Mamdani REJECTS Kimmel's Trump idea on live TV

Mayor Zohran Mamdani walked onto the Jimmy Kimmel Live! stage in Brooklyn Monday night, and the crowd at BAM was still on their feet cheering well after he sat down.

Kimmel started with Fox News clips promising crime would go "through the roof" under Mamdani. Instead, murders and shootings hit record lows.

Kimmel's verdict: "I think this means you're doing a good job."

Then the mayor went through the unglamorous list: potholes, the BQE, Parents' Night Out, a city-run grocery store, and the 17 free public bathrooms he's selling as putting "the sewage back in sewer socialism."

On his oddly friendly relationship with Trump, Mamdani said their texts stay on two things: the Sunnyside Yard plan for 12,000 homes, and the Haitian New Yorkers whose protected status Trump ended.

The good mayor rejected Kimmel’s suggestion they text the president a selfie.

"Jimmy, I love you, but I love housing more."

Watch the full exchange here.

The White House's internal panic is now on the record: multiple Trump advisers told CNN on Monday that they've privately concluded the party has little chance of holding the House going into November.

Losing the House is "generally seen as a foregone conclusion."

Republican Barbara Comstock put it bluntly: "Donald Trump did everything he could to help Republicans lose over the summer"

The president's approval is tanking, his coalition has fractured, and they see no path to bringing back independents and swing voters before the midterms. One source with knowledge of the White House atmosphere said it plainly: "It's obviously going to be f---ing rough."

The problem is Trump himself. Top White House officials and elected Republicans have stopped even trying to talk him out of anything. They know they can't stop him, so they don't even attempt it. The dynamic comes as Republicans brace for a midterm cycle where the House is now a toss-up and the Senate map offers only slightly better odds. Trump's political operation is working off the belief that they can still win with enough turnout, but his own team doesn't believe it.

And, the Front Row Joes — the superfans who've attended over 100 Trump rallies — are splintering. Rick Frazier, who's been to more than 100 rallies, says he's sitting out November because Trump "can't be trusted" on Epstein and the military-industrial complex.

Meanwhile, vulnerable Republicans are quietly distancing themselves. GOP candidates in tough races who previously championed Trump are now highlighting their differences with him, according to a Washington Post survey.

Some are even supporting Democratic initiatives to counter Trump's messaging.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had the bright idea on Sunday to defend his office's sweetheart plea deal for a child sex offender who admitted to sexually abusing a young boy. It went about as well as you'd expect.

Paxton's prosecutors offered Adam Hoffman — a man charged with repeatedly raping a young boy — a deal that would have allowed him to serve just one day in prison after a hung jury. The plea deal also would have let him avoid registering as a sex offender entirely.

The judge was appalled. "One day," Judge Roy Sparkman said. "Somebody has to sell me on the wisdom of it."

So Sparkman imposed 60 days. Hoffman was released early after serving 30. And this weekend, Paxton went on defense, arguing on video that critics were wrong to complain because the guy served 30 days, not one.

The criticism exploded online for being misleading: Paxton's office negotiated the one-day deal, the judge rejected it, and Hoffman was released on good behavior before serving his full sentence. For child rape.

Paxton is running for Senate against Democrat James Talarico, who called the deal an "Epstein-style sweetheart deal." Some polls show Talarico pulling ahead. It should be a no brainer, but it’s sadly close.

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten announced Monday that he's reopening the criminal investigation into an alleged gang rape at Cornell that occurred in October 2024. Seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity were accused of drugging and raping a 20-year-old female student, but no charges were filed at the time.

The reopening comes after a civil lawsuit filed by the alleged victim — identified only as Jane Doe — drew national attention earlier this month. Cornell conducted an internal investigation and issued a range of sanctions, including expulsions and suspensions for some of the accused, but only two of the seven were actually expelled.

The others received lesser punishments: suspensions, mandatory workshops, and, infuriatingly enough, essays. None were arrested. Van Houten said he would present the case to a grand jury and pursue criminal charges. Cornell said it supports the reopening.

In 2024, Cornell suspended 15 students for protesting genocide after the university president bumped protesters with his car.

The full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals hears arguments Tuesday in the case that started in March 2025, when the administration flew two planeloads of Venezuelan men to a prison in El Salvador hours after a federal judge ordered them returned.

The narrow question before the court: can Chief Judge James Boasberg continue investigating whether the administration knowingly defied his order?

The government has spent 18 months trying to reframe that question into something else. Twelve former Justice Department officials — Republicans and Democrats — filed an amicus brief arguing the stakes reach past this case to whether the administration set out to defy the law from day one.

Today is when the courts decide whether contempt of a federal judge has any consequences at all.

U.S. Ambassador David Perdue told Fox News Sunday that Trump had asked Chinese President Xi Jinping if he'd like to buy American weapons.

Hours later, two U.S. officials told the Wall Street Journal there was no such plan — and one noted, apparently without irony, that it's already illegal.

Selling arms to China would directly undermine Taiwan's security and contradict decades of U.S. policy. The administration's explanation for how this got floated on national television by its own ambassador has not been forthcoming. The Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial board, meanwhile, used two words to describe Trump's latest move toward Putin at the G-20.

Two dozen UN human rights experts released a report warning that the U.S. policy of deporting migrants to countries they have no ties to has set off a "cascade of human rights violations" with potentially deadly consequences.

Since Trump returned to power, the administration has struck deals with 35 nations — nearly a third of them in Africa — paying them millions to accept migrants, including refugees and asylum seekers, who have no connection to those countries. The cruelty is not incidental — it's the point.