Former First Lady Jill Biden is still suspicious of one of the women who testified about son Hunter's drug use during his June 2024 gun trial, she wrote in her forthcoming memoir.
Jill Biden has revealed that she still hasn't made peace with Nancy Pelosi, years after the former House speaker helped lead the Democratic effort to push her husband out of the 2024 presidential race.
President Donald Trump has spent multiple nights this week “posting angry screeds” on social media, and while not uncommon for the commander-in-chief, its increased frequency set off alarm bells for one former Trump administration official and security expert.“I want to talk about a SINGLE WEEK. This past week,” wrote former Homeland Security senior official Miles Taylor in an analysis published on his Substack Tuesday. “If y’all didn’t sense it, something shifted these past few days, and you can measure it by the headlines.”On Sunday, Trump attacked several of his political adversaries on social media in a late-night posting spree. He launched similar attacks on social media again the next night. And the reason, Taylor argued, was the president’s unprecedented wave of setbacks he encountered over the previous seven days, setbacks that have sent the president “spiraling.”“Six different fronts in the anti-corruption fight in one week,” Taylor wrote.“A slush fund paused… a president’s name ordered off a national landmark… a lifeline thrown to purged FBI agents… a thousand voices on the record against a Trump gag order… a federal agent in handcuffs for Trump’s unconstitutional crackdown… and a detention camp on the brink of closure.”Trump has taken a series of unprecedented “losses” in recent days, and from his “own friends and allies.” With the primary election season largely finished – and the threat of facing a Trump-backed challenger mostly gone – GOP lawmakers are “suddenly finding it advantageous to oppose” the president, Punchbowl News reported Tuesday.“This is why Trump is staying up late [at] night and having social-media meltdowns. He sees what’s happening, and he can’t believe that an all-powerful, would-be king is being thwarted like this,” Taylor wrote. “It’s possible that many of Trump’s henchmen don’t see it yet, as they’re incentivized to give the boss ‘good news.’ So they’ll pretend the tide is still with them. But on this Tuesday morning, I can confidently say: ‘It isn’t.’ And if they keep looking the other way, sooner or later they’re going to be washed out to sea.”
Donald Trump's decision to hand the nation's intelligence apparatus to his housing regulator landed with a thud Tuesday — including among members of his own party.Conservative commentator Erick Erickson, founder of RedState, didn't mince words about the pick. "Bill Pulte is one of the worst members of the President's team and has convinced Trump to do more stupid stuff than anyone else in the past year," Erickson wrote on X.That sentiment has been building on Capitol Hill for months. "I think he's a nut," one House Republican told Politico last September. "The guy's just a little too big for his britches," added a second GOP lawmaker on the House Financial Services Committee.Trump announced Tuesday on Truth Social that William J. Pulte — director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — would serve as acting Director of National Intelligence, replacing Tulsi Gabbard, who resigned last month after her husband was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer. Pulte will keep all three roles simultaneously.The 38-year-old grandson of homebuilding magnate William J. Pulte has no prior intelligence or national security experience. Since taking over the FHFA in 2025, he has sent criminal referrals to the Justice Department alleging mortgage fraud against New York Attorney General Letitia James, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) — all Trump political foes. The Government Accountability Office opened an investigation into whether he abused his authority in doing so.Reactions beyond the right were withering. "[Pulte] has been at the forefront of using his government position to investigate the president's political enemies," Jewish Insider reporter Jacob Rubashkin wrote on X. "Now he'll head up the nation's intelligence apparatus."Stan Soloway, a former deputy undersecretary of defense, put it plainly: "Does Trump know that building a strong intel infrastructure is not about buildings?"Punchbowl News founder Jake Sherman noted the obvious: Pulte "has never served in an intelligence role." Politico congressional reporter Kyle Cheney called the dual-hatting arrangement perhaps "the weirdest part" — treating the DNI job as part-time.
Steve Hilton paced the stage at a brewery outside San Francisco with a simple message: California is broken and only an outsider can fix it.
