Trump Proudly Declares He’ll Hide All His Shady Guests From the Public

Donald Trump doesn’t want the public to know who visits the White House. 

A White House official told the Washington Examiner Tuesday that visitor logs will not be released during Trump’s second term, mirroring his policy during his first term. After the 2020 election, President Biden resumed the practice, which began during Barack Obama’s presidency. 

It’s telling that early on, Trump is refusing a basic transparency measure. The Obama administration made over six million visitor records public through open.gov, a bright spot in an otherwise secretive administration. Today, the website doesn’t work anymore, a testament to the Trump administration’s opacity. 

Through his first weeks in office, Trump has restricted the communications teams of several government agencies from disseminating information, including those concerning public health such as the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services. 

While a federal judge ordered the federal government to restore government health websites and data sets on Tuesday, much of what the Trump administration decides to make public may not be argued about in a courtroom. The White House has exempted Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from needing to respond to public records requests and most court intervention until at least 2034, for example.

It flies in the face of what Musk promised in November when he was campaigning for Trump. He claimed in an X post back then that “there should be no need for FOIA requests,” referring to the Freedom of Information Act. 

“All government data should be default public for maximum transparency,” Musk added. But both he and Trump seem inclined to be hiding what they’re doing, suggesting that the Trump administration is engaging in some highly unpopular, if not illegal, behavior. 

Insiders are blowing the whistle on Kash Patel, claiming that Donald Trump’s appointee to run the FBI lied to Congress during his confirmation hearings and is already directing a “purge” of the bureau while he’s still a private citizen.

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin reacted Tuesday to the reports, asking the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate the “highly credible” claims that Patel had issued “directives” to White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, and several members of the “newly established” FBI director’s advisory team.

“I have received highly credible information from multiple sources that Kash Patel has been personally directing the ongoing purge of career civil servants at the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Durbin wrote in a letter to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

“Although Mr. Patel is President Trump’s nominee to be FBI Director, he is still a private citizen with no role in government,” the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee continued. “This alleged misconduct is beyond the pale and must be investigated immediately.”

Durbin’s letter pointed to notes from a January 29 meeting that stated “KP wants movement at FBI, reciprocal actions for DOJ,” reported The Hill.

But such evidence would suggest that Patel perjured himself during his Senate confirmation hearing on January 30, when the Trump nominee denied knowing of any “plans or discussions” to “punish” personnel that had been involved in Trump’s criminal investigations.

“Are you aware of any plans or discussions to punish in any way, including termination, FBI agents or personnel associated with Trump investigations?” Senator Cory Booker asked at the time.

Patel, in turn, replied that he was “not aware.”

“All FBI employees will be protected against political retribution,” Patel said at the time.

Completely gutting the nation’s systems is apparently the MO of Trump’s second term. Last month, Trump’s team ransacked FBI leadership, firing the top five career positions at the bureau, according to The Hill. The administration also conducted a mass firing of more than a dozen career prosecutors who had worked directly with former special counsel Jack Smith as he developed two cases against Trump: one into Trump’s alleged retention of classified documents after he left the White House in 2021, and another into Trump’s involvement in the January 6 riots.

The matter boiled down to “trust” for the incoming administration, which claimed that the prosecutors had weaponized the government against the MAGA leader and had no place in a second Trump term.

Donald Trump’s illegal funding freeze just won’t stop.

A senior official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency ordered employees to place financial holds on a range of the agency’s grant programs, in defiance of a federal judge’s restraining order against the Trump administration’s sweeping funding freeze, NBC News reported Tuesday.

In an email sent Monday, Stacey Street, FEMA’s director of the Office of Grant Administration, ordered her subordinates to “put financial holds on all of your awards—all open awards, all years (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024).”

NBC obtained screenshots of the email from one of the recipients.

“There’s a lot of people who are running scared and trying to appease [the new administration],” said the recipient, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.

“This is a violation of the court order.”

Earlier Monday, U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell had said that the Trump administration had continued to block federal grants, ignoring the judge’s previous directive restraining the disastrous executive order that would have stripped funding from an array of essential government services.

Trump reaffirmed his intention to get rid of the “slow and totally ineffective” FEMA, in an angry post on Truth Social Tuesday. The Department of Homeland Security announced the dismissal of four FEMA employees Tuesday, after Elon Musk claimed that DOGE had discovered nearly $60 million in funds going to house undocumented immigrants in New York City just last week.

Donald Trump is once again threatening to destroy the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The president took aim at the agency, which provides essential disaster aid, in a post on Truth Social Tuesday.

