White House Is in Full Panic Mode as Trump Doubles Down on Iran War

Chief of Staff Susie Wiles reportedly called a crisis meeting with Republican strategists to discuss the midterms.

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles summoned dozens of Republican political consultants from across the country for a meeting Monday at the Waldorf Astoria, a person familiar with the plan told Politico’s Playbook.

The gathering of Republican operatives comes as the White House is developing its strategy and aligning the broader party apparatus to face November’s midterm elections amid Donald Trump’s rather unpopular “excursion” to the Middle East.

Former deputy chief of staff James Blair, who departed the White House earlier this month in order to run the president’s political operation, was also involved in organizing the meeting at the Waldorf.

“Taken together, the sessions underscore growing urgency inside the White House about the midterms and concerns around energy prices and cost of living exacerbated by the Iran war,” Politico reported.

Trump’s overall approval rating has hit a new low of just 37 percent, according to an NBC News poll Monday. Two-thirds of Americans disapproved of Trump’s handling of inflation and the Iran conflict, which has upended global trade and sent energy prices skyrocketing.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright admitted Sunday that gas prices may not come back down until next year, leaving Republicans in a tough spot when it comes to seeking reelection in November. It seems that strategists in the White House are aware that there’s only so much spin they can do.

“The rhetoric around this stuff matters way less than the reality,” one person close to the White House told Politico’s Dasha Burns Monday. “It either will be or it won’t be. If we don’t see the $3 gallon of gas, we’re gonna get killed.”

House Republicans in Disarray as Members Try to Expel Each Other

House Republicans are descending into chaos, with two more targets on the chopping block.

Republicans are fighting over expelling some of their own members of Congress.

Representative Cory Mills, under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over allegations of assaulting women, soliciting sex workers, lying about his military service, and profiting from federal contracts as a member of Congress, has drafted a resolution to expel his colleague, Representative Nancy Mace, from Congress after she tried to expel him and three other members of Congress last week.

A source told NOTUS, which first reported the news, that the resolution would highlight an incident at Charleston International Airport in South Carolina, last year, in which Mace yelled at TSA agents and security officers, calling them “fucking incompetent.”

The resolution could bring up any other number of Mace’s scandals. The South Carolina representative is also facing her own House Ethics Committee investigation over allegations that she collected $12,000 in congressional reimbursement funds that she wasn’t eligible for, and ordered her staff to buy her alcohol late at night, clean her house, and promote her on forums as one of the “hottest women in Congress.”

The congresswoman took to X after news of Mills’s resolution broke, posting that he “lied about his military service, has been accused of beating women, has a restraining order against him, and has allegedly been stuffing his own pockets with federal contracts while sitting in Congress. As a survivor, I will always stand up and right the wrongs of others. He is only coming after me because he knows he’s next.”

Mace last week also targeted Democrat Eric Swalwell and Republican Tony Gonzalez, who ended up resigning rather than face expulsion resolutions from Congress. Swalwell faced numerous allegations of sexual assault and misconduct, while Gonzalez sent sexually explicit messages to two aides and had an affair with one who later committed suicide.

The fourth representative in Mace’s crosshairs is Democratic Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, who faces an expulsion vote this week over allegedly misusing Federal Emergency Management Agency funds.

For now, the infighting in the Republican caucus undermines their already razor-thin control of the House and makes it appear that petty squabbling is taking precedence over serious ethical issues.

Louisiana’s Gun Laws Enabled Man Who Shot His Family Dead to Get a Gun

Shamar Elkins, who shot eight children dead and wounded two adults, had two prior criminal convictions.

The man who just committed the deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. in the past two years had a previous weapons conviction—so how did he get his hands on another gun?

Shamar Elkins, a 31-year-old father, shot and killed his seven children and their cousin Sunday in Shreveport, Louisiana. The victims’ ages ranged from three to 11, CNN reported. He also critically injured two women: his wife and the mother of the eighth child.

But in March 2019, three years after he finished a seven-year stint in the Louisiana Army National Guard, Elkins was arrested for firing a 9-millimeter handgun 300 feet away from the fence line of a school where children were playing outside, KTBS reported.

Elkins was charged with illegal use of weapons and carrying a firearm on school property. He pleaded guilty to the illegal weapons charge, and the second, more serious charge was dismissed. Elkins was placed on probation for 18 months but walked away without a permanent firearms ban.

Elkins was also charged with driving while intoxicated in 2016, CNN reported.

The state of Louisiana has a 10-year ban on firearm possession after certain felonies—crimes of violence, sex crimes, drug crimes, burglaries, for example—but not all felonies. The crime to which Elkins pleaded guilty sat beneath this legal threshold.

Because Elkins’s 2019 conviction for illegal weapons use only resulted in probation, his record fell short of the legal threshold for a permanent firearms ban under........

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