According to NBC News, Don and Bettina have already gotten married in Florida.
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s oldest son, married socialite Bettina Anderson on Thursday in West Palm Beach, Florida, according to Palm Beach County records.
A private wedding celebration is expected to take place Saturday in the Bahamas, Page Six reported. President Donald Trump indicated Thursday that he will not be in attendance, saying the date “was not good timing for me,” citing the ongoing war in Iran and other presidential matters. The president was initially scheduled to be in Bedminster, New Jersey, this weekend but is now expected to be at the White House….
Anderson comes from a prominent Palm Beach family. Her father is Harry Loy Anderson Jr., a banker and philanthropist.
Fun facet: Bettina’s father Harry Loy Anderson wrote a letter of recommendation for Jeffrey Epstein in 1999, calling Epstein “a gentleman of the highest integrity” to help him get big tax breaks in the Virgin Islands…”.
Is Trump actually planning military actions this weekend? He has been threatening more strikes in Iran and is suggesting the possibility of regime change in Cuba.
The New York Times (gift article): Trump Weighs His Options in Carrying Out New Strikes in Iran.
President Trump was in the Oval Office on Friday morning with his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, in what appeared to be a review of military options for potentially resuming the bombing campaign against Iran.
The existence of the meeting was revealed by Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a graduation ceremony at the Naval Academy. While he said nothing about the substance of the meeting, the timing was notable, as negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and its blockage of the Strait of Hormuz appear to have hit a dead end.
There is no shortage of targets, should Mr. Trump, in coordination with Israel, decide to resume the assault on Iran that paused on April 8. There are energy facilities left untouched after about 38 days of bombing, the deep underground nuclear storage site at Isfahan where Iran’s supply of near-bomb-grade uranium is already under rubble, and missile sites that were attacked back in March but appear to have been dug out.
And after weeks of declaring that an agreement was near, and then that the Iranians were “dangling” him, negotiations seem to be at a standstill. Mr. Trump announced on Friday that he was skipping the wedding this weekend of his son and namesake, Donald Trump Jr., because of “circumstances pertaining to the Government, and my love of the United States of America.” [….]
Now he has to deal with the reality that after five weeks of war and six weeks of cease-fire, he has failed to force Iran’s leaders to relent. Mr. Trump frequently notes — accurately — that Iran’s navy has been sunk and its air force destroyed, and that many of its missile sites and military bases have been reduced to rubble or badly damaged. But the destruction has not translated into victory.
Crucially, the near-bomb-grade nuclear uranium remains where it has been since Mr. Trump ordered a bombing raid on three nuclear sites nearly a year ago, deep underground at Isfahan. Iran’s missile capability has been degraded, but not destroyed. And the Strait of Hormuz has fallen under Iran’s control, even as the U.S. Navy intercepts shipments headed into or out of Iranian ports.
If Mr. Trump orders new combat operations, the political risks are high. Already gas prices are over five dollars a gallon in some parts of the country, and renewed military activity could send them even higher. Popular sentiment is clearly against the war, a range of public opinion polls show, and Mr. Trump’s approval ratings have plummeted to around 37 percent.
You can use the gift link to read about Trump’s options for military action in Iran.
BBC News: Trump is putting pressure on Cuba – why and to what end?
The relationship between the United States and Cuba – already strained and fragile for decades – has been rapidly deteriorating in recent weeks.
Accusing Cuba of posing a national security threat, the US has hit it with an oil blockade, sanctions and now an unprecedented murder indictment against former leader Raúl Castro.
Washington is also warning that a peaceful agreement with the Caribbean nation is unlikely, while Cuba says the US is using a “fraudulent case” to justify military intervention….
Since returning to the White House, Donald Trump has made clear his desire to change Havana’s leadership and has openly mused that Cuba is “ready to fall”.
In March, he suggested the country was in “deep trouble” as he threatened a “friendly takeover”.
There has been no announcement of plans for any military intervention but Cuba is on edge, especially as surveillance activity in the Caribbean increases.
Over the past week, the US military has been publicly broadcasting the location of its aircraft near Cuba on plane-tracking websites.
Leaving the flight transponders on “is likely deliberate”, said UK drone expert Dr Steve Wright, with the US intending to send “a clear message it has eyes in the sky to maintain the squeeze”.
