Trump News

'A lot of people in there that shouldn’t be there': Trump orders fresh purge of officials

President Donald Trump has instructed Bill Pulte, the controversial new acting head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), to execute sweeping personnel cuts across the nation's 18 federal intelligence agencies and units before a permanent successor is confirmed.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump revealed his explicit mandate to Pulte, who lacks the necessary security clearances, to dramatically reduce the size of an agency he views as "unnecessary and/or too big."

"I'd like to see it smaller. I think there are a lot of people in there that shouldn't be there," Trump admitted to The Journal, specifically targeting career officials from the Biden and Obama administrations. When asked directly if he was ordering firings, Trump confirmed the instruction. "I want him to 'start the process,'" Trump said, adding that his eventual permanent nominee should continue the purge once confirmed.

Trump bluntly framed Pulte's temporary status as an operational advantage rather than a limitation. "You're less shackled," Trump said of the acting designation. "It sort of gives you more power, you know, for a somewhat limited period of time."

The president outlined a calculated strategy to complete major structural changes before his permanent appointee takes office, allowing the future ODNI to inherit a smaller, ideologically aligned agency rather than managing the cuts themselves.

"Frankly, it might be good for him to shake it up before people come," Trump explained. "Because, if he [Pulte] reduced the size, in conjunction with me…and in conjunction with possibly the person coming in…he can do a lot of the hard work and we wouldn't have to saddle somebody that goes in."

The approach reflects Trump's broader effort to reshape the intelligence community according to his preferences, The Journal reported. Pulte, who has no prior intelligence experience and has been highly critical of the FBI and other agencies, is widely viewed as unlikely to survive Senate confirmation despite his acting appointment.

Pulte and ODNI representatives declined to comment to The Journal on the directives.

White House ballroom donors ‘should be losing sleep’ as ‘massive’ reckoning looms: expert

Ex-Trump official Miles Taylor issued a stark warning to those who donated to President Donald Trump's White House ballroom project on Friday, arguing that they and their affiliates “should be losing sleep” over what he cautioned would be a “massive” legal reckoning just on the horizon.

Taylor, who previously served as chief of staff in the Homeland Security Department under Trump, flagged the bombshell report from Public Citizen this week that found more than half of the known donors to the ballroom project had received government contracts in the last six months totaling more than $50 billion.

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Trump's latest Oval Office nap reignites fears days before 80th birthday: MS NOW

Continuing questions about Donald Trump’s health were not helped on Thursday during an Oval Office press availaibility that led to more questions about his ability to keep up at his current pace.

On MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,” co-hosts Johnathan Lemire and Willie Geist highlighted the 79-year-old president “slumped’ in his chair as EPA Head Lee Zeldin talked about clean coal, with the two pundits observing the president was clearly asleep.

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'I'm mad as hell!' Republicans get earful as Dem loses it over massive budget cut

A Florida Democrat snapped during a House Appropriations subcommittee meeting Friday, declaring the Republican fiscal year 2027 spending bill "a war on women and girls" after it moved to eliminate family planning funding for millions of Americans.

"I'm mad as hell! I cannot believe what I see!" Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL) shouted during the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies subcommittee markup. "This is a war on women and girls!"

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Trump official proclaims America is in 'economic golden age' — and gets slammed

Kevin Hassett, Director of the National Economic Council, told Fox News on Friday that the economy under President Donald Trump was booming — and hilarity ensued.

Hassett claimed "the Trump boom" wouldn't be reported by "the fake news," and that the One Big Beautiful Bill has massively helped to improve the economy — dismissing affordability concerns among Americans.

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Trump lawyers pitch fit as he's asked to prove 'financial harm' in libel claim: report

Amid the ongoing litigation of President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC, the president’s lawyers were asked to provide records supporting one of the president’s key claims in the suit – and immediately lashed out, The Guardian reported Friday.

Trump sued the BBC last year after accusing the broadcaster of deceptively editing a documentary that detailed his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. He claimed to have suffered “overwhelming financial and reputational harm” due to the network’s actions.

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'Whoo!' Data guru warns 'rural revolt' is turning 'field of dreams' into Trump nightmare

President Donald Trump is facing a "rural revolt" as a result of his policies, according to a new data analysis.

The soon-to-be-80-year-old president was re-elected in 2024 on his promise to improve the economy, but voters aren't happy with the job he's done so far, and many of his policies are directly hurting farmers and voters in the rural areas that have backed him in all three elections.

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Trump insiders reveal party members seething as his 'unforced errors' destroy work

Republican members of Congress are reaching a "boiling point" with President Trump, with GOP insiders expressing deep-seated frustration over what they characterize as the president's relentless demands and self-sabotage timing that undermines their legislative efforts.

