FEMA employees were abruptly placed on administrative leave Tuesday—just 24 hours after they signed an explosive open letter warning Donald Trump that the agency is being dragged back to its pre-Katrina dark ages.
The letter, signed by 191 current and former FEMA staffers, was sent to Congress and top officials on Monday. Its message was blunt—the people now running FEMA are inexperienced, politically driven, and dismantling the very programs that keep Americans safe when disaster strikes.
The writers warned that, left unchecked, the agency could stumble into catastrophe. By Tuesday evening, FEMA’s administrator’s office had fired back with suspension letters.
The employees were told they would remain in “non-duty status” but keep their pay and benefits, effectively being benched for speaking out.
The letter also cited decisions made by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi “ICE Barbie” Noem as a reason the agency could fail to manage disaster responses.
FEMA confirmed that multiple employees were placed on immediate leave, though the exact number remains unclear. Of the nearly 200 signatories, only about 36 revealed their names publicly, The Washington Post and CNN reported.
“It is not surprising that some of the same bureaucrats who presided over decades of inefficiency are now objecting to reform. Change is always hard. It is especially for those invested in the status quo, who have forgotten that their duty is to the American people not entrenched bureaucracy,” a FEMA spokesperson told the Daily Beast.
“Under the Biden Administration, the American people were abandoned as disasters ravaged North Carolina, and needed aid was denied based on party affiliation in Florida. Our obligation is to survivors, not to protecting broken systems. Under the leadership of Secretary Noem, FEMA will return to its mission of assisting Americans at their most vulnerable.”
Former President George W. Bush was heavily criticized for his administration’s slow response to Hurricane Katrina particularly in New Orleans, where much of the city was left underwater. In its aftermath, Congress passed the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006 (PKEMRA), which added safeguards to prevent another botched response.
The letter from FEMA employees warns that the Trump administration is rolling back those protections and calls on Congress to intervene. Their demands include shielding FEMA from “further interference” from the DHS, stopping “illegal impoundments of appropriated funding,” and protecting FEMA workers from “politically motivated firings.”
Noem, whose department oversees FEMA, was already under fire in July over the response to flooding in Texas that left about 135 people dead. Critics blamed a new rule she insisted upon, which required her personal sign-off on any contract or grant over $100,000, which delayed the deployment of an Urban Search and Rescue team by at least three days.
At least two FEMA staffers placed on leave had been part of that Texas flood response, The Washington Post reported.
Jeremy Edwards, a former FEMA press secretary who signed the “FEMA Katrina Declaration,” said the number of signatories “signifies the severity of the problem.”
“They are that scared of us being so inadequately unprepared. It speaks a lot to the situation right now,” Edwards told The Post.
The Trump administration also placed about 140 Environmental Protection Agency employees on leave in July after they signed a letter protesting the agency’s management and the treatment of federal workers.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
Donald Trump and his administration suffered two major legal setbacks as federal judges in California and Rhode Island ruled against key policies pursued by the White House.
In California, U.S. District Court Judge Jennifer Thurston ordered the release of Salam Maklad, a Syrian national from the Druze religious minority, who had been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers earlier this summer.
In Rhode Island, Senior District Judge William Smith blocked the administration from imposing new restrictions on domestic violence funding programs connected to the president’s recent executive order targeting what he described as “gender ideology.” Details of both rulings were shared by Politico’s legal affairs reporter, Kyle Cheney, on X.
With Republicans in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, the judiciary has become a critical check on Trump’s agenda. Courts have previously halted efforts to penalize law firms representing cases against Trump, blocked attempts to revoke protections for Haitian migrants and struck down sanctions aimed at employees of the International Criminal Court. The California case centered on Maklad, who entered the United States in 2002 without valid documentation and applied for asylum. Court records show she later married a man who was granted asylum, which her legal team argued made her eligible for legal immigration status. ICE recently detained her after she attended what she believed was a routine “check-in” meeting and subsequently placed her in expedited removal proceedings and threatened her with deportation. Thurston emphasized Maklad’s clean record and lack of flight risk, writing that “the balance of the equities and public interest weigh in favor of Ms. Maklad.”
