Trump Administration

CNN reports: White House senior adviser Stephen Miller wants to make sure that outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is only the first of a string of senior officials headed out the door, as he is given more authority over immigration policy. Trump administration officials say that Miller, who played key a role in Nielsen’s ouster, wants the President to …

Bloomberg Law reports: A Labor Department official who worked for a steel company in a lawsuit against a worker union after joining the Trump administration has stepped down from his post in the face of ethics questions. Associate Deputy Labor Secretary Michael Avakian resigned effective April 5, a Labor Department official told Bloomberg Law. The move comes less than one …

Bustle reports: The 2016 Democratic nominee for president has some thoughts on the Homeland Security secretary’s departure: that it won’t probably change all that much. Responding to Kirstjen Nielsen’s departure, Hillary Clinton rebuked the Trump administration’s immigration policy, saying the “administration’s dehumanization and cruelty toward migrants” won’t stop with the leadership shake-up. Nielsen was the public face of the Trump …

“Kirstjen Nielsen I think is a great example of what happens when you go to work for Donald Trump. He is the great reputation killer. Here is this woman who was a reasonably admired bureaucrat. For the rest of her life people will look at her and think, ‘Oh, that’s the woman who put children in cages. That’s the woman …

Axios reports: Don McGahn, who has kept his head down since leaving as White House counsel, shared some off-the-record thoughts on Thursday in a lunch with about 40 senior Republican Senate aides. Details: “I spent the last couple of years getting yelled at,” he said, per two sources at the lunch, held in the Capitol’s Strom Thurmond room. “And you …

CBS News reports: Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is expected to offer her resignation at a meeting at the White House on Sunday, U.S. officials familiar with the matter say. Nielsen was set to meet with President Trump at 5 p.m., the officials said. Nielsen’s expected departure is a part of a massive DHS overhaul engineered and directed …

The Hill reports: Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Sunday that Democrats will “never” see President Trump’s tax returns. “Nor should they. That’s an issue that was already litigated during the election. Voters knew the president could have given his tax returns. They knew that he didn’t and they elected him anyway,” Mulvaney said during an appearance …

NBC News reports: Attorney General William Barr ordered an investigation into the Department of Justice’s treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender staff following a complaint from DOJ Pride, its LGBTQ employee resource group. In an April 4 letter to DOJ Pride released Friday, Barr said he was “troubled” by the group’s concerns, which were raised in a March 27 …

The New York Times reports: The United States has revoked the visa of the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor because of her attempts to investigate allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan, including any that may have been committed by American forces. The visa revocation — confirmed on Friday by the office of the chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and the State …

CNN reports: FBI Director Christopher Wray said Thursday that white supremacy presents a “persistent” and “pervasive” threat to the United States, breaking from President Donald Trump, who has sidestepped questions of whether white nationalists present a growing problem. “The danger. I think, of white supremacists, violent extremism or another kind of extremism is of course significant,” Wray said at a …

Axios reports: Vice President Mike Pence unleashed some of the most stinging criticisms of NATO allies Germany and Turkey yet from the Trump administration, contending that both countries’ recent actions threaten to undermine the alliance. Some NATO allies see President Trump as a threat to the alliance, with Trump himself having privately mused about withdrawing the U.S. from NATO on …

The Washington Post reports: White House spokesman Hogan Gidley twice referred to Puerto Rico as “that country” during a television appearance Tuesday in which he defended a series of tweets by President Trump lashing out at leaders of the U.S. territory. “With all they’ve done in that country, they’ve had a systematic mismanagement of the goods and services we’ve sent …

The Daily Beast reports: The Department of Homeland Security has disbanded a group of intelligence analysts who focused on domestic terrorism, The Daily Beast has learned. Numerous current and former DHS officials say they find the development concerning, as the threat of homegrown terrorism—including white supremacist terrorism—is growing. In the wake of this move, officials said the number of analytic …

Via press release: This morning the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed a request in the federal district court for the District of Columbia for an order that would authorize the public release of grand jury material that is “cited, quoted, or referenced” in the report submitted to Attorney General William Barr by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. On …

The Washington Post reports: A White House whistleblower told lawmakers that more than two dozen denials for security clearances have been overturned during the Trump administration, calling Congress her “last hope” for addressing what she considers improper conduct that has left the nation’s secrets exposed. Tricia Newbold, a longtime White House security adviser, told the House Oversight and Reform Committee …

The Daily Beast reports: Mike Pompeo, the U.S. secretary of state, and the State Department have declined to directly condemn a new law in Brunei stipulating the stoning to death of LGBT people. In follow-up questions, The Daily Beast then asked if Pompeo and the State Department specifically objected to the violently anti-LGBT law, set to take effect on April …

From the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal blog: The founder of an organization of community care clinics that cater to women praises the Trump administration for deciding to give her group $5.1 million over three years for use in California, a grant that once might have gone to Planned Parenthood. “With this grant, the administration has opened up a new avenue …

The right wing CNS News reports: The federal government spent $1,822,712,000,000 in the first five months of fiscal 2019, the most it has spent in the first five months of any fiscal year since 2009, which was the fiscal year that outgoing President George W. Bush signed a $700-billion law to bailout the banking industry and incoming President Barack Obama …

The Washington Post reports: A federal judge in Washington ruled late Thursday that the Trump administration’s push to make health insurance plans available outside the Affordable Care Act that avoid the requirements of the health care law was illegal, calling the efforts “clearly an end-run around the ACA.” The 43-page ruling, submitted by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates of …

Dominic Holden reports at Buzzfeed News: The Justice Department has grown increasingly hostile toward its own LGBT workers, causing top talent to quit as they experience discrimination and “declining morale,” according to a group of LGBT employees who confronted Attorney General Bill Barr in a letter this week. Other workers cited in the letter said the FBI academy discriminates against …