A top counterterrorism official in the Trump administration is under investigation after allegations that she was using "sugar daddies" to fund her lifestyle, The Daily Mail reported on Wednesday.
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism Julia Varvaro, 29, had an official complaint filed against her after a man who was identified by The Mail as Robert B. alleged he spent $40,000 on her during their three-month relationship. He said they met on the dating app Hinge, and alleged she has used a sugar daddy platform under the pseudonym "Alessia."
"Robert has made an official complaint with the Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General, revealing she had a profile on the sugar daddy website 'Seeking,'" The Mail reported. "On the page, seen by the Daily Mail, she called herself Alessia and offered 'seductive sophistication.' She used the same photo that is on her Instagram."
Varvaro told the outlet she did nothing wrong and denied having a profile on Seeking.
"We were together in an exclusive relationship. We went on vacations. I don't know what's the problem with that," she said.
In the complaint, Robert made several allegations about his ex, including that they consumed marijuana together — something the high-level Trump official has denied.
"I did not want a sugar daddy/prostitution relationship, after spending $30,000-$40,000 for vacations, Cartier jewelry, expensive handbags, and various shopping trips. She told me that she does not have college debt because sugar daddies paid for her college education," he said in the complaint.
"She also told me directly that the $40,000 worth of jewelry on her wrists and ears are all trophies from her sugar daddies," he added. "I believe that she's under financial stress and that her actions pose a security risk."
Veteran Democratic Party strategist Max Burns believes the movement's loss of both Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson is a sign that MAGA support could be slipping.
Burns wrote in The Hill, "MAGA voters have long believed in taking Trump 'seriously but not literally.' This is just another way of saying Trump might lie to other people to advance his own interests, but he would never lie to the supporters who power his political movement.
"At least some of those faithful Trump supporters are finally ready to admit that they’ve been conned, and there’s no way back to believing the fairy tale.
"Greene and Carlson’s awakenings are just the beginning of an exodus from the MAGA movement, which just a year ago seemed to be reaching new heights of power. After a decade of chaos and disruption, Trump’s transactional politics is finally catching up with him. It’s just a shame that it took so long."
Carlson has emerged as a vocal critic of Trump's MAGA movement, primarily over the Iran war. Carlson directly challenged GOP leaders during heated interviews, demanding they answer basic questions about Iran policy.
Carlson, a mainstay on Fox News from 2016 to 2023, recently said he regrets backing Trump over traditional conservative values, The Guardian reported. He said, "You know, we’ll be tormented by it for a long time – I will be. And I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people. It was not intentional, that’s all I’ll say."
Greene has distanced herself from the MAGA movement over Trump's Iran war, which she views as a fundamental betrayal of core MAGA principles. Greene spent millions campaigning for Trump specifically because he promised to end foreign wars.
Greene suddenly resigned from Congress late last year. Greene had publicly distanced herself from Trump over his Iran war policies, declaring opposition to the conflict and characterizing it as a betrayal of MAGA principles.
Her decision to leave Congress marked the culmination of growing ideological rifts within Trump's movement and her frustration with the direction of the Republican Party under Trump's leadership during his second term.
President Donald Trump is reportedly considering extending his deadline for Iran by another “three to five days,” Axios’ Barak Ravid claimed on Wednesday, citing an unnamed source who shared the news in a curse-laden message.
"Trump is willing to give another three to five days of ceasefire to allow the Iranians to get their s--- together," a “U.S. source briefed on the matter” told Ravid, he claimed in a social media post on X. “It is not going to be open-ended."
Trump has issued Tehran several deadlines throughout the duration of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, deadlines that he’s extended several times for various reasons, most of which have been sharply refuted by Iranian officials.
The latest two-week ceasefire tentatively agreed to by Washington and Tehran was set to expire on Wednesday, but Trump announced Tuesday that he would be extending the ceasefire "until such a time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal” for an agreement to end the conflict.
His reasoning for the aforementioned extension, Trump claimed, was that Iran’s government was “seriously fractured,” another claim that Iran immediately disputed, alleging it to be a “false claim” and a “desperate attempt to save face.”
According to Ravid, Trump now appears poised to give Tehran three to five more days to offer a proposal to end the conflict before hostilities between the United States and Iran would resume.
"Trump is willing to give another three to five days of ceasefire to allow the Iranians to get their shit together," one U.S. source briefed on the matter told me. "It is not going to be open-ended" https://t.co/aQogWCkO3m — Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) April 22, 2026
Fox News host Lara Trump took a subtle shot at her sister-in-law, Ivanka Trump, for offering the most "unsolicited advice" in the family.