Meanwhile, US news site Axios, citing classified intelligence, reported that Cuba possessed 300 drones and was discussing striking nearby US targets – including Guantanamo Bay, Key West in Florida, and naval vessels.
It also quoted a US official who said the intelligence – which it characterised as a potential pretext for US military intervention – suggested Iranian military advisers were in Havana.
There’s much more at the BBC link.
CBS News: CIA director brought paramilitary leader involved in Maduro capture to Cuba meeting, sources say.
When CIA Director John Ratcliffe visited Havana last week for a rare meeting with senior Cuban officials, he brought along one of the operators involved in the U.S. mission to capture then-Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro earlier this year, multiple people familiar with the matter told CBS News.
Venezuela and Cuba were allies before Maduro’s arrest, and the Cuban government has said 32 of its military and police officers were killed in the January operation to extract Maduro.
Ratcliffe made a point of introducing the paramilitary leader to the Cubans as the one who killed their people in Venezuela, several sources said.
The presence of a paramilitary officer who was involved in capturing a key partner of the Cuban government just months earlier may have been intended to send a signal….
Ratcliffe’s visit followed months of pressure on Cuba. The administration has threatened steep tariffs on any countries that export oil to the island nation, leading to severe fuel shortages.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said the country needs to make fundamental economic and political reforms, and President Trump has floated a “friendly takeover” of the island, which has vexed U.S. administrations since Cuba’s communist movement rose to power in 1959.
Hours after the Maduro raid, Rubio pointed to Cuba’s ties to Venezuela, telling reporters that Venezuela’s “whole spy agency” was “full of Cubans.”
“If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned, at least a little bit,” he said.
Here’s hoping there won’t be any US bombs dropped anywhere this weekend.
More foreign intervention news: Trump is still meddling in Greenland. Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, who is also Trump’s “envoy” to Greenland showed up there this week.
NBC News: Trump’s envoy went to Greenland to make ‘friends.’ They were left unimpressed.
President Donald Trump’s envoy to Greenland says he got a warm welcome on his first visit this week. But the mood on the Arctic island was decidedly frostier, with one of its most prominent lawmakers calling the visit “appalling” and “offensive.”
Pipaluk Lynge, who chairs Greenland’s foreign and security policy committee, slammed Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry’s trip as “a clear attempt to divide us” during the sensitive negotiations on the future of the semi-autonomous Danish territory.
She singled out his attempts to offer chocolate chip cookies to a group of Greenlandic children, seen by some as a surreal effort to win approval despite grown-up Greenlanders saying no to American advances.
“I think it’s remarkable that they feel welcome even though they weren’t invited,” Lynge said in an interview with NBC News.
Trump has caused outrage in Greenland and Europe by suggesting he could use force to seize the island, which has vast mineral resources and is strategically positioned in a region increasingly contested between the United States, Russia and China. Most officials and experts agree that were the U.S. to invade a fellow NATO member, it would spell the end of the troubled military alliance.
While Trump has rowed back these explicit militaristic threats, his designs on Greenland have not gone away. Arriving this week, Landry said his mission was to “make friends” but also that it was time for Washington “to put its footprint back” on the Arctic territory.
There was little evidence of any friendliness on the street, with the governor being heckled by people shouting “Don’t come here” and others giving him the finger.
Trump administration corruption news:
Ryan J. Reilly at NBC News: Jan. 6 prosecutor, Trump administration targets sue over ‘weaponization’ fund.
A fired Jan. 6 prosecutor and a law professor acquitted in a federal criminal case brought by the Trump administration are among the plaintiffs who sued Fridayto block a $1.8 billion dollar fund established to give payouts to allies of President Donald Trump.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, alleges that the “anti-weaponization” fund creates a politically discriminatory process that excludes individuals like the plaintiffs, who say they were mistreated by Republican officials and administrations.
“
By its own terms, the Anti-Weaponization Fund is available only to claimants who assert that they were targeted by ‘Democrat’ administrations, even though the current administration has weaponized the awesome power of the federal government against its perceived political opponents like no other administration before it,” the suit states.
Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Floyd, a career federal prosecutor who had been a deputy in the Capitol Siege Section and was fired by former Attorney General Pam Bondi in June 2025, is one of the plaintiffs.