The judge ordered her release and barred authorities from rearresting her without “compliance with constitutional protections, which include, at a minimum, pre-deprivation notice — describing the change of circumstances necessitating her arrest — and detention, and a timely bond hearing.” Thurston further ruled that “Respondents are PERMANENTLY ENJOINED AND RESTRAINED from rearresting or re-detaining Ms. Maklad absent compliance with constitutional protections. … At any such hearing, the Government SHALL bear the burden of establishing, by clear and convincing evidence, that Ms. Maklad poses a danger to the community or a risk of flight, and Ms. Maklad SHALL be allowed to have her counsel present.”
On the same day, Judge Smith ruled against the administration in a case tied to President Trump’s Executive Order 14168, titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The directive, issued earlier this year, declared that sex is an “immutable biological classification as male or female” and instructed federal agencies to “prioritize investigations and litigation to enforce the rights and freedoms” tied to this definition.
Following the order, the Office on Violence Against Women revised its grant policy in May 2025 to prohibit funding for “inculcating or promoting gender ideology.” A coalition of 17 nonprofit groups challenged the restrictions, arguing they undermined their work with survivors of domestic violence. Judge Smith sided with the organizations, ruling that the new requirements “could result in the disruption” of critical services for victims of sexual and domestic violence. Together, the rulings marked another day of judicial pushback against the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape immigration enforcement and federal gender policy.
President Donald Trump on Monday said he would target former President Joe Biden’s circle, calling them “evil people.”
“There were some brilliant people,” Trump said, referring to Biden’s allies in his White House. “But they’re evil people, and they’re going to be brought down. They have to be brought down ’cause they really hurt our country.”
Trump’s threat to have his political opponent’s allies “brought down” marks his latest move to potentially target political adversaries in a pattern that has alarmed critics who paint the president as pursuing retribution and say he is weaponizing the Justice Department — a claim the president has made about the Biden administration.
Biden’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump made the comments during lengthy remarks in the Oval Office, where the president and his allies made a series of claims about the impact of his anti-crime efforts in D.C. and top officials took turns heaping praise on him. While signing executive orders that aim to do away with cash bail, Trump repeatedly focused on the murder rate in the city, saying it had not seen a single person killed in 11 days — a change that he has been brandishing in recent days as he touts his administration’s efforts to address D.C. crime. That push has included federalizing the D.C. police force, deploying the National Guard and stepping up the federal law enforcement presence in the city.
Trump claimed that it has been “many years” since D.C. went a week without a murder. Publicly available crime data from the Metropolitan Police Department, however, indicate that D.C. went 16 days without a murder earlier this year, from Feb. 25 to March 12.
Trump argued that the city’s restaurants are experiencing a “boomtown,” a comment that is uncertain, as restaurant employees in a D.C. neighborhood with a large immigrant community told NBC News last week that business was declining due to Trump’s policies. His deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, who attended the signing with Vice President JD Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, claimed that people in D.C. had resumed wearing jewelry and carrying purses because of Trump’s anti-crime push.
“They’re wearing jewelry again. They’re carrying purses again,” Miller said. “People had changed their whole lives in this city for fear of being murdered, mugged and carjacked. It is a literal statement that President Trump has freed 700,000 people in this city who were living under the rule of criminals and thugs.”
At the start of the operation, though, crime in D.C. was down 26% compared to last year. Many city residents, too, have slammed the deployments and said it is scaring Washingtonians.
The president has frequently claimed that Democrats weaponized the Justice Department and other law enforcement agencies against him, pointing to his criminal indictments related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents, as well as his conviction related to falsifying business records, which were dropped when he was elected to a second term. Trump repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in the cases against him.
Democrats have gone after Trump’s comments, arguing that the Trump administration’s several investigations into his political foes constitute the exact weaponization that he claimed they pursued against him.