"What she's got, I feel like she wants to help," Lara Trump told White House insider Katie Miller on a podcast this week. "Like she always means so well."
"But, you know, it's okay," she added. "We take it all in stride. It's all good."
Lara Trump acknowledged that Ivanka also gave the "best gifts."
"Eric and I are the absolute worst," she admitted. "I mean, she remembers everything: my kids' birthdays, every single time. Don't ask me when the last time was I sent my nieces and nephews an actual birthday gift on time, because I always fail. I'm the worst."
President Donald Trump's cabinet has a new set of fears to contend with as they are dealt a fresh problem, a political analyst has suggested.
Heather Delaney Reese claims that Trump's team is slowly but surely leaking information to cover themselves as cabinet members and White House insiders worry for their future.
Reese wrote, "The cabinet he promised would be the tightest, most loyal operation in history, is hemorrhaging. Kash Patel is now suing The Atlantic over a deeply reported story about his excessive drinking, which claims his staff has trouble waking him up when he was seemingly intoxicated.
"In the past couple of months, three cabinet members have been fired or forced out: Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, and Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Every single one of them a woman.
"Every one of those leaks came from someone who is scared. People do not risk their careers and their clearances to talk to reporters because things are going well. They talk because they cannot stay quiet anymore. Because the fear of staying silent has finally overtaken the fear of him.
"And once that starts, it does not stop. Because what they are seeing is serious enough that the fear of staying silent has finally overtaken the fear of him. That is a shift. A real, documentable shift. And once it starts, it does not stop."
Trump has fired Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr.'s appointed CDC director, Susan Monarez, IRS head Bill Long after just two months, and multiple National Security Council and Pentagon officials.
Trump fired Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi in rapid succession, citing performance concerns and policy disagreements. Noem faced criticism for her handling of ICE operations in Minneapolis, where agents killed two individuals. Democratic lawmakers condemned her dismissal as insufficient accountability.
Trump subsequently removed Bondi, claiming she failed to aggressively pursue his political enemies and investigate perceived adversaries.
The White House faced backlash for "honoring" the University of Georgia women's tennis team with a photo that featured only men in the foreground.
On Tuesday, the Bulldogs were among other NCAA champions that were invited to the White House. To celebrate their accomplishment, the White House's Margo Martin posted a photo on X with the women of the team barely visible behind a group of men, which included President Donald Trump.
"Congratulations, Georgia Women's Tennis!" Martin wrote.
Reactions to the photo were critical.
"Who is being celebrated in this picture? Usually puts the focus of the picture front and center, not hidden behind the dude bros," Winston Smith wrote.
"Good thing the women are showcased. Who are all those other clowns in the picture and what's up with the conman in the middle?" John Gilbert asked. "What a pathetic picture."
"Georgia Women's Tennis, with a bunch of dudes standing in front of them," another commenter complained.
"Of course they put the women in the back. Just like the misogynistic a—holes they are," a user with the handle @mrsccveach noted.
"Where are the women? Oh, there they are, in the back of the bus, behind the white men," Susan jabbed.
After weathering years of challenges, from online competition to the COVID pandemic, President Donald Trump’s tariffs became “the last reason” why Jennifer Bergman decided to close down the New York City toy store her mother opened in 1981.
As small businesses currently navigate a complex tariff refund process and still face rising costs, Bergman, 59, is one of five business owners speaking out in a new $200,000 YouTube ad campaign launched Wednesday by Small Businesses Against Tariffs, a project from the Defending Democracy Together Institute, an advocacy group formed by anti-Trump conservatives.
“I'm not afraid of [Trump]. I'm not afraid of his goons, and if they want to throw us all into jail because we're saying things against them, that's fine by me,” Bergman told Raw Story.
“My parents would be really proud of me, and they'd bail me out if they were still around. Actually, they'd be right there with me in jail.”
Bergman closed her store, West Side Kids, in July after she realized she wasn’t going to be able to pay her rent or make payroll.
”I’d never had that before, ever, ever,” she said.
Over the years, Bergman’s staff shrunk from 12 employees to four. Those four people lost their jobs when the store closed and struggled to find new ones, with one even becoming unhoused, Bergman said.
When Trump added a 145 percent tariff on China last year, Bergman said a $10 toy she’d typically sell for $20 would need to be marked up to $45 to cover the extra costs since she couldn't “afford to eat any of it.”
The price of a scooter she’d typically sell for $150 shot up to $180 when her supplier called to say they needed to reroute shipping containers to Canada and raise prices after Trump announced tariffs last May.
“Prices were going up, and you only have a finite amount of money to spend,” Bergman said.
