Trump News

GOP strategist Scott Jennings's attempt to defend President Donald Trump's shifting story on the war in Iran blew up in his face on Thursday during a panel on CNN's "NewsNight" with Abby Phillip.

The Trump administration has justified coordinating recent bombing strikes against Iran by arguing that the country was close to achieving a nuclear weapon and that Iran presented an "imminent threat" to the U.S. While the administration has been saying everything is going great, recent reports indicate that the Iranians have figured out effective ways to fight back.

President Donald Trump's administration announced an oil market move on Thursday that had some analysts up in arms.

The Treasury Department announced that it had temporarily rescinded sanctions on Russian oil already at sea. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the move was in response to skyrocketing energy prices resulting from the war in Iran, but several analysts noted that Russia benefited from the move in myriad ways.

President Donald Trump's administration temporarily lifted sanctions against Russian oil that is already at sea on Thursday in an effort to ease the oil price crisis caused by the recent war in Iran, according to a new report.

The New York Times reported that the new exemptions will be in place until April 11. The U.S. initially placed sanctions on Russian oil as a means of exerting economic pressure on the country to end its war in Ukraine.

A former senior U.S. official who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations delivered a blunt assessment when asked about the Trump administration's failure to plan for Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz: "I'm dumbfounded."

Trump's own top officials admitted to lawmakers behind closed doors that they never planned for the possibility that Iran would shut down the strait in response to U.S. military strikes, multiple sources familiar with classified congressional briefings told CNN. The scenario is among the most catastrophic economic scenarios American national security planners have war-gamed for decades.

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.

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.

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's administration is about to meet a "reckoning" for its international boat strikes, according to one expert.

Over the last several months, the Trump administration has conducted multiple bombing campaigns against boats in the Caribbean, operations that have killed at least 154 people. Now, the administration is expected to defend the legality of the boat strikes during a hearing on Friday with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a Guatemala-based international organization that is part of the Organization of American States, which the U.S. helped create in 1948.

A House Republican who helped kill a bill to release the records of sexual harassment allegations against lawmakers will lead the ethics probe of another House Republican who has been accused of sexually harassing his former aide, according to a press release.

The House Ethics Committee announced on Thursday that Rep. Michael Guest (R-MI) will lead theinvestigation into Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-TX). Gonzalez has been accused of harassing his former aide, Regina Santos-Aviles, who later killed herself by self-immolation, according to reports.

FBI Director Kash Patel was roasted by political analysts and observers on Thursday after he revealed his latest training gimmick for FBI agents.

Variety reported that the FBI is teaming up with the Ultimate Fighting Championship to train new agents at the bureau's headquarters in Quantico, Virginia. The report quotes a press release from the UFC that says fighters will train agents on "specific techniques and tactics, offering a unique perspective to the students as they prepare to enter the field office."