Russ Vought Helped Kill USAID—and Is Now Using the Money for Himself

Office of Budget and Management Director Russell Vought killed USAID, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths, and is now using the money he “saved” to bankroll his security detail.

A Reuters report Friday states that the Project 2025 architect who promised to put federal employees “in trauma” is spending $15 million of former USAID funding—money that would have gone toward fighting HIV, polio, malaria, and other diseases—to pay his U.S. Marshal security through the end of the year.

One source told Reuters that Vought has more than a dozen U.S. marshals in his security detail.

While Vought allegedly faced a threat on his life last month, the irony of the man who ripped disease-fighting funding away from some of the most at-risk people in the world only to use it to beef up his personal bodyguard staff is impossible to ignore.

This is yet another example of Trump officials’ questionable personal spending habits. On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Department of Homeland Security is leasing a $70 million jet that Secretary Kristi Noem and her alleged boyfriend Corey Lewandowski use to travel in luxury. And what’s up with that $400 million White House ballroom?

Disgraced sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein said he had “new administration people” visiting his Little Saint James Island in 2016—just a month before President Trump’s first inauguration. 

In a December 2016 email to Bill Gates, Epstein told him to “come to visit the island. New administration people visiting.” 

We can only speculate which people from the colorful cast of Trump characters were on pedophile island, but one possibility is Steve Bannon, Trump’s then adviser, who had a genuine friendship with Epstein. Stephen Feinberg, now Trump’s deputy secretary of defense, was also close to Trump in his first term and has been named in the files.

“These people are playing in our faces,” political commentator Nina Turner wrote on X. ”They need to be charged. Period.”

“Donald Trump did drain the swamp, right from the White House to Epstein Island,” one X user wrote.

This document only publicly reaffirms the connection to the perverted financier that people in both Trump’s first and second term have had—and in some cases lied about. On Thursday, another email from 2016 showed Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz inviting Epstein to his Valentine’s Day party—eight years after Epstein was registered as a sex offender. And on Wednesday,  Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick admitted he visited Epstein’s pedophile island with his wife and children in 2012 after he lied dramatically about cutting off all contact with the predator. 

The whistleblower complaint against Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard was related to a conversation between two foreign nationals about Jared Kushner, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter who spoke with The Wall Street Journal Thursday.

The Journal could not determine where the foreign nationals were from, or what they had discussed about Kushner. But if verified, the allegations against the president’s son-in-law recorded in the conversation would be significant, U.S. officials told the Journal. They added that there was currently no corroborating evidence, but that didn’t mean the allegations lack any merit.

Senior Trump administration officials denied the allegations about Kushner but did not offer any more details about the conversation, in order to preserve security around a sensitive surveillance method.

Kushner is deeply embedded in the Trump administration’s national security dealings—as a front for a series of pretty blatant real estate and land development grifts. Kushner has previously been under scrutiny for possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

In May, a whistleblower accused Gabbard of restricting the distribution of a highly classified intelligence report for political purposes. Typically, an employee is able to share a complaint alleging wrongdoing directly with lawmakers, as long as the director of national intelligence instructs them on how to securely transmit it. But eight months later, and the whistleblower’s complaint was still not transmitted to Congress—and was reportedly locked away in a safe. A heavily redacted version of the report finally arrived in Congress last week.

Christopher Fox, the inspector general for the intelligence community, claimed that Gabbard was only informed in December that she needed to provide security guidance in order to transmit the complaint. Former I.C. Inspector General Tamara Johnson had determined that the allegation against Gabbard “did not appear credible,” but Fox noted that that determination had “no legal effect” on the whistleblower’s right to submit the complaint to Congress.

In May, Kushner reportedly advised administration officials in negotiations with Arab leaders, ahead of Donald Trump’s trip to the Middle East.

What country can flex that the man in charge of its public health policy proudly snorts cocaine off of toilets? As far as this writer is aware, just the United States.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. boasted about his drug-huffing past during an interview with podcaster Theo Von Thursday, claiming that his strong immune system was all thanks to times that he railed lines from the porcelain throne straight to the dome.

Referring to times during the pandemic when he insisted on attending 12-step meetings in person, Kennedy insisted that his brazen attitude toward viral infections was due to the fact that he “used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats.”

Kennedy then explained that the real disease, to him, was his addiction, which he said would “kill him” if he didn’t attend daily recovery meetings.

For a quick comparison on the rapid degradation of American politics: Just last week marked the 10-year anniversary of when Jeb Bush encouraged a small but tepid audience to “please clap”—a misstep that, at the time, was received with such abhorrence by the American public that it almost immediately spelled the end of his political career.

Yet somehow, Kennedy will likely move on from this interview completely unfazed by the blatant admission of his illicit behavior.

Meanwhile, the 72-year-old’s bizarre health conspiracies have wreaked havoc on America’s public health policies. During a measles outbreak in Texas last year, Kennedy refused to endorse the tried and true measles vaccine, recommending instead that susceptible residents self-medicate with vitamins. He has transformed HHS, replacing independent medical experts on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel with a hodgepodge of vaccine skeptics. He also overhauled the child vaccination schedule without notifying his staffers, a decision that could potentially affect vaccine access and insurance coverage for millions of American families in the coming years.

