Karoline Leavitt Will Soon Lie Somewhere Else

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt—one of the most public facing spokespersons for President Trump and the MAGA agenda—will step away from her role next month to spend more time with her family. 

“Our wonderful White House Press Secretary, and one of my most trusted aides, Karoline Leavitt, will be departing her role at the end of the month so she can spend more time with her beautiful young children and family, a decision I totally understand and respect!” Trump wrote Wednesday afternoon on Truth Social. “Karoline has been a real leader in the White House, and has done a phenomenal job fighting for Justice, Liberty, and Freedom, since 2018, including our Historic Re-Election Campaign of 2024. Karoline has been one of the best White House Press Secretaries in the History of the Office. Thank you, Karoline, for a job well done!” 

Leavitt first joined the Trump administration in 2020 as part of the White House Office of Presidential Correspondence, and was eventually named assistant White House Press Secretary. She ran an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in New Hampshire before making her way back to the Trump campaign, and was named press secretary in 2024, the youngest one ever at 28 years old. It is unclear who will replace her. 

Leavitt leaves a legacy of devoted bigotry behind her. She lied about Trump blocking $50 million worth of condoms to Gaza. She blamed a deadly collision between a military helicopter and an American Airlines flight that killed 67 people on DEI instead of massive cuts Trump made.  She called the Epstein files a “Democratic hoax, and she called Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran national and Maryland father wrongly deported by the Trump administration, a “foreign terrorist,” and “MS-13 gang member’ who “was engaged in human trafficking.” That was a lie too. 

President Donald Trump has just been sued for trying to sell early access to his Truth Social posts. 

The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Wednesday, calling Trump’s plan “extraordinary, corrupt and unconstitutional.” 

Truth Social is part of Trump’s company, Trump Media & Technology, which announced the plan last month. Under a new product, known as Trump API, it seeks to get Wall Street companies to pay between $60,000 and $100,000 per month for preferred access to Trump’s posts so their traders can have an advantage on market reactions to them. 

Trump API would provide 24/7 access, along with Trump’s archived posts going back to 2022, including ones that were deleted or altered. Trump Media’s interim CEO Kevin McGurn says that the company intends “to create a lot of friction for those folks that aren’t coming to us directly.”   

This seems a lot like insider trading, which is a federal crime prosecuted by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the lawsuit directly takes aim at the ethical issues behind selling access to market-moving information from the president of the United States. 

“This scheme is profoundly corrupt. The President stands to gain financially by giving ‘market-moving’ government information to those who are willing and able to pay his personal company,” the plaintiffs write. “There is no legitimate interest, let alone a significant one, in permitting President Trump to profit from selling government information.” 

According to the lawsuit, Trump Media disclosed on Monday that it already has more than 10 subscribers to the service, including financial news outlets and high-frequency trading firms. The president stands to personally profit from those companies having access to privileged information generated by his position. 

With any other politician, this would be a massive ethical violation possibly coming with legal penalties, but for Trump, it’s only the latest in a series of schemes that have allowed him to profit off of his presidency. For now, this lawsuit is the only attempt to end his insider trading venture. 

Newly-confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche seems to want to resurrect President Trump’s $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization” slush fund by another name.

Blanche claimed that the fund was dead, while at the same time insinuating that the administration would look for other ways to offer payouts to insurrectionists and allies during his introductory press conference on Wednesday.

“The president has never gone as far as you have to say that the Anti-Weaponization fund is dead. Now that you’ve been confirmed narrowly, arguably because of that Anti-Weaponization fund ... is it dead, and is it ever gonna come back?” a reporter asked.

Blanche offered a verbose, noncommittal answer.

“I quibble with that, because the president said in the Cabinet meeting that it’s dead. He’s also said that he likes it. But he has also said it’s dead,” Blanche said. “As for me ... I have testified under oath that it’s dead. I have testified in front of the House when I wasn’t under oath where I said it was dead. I have answered questions after my hearing where I said that it was dead. I rescinded the order that set up the weaponization fund, which means that it does not exist ... I’m not sure how I can further say that the Anti-Weaponization Fund does not exist.”

“We also have said ... that if Congress would like to make it a law, that we would support that,” Blanche continued, changing tack. “The president feels very strongly, as do I, that there were people who were victims of a Department Of Justice that was absolutely weaponized, and he feels very strongly he would want to make them whole, as do I. But it will not be through the Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

Within Blanche’s answer is a strong desire to gift reparations to Trump’s aggrieved supporters and friends through whatever means accessible to them—an alarming answer given that it was one of the issues his confirmation apparently hinged on.

The Los Angeles Lakers may soon be sold for $12 billion—and the Trump administration might have something to do with it. 

ESPN reported Wednesday that Josh Kushner, the brother of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and ex-Disney CEO Bob Iger have reportedly reached a deal with business executive Mark Walter to buy the NBA team just a year after Walter purchased it for $10 billion. 

The timing is suspicious, as Walter is facing a loan fraud investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, over $16 billion in private credit deals concerning insurance companies he owns. Walter also happened to visit the White House in June to be honored with the Los Angeles Dodgers, which he owns, for winning the World Series. 

Did Trump cut a deal and get his son-in-law’s brother involved to help Walter out with some impending financial trouble? Josh Kushner is said to politically disagree with his brother and Trump. But he still would have been the main investor in the abandoned plan by FIFA President Gianni Infantino, who has cozied up to Trump, to sell stakes in the World Cup. Kushner would have to sell his minority stake in the Miami Heat to complete the Lakers deal.

Walter faces a serious threat to his business empire with the federal probes, according to The Wall Street Journal. Trump’s second term has been marked by visible corruption involving business executives and wealthy foreign leaders close to the president, and that appears to be extending to professional sports.  

After a tense month in which she drew the ire of President Trump, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro has called a special grand jury to Washington, D.C.

A special grand jury is a judicial body made up of 23 American citizens that exists to conduct large, sometimes yearlong investigations usually centered on government corruption or organized crime. They can also issue a report regarding the potential “preponderance of evidence” upon the conclusion of their investigation, something a regular jury can’t do. Anyone named in their investigation may later testify in front of them.

Pirro’s move is unprecedented, as a federal special grand jury has never been called in a jurisdiction as small as D.C. And while she has yet to speak on what the body will actually focus on, one doesn’t need to look far to identify why she might be taking aggressive measures like this right now.

Pirro couldn’t get the “DC Sandwich Guy” after charging him with assault for throwing a sandwich at a federal agent during Trump’s takeover. She failed to indict the six congressional Democrats—led by Senator Mark Kelly—who made a video urging federal law enforcement and members of the military not to obey illegal orders in February. And most recently she’s failed to get any kind of prosecutorial motion on the Reflecting Pool drama, getting into screaming matches with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum of all people while Trump publicly rebukes her. The former Fox News host has had her back against the wall for some time now. While this move still might not put any actual bite into her bark, it might be just loud enough for Trump not to fire her.