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Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas sharply criticized President Donald Trump’s tariff strategy and derided Vice President JD Vance during private donor gatherings last year, according to audio recordings obtained by Axios that capture some of the most pointed intra-party attacks from a Republican lawmaker since the administration took office.
The comments, made during two separate meetings, reveal Cruz leveling unusually blunt critiques of both Trump and Vance behind closed doors, at a time when he is widely viewed as weighing a potential 2028 presidential bid.
The recordings — totaling nearly 10 minutes — show Cruz framing himself as a pro–free trade, interventionist Republican, positioning his views in contrast to Vance’s more restrained foreign policy outlook as a possible primary challenge looms.
In the conversations, Cruz portrays Vance as closely aligned with conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson, whom Cruz has repeatedly accused in public disputes of promoting antisemitism and advocating an anti-Israel foreign policy.
The audio files were provided to Axios by a Republican source and were recorded in early and mid-2025.
In the later recording, Cruz warns donors that Trump’s tariffs risk triggering severe economic fallout and could ultimately expose the president to impeachment.
Cruz recounts that after Trump announced the tariffs in early April 2025, he and several other senators held a late-night call with the president urging him to reconsider. Cruz says the call stretched past midnight and “did not go well,” describing Trump as “yelling” and “cursing.”
“Trump was in a bad mood,” Cruz tells the donors. “I’ve been in conversations where he was very happy. This was not one of them.”
Cruz says he cautioned Trump about the political consequences, recalling that he told the president: “Mr. President, if we get to November of [2026] and people’s 401(k)s are down 30% and prices are up 10–20% at the supermarket, we’re going to go into Election Day, face a bloodbath.”
“You’re going to lose the House, you’re going to lose the Senate, you’re going to spend the next two years being impeached every single week.”
According to Cruz, Trump’s response was blunt: “[Curse] you, Ted.”
At one point during the donor session, when an attendee referenced “Liberation Day,” Trump’s label for the tariff rollout, Cruz quipped: “I’ve told my team if anyone uses those words, they will be terminated on the spot. That is not language we use.”
Cruz also told donors that he has been “battling” the White House to secure approval for a trade agreement with India. When asked which administration officials have resisted such deals, Cruz pointed to White House economic adviser Peter Navarro, Vance, and “sometimes” Trump.
Returning to Vance, Cruz again tied him closely to Carlson’s worldview, saying: “Tucker created JD. JD is Tucker’s protégé, and they are one and the same.”
{Matzav.com}
[Video below.] Rav Aharon Teitelbaum of Satmar issued a sweeping directive prohibiting yeshiva bochurim and avreichim affiliated with Satmar institutions in Israel from taking part in street protests, following a series of deadly incidents in which two bochurim were killed during or near demonstrations against the draft law and other issues.
The directive was delivered Motzaei Shabbos during a melaveh malkah marking the yahrtzeit of the Rebbe’s grandfather, the Atzei Chaim of Sighet, in Palm Springs. In his remarks, the Rebbe addressed the recent tragedies and announced an outright ban on participation in protests by members of the Satmar community.
The Rebbe’s comments followed recent demonstrations during which two bochurim, Yosef Eisenthal and Naftali Tzvi Kramer, were killed after being struck by vehicles. The Rebbe referred to the drivers involved as “רוצח’ישע דרייווערס,” saying they deliberately drove buses into crowds in order to harm bochurim.
Recalling earlier tragedies, the Rebbe referenced the 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the Shomron by Hamas terrorists. He said: “I spoke then and asked a very difficult question: Who gives permission to send bochurim into the occupied territories? It is a place of danger, Arab murderers roam there and kill bochurim, and the parents who sent their children to a place of danger, their blood is on their hands. At the time there were many Zionists who shouted that it was not a dangerous place, but the reality is known to all: sending bochurim into the territories is murder.”
Turning to the current wave of protests, the Rebbe said: “In recent weeks, when the decree of drafting yeshiva students reached a new peak, with harsh decrees and the kidnapping of bochurim from their homes, they began organizing protests in the streets. Unfortunately, at some of these protests there are people who block roads and do improper things. Recently, two bochurim were murdered in these protests, and I want to say from here — the Zionists are no less murderers than the Arabs.”
The Rebbe continued: “Just as everyone understands that we do not send bochurim into the territories where Arab murderers roam, in the same way we do not send bochurim to protests where Zionist murderers roam. It is exactly the same thing.”
Emphasizing that the ruling applies directly to his own community, the Rebbe said: “I cannot speak for the entire world, but we have yeshivos in Yerushalayim and Bnei Brak, we have kollelim in Yerushalayim and Bnei Brak — and I want from here to forbid our people not to participate in these protests where Zionist murderers are present.”
Citing the principle of ‘al pi shnayim eidim yakum davar’, the Rebbe added: “Two bochurim were murdered by the Zionist murderers, and that is enough.” He requested that his words be publicized in every place where there is a Satmar community, saying, “It needs to be heard throughout all of Eretz Yisrael.”
The Rebbe concluded by citing the Gemara in Chullin that “chamira sakanta mei’isura” — danger is more severe than prohibition and invoked the teachings of the Satmar Rebbe Rav Yoel Teitelbaum, the Divrei Yoel. He said that anyone familiar with how the Divrei Yoel led the struggle against Zionism knew that he recognized the danger involved, and therefore ruled that all members of the Satmar community are forbidden from participating in such demonstrations.
WATCH:
President Trump said his administration is examining the fatal shooting of an armed protester by federal agents during an anti-ICE demonstration in Minneapolis, signaling that a formal assessment of the incident is underway.
