Ousted Republican NTSB Member Rejects White House Story on His Firing

Donald Trump has fired a Republican member of the National Transportation Safety Board, or NTSB, accusing him of misconduct on the job.

J. Todd Inman was fired late last week and said he was given no explanation why. On Monday, the White House released a statement accusing him of “inappropriate alcohol use on the job, harassment of staff, misuse of government resources, and failure to attend at least half of NTSB meetings,” saying he was “lawfully removed” due to “highly concerning reports.”

“The Trump administration remains committed to maintaining safety and security for Americans in the air and on the ground,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement.

Inman, meanwhile, told The Washington Post that it was all made up.

“I categorically deny the false allegations made in the White House statement,” Inman said. “It has become increasingly obvious this action was a political hit job. While not my original intent I look forward to defending my reputation against those responsible with every legal means possible.”

Inman didn’t tell the Post why he said his firing was political, but he had represented the NTSB at news conferences since an American Airlines flight crashed in Washington, D.C., at the beginning of Trump’s second term.

Last May, Trump fired another member of the NTSB, vice chair Alvin Brown, who was appointed by President Biden. Brown is suing the Trump administration over his ouster, arguing that Trump didn’t have the authority to fire him, even as the Senate confirmed his replacement, John DeLeeuw, last month. The Supreme Court is expected to rule in favor of the Trump administration. Will Inman sue as well?

One of the same law firms that President Trump tried and failed to suppress is now representing AI company Anthropic in its lawsuit against the Trump administration.

Last year, Trump signed an executive order demanding that government agencies eliminate WilmerHale’s government contracts, their security clearances, and their access federal buildings, on the grounds that they allegedly “rewarded” Robert Mueller by allowing him to remain on their payroll after his investigation into Trump’s connections to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The executive order was ruled unconstitutional in May.

Now, that same law firm is helping Anthropic sue the Trump administration for labeling them a “supply risk” after the AI company refused to lift regulations restricting government access to surveillance and unmanned weapons systems.

More than a dozen federal agencies are targeted in the lawsuit, including the Departments of Defense, Treasury, State, and Veterans Affairs.

“Anthropic was founded based on the belief that AI technologies should be developed and used in a way that maximizes positive outcomes for humanity, and its primary animating principle is that the most capable artificial-intelligence systems should also be the safest and the most responsible. Anthropic brings this suit because the federal government has retaliated against it for expressing that principle,” the lawsuit reads.

The lawsuit goes on to cite Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegesth’s statements on Anthropic against them. “When Anthropic held fast to its judgment that Claude cannot safely or reliably be used for autonomous lethal warfare and mass surveillance of Americans, the President directed every federal agency to ‘IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology’—even though the Department of War (Department) had previously agreed to those same conditions,” the suit states. “Hours later, the Secretary of War directed his Department to designate Anthropic a ‘Supply-Chain Risk to National Security,’ and further directed that ‘effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic.’

“These actions are unprecedented and unlawful,” the lawsuit adds. “The Constitution does not allow the government to wield its enormous power to punish a company for its protected speech.”

In response, the White House has stated that it “will never allow a radical left, woke company to jeopardize our national security by dictating how the greatest and most powerful military in the world operates.”

The U.S. will only pull out of Iran when Israel decides it’s time to call it quits.

That’s according to Donald Trump, who told The Times of Israel on Sunday that the decision to end the Iran war will be a “mutual” decision he makes with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“I think it’s mutual … a little bit. We’ve been talking,” Trump said when asked if he alone would make the decision to end the war. “I’ll make a decision at the right time, but everything’s going to be taken into account.”

He dismissed the idea that Israel could continue its own campaign against Iran even after the U.S. pulls back, telling the Times of Israel, “I don’t think it’s going to be necessary.”

“Iran was going to destroy Israel and everything else around it.… We’ve worked together. We’ve destroyed a country that wanted to destroy Israel,” Trump told the paper.

Trump’s deference to Israel stands in stark contrast to where he supposedly stood on the issue on Friday, when White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the decision to end the war would be solely up to the U.S. president’s discretion.

