Kash Patel Scandal Gets Worse With Confession of Drunken Arrests

Just days into the fallout over The Atlantic’s reporting on his alleged drinking issues, FBI Director Kash Patel will now have to answer questions about a 2005 letter, in which he admitted to being arrested twice for public intoxication and public urination.

The letter, which was first reported by The Intercept, was part of Patel’s Florida Bar Disclosure Statement. Patel reported that his first arrest, in 2001, occurred while he was drunk at a basketball game as a student at the University of Richmond. He was escorted out of the game by campus police.

“Upon exiting the arena,” he wrote, “the officer placed me under arrest for public intoxication, as I was not yet of 21 years of age.”

The second arrest was while he was a law student at Pace University.

“We went to a few of the local bars and consumed some alcoholic drinks.… In a gross deviation from appropriate conduct, we attempted to relieve our bladders while walking home,” Patel wrote. “Before we could even do so, a police cruiser stopped the group. We were then arrested for public urination.

“Both of these incidents are not representative of my usual conduct of behavior,” Patel continued. “And it is my hope that the Board views them as an anomaly. I dually apologize for my improper behavior both to the Board and the community at large.”

While neither incident was particularly scandalous, they do not appear to have just been anomalies, as Patel said. The Atlantic’s Sarah Fitzpatrick has not only said she stands by her initial report about Patel’s drinking affecting his performance, but that she’d “been inundated by additional sourcing going up to the highest levels of the government, thanking us for doing the work, providing additional corroborating information.”

Patel has yet to comment on the letter.

The Department of Justice announced Friday that it will resurrect federal firing squads as part of an effort to implement Donald Trump’s day-one executive order to revamp capital punishment.

Trump’s order, signed in January 2025, demanded the attorney general pursue the death penalty on “all crimes of a severity demanding its use,” including murder of a law enforcement officer or any capital crime committed by an undocumented immigrant.

Under former President Joe Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland had paused federal executions. Trump became furious when, before leaving the White House, Biden pardoned 37 prisoners on death row. The Republican kicked off his second term in office with a bloodthirsty decree for more death.

The January order made no mention of firing squads. Still, the DOJ said in its Friday announcement it had directed the Bureau of Prisons to “expand the execution protocol to include additional manners of execution such as the firing squad.”

Some view firing squads as more humane than lethal injection, which do not have a 100 percent success rate and sometimes require multiple doses. However, execution by firing squad can also result in prisoners slowly bleeding to death if they are not immediately killed by the bullet.

In March 2025, the Supreme Court allowed South Carolina to carry out the country’s first execution by firing squad in 15 years. Since 1608, at least 144 prisoners have been executed by firing squads in America, most of them in Utah, according to the Associated Press. Firing squads have not gained much traction outside of Utah because they are considered to be barbaric. Currently only five states—Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah—allow the use of firing squads in certain circumstances.

President Donald Trump’s attempt to ban immigrants from claiming asylum at the southern border was blocked in a federal court Friday.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled 2–1 that Trump could not deport immigrants “under summary removal procedures of his own making” or suspend their rights to apply for asylum, even if they cross the border illegally.

Cornelia Pillard, an Obama appointee, and J. Michelle Childs, appointed by Biden, ruled against Trump, while Trump appointee Justin Walker ruled in the administration’s favor. The three-judge panel upheld a ruling from U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss in July, who said that Trump’s January 2025 executive order ending asylum claims for those who cross the U.S.-Mexico border went against federal law.

“Barring foreign individuals who are physically present in the United States from applying for asylum and, if they make the statutory showing that they are eligible, from being considered to receive it cannot be squared with the statute,” Childs wrote in her ruling.

Last year, Trump adviser Stephen Miller railed against the lower court’s similar conclusion, calling Moss a “marxist judge” attempting to “circumvent the Supreme Court,” which is where the case is likely headed next. Asylum claims have plummeted under Trump, who has fired immigration judges and pushed mass deportations despite multiple defeats in court.

Young voters across the country overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 election. But less than two years into his term, the MAGA leader has completely lost them.

An NBC News Decision Desk poll published Friday reveals a stark reversal in Gen Z’s opinion of the president, indicating that just 24 percent approve of Trump’s performance, while 76 percent disapprove.

The nosedive is in no small part due to the war with Iran, and the subsequent cost of living crisis caused by sky-high fuel and oil costs. A collective 81 percent of Gen Z respondents said that they either somewhat or strongly disapprove of Trump’s handling of the Iran war, and 72 percent said that the U.S. should stop military operations in Iran altogether.

Some 48 percent of polled young Americans said that inflation and the rising cost of living were the most important economic matters to themselves and their families at the moment, an 8 percent increase compared to August 2025.

Meanwhile, roughly 80 percent of Gen Z respondents said that the U.S. is on the wrong track, the highest percentage of any age group polled, and nearly half (47 percent) of polled young adults said that they would choose to live in the past if they could. A minority of respondents appeared optimistic about the future: Just 10 percent said they’d choose to go less than 50 years into the future if the option was hypothetically available to them, and 5 percent said they would time-skip by more than 50 years.

