The Wild Reason Kash Patel Fired Someone

As federal agencies trumpet blatantly political messages blaming the “radical left” for the current government shutdown, FBI Director Kash Patel had a trainee fired for simply putting a gay pride flag on their desk.

In a letter dated Wednesday, Patel cited President Donald Trump’s Article 2 power to dismiss a trainee who the director said had “exercised poor judgment with an inappropriate display of political signage” while working in Los Angeles, where the trainee had been assigned during the Biden administration.

Although the letter did not cite a specific infraction, three people familiar with the incident told MSNBC the trainee was fired for displaying a pride flag on their desk.

Under previous administrations, displaying a pride flag at one’s desk would not violate any FBI policy, two bureau veterans told CNN. But since entering office, Trump has taken significant efforts to eradicate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and to make it easier to discriminate in the workplace—summoning a flurry of lawsuits.

And federal employees have responded in kind. One person told MSNBC that FBI agents had warned colleagues after Trump entered office that the president’s loyalists in the bureau were searching through internal files for lists of LGBTQ employees. Even before Trump’s inauguration, agents and prosecutors warned one another to be careful about revealing their sexual orientation or support for the LGBTQ+ community to their new superiors.

Earlier this month, Trump claimed that he had “no problem” with banning the progressive pride flag, which includes the colors of the transgender flag, after Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend claimed that “a lot of people are very threatened” by it. Wednesday’s firing comes as members of the Trump administration escalate rhetoric baselessly linking the transgender community to political violence, including a campaign for the FBI to adopt a new designation of “transgender ideology-inspired violence and extremism.”

Lawyer Alejandra Caraballo recently warned that under Trump, anything “as innocuous as a pride flag can cause a federal investigation now or people to lose their jobs.… The spectacle is there to create fear in everyone else that they need to comply or they are next.”

The Trump administration’s projected strength during the government shutdown is belied by a nagging insecurity, reports The Wall Street Journal: that the Democratic health care concerns that set off the affair are well founded.

The government shut down this week after the GOP refused several Democratic demands, chief among them extending Affordable Care Act premium subsidies currently on track to expire at the end of 2025. Without the subsidies, millions of Americans, many in red-leaning states, would see their health care premiums more than double—initiating a political nightmare for a party hoping to cling onto its weak majority in the House in 2026.

The White House is keenly aware of this. Citing administration officials, the Journal reports that Trump’s advisers are concerned the GOP “will take the blame for allowing healthcare subsidies to expire,” and have “privately acknowledged” that the issue could cause Trump “political headaches.”

White House officials are thus considering proposals to extend the subsidies, according to the Journal, but the president remains undecided on supporting such a plan.

Republican strategists have long warned that the expiration of the subsidies would be a political disaster, with Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio issuing a memo in July that stated: “By broad bipartisan margins, voters want to see the tax credits extended rather than expire at the end of the year, whether in the context of premiums doubling or 5 million families losing their health insurance,” and “this includes solid majorities of Trump voters and swing voters.”

Nonetheless, Trump and his team are reportedly intent on standing strong and refusing to “cave to Democrats’ demands and negotiate while the government is shut down.” The White House, the Journal reports, still believes it has “the upper hand” in the ongoing shutdown.

But beyond the looming health care issue, early polling indicates that—despite the Trump administration’s sombrero memes and legally dubious use of federal agencies’ websites to villanize “radical left” Democrats—Americans blame Republicans more than Democrats for the shutdown.

Even a government bailout won’t undo the damage that Donald Trump’s tariffs have wreaked on America’s soybean farmers.

The president reiterated Wednesday that he intended to use the country’s supposed tariff money to subsidize American soybean farmers. Trump initially suggested the same idea last week, though he mixed up “billions” and “millions” in recounting how much money would amount to actual aid.

But speaking with CNN Thursday, American Soybean Association President Caleb Ragland said that a bailout wouldn’t be the golden ticket that Trump has made it out to be, as American farmers still need a market to sell their products.

“Right now, our largest export market in China is a zero buyer,” Ragland said. “They buy as many soybeans as all of our other export markets combined. And right now, with them having not entered into purchase U.S. soybeans, it is hurting prices and it is causing lots of uncertainty as a whole.”

Soybeans are the largest agricultural product that is exported from the United States, with the most beans grown in Illinois. The U.S. has been the number one supplier of soybeans to China.

“Government payments and programs never make farmers’ bottom line whole. It will oftentimes serve as a Band-Aid on a wound,” Ragland, a soybean farmer himself, told CNN. “What we need is markets and opportunity so we can actually make a profit and recoup the large investment that farmers have made.”

The Trump administration appears fond of bailouts. The White House is currently working out the kinks in a multibillion-dollar lifeline to Argentina in an apparent effort to make that country great again too. But after widespread reporting that the South American nation had replaced the U.S. as China’s soybean supplier, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC that the cash infusion had become a “credit swap line.”

Farmers may have avoided these difficult times altogether if Trump had never instituted his aggressive tariff plan to begin with. Tensions between the Trump administration and Beijing have practically halted trade with China, nixing a crucial market for American farmers.

Apple has taken down apps that alert people to the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in their area after pressure from Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The primary ICE tracking app, ICEBlock, was intended to “keep people safe” in the midst of President Trump’s immigration crackdown. But Bondi saw it differently, arguing that it placed already masked ICE officers in danger.

“We reached out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store—and Apple did so,” Bondi said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “ICEBlock is designed to put ICE agents at risk just for doing their jobs, and violence against law enforcement is an intolerable red line that cannot be crossed. This Department of Justice will continue making every effort to protect our brave federal law enforcement officers, who risk their lives every day to keep Americans safe.”

Now, thanks to Apple once again bowing down to the Trump administration, its users will have to resort to other measures if they want to know where ICE is or may be.

Tracking apps were blamed after last month’s attack on an ICE facility in Texas that killed two detainees. ICEBlock’s founder, Joshua Aaron, was unconvinced.

“You don’t need to use an app to tell you where an ICE agent is when you’re aiming at an ICE detention facility. Everybody knows that’s where ICE agents are,” he told the BBC.

President Donald Trump’s obsession with posting AI slop to mock House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has reached a new low.

Amid an ongoing government shutdown, Trump posted a computer-generated video on Truth Social Thursday night that showed him sitting across from Jeffries in the Oval Office, with two red “Trump 2028” hats sitting on the desk between them.

That initial image was from the president’s meeting with Democratic leaders earlier this week, in which Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had drawn a hard line over cutting funding for health care subsidies.

The new image Trump shared sprang to life as he tossed a third red hat onto Jeffries’s head, and then pointed and laughed like a petulant child. In the background, the Village People’s “YMCA” could be heard, a favorite of Trump’s.

The AI-generated video managed to evaporate any trace of nuance from the fruitless meeting that the president had transformed into a photo op to highlight his power, which he clearly views as limitless. Clearly, one cannot actually expect any good-faith negotiations from such a witless bully.

This week, Trump has been posting a storm of AI-generated videos to mock Jeffries, hounding him with racist memes and inspiring other Republicans to join in. Weirdly, Trump seems to have no problem posting AI deepfakes of himself—images of the president have a tendency to feel surreal, even when they’re legitimate—but in some cases, it appears that the commander in chief can’t tell the videos aren’t actually real until it’s too late.