The Justice Department is investigating Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and New York Attorney General Letitia James on allegations of mortgage fraud.
James led a civil fraud case against Trump, and Schiff served as the lead House manager in Trump’s first impeachment trial. They denied any wrongdoing.
NBC News has also previously reported that the Justice Department is in the initial stages of an investigation into James’ handling of her civil fraud case against Trump, which her attorney likened to a “political retribution campaign.”
Trump also threatened Friday to fire a Federal Reserve governor, Lisa Cook, if she did not resign after facing separate accusations of mortgage fraud. Cook said she won’t step down.
On Monday night, Trump said he was removing Cook from her post. Trump has been highly critical of the Federal Reserve for not adjusting interest rates as he would like.
And late last week, the FBI searched the home of former national security adviser John Bolton. A source familiar with the matter told NBC News at the time that the search was part of a “national security investigation in search of classified records.” Bolton did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment Friday.
Also on Monday, Trump left the door open to investigating former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a staunch critic of Trump who was among the Republicans who ran against him for president. Trump was referring to a 12-year-old scandal called “Bridgegate.“
“If they want to look at it, they can,” Trump said, responding to a question about whether the White House planned to investigate Christie. “You can ask Pam. I think we have other things to do, but I always thought he got away with murder.”
On Sunday, after Christie criticized him on ABC News’ “This Week,” Trump wrote on his social media site Truth Social, “For the sake of JUSTICE, perhaps we should start looking at that very serious situation again?”
Meanwhile, Trump’s allies in Congress have pushed to hear testimony from Biden’s circle about his mental acuity while in office, which Trump and Republicans claim was in decline but was covered up by the former president’s team. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., has sought testimony from Biden’s former White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor and former White House aides, including his domestic policy adviser, Neera Tanden and his deputy chief of staff, Annie Tomasini.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/-going-brought-trump-vows-go-bidens-advisers-rcna227019
A network of family planning clinics in Maine will remain without Medicaid funding as it challenges Trump administration restrictions on abortion providers, a federal judge ruled Monday.
The decision leaves Maine Family Planning unable to access reimbursements that support thousands of low-income patients during the course of its lawsuit.
Why It Matters
The cuts stem from President Donald Trump‘s flagship congressional reconciliation package, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which barred Medicaid dollars from going to Planned Parenthood.
But the law’s cuts weren’t limited to Planned Parenthood, which is the nation’s largest reproductive health care provider.
Smaller organizations, like Maine Family Planning, which operates 18 clinics in the state, were also swept up in the cuts. The group provides affordable reproductive health care, primary care and other services to people across Maine, which is one of the poorest and most rural states in the Northeast.
What To Know
Maine Family Planning argued that the Trump administration’s cuts unfairly targeted its operations even though Medicaid funds do not cover abortion care, which makes up only a fraction of its services.
“It’s unfair to cut off funding for the clinics solely because Congress wanted to defund Planned Parenthood,” an attorney for the provider told the court earlier this month.
But U.S. District Judge Lance Walker, who was appointed by Trump in 2018, ruled that Medicaid payments will not resume while the case is ongoing.
His decision came despite a ruling last month by another federal judge requiring that Planned Parenthood clinics across the U.S. continue receiving Medicaid reimbursements while their legal fight with the Trump administration plays out.
That court battle is still underway.
Earlier this month, Emily Hall, a lawyer for the Department of Justice, defended the administration’s cuts in court, telling Walker that Congress has the authority to withhold funds from abortion providers, even when they provide other health care services.
“The rational basis is not simply to reduce the number of abortions, it’s to ensure the federal government is not paying out money to organizations that provide abortions,” Hall said.
Supporters of Maine Family Planning, meanwhile, emphasize that its clinics deliver essential care far beyond abortion. Services include contraception, cervical cancer screenings and primary care for roughly 8,000 low-income patients statewide. Losing Medicaid reimbursements, they argue, would devastate access to affordable health care.