“The product was getting so much more expensive that I was spending more money for less.”
Bergman also blamed Trump’s tariffs for preventing her from closing on a deal to sell her store as she was in conversation with two potential buyers in early 2025.
“When the tariffs hit, they were both like, ‘We can't do this right now … we just need to deal with this,’ and so I lost the opportunity to sell my store, too.” Bergman said.
‘Never in my wildest dreams’
After deciding to expand to a second location in 2024, Gabe Hagen, co-founder and owner of Brick Road Coffee in Arizona, said starting construction in early 2025 was “rough” timing due to tariffs.
“Once we learned the results of the election and what the new administration was planning on doing with tariffs, we had to really think on our feet,” Hagen told Raw Story.
“We had to kind of re-pivot what we were doing, so we cut back a lot up front.”
Hagen, who is also featured in the Small Businesses Against Tariffs campaign, said the business decided to change equipment purchases and pre-purchased a year’s worth of cups and disposables to “weather the impacts of tariffs.”
Hagen’s projections for stocking the second location, which is both a roastery and a coffee shop, ended up being about a third of what he actually spent.
“The strain of that on a new small business — especially one that's just expanded — we're already so tight on our cash, it's just rough,” Hagen said.
At the end of 2024, raw coffee beans cost Hagen about $4 a pound. At one point, prices spiked to just under $7 a pound, Hagen said. Now prices for speciality coffee are still $5 to $6 per pound, he said.
When Hagen started, roasted coffee cost around $10 per pound. Now prices range between $12 to $14 on the wholesale side, he said.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I think we'd be paying 50 percent tariffs on a Brazil coffee, which is our number one coffee that we use,” Hagen said.
The Trump administration backed down its tariffs on coffee at the end of last year, but small businesses like Hagen's are still feeling the effects.
“Every new business, we expect some bleed, but this bleed is taking a lot longer than we expected,” he said.
Hagen took out another working capital loan and put his house up for collateral, he said.
Gabe Hagen at Brick Road Coffee's second location and roaster, Prism Coffee Lab (Photo provided by Brick Road Coffee)
“We don't really have many more levers left on a small business side, so that's why tariffs were so important for me to speak out against because I can't just grow my coffee,” Hagen said.
The unpredictability of Trump’s tariffs make it hard to know “when we'll feel relief," Hagen said.
“I don’t know if it'll change back, so I think the hardest part for me is I don't know how to do a 12 month forecast," he said.
From a trucking company to a DIY flower shop and an eco-friendly dinnerware company, small businesses have struggled to stay afloat due to tariffs, Raw Story reported.
"We felt it was important to run this campaign in light of spiking prices and confusion around the tariff refund policy,” a Small Businesses Against Tariffs spokesperson said.
“Our hope is that it will help to educate Americans about who truly pays the costs of tariffs and trade wars: American small businesses and consumers. The goal here is to keep engaging those people who show an active interest in the tariff issue, to emphasize who ends up paying the costs of tariffs and to de-bunk widespread lies.”
President Donald Trump extended his self-imposed deadline Tuesday for when the United States would resume attacks on Iran, claiming that his decision was made “based on the fact” that Iran’s government was “seriously fractured” – a remark that one senior Iranian official mocked as a “desperate attempt to save face.”
Trump has extended his own deadlines several times amid the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, despite calling at least one of them “final.” His justifications for extending his own deadlines have varied, but often involved claims about Iranian officials that Tehran would immediately refute.
On Trump’s latest deadline extension, the president said the fracturing of Iran’s government was a key component in his decision, but as has happened over the past 54 days since the war began, an Iranian official immediately refuted the claim.
“[A senior] Iranian official dismissed Trump’s claims that Iran’s leadership was in disarray, characterizing it as a desperate attempt by Trump to save face after his recent false claims, including that Iran had offered him sweeping concessions,” wrote Drop Site News’ Jeremy Scahill, citing an Iranian official who spoke with the outlet on the condition of anonymity for its report published on Wednesday.
After one round of failed peace talks between Washington and Tehran, Trump claimed on Tuesday that Vice President JD Vance and a U.S. delegation were already on the way to Pakistan for a second round of talks. However, subsequent reporting revealed that Vance had yet to leave Washington by midday, with Tehran having yet to commit to participating.
Trump has continued to insist that the second round of peace talks will take place, and without lifting his administration’s naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. An Iranian official, however, once again refuted Trump’s claim.
“The Pakistani side indicated that they expect Trump to lift the naval blockade of Iran,” the same Iranian official told Drop Site News. “If that happens, and the ceasefire is extended, a new round of talks will be held on Thursday.”
