Trump Nominee Accused of Sexually Harassing a DHS Colleague

The president’s nominee to run the Office of Special Counsel was recently investigated for harassment.

Paul Ingrassia currently serves as the White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security. Trump tapped him to man the independent agency in June, but one month later, Ingrassia allegedly effectively coerced a lower-ranking female colleague to share a hotel room with him, reported Politico.

Ingrassia’s junior, another Trump appointee, had arrived with Ingrassia and other DHS colleagues at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando in late July. But it was only when the group reached the front desk that she learned she had not been provided a room of her own.

“Eventually the woman discovered that Ingrassia had arranged ahead of time to have her hotel room canceled so she would have to stay with him,” three administration officials told Politico anonymously.

The unnamed woman initially protested the arrangement, but relented to prevent making a scene in front of her colleagues. The two went to their room and slept in separate beds, according to Politico.

But the incident has remained a hot topic amongst DHS staffers ever since.

Ingrassia’s attorneys denied the allegations, and said that no last-minute changes were made to the hotel reservation.

“Mr. Ingrassia has never harassed any coworkers—female or otherwise, sexually or otherwise—in connection with any employment,” Edward Andrew Paltzik wrote in a letter to Politico, acknowledging that the DHS co-workers shared a hotel room but that “no party engaged in inappropriate behavior” on the trip.

The unnamed woman told Politico in a statement that she “never felt uncomfortable” with Ingrassia’s behavior and said she never made a complaint.

“A colleague misjudged the situation and made claims of alleged harassment that are not true,” the woman said. “There was no wrongdoing.”

The woman wasn’t the first to file a complaint. Instead, a career official filed one, with Ingrassia’s female colleague filing her own complaint afterward. The woman later retracted her complaint, which three officials said was out of fear of retaliation.

But in her interview with Politico as well as the legal complaint, the woman underscored that she wanted Ingrassia to change his tone with her and to begin communicating in a more professional manner. Five administration officials told Politico that Ingrassia’s behavior was “affecting her ability to do her job.”

A DHS spokesperson told the publication that its investigation into the incident had been fruitless.

“Career human resources personnel thoroughly looked into every allegation and concern and found no wrongdoing,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

Ingrassia was already a controversial pick before news of the investigation became public. Republican senators have raised concerns about the 30-year-old’s lack of experience and his ties to multiple antisemitic extremists. That would include white nationalist Nick Fuentes and self-proclaimed misogynist and proud woman-beater Andrew Tate, whom Ingrassia worked for as a member of Tate’s legal team.

The incident also casts Ingrassia’s nomination for the Office of Special Counsel into doubt, particularly as the agency’s work primarily focuses on sensitive matters, including federal employee whistleblower complaints and discrimination claims.

MAGA prosecutor Lindsey Halligan is already making basic errors in her indictment of New York Attorney General (and Trump target) Letitia James. In an official court filing Thursday, Halligan listed James’s address as “Brooklyn, New Jersey” instead of New York, where Brooklyn is.

This is a pretty glaring mistake that someone trying to prosecute a state attorney general for false statements to a financial institution should not be making. Halligan, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, also brought forth charges last month against former FBI Director James Comey for lying to Congress, after her predecessor refused to. In that indictment, Halligan too made basic errors, like misspelling words and submitting the wrong documents to the judge.

Halligan, previously Trump’s personal lawyer, is a deeply unqualified pawn whose only mission is to head these obviously politicized legal attacks on people Trump doesn’t like. She had literally never prosecuted anyone before Comey, and has most of her experience in insurance cases.

“When you bring a case against the former director of the FBI, you definitely want it to be the maiden voyage of an insurance lawyer,” Last Week Tonight host John Oliver said sarcastically after Halligan indicted Comey. “What she lacks in prosecutorial experience she more than makes up for in random insurance facts and a shitload of undereye concealer.”

Now those same concerns are bubbling up again as Halligan makes an easily avoidable blunder in her newest politically motivated prosecution. All this from the administration obsessed with merit.

Passing over Donald Trump (in spite of his less-than-subtle appeals), the Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday gave Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado the Nobel Peace Prize.

The award’s announcement cautioned that democratic backsliding is accelerating globally—a trend to which Trump has made no small contribution.

The Nobel Committee said it was recognizing Machado for “her tireless work promoting democratic rights” in an “authoritarian state.”