The impact is “nothing short of catastrophic,” Meetra Mehdizadeh, an attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in court earlier this month.
The network previously warned that without Medicaid dollars, it could be forced to halt primary care services by the end of October.
While the Trump administration’s push centered on defunding Planned Parenthood, the bill avoided naming the organization directly. Instead, it barred reimbursements to providers primarily engaged in family planning services that received more than $800,000 from Medicaid in 2023.
Maine Family Planning argues the threshold was lowered specifically to ensure the cuts extended beyond Planned Parenthood, making it the only other organization so far to acknowledge its funding is at risk.
What People Are Saying
George Hill, the president and CEO of Maine Family Planning, said in a statement to Newsweek: “This ruling is a devastating setback for Mainers who depend on us for basic primary care. The loss of Medicaid funds—which nearly half our patients rely on—threatens our ability to provide life-saving services to communities across the state. Mainers’ health should never be jeopardized by political decisions, and we will continue to fight for them.”
Nancy Northup, president and CEO at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement provided to Newsweek: “This ruling means that thousands of Mainers across the state may lose access to their trusted health provider for essential health care services, including cancer screenings, birth control, and primary care at Maine Family Planning.
She added, “The Trump Administration and Congress would rather topple a statewide health safety network than let low-income patients receive a cancer screening at a clinic that also offers abortions. This ruling takes a sledgehammer to an already overstretched health care network, and Mainers statewide will feel the effects of defunding Maine Family Planning, regardless of their insurance status.”
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-judge-medicaid-abortion-providers-maine-2118945
California “bluffed” its way into flipping the script on Republicans and Donald Trump, according to a new report.
Politico on Saturday published a story called, How California bluffed its way into a redistricting war with Trump, in which the outlet quotes “nearly 50 people involved with the effort” who “shared details with POLITICO about the tightly guarded process.”
California is currently in the process of potentially altering its district maps in response to Texas’ redistricting. But it started off as a “bluff,” according to reporters.
“When word got out that Texas might undertake an extraordinary mid-decade redistricting at Donald Trump’s behest, a handful of top California Democratic operatives floated an idea to Rep. Zoe Lofgren: Could California respond in kind?” according to the weekend report. “Lofgren, the chair of California’s 43-member Democratic delegation, consulted in June with a trusted data expert who dismissed it as absurd — a foolhardy end-run around the state’s popular redistricting panel with no guarantee of yielding enough blue seats to fully offset Texas. Deterred by those misgivings, California Democrats instead spent weeks putting up a front, dangling the threat of a countermove without making any real plans to do so.”
The piece quotes Lofgren as saying, “It seemed to me worth a bluff… If the Texans and Trump thought they’d go through all of this and they’d end up not gaining anything, maybe they would stop.”
She then added, “But they didn’t stop… They just doubled down.”
However, the bluff soon met reality.
“So did California Democrats, especially Gov. Gavin Newsom. In a matter of weeks, they bluffed themselves into the marquee political contest of Trump’s second term, a high-voltage fight to shape the outcome of the 2026 midterms and the remaining years of his presidency,” according to the outlet.
Summing up, the reporters wrote, “In the end, 87 of 90 Democrats voted to put the maps on the ballot — a display of consensus that [Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas] said was made possible by the California-under-siege mentality that had been building up ever since Trump re-took the White House.”
“It’s Whac-a-mole. We’ve been trying to play defense,” Rivas reportedly added. “But we finally just threw up our hands and said, ‘We’ve got to flip the script.’”
Residents of Washington, D.C., are continuing to push back against the narratives about their city as military troops and federal officers swarm the streets as part of the Trump administration’s declared 30-day crime emergency.
“It’s offensive, it’s dangerous, and it’s discriminatory to look at the part of the city, that is majority Black and has been so historically, and define them as slums and crime ridden when we’re communities and every neighborhood is different,” said Gregory Jackson, a longtime public safety advocate who lives in Ward 8.