“First, hundreds of people attacked the foundation of an ordered society by trying to stop the results of a free and fair election—committing serious assaults on law enforcement and other crimes as they did so,” Floyd said in a statement, referring to the failed effort by Trump supporters to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s win on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Then, this administration pardoned them — removing the accountability that had been hard earned by victims, witnesses, law enforcement, and prosecutors and imposed by impartial jurors and judges. Now they are asking taxpayers to illegally reward them for their crimes,” he said.
Another plaintiff is Cal State Channel Islands professor Jonathan Caravello, who was acquitted of an assault on law enforcement charge over an incident last summer in which he picked up a tear gas canister that had been deployed by federal agents during a protest against an immigration raid at a California cannabis farm.
The city of New Haven, the National Abortion Federation and the watchdog group Common Cause also joined the suit. All the plaintiffs are represented by Democracy Forward, a progressive nonprofit legal group that filed more than 150 lawsuits in the first year of Trump’s second term.
Read more details about the lawsuit at the NBC link.
Ryan J. Reilly and Kyla Guilfoil at NBC News: Justice Department deletes press releases on charges against Jan. 6 rioters.
The Justice Department has removed press releases detailing the charges against hundreds of individuals who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot from its website, the department confirmed Friday.
“Nothing ‘quiet’ about it,” the DOJ Rapid Response X account said in a post replying to allegations that the Justice Department had deleted press releases related to Jan. 6.
“We are proud to reverse the DOJ’s weaponization under the Biden administration,” the post continued. “We will do everything in our power to make whole those who were persecuted for political purposes. This includes stripping DOJ’s website of partisan propaganda.”
A review by NBC News found that the vast majority of press releases pertaining to Jan. 6 defendants have been removed from the DOJ website as of Friday evening.
The move to wipe hundreds of press releases from the official government site is the latest attempt by the Trump administration to reframe the Jan. 6 siege and to paint the rioters who participated in it as victims.
On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump mass pardoned the rioters. Soon after, Justice Department officials and FBI agents who were a part of the Jan. 6 investigation and prosecutions were fired.
And this week, the Justice Department announced a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund aimed to compensate those who “suffered weaponization and lawfare.”
After acting Attorney General Todd Blanche did not rule out Jan. 6 rioters’ eligibility to be paid by the fund, outrage swelled from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress.
It appears that Trump is losing support among Senate Republicans after announcing this naked attempt to steal nearly $1.8 billion from US taxpayers. Acting AG Todd Blanche met with GOP Senators yesterday, and it did not go well.
Brennan Leach and Kyla Guilfoil at NBC News: Ted Cruz says GOP senators were ‘screaming’ at Todd Blanche during ‘anti-weaponization’ fund briefing.
Screaming, yelling and accusations of self-dealing.
That’s how Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on Friday described a closed-door meeting with Senate Republicans and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on the Trump administration’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund that’s drawn bipartisan opposition.
On his podcast “Verdict with Ted Cruz,” the Texas senator described the meeting as “one of the roughest meetings I’ve seen in my entire time in the Senate.”
“Fiery does not begin to cut it,” Cruz said. “My guess is there’re probably 45 senators in the room, at least half of them were blasting the attorney general, and they were pissed.”
Senate Republicans met with Blanche on Thursday to discuss the fund, which ultimately derailed a vote on a Republican bill to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, NBC News previously reported.
Cruz said several of his GOP colleagues felt that they could not politically defend the fund because it appeared as though President Donald Trump “cut a deal with himself.”
“There were multiple senators yelling at the attorney general, saying this feels like self-dealing,” Cruz said.
“I got to tell you, the Republican senators were pissed — people were the entire meeting. They were screaming at the acting attorney general, and he was trying to lay out the legal basis,” Cruz said, adding “the legal basis is quite sound.”
A bit more:
Cruz said on his podcast that if the Senate had gone forward with planned series of votes pertaining to the ICE and Border Patrol bill Thursday night, roughly half of the Republican caucus would have voted with Democrats in favor of amendments seeking to rein in the fund.
He emphasized “the degree of the jailbreak of Republicans who were bolting, who were saying we’re going to vote with the Democrats.”
Cruz warned that if the administration does not modify the anti-weaponization fund by the time Congress comes back into session, “they’ve got a full-on revolt in the Senate.”
More corruption by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik. The New York Times: Lutnick Donated $5 Million to House Republicans Before Epstein Testimony.