“Democracy is a precondition for lasting peace,” the committee stated. “However, we live in a world where democracy is in retreat, where more and more authoritarian regimes are challenging norms and resorting to violence.”

The “same trends” of repression and consolidation of power seen in Venezuela are happening globally, the committee said: “rule of law abused by those in control, free media silenced, critics imprisoned, and societies pushed towards authoritarian rule and militarisation.

“When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognise courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist,” the committee continued.

In these warnings, it’s hard not to hear echoes of the United States today under Trump—the militarization of American cities, weaponization of government against political opponents, violations of civil liberties, deportation of dissidents, and attacks on the press, academia, and other institutions.

Last month, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, a global democracy watchdog, reported that it had flagged twice as many instances of the U.S. government eroding or abolishing “rules, institutions, and norms” that shape American democracy in the first four months of Trump’s second term as in the previous two years. Examples included “efforts to restrict academic freedom, criminalize protest activity, question the legitimacy of certified elections, selectively restrict media access to the executive and circumvent due process norms.”

It’s been three weeks since House Speaker Mike Johnson sent lawmakers back to their districts, and Republicans are getting seriously sick of his WFH strategy. 

During a private conference call with House Republicans Thursday, at least three lawmakers raised concerns about keeping the House out of session after it passed a stopgap funding bill that never made its way through the Senate, sources told MSNBC.  

California Representative Jay Obernolte warned that staying home would make it seem like Republicans were “prioritizing politics over government.”

“I think we’re gonna get to a point where it’s damaging to continue to keep the House out of session,” he said. 

Oklahoma Representative Stephanie Bice said she had “concerns” about lawmakers staying in their districts during the government shutdown, and that constituents probably “wonder why we’re not there,” according to one source. She warned leadership to imagine the optics of staying home next week, when lawmakers could just as easily deliver messaging from Washington. 

North Dakota Representative Julie Fedorchak expressed a similar sentiment, arguing that their messaging would be stronger and more consistent if they weren’t all working from home. 

Some Republicans have already voiced their disapproval publicly. 

California Representative Kevin Kiley fumed at the speaker’s comment Thursday, claiming that the House would likely remain out of session for another week because “we’ve already done our job.”

“What the House has done is pass a 7-week Continuing Resolution. The entire reason a CR is necessary is that Congress has not done its job in passing a timely budget,” Kiley wrote on X. “The Speaker shouldn’t even think about cancelling session for a third straight week.”

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has found herself at odds with party leadership, has slammed Johnson all week for sending lawmakers home.

“I think he should really bring the House back in session for many reasons. We have appropriation bills that need to get passed. There is a new Democrat that’s been elected that does deserve to be sworn in. Her district elected her. We have other bills that we need to be passing,” Greene told CNN Thursday. “Any serious speaker of the House is going to build consensus within his conference behind a plan. It’s not something secret that gets worked on in a committee.”

Earlier this week, Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie suggested that Johnson had scattered lawmakers to the winds to avoid swearing in Democratic Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, who would be the tie-breaking vote on a petition to discharge the Jeffrey Epstein files in full. When pressed about it on Tuesday, Johnson struggled to explain why he was waiting for the House to be in full session, when she could be sworn in in a short pro forma session. 

Two Republican governors have broken with the Trump administration, condemning the president’s decision to release the National Guard into American cities.

Vermont Governor Phil Scott called it an “unnecessary” and “unconstitutional” move that only “further divides and threatens people.”

“We need stability right now in this country—we don’t need more unrest.… I don’t think our guard should be used against our own people. I don’t think the military should be used against our own people. In fact, it’s unconstitutional,” he told VTDigger on Thursday. “Unless, of course, there’s an insurrection, much like we saw Jan. 6 a few years ago.”

Scott also said he would reject a request to deploy Vermont’s National Guard elsewhere, and that Trump calling for the jailing of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was “wrong on many, many different levels.”

Scott did not support Trump in 2016 and called for his removal from office after the January 6 insurrection.

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has been much more supportive of Trump than Scott has in the past, attending rallies and receiving endorsements from him since 2018. Even he thinks this is a bit much.

“We believe in the federalist system—that’s states’ rights,” he told The New York Times on Thursday. “Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration.”

