Pam Bondi’s Replacement Reveals He’s Worse on Epstein Than She Was

The man tapped to fill Pam Bondi’s shoes isn’t any better at handling the Epstein files than she was.

Hours after Donald Trump named him as Bondi’s temporary successor on Thursday, acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche took to Fox News, weaving a bold-faced lie about the celebrity pedophile investigation to the network’s conservative audience.

“The Department of Justice has now released all the files with respect to the Epstein saga,” Blanche said. “[Former] Attorney General Bondi and I appeared in front of Congress voluntarily a couple weeks ago to answer any questions they had. We have made every single congressman—senator—available to come and see any document, redacted or unredacted, that they want.

“To the extent the Epstein files was a part of the past year of this Justice Department, it should not be a part of anything going forward,” Blanche added.

But the notion that the DOJ has released everything it has on the Epstein files just isn’t true.

The agency has released roughly 3.5 million pages of evidence related to Epstein’s crimes, but according to a memo from Blanche’s former office in January, the DOJ’s “collection efforts resulted in more than 6 million pages being identified.” That would suggest the agency has only released about half of the evidence that DOJ employees had already determined to be related to the case.

Failing to provide all of the documentation related to the Epstein files is in violation of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed by Congress and signed by Trump into law in November.

Lawmakers were quick to call out the discrepancy in Blanche’s numbers, indicating that the Epstein files are likely to be just as big an issue for the new DOJ chief as for his predecessor.

“This is a lie. About 50 percent of the files have been released and per our subpoena it’s illegal to withhold them,” wrote California Representative Robert Garcia on X, responding to a clip of the interview. “Blanche may think it’s over, but we are just getting started.”

At least one Republican similarly put Blanche to task, reminding the new DOJ head of the looming release deadline.

“Congratulations AG Blanche,” posted Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie. “Now you have 30 days to release the rest of the files before becoming criminally liable for failure to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.”

President Trump is seeking the largest military budget in this country’s modern history for 2027, even as a multitude of domestic issues—from health care to housing, to the general cost of living—continue to persist.

The White House on Friday requested $1.5 trillion from Congress, which would amount to a 40 percent increase from what the Pentagon spent this fiscal year. The budget would come at the expense of the social safety net, with the administration estimating at least $73 billion in cuts across domestic programs. This comes just days after Trump told his supporters at a private lunch that “it’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things.”

The White House’s budget fact sheets state its intention to “cut woke programs” like the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Justice Program, the Community Services Block Grants meant to address poverty, and the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, which supports banks and lenders in underserved parts of the country. The Trump administration claims such programs have been “hijacked by radicals” and “advance critical race theory.”

Trump is asking for a trillion-dollar check for death and destruction while actively shutting down programs that help Americans of all backgrounds, all while so many people can’t afford to buy a home, pay off their student loans, or even break a leg.

This story has been updated.

President Donald Trump is bragging about committing war crimes in Iran—and promising to commit even more.

The U.S. military executed a double-tap strike on a highway bridge outside of Tehran, according to a U.S. official who spoke anonymously to The New York Times Thursday.

The two strikes reportedly struck the bridge roughly an hour apart, with the second arriving while emergency responders, who are considered protected civilians, were assisting the wounded.

In a post on Truth Social Thursday night, the U.S. president appeared to celebrate that strike and promise more destruction like it.

“Our Military, the greatest and most powerful (by far!) anywhere in the World, hasn’t even started destroying what’s left in Iran. Bridges next, then Electric Power Plants! New Regime leadership knows what has to be done, and has to be done, FAST!” Trump wrote.

The military official claimed the strike site was a planned military supply route for Iran’s missile and drone forces, but Iran’s deputy governor of Alborz Province, Ghodratollah Seif, flatly denied that characterization, according to the Times.

Seif said that there was “absolutely no military activity” on the bridge. The dead and wounded reportedly included civilians who had been picnicking in a nearby park for the final day of the Persian New Year.

