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President Donald Trump named the new leader of the U.S. Agency for Global Media on Thursday, just one week after a federal judge ousted one of his allies from the post, according to a new report.

NBC News reported that Trump named Sarah Rogers, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, to lead USAGM after Trump ally Kari Lake was ousted by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth last week. Rogers is a First Amendment lawyer who formerly represented the National Rifle Association, or NRA, and challenged social media companies for allegedly censoring the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk and other conservative voices.

MSNBC's Jen Psaki criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Wednesday for banning press photographers from Pentagon briefing rooms over photos his staff deemed unflattering, according to a Washington Post report.

Psaki highlighted the irony of Hegseth's press fixation during the 12th day of the Iran war, when he should focus on military operations. She noted Hegseth has previously accidentally posted classified war plans in a chat with no accountability and overseen national security officials checking Twitter during active military operations.

Former Trump administration Homeland Security staffer Miles Taylor delivered a blistering assessment Thursday on MS NOW on how unprepared President Donald Trump was for the risk that Iran would shut down the Strait of Hormuz.

"One of the things I really have been trying to do is not to let my biases and priors override how I am interpreting the news, which is I obviously don't think particularly highly of the individuals that run the federal government or White House," said anchor Chris Hayes. "But at the same time, I want to think, well, it can't be as shambolic as it looks, right? I'm missing something. Obviously, the Department of Defense has an incredible architecture around planning. As someone who worked in the first Trump administration, like, how are you interpreting these signals?"

After the right-wing Daily Wire published a bombshell report revealing extensive self-dealing and suspicious conflicts at the Department of Homeland Security under now-ousted Secretary Kristi Noem, former GOP aide Kurt Bardella singled out another person implicated in the report: Tricia McLaughlin, who previously handled public relations for the agency, as well as her husband, Ben Yoho.

"Tricia & Ben would be better served using their legal resources to prepare for the avalanche of investigations coming their way than having their lawyers send people like me cease & desist/defamation threats," wrote Bardella on X.

The Department of Justice and Department of Veterans Affairs just quietly handed themselves a troubling new weapon, analyst Steve Kennedy wrote Thursday in Slate.

They announced a partnership allowing VA attorneys to become federal prosecutors with the power to petition state courts for guardianship and conservatorship over veterans deemed unable to make medical decisions.

Legal experts were alarmed on Thursday as the latest "laughable" legal theory put forward by President Donald Trump's allies seemed to move closer to becoming law.

The Trump administration has been circulating a draft executive order that would federalize the U.S. election process in the event of a national emergency, The Washington Post reported. Even though the legal theory underpinning the order is "far from irrefutable," Anna Bower and Molly Roberts, senior editors at Lawfare, argued in a new article that "bits and pieces" of the order could still become law.

President Donald Trump's administration is considering defunding a key election watchdog agency just in time for the 2026 midterms, according to a report.

CBS News reported on Thursday that the White House is mulling defunding the Department of Justice's federal observer program, which dispatches election observers across the country to protect the right of minority groups to vote. The move is being contemplated at a time when public polling shows Trump is losing support from key voting blocs, like young males, over recent moves, such as starting a war in Iran.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNN Thursday that President Donald Trump takes a long-term view and disregards short-term disruptions in global oil markets caused by the Iran war.

Wright stated Trump focuses on what's "best for the American people" and brings "safety to our troops" and "prosperity to the Middle East."

A group of federal judges tore into the Trump administration for the escalating threats to their safety — noting that the president's attacks on any judge who rules against his policies has led to threats, cyberstalking, and even unsolicited pizza deliveries to the judges' homes.

According to Politico, the judges in question were speaking at a recent white-collar crime conference held by the American Bar Association.

A pair of MAGA firebrands were at each other's throats on Thursday over claims made in a series about Erika Kirk, the widow of the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Ben Shapiro, editor emeritus of conservative media company The Daily Wire, posted a video on X sharply criticizing MAGA radio host Megyn Kelly for not criticizing another MAGA firebrand, Candace Owens, over her claims that Erika Kirk participated in the assassination of her husband. Owens has made similar outlandish claims about Kirk in a podcast series called "Bride of Charlie."

President Donald Trump instituted a drastic change to the legal immigration process in recent months, implementing a new $100,000 fee for noncitizens to enter the United States on an H-1B visa, a program used to import high-skilled workers like engineers.

However, with the program in force, the net effect has been a drop in revenue for the government.

President Donald Trump claimed at a Kentucky rally that U.S. and Israeli military operations have "virtually destroyed Iran," and "we won," but CNN correspondent Nic Robertson's reporting from Kuwait contradicts the narrative.

Within hours of Trump's statements, Iran struck two oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and attacked locations across the Middle East. Robertson documented residential buildings blown apart, injured civilians, and multiple overnight attacks on Kuwait, including strikes on Kuwait International Airport.