Despite local police data showing a 30-year low crime rate throughout D.C., Trump announced a federal crackdown in the city on Aug. 11, describing the state of crime in the nation’s capital as a “situation of complete and total lawlessness.” He told reporters that day, “We’re getting rid of the slums.”
When asked on Tuesday to clarify whether Trump is referring to homeless encampments or residential buildings as “slums,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president was referring to “the most dangerous communities, neighborhoods and streets in this city where, unfortunately, violence has ravaged these communities and taken the lives of…far too many law-abiding D.C. residents.”
On Friday, President Donald Trump told reporters that D.C. was a “hellhole” before his federal crackdown, declaring “now it’s safe.” The president said of out-of-town visitors: “They’re not going to go home in a body bag. They’re not going home in a coffin.”
Jackson, who served as deputy director of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention under President Joe Biden, said painting a broad brush of the city is “extremely harmful” to Black communities in D.C.
“It’s disrespectful to the families that are there, to the working professionals. On my street, there are young families, there are folks in the military, I served in the White House–we are made up of very diverse family folks and community-centric folks,” he told theGrio.
Courtney Snowden, a sixth-generation Washingtonian and former D.C. deputy mayor, said D.C. neighborhoods are comprised of “amazing” residents who are “committed to the success of the city.”
“[They’re] doing what people do in neighborhoods all across the country. They get up and they go to work every day, they contribute and pay their taxes, and they’re raising families,” Snowden told theGrio. “So to have the president of the United States and his cabinet members talking about American citizens and District residents and the communities in which they live in that way is appalling.”
On Wednesday, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s anti-DEI agenda, said the surge of law enforcement and the National Guard is for the “safety” of the city’s majority Black residents.
Critics who spoke to theGrio said they don’t believe the Trump administration’s stated concerns about crime, and caring about the safety of its residents are “genuine.”
Jamal Holtz, president of the D.C. Young Democrats, noted D.C. “isn’t even among the top 10 most dangerous in the nation.” In fact, three of the top ten cities are in Ohio, which sent additional National Guard troops to D.C. in a show of political support for Trump’s D.C. crackdown.
“This isn’t about a need for public safety. Autocrats have used false pretenses and narratives to take over local matters and take over local law enforcement as a first step towards a broader power grab,” Holtz told theGrio.
“If he’s willing to overturn democracy in D.C. over the false narrative of a crime emergency here in the District of Columbia, I think it should scare all Americans that this will likely happen to communities across the nation,” said Markus Batchelor, political director at People For the American Way and D.C. native.
Critics of the Trump White House say that rather than working with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and local officials to continue the progress already made in making D.C. streets safer, they’ve turned to a tough-on-crime approach to public safety that has proven ineffective without other community intervention programs and investments.
Several mayors of inner cities have touted Biden-era investments and support in community violence intervention strategies as part of the success of reducing crime. However, the Trump administration slashed those funds and programs. The Department of Homeland Security also slashed a $20 million security grant for D.C. earlier this month. Additionally, a bill that would restore a $1 billion deficit in D.C.’s budget, which includes public safety funding, remains stalled in the Republican-controlled Congress.
“Does Washington, D.C., like every other major city in America, have this problem with crime? Absolutely. Are some of those issues exacerbated by, quite frankly, politicians like Trump, who are disinvesting in the inner city, public education, housing, and good-paying jobs? Yes,” said Batchelor.
Jackson, the former White House official, said of Trump’s D.C. crackdown, “A lot of this is a reaction rather than looking at the real strategy that we know can save lives and prevent violence, and really doubling down and supporting a city that does need support.” He said the city “does have work to do,” emphasized it “does not need military forces patrolling communities that don’t even have a grocery store.”
On Friday, Trump announced he will ask Congress for $2 billion to “rebuild” the District of Columbia, including updating roads and light poles. “This place will be beautified within a period of months,” said Trump, who did not indicate whether any of that funding would cover public safety.
Leaders say they’re also concerned about the physical and psychological impact of having troops, federal officers, and military tanks all across city streets.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered that the National Guard to be armed, escalating their presence in D.C.
