Mamdani SCHOOLS Trump on press freedom

The White House press ban that started as a petty Friday afternoon Truth Social post has metastasized into a constitutional crisis.

After Trump barred CNN, MSNBC, and Politico from the White House grounds last week, NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox News suspended pool coverage entirely in solidarity, leaving the president without a single major TV crew as he headed to the United Nations General Assembly.

The video of him talking anyway with no audio — which is historically provided by the pool — was music to the ears of many.

CNN, MSNBC, and Politico filed a joint lawsuit Monday calling the ban "a direct assault on the First Amendment."

Trump's response: launch "Trump TV," a state TV YouTube channel that debuted with an 80-day-old speech. Obama called it "unimaginable."

Jon Stewart offered Trump a simpler solution — try being a better president.

Zohran Mamdani sat down with Donald Trump at Gracie Mansion yesterday for a "wide-ranging" meeting that touched on affordable housing and immigration.

It was the first time a sitting president set foot there since Reagan in 1981.

Days after Trump banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House as "FAKE NEWS," Mamdani told him to his face: "We're going to have all of the members of the press here on the lawn, and that is something that I believe in."

Trump didn't blink, insisting he has "an obligation not to allow them into another very special house."

Trump praised Mamdani's $21 billion Sunnyside Yard housing pitch without committing federal money to it, and dodged on restoring Temporary Protected Status for Haitian New Yorkers.

Then Mamdani sat down for a CNN interview, called Netanyahu "a war criminal and an architect of a horrific genocide of the Palestinian people," and said the ICC arrest warrant against him "should be honored."

The Republican Party has spent months using Mamdani as a boogeyman to scare suburban voters about Democratic socialism ahead of the midterms. Trump just handed him a friendly photo op and a presidential endorsement of his mayoralty.

Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, 28, was mid-delivery in Austin, Texas, on Sunday when ICE agents shot him in the torso. His wife learned he'd been shot when he called her screaming in agony — then the line went dead. The hospital denied her access to him.

ICE moved him to an undisclosed location before his attorney could intervene, even though a bullet reportedly remains lodged near his spine.

A separate incident the same day in Illinois saw a US citizen detained by federal immigration agents and hospitalized. A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the administration's third-country deportation policy — which has already sent more than 25,000 people to countries they have no connection to — is unlawful.

The administration's answer to a court ruling that its deportation program is illegal is, apparently, to keep shooting people.

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll puts Trump's approval at 32% — a career low — as gasoline sits at roughly $4.48 a gallon and diesel hits a record high.

Marjorie Taylor Greene hit Trump with a public broadside over the diesel prices. His hand-picked Fed chair raised interest rates despite Trump's demands for 1%. The Supreme Court blocked his attempt to restrict mail-in ballots. A federal judge again barred the Kennedy Center from bearing his name.

Trump's answer to all of it: mention Joe Biden — a man with stage four cancer who has largely retired from public life — roughly three times a day, 890 times so far this year. The walls aren't closing in. They closed. He's just still talking.