And last month, the health secretary unveiled the outcome of his department’s monthslong project to reimagine the food pyramid. The result: an upside-down triangle in which butter, steak, and cheese play a leading role.

The lone Democrat in the Senate to vote to keep the Department of Homeland Security funded was none other than Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman.

The progressive turned Trump sympathizer voted to advance a bill funding DHS for the next year, using the justification that he opposes government shutdowns for any reason. Every other Democrat in the Senate, including centrists such as Maine’s Angus King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, and Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto, voted against the funding. The bill ultimately failed to move forward, despite Fetterman’s best efforts.

Fetterman posted a video on X Thursday claiming that “shutting DHS down has zero impact and zero changes for ICE.”

“ICE already has $75B in funding from the BBB that I did not vote for,” Fetterman said, referencing Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill that was passed in July. “But it will hit FEMA, Coast Guard, TSA and our Cybersecurity Agency. As a Democrat, I can’t vote to shut down critical parts of our government.”

“The Republicans have to work with us, and they haven’t even come to the table on addressing our concerns,” Masto said, adding that she would oppose even temporary funding for DHS because progress on reforming ICE and the Border Patrol had stalled. New Jersey’s Cory Booker said Wednesday that Congress “cannot give another dollar” to DHS.

“You have a reckless, out-of-control agency that is violating the rights of Americans. Literally, shooting and killing Americans unjustly. And my colleagues do not seem to be aggrieved about this. The small-government conservatives don’t think that this is in any way an overreach of executive power into the lives of community members,” Booker told Chris Hayes on MS NOW.

Fetterman has called for President Trump to fire DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, warning last month that “she is betraying DHS’s core mission and trashing your border security legacy.” But otherwise, he has taken a right-wing stance on immigration, supporting ICE and Trump’s mass deportation agenda despite the fact that his own wife, Gisele, was once undocumented.

Donald Trump could not care less that he virtually endorsed a blatantly racist clip of former President Barack Obama and his wife, former First Lady Michelle Obama.

The president admitted Thursday that no one will face consequences for a video that temporarily appeared on his Truth Social account last week, depicting the famed couple as a pair of apes.

Trump casually brushed off the clip while answering questions at the White House, telling a reporter that the AI-generated scene was nothing more than a “little piece that had to do with The Lion King.”

“Sir, have you fired or disciplined that staffer who posted the video from your account that included the Obamas?” asked a journalist.

“No I have not,” Trump said. “That was a video, as you know, on voter fraud.”

“Fairly long video, had a little piece that had to do with The Lion King, it was shown all over the place long before it was posted,” he continued, ignoring the fact the beloved children’s film only features one primate, Rafiki, who is a mandrill. “That was—I’m sure you saw it—a very strong piece on voter fraud.”

Trump officials had quickly shifted blame away from the president after the bigoted video appeared on his Truth Social profile, claiming that an unnamed staffer was responsible—rather than Trump himself.

A total lack of accountability is, however, par for the course for Trump, who rose to the forefront of American politics in 2016 despite widespread knowledge that he “grabs” women “by the pussy,” and multiple reports that Trump spent his real estate career dodging payments that he owed contractors.

That same year, Trump famously told a crowd of his supporters in Iowa that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and [he] wouldn’t lose any voters.”

Exactly one decade later, that lesson still holds true for the militant leader. Despite being mentioned more than 38,000 times in the publicly available, redacted version of the Epstein files, Trump’s Republican allies and staunch MAGA supporters have refused to condemn him. Images and reports of Trump schmoozing and buddying up to the child sex trafficker, as well as allegations that Trump abused a 13-year-old girl (referred to in an FBI tip sheet), have hardly moved the needle on the loyalty of his seemingly undying followers.

Turning Point USA has recently fired several employees, as a right-wing commentator’s conspiracy theories about founder Charlie Kirk’s death have reportedly begun to take root at the far-right organization, The Bulwark reported Thursday.

Last week, Aubrey Laitsch, a former communications staffer at TPUSA, posted a video claiming that the organization lied about the reason she was let go.

“I just have a gut feeling that I was terminated from Turning Point because I am questioning the narrative of what happened to my role model and CEO, Charlie Kirk, on the day of his assassination,” Laitsch said. She later documented a man who appeared to be a private investigator snooping around her house, further raising concerns that something was amiss.

Laitsch’s suspicion that Kirk’s death was an inside job didn’t come from nowhere: It’s a conspiracy theory being pushed by Candace Owens, whose claims that Kirk was murdered for his rejection of Israel and AIPAC have ripped a massive hole in the middle of the far right.

Laitsch’s firing is just the latest in a series of terminations, as staffers have reported a “purge” at the organization—and even started a “fallout fund” for terminated employees. Owens has also boosted stories of firings, sharing audio of an anonymous staffer who claimed to have been fired without explanation and another story of a TPUSA executive who showed up at an employee’s home to fire her and demand back her company electronics.

