Trump’s White House Ramps up Its Dangerous War on the AP

The Trump administration on Friday booted the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One, citing the newswire’s choice to continue referring to the recently renamed “Gulf of America” as the “Gulf of Mexico.”

“The Associated Press continues to ignore the lawful geographic name change of the Gulf of America,” wrote White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich on X. “This decision is not just divisive, but it also exposes the Associated Press’ commitment to misinformation.”

Moments after Donald Trump was inaugurated, the newly minted president signed an executive order officially renaming the ocean basin to linguistically claim it as America’s.

“While their right to irresponsible and dishonest reporting is protected by the First Amendment, it does not ensure their privilege of unfettered access to limited spaces, like the Oval Office and Air Force One,” Budowich said. “Going forward, that space will now be opened up to the many thousands of reporters who have been barred from covering these intimate areas of the administration. Associate[d] Press journalists and photographers will retain their credentials to the White House complex.”

The Associated Press—an international publication—has defended its decision to defy the Trump administration’s guidance on renaming the body of water by citing its global audience. The wire pointed to its style change for Mount Denali to Mount McKinley under the rationale that Trump has singular authority as the head of the federal government to rename national landmarks.

“The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years. The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen,” the outlet said in a statement. “As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.

“The Associated Press will use the official name change to Mount McKinley. The area lies solely in the United States and as president, Trump has the authority to change federal geographical names within the country.”

The lead prosecutor assigned to New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s public corruption case resigned Friday, in a mic-drop statement slamming the Department of Justice official who thought he’d be stupid enough to drop the charges at Donald Trump’s behest.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagan Scotten wrote a scathing letter to acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, who earlier this week had ordered federal prosecutors in New York to drop the charges against Adams alleging he had sought out and taken bribes from the Turkish government.

Bove argued that the prosecution would interfere with Adams’s ability to execute Trump’s crackdown on immigration. It seems the DOJ sought to remove the charges to ensure Adams’s compliance with enacting Trump’s mass deportations in his sanctuary city.

Scotten, a graduate of Harvard Law School who was awarded two bronze stars for his service as a troop commander in Iraq, made sure to set the record straight, telling Bove that he was nobody’s fool.

“I have received correspondence indicating that I refused your order to move to dismiss the indictment against Eric Adams without prejudice, subject to certain conditions, including the express possibility of reinstatement of the indictment. That is not exactly correct,” Scotten wrote.

“The U.S. Attorney, Danielle R. Sassoon, never asked me to file such a motion, and I therefore never had an opportunity to refuse. But I am entirely in agreement with her decision not to do so,” he wrote.

Sassoon, a Trump appointee with a solid conservative record, joined a cascade of resignations Thursday over the order to drop the charges. She revealed that Adams’s lawyers had requested a quid pro quo agreement and that her office had been planning to bring forward a superseding indictment against Adams.

“There is a tradition in public service of resigning in a last-ditch effort to head off a serious mistake. Some will view the mistake you are committing here in the light of their generally negative views of the new Administration. I do not share those views,” Scotten continued.

“I can even understand how a Chief Executive whose background is in business and politics might see the contemplated dismissal-with-leverage as a good, if distasteful, deal. But any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way.

“If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me,” Scotten concluded.

Read his full letter here.

A major lawsuit to end Elon Musk’s takeover of the federal government has landed before one of Donald Trump’s least favorite judges.

Judge Tanya Chutkan, who presided over Trump’s federal election interference case, was assigned the federal lawsuit filed by 14 states against the president and Musk, attacking the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s authority.

Chutkan gained the national spotlight as she refused to accept arguments from Trump’s legal team at nearly every step in the January 6 case. She infuriated Trump when she placed a gag order on him in October 2023 and said that his presidential candidacy did not give him “carte blanche” to vilify public servants “who are simply doing their job.” Trump lashed out at the judge, calling her “the most evil person” as she seemed unwilling to bend to the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.

Now Chutkan will preside over a pivotal lawsuit that will determine the future of the U.S. government and the second Trump administration. The suit directly attacks Musk as a “21st century tech baron,” claiming that “the scope and reach of his executive authority appear unprecedented in U.S. history.”

“His power includes, at least, the authority to cease the payment of congressionally approved funds, access sensitive and confidential data across government agencies, cut off systems access to federal employees and contractors at will, and take over and dismantle entire independent federal agencies,” the lawsuit states.