Those polled said that their feelings about the future were informed by their relationship with technology and a “growing discomfort with being connected to the internet at all times,” reported NBC News. The current technological and geopolitical uncertainty has inspired a nostalgia for a less chaotic, less technologically dependent world.

The poll found that 62 percent of Gen Z respondents believed that life will be worse for them than for previous generations. Just 25 percent said that they thought that the quality of life would improve compared to the past, and 13 percent said it would remain the same.

Senator Elizabeth Warren thinks that anyone celebrating the Trump administration ending its investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is “fooling themselves.”

On Friday, the Justice Department announced it would be dropping its targeted, flimsy investigation into Powell, who has been under threat of termination from President Trump for months due to his refusal to lower interest rates. But Warren doesn’t see the move as an admission of defeat—rather, as a brazen attempt to expedite the nomination of Powell’s replacement, Kevin Warsh, who is seen as much more favorable to the Trump administration. Just this week, Warsh avoided questions in a congressional hearing about his financial ties to Jeffrey Epstein and whether Trump spoke to him about lowering interest rates.

“This is just an attempt to clear the path for Senate Republicans to install President Trump’s sock puppet Kevin Warsh as Fed Chair,” Warren wrote in a statement on Friday. “Let’s be clear what the Justice Department announced today: they threatened to restart the bogus criminal investigation into Fed Chair Powell at any time while failing to drop their ridiculous criminal probe against Governor Cook.”

The DOJ’s decision to end the investigation follows Republican Senator Thom Tillis’s refusal to confirm Warsh as the next Fed chair “until this legal matter is fully resolved.”

“Anyone who believes Donald Trump’s corrupt scheme to take over the Fed is over is fooling themselves,” Warren continued. “The Senate should not proceed with the nomination of Kevin Warsh.”

Insider trading is of no concern to the Trump administration.

Federal prosecutors have charged Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a 38-year-old active-duty Army soldier involved in the planning and capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, with using confidential intel to win $400,000 on Polymarket predictions related to the raid.

But Donald Trump practically shrugged off the illegal activity while speaking with reporters Thursday evening, suggesting to the room that there was no issue with making extra cash off of insider knowledge so long as the soldier was betting on the U.S. to win.

“Mr. President, apparently there was a special forces soldier involved in the capture of [Maduro] who was arrested by federal authorities today on suspicion of insider trading and betting on Polymarket,” stated a reporter. “Are you concerned that federal employees are betting on these reduction markets and potentially getting rich?”

“Well, I don’t know about it,” Trump said, taking a long pause. “Was he betting that they would get him or they wouldn’t get him?”

“It sounds like he was betting on his removal from office, that Maduro would be removed,” the reporter clarified.

“That’s interesting. That’s like Pete Rose betting on his own team, it’s a little like Pete Rose,” Trump said, referring to the former Cincinnati Reds manager.

Rose was permanently blacklisted from the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1989 after he was caught betting on his team to win. Rose’s behavior also spurred the Hall of Fame’s board of directors’ eponymously titled 1991 baseball rule, barring anyone on the permanently ineligible list from running for election in the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.

“If he bet against his team, that would be no good,” Trump added, referring to Van Dyke.

In the same press conference, Trump lamented that “the whole world has become somewhat of a casino.”

“I was never very much in favor of it, I don’t like it conceptually,” said Trump, whose social media company Truth Social is in the midst of launching its own prediction platform, Truth Predict. “It is what it is.”

Van Dyke was arrested Thursday and faces up to 60 years in prison. In a statement posted on social media, Polymarket said that “insider trading has no place” in its betting services, and claimed it had appropriately coordinated with law enforcement and the Justice Department investigation to hold Van Dyke accountable.

Yet despite the clear parameters of the law prohibiting such activity, some corners of Washington are already divided on what justice looks like for the soldier. Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna has already asked Trump to pardon Van Dyke, claiming in a social media post that “unless the DOJ plans on going after all the crooks in Congress currently insider trading, this is simply skewed justice.”

“I don’t agree with what he did and he should be required to disgorge all the profits; however, unless the DOJ plans on doing Congress next, this is not justice,” she affirmed.

It looks like Kash Patel’s major meltdown over The Atlantic’s humiliating report on his excessive drinking and unexplained absences has only made things worse for the embattled FBI director.

Last weekend, The Atlantic’s Sarah Fitzpatrick reported that Patel was known to drink in excess, routinely delayed meetings and time-sensitive operations, and was often unreachable, raising concerns about the potential for foreign coercion and other national security risks. His behavior had also grown increasingly erratic as he became worried he might lose his job.

In response, Patel filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit Monday alleging that the article was “replete with false and obviously fabricated allegations designed to destroy Director Patel’s reputation and drive him from office.” Within a day of filing, he already managed to undermine his own lawsuit.