State Secretary Marco Rubio gave away the game on the rationale for U.S. involvement in the war last week. Speaking to a press huddle, Rubio explained that Israel had forced Trump’s hand in the matter by heedlessly barging forward with its war plans against Iran. That prompted U.S. military assets to strike first, a decision that Rubio chalked up to intel that indicated Iran would retaliate with force against American interests if Israel initiated an attack.

Hours later, Trump decided that messaging was unacceptable, publicly disagreeing with his secretary of state’s interpretation of events.

That required Rubio to reemerge before reporters the following day, frantically backpedalling on the explanation he had offered. Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, claimed later the same day that Rubio’s point-blank comments had been “taken out of context.”

Talk of escalating the conflict with Iran has ramped up in recent days amongst chief White House officials, at times doing so in a remarkably disaffected way. The president declared on Friday that he wants “unconditional surrender” from Iran, and would not negotiate a peace deal without it.

Trump and his Republican allies are privately warming to the idea of a U.S. ground invasion in Iran. Meanwhile, Iranian officials have already said they are “confident” the country could counter a U.S. ground invasion.

So far, seven U.S. soldiers have been killed in the conflict, as have more than 20 Iranian officials, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Eighteen American soldiers have also been seriously injured. More than 1,200 Iranian civilians have been killed, including dozens of children at a girls’ school in the country’s south. A U.S. assessment report found that the strike was “likely” the fault of American forces.

Republican Representative Andy Ogles decided to write off an entire religious community in America on Monday.

“Muslims don’t belong in American society,” Ogles posted on X. “Pluralism is a lie.”

The Tennessee congressman has a long history of bigoted comments. He said America “should kill ’em all” last year regarding Palestinians in Gaza. He called for sending pro-Palestine student protesters to Gaza last May, and used footage of September 11 to attack Zohran Mamdani before he was elected New York City mayor.

In November, Ogles made a series of anti-Muslim comments on his Restoring the Republic podcast, saying, “The only thing they can do is essentially come to our nation and breed their way through our society, and I hate to say that, that’s harsh, it’s going to offend somebody, so what? Wake up.”

What prompted Ogles to post prejudice against Muslims Monday morning isn’t clear, although a protest outside of Mamdani’s mayoral residence in New York on Sunday might have had something to do with it. Anti-Islam provocateur Jake Lang showed up with about 20 protesters outside of Gracie Mansion, only to be met by 125 counterprotesters. Among them were two people allegedly inspired by ISIS who were arrested after throwing homemade bombs that didn’t explode.

If that wasn’t what spurred Ogles’s attack, it could be the war in Iran, or something from one of his four Muslim colleagues in Congress, particularly Representative Ilhan Omar, whom he has attacked in the past. Perhaps he should be more worried about the open federal investigation into his campaign finances or the mounting fact-checks of his lies about his background. Ogles should be censured by Congress at a minimum, but bigotry against Muslims in America is sadly considered normal, especially in the Republican Party.

Russia may be about to get rich off of Donald Trump’s illegal war in Iran.

The spiraling regional conflict, sparked by ongoing attacks from the U.S. and Israel, has sent the price of oil skyrocketing to almost $120 per barrel. As a result, demand for discounted Russian oil has spiked.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced last week that the U.S. would issue 30-day waivers to allow Indian refiners to purchase Russian oil that was “already stranded at sea,” promising doing so would “not provide significant financial benefit” to the Kremlin.

However, India typically imports an average of 10 million metric tons of crude oil per month through the Strait of Hormuz, Vaibhav Raghunandan, an EU-Russia analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, told Politico.

“Even if half of this volume is replaced with Russian volumes at sea, it will translate to huge profits for the Kremlin,” Raghunandan said. As of February 2026, Russia’s so-called shadow fleet of stranded oil tankers held approximately 150 million barrels of Russian oil worth an estimated $6.4 billion, according to the Robert Lansing Institute.

“We may unsanction other Russian oil,” Bessent said to Fox Business’s Larry Kudlow Friday. But permitting further sales of Russian oil would undoubtedly offer a financial boon to the country’s ongoing war effort in Ukraine. So far, Trump has largely proven powerless at forging a deal between Moscow and Kyiv—and war with Iran could only make matters worse.

All of this comes after the White House dismissed reports that Russia was assisting Iran in targeting U.S. assets in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, called for the European Union to lift sanctions on Russian oil amid escalating conflict in the Middle East, which has brought global trade to an abrupt stop. Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriyev echoed Hungary’s request.

