Sources told CNN on Thursday that Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins is expected to leave after the midterms, after becoming the Cabinet official to draw President Donald Trump's ire.
CNN reported that Collins could be on his way out because of the way he handled a veterans' health bill. Sources told the outlet that Collins' relationship with Republicans in Congress is "garbage" because of it.
The White House told CNN in a statement that the president is not unhappy with Collins, and sources said Collins may leave of his own accord.
The Trump administration was investigating a vandalism incident on Thursday involving graffiti and soap bubbles.
The bubbles was reportedly overflowing out of the fountain, and neon graffiti with the message "Clean hands Dirty $" was etched at the World War II Memorial in Washington, DC, CNN reported.
Someone has just poured bubble soap into the World War II Memorial Fountains on the National Mall. pic.twitter.com/3UDCxHCdmC — Andrew Leyden (@PenguinSix) August 13, 2026
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt's departure is a sign that things are only going to get worse for the Trump administration, former CNN correspondent Jim Acosta said on the latest episode of his show.
Acosta opened by giving a sendoff to Leavitt's career, which she says she is ending to focus on motherhood for her two children, though observers have speculated it could be about something else.
Leavitt, he said, "was going for the gold in the lie Olympics," despite his first impression when she took the podium that "is she ready for prime time? She’s going to have to do those special exercises that they do inside the Trump White House to really hone their skills at lying to the American people."
Nonetheless, said Acosta, her departure is a clear sign that the "rats are starting to jump ship" from an administration that is about to lose all of its power and clout.
"Maybe they’re starting to see what is coming this November and the size of the tidal wave that is building at this point, and they want to jump off this ship as quickly as possible before they get tossed around at sea, like Matt Damon in the Odyssey or something," said Acosta.
Attorney General Todd Blanche allowed a 92-year federal ban on unregistered gun silencers and short-barreled rifles to collapse.
Blanche failed to appeal a federal court ruling, contradicting his July 15 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
While being confirmed, Blanche wrote, "the Department's duty is to defend the constitutionality of the laws passed by this body" and argued the Department of Justice was "presently defending the NFA against constitutional challenges."
However, four days after his August 8 Senate confirmation, the seven-day appeal deadline passed, and the Department of Justice had not filed anything.
Congress zeroed out the $200 National Firearms Act tax, leading a federal judge to rule registration requirements fell with it, according to the Congressional Record.
Gun Owners of America and Silencer Shop conducted the first unregistered suppressor transfers since 1934 at a Texas storefront.
Gun-control groups, like GIFFORDS, condemned the decision, according to Brady.
Its Executive Director Emma Brown said, "By not seeking a stay, the Department of Justice is putting the gun industry's profits ahead of the American people's safety."
President Donald Trump's latest personal money ventures have left celebrity podcaster Joe Rogan completely floored — and outraged.
Rogan gave last-minute backing to Trump's campaign in 2024, but since then has recoiled from many of Trump's policies, including his mass deportation plans.
In his latest show, Rogan and comedian Shane Gillis raged against Trump's latest schemes to monetize the presidency.
In particular, they were horrified that Trump is planning to sell early access to his Truth Social posts, which often drive federal policy and stock prices around the country — something that would allow paying customers to easily trade stocks based on nonpublic information.
"He's selling faster access to his tweets, and then you can bet on the markets," said Gillis. "It’s literally insider trading.”
“Wait a minute, is that real?" cut in Rogan. "How is that legal? Who’s telling him this is a good idea? $100K to get early tweets? That’s literally crazy. He’s just on a grab.”
The two of them also slammed the president's involvement in cryptocurrency side ventures.
“This government has done some (expletive) that no government has ever done before and one of them is the crypto stuff," said Rogan. "The crypto stuff is nuts. Trump has made billions in crypto. Then you got his sons and his sons are involved in these weird business deals, and there’s a lot of money flowing around that you could dig in and start arresting people.”
Speculation over who could replace White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is intriguing gamblers, who are betting on wild-card picks.