Trump is not likely to be happy with Chutkan being assigned the case but so far has not mentioned her on his Truth Social account, as of this writing. Likewise, Elon Musk hasn’t posted on X. But it’s only a matter of time, considering that several MAGA personalities, such as Laura Loomer, are already attacking her. The right will soon be on the attack, led by the president and Musk, escalating their attempts to undermine the federal judiciary and constitutional separation of powers.

There appears to be mass chaos at the agency responsible for keeping a “safe, secure, and reliable” watch over the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.

ABC News is reporting that hundreds of employees at the 1,800-person National Nuclear Security Administration were fired on Thursday. Many of them described the situation as a “national security crisis.”

The Department of Energy then suddenly paused the firings on Friday, frantically calling back employees to tell them they still have a job.

“This is creating unbelievable threats to our national security. Trump, Musk, and DOGE are wiping out the employees who manage our nuclear arsenal,” attorney and former Ukrainian Armed Forces member John Jackson wrote on X. “Every time someone retires, there will be no one to fill their slot.”

The confusion comes as the Trump administration on Thursday directed agencies to fire thousands of probationary employees in the federal workforce. While Trump is framing these mass firings as commonsense fat-trimming, this seems to be a pure ideological war—with brutal consequences.

Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday establishing the “Make America Healthy Again Commission,” which Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will chair. One virologist was quick to lay out multiple rhetorical quirks in the order that suggested an anti-vaccine agenda.

“Fortunately, I speak fluent anti-vax grifterese & can translate,” Dr. Angela Rasmussen wrote in an illuminating thread on X.

The order reflected many of Kennedy’s concerns as a vocal anti-vaccine advocate who has repeatedly pushed the long-debunked claim that vaccines lead to autism. During his confirmation hearing, Kennedy claimed he did not oppose vaccines but stressed studying the origins of chronic illness over researching infectious disease.

The executive order said that all research by all federal health agencies “should prioritize gold-standard research on the root causes of why Americans are getting sick.”

According to the “purpose” section of the order, this seemed to indicate research on “nutrition, physical activity, healthy lifestyles, over-reliance on medication and treatments, the effects of new technological habits, environmental impacts, and food and drug quality and safety” would be given priority. As Rasmussen put it, “vaccines, approved medications, processed food, lifestyle choices” were MAHA priorities.

The executive order established that within 100 days, the commission needed to submit a report assessing “the threat that potential over-utilization of medication,” among other things, poses to children.

The report would “assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs.”

Rasmussen wrote that the order’s references to the issue of “increased prescription of medication” translated to the claim that “evidence-based medicine is bad” and that a supposed “over-reliance on medication and treatments” in the U.S. suggested a shift toward “replacing vaccines and drugs with supplements.” Further, the order stated that agencies must “ensure the availability of expanded treatment options,” making it clear alternative medicine is on the menu.

The order also established a policy where agencies must “work with farmers to ensure that United States food is the healthiest, most abundant, and most affordable in the world.” During his Senate hearing, Kennedy had also pushed for stricter regulations on food additives. Rasmussen noted that this policy could create a context to “deregulate food standards.”

“We must restore the integrity of the scientific process by protecting expert recommendations from inappropriate influence and increasing transparency regarding existing data,” the order states. Rasmussen warned that this was creating a context to remove experts and replace them with pseudo-scientists.

The Trump administration has cut news access to some American foreign service employees, even as they clamor that the up-to-date information is essential for their work.

“It is critical to our jobs,” one employee anonymously told HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery on Friday.

The employee said they could not access Politico, The New York Times, or Bloomberg, despite having paid subscriptions to all of them, and added that the content is crucial as the news industry covers policy developments, information on meetings, and more. They added that the loss of Politico Pro was particularly damaging, as the digital publication serves as a popular channel to publish leaked documents.

DOGE severed the government’s subscriptions after a MAGA conspiracy emerged that revenue for Politico—which had a lapse in payroll on Tuesday—was dependent on subscriptions paid for through USAID, which was under a budget freeze at the time. In truth, USAID paid roughly $24,000 for its subscriptions to Politico Pro, while the rest of the government spent $8.4 million on the premium news subscription in 2024. But federal subscriptions to Politico Pro began under Trump’s first administration, according to public data from USASpending.

