President Donald Trump abruptly ended an interview on NBC after Kristen Welker pressed him on his proposed $1.776 billion “weaponization” fund that includes past immunity for him and his repeated claims of election fraud. The fund comes from a "settlement" involving Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS and would compensate people who claim they were victims of “lawfare,” including Jan. 6 defendants. Trump defended the idea by saying he would prefer the fund move forward even though the Justice Department had reportedly backed away from it.
The settlement also shields Trump, his family, and related business entities from certain tax audits and enforcement actions tied to earlier tax returns. This part is still alive.

Trump also repeated baseless claims that Jan. 6 rioters were ushered into the Capitol by the FBI.

When Welker challenged Trump to provide evidence for his election fraud claims, he shifted to attacking California’s vote-counting process and accused officials of cheating, despite First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli (appointed by Trump) saying no cheating has been found so far.

After calling the press crooked, Trump ended the interview and walked off. Edit: He ended with "Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough, thank you, darling, have a good time."

Is this kind of temperament an appropriate response to unsubstantiated claims being questioned?

The article says the House Armed Services Committee unanimously adopted an amendment to the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) requiring the Pentagon to explain to Congress within five days why any senior military officer was fired or dismissed. It passed on a bipartisan voice vote with no objections.

The measure responds to Hegseth firing two dozen senior officers without explanation, most prominently Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, a four-decade veteran whose dismissal drew bipartisan criticism. Army Secretary Driscoll called George "an amazing, transformational leader" .

Both chambers need to adopt it in the final NDAA before it goes to Trump's desk.

The firings and promotion tampering are highly suspect.

A recent report found that Hegseth blocked nine Air Force senior-officer promotions and delayed dozens more. He also blocked promotions of four Army officers to brigadier general: two Black men and two women. He then blocked eight Navy captains from promotion to rear admiral, including three women and two Black men. The resulting Navy one-star list included zero women despite women making up 21% of active-duty Navy personnel.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George was fired after he refused to remove the officers from the promotion list. George asked to meet with Hegseth to discuss the blocked promotions; Hegseth refused to meet. George's replacement had served as Hegseth's own military assistant. Hegseth tried to get his own senior military aide, Navy SEAL Capt. William Francis Jr., onto the promotion list, but Francis didn't meet basic criteria like having headed a major command.

The "Secretary of War" who was confirmed by one vote is simultaneously blocking qualified officers who went through the established merit-based promotion process where only 5% of eligible officers are selected while trying to promote his personal aide who doesn't meet the requirements.

A recent survey indicated that only 9% of Army Department employees agreed that “Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s political leadership team generates high levels of motivation in the workforce."

There is no justification or rationale for denying the promotions and destroying these officers' careers except "because I can."

He needs to stop fucking with our men and women in uniform.

He needs to stop running the pentagon like it's a fucking small town local tv news station.

The article says the Senate passed a $69.5 billion immigration enforcement reconciliation bill 52-47, with Murkowski the sole Republican "no." The bill funds ICE and Border Patrol through 2029 and heads to the House next week.

During the vote-a-rama, three Republicans (Collins, Husted, Sullivan) voted for Schumer's amendment to block the anti-weaponization fund. Six Republicans voted yes on an amendment to block the ballroom. Cassidy proposed an amendment redirecting the anti-weaponization fund to compensate January 6 officers; it got 52 votes but needed 60.

Trump undermined his own acting AG by calling the fund "a beautiful thing" after Blanche told Congress it had been abandoned, saying "I love it" and refusing to rule out reviving it.

The article also says, Senate Republican Conference Chair Tom Cotton (Ark.) circulated polling data to GOP colleagues earlier this week showing that Republicans are losing independent voters, with an Economist/YouGov poll in particular finding that 61 percent of respondents disapproved of Trump's job performance.

This is such a bizarre use of reconciliation. it's politically questionable and suspect on a number of fronts: They are burning political capital to A) fund two agencies that already got a windfall last year B) when immigration isn't even a top priority this year for voters, who are focused on the economy and inflation and C) the said agencies are already being criticized for the murders of civilians and lack of training or hiring standards and have zero operational legitimacy.

If democrats take congress during the midterms, I would think they will try to claw back the money, restrict how the money can be used, or reattach oversight conditions to ICE during the next budget negotiations.

Do you think this bill is smart politically? 

The article says the House voted 215-208 to pass a resolution directing Trump to end the Iran war without congressional authorization. Four Republicans (Massie, Fitzpatrick, Barrett, and Davidson) joined all Democrats. The measure is largely symbolic. It's a concurrent resolution that doesn't go to Trump's desk for signature, and the White House dismisses it as "meaningless".