According to reporting by The Daily Beast, the prediction market Kalshi is taking bets on who will replace Leavitt. President Donald Trump's devoted aide, Natalie Harp, has recently emerged as a "wild card" pick, but CNN conservative pundit Scott Jennings remains the frontrunner, The Daily Beast wrote.
Jennings is leading with a 29 percent chance of landing the job, The Daily Beast reported on Thursday. Jennings appeared on CNN NewsNight on Wednesday night, and guest host Lulu Garcia-Navarro put the suggestion to him directly.
Jennings said "no," and pivoted to praising Leavitt, calling her "maybe the greatest White House press secretary in the last 30 years, at least." Fellow CNN commentator Bakari Sellers chimed in, saying, "Democrats are afraid of Scott Jennings becoming press secretary. There you go. Now you've got the job."
White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly followed in second place at 17 percent, and Trump's former legal spokesperson Alina Habba sits at 16 percent. MAGA commentators have supported the idea of appointing Habba. Former GOP congressman and convicted fraudster George Santos wrote in a Thursday evening post on X, "I freaking love her energy."
Below them, Kalshi has stacked up a field of dark-horse contenders. Among them is Natalie Harp, the 35-year-old personal aide who prints out articles for Trump to read and posts on his behalf on Truth Social, according to The Daily Beast. Kalshi gives her a 5 percent chance, which means a $100 bet on Harp would pay out roughly 20-to-1, about $2,000, if she's picked.
Harp's inclusion is notable given her low public profile, The Daily Beast noted. She is not active on social media and has never spoken publicly about her White House role.
Other long-shot names include White House Assistant Press Secretary Liz Huston, longtime Trump adviser Jason Miller, Don Jr.'s wife Lara Trump, Communications Director Steven Cheung, and Roma Daravi, a public relations executive at the Kennedy Center, per The Daily Beast.
CNN anchor Pamela Brown stunned the panel on CNN's "The Arena" on Thursday with a family story about President Donald Trump's latest obsession.
Reports indicated that Trump aides had found a loophole to place the president's name on the Kennedy Center after a judge earlier this year ordered the administration to take it down. Matt Mowers, a former Trump administration official, defended the move by arguing that most Americans don't care about the issue, and that the president "doesn't really care that much either."
Brown interjected with a story that other panelists said "explains it all."
"I know he does," Brown said about Trump's push to rename the Kennedy Center. "He told my mom in his 20sthat his dream was to have hisname on every building in theworld."
"Well, there you go!" former Republican lawmaker Adam Kinzinger said, laughing.
"Mymom would always tell that storythat that that was his big dream,dream," Brown added.
Mowers broke out laughing at the story as well.
Trump has displayed a near-obsession with remaking Washington, D.C., in his image during his second term. Outside of remodeling and renaming the Kennedy Center, Trump has also sought to paint several statues around the city gold and to erect an Arc de Trump in the District, modeled after the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
Schmidt, a co-founder of the anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project, argued that Leavitt would leave behind a legacy that would someday haunt her children — and that she would have to face her role in President Donald Trump's regime.
"This is the face the whole world knew was lying," Schmidt said. "It is a face of degeneracy, an ugly, twisted face that spewed poison nobody ever thought possible that could ever leak from this White House or any White House."
Schmidt described how Leavitt had responded to the ICE killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota, defended Trump's hand bruising, and attacked members of the press who pushed back on the administration.
"Bhopal-like death cloud poison, the type that chokes a democracy, that capsizes faith in institutions, in each other, in the basic conception of reality and the ability to tell it apart from the most malicious, horrific and fantastical lies," Schmidt said. "Karoline Leavitt, at a young age, helped obscure the ability of millions of Americans to know what is up and what is down, what is left and what is right. Over and over again, she had the opportunity to display character, to show dignity, to measure up. Instead, she fell down."
