Trump Plans to Fire FDA Chief Over Vaping Fight

President Trump is planning to fire Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary over disagreements relating to flavored vapes and other policy decisions, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Trump’s displeasure with Makary has been well documented. Last week, the Journal reported that the president became frustrated with the commissioner because he refused to approve blueberry, mango, and menthol vape flavors from manufacturer Glas because they’d be too marketable to young and underage users. This complicated Trump’s campaign promise to “save vaping,” as well as his effort to win back the youth vote.

Recent polling shows Trump sitting at a dismal 24 percent approval rating with Gen Z, having lost virtually all of the gains he made with that bloc in 2024.

Makary is a top MAHA advocate, but many conservative lobbyists will be happy to see him gone. Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the anti-abortion organization Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, has been calling for Makary’s firing since December, citing his decision not to impede the approval of a generic abortion pill. Former Senator Rick Santorum last week lamented that Makary “immediately fired the best leaders at the FDA, replaced them with anti-Trump leftists who hollowed out FDA, harmed patients, stifled innovation & drove bio-tech to China then lied about it.”

Trump has yet to publicly comment on Makary’s job status.

This story has been updated.

ABC is fighting back against President Trump’s Federal Communications Commission, accusing the agency of violating its First Amendment rights.

In a filing Friday, the TV network said that the FCC’s latest probe into the TV show The View created a “chilling effect” on free speech by punishing political content the Trump administration disagrees with.

“Some may dislike certain—or even most—of the viewpoints expressed on ‘The View’ or similar shows. Such dislike, however, cannot justify using regulatory processes to restrict those views,” ABC said in the filing.

The FCC set its sights on The View after a February episode with Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico of Texas. The agency questioned whether the show was exempt from the equal time rule, which requires news broadcast stations to give equal time to political candidates. According to ABC’s filing, the FCC ordered the company’s Houston station KTRK-TV to file a request with the agency asking if the show qualified for an exemption from the equal time rule.

The network claimed that this went too far; The View received an exemption in 2002 which had not been challenged once in the following 24 years. It called the demand to file for a new exemption “unprecedented, beyond the Commission’s authority and counterproductive to the Commission’s stated goal of encouraging free speech and open political discussion.”

Two weeks ago, the FCC asked to review the broadcast licenses of eight ABC stations years before they are set to expire, after late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about Trump and first lady Melania Trump that angered the president. While the network’s Friday filing doesn’t mention that, it seems to have influenced their new posture against the administration.

In December 2024, ABC paid Trump a $16 million settlement after he sued the network for defamation. Now they appear to be gearing up for a long court battle against the administration that could go to the Supreme Court. ABC is retaining experienced Supreme Court litigator Paul D. Clement, who served as solicitor general under President George W. Bush. It appears that they won’t give in to the Trump administration any more.

Federal immigration agents held a teenage boy at gunpoint Wednesday and bloodied him up, before they realized they had the wrong person.

Jeury Concepcion, 19, told NBC New York he’d been victim of a violent wrongful immigration arrest in the Bronx’s Norwood neighborhood earlier this week. In a video of the incident, a masked federal agent can be seen running up behind Concepcion with his gun drawn. Concepcion stopped and appeared calm, as more masked agents pulled up in an unmarked car.

Two federal officers then pushed him to the ground, and a third rushed over to help place him in handcuffs as he struggled facedown on the sidewalk. Another agent, wearing an “ERO” (Enforcement and Removal Operations) vest, kept bystanders at bay. Cellphone video showed that Concepcion was bleeding out of his head as ICE agents put him in their vehicle.

During the ride, the officers finally asked Concepcion to show ID and his cellphone. Only then did they realize they had arrested the wrong person. Concepcion said he was born and raised in New York.

Concepcion said he was dropped off at a park he was unfamiliar with and was later reunited with his mother, who took him to the hospital where he needed four stitches. Concepcion has visible cuts and bruises on his face, and is also suffering from a concussion, he told the outlet.

