Donald Trump wants to crush The Swamp. The leaks, the sneaks, and the secrets are all there. Our writers, David Gardner, Farrah Tomazin, and Sarah Ewall-Wice, are sifting through the ooze so you don’t have to. Don’t miss out.
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In this week’s news from the ooze: Kristi Noem, Kush Desai, Regis Philbin, Robert “Bobby” Peden, Dr. Phil, Mary Margaret Olahan, Knute Rockne, Thomas Massie, Abby Phillips, Lance Gooden, and Don Lemon. |
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Amy Coney Barrett Plots Her Own Death |
Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s ties to Notre Dame University run so deep that she’s literally planning on spending eternity there. The Swamp can reveal that the Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justice, who studied and taught law at the Indiana institution for years, has quietly purchased a plot at Cedar Grove Cemetery — the campus’s historic graveyard where generations of priests, professors, and alumni have been laid to rest. Cedar Grove isn’t your average cemetery. Opened in 1844, it’s one of the oldest Catholic cemeteries in the Hoosier state, and for decades it served only Holy Cross priests and nuns before opening to lay faculty and alumni. Walk the 22 acres of grounds and you’ll find the graves of university presidents, war veterans, and Knute Rockne, an All-American player turned legendary football coach who led the Fighting Irish for 13 seasons, notching three national championships. Barrett and her husband, Jesse, whom she met in law school, will one day join the cemetery’s roster. It seems like a fitting place for the Notre Dame double alum, who served as a law clerk for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and then spent two years practicing law at DC-based litigation firm Miller Cassidy Larroca & Lewin before opting to return to the university as a professor. “I thought it would be more compatible with raising a family,” says Barrett, who was the eldest of seven children and has seven of her own, including two adopted from Haiti.
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Barrett has been on a publicity tour for the book, which has already earned her a $2 million advance, including being interviewed by Carlyle billionaire David Rubenstein at the Library of Congress 2025 Book Festival. (Shannon Finney/Getty Images) |
Indeed, at an event in D.C. on Saturday to promote her new book, Listening to the Law, the 53-year-old said she never expected to leave South Bend when she first got the call from the Trump White House in 2017 to serve as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. She also initially hesitated three years later, when Trump’s White House counsel came knocking again following the death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. At first, Coney Barrett wasn’t sure about moving her children to Washington, and she knew the confirmation process would be bruising. “When we decided to go through with it, Jesse said: ‘I'm in, one condition: that we burn the boats,’” Barrett says, referencing a military strategy used by Alexander the Great, who, after landing on the shores of enemy territory, ordered his men to burn the ships they had landed in. The only choice was to forge ahead. “It was rough, but I just resolved not to look back.” Just as well for Trump, who ended up getting his third Supreme Court pick and the 6-3 conservative majority that has overwhelmingly ruled in his favor since. In recent years, the average Supreme Court justice lives into their eighties so Coney Barrett won’t be settling down any time soon. Still, when she does, it would be nice if she lands near Notre Dame alum and Cedar Grove’s most entertaining resident Regis Philbin.
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“Lips” Leaves it All Out There as a Palm Beach Wannabee
Is Karoline Leavitt the latest Trumpette to get the Mar-a-Lago Face? A photo making the rounds online shows “Lips” Leavitt giving Kristi Noem, the Queen of the MAGA makeover, a run for her money. Other Palm Beach wannabees could include Laura Loomer, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Lara Trump, and Pam Bondi. Of course, the Leavitt post showing Trump’s mouthpiece heavily made up with swollen lips could be a doctored or filtered photo. But at 27, the youngest press secretary in presidential history certainly looks quite different from the fresh-faced woman in her early Insta pictures. “Can a plastic surgeon explain to me what has happened to Karoline Leavitt’s face?” asked one curious person. Leavitt has never commented on the suggestion that she’s dabbled in lip filler, rhinoplasty, or Botox, and why should she? It’s a free country. Or, at least, it used to be. No doubt, she would need a little help keeping a straight face while answering media questions about her boss’ close friendship with fellow convicted felon Jeffrey Epstein.
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This viral image shows signs of being electronically exaggerated but does raise intriguing questions about the White House press secretary's looks. |
Musk’s Gateway to Mars Goes Down to Earth With A Dump |
It didn’t work out so well for the world’s richest man in Washington, so Elon Musk is creating his own city—no Trump, no sucking up required. Starbase, Texas, described on its website as “Gateway to Mars,” was incorporated in May 2025 and includes the site of Musk’s rocket company SpaceX. The mayor, Robert “Bobby” Peden, 36, has worked at SpaceX for 12 years and serves as a vice president of Texas Test and Launch. City Commissioners Jenna Petrzelka, 39, and Jordan Buss, 40, are both current or former SpaceX executives. Which means Starbase is your classic company town. It even has its own holiday—May 29—called Starbase Day, “in recognition of the incorporation and operation of the City and that said day shall be held to be a holiday of the City each year such that the community may remember the founding of the City and commune together in celebration.” If it sounds a little like a cult, not every resident has drunk the Kool-Aid. At a recent meeting of the City Commission, Rose Applegate was worried about a property owned by her parents. She was “concerned about the ongoing changes around the property and would like to know who the neighbors will be.” Mike Montes wanted to know if Starbase was providing water and sewage removal. Another property owner, Mike Wojcik, complained that “neighbors are blocking and encroaching on his property.” Barbara Hill is “upset because she constantly gets offers on the property and feels like she doesn’t know what is being planned by the City.” Welcome to Musk Town USA. Standard rules don’t apply.