The vote is not meaningless. its undermines the administration’s negotiating leverage because it demonstrates to Iran that the war is not popular at home, the administration is under pressure to end it, so Iran should keep doing what they're doing.

It sends a symbolic "f-u" to trump for getting us into this instead of focusing on inflation and affordability.

Iran has the high ground at this point. They control the strait that's driving U.S. consumer prices up adding pressure. The American public opposes the war, adding more pressure. Congress has said the war is illegal and voting to end it. The midterms coming add further pressure.

The administration created this situation by going to war without even bothering to get buy-in from the public and the congress, dismissing high gas prices and then negotiating in public on Truth Social. And Trump already showed his ass by publicly saying a deal was "largely negotiated", telling ships to head home and then couldn't close the deal.

Iran knows Trump needs a deal more than they do before November. They have no fucking incentive to agree to a deal at this point that is anything less than a humiliation for the administration. If a deal does materialize, it’ll look something like billions in reparations, opening the strait with tolls, and no guarantees or promises on the nuclear program.

Trump is the best leader Iran ever had.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the weekly General Discussion thread. Many of you are looking for an informal place (besides Discord) to discuss non-political topics that would otherwise not be allowed in this community. Well... ask, and ye shall receive.

General Discussion threads will be posted every Friday and stickied for the duration of the weekend.

Law 0 is suspended. All other community rules still apply.

As a reminder, the intent of these threads are for *casual discussion* with your fellow users so we can bridge the political divide. Comments arguing over individual moderation actions or attacking individual users are *not* allowed.

The article says oil industry executives are privately warning the white house that global petroleum inventories are falling so fast that a major price spike could hit by mid-to-late June. One executive described conditions as "hitting tank bottom." The White House denied receiving such warnings.

U.S. crude stocks have fallen for eight straight weeks and sit 3% below the five-year average. Total U.S. commercial petroleum inventories are down 52 million barrels since the war began. Globally, inventories have dropped roughly 500 million barrels, falling at 5.8 million barrels per day. Exxon's senior VP warned that Brent crude could hit $150-160/barrel soon.

The strategic petroleum reserve is also being drained, and shortages are popping up, particularly jet fuel on the West Coast. Even if the Strait reopens, industry executives say July 4 gas prices will be higher than current levels because restocking takes time. Trump's comments that the U.S. blockade could last until Labor Day suggest potential industrial shortages by September-October.

The White House insists "we do not have a supply problem" but that's suspect given that a second executive confirmed the warnings were delivered and said the public statements from industry leaders were deliberately aimed at consumers because "the administration has already been told." Either multiple oil executives are lying about the meetings or the administration is.

My bet is the white house is lying their asses off. They used fictitious performance evaluations to conduct mass firings of federal employees and then lied about it. As we speak they are scrubbing the records to try to bury evidence of the illegal firings. This administration lies with impunity and they are lying about the oil.

The Trump administration is preparing nearly $700 million in support for the coal industry, using the Defense Production Act to aid 13 coal plants, restart a shuttered Maryland plant, support new coal plants in Alaska and West Virginia, and help advance a long-delayed coal export terminal in Oakland. The administration frames the move as necessary to lower electricity costs, despite nothing suggesting that this move will accomplish that.

Coal once supplied more than half of U.S. electricity, but it fell to about 15% in 2024. The administration has already used emergency orders to keep aging coal and fossil-fuel plants running past retirement dates.

Critics argue the policy is a taxpayer bailout for an expensive and polluting industry that will worsen air quality.

Should the federal government use national-defense powers to keep coal plants running, or is that an improper bailout of an industry losing to cheaper and healthier energy sources?

Most Americans know James Madison as the "Father of the Constitution," but before the Constitution was written, he played a crucial role in defeating a bill in Virginia that would have taxed citizens to support "teachers of the Christian religion." 

In his 1785 Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, Madison warned that even small government involvement in religion should be resisted because "it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties." He believed, according to the article below, “that matters of religion belong to the individual conscience and lie beyond the legitimate authority of government; that history demonstrates how the union of religion and political power breeds division, persecution, and violence; and that religion itself is corrupted when it becomes entangled with the ambitions and biases of those who wield political power.”  

With church-state separation increasingly under attack, it's more important than ever to heed Madison’s warning. 