While speaking to Radio Atlantic Thursday, Fitzpatrick was asked about Patel’s lawsuit. “I stand by every single word of this report,” she said, noting that aside from Patel, the response to the article has been overwhelmingly supportive.

“And I think one of the things that has been most gratifying, after—immediately after the story published was, I have been inundated by additional sourcing going up to the highest levels of the government, thanking us for doing the work, providing additional corroborating information,” Fitzpatrick said.

The sources Fitzpatrick spoke with to produce the original report were “people who felt that not only was this conduct embarrassing, unbecoming, but that it was a national security vulnerability, and that Americans were perhaps less safe as a result,” she said.

Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is still living in a waterfront home on a Washington, D.C., military base nearly two months after she was fired, according to reporting from The Wall Street Journal.

Noem moved into the home—usually reserved for the Coast Guard commandant— after the previous commandant, Linda Fagan, was fired. It is not typical for Cabinet members or civilians to live in military housing. While other Trump Cabinet members have opted for military housing in his second term, allegedly due to threats they received, Noem is no longer a Cabinet member and should be living in civilian housing. Markwayne Mullin was confirmed as the new homeland security secretary on March 23, over a month ago, and Noem was ousted before that.

Admiral Kevin Lunday, the current Coast Guard commandant, has plans to move into the home Noem is occupying very soon, according to sources close to the situation.

Corey Lewandowski, Noem’s former aide and alleged affair partner, has been spotted at the home multiple times, even as recently as this month. Neither Noem nor DHS has commented.

President Donald Trump is backing down from his vendetta against Jerome Powell.

The Justice Department announced Friday that it is dropping its criminal investigation into the Federal Reserve chief over the renovation of the central bank’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.

“This morning the Inspector General for the Federal Reserve has been asked to scrutinize the building costs overruns—in the billions of dollars—that have been borne by taxpayers,” U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro posted on X. “Accordingly, I have directed my office to close our investigation as the IG undertakes this inquiry.”

“I will not hesitate to restart a criminal investigation should the facts warrant doing so,” Pirro added, appearing to suggest that there was not a factual basis for the previous investigation.

Powell’s term expires on May 15, and Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh to fill the position has faced roadblocks, with Republican Senator Thom Tillis threatening to hold up Warsh’s confirmation over the trumped-up investigation of Powell. Tillis’s vote against Warsh would have been enough to sink his nomination.

Trump has threatened to fire Powell for months, citing the made-up headquarters scandal and complaining about interest rates not being lowered enough. Earlier this month, Trump said he would fire Powell if he stayed past his term, even though Powell is legally allowed to remain as chair “pro tempore” until Congress confirms his replacement.

At his Senate confirmation hearings earlier this week, Warsh dodged questions about his financial ties to Jeffrey Epstein and whether Trump had discussed lowering interest rates with him. While a significant roadblock to his confirmation has just been lifted, those questions could still deter his appointment.

This story has been updated.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is hoping to get around Florida’s Constitution in order to redraw the state’s congressional map and give Republicans nationally a big advantage.

The Florida Constitution bans legislators from drawing districts with “the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent.” DeSantis, who has called a special session of the state legislature to vote on the new maps on Tuesday, plans to get around that provision in three ways, Axios reports.

First, DeSantis’s office has redrawn the new congressional districts in secret, rejecting state legislators’ calls for an open process during their regular session in January. DeSantis is the first governor in state history to submit his own secretly drafted maps, and as of Thursday night, Florida lawmakers still haven’t seen them. The hidden process frustrates legal challenges, making it hard for plaintiffs to access records and prove intent.

Second, since DeSantis’s staff are the ones drawing the maps, he can claim executive privilege as a legal defense to court challenges. He did so in a 2022 court challenge to new legislative maps. In that case, he also invoked the “apex doctrine,” which requires plaintiffs to first depose low-level staff members before higher ones, to shield his staff from depositions. Ultimately, the maps were upheld in federal court.

That doctrine would waste time and help the Florida governor run out the clock on any court challenges to his districts, which is the third part of DeSantis’s plan. The U.S. Supreme Court generally abides by the “Purcell principle,” which limits lower courts from changing election laws too close to an election to protect voters. By running out the clock in court, DeSantis can then invoke that principle to force his maps through in time for November’s midterm elections, although this could backfire if the courts decide DeSantis’s changes are too close to the midterms.

Republicans hope Florida can offset a Democratic redistricting win in Virginia earlier this week, when voters passed a state constitutional amendment to temporarily allow the Democratic-run legislature to redraw the state’s maps. But even if DeSantis successfully gets his new maps approved, there’s no guarantee that Republicans will gain seats.

“The enemy gets a vote,” a Republican consultant involved in the redistricting process told Axios. “And in an environment like this, where independents are breaking hard against us and our people aren’t showing up and Democrats are pissed, we could wind up losing a net number of seats.”