Another man was arrested as part of the ICE investigation in Norwood. A separate video shows agents chasing and tackling the man, who the agency claims is an undocumented immigrant.

This is the kind of wanton violence that President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement crackdown has unleashed on citizens and noncitizens alike. Speaking at a security conference in Phoenix Tuesday, White House border czar Tom Homan threatened to “flood” New York City with ICE officers, while New York Governor Kathy Hochul promised to pass new protections for immigrants.

State Secretary Marco Rubio’s meet and greet with Pope Leo XIV didn’t squash the White House’s beef with the Vatican—instead, it seemed to emphasize it.

Rubio told reporters in Rome Friday that his meeting with the pontiff was “very positive,” but mentioned that they did discuss the Iran war and America’s point of view.

“We had a very good meeting,” Rubio said, according to CNN’s Alejandra Jaramillo. Rubio also said he expressed to Leo “the danger that Iran poses to the world.”

Donald Trump revealed Thursday evening that he had instructed Rubio to bring up the matter, apparently uninterested in settling a boiling feud between his administration and the Catholic Church.

“I just said, tell the pope very nicely, very respectfully, that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. “Also tell the pope that Iran killed 42,000 innocent protesters who didn’t have guns, who didn’t have weapons. Tell that to the pope.”

The Chicago-born pontiff upset the president and a number of Trump’s underlings when he advocated for world peace earlier this year. The Pentagon reportedly threatened a Holy See ambassador in January, days after the pope made antiwar remarks during his State of the World address.

Leo has brushed off Trump’s remarks, claiming that he has “no fear” of the Trump administration or of “speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel,” though the Vatican did reject a White House invitation to host the pope for America’s 250th anniversary on July 4.

Rubio’s meeting with Leo ended in an awkward gift exchange that seemingly left the pope speechless. In a not so subtle gesture, the pope gave the Trump administration representative a pen made of olive wood as a de facto olive branch, dubbing it a “plant of peace.” Rubio, in turn, gave the pope a tiny crystal football while acknowledging that the pope—a well-known Chicago White Sox fan—is more of a “baseball guy.”

The Vatican put out a statement after the meeting, referring to the talks as “cordial” but noting that “there followed an exchange of views regarding the regional and international situation, with particular attention to countries marked by war, political tensions, and difficult humanitarian situations, as well as to the need to work tirelessly in support of peace.”

Virginia’s leadership is preparing to fight its state Supreme Court ruling Friday overturning Democrats’ redistricting referendum.

In a statement, Democratic state Attorney General Jay Jones called out the court’s decision as “putting politics over the rule of law.”

“This decision silences the voices of the millions of Virginians who cast their ballots in every corner of the Commonwealth, and it fuels the growing fears across our nation about the state of our democracy,” Jones said. “My team is carefully reviewing this unprecedented order and we are evaluating every legal pathway forward to defend the will of the people and protect the integrity of Virginia’s elections.”

Senator Tim Kaine criticized the timing of the state’s Supreme Court ruling, saying, “If the Virginia Supreme Court had legitimate concerns about this referendum, the time to stop it would have been before three million Virginians cast their ballots.

“The U.S. Supreme Court eviscerates the Voting Rights Act in a lawsuit brought by a January 6 extremist and Southern states race to craft backroom deals disenfranchising minority voters and candidates. Meanwhile Virginia voters choose to stand up against national disenfranchisement only to see their votes cast into the trash by a 4–3 ruling,” Kaine added.

Meanwhile, Republican-led states across the country continue to gerrymander following President Trump’s demand for mid-decade redistricting and the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act last week. Most of those actions took or are taking place without state referendums, basically forcing through new congressional maps that disenfranchise Democrats and Black Americans.

One polling expert, Zachary Donnini of VoteHub, projects that barring any more court orders, nine Republican-led states will have successfully redrawn their maps this year, as opposed to one Democratic-led state. Thanks to a conservative-controlled Supreme Court, the GOP is stacking the deck and denying Black people representation.