“I was made aware of the funding of USAID to media outlets, including Politico.… And I can confirm that the more than eight million taxpayer dollars that have gone to essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico on the American taxpayer’s dime will no longer be happening,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week. “The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now.”

Politico bosses sent a memo to staff saying they “welcome” the conversation around the value of their products, which provide in-depth policy analysis and hard-hitting government scoops.

The company had “never been the beneficiary of government programs or subsidies,” Politico CEO Goli Sheikholeslami and global editor in chief John Harris wrote in the memo, and the “overwhelming majority” of subscriptions stemmed from the private sector. “Please know that our business is strong and enduring,” they wrote.

But that doesn’t mean that the White House isn’t still benefiting from the news wires.

“My guess,” the anonymous foreign service person told HuffPost, “is the White House kept their access.”

Musk and his team similarly attacked Reuters, misleadingly claiming that DOGE had “uncovered” details that the news organization had been “paid millions of dollars by the US government for ‘large scale social deception.’” In actuality, the public contract to Reuters’s data division was authorized by Trump during his first administration and had tasked Reuters to research potential defenses against deception.

Elon Musk and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a very political-looking meeting that they swear was just business—and that Donald Trump barely knew anything about.

Musk and Modi met at Blair House in Washington, D.C., on Thursday to discuss “space, mobility, technology and innovation,” as Modi put it on X.

At the sit-down, Modi was flanked by his entire foreign affairs team. His seven different aides sat facing some of Musk’s children, while Musk and Modi sat in the head chairs that the president and a foreign dignitary usually sit in.

The meeting raised eyebrows everywhere, as Musk has multiple potential business ventures with India, including his Starlink satellite network and is looking for a way around the country’s electric vehicle tariffs. Senator Chris Murphy posited that Musk was basically acting as secretary of state, but “not to ask for concessions that would benefit Americans, but for concessions that would make him rich.”

Trump, however, was clueless when asked about the meeting later that day.

“When Elon Musk met with Prime Minister Modi earlier today, did he do so as an American CEO or did he do so as a representative of the U.S. government?” a reporter asked Trump.

“Uhh, are you talking about me?” Trump replied.

“No, Elon Musk.”

“Well Elon—I don’t know. They met, and I assume he wants to do business in India, but India’s a very hard place to do business in because of the tariffs.… No, I would imagine he met possibly because he’s running a company,” Trump replied.

“How does Modi know if he’s meeting with a CEO or meeting with a representative of your government?” a reporter then asked.

“Well he’s meeting with me in a little while, so I’m gonna ask him that question,” Trump said.

This exchange only fuels the perception of Trump as a simple figurehead while the world’s richest man actually runs the show, kind of how the royals are in England. One can only wonder how far this will go. Does Musk just get access to every single important person who walks through the White House doors?

Steve Bannon, former architect of the MAGA movement turned podcaster, warned that Republicans making cuts to Medicaid would affect members of Donald Trump’s fan club.

On the Thursday episode of War Room, while gushing over massive government spending cuts, Bannon warned that cutting Medicaid specifically would prove unpopular among the working-class members of Trump’s base, who make up some of the 80 million people who get their health care through that program.

“Medicaid, you got to be careful, because a lot of MAGA’s on Medicaid. I’m telling you, if you don’t think so, you are deeeeeead wrong,” Bannon said. “Medicaid is going to be a complicated one. Just can’t take a meat ax to it, although I would love to.”

Republicans’ nascent budget blueprints this week contained a proposal for the Committee on Energy and Commerce, which oversees Medicaid, to reduce the deficit by at least $880 billion from 2025 to 2034.

The gargantuan cuts would help Republicans pay to extend Trump’s 2017 tax plan, lightening the load for the very rich at the expense of the poor.

The House GOP plan would direct several congressional committees to find at least $1.5 trillion in savings across their programs. Bannon didn’t see that working out, saying that there was “confusion and mayhem” on Capitol Hill.

“Show me the trillion dollars in cuts. I don’t want a $2 trillion deficit. I want to see it cut in half. How’d you do it?” Bannon said. “What they’re talking about, the 1.5 trillion over 10 years, that’s $150 billion a year. Now, I realize this may be taken differently, but it’s $150 billion. It’s not gonna work.

“And to back it up, if you got the C.R. on the 14th. You gotta fund the government going forward, or maybe not, but I don’t see ’em shutting down President Trump’s government in his first 100 days,” Bannon said, referring to the government spending deadline on March 14.