"All of the lies have come together now in a great stew of catastrophe for the American people," Schmidt said. "And it didn't just happen. It got there brick by brick, lie by lie. And Karoline Leavitt, of all of Trump's shills and liars, distinguished herself."
He called her lies "more rotten than the last, more putrid than can ever be imagined since the last was thought to be as rotten as it gets."
"But no, Karoline Leavitt is like a deep-sea diver who found a door at the bottom of the Mariana Trench that let her go lower. Good riddance," Schmidt said.
Attorney General Todd Blanche deployed the Justice Department to defend President Donald Trump's embattled IRS settlement just one day after being sworn in.
The May settlement shielded Trump, his family, and businesses from IRS audits in exchange for dropping a $10 billion lawsuit against the agency.
Wednesday night, Politico's Josh Gertstein drew attention to a new filing in the case.
"Trump Justice Department backs Trump's private lawyers in bid to have appeals court block and overturn judge's order imposing fraud-on-the-court sanctions for Trump-IRS settlement," Gertstein reported.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams threatened the deal in July, issuing sanctions against Trump's legal team and a gag order barring references to the agreement in official proceedings.
Blanche's Department of Justice, or DOJ, filed a brief with the Eleventh Circuit supporting Trump's lawyers' bid to overturn the judge's order.
Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter argued the settlement was legitimate.
Democrats predicted Blanche would act in Trump's favor.
During Blanche's confirmation hearing, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) warned, "He is about to become Trump's sword against his adversaries and shield against any scrutiny."
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) also argued, "He will never do what's best for the American people. He will only do what's best for Donald Trump."
According to NPR, Republicans John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) refused to advance his nomination without having written assurances Blanche's tax audit immunity deal was limited to the lawsuit's plaintiffs and that its proposed $1.8 billion "Anti-weaponization Fund" was annulled.
National security journalist Marcy "emptywheel" Wheeler raised her new theory in a post about the incident, which involved reporters and even some White House staff traveling in a decoy Air Force One flight without their knowledge during the threat of an assassination attempt — and it comes back to the fact that the only other significant people on the real flight were Trump aides Natalie Harp, Walt Nauta, and Dan Scavino.
"The details about who was in that catering cart are useful," she said, and not just because of the fact that "Trump took his comfort blonde, Harp, with him but not Stephen Miller (or any other Cabinet official, to include Marco Rubio)," wrote Wheeler. Rather, it could actually explain why Trump is so angry and scared about the leaks coming out of the White House.
At the same time that The New York Times was hit with subpoenas for its journalistic sources about the Air Force One security issues, Wheeler explained.
"Susie Wiles and Kash Patel started seizing phones almost immediately. They also had to learn who was traveling with Trump — who was in that catering cart," Wheeler wrote.
The simple fact is, said Wheeler, the nature of this leak means only a small handful of people could have tipped off the press — and most of those options aren't good for Trump. Those options include "One of those closest aides in the catering cart, or the junior people they brought with them; A very small group of the big-ego people left back as bait on Old Air Force One; Someone inside the Secret Service, involved in the ruse; [or] Turkish sources, who learned of the transfer."
This means that for all Trump knows, one of his most trusted aides, like Harp, could have betrayed him. And it's vital to him to know whether that happened, Wheeler wrote.
"None of that justifies the abusive way Kash and Susie Wiles started chasing down sources," she concluded. "But it does explain it."
A federal judge issued a blunt warning to Trump Justice Department lawyers this week, making clear his patience with stonewalling over the Epstein files is running thin.
Senior U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan didn't mince words during Thursday's public hearing, All Rise News reported — reminding the courtroom of his history of holding government attorneys in contempt during a previous high-profile corruption case involving the late Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK).
"That isn't a threat. That's a promise," Sullivan said.
The hearing centered on a lawsuit from journalist Katie Phang, who won a major victory in June when Sullivan ruled she suffered "informational injury" from the government's refusal to release Epstein-related files, giving her legal standing to sue as a reporter. Her attorneys are now asking Sullivan to hold DOJ in contempt for continuing to withhold documents, including handwritten FBI interview notes with a woman who alleges President Trump and Jeffrey Epstein abused her as a minor.