The Trump administration is pushing deep into new territory in its immigration crackdown, moving beyond deportations to target the citizenship of naturalized Americans in a campaign that legal experts warn could ultimately be weaponized against political opponents.The Justice Department has filed more denaturalization cases in the last 16 months than were filed across all four years of the Biden administration, according to federal data, and attorneys general offices across the country have been tasked with identifying hundreds of additional targets, reported NPR. Department leaders pressuring lawyers to generate cases quickly — sometimes by scanning news stories and social media posts – and while the cases filed so far largely involve serious criminal conduct like drug trafficking, child sexual abuse, terrorism-related activity and war crimes, legal scholars say the infrastructure being built around this effort is far more alarming than any individual case."Once it becomes easy to take somebody's citizenship away — it becomes easy to take anybody's citizenship away," warned Cassandra Robertson, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University who has studied denaturalization.What makes the program particularly troubling to civil liberties advocates is how little protection defendants have. In civil denaturalization proceedings, Americans are not entitled to appointed counsel if they cannot afford it. There is no statute of limitations, meaning the government can reach back decades for evidence, and several cases reviewed by NPR were resolved with little or no court appearance by the defendant.The administration has also signaled the program could expand beyond criminals. Trump and administration officials have publicly threatened the citizenship of political figures including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar — comments Robertson calls evidence of a real risk of "political retribution."A former DOJ attorney who spent nearly a decade in the office that handles these cases said the mandate under Trump has shifted dramatically. Where lawyers once had discretion to pursue only strong cases, they are now directed to go after anyone potentially eligible — including those with minor paperwork errors or immaterial discrepancies."The retaliatory nature of this administration and using the law in any type of legal maneuvering to go after its enemies — that is a serious concern of mine," the former DOJ attorney said, speaking anonymously for fear of government retaliation.Legal experts note that federal judges — not administration-controlled immigration courts — still oversee these cases, providing some check on potential abuse, but with hundreds of cases now in the pipeline, that guardrail may soon face its first serious test.
Donald Trump has announced who will replace Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard following her planned resignation.
John J. Kelly, who served as the U.S. attorney for the District of New Mexico from 1993 to 2000, was exposed in April for his previously undisclosed ties with Jeffrey Epstein, and on Tuesday, veteran journalist Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez accused the state’s “elites” of continuing to “protect him” amid the ongoing investigation into activity at Epstein’s sprawling New Mexico compound.In 2024, Kelly was asked by a local news outlet why his name had appeared in Epstein’s contact directory, often referred to as his “little black book,” and told the ABC News affiliate that he had “no clue.” However, as uncovered by Valdes-Rodriguez, a file published by the Justice Department revealed that Epstein had given Kelly “power of attorney” to facilitate his purchase of Epstein’s infamous New Mexico compound known as Zorro Ranch.It was during Kelly’s tenure as the top federal prosecutor in New Mexico that then-16-year-old Annie Farmer filed a report with the FBI about being sexually abused by Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell at Zorro Ranch – a tip that “protocol would require to be forwarded to Kelly’s offices,” Valdes-Rodriguez previously wrote, and one that ultimately went “ignored,” per The New York Times.And yet, despite Kelly having “directly [contradicted] his account of barely knowing Epstein,” Valdes-Rodriguez argued, the ex-prosecutor remains on Albuquerque’s Ethics Board as a mayoral appointee, and no public announcements have been made regarding plans to question him, including from the newly created legislative committee with subpoena power dedicated solely to investigating potential crimes that occurred at Zorro Ranch.“Kelly is still on the ethics board. And the state’s political and media elites continue to protect him, as he appears to have protected Epstein,” Valdes-Rodriguez wrote in a report published on her Substack Tuesday.“What none of these institutions appear to have done is look at the documents themselves. They have chosen, instead, to take Kelly’s word. That’s how s--- works in New Mexico.”Since Valdes-Rodriguez’s April report exposing Kelly’s past ties to Epstein, the former federal prosecutor has claimed that he “never met” Epstein, and that he “was never aware of any activities beyond the real estate transaction,” the Santa Fe New Mexican reported. However, Kelly’s “record of inaction against Epstein,” Valdes-Rodriguez argued, was “not insinuation,” but “fact.”“John J. Kelly has a story to tell about Jeffrey Epstein, about Zorro Ranch, about what his office did and did not do with the reports that accumulated there over seven years,” Valdes-Rodriguez wrote. “But because New Mexico is New Mexico, he has not been asked to tell it under oath. And he probably never will be.”
Former first lady Jill Biden defended her husband, former President Joe Biden, as a presidential candidate on Tuesday, saying she believes he would have defeated President Donald Trump if he were the final nominee in 2024. “I believe he would have beat Donald Trump in that election,” Jill Biden said in a Tuesday morning interview […]