“What you propose is very difficult, as it would require EU bureaucrats to think and understand how markets work—and, most difficult of all, to acknowledge their strategic blunders and atone,” he wrote on X. “And yet, they will have to do it very soon.”

It seems that President Trump has scared every man in his Cabinet into wearing the matching shoes he bought for all of them.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Trump has developed a strong affinity for the American shoe brand Florsheim, and has bought a pair for Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, communications director Steven Cheung, deputy chief of staff James Blair, and speechwriter Ross Worthington. Even those not in his Cabinet, such as Fox News host Sean Hannity, Senator Lindsey Graham, and Tucker Carlson, have been gifted a pair. They are around $145.

“Did you get the shoes?” he’d ask them.

“All the boys have them,” one female White House official told the WSJ. “It’s hysterical because everybody’s afraid not to wear them,” said another.

Rubio and Vance got their Florsheims after an Oval Office meeting last year. “Marco, JD, you guys have s—y shoes,” Trump said before getting a Florsheim catalog and asking them their shoe sizes.

“The president kind of leans back in his chair and says, ‘You know you can tell a lot about a man by his shoe size,’” Vance said.

While this strange development may have little to do with policy, it does offer more insight into the psyche of the president. He is someone who wants control of aesthetics and the patronage that comes with gift-giving.

At least two members of the president’s Cabinet have recently purchased bomb-proof bunkers.

Ron Hubbard, the creator of Atlas Survival Shelters, told The Telegraph over the weekend that orders have gone up “tenfold” since the United States and Israel attacked Iran earlier this month.

“I’ve been inundated with calls,” said Hubbard.

But among his anxious clientele are two chief members of Donald Trump’s team, according to the shelter maker.

“One of them texted me yesterday, asking me: ‘When will my bunker be ready?’” he told The Telegraph.

Hubbard constructs hundreds of galvanized steel shelters each year at Atlas’s factory in Sulphur Springs, Texas. Its catalog offers underground shelter options from tornado bunkers to hidden gun rooms, with prices ranging from $200,000 to $5 million. On the higher end of the spectrum, Atlas’s bunkers can come with practically every amenity imaginable, including mud rooms, swimming pools, cinemas, armories, and gun ranges.

And right now, business is booming. The company has so far averaged $2 million a month in sales for 2026, but Hubbard predicts that could jump to as much as $50 million next month.

“Bunker building is like being a farmer. When it’s time for harvest, you have to reap all you can,” he told The Telegraph.

But politicos are not the only people tapping into the doomsday-prepper lifestyle. Hubbard described the vast majority of his customers as being “Christian, conservative CEOs.” Last year, Hubbard met that crowd at a familiar watering hole—Mar-a-Lago—to advertise the drastic solution.

Hubbard refused to name his wealthiest customers but nonetheless boasted to The Telegraph that he has built shelters for several of the richest men on the planet, and that more tech moguls have recently come knocking for similar products.

The president, meanwhile, has done nothing to abate concerns. When asked by Time last week if Americans should be worried about Iran attacking them on U.S. soil, Trump responded: “I guess.”

“Like I said, some people will die,” Trump told the magazine. “When you go to war, some people will die.”

So far, seven U.S. soldiers have been killed in the conflict, as have more than 20 Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Eighteen American soldiers have also been seriously injured. More than 1,200 Iranian civilians have been killed, including dozens of children at a girls’ school in the country’s south. A U.S. assessment report found that strike was “likely” the fault of American forces.

A woman who says Donald Trump abused her when she was 13 years old in 1984 shared information about her life that turned out to be true.

While her story about Trump is still unproven, The Post and Courier, a newspaper in Charleston, South Carolina, was able to corroborate details of her life provided in recent releases from the federal government’s Jeffrey Epstein archives. The woman was interviewed four times by the FBI in 2019, detailing abuse she faced at the hands of Trump and Epstein.

She gave details about her life and legal history that the newspaper was able to verify using news reports, court records, police reports, and government records from multiple states. None of the confirmed details are directly related to her allegations against Trump.

