President Donald Trump is facing criticism for his red-carpet welcome and public embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin on the Alaska tarmac at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson — an event featuring a B-2 stealth bomber and F-35s flyover — though many are more alarmed by what happened next.

The Russian President, a former top KGB foreign intelligence officer — a Soviet spy — was invited into The Beast, the heavily armored limousine that is the official state car of the President of the United States.

“After President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin stood for a brief photo opp, Trump appeared to ask Putin if he would like to ride with him,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “Trump then gestured toward the presidential limousine, ‘The Beast,’ and both proceeded to get inside.”

As Trump and Putin rode off, alone, with no administration officials, no translators, and only Secret Service agents, critics and experts were aghast over the brewing national security and counterintelligence crisis.

Calling it an “appalling…White House decision to invite Putin into the beast,” Ian Mellul, a former Biden White House Director of Presidential Production, wrote: “Giving Putin a 1-1 in the beast, off the record. No interpreters. No transcript. No witnesses. The beast will have to be swept for bugs and other devices after the summit ends by USSS [U.S. Secret Service].”

Sophia A. Nelson, an award-winning author and journalist, remarked: “Trump just allowed A known Russian KGB spy to get into his car—the Beast. Correction: our car. Smdh.”

“As if this image wasn’t sickening enough,” remarked John Ridge, who writes about national security, foreign policy, and the Ukraine war, pointing to Putin grinning in the back seat of The Beast, “now we are going to need to replace the Beast and tear out most of 11 ABN DIV HQ to decontaminate them of listening devices and other sensors. This is a genuine counterintelligence nightmare.”

One MSNBC commentator called it “extraordinary” that anyone would be invited into the President’s car.

MSNBC: ‘It is extraordinary that any president or prime minister gets into Trump’s car. This is very rare for any allied leader, let alone a former KGB leader’

Did Putin bug ‘The Beast’? pic.twitter.com/zOYssqJI5I

— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) August 15, 2025

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Other events on the tarmac were disturbing to some experts, including the image of U.S. Armed Forces on their knees preparing the red carpet for Putin. Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, weighed in:

Truly shocking. https://t.co/vWe8wviHlN

— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) August 15, 2025

“Clapping for the war criminal,” wrote independent journalist Terry Moran. “What a disgrace to our country’s ideals.”

Clapping for the war criminal. What a disgrace to our country’s ideals.

Trump always shows his true colors around Putin. And he always sells out America and our allies.

I remember when Republican presidents—Ike, Reagan, Bush—always stood up to tyrants. This is pathetic. pic.twitter.com/BOb5uC77jX

— Terry Moran 🇺🇸 (@TerryMoran) August 15, 2025

Former Tea Party Republican congressman turned podcaster and Democrat Joe Walsh wrote: “Disgusting. Despicable. Traitorous. He’s clapping for and smiling at a war criminal, a thuggish dictator who invaded a sovereign nation and killed & destroyed the lives of millions. Disgusting. Despicable. Traitorous.”

Former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton told CNN, “These are very sensitive stealth aircraft. Everybody on the Russian party is a suspected spy. This whole base is now is now available to them, at least to some extent. I don’t think it should have been held on the base.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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A federal district court judge initially appeared “skeptical” of the Trump administration’s legal authority to take control of the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) in a hearing Friday afternoon, which she called just hours after the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration to stop the move.

But just before a break in the hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee, made clear her goals.

“I want to get to a practical solution because time is short and … there are people who need to know who they are taking direction from and what they are doing,” Reyes said, as CNN reported.

The District called the Trump administration’s order requiring an emergency head of the D.C. Police a “baseless power grab,” according to Politico.

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“We are suing to block the federal government takeover of DC police,” D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb wrote on social media on Friday morning, calling the administration’s actions “brazenly unlawful.”

“By illegally declaring a takeover of MPD, the Administration is abusing its temporary, limited authority under the law. This is the gravest threat to Home Rule DC has ever faced, and we are fighting to stop it.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday had issued an order that “sought to have DEA Administrator Terrance Cole take over the DC police and void certain DC laws regarding immigration enforcement,” CNN reported.

Judge Reyes challenged the Trump Department of Justice’s interpretation of the Home Rule Act, which grants Congress some control over the District of Columbia.

“The statute would have no meaning at all if the president could just say we’re taking over your police department,” Judge Reyes said in court, as Politico’s Kyle Cheney reported.

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Judge Reyes also appeared skeptical that Attorney General Pam Bondi could appoint the head of DEA, Terrance Cole, as the head of the Metropolitan Police Force.