A former State Department lawyer told the Times that the bridge appeared to have been “targeted not to provide any military advantage but in the hopes of coercing Tehran and generating content.”

Of course, extensive destruction not justified by a military necessity is a war crime, and these wouldn’t be the first the U.S. military has committed in Trump’s reckless war.

Despite being fired by President Trump on Thursday, outgoing Attorney General Pam Bondi may still have to respond to a congressional subpoena and testify under oath in two weeks.

Last month, five Republicans joined every single Democrat on the House Oversight Committee to vote to subpoena Bondi, and on Thursday, Democrats and even Republicans on the committee said that they still expected Bondi to show up and answer questions about her handling of the government’s release of files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“Pam Bondi and Donald Trump may think her firing gets her out of testifying to the Oversight Committee,” ranking member Robert Garcia posted on X, along with a statement on behalf of the committee’s Democrats. “They are wrong—and we look forward to hearing from her under oath.”

Republicans didn’t hold back, either.

“My subpoena still stands,” Republican Representative Nancy Mace posted. “When the Oversight Committee moved to subpoena Bondi, I did it by name, not by or not as the sitting Attorney General of the U.S. RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES.”

Representative Lauren Boebert, also a Republican member of the committee, made a joke about Bondi’s infamous comments about stock market gains in response to questions about Epstein during a congressional hearing in February.

“DOW fell below 50,000?” Boebert posted on X, suggesting she has little sympathy for Bondi and may also still support the subpoena.

Republican Representative and Oversight Chair James Comer isn’t being so forthcoming, though. In a statement, a committee spokesperson said, “Since Pam Bondi is no longer Attorney General, Chairman Comer will speak with Republican members and the Department of Justice about the status of the deposition subpoena and confer on next steps.”

Will Trump and his fellow Republicans stop Bondi from testifying? While the president was clearly dissatisfied with Bondi’s performance (and her firing may have had to do with more than just Epstein), he may try to keep her quiet because of how much she knows about him.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired the highest-ranking Army officer in the country in the middle of the U.S. war on Iran.

On Thursday, CBS News reported that Hegseth had asked Gen. Randy George, the Army’s chief of staff, to step down and retire. The Biden appointee’s term was set to end in 2027; Army chiefs of staff typically serve four-year terms. George joins more than a dozen high-ranking military officers who have been fired since Hegseth and his ultra-hawkish ideology took over at the Pentagon.

According to CBS, the Pentagon wanted someone who’d do a better job of listening to Hegseth and President Trump and their vision for the Army. “We are grateful for his service, but it was time for a leadership change in the Army,” an official said. The move comes at a crucial moment, as the U.S.-Israeli joint war in Iran grows more serious. On Thursday, Trump and Hegseth promised to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Age.”

President Donald Trump has to nominate someone to replace Attorney General Pam Bondi and, big surprise: His options are all bad.

Ahead of Bondi’s ouster Thursday, reports were already swirling that a dissatisfied Trump was planning to tap Lee Zeldin, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to replace her.

Since taking on his role in January 2025, Zeldin has been a fierce supporter of Trump’s agenda, overseeing what he called “the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States.”

To achieve the president’s energy production goals, Zeldin has tried to make life easier for polluters by eviscerating auto fuel standards, oil drilling limits, and the “endangerment finding” underlying emissions regulations. Under Zeldin, Trump’s EPA is overseeing a historic decline in enforcement of the nation’s environmental laws.

Zeldin has a legal background, and became the youngest attorney in New York state at the time in 2004, at the age of 23. He served in Congress from 2015 until 2023, where he supported Trump in both of his impeachments and voted against certifying the results of the 2020 election.

But there are other names being floated to replace Bondi.

One person being discussed as a potential new attorney general is Jeanine Pirro, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, according to MeidasTouch’s Scott MacFarlane.

The former Fox News host Trump tapped for the top federal prosecutor in the nation’s capital would certainly be loyal: She once bragged about how far she went to push Trump’s claims that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen.