According to interviews with NOTUS, Republican congressional insiders describe a workplace environment poisoned by "resentment" as Trump repeatedly upends their strategy at crucial moments.

"There's a really stark frustration that's probably past the boiling point to a place of resentment, actually," one senior Senate GOP aide said bluntly. "You've had, whether it's Senate Republican leadership and really just generally the conference working really hard to deliver the president's agenda, and frankly it's the White House and the president himself that keeps shooting us in the foot when we're on the goal line of delivering some of these key things."

The grievances are mounting, according to the report. In recent weeks, Republicans have openly rebelled against Trump's demands to fund a White House ballroom renovation, a $1.8 billion Justice Department compensation fund for Capitol riot participants, and his nomination of Bill Pulte—a political loyalist with zero intelligence experience—to direct the nation's intelligence agencies.

Adding to the dysfunction, both chambers of Congress voted to challenge Trump's Iran war strategy, which has spiraled into what many view as another Middle Eastern quagmire.

What has particularly inflamed GOP lawmakers is the timing of Trump's decisions. His endorsement of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn just one week before the primary exemplified what Republicans view as reckless interference that undermined a popular Senate leader and former top GOP legislative strategist.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) suggested Trump may simply be receiving poor counsel. "Somebody's not serving him well," Cramer said, calling the Pulte announcement timing "a mystery."

"With Donald Trump, he's usually a step ahead of all the rest of us, and oftentimes you look back and go, 'Oh, that makes sense now.' I think some of it may be that, on one hand," Cramer told NOTUS. "On the other, maybe he's not being served as well by advisers as he was in the first term, because some of this stuff does seem like unforced errors."

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) was more direct in her criticism, stopping short of outright revolt but making clear the proposals are indefensible.

"It's not like, 'OK, I'm going to take my stand and push back against the president.' These are not good ideas," she said. "It's not a good idea to tell the American public that I want to renovate a ballroom and I'm going to pay for it with donations, and then turn around and say, 'I need taxpayer dollars for it.'"

Murkowski reiterated the distinction: "This is not, you know, a design to be a revolt against Donald Trump. It's not a good idea, and we don't support the ideas that are not good ideas."

DOJ tells judge Trump can 'bulldoze' Statue of Liberty with no consequences

A Justice Department lawyer told a federal appeals court Friday that the Trump administration could demolish the Statue of Liberty before anyone could sue to stop him — and that would simply be the end of it.

The stunning exchange came during oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit over President Donald Trump's controversial $400 million White House ballroom project, built on the site of the demolished East Wing.

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Shock as Trump's spy chief found to lack any security clearance

President Donald Trump's pick to lead the entire U.S. intelligence community has never held a security clearance of any kind before being handed the job, CNN reported Thursday — and the vetting process wasn't even initiated until days after the announcement.

Bill Pulte, a wealthy housing finance official and grandson of the founder of homebuilding giant PulteGroup, was tapped Tuesday by Trump to serve as acting director of national intelligence, replacing outgoing DNI Tulsi Gabbard. He has no background in intelligence, espionage, or national security.

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Todd Blanche brags he's rigging DOJ with 'roadblocks' to protect Trump from prosecution

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche boasted Thursday that he is installing "roadblocks" inside the Justice Department to prevent Democrats from prosecuting President Donald Trump after his term ends — the latest in a string of moves critics say have turned the DOJ into a personal protection service for the president.

"We can just keep on exposing it and putting roadblocks in place so it never happens again," Blanche told NewsNation host Katie Pavlich in an exclusive interview, first surfaced by journalist Aaron Rupar, adding that he worries about "some Democrats coming out and actually already forecasting what they're gonna try to do if they get leadership again."

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Hardcore Trump backer sweats as farmers threaten to flip his seat blue

President Donald Trump is heading to Wisconsin to campaign for Rep. Derrick Van Orden, a third-term incumbent whose rural district is being squeezed by the policies he has spent two years defending.

Van Orden represents Wisconsin's 3rd Congressional District, a stretch of farm country that produces more milk than most states and depends on roughly 17,000 farms to drive its broader economy. Politico reported that the region is directly impacted by Trump's tariff regime, rising fuel and fertilizer costs and trade disruptions caused by the war with Iran.

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Outlandish experiment shows top officials risking physical injury to please Trump

President Donald Trump has faced barely any pushback from those within his Cabinet, having prioritized loyalty so intense that members have risked physical injury just to appease him, according to a report Friday.

Slate writer Ian Prasad Philbrick came to his conclusion after conducting an experiment: he purchased a pair of Florsheim Shoes, the same kind Trump had purchased for his entire Cabinet who are “afraid not to wear them,” a White House aide previously told The Wall Street Journal.

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