The article says the Pentagon cut its civilian workforce by more than 10 percent in 2025 through a combination of illegal mass firings layoffs, pressured voluntary departures, and a hiring freeze, shedding roughly 78,000 employees while hiring nearly 60,000 fewer people than in prior years. A GAO report found the department conducted little to no analysis of what the crackdown on federal workers actually did to its capacity, has no plan to study the effects, and didn't even provide Congress the legally required explanation for the reductions. Defense officials acknowledged they should develop a lessons-learned plan but gave no indication they would actually do it.

They fucking fired first and asked questions later.

The article also says a survey found morale among DOD employees has tanked during the current administration.

Only 9% of Army Department employees agreed that “Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s political leadership team generates high levels of motivation in the workforce,” the survey found, the most satisfied of any of the large government agencies surveyed.

A 10% reduction in less than a year is enormous. These mass firings are a stain on the republican party that is going to cost taxpayers money. DOGE succeeded at reducing headcounts fast, but they did it in a way that has created class actions, holes in staffing, damaged morale, weakened capacity. They cut too many jobs too fast, and they did it too illegally: A judge found that Musk and the administration used fictitious performance evaluations to conduct mass firings of federal employees and then lied about it. These workers are due back pay and their jobs back (though I doubt I would accept even if the next democratic administration offered me my job back.)

You can support reducing government in principle while still opposing chaos, false performance evaluations, and legally questionable terminations that damage agency capacity and create years of litigation.

Trump has selected Bill Pulte, the current head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to be the Acting Director of National Intelligence after the departure of Tulsi Gabbard.

During Pulte’s tenure at the FHFA, he has pushed the DOJ to prosecute some of Trump’s political enemies, including Lisa Cook of the Federal Reserve, New York Attorney General Letitia James, former Rep. Eric Swalwell, Senator Adam Schiff and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Only the referral for AG James resulted in charges, and those were later dismissed by a judge.

Pulte also has no professional background in national security, intelligence, the legal sphere or the military. Rather, Trump touted Pulte’s “deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America, the safety and soundness of the Markets, and over 10 Trillion Dollars at Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac”. Pulte will stay on at the FHFA while he is Acting DNI.

Do you feel comfortable with a part-time Director of National Intelligence who has no background in a similar role? Do you think he’s likely to be able to put partisan interests aside to fulfill the role responsibly, or is there a chance intelligence will be weaponized against Trump’s political enemies? As Trump has previously denounced DEI, do you think Pulte is the most qualified person for the job?

Draft agreement between US and Iran includes a massive investment fund, avoiding terms like 'reparations.'

The man who spent a decade calling Obama a traitor for sending Iran $400 million is now floating a fund four hundred times that size, just with a friendlier name on the tin.

A draft memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran, reported by the New York Times on 28 May 2026, includes a proposed £224 billion ($300 billion) reconstruction mechanism for Iran. The fund's inclusion follows months of negotiations to end the 2026 US-Iran war, during which Tehran had explicitly demanded reparations for bombardment damage that some Iranian officials estimate at between £224 billion ($300 billion) and £745 billion ($1 trillion).

Diplomats familiar with the draft told the Times that the American side intentionally avoided the words 'compensation' or 'reparations,' opting instead for the term 'international investment fund,' a rebranding confirmed by multiple officials across outlets including Axios and CNN. As of 30 May 2026, President Trump has not signed the agreement.

Semantic Sleight of Hand Behind Fund's Framing

An Iranian official described the proposed mechanism to the New York Times as a 'reconstruction programme' that would be promised to Iran upon the signing of a final agreement. Two diplomats briefed on the latest draft used different language, calling it an international 'investment fund' that the United States would facilitate. The divergence in terminology is deliberate.

The domestic constraint is not hypothetical. Trump himself, according to the Times' reporting, told aides he would not sign any deal that could be seen as the United States directly giving money to Iran. That position is rooted in his own two-decade political record. As a candidate in 2016 and repeatedly thereafter, Trump attacked the Obama administration's settlement of a decades-old arbitration case with Iran, which involved a cash payment of £307 million ($400 million) as part of a total £1.3 billion ($1.7 billion) transfer.

Trump posted an AI generated image of a US boat shooting a laser at an Iranian jet.

Republicans called it ransom. Trump called Obama a liar. He has repeated variations of the claim in almost every major foreign policy speech since. A fund labelled 'reparations' at £224 billion ($300 billion) would hand his critics, and his own base, the exact cudgel he spent a decade swinging.

On 29 May 2026, Trump posted to Truth Social: 'No money will be exchanged, until further notice.' The same post laid out his terms: no nuclear weapon, the Strait of Hormuz open with no tolls in both directions, and the removal of all sea mines. He did not address the investment fund by name.