But Pirro is mired in many of the same kinds of disasters that plagued Bondi’s reign. Pirro’s office was behind a thwarted effort to pursue a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, one of the president’s perceived enemies. Pirro’s office also failed four separate times to indict one woman accused of assaulting a federal agent. And in February, Pirro enraged the MAGA base when she warned citizens not to bring firearms to the District of Columbia.

Some senators are hoping Trump will hear their pitch for Utah Senator Mike Lee as attorney general, two sources with knowledge of the matter told NOTUS. Lee is probably best known for posting MAGA conspiracy theories and shitposting online.

Lee spent several years as an attorney with a private law firm in appellate and Supreme Court litigation before serving for three years as an assistant U.S. attorney in Salt Lake City. He later held a one-year clerkship with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

For now, Trump has promoted Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to interim attorney general.

Nearly 40,000 poor and working-class people in Puerto Rico were promised accessible solar panels and battery storage from the U.S. government following massive blackouts after Hurricane Maria in 2017 and Hurricane Fiona in 2022. Within a year of Donald Trump winning his second term as president, his administration eliminated the programs.

On Thursday, Grist reported that the Trump administration has diverted a large chunk of funding away from the Energy Resilience Fund, a $1 billion program Congress formed in 2022, and handed over what’s left of it to the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or PREPA—a government-owned energy company with a history of corruption and incompetence. On top of that, in January, Trump’s Department of Energy eliminated $350 million in grants to low-income households on the island to set up their own solar systems.

“Why would you cancel something that is working as intended and being executed, to give it to someone that has a bad history?” a former Energy Department official told Grist, referring to PREPA. “Why are we risking these funds?”

The ailing state of Puerto Rico’s power grid was exacerbated by Hurricane Fiona in 2022 and Hurricane Maria in 2017. Both resulted in blackouts across the island, and the infrastructure failure caused by the former—not by the storm itself—killed around 3,000 people in Puerto Rico. Now Trump has placed the power grid, and the safety of thousands of Puerto Ricans, in flux as hurricane season approaches once again.

Only 6,000 solar battery units were placed before the ERF’s funding was cut. Read the full report here.

The National Capital Planning Commission, or NCPC, issued final approval for Donald Trump’s White House ballroom Thursday, a key goalpost for the enormous development.

The decision arrived two days after U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ordered construction on the site to cease until Trump obtained congressional approval. It is not clear yet if the agency’s approval will bear any weight with regard to the halted timeline, which Trump has tried to expedite in an attempt to complete the project before he is out of office.

Leon argued in a 35-page opinion Tuesday that while the president serves as the “steward of the White House for future generations of First Families,” he does not own it, emphasizing that “no statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have” with regard to reimagining the White House grounds.

Trump has repeatedly rejected the fact that he needs Congress’s approval to build upon or demolish the publicly owned mansion.

The 12-person NCPC was originally set to vote on the ballroom in March, but was delayed until Thursday due to the number of individuals wishing to comment on the development at the committee meeting. Most of those who spoke were opposed, reported the Associated Press.

Trump’s idea to build a 90,000-square-foot ballroom on the executive estate has been riddled with problems and colored by lies since he first announced the project in July. Initially, Trump pledged that the development would “be near but not touching” the White House East Wing.

Months later, his construction teams completely razed the FDR-era extension, plowing forward without prerequisite approval from the NCPC or the express permission of Congress, both of which were conveniently unavailable at the time due to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

The ballroom’s estimated price tag has been similarly difficult to nail down. Trump originally claimed that the project would cost $200 million, but a decision to tack on extra construction to the site doubled its cost to $400 million. The new building will have 40-foot ceilings, be able to accommodate up to 1,000 seated guests, and would constitute 22,000 square feet of the 90,000-square-foot development, according to projections offered by East Wing ballroom architect Shalom Baranes in January.

