Federal employees at the Department of the Interior are reportedly raising alarms over a weekly video series titled “Inside Interior,” which they describe as “propaganda” — a slick, over‑the‑top portrayal of President Donald Trump and agency leadership, complete with staged scenes and breathless narration.
The Daily Beast reported Wednesday that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, once tagged “Diva Doug” for requesting political appointees to bake chocolate chip cookies and summoning a U.S. Park Police helicopter for his own personal use, now finds himself at the center of growing backlash within his own department.
Staffers deride the Environment and Natural Resources Agency as “The Department of Propaganda,” a moniker born from their mounting frustration with weekly “Inside Interior” videos, widely criticized for their slick, “Dear Leader”-style presentation and unabashed praise of Trump and Burgum to a lesser extent.
The latest installment, according to the report, touts that “Interior made major moves to strengthen America’s energy future, protect taxpayer interests, and keep our nation’s capital city safe.”
But the true inflection point came with a July 4 special that left many shaken. The clip opens with Trump dancing to the Village People’s YMCA, then cuts to him exiting Air Force One, greeted by cheering construction workers, before returning to more footage of Trump, much to the chagrin of those compelled to watch.
The report further noted that the narration heralds the day with a patriotic fervor likened to authoritarian regimes: “Happy Birthday America!” “Today we celebrate 249 years of American liberty, freedom and strength and we’re doing it under the fearless leadership of President Donald J. Trump, who reminds us every day what true patriotism looks like as he works tirelessly to make America great again.”
Critics among the staff have dubbed the presentation “North Korea‑worthy,” according to the report.
Meanwhile, many already felt demoralized by deep cuts tied to tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative and a policy shift prioritizing fossil fuel development over conservation.
A National Park Service employee told The Beast: “I have never seen a more blatant and deplorable display of propaganda on behalf of the Trump administration.”
Adding insult to injury, they note, “They even called for the USA to celebrate the 4th ‘the MAGA way!’
MAGA lawmaker Mike Collins lobbed a political grenade into efforts from Team Trump to limit his exposure to fallout from the Epstein files.
Georgia Rep. Collins made a bombshell admission, that he believes Donald Trump’s name will be in the files, at a county GOP meeting, the Washington Examiner reported.
A constituent asked the MAGA lawmaker whether he believed Trump was in the files related to Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender who died by suicide while in federal custody in New York City in August 2019 as he awaited trial on new sex trafficking charges.
“Yeah, I’m sure he’s in there,” Collins said, without providing evidence, according to an audio clip of the exchange uploaded to YouTube, titled, “HOT MIC: Republican caught saying Trump IS IN THE EPSTEIN FILES!”
The White House has repeatedly pushed back after reports emerged that Trump was told in May that he was in files related to Epstein. Trump and Epstein were once friendly, but the president said they fell out in 2004.
The Daily Beast contacted the White House and Collins for comment.
Trump “is in the Epstein files,” he wrote in a post on X as he and the president engaged in a bitter online feud. He alleged that “that is the real reason they have not been made public.” Musk signed the post off by writing: “Have a nice day, DJT!”
Musk added in a follow-up post: “Mark this post for the future. The truth will come out.”
At the time, Trump brushed off the claims in an interview with NBC News.
“That’s called ‘old news.’ That’s been old news. That has been talked about for years. Even Epstein’s lawyer said I had nothing to do with it. It’s old news,” the president said.
Officials in the first Trump administration determined that Epstein’s death was a suicide, but conspiracy theories that he was killed to shield high-profile individuals have proliferated nonetheless.
The Trump administration, in February, declassified and released files related to Epstein, but they were highly redacted and did not offer major revelations. The FBI said in a July memo that a “systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/hot-mic-catches-republican-saying-trump-is-in-the-epstein-files
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has declined to oppose a Texas gerrymandering effort that could maintain Republicans’ control of Congress. Still, he has insisted that a similar move by Democrats in California was an “illegal power grab.”
“Gavin Newsom’s latest attempt to disenfranchise millions of California voters was written in the dark of night by the DCCC—more than 2,700 miles away from Sacramento in Washington,” Johnson wrote in a Monday post on X. “This is a slap in the face to Californians who overwhelmingly support the California Citizens Redistricting Commission.”
“Gavin Newsom should spend less time trampling his state’s laws for a blatant power grab, and more time working to change the disastrous, far-left policies that are destroying California,” he continued.