“I was surprised that Governor Abbott sent troops from Texas to Illinois,” Stitt continued. “Abbott and I sued the Biden administration when the shoe was on the other foot and the Biden administration was trying to force us to vaccinate all of our soldiers and force masks across the country.… As a federalist believer, one governor against another governor, I don’t think that’s the right way to approach this.”

Stitt, who made the comments shortly before Scott, indicated he isn’t the only Republican governor who disapproves of Trump sending military from other states into the streets of Chicago, Portland, and Washington, D.C.

“Maybe you just haven’t asked the right ones,” he said. Only time will tell.

“This is an achievement of a whole society,” said Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado upon receiving the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. “I am just, you know, one person. I certainly do not deserve this.”

Donald Trump, on the other hand, did not receive the honor, despite believing—and asserting incessantly—that he deserves it more than anyone.

The White House on Friday lamented that the prize was not bestowed upon the man who felt the most entitled to it: “President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives,” wrote Steven Cheung, the notoriously feisty White House communications director, on X. “He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will.”

“The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace,” Cheung continued, in a seeming slight to Machado, whom Trump has previously praised for her pro-democracy activism and resistance to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Trump and his team have vociferously campaigned for the award in recent months, spuriously claiming the president has ended eight wars during his second term. In August, the president reportedly called Norway’s finance minister, Jens Stoltenberg, “out of the blue” to say “he wanted the Nobel Prize.”

World leaders seemingly caught on to Trump’s yearning for a Nobel as a way to the president’s heart, with the rulers of several countries, such as Pakistan, Israel, Guinea-Bissau, Gabon, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, scoring points with him by stating publicly that he deserves it.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. added to his repertoire of controversial, unsubstantiated claims about causes of autism at a Thursday Cabinet meeting, where the health secretary linked circumcision to autism.

President Donald Trump was repeating his administration’s hotly contested claim that Tylenol during pregnancy increases the risk of autism when Kennedy cut in to offer an example of “confirmation studies” to that effect.

“There’s two studies that show children who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism,” he said. “It’s highly likely because they’re given Tylenol. So, you know, none of this is dispositive, but all of it is stuff that we should be paying attention to.”

Kennedy did not specify the research he was citing, but one high-profile study that matches his description is a heavily criticized 2015 study that found, in a subgroup of a larger cohort of Danish children, “risk of infantile autism in circumcised boys was twice that of intact boys.” Notably, experts have warned against drawing sweeping conclusions from that study, which was “observational,” not “causal,” and did not account for myriad possible “confounding variables,” such as “cultural or social factors affecting the likelihood of an (early) autism diagnosis.”

It also did not investigate the use of acetaminophen.

Kennedy’s remark came just after he flipped the scientific method on its head by announcing his effort to “make the proof” for the administration’s unproven Tylenol-autism connection.

A federal judge in Illinois has ordered the Trump administration to stop beating, shooting at, and generally using violence against journalists and peaceful protesters.

The Thursday ruling comes as ICE and the National Guard tear through the streets of Chicago, shooting at and arresting journalists, protesters, and immigrants alike.

Judge Sara Ellis, the Obama appointee overseeing this case, has suspended federal agents from “using riot control weapons,” “firing [tear gas] canisters,” “using force, such as pulling or shoving a person to the ground, tackling, or body slamming an individual,” “striking any person with a vehicle,” and more abuses of power. The order applies to all agents from the Department of Homeland Security, including ICE and Border Patrol.

Federal agents have done all of that in recent weeks. In September, an ICE agent shot a pepper ball inside CBS News Chicago reporter Asal Rezaei’s car completely unprompted, in just one of many recent attacks on journalists. Also last month, ICE shot Reverend David Black in the head with a pepper ball while he was praying outside of an ICE facility in Broadview. In yet another incident caught on camera, a CBP agent shot a woman five times, and then arrested her.

“Federal agents have responded with a pattern of extreme brutality in a concerted and ongoing effort to silence the press and civilians. Dressed in full combat gear, often masked, carrying weapons, bearing flash grenades and tear gas canisters, and marching in formation, federal agents have repeatedly advanced upon those present at the scene who posed no imminent threat to law enforcement. Snipers with guns loaded with pepper balls, paintballs, and rubber bullets are stationed on the roof of the Broadview ICE facility with their weapons trained on the press and civilians,” read the original complaint, made on behalf of the Chicago Headline Club, Block Club Chicago, and Chicago Newspaper Guild Local 34071, among other local media organizations.