President Donald Trump started his morning with a furious Truth Social rant against the Supreme Court, complaining they are not loyal enough to him and not endorsing policies he wants.
In particular, he took aim at the justices for striking down his reciprocal tariff scheme, as well as their visible skepticism to his executive order rewriting the Fourteenth Amendment to abolish birthright citizenship — and lashed out at Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as "low IQ," an insult he routinely uses on Black women.
"How can the Democrats not like how the U.S. Supreme Court votes," fumed Trump. "The Democrat Justices stick together like glue, NEVER failing to wander from the warped and perverse policies, ideas, and cases put before them. They ALWAYS vote as a group, or BLOCK, even that new, Low IQ person, that somehow found her way to the bench (Sleepy Joe!)."
"The Republican Justices don’t stick together, they give the Democrats win after win, like a 159 Billion Dollar pile of cash on a completely ridiculous Tariff decision, and nasty, one sided questions on the country destroying subject of Birthright Citizenship, something which virtually NO OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD IS STUPID ENOUGH TO ALLOW," said Trump (this is not true). "It was meant for the babies of slaves, not for the babies of Chinese Billionaires. No, certain 'Republican' Justices have just gone weak, stupid, and bad, completely violating what they 'supposedly' stood for."
"Handing over 159 Billion Dollars in Tariff refunds to people who have been Ripping Off our Country for years, is unexplainable," Trump continued. "One little sentence would have stoped[sic] this record setting payment from having to be made. It is a travesty! Their Tariff decision was an unnecessary and expensive slap in the face to the U.S.A., and a giant victory for its opponents. If they rule against our Country on Birthright Citizenship, which they probably will, it will be even worse, if that’s possible. It will cost America massive amounts of money but, more importantly, it will cost America its DIGNITY!"
"No, the Radical Left Democrats don’t need to 'Pack the Court,' it’s already Packed!" he concluded in a fury.
President Donald Trump's back-and-forth with the Federal Reserve is set to worsen as he is already on track for a blowout with Jerome Powell's successor.
Trump has waged a relentless campaign to remove Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, primarily over monetary policy disagreements. Trump has repeatedly demanded that Powell lower interest rates significantly, but Powell has maintained that rates must remain elevated to combat inflation.
When unable to remove Powell directly by law, Trump launched a criminal investigation into Powell through U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, alleging mismanagement of Federal Reserve headquarters renovation costs. However, the strategy backfired spectacularly.
The investigation now blocks confirmation of Trump's replacement nominee, Kevin Warsh, effectively prolonging Powell's tenure rather than ending it.
Analysis from The Bulwark's Catherine Rampell suggested Kevin Warsh, Trump's pick to replace Powell, is already on track to clash with the President.
Rampell wrote, "Maybe Warsh thinks he can manage Trump. Certainly, every other onetime Trump ally or appointee seems to believe they’re uniquely able to survive a disagreement with him. But smooth and well-connected as Warsh is, I am dubious he’ll be able to sweet-talk his way out of presidential wrath. That’s important, because a confrontation over interest rates between Trump and a Warsh-led Fed is starting to look inevitable."
Rampell outlined the three problems Warsh will face should he be confirmed as Fed Chair.
"Warsh will be just one of twelve votes on the committee that sets interest rates; he can’t deliver them solo," Rampell wrote.
"Second, markets don’t seem to think he’ll really want to. When Warsh was first announced as Trump’s nominee in January, long-term Treasury yields ticked up slightly—suggesting investors expect the Fed to become somewhat more hawkish under Warsh, despite Trump’s demands and Warsh’s recent dovish transformation.
"Third, that market reaction occurred before Trump started bombing Iran, leading to severed global supply chains and higher prices."
European diplomats were left perplexed after the Trump administration’s “naughty and nice” list of NATO nations was leaked this week, though details as to how the White House intends to punish allies given the “naughty” designation remain scant, Politico reported Wednesday.
According to three European diplomats and a Pentagon official “familiar with the plan,” the list “includes an overview of members’ contributions to the alliance and places them into tiers,” and was drafted as a means to help the Trump administration look “for ways to punish allies who refused to back the Iran war,” Politico’s report reads.
“They don’t seem to have very concrete ideas… when it comes to punishing bad allies,” a European official told Politico on the condition of anonymity. “Moving troops is one option, but it mainly punishes the U.S. doesn’t it?”
Joel Linnainmäki, a former Finnish official who assisted in the nation’s 2023 acceptance into NATO – an acronym for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – was left equally confused by the Trump administration’s intentions behind the drafting of the list.
