White House Dealing With Sudden Exodus as Staffers Flee

There appears to be a late summer exodus occurring at the White House, as a large chunk of Treasury Department employees have vacated the premises—along with press secretary Karoline Leavitt and another high-ranking aide. 

NOTUS reported Wednesday that seven of Trump’s 16 Senate-confirmed appointees have either been fired from or left the Treasury Department. Four of those seven left after specific disapproval of the Trump administration’s efforts to bend and/or break tax law—including attempts to use taxpayer data from the IRS to aid in deportations and to create the president’s $1.776 billion anti-weaponization slush fund.  

This comes as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has already had three different chiefs of staff.

“They’re asking them to do stuff that is well beyond the norm, and for some things that may or may not be legal,” Mark Mazur, a former high-ranking IRS employee who also served as acting assistant secretary for tax policy under former President Joe Biden, told NOTUS. “A lot of these people expect to have a career after this administration, and being disbarred would be a bad thing for them.”

Outside Treasury, an aide to Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Emily Underwood, is also leaving her post, according to Axios. She’ll be entering venture capital, and will be replaced by Caleb Orr, an adviser to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Leavitt will also be leaving her position as White House press secretary at the end of the month.

While high rates of turnover and sudden exits have always been a key feature of Trump’s administrations, the timing of these most recent departures should still raise alarm. Trump’s own appointees are leaving in the midst of a flailing, costly war on Iran, a general affordability crisis, horrid approval ratings for Trump, and an ominous slate of upcoming elections that threaten Republicans’ congressional majority. 

The Treasury Department has not officially commented on the departures. 

Following embattled Cory Mills’s major loss Tuesday in Florida’s Republican primary elections, President Trump took to Truth Social to publicly distance himself from the disgraced MAGA lawmaker—and endorse his opponent, Ryan Elijah.

“I told Congressman Cory Mills of Florida, a friend of mine, to get out of the Race, but he wouldn’t listen,” Trump wrote Wednesday. “He thought he could win, so who can blame him?”

“We now have a great candidate, Ryan Elijah, running in his place! Ryan stands for EVERYTHING MAGA, and is respected by ALL. He has my Complete and Total Endorsement!” Trump added.

Trump announced his endorsement for Mills in February, and remained quiet as the numerous allegations against the Florida lawmaker stacked up in the ensuing months. Mills has been accused of sexual misconduct, harassment, campaign finance violations, financial disclosure violations, accepting inappropriate gifts, and multiple ethics violations. He has faced a months-long ethics probe and is reportedly under investigation by the Department of Justice.

In 2024, Trump carried Mills’s district by 12 points. When the outcome of Tuesday’s primary race was called, Mills trailed his opponent by the same margin. No wonder the president is suddenly interested in switching sides—only after the ballots have already been cast.

The USS Abraham Lincoln wasn’t able to be resupplied because the U.S. Navy’s main resupply base in the Gulf of Oman was destroyed by Iranian strikes—a fact that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth chose not to make public, David Rhode, MS NOW’s senior national security reporter, said on Tuesday.

From late February until June, Iran launched extensive missile and drone strikes on Naval Support Activity Bahrain, causing devastating damage that was not acknowledged by the Pentagon.

The U.S. Navy was forced to evacuate most personnel, and move supply operations to a U.K. naval base on Diego Garcia, a tiny island in the Indian Ocean 2,200 miles from where two aircraft carrier groups have been operating in the Gulf of Oman.

Rhode also refuted Trump’s repeated claims that the Strait of Hormuz was open and under U.S. control. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Centre reported that a ship was attacked as recently as Tuesday, as it attempted to exit the strait. Rhode pointed to a separate incident in the Red Sea, where Iran-backed Houthis attacked a ship at the Bab el-Madeb Strait.

According to MS NOW, recent reports of horrific conditions aboard U.S. Navy ships showed that the U.S. Navy was clearly under “tremendous strain.” Family members of sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln have reported food shortages, and sanitation issues. During the Lincoln’s more than 200 days without a port call, there have been multiple instances where sailors have tried to jump overboard. And the problems experienced by U.S. Navy service members aren’t confined to just one ship.