The ballroom is the biggest and most expensive reform Trump has proposed to the White House, but it’s far from his only attempt to remake the “People’s House” in his image. Trump also renovated Jackie Kennedy’s famous Rose Garden, mowing down flowers in order to literally pave paradise. He gutted the Lincoln bathroom, transforming it from Lyndon B. Johnson’s “favorite office” into a marble-slathered eyesore, and swapped the historic Palm Room’s lush green tones and tall ferns for white paint and framed photos of plants.

Donald Trump is preparing to release a budget plan that sets aside more than $1 trillion for defense spending in 2027, a sum that will be at least partially paid for by cuts to programs that actually help Americans.

Trump is reportedly looking to boost defense spending to $1.5 trillion in 2027, up from the nearly $1 trillion spent in 2026, Bloomberg reported Thursday. The demand for more defense funding comes amid Trump’s increasingly unpopular war in Iran, and its ever-rising price tag, unknown death toll, and vacillating objectives.

All of this comes at the cost of cutting federal programs—a tool that Democrats could use to their advantage come the midterm elections. Trump’s drastic cuts to the federal workforce and reduction on health care spending should play nicely for the Democrats who hope to highlight affordability.

Trump spoke frankly Wednesday about prioritizing paying for a war over programs such as universal daycare, Medicaid, and Medicare. So frankly, in fact, that the White House removed a recording of his speech after posting it.

Trump’s 2027 budget proposal is also expected to update 10-year deficit projections, which are currently placed at around $16 trillion. During his first term, Trump promised to erase the nation’s debt, but instead added $7.8 trillion to it. Given that the Supreme Court struck down his disastrous reciprocal tariff policy that he promised would help balance the deficit, it’s not clear how he’d make good on that promise now.

The U.S. government is staring down a projected $1.9 trillion deficit for this fiscal year, with the total national debt now pushing $39 trillion.

Pam Bondi is out of the Trump administration—and some insiders believe the underlying reason is due to an odd connection to California Representative Eric Swalwell.

Donald Trump fired Bondi Thursday, thrusting her out of government altogether and into the private sector. Her dismissal was reportedly supposed to occur Friday, but was rushed due to rampant speculation about her replacement that consumed Washington Wednesday night.

An unidentified senior administration source that spoke with the Daily Mail Thursday claimed that Bondi begged Trump to reconsider, pleading to give her more time in the role, but Trump was adamant about her departure.

“She was unhappy and tried to change his mind,” the Mail’s source said.

It was widely believed that one of Trump’s chief complaints with Bondi was her handling of the Epstein files, which remains one of the president’s most enduring scandals. But the source that spoke with Mail pointed in a different direction, positing that the sudden dismissal was in no small part because Trump believed Bondi had previously tipped Swalwell off over the FBI’s efforts to publicize decades-old files related to the lawmaker’s former relationship with a suspected Chinese spy, Christine Fang.

“She’s intervening in those matters. The White House wasn’t pleased she was intervening due to her personal friendship with Swalwell,” the source told the Mail.

Sources that spoke with Semafor also reported the Swalwell detail.

Swalwell issued a cease and desist letter to FBI Director Kash Patel on Monday, urging the intelligence chief to commit by Wednesday not to release the files on him and Fang. Swalwell is a leading Democratic candidate in the California gubernatorial race.

“The Congressman has never been accused of wrongdoing in that matter and your attempt to release the file is a transparent attempt to smear him and undermine his campaign for Governor of California,” attorneys Norm Eisen and Sean Hecker wrote on Swalwell’s behalf. “Your actions threaten to expose you, others at the FBI, and the FBI itself to significant legal liability.”

It is not clear why Bondi would have intervened in the situation. Swalwell has been a vocal critic of the president, and has publicly chastised Bondi for failing to prosecute multiple death threats against him and his family. Nonetheless, the Mail reported that Bondi and Swalwell have a “friendly” relationship.

MS NOW reported that Trump was also frustrated with Bondi’s repeated failures in prosecuting his perceived enemies.