“[President Donald] Trump and his team are busy trying to extract themselves from their self-inflicted quagmire,” Linnainmäki told Politico. “Likely the administration does not have the bandwidth to open another hostile front with Europe as long as the war continues.”
Trump has long been a critic of NATO, with tensions escalating amid his administration’s war against Iran as NATO countries refused to join in the efforts.
“Without the U.S.A., NATO IS A PAPER TIGER!” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social last month. “They didn’t want to join the fight to stop a Nuclear Powered Iran.”
Trump has also floated leaving the NATO alliance, a move that critics noted would likely be illegal due to U.S. law strictly prohibiting a president from single-handedly terminating the United States’ NATO membership.
A criminal investigation into the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has been filed as an act of revenge from Donald Trump's administration, a legal analyst has claimed.
The legal center has been indicted on federal charges relating to past payments to confidential informants used to infiltrate groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Bryan Fair, the SPLC’s chief executive, called the allegations “false” and said the Justice Department’s actions “will not shake our resolve to fight for justice and ensure the promise of the civil rights movement becomes a reality for all."
Prosecutors allege the center had funneled $3 million into confidential sources within extremist groups between 2014 and 2023.
Joyce Vance, who served as the United States attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017, wrote in her Substack, "At first blush, these allegations feel like an extension of the revenge docket and the attacks on universities and law firms, an effort to delegitimize and marginalize an organization that is pushing back against the administration.
"We’ll have a chance to study the charges as we learn more about the government’s evidence. The government’s core theory is that the SPLC paid high-ranking white supremacists, but they seem to ignore the reason—that the use of paid informants was essential to the intelligence the Center was gathering on the groups they were members of, including intelligence that was shared with the FBI."
Vance went on to note that the DoJ's filing named no individuals, and that this could be a telling sign of where the case leads.
"It’s worth noting that only SPLC, as an entity, is indicted here," she wrote. "No individuals are charged. That suggests an inability to identify a specific individual who committed a specific criminal act, or perhaps a lack of confidence in the ability to convict an individual, given the overall context of the work the Southern Poverty Law Center does.
"[Todd] Blanche reiterated that the investigation was ongoing at the press conference. So why rush to indict the case today? Why not wait and see what the investigation reveals before charging? Perhaps it’s that Blanche is auditioning for the AG position and [Kash] Patel is trying to hold onto his. But it may also suggest some weakness in the evidence.
"This administration has targeted people and institutions whose philosophies run contrary to its own, even as it has protected and rewarded its allies, disappearing convictions of people like Steve Bannon and January 6 defendants convicted on serious insurrection charges."
The Democratic Party could be handed a 10-to-1 advantage thanks to a recent redistricting vote, a political analyst has claimed.
Virginia Democrats have pushed an aggressive redistricting measure aimed at gaining four additional House seats through redrawing the state's congressional map to favor Democrats in 10 of 11 districts.
The ballot measure, which passed last night (April 21), will redistrict the state's congressional map and could result in Democrats winning as many as four House seats.
Democratic state House Speaker Don Scott said, "Virginia just changed the trajectory of the 2026 midterms. At a moment when Trump and his allies are trying to lock in power before voters have a say, Virginians stepped up and leveled the playing field for the entire country."
The Bulwark analysts Tim Miller and Bill Kristol analyzed the chances of Democratic Party victory at the Virginia midterm elections.
Miller added, "The side that favored the referendum that redistricted the state of Virginia and redrew the state in such a way that it might end up being a 10-to-1 Democratic majority.
"My main takeaway though, like my biggest picture of all this, like taking off the campaigns and elections nerd hat, you know, and just like looking at the biggest picture takeaway, it's really a huge win and an exclamation point for the response that the Democratic Party and the pro-democracy movement had to Donald Trump and his cronies attempts to rig the midterm elections. And they're going to keep trying other things."
Kristol added, "I mean, this is Virginia. Two-thirds of Virginians voted in 2020 for the previous redistricting, and that was the actual sentiments of Virginia are probably two to one for let's have nonpartisan redistricting and so they overcame that because of the threat of Trump, and I I was one of those who thought they should, and I voted that way and obviously a lot of other people thought so too.
"The Democrats have won [Virginia] with the exception of that first Biden midterm. It's why the state of Virginia has gone blue. It was a swing of two-thirds in favor of nonpartisan redistricting. That would be one way to look at it.
"It [Jay Jones Nov. '25 results] is very consistent with the generic ballot polling right now nationally, which is +7, +8. I feel like that's a kind of, pretty good for Democrats but not quite at blowout levels."
Gabe Hagen at Brick Road Coffee's second location and roaster, Prism Coffee Lab (Photo provided by Brick Road Coffee)