MSN

A House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the State Department's FY 2027 budget turned into a shouting match Wednesday when Rep. Bill Keating (D-MA) unloaded on Secretary of State Marco Rubio over a string of Trump administration national security appointments — and refused to let Rubio laugh it off.

Keating opened by putting Rubio on the spot, asking whether — in all his years vice-chairing the Senate Intelligence Committee — he had ever heard of Bill Pulte, President Donald Trump's newly named acting director of national intelligence.

President Trump's decision to nominate Bill Pulte as director of national intelligence caught many of his closest advisors off guard and dealt a significant blow to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, with whom the Federal Housing Finance Agency head has engaged in an ongoing power struggle.

According to reporting from the Wall Street Journal, Pulte, who leads the agency overseeing the country's mortgage market, personally approached Trump with an audacious proposal: ascending to the position of director of national intelligence following Tulsi Gabbard's departure.

The nomination appears rooted not in foreign policy expertise—Pulte has none—but in what Trump prizes most: unwavering loyalty, the Journal is reporting before adding that, in pitching himself to the president, Pulte promised to become an "unyielding advocate" for Trump's foreign policy agenda and signaled support for the administration's Iran war, according to sources familiar with the conversations.

The move represents a major victory for Pulte in his internal administration battles. The Federal Housing Finance Agency director has become a deeply polarizing figure, clashing repeatedly with Trump advisers who have grown frustrated with his aggressive approach and willingness to bypass the chain of command to access the president directly.

Trump has reportedly resisted efforts by administration officials to remove Pulte, telling confidants he values the FHFA chief's loyalty above all else.

Trump "first raised the idea of appointing Pulte as intelligence director to aides over the weekend, according to a person familiar with the matter," the Journal is reporting before adding that the fact that president actually pulled the trigger on Pulte's nomination, "caught them by surprise."

As for Bessent, one of the president's closest allies in the Cabinet, he was reportedly kept out of the loop, the Journal is reporting.

Mike Pence faced some pushback on CNN in his defense of President Donald Trump's policy priorities.

Trump's former vice president appeared Wednesday morning on "CNN News Central" to promote his new book, "What Conservatives Believe: Rediscovering the Conservative Conscience," and he justified some of the president's policies, including tariffs, that he personally did not support.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright appeared on Fox News Wednesday to defend the Trump administration against Democratic criticism over gasoline prices spiking amid the president’s deeply unpopular war against Iran, and provided a stunning explanation for the record-setting price surges.

Fox News’ Bill Hemmer cued a compilation clip of Democratic lawmakers criticizing the Trump administration for its war against Iran, placing the blame for rising energy costs squarely on the decision to launch the war. And yet, Wright insisted that the blame lay elsewhere.

President Donald Trump has not appeared at a single public event in eight days — and the White House isn't saying when that will change.

Trump's last confirmed live public appearance was May 27, when he presided over a Cabinet meeting at the White House. Since then, his schedule has been a wall of closed-press policy meetings, Executive Time, and private dinners. The only glimpse of the president came via a pre-taped Fox News interview with his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump — not a public event.

President Donald Trump is on the brink of burnout from his "descent into rage-madness," Nobel Prize-winning economist turned political commentator Paul Krugman wrote for his Substack on Wednesday — and is at risk of being rendered irrelevant to the very movement he created.

The president, wrote Krugman, cannot ever admit he led America into disaster with the Iran war, "but the debacle has clearly broken him. So we are now saddled with a president who has given up governing, but will maintain his grip on power wherever he can. And his power will be exclusively focused on rage and revenge."

President Donald Trump has faced a rare wave of bi-partisan scrutiny over his pick to replace outgoing Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard, and on Wednesday, a raunchy video resurfaced that may pose even more problems for the Trump nominee.

Recorded in 2023 in Florida at a mock-stock event, Bill Pulte – the current Federal Housing Finance Agency director and Trump’s pick to become DNI – is seen on video receiving a trophy with the inscription “Bill Pulte f----.”

A rare loss by a Republican who waltzed into Tuesday's primary with a high-profile endorsement from Donald Trump has raised concerns that a change is in the air for November’s general election.

According to a report from MS NOW, authored by Hunter Woodall and Alex Tabet, the fact that Rep. Randy Feenstra (R) lost the GOP primary for Iowa governor nomination to rival Zach Lann has Republicans “anxious” about what voters want, with the added threat that Lann’s Democratic opponent might be the next governor.

The Justice Department's No. 3 official briefly admitted on X that the agency was moving to revive a controversial fund to compensate Jan. 6 defendants — then deleted the post on Wednesday.

Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward, Jr. responded to a post from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) with a terse three-word reply — "We're on it." — before quietly scrubbing it. Politico's Josh Gerstein flagged the deletion.

Donald Trump's appointment of Bill Pulte as acting Director of National Intelligence hands a man with no intelligence experience — and a documented willingness to weaponize government power against Trump's enemies — control over the nation's entire spy apparatus just months before the midterm elections, a former federal prosecutor warned Tuesday.

Joyce Vance, who served as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, laid out the threat in stark terms. The DNI's portfolio includes advising the president on potential foreign interference in elections — a responsibility that, in Pulte's hands, Vance wrote, could become something far more sinister.

Ever since Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was nominated as the GOP's U.S. Senate candidate in the Lone Star State, a Republican group in Austin is in crisis, as some of its members openly advocate for Democratic challenger James Talarico.

According to the Austin American-Statesman, an unofficial Facebook forum for the Travis County Republican Party has had to block and remove dozens of people as they have posted messages in support of Talarico: "Andy Hogue, a member of Travis County Republicans ... posted the directive in the group last week."