“It’s—how could we possibly have a $2 trillion deficit; where are the DOGE cuts? We need ’em all. They’ve had at least enough time to identify at least the waste fraud abuse in all these different organizations. It doesn’t have to be perfect,” Bannon continued.

“I think it’s generally confusion and mayhem on Capitol Hill. But hey, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there’s some logic here, and maybe they’re making some progress on this. But until we see the math, and I mean hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts, hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts, and stop whining about entitlements. Get into that discretionary spending. Get into the Pentagon.”

Vice President JD Vance ripped European leaders in a speech at the Munich Security Conference Friday, extolling nativism and far-right politics while downplaying Russia as nothing to worry about compared to “the threat from within.”

Vance told the stunned audience composed of foreign leaders, business executives, and others connected with international security that “the threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor.

“What I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America,” he added.

He went on to accuse European courts and officials of “canceling elections,” in a reference to Romania’s recent election and Germany’s upcoming election. Vance didn’t seem to notice the irony in any of his words, given his boss’s attempt to overthrow democracy on January 6, 2021.

The vice president criticized European leaders for being afraid of their own voters, in a nod to European far-right parties, such as the AfD in Germany, seeming to threaten a chilling of relations with governments whose ideologies differ from his and Trump’s.

“If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you, nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump,” Vance said.

Hanging over the conference was Thursday’s attack in the German city, where a car driven by an Afghan immigrant ran into a crowd of people, injuring at least 28. Vance used the incident to bolster a nativist argument for restricting immigration.

“How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction?” Vance asked.

“If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk,” Vance said, downplaying a man currently threatening America’s democracy, as well as that of Germany, and drawing a false equivalence between a climate activist and the world’s richest man.

The vice president may think he struck a blow for the Trump administration’s worldview in Munich Friday, but he’s missing the hypocrisy of his own words. The Trump administration has so far rammed through executive orders instead of passing laws, gutted the federal workforce, undermined the right to a free press, and ignored the outcry from all Americans outside of the MAGA bubble.

The president of the United States is roping the nation’s humanitarian aid–focused agency into his election conspiracy.

During a joint Oval Office appearance Thursday with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, one particularly sycophantic individual identifying as press asked the U.S. commander in chief if he believed that USAID, which provides humanitarian assistance and funding for infrastructure and developmental tech in developing nations, had interfered in the 2020 and 2024 elections, the latter of which Trump won.

“President Trump, first of all, congratulations for a fantastic 24 days of your presidency. Historic and unprecedented decisions that you’ve made—” the reporter said before Trump interrupted: “I like her.”

“I’m particularly impressed by the exposé on USAID,” she continued. “And I would like you to share with us, if you think USAID had a role in election interference in the U.S. in 2020, and in the elections in 2024.”

To that, Trump said, “It could have had a role.”

“There were a lot of bad things that happened in 2020,” Trump said. “I think bad things happened in 2024, but it was too big. We won by a tremendous margin. And we want every swing state. We won the popular vote by millions of votes. So it was too big to rig.

“But yeah, I think they probably tried,” he continued. “We’re looking to go to a system now, much different, where one-day voting, voter ID, and just, we have to do that. And paper ballots, we want paper ballots. And when they do that, we’re gonna clean it up very, very well.”

Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him has been roundly and thoroughly debunked. Ex–special counsel Jack Smith wrote in a January letter to former Attorney General Merrick Garland that he believed there was enough evidence to convict Trump should the January 6 case have gone to trial.

Meanwhile, Trump’s continued attacks on USAID have only served to weaken America’s soft power on the international stage.

The information obtained through the agency’s work immediately aids and shields American citizens. Data aggregated from aid missions around the world inform U.S. policy on issues ranging from public health to diplomacy. Earlier this month, news that there was an Ebola outbreak in Kampala, Uganda, was reported via a USAID mission, for example. Choosing to nix the agency would force the U.S. into an information dark age that could see the country caught off guard in future health crises.

Regardless, Trump’s right hand, Elon Musk, has made it a personal mission to dismantle USAID. In a string of recent tweets, Musk has slammed USAID—which distributed more than $40 billion in congressionally appropriated foreign aid in 2023 and has closed $86 billion in private-sector deals—as a “criminal organization” that is an “arm of the radical-left globalists.”