One must not cry for the discarded members of an ultra-right-wing Christian-nationalist organization—and it’s worth noting that suggesting your boss committed murder would probably get you fired from any job.

The heads of Customs and Border Protection and ICE were grilled by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Thursday about the conduct of federal agents.

Republican Senator Rand Paul called out the agency heads for what happened on Minneapolis’s streets just prior to Alex Pretti’s killing, specifically a video of agents shoving a woman face down on the ground.

CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott equivocated, saying that pushing a woman to the ground “can be” considered a de-escalation tactic, “depending on the circumstances.”

“I don’t know what happened before this. If an officer thinks that doing that is going to prevent any kind of a physical encounter, if there’s a weapon or anything else, I’m not saying there is, I’m just saying in certain cases, using hand-to-hand is a de-escalation,” Scott said. Paul didn’t agree with this.

“No one in America believes that shoving that woman’s face in the snow was de-escalation, but your officers need to know that they had a verbal encounter with her. She did not place her hands on the officers. She wasn’t trying to get their weapon,” Paul said, asking if it is “proper to physically throw a woman down or throw anyone down” in response to verbal attacks.

Scott and Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons eventually both answered no.

After a video was shown of Pretti’s killing, Democratic Senator Gary Peters pointed out how Pretti was beaten with a spray canister before he was shot. He criticized the violence perpetrated by agents, asking if beating someone “with a canister, is that de-escalatory?”

The answer from Scott wasn’t encouraging.

“What I’m seeing is a subject that’s also not compliant. He’s not following any guidance. He’s fighting back nonstop. I don’t know what they’re saying. I don’t know what’s going on in this situation,” Scott responded.

Neither of the agency heads came off well during the hearing, nor did they indicate any changes are coming in how Border Patrol and ICE handles detentions or people protesting against them. Violence has become the norm, even after the outrage following the killings of Renee Good and Pretti. U.S. citizens are routinely detained, either because federal agents are trying to punish them for protesting or because they are being racially profiled as undocumented immigrants.

The Trump administration may make a few nods here and there toward de-escalation and lowering tensions, but its mass deportation agenda, complete with violence and hostility toward protesters, remains intact, even with an announced drawdown in Minneapolis. The protesters around the country aren’t going to stop as long as the injustice continues. Will the government finally get a clue?

President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday rejected scientific evidence that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, undermining a foundational pillar in the fight against climate change.

The agency revoked the 2009 endangerment finding, an Obama-era policy that emerged from the 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA Supreme Court case that determined greenhouse gases to be a real public health risk that could be addressed via the Clean Air Act. Repealing the rule affects what the EPA can regulate, from vehicles to the oil and gas industry to major power plants.

President Trump claimed that the endangerment finding “severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for American consumers.” But this is a massive blow for the institutional fight against climate change—and for our finite environment.

Less pollution and emissions oversight will only expedite the negative impacts of climate change that we’ve already experienced.  

“This decision prioritizes the profits of big oil and gas companies and polluters over clean air and water, the health of kids and all people, and the progress we’ve made to respond to climate change,” Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health head Lisa Patel told Axios. 

Legal challenges from the D.C. Court of Appeals are expected soon. 

This story has been updated. 

A senior U.S. district judge on Thursday blocked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s efforts to punish Senator Mark Kelly.

In an exclamatory 29-page opinion, Judge Richard Leon tossed Hegseth’s attempt to censure the retired U.S. Navy captain after Kelly encouraged American troops to reject illegal orders. Hegseth attempted to silence Kelly on the basis that U.S. service members are not extended the same First Amendment protections as the general population—but that rationale didn’t fly with Leon.

“Unfortunately for Secretary Hegseth, no court has ever extended those principles to retired servicemembers, much less a retired servicemember serving in Congress and exercising oversight responsibility over the military,” Leon wrote in his ruling. “This Court will not be the first to do so!”

Leon further scolded Hegseth for trying to circumnavigate the judicial system in order to muzzle the Arizona Democrat by arguing that the military was better equipped to handle the dispute. To advance his point, Leon turned to the wise words of fabled folk singer-songwriter Bob Dylan.

“This Court has all it needs to conclude that Defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly’s First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees,” Leon wrote. “After all, as Bob Dylan famously said, ‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.’”

Leon’s decision arrived two days after a grand jury in Washington refused to approve Kelly’s charges, which were related to a pro-law and order video he took part in last November that enraged Donald Trump.

In the video statement posted to Facebook, six Democratic members of the House and Senate—a coalition of veterans and former national security professionals—urged servicemembers not to “give up the ship.” The bloc repeated that America’s military and intelligence communities “can” and “must … refuse illegal orders.” They made no reference to disobeying Trump directly, only reminding people to uphold the Constitution.

In reaction, the president called for their execution, writing on Truth Social that their behavior was “punishable by DEATH!”

This story has been updated.