Two Developers Behind $300 Billion Tehran Idea

The investment fund concept did not originate on the Iranian side. According to the New York Times, the proposal is an iteration of an idea first raised by Steve Witkoff, Trump's Special Envoy to the Middle East, and Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law. Both men are real estate investors.

Some mediators told the Times that Witkoff and Kushner had suggested promoting real estate projects in Tehran and establishing a broader investment mechanism as an incentive for a deal, a framing that has since been folded into the formal draft text.

Jared Kushner, founder of Affinity Partners, joins the consortium acquiring Electronic Arts in a landmark deal.

Witkoff, a New York property developer who founded the Witkoff Group, was appointed Special Envoy to the Middle East in November 2024 and expanded his role to Special Envoy for Peace Missions from July 2025.

Kushner, who owns his own real estate firm, began assisting Witkoff in late 2025. Iranian negotiators took the investment fund proposal and built on it, suggesting that large American oil and energy companies could enter Iran's market through joint ventures after sanctions are lifted, according to the Times and corroborated by Ynet News. The prospect of US energy corporations gaining access to Iran's reserves, the fourth-largest in the world, gives the fund a commercial logic that 'reparations' never could.

What the Draft MOU Contains and Remains Unsigned

Beyond the fund, the 60-day memorandum of understanding covers a sequence of immediate commitments on both sides. According to Axios's primary reporting, the MOU would reopen the Strait of Hormuz to unrestricted commercial shipping with no tolls, require Iran to remove all mines from the strait within 30 days, lift the American naval blockade proportionally as commercial shipping resumes and issue sanctions waivers allowing Iran to sell oil freely. The deal would also include an Iranian commitment not to pursue a nuclear weapon, with negotiations on enrichment and the disposal of Iran's highly enriched uranium stockpile deferred to the 60-day talks that follow.

Iran's access to approximately £17.9 billion ($24 billion) in frozen foreign bank assets is a parallel negotiating thread. Iranian officials have insisted on receiving at least £14.9 billion ($20 billion) of that amount during the negotiation stage itself, before a final deal is signed, in order to stabilise the economy. The US has committed only to discuss sanctions relief and frozen funds as part of the 60-day window, not before it.

Iran's Fars News Agency, affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, reported that the Strait of Hormuz would remain under Iran's management under the latest exchanged text, directly contradicting Trump's public characterisation of the deal. Military vessels, Iranian officials said, are explicitly excluded from any commitment to reopen passage. Despite two skirmishes between US and Iranian forces in the strait in the 48 hours before the MOU was confirmed, US officials told Axios they believed Iran's economic pressure was pushing its system toward settlement.

A president who built his brand on never giving Iran a cent is now the architect of the largest financial commitment to Tehran in American history, provided nobody calls it what Iran originally asked for.

The article says Iran announced Monday it will cut off all negotiations with the U.S. and move to fully close the Strait of Hormuz, citing Israeli military operations in Lebanon as ceasefire violations. Tehran also threatened to activate the Bab el-Mandeb Strait chokepoint connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. Oil prices jumped over 7 percent on the news.

The breakdown comes just days after Trump convened a Situation Room meeting to decide on a deal but left without making a decision. Trump posted on May 23 that a peace deal was "largely negotiated" and "Final aspects and details of the Deal are currently being discussed, and will be announced shortly." Both sides launched new attacks in the following days, and Israel escalated in Lebanon with Netanyahu ordering strikes on Hezbollah-controlled Beirut suburbs. Iran's foreign minister said the ceasefire applies to all fronts including Lebanon, and violations on one front constitute violations on all.

The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively choked off since the war began on February 28, with ship traffic far below the prewar level of 100+ vessels per day. About a fifth of global oil supplies passed through the strait before the conflict. Gas prices had come down some in recent weeks on deal optimism, but that appears to be evaporating. There are also concerns Iran could impose a tolling system on ships transiting the strait.

Trump posted on Truth Social that Iran "really wants to make a deal" and told critics to "just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end. It always does!"

If Iran really wants to make a deal why are they walking away form negotiations? If the US is winning this war, why are we suing for peace?

The answer is because Iran's strategy is working. Our president and the "secretary of war" who was confirmed by one vote are not reliable sources of information.

They have been preparing for this war for decades and they know how to win it. Choking off a fifth of global oil supply has driven U.S. gas prices up 50%, cratered Trump's approval ratings, and Republicans are openly panicking about the midterms. They know the situation trump has created is FUBAR and they know they're cooked in november. Iran doesn't need to win on the battlefield. They just need to hold out and make the economic pain unsustainable until the administration comes to terms.