Howard Lutnick, President Trump’s secretary of commerce, made a $5 million donation last month to a committee supporting House Republicans, an unusually large contribution for a sitting cabinet secretary.
The donation was made on April 1, four weeks after the House Oversight Committee arranged to interview Mr. Lutnick about his ties to the sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein. The closed-door interview took place on May 6.
Mr. Lutnick gave the money to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the main super PAC behind House Republicans and Speaker Mike Johnson, according to a new filing made public on Thursday. Mr. Lutnick has recently been a major Republican donor, but this was his first contribution since being named commerce secretary. It ties his largest-ever federal donation, $5 million he gave to Mr. Trump’s super PAC in 2024….
Federal employees are permitted to make donations, but it is rare to see such a high-ranking official donate such a significant amount. Mr. Lutnick is the first Trump cabinet official to make a seven-figure disclosed federal donation after being confirmed to a post, according to a review of federal election filings.
The closest analogue in Mr. Trump’s administration was the role played by Elon Musk during his stint as a part-time government employee, during which he continued to donate millions to conservative causes.
Lutnik should be fired.
Before I wrap this up, here are two significant immigration stories:
The Washington Post: Judge drops criminal case against Kilmar Abrego García, deeming it vindictive.
A federal judge on Friday dismissed the Justice Department’s human-smuggling case against Kilmar Abrego García, ruling that the Trump administration improperly brought it to punish him for successfully challenging his illegal deportation last year.
U.S. District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. in Tennessee wrote that “evidence before this Court sadly reflects an abuse of prosecuting power.”
The decision delivered an extraordinary defeat for the administration, which marshaled the resources of multiple federal agencies to publicly malign Abrego after court rulings concluded that officials had unlawfully deported him to his native El Salvador, in violation of a 2019 immigration court order.
Crenshaw’s ruling also marked the first time a judge validated what has become an increasingly common defense raised by high-profile defendants targeted by the Justice Department in Trump’s second term: the claim that they are being prosecuted not in pursuit of justice but rather for political revenge.
In a decision released Friday afternoon, the judge acknowledged the incredibly high bar defendants must meet to warrant a case’s dismissal on those grounds. It requires defense attorneys to prove that charges would not have been brought but for improper, vindictive motives on the part of government attorneys.
Crenshaw, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, wrote that in Abrego’s case, it was clear that the investigation into him was tainted “with a vindictive motive.”
This is outrageous. NPR: Trump administration to force foreigners in the U.S. to apply for a green card abroad.
Foreigners in the U.S. who want a green card will need to leave and apply in their home country, the Trump administration announced Friday, in a surprise change to a longstanding policy that sowed confusion and concern among aid groups, immigration lawyers and immigrants.
For over half a century, foreign nationals with legal status have been able to apply for and complete the entire process for permanent residence in the United States — including individuals married to U.S. citizens, holders of work and student visas, and refugees and political asylum seekers, among others.
The announcement from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said foreigners who are in the U.S. temporarily and who want to apply to become lawful permanent residents, or green card holders, have to return home and apply there, except in “extraordinary circumstances.” USCIS officers would decide whether applicants meet those.
“Nonimmigrants, like students, temporary workers, or people on tourist visas, come to the U.S. for a short time and for a specific purpose. Our system is designed for them to leave when their visit is over. Their visit should not function as the first step in the Green Card process,” the agency said in a statement.
That isn’t true. People have always been able to apply for Green Cards here in the US. For example, there are probably thousands of people working in important jobs at universities waiting to get Green Cards. These people are making valuable contributions to society. They may have married US citizens and had children. And now they are supposed to leave their jobs and families in order to get a Green Card? Back to the NPR story:
It is the latest step by the Trump administration making legal immigration more difficult for foreigners already in the U.S. and for those hoping to come here.
Hundreds of thousands apply for green cards from the U.S. each year
“The goal of this policy is very explicit. Senior officials in this administration have said over and over that they want fewer people to get permanent residency because permanent residency is a path to citizenship and they want to block that path for as many people as possible,” said Doug Rand, a former senior advisor at USCIS during the Biden administration, who added that about 600,000 people already in the U.S. apply each year for a green card.
USCIS did not say when the change would come into effect, whether individuals would be required to remain in another country throughout the entire process, or whether the policy impacts foreigners whose green card applications are already underway.
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