Rhode criticized Trump’s repeated dismissal of family members’ concerns as an “unforced political error.”

President Trump’s endorsements keep losing.

Two of his picks in Florida’s Republican congressional primaries were defeated Tuesday night: Incumbent Representative Cory Mills, who is facing a multitude of scandals, fell short in the 7th district, and former Commerce Department adviser Catalina Lauf was unable to benefit from a late Trump endorsement in the crowded 19th district. On top of that, his choice for governor of Wyoming, Megan Degenfelder, lost by nearly 16 percentage points.

These losses make it 10 times in this election cycle that a Trump-backed candidate lost their Republican primary, the same amount that he lost in 2018, 2020, and 2024 combined. Trump’s worst year for endorsements was in 2022, and he’s one loss away from matching that.

Mills is facing a Department of Justice investigation over sexual misconduct, campaign finance violations, financial disclosure violations, accepting inappropriate gifts, and multiple ethics violations. Just days ago, Mills refused to deny reports that he dated a 19-year-old as a sitting member of Congress. He lost his race to former TV reporter Ryan Elijah by 13 points.

Trump waited until last week to endorse Lauf, who was running in a crowded and expensive primary against former Representatives Chris Collins and Madison Cawthorn, several former congressional candidates, a January 6 rioter, and many transplants to the state. In the end, one of the few local candidates, conservative radio host Jim Schwartzel, won the race to replace Representative Byron Donalds, who is running for Florida governor.

And Degenfelder, Wyoming’s superintendent of public instruction, lost handily to state Senator Eric Barlow in the deep red state by more than 20,000 votes, despite running a very conservative campaign. Barring some kind of crazy news, Barlow will likely be elected governor in November.

All of this suggests that Trump’s unpopularity is becoming too much even among Republicans. His approval rating has fallen to 33 percent, the lowest level of his presidency, according to a new Reuters poll. But Trump was still unrepentant Wednesday morning, bashing Mills before throwing his weight behind Elijah on Truth Social. It looks like he won’t change his ways before November.

The saga around Trump’s personal aide Natalie Harp grows stranger, as new reporting points to her deeper obsession with him—one that goes beyond just doing her job.

CNN reported that in 2023, Harp got into a massive argument with the drivers of Trump’s motorcade after they told her there wasn’t enough room in Trump’s SUV for her as he headed to a New York City courthouse for more legal issues—leading her to hop in the trunk of the SUV and ride in there.

The New York Times also unearthed some of Harp’s gushing letters to Trump.

“I also am sorry if I was an embarrassment walking the course in Scotland,” she wrote after being caught running alongside Trump’s golf cart. “I want things to always be right between us. I also know I’ve been distracted all week (forgetting to eat throughout the days, and even forgetting to sleep, and only catching a couple hours at a time) ... With all my heart, Natalie.”

The phrasing of this letter—and the fact that it exists at all—does not feel appropriate for any working relationship, much less one between the president and his closest personal assistant. Harp’s estranged older brother added even more context to her fascination with Trump, and letter-writing.

“I’d say since she was, like, 16, she’s had an obsession with, um, gosh, how do I explain this? Um, she’s written letters to other presidents, let me put it that way,” he said on CNN Tuesday night. “It’s actually kind of sad. That’s obsession. It’s like an unhealthy obsession with someone if you’re gonna jump into the trunk of their car.”

Harp’s relationship with the president has been scrutinized in the past, but it’s currently come under the national spotlight thanks to a comment from Senator Jon Ossoff that has sent the MAGA base into a rage.

“[Trump] doesn’t want to do the job,” he said at an Atlanta rally earlier this month. “He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.”

Ossoff was alluding to how Harp made it onto Trump’s secret flight out of Turkey last month, while journalists and Cabinet members like Secretary of State Marco Rubio remained aboard the Air Force One at risk of an Iranian strike.

Even as the entire MAGA sphere attempts to shrug this reporting off as targeted liberal fake news, It’s clear that this story isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.