“FEMA spent tens of millions of dollars in Democrat areas, disobeying orders, but left the people of North Carolina high and dry. It is now under review and investigation,” Trump wrote. “THE BIDEN RUN FEMA HAS BEEN A DISASTER. FEMA SHOULD BE TERMINATED! IT HAS BEEN SLOW AND TOTALLY INEFFECTIVE. INDIVIDUAL STATES SHOULD HANDLE STORMS, ETC., AS THEY COME. BIG SAVINGS, FAR MORE EFFICIENT!!!”

Trump’s tantrum comes one day after Elon Musk claimed that the Department of Government Efficiency had “discovered” that FEMA had provided nearly $60 million to house undocumented immigrants in New York City last week.

“Sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order,” Musk fumed on X. “That money is meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high end hotels for illegals! A clawback demand will be made today to recoup those funds.”

The Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday that the four “deep state activist” FEMA officials who made the payments had been fired.

Trump has floated the idea of scrapping FEMA multiple times. Most recently, he weighed shutting down the agency while residents of Los Angeles County coped with ongoing wildfires.

“I like, frankly, the concept when North Carolina gets hit, the governor takes care of it. When Florida gets hit, the governor takes care of it. Meaning the state takes care of it,” Trump told reporters last month. (Florida receives the most funding from FEMA of any state.)

Trump said that assistance for states affected by natural disasters would be run directly through his administration, ensuring that he can use it as political leverage to reform the policies of Democratic-led states and cities.

The president previously said that he planned to sign an executive order reforming—or even abolishing—the agency. It’s unclear if this is still his plan, and his social media posting is simply setting the stage for what’s to come.

Now we know just how serious Trump is about acting outside of his authority as president to gut federal agencies: Since he made this initial statement, Trump’s administration has illegally taken the ax to USAID.

Donald Trump has made odd jokes and eyebrow-raising militaristic threats about buying Greenland, but on Tuesday, at least one Republican lawmaker took the idea a step further, pitching an entirely new identity for the Danish territory.

A new bill filed in the House by Georgia Representative Buddy Carter offered a new name for the autonomous region once it’s folded under the U.S. banner, though the title sounds more like a Saturday Night Live punchline than a legitimate rebrand.

“Greenland shall be known as ‘Red, White, and Blueland’,” the text of the bill reads, authorizing the president to enter into negotiations with the government of Denmark to purchase or otherwise acquire Greenland. “Any reference in a law, map, regulation, document, paper, or other record of the U.S. to Greenland shall be deemed to be a reference to ‘Red, White, and Blueland.’”

In an attached statement, Carter gave Trump free license to pursue Greenland under the belief that the territory is suddenly a national security priority, celebrating that the absorption of Greenland into America would, quite literally, make the nation “bigger than ever.”

“President Trump has correctly identified the purchase of what is now Greenland as a national security priority, and we will proudly welcome its people to join the freest nation to ever exist when our Negotiator-in-Chief inks this monumental deal,” Carter said.

In January, a trip to Greenland by Donald Trump Jr., far-right political pundit Charlie Kirk, and Trump administration staffer Sergio Gor only served to heighten tensions between the United States and the island’s inhabitants.

Pipaluk Lynge, the chair of Greenland’s parliamentary Foreign and Security Policy Committee, told Politico at the time that the territory wants its “own independence and democracy.” Lynge also warned the U.S. not to “invade” the nation, which is largely composed of Indigenous tribes, in light of its historical treatment of Alaska’s Indigenous population.

The trio’s presence on the island—and myriad photo ops with local residents—was further torched as a stunt to make the territory appear open to U.S. governance.

Local criticism extended to a series of photos featuring Kirk and Greenlandic residents in MAGA hats, which Danish media reported was staged. The MAGA cohort reportedly rounded up homeless people from the area—including one person from under a bridge—promising them a meal at the Hotel Hans Egede in exchange for their participation in the pro-Trump photo circuit.

“All they have to do is put on a cap and be in the Trump staff’s videos. They are being bribed, and it is deeply distasteful,” Tom Amtoft, a 28-year resident of Nuuk, told Danish news outlet DR News.

Amtoft reportedly witnessed the group’s attempts to get locals to wear the MAGA caps for the photos, describing the process as “very aggressive.” He said the Trump envoys chose a “selective” group of people “who could say that Greenland should be bought.”

A late-January poll by pollster Verian found that 85 percent of Greenland’s residents do not want to become part of the United States. Just 6 percent were in favor of the switch, while 8 percent were undecided, according to The Guardian.