In her interviews with the FBI, she describes Epstein’s activities in the mid-1980s on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina, where the financier sexually assaulted minors. She said that Epstein constantly pressured her to find more girls to “come party,” describing his friends as “disgusting.” These so-called parties usually involved alcohol and drugs, and would turn violent with beatings and hair pulling. She said that Trump forced her to commit a sexual act on him around 1984 after she traveled to New York or New Jersey with Epstein.

She detailed that one incident took place while Trump was developing a casino in Atlantic City. She was led to Trump in a “very tall building with huge rooms.” Trump allegedly told others to leave the room, and told her, “Let me teach you how little girls are supposed to be,” before unzipping his pants and forcing her to perform a sex act. She told the FBI that she “bit the (expletive) out of it,” which angered Trump, who slapped her and cursed.

A friend of the woman also reported her allegations about Trump to the FBI, asking that her friend be protected, according to an email circulated around the bureau that the Justice Department made public. The woman herself named business associates of Epstein in North Carolina who also abused her, and the newspaper was able to identify some of them.

In a statement to the newspaper, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the woman’s allegations were “baseless accusations from decades ago’’ that “are backed by zero evidence or facts. Leavitt described the accuser as “a sadly disturbed woman who has an extensive criminal history.” But Trump has sought to diminish and bury every Epstein revelation that paints him in a negative light, and his critics will point to this woman’s account as one of the reasons why.

President Donald Trump says he wants hundreds of ships to “show some guts” and sail through the war zone he created.

Speaking to Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade Sunday, Trump tried to bully shipping companies into reopening the Strait of Hormuz—where global trade has come to a screeching halt amid Iran’s retaliation to U.S. and Israeli strikes.

“These ships should go through the Strait of Hormuz and show some guts, there’s nothing to be afraid of,” Trump said.

“They have no Navy, we sunk all their ships,” he added.

The halt of trade in and out of the Persian Gulf has quickly rippled out into the global supply chain, sending oil prices skyrocketing. Last week, Trump offered to send the U.S. Navy to escort ships through the essential passageway, but the surplus of stopped ships is likely too great for American assets to assist. On Sunday, more than 1,000 vessels waited to sail through, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Appearing on Fox Sunday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright pledged that “energy will flow soon” through the Strait of Hormuz, and that energy prices were only rising out of concerns that the conflict could become a “drawn-out crisis.”

While Trump has insisted he only wants the war to last four weeks, U.S. Central Command is making plans to keep fighting until September, and the Pentagon is eyeing a request for supplemental defense funds. Trump and other top administration officials have also refused to rule out deploying troops to Iran. Why would that sound drawn-out?

The current standstill at the Strait of Hormuz is unprecedented. “In the whole written history of the strait, it has never been closed, ever,” JPMorgan Chase analyst Natasha Kaneva told the Journal. “To me, it was not just the worst-case scenario. It was an unthinkable scenario.”

President Trump’s sons are trying to sell drones to the Pentagon.

Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are merging their publicly traded golf-course holding company with Powerus, a Florida-based drone company, with the goal of filling the gaps left by the Trump administration’s ban on Chinese drones.

The drone market “is certainly going to grow faster than, say, golf courses are,” Powerus CEO Andrew Fox told The Wall Street Journal.

The Trump-backed investment firm American Ventures, the Trump-backed investment bank Dominari Securities, and drone parts maker Unusual Machines, the latter of which Trump Jr. is a shareholder and advisory board member of, are involved in the public merger. Eric Trump is also invested in Israeli drone maker Xtend.

Powerus wants to build more than 10,000 drones a month.

While the financial and political impacts of this merger remain to be seen, it is impossible to ignore that as drone usage ratchets up, as the Trump administration blocks drones from China, and as Trump wages war in Iran using AI, the president’s sons and their investment firms are immediately at the scene ready to reap any benefits they can find. Family corruption has been a defining aspect of Trump’s second term, so much so that his sons investing in drones while he starts what may be yet another violent, drawn-out war in the Middle East is just another headline.

“Raise your hand if you elected @realDonaldTrump so his kids could make money off of government contracts,” one large pro-Trump X account complained.

“Rushing to cash in on Daddy’s failed war before they’ve even gotten Barron and Kai to enlist,” another large account on the liberal end of the spectrum wrote. “Truly deplorable behavior, but what we expect from these corrupt reprobates.”