“We’re looking, we’re reviewing everything and will come out with a determination,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal during a brief phone interview Sunday night, stopping short of offering a personal judgment on whether the agent’s actions were warranted.
“I don’t like any shooting. I don’t like it,” Trump said in the same call. “But I don’t like it when somebody goes into a protest and he’s got a very powerful, fully loaded gun with two magazines loaded up with bullets also. That doesn’t play good either.”
Authorities identified the man killed as 37-year-old Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse who had joined the protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Officials in Minnesota said Pretti was armed with a handgun at the time of the encounter and possessed a valid concealed carry permit.
Video footage that spread rapidly online appears to capture the moments leading up to the shooting, showing a struggle in which one agent seems to pull a firearm from Pretti’s waistband while other officers restrain him on the pavement. Seconds later, gunfire is heard, after which Pretti becomes motionless and was later declared dead.
Trump also indicated that the surge of federal personnel sent to the Minneapolis–St. Paul area would not be permanent, suggesting the deployment would be scaled back in the future.
“At some point we will leave. We’ve done, they’ve done a phenomenal job,” he told the Journal.
He did not say when the federal agents would be withdrawn.
{Matzav.com}
A chareidi IDF soldier wounded in combat delivered a searing rebuke during a stormy session of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, accusing state authorities of completely erasing religious and chareidi wounded soldiers from the public and legislative conversation even as efforts intensify to draft more chareidim.
Eliyahu Pinchas Tzemach, a representative of the Metzuyanim B’Yisrael organization , which advocates for religious and chareidi IDF wounded, addressed the committee during deliberations on the draft law. Speaking with visible anguish, Tzemach described what he called the total disappearance of chareidi wounded soldiers from policy discussions.
“I hear debates, I see headlines, I follow this law from every angle, but there is one thing I have not heard even once: wounded soldiers,” he told lawmakers. “Not in the law, not in the discussions, not even in a single sentence. As if they do not exist.”
Tzemach pointed to what he described as a glaring and painful contradiction: the state tracks the lives of chareidi youth in minute detail, yet refuses to acknowledge them once they are injured in military service.
“The state knows exactly where every chareidi boy studied at age 14, which institution he transferred to at 15, what he eats, what level of kashrus he keeps, but when that same boy enlists, is wounded, and broken, the state is not even willing to know how many there are,” he said.
“Even to count us, they are not willing,” Tzemach added. “Forget rehabilitation, forget treatment … even the basic recognition that we exist is already too much for the system.”
According to Tzemach, this is not a bureaucratic oversight but a deep systemic failure with devastating consequences. Wounded soldiers are left without answers, families collapse under the strain, and there is no rehabilitation framework tailored to the needs of the chareidi public.
He described realities on the ground that, he said, are never voiced in the Knesset: mixed-gender therapy groups that chareidi patients cannot join; Beit HaLochem facilities with no accommodations for Torah-observant soldiers; rehabilitation gyms, activities, and overseas delegations that are entirely mixed; and the complete absence of transitional housing or structured rehabilitation tracks for chareidi wounded and their families.
“There is no rehabilitation. There simply is none,” he said. “And then they come and demand more enlistment, more targets, more numbers — without stopping for a moment to ask: what will be with those who were already wounded? And what will be with those who enlist now and will be wounded?”
Tzemach posed a direct challenge to lawmakers: “How can you demand more enlistment from the chareidi public when those who already carried the burden and were wounded have been completely erased from the discourse?”
Speaking afterward, he said that the focus on quotas and targets is fundamentally misplaced.
“Before talking about numbers, targets, and enlistment quotas, there must be a conversation about rehabilitation,” he said. “About responsibility. And about the future of chareidi wounded soldiers who have paid — and unfortunately will yet pay — a very heavy price.”
{Matzav.com}Former President Barack Hussein Obama issued a rare and forceful public rebuke of President Donald Trump on Sunday, directly blaming the current administration for the deadly shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and warning that the situation surrounding federal immigration enforcement is spiraling dangerously.
“The killing of Alex Pretti is a heartbreaking tragedy,” Obama said in a statement posted on X. “It should also be a wake-up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault.”
In his statement, Obama sharply criticized the conduct of federal immigration agents operating in U.S. cities, saying their tactics have sparked justified outrage nationwide. “People across the country have been rightly outraged by the spectacle of masked ICE recruits and other federal agents acting with impunity and engaging in tactics that seem designed to intimidate, harass, and provoke and endanger the residents of a major American city,” he wrote.
Obama’s comments came one day after Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse, was shot and killed by Border Patrol agents during a confrontation on a Minneapolis street.
According to authorities, Pretti was carrying a loaded firearm when he stepped between federal agents and a woman they were pepper-spraying. Agents attempted to arrest him, removed the gun from his belt, and then fired roughly 10 shots, killing him at the scene.
While acknowledging that immigration enforcement is inherently challenging, Obama said the Trump administration bears responsibility for fostering an environment in which deadly force is used recklessly.
“The President and current administration officials seem eager to escalate the situation, while offering public explanation for the shootings of Mr. Pretti and Renee Good that aren’t informed by any serious investigation – and that appear to be directly contradicted by video evidence,” Obama wrote.
The statement marked Obama’s first public comments on the unrest in Minneapolis, which erupted earlier this month after ICE agents fatally shot Renee Good. Authorities said Good had attempted to block immigration officers with her vehicle and nearly struck an agent, who then opened fire, killing her.
{Matzav.com}