“It reinforces a stereotype that Black and brown folks are seen as a threat first and a human second,” said Jackson, who recalled being treated like a suspect when he was shot by a stray bullet in 2013.
“Now you could just be walking home from school and be interrogated. Some folks are sitting on their porch and have officers running up on them,” he told theGrio. “It really just reinforces that Black folks in this country, especially in the eyes of the Trump administration, are seen more as a threat and a suspect than Americans or neighbors.”
Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) and other Republican lawmakers have backed the Dignity Act, a bipartisan bill aimed at overhauling the immigration system. The legislation aims to provide legal status for undocumented immigrants, bolster border security, and reform visa policies. If passed, the act would lead to significant changes to current immigration laws, reflecting a push for comprehensive reform.
Salazar said, “It takes a lot of courage to step up and say that you might be part of the solution.” She added, “They did break the law. They are illegals or undocumented.”
Salazar stated, “But they have been in the country for more than five years, contributing to the economy. Those people, someone gave them a job, and they are needed because we need hands in order to continue being the number one economy in the world.”
The Dignity Act grants legal status to undocumented immigrants, reforms asylum screening for better legal access, sets up Latin American processing centers to reduce risky migration, creates STEM PhD work visas, and boosts ICE accountability.
The Dignity Act has received backing from several Republican lawmakers. It also gained support from Democrats like Veronica Escobar (D-TX) and Adriano Espaillat (D-NY).Escobar (D-TX) said, “I have seen firsthand the devastating consequences of our broken immigration system, and as a member of Congress, I take seriously my obligation to propose a solution. Realistic, common-sense compromise is achievable, and is especially important given the urgency of this moment. I consider the Dignity Act of 2025 a critical first step to overhauling this broken system.”
Immigration attorney Rosanna Berardi questioned the bill’s viability, citing conflicts with enforcement policies under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Critics argued it could undermine efforts to curb unauthorized migration.
Immigration attorney Rosanna Berardi said, “Without congressional action to roll back many of the core immigration elements of H.R. 1—especially the funding and restrictions around detention, deportations, and parole—there’s really no practical space for the Dignity Act’s approach. However, I do think this framework could help create bipartisan conversations focused on creating easier work-visa access and temporary status for migrant workers in industries like agriculture, hospitality, health care and manufacturing.”
Salazar emphasized the need for a comprehensive strategy to meet labor demands and maintain economic stability. If enacted, the legislation would likely spark a reevaluation of national immigration policies.
A former member of Congress unloaded on CNN on Tuesday evening after the president referred to himself as a “war hero” during a radio interview.
During an interview with conservative radio host Mark Levin, President Donald Trump described Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “war hero” for his actions in Gaza. Trump added that he should also be known as a war hero because he approved of the bombing mission that destroyed Iran’s nuclear facility.
“Nobody cares, but I am too,” Trump said, referring to himself as a hero. “I sent those planes.”
Adam Kinzinger, a former Air National Guard officer, discussed Trump’s comments on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront.”
“This is nuts!” Kinzinger, who represented Illinois in Congress as a Republican for more than a decade, shouted. “This is nuts, and his people are going to find a way to justify this.”
“Listen, when they were putting out something honoring the Army’s 250th anniversary, they put out a picture of Donald Trump in his military academy uniform,” he continued. “Which has nothing to do with the military except that they drill you.”
“This is nuts. He’s not a war hero,” Kinzinger said. “You can like what he’s done. That’s fine. I hope he gets a resolution in Ukraine, but to put himself on the same level as people who have actually gone out and served this country, not claimed bone spurs, is an offense to anybody who’s served.”
Eric Lendrum, a speechwriter for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has expressed racist, antisemitic, and anti-LGBTQ+ views on social media and in podcast appearances as recently as this year. The DHS, led by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, has defended Lendrum by pointing out his free speech rights.
Lendrum is currently listed as a DHS speechwriter. He previously worked as a press assistant for the Department of the Interior during the first Trump administration.