“I still do not understand on what basis the president, through the attorney general, through Mr. Cole, can say ‘You police department can’t do anything unless I say you can.’ That cannot be the reading of the statute,” Judge Reyes said, according to Cheney.

In an important concession, the attorney for the Department of Justice admitted that, despite President Donald Trump’s rhetoric, the law only allows for 30-day “emergency” powers control of D.C., unless Congress approves an extension:

“Government attorney acknowledges to Judge Reyes that if Congress does not approve extension beyond 30 days, there’s NO AUTHORITY for the president to extend emergency power re Metropolitan Police beyond the 30 days,” Professor of Law Ryan Goodman noted from the court proceedings.

But at the break, CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said the D.C. “lawsuit looks like a serious uphill climb for the DC Attorney General,” because “the law – Section 740 – says the mayor shall provide such services of the Metro PD as the President may deem necessary and appropriate.”

“That is very broad language,” Honig said, as CNN reported. “And what DC is trying to argue is, well, ‘provide such services’ does not mean take over our personnel.’”

It’s unclear if Judge Reyes will return Friday with a resolution.

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U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) is under fire after invoking the U.S. Constitution’s racist Three-Fifths Compromise—that mandated slaves be counted only as three-fifths of a person—to defend his claim that undocumented immigrants should not be counted at all in President Donald Trump’s push for an unprecedented new census.

The U.S. Constitution is clear and cannot be changed without a constitutional amendment.

Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 states that all “free Persons” shall be counted:

“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”

The Fourteenth Amendment adds that “the whole number of persons in each State” is to be counted.

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Senator Hagerty, who in 2022 voted against legislation protecting same-sex and interracial marriages, suggested that there are other interpretations of the Constitution that would ban undocumented immigrants from being counted in a census, and he claimed that blue states only want the undocumented to be counted for “power.”

“This is all about power,” Senator Hagerty told Fox Business on Friday (video below). “This is why you see these sanctuary cities situated in blue states. That is, blue states that are losing citizens to states like mine in Tennessee, they’re losing citizens, they’re backfilling with illegal aliens.”

Undocumented immigrants have always been counted in every census since there have been people considered undocumented.

Not according to Hagerty.

“This is not what the Founding Father has ever intended to count illegals for the purposes of allocating voting power in America,” he claimed.

When the Founders drafted the Constitution, there were no “illegals,” because almost anyone could freely enter the country. Not until 1929 did entering the U.S. without authorization become a federal crime, and only a misdemeanor.

Hagerty has a different point of view.

“We should only be counting citizens,” he insisted, promoting legislation he has filed, saying he has 18 co-sponsors.

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“I have a hard time imagining that Democrats can continue to say this is the right way to go for America,” he continued. “It has been the motive behind the crime at our Southern border that President Trump is fixing and the American public is loving it.”

NBC News, just weeks ago, reported that there “has been a clear decline in support for Trump’s handling of immigration.”

Asked point-blank by the Fox Business host, “Is it constitutionally legal to do that?” the Tennessee GOP lawmaker replied, “There’s a constitutional interpretation, I think, that has been misapplied. It goes back to slavery days. And you know, what portion of a person is going to be counted, etcetera.”

“A person here illegally should not be counted,” he insisted. “That’s just common sense. We need to fix it.”

Critics slammed Hagerty.

“Someone should mount a giant blowup of the 14th amendment in the Senate Republican cloakroom, because these people apparently haven’t read it,” suggested Matt Bennett, Executive Vice President for Public Affairs for the think tank Third Way.

“The U.S. Constitution is unambiguous. No ‘interpretations’ have been ‘misapplied,'” wrote communications professional Mathew Helman. “As MAGA tries to reverse-engineer a way around the Constitution, we’ll get lots of dishonest word salad like this.”

“So we’re clear,” wrote Wall Street investment banker Evaristus Odinikaeze, “Sen. Hagerty’s ‘legal rationale’ is to drag us back to the logic of the 3/5 Compromise.”

“Counting human beings as fractions was a moral stain on this country, not a precedent to revive. The Constitution requires an actual enumeration of all persons living in the U.S. Anything less is an attack on democracy itself.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Sen. Hagerty on his legal rationale for not counting undocumented immigrants in the census: “There’s a constitutional interpretation I think that has been misapplied that goes back to slavery days and what portion of a person is going to be counted.” pic.twitter.com/zhrCLTciEp

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 15, 2025

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