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Spotted: Phil McGraw (aka Dr. Phil) at the Museum of the Bible for Trump’s speech about religious liberty, a distraction from being sued by a Christian broadcaster for $500 million. Texas MAGA Congressman Lance Gooden and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton at Butterworth’s. Congressional staffer Ed Skala at Board Room Bar DC. White House staffers Olivia Wales, Allison Schuster, and Kush Desai at Ned's Club.
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Panic Room: Dems Take On MAGA’s D.C. Private Clubs
Washington is crawling with private clubs these days, and the velvet rope has never been more political. Just ask Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and housing finance chief Bill Pulte, who recently turned their rivalry into a membership melodrama at Don Jr’s Executive Branch. Depending on who you speak to, it was less “gentleman’s disagreement” and more Real Housewives of Wisconsin Avenue — a spat over access, ego, and who does a better job of sucking up to Trump. But while the Bessent-Pulte feud plays out like a scene from Succession: the Washington Edition, another private club is flipping the script. The Gathering Spot, known as TGS, co-founded by Georgetown alumni Ryan Wilson and T'Keel “TK” Petersen, has built its reputation not on snobbery but solidarity. TGS began as a private networking space in Atlanta for the Black community and has since become a hub of progressive advocacy, where guests have included Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Senator Cory Booker. Their D.C. branch is located about two blocks from the White House. Its members are a mix of professionals, entrepreneurs, captains of industry, and lawmakers, Senator Raphael Warnock and CNN’s Abby Phillips among them. But as Washington deals with Trump’s growing control over the city, federal government job losses, and ICE ramping up racial profiling and arrests, the club is now hoping to provide a refuge for those overwhelmed by the current political climate. “We’ve started an effort in D.C. that we’re calling the Safe House initiative,” Wilson tells The Swamp. “It’s counter to what you see in the private club space, but our mission has always been about building community. So we’re opening our doors to anyone in the city that needs a safe place to meet or work.” Membership at TGS is in the order of $2,000 a year, but a new “access” membership tier was announced last week for $100. That’s a drop in the ocean compared to the $500,000 top-tier membership at the Executive Branch, or the $10,000 rates you’d pay at Ned’s Club around the corner. The downside? You won’t see hot-head Bessent, who famously clashed with Elon Musk earlier this year, having yet another spat with some other Trump ally.
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Dive Deeper Into the Swamp…
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Is Karoline as Sour on Lemon as MTG? |
Lemon's Capitol Hill assignment shows he's willing to ask MAGA's biggest stars questions—but he has not been allowed (yet) into the coveted "new media seat" in the Brady Briefing Room. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images) |
Karoline Leavitt’s regular welcomes to “new media” seat-fillers at her briefings could be said to have a pattern. Take, for example, Benny Johnson (pro-Trump YouTuber); Mary Margaret Olohan (reporter at the pro-Trump Daily Wire); Jordan Conradson (reporter at the pro-Trump Gateway Pundit); John Fredericks (pro-Trump radio broadcaster); and of course, Mr. Marjorie Taylor Green, Brian Glenn. What could possibly unite them? Keen to break that pattern is Don Lemon, a Trump skeptic and, in his CNN days, Twitter target, unafraid to ask critical questions. He tells Joanna Coles in the latest edition of The Daily Beast Podcast that he has asked to fill the new media seat but has not—yet—received access. Lemon has already shown he is unafraid to ask real questions, roaming the corridors and steps of Capitol Hill last week, where he attended the Epstein survivors’ press conference held by Democrat Ro Khanna and GOP rebel Thomas Massie. Seeing Greene, he told her, “I am also a survivor.” “No, no, you’ve been fired for being a misogynist from CNN,” she shot back, which Lemon denied. She also accused him of trying to bust into her office the day before with a group of “Tesla Takedown” protesters. “I did not,” Lemon insisted. Before Lemon joined the press conference, The Swamp witnessed MTG answering other reporters’ questions, but after her Lemon encounter, she beat a hasty retreat. Surely, however, Leavitt can better cope with the Lemon treatment? It’s time for some zest in the briefing room.
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