DOJ attorney Andrew Block repeatedly cited victim privacy protections to justify the delays, but Sullivan wasn't satisfied, at one point telling Block flatly that he wanted actual documentation, not vague assurances.
"I'm just looking for corroboration. I'm just looking for evidence," Sullivan said.
Phang's attorney, Emily Gilman, pushed back on the government's privacy justification directly, arguing DOJ's real motive was simpler.
"They just don't want to produce those documents," Gilman said.
Sullivan grew visibly frustrated when Block couldn't provide even a rough timeline for when the government would publish its legal justifications for withholding records.
"The public demands a time-frame — not just me," Sullivan said.
The judge deliberately kept the hearing public rather than sealed, saying both the public and Epstein's victims "have a right to know what the hell is going on in this case" — with the result that the phone line was flooded to capacity and many callers were prevented from connecting.
Senior staff was furious with President Donald Trump as more information surfaced about the jet plane swap in Turkey last month, a White House insider said on Thursday.
Brian Karem, Raw America White House reporter, detailed how these Trump administration officials and a former White House press secretary reacted to news that Trump had abandoned his own team and press corps for another plane amid a threat from Iran.
Trump had commented, joking with reporters that he would "go first" if Air Force One was attacked.
"Apparently not," a high-ranking Trump staff member told Karem. "He got off the plane and left us there."
Members of the press and even Trump's top Cabinet members had no knowledge of the threat, as Trump left them as "potential sitting ducks in the event of a missile attack," Karem reported.
The president's move has prompted a rupture among some of his top staff.
"When reporters asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio this week about the ruse, Rubio turned around, gave a slight grin, and then left the room with a disgusted expression on his face," Karem wrote.
"How would you feel if you were cannon fodder?" a senior Trump staff member said.
At least two press members told Karem that they had prepared for the next time they travel in the press pool and had their "affairs in order."
"What does it say that our president cares so little for those around him?" the senior staffer asked.
Former Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart told Karem he felt compelled to speak out about Trump's comments and actions after the reports came to light.
"There is simply no reason why we should accept that behavior, and the reporters and the staff who were left behind have every reason to be upset," Lockhart said. "The president’s life is paramount. But that’s not an excuse for forgetting everyone else."
Historian Heather Cox Richardson says the MAGA movement is falling apart — and that a rattled Donald Trump is growing weaker by the day.
In her latest video, the author of the popular "Letters from an American" newsletter laid out what she called mounting signs the president's coalition is fracturing.
"MAGA certainly seems to be coming apart in a lot of different ways," she said. "And what we're seeing come together is a new kind of larger democratic tent."
Richardson pointed to a string of warning signs, including that two Trump loyalists — MyPillow founder Mike Lindell and Rep. Andy Ogles — recently lost primaries after his backing. Lindell, she noted, went down by more than 10 points. Trump's job approval has sunk to 33 percent, and, she said, most Americans now tell pollsters he's dishonest, that the country is out of control, and that he's too old for the job.
The exodus around him tells the same story, she argued.
The White House counsel is out, and press secretary Karoline Leavitt is stepping down, departures Richardson tied to aides growing wary of being asked: "to do things that might get them in trouble in the long term."
Abroad, she said, Trump "looks completely weak," with Benjamin Netanyahu publicly breaking with him and Iran "walking him like a puppy dog" as traffic through the Strait of Hormuz collapses. She blasted the decoy-plane scheme that left the press pool and aides on a jet facing an Iranian threat as an act of "sheer cowardice."
At the root, Richardson argued, is the broken promise that Trump sold 2024 as a "permanent realignment" but couldn't hold white supremacists, Latino voters and young people together.
"Trump was promising everything to everybody," she said, "and it was not going to be possible."
Now, she warned, his allies are racing to "grab as much as they can" before the midterms as questions about his health mount.