From December 2017 to March 2025 — the same month he reported started working at DHS — Lendrum also wrote for conservative website American Greatness, and hosted his The Right Take podcast from at least January 2021 to May 2023, according to NOTUS, which first reported on his hateful digital footprint.
In one December 2021 American Greatness post, he defended the MAGA rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol building on January 6 as “peaceful protesters,” and compared what he described as the “dehumanization” of American conservatives to that of enslaved Africans in the U.S. and Jews in Nazi Germany.
On his podcast, Lendrum described seeing Democratic members of Congress “crouching under their chairs” during the January 6 insurrection as “gratifying.” In an October 2022 episode, he endorsed the white supremacist “great replacement theory” as “real.” The racist and anti-Semitic white supremacist theory claims that rich Jews want to “replace” white Americans and Westerners with non-white immigrants and people of color (especially Black people and Muslims) to fundamentally change the nation’s racial makeup and political culture.
As NOTUS notes, on an April 2023 episode, Lendrum vowed to “always properly deadname tr**ny freaks” and to continue using the anti-trans slur.
“I will keep calling them tr**nies because I know it’s derogatory, and I know they freakin’ hate it. That’s why I deadname them. That’s why I use their original pronouns,” he said. “You control the language. Don’t give these freaks an inch on the language.”
Even more disturbingly, he argued that “We need to eradicate transgenderism. Wipe it off the face of the Earth. Destroy it. Get rid of it.” Lendrum did clarify that he was “not saying get rid of the people. I’m saying eliminate the ideology. Cure these people.” However, as NOTUS notes, he did not include a similar disclaimer in a November 2024 X post calling for trans eradication.
“The evil ideology of transgenderism must be ERADICATED from the face of the earth, once and for all. Nothing of it must remain,” he wrote. “Real justice must be done.”
Much of Lendrum’s anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric cited in the NOTUS report comes from his X account, @realEricLendrum, where he also described asylum seekers as “illegal scum” in a September 2023 post.
According to the outlet, his April 2023 post equated trans people to “child molesters.” That same month, he responded to trans activists protesting against Florida’s restrictions on teaching about sexuality and gender identity in schools, writing that “This must be stopped, by any means necessary.”
In a February 2024 post seemingly responding to the arrest of a 19-year-old for defacing a rainbow-colored intersection dedicated to the victims and survivors of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, he called on “more people” to “go out and actively vandalize that hideous display, in a further show of solidarity and a middle finger to the gay agenda.”
In August 2024, he posted that being LGBTQ+ “literally is a choice.”
“There is no ‘gay gene,’” he wrote. “And if being ‘trans’ isn’t a choice, then why do people have to undergo certain treatments in order to ‘become trans’?” Almost all major American medical and psychological associations consider sexual orientation and gender identity to be determined by a combination of inborn genetics and external social factors that are primarily outside of a person’s choosing.
After Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde pleaded with President Donald Trump to have “mercy” on LGBTQ+ people and immigrants at a prayer service ahead of his second inauguration in January, Lendrum attacked Budde on X.
“Lock this freak up,” he wrote, adding that children who identify as LGBTQ+ “are being sexually and psychologically abused by their parents.” His rhetoric echoes that of numerous right-wing politicians and influencers who think that queer people and allies are “grooming” and “sexualizing” children simply by existing and acknowledging the existence of other queer individuals.
According to NOTUS, a description of Lendrum’s role as speechwriter on the DHS Office of Public Affairs’ website specifies that his duties include preparing “speeches, talking points, editorials, Congressional testimony, video scripts, web content and other written content” for DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. As the outlet notes, the agency has drawn criticism in recent weeks for a social media post aimed at recruiting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents that appeared to reference a notorious 1978 White Nationalist book.
NOTUS and other outlets reported that DHS has declined to answer questions about Lendrum’s hateful comments or its vetting process, responding only with a link to the text of the First Amendment, which says (in part): “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.”