Judge Ellis also noted that federal agents “must have visible identification (for which a unique recognizable alphanumeric identifier sequence will suffice) affixed to their uniforms or helmets and prominently displayed, including when wearing riot gear,” although she did not say they couldn’t still wear masks.

The Temporary Restraining Order will last for 14 days, after which the case will move forward.

The IRS is walking back an earlier promise to provide its furloughed workers back pay.

The tax agency had notified its employees on Wednesday that they would be “compensated on the earliest date possible after the lapse ends” in accordance with the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019. But that was apparently an overstep: The IRS corrected itself the following day, stating that it would defer to the direction of Russel Vought’s Office of Management and Budget.

“An earlier memo circulated on furlough guidance incorrectly stated the nature of the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019 as it relates to compensation for non-pay and non-duty status,” the IRS posted on its X account Thursday. “OMB will provide further guidance on this issue, you will be updated accordingly.”

An IRS employee that spoke with Federal News Network said that the initial email was automatically deleted from staff email inboxes by Thursday.

Back pay for furloughed workers has been a point of contention throughout the eight-day government shutdown, despite the fact that it’s legally mandated. Donald Trump himself signed the bipartisan-supported law after the last government shutdown, which lasted a record 35 days from 2018 into 2019.

On Tuesday, OMB tested the waters with potentially flouting the law, circulating a draft legal opinion indicating that furloughed federal workers would no longer be guaranteed back pay. Instead, the agency announced that members of Congress would need to specifically address the back pay provisions in a stopgap spending bill.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who voted in favor of the 2019 law, told reporters Wednesday that it was his “understanding that the law is that they would be paid.”

“There is some other legal analysis that’s floating around. I haven’t yet had time to dig into and read that. But it has always been the case—that is, tradition and I think statutory law—that federal employees be paid,” Johnson said in a news conference.  “And that’s my position. I think they should be. They should not be subjected to harm and financial dire straits.”

The White House is using footage from Florida to make propaganda about the supposed “chaos” in Chicago, Illinois.

As the National Guard troops have entered Chicago to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, the Trump administration posted a video on X Wednesday to hype up its federal law enforcement operations in Chicago. “An incompetent Mayor. A delusional Governor. Chicago is in chaos, and the American people are paying the price,” the post read. “Chicago doesn’t need political spin—it needs HELP.”

But spin was all that the White House had to offer—because the video contained some footage that had nothing to do with Chicago at all.

The promotional video devolved into an onslaught of chaotic arrest footage, showing officers clad in tactical gear moving through the night to kick down doors and drag people out of their cars as Chicago Pastor Corey Brooks’s voice urged the city to welcome Trump’s advances.

But The Daily Beast reported Wednesday that some of the footage was actually from Operation Tidal Wave, a state-wide operation in Florida that led to the arrests of 1,120 people, only 63 percent of whom had a criminal record.

In fact, one shot that was used twice in the video about Chicago could be spotted in footage the DHS published in May of their work in the Sunshine State. Palm trees were visible in some of the shots included in the new video, clearly demonstrating that the footage was not all from the Windy City.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker’s spokesperson slammed the White House for their fake video. “We are proud that Chicago was just ranked the best big city in the United States. We are proud of its beautiful beaches, booming businesses, and decent people. However, we cannot claim credit for many palm trees here,” spokesperson Matt Hill told the Beast.

“We know the lies don’t just come out of their mouth. So it’s not surprising that the Trump team spends more time producing videos purporting images of Florida as Illinois—rather than spending any time to lower prices or protect healthcare for hardworking Americans,” Hill added.

The video also included footage of the Chicago skyline and streets from above, and images of Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. Earlier this week, Trump claimed the two Democratic officials ought to be imprisoned.

Clearly, Trump’s attempt to wage war on American cities requires a subsequent disinformation campaign. Earlier this week, the Oregon Republican Party shared a graphic about dangerous riots in Portland—but the images weren’t from that city either.

The Trump administration has also used its excessive federal law enforcement response to make content that pushes the narrative that the United States has descended into chaos at the hands of Democratic leaders. Earlier this month, DHS used footage from a horrific raid on a Chicago apartment building where ICE officers dragged young children from their homes in zip-ties to make another promotional video.