected drug-smuggling vessels in recent months as part of a broader campaign to dismantle cartel-linked trafficking operations and increase pressure on transnational criminal organizations.
Fox News Digital’s Alex Nitzberg contributed to this report.
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Los Angeles hotel industry ‘struggling’ under wage mandate signed by Mayor Karen Bass, new survey finds
Hotels in Los Angeles, California are struggling, a new report from industry researchers claimed in a new report.
“Hotels are struggling to keep up with rising operating costs coupled with falling demand,” the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA) researchers said last week.
According to AHLA, the city’s minimum wage mandate and other policies led to increased “costs without flexibility to reflect market conditions and demand levels.”
A phased-in minimum wage hike in Los Angeles mandated up to $30 per hour for airport and hotel workers. The law was signed into law last year by Mayor Karen Bass, mandating that their hourly wage must be raised by $2.50 each year until they reach $30 in 2028.
DAVID SPADE WONDERS IF HOLLYWOOD CAN RECOVER ITS MOVIE INDUSTRY AS PEOPLE FLEE LOS ANGELES
The AHLA is the largest hotel association in America, representing more than 30,000 members from all segments of the industry nationwide. Its methodology stated it was a “member survey of Los Angeles hotel operators and owners” that featured “16 questions in multiple-choice, select-all-that-apply, and ranking formats.”
The report claimed that the policies led to reduced hiring and cuts in labor hours. Other issues that arose included delayed or canceled hotel investment and development, reduced airline operations and restaurant closures.
“The report finds that hotels across Los Angeles are facing increasing financial and operational pressure as rising labor and operating costs outpace revenue growth, noting that development is slowing, investment is shifting to other markets, and some hotels have closed or delayed expansion plans,” the report stated.
The report found that none of the members believe Los Angeles is a favorable environment to make investments and 80% said that the city is not a good place for long-term hotel investment. Almost all the members surveyed said that rolling back the regulations would make the city’s market more attractive.
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AHLA said that hotels are the backbone of Los Angeles’ tourism economy, investing millions of dollars in the city every year.
“Los Angeles hotels generate $12.5 billion in annual economic activity, support nearly 64,000 jobs, and produce more than $1.1 billion in state and local tax revenue that funds essential public services,” according to the report.
This isn’t the first time the AHLA has released a report showing adverse effects of the minimum wage mandate after Bass signed it into law. The AHLA previously commissioned another study that found hotels have eliminated or expect to eliminate 6% of positions, roughly 650 jobs, since the Hotel Worker Minimum Wage Ordinance took effect in September.
The Los Angeles City Council and Mayor Bass’ office did not respond to Fox News Digital‘s requests for comment.
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