Johnson accused Newsom of using redistricting to launch a presidential campaign.
“Democrats across the nation have played politics with redistricting for decades, and this is just the latest example,” he argued. “Republicans who are following state and federal laws will not be lectured by people who abused the system.”
“I have instructed the NRCC to use every measure and resource possible to fight the California Democrats’ illegal power grab,” he added. “I will continue to lead efforts to defend our House Republican incumbents and grow our majority so that we can continue to deliver on our commonsense, America First agenda.”
A spokesperson for Johnson told The Washington Post that the speaker had “no involvement” in Republicans’ “development of national redistricting strategy.”
https://www.rawstory.com/mike-johnson-california-redistricting
Wednesday evening on the MAGA cable channel OAN, as Defense Department spokeswoman Kingsley Wilson gushed to host Matt Gaetz about an alleged year-over-year increase in female military recruits, four images of women soldiers in combat fatigues were displayed on-screen.
All four images were AI fakes.
The images appear to have been generated using Elon Musk’s Grok, as small watermarks in the bottom corners seem to indicate.
“These numbers are fantastic,” Wilson told Gaetz as the AI images scrolled on-screen. “Under the previous administration, we had about 16,000 female recruits last year; now we’ve got upwards of 24,000,” she continued. “It is a testament to Secretary Hegseth and President Trump’s leadership.” (The Pentagon has not officially released detailed data on female recruitment, but it told Fox News those same figures.)
A DOD spokesperson said the images were not provided by them, so CNN asked OAN whether its staff generated the photos and if the network has any policy regarding AI-generated content. The far-right network did not respond.
OAN, short for One America News, launched in 2013, and during Trump’s first administration, it quickly morphed into a conspiracy-heavy, MAGA-boosting outlet.
The little-watched cable channel has become best-known for promoting Trump’s 2020 election lies, and it has settled multiple defamation lawsuits resulting from those on-air claims. Last year, the network settled a lawsuit from voting technology company Smartmatic alleging the channel boosted the election lies in order to “increase viewership and revenue.”
The network also settled a defamation suit from a Dominion Voting Systems executive, but it still faces a separate defamation lawsuit from the company.
OAN’s viewership and revenue have dwindled since DirecTV dropped it in 2022. However, earlier this year, it received a PR boost when Kari Lake, Trump’s pick to run a hollowed-out Voice of America, claimed that OAN will provide “newsfeed services” to VOA and other US-funded international broadcasters.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/15/media/oan-gaetz-ai-images-women-military-kingsley-wilson
On Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order titled “Enabling Competition in the Commercial Space Industry”, saying it was crucial to national security that the private rocket-ship industry increase launches “substantially” by 2030.
The order directs the U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to “eliminate outdated, redundant, or overly restrictive rules for launch and reentry vehicles.” Duffy called Trump’s executive order “visionary”.
According to the executive order, this would mean that commercial spaceship companies may be able to bypass the environmental reviews that are required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
Usually private space companies are required to get launch permits from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and are subject to review under the National Environmental Policy Act.
Space companies have complained that the FAA has taken too long to review launch permits, and environmental groups have criticized the agency for not using NEPA reviews to require more protections at launch sites.
Environmental reviews are in place because rocket launches and landings can be hugely disruptive to local towns and residents, along with the nature and wildlife in the area.
For example, toxic chemicals, noises and fumes created at launch can injure and kill endangered species, while exploded rocket parts returning to Earth can harm marine life.
…
The suit looked at SpaceX’s Starship rocket launch in Texas in April 2023, which had a concerning impact on the surrounding environment. The spaceship annihilated its launchpad, sending chunks of concrete flying 6 miles (10km) away. It also sparked a grassfire that burned nearly 4 acres of a state park.
SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite internet company, has received billions of dollars in federal contracts over its more than two-decade existence.
But SpaceX has most likely paid little to no federal income taxes since its founding in 2002 and has privately told investors that it may never have to pay any, according to internal company documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The rocket maker’s finances have long been secret because the company is privately held. But the documents reviewed by The Times show that SpaceX can seize on a legal tax benefit that allows it to use the more than $5 billion in losses it racked up by late 2021 to offset paying future taxable income. President Trump made a change in 2017, during his first term, that eliminated the tax benefit’s expiration date for all companies. For SpaceX, that means that nearly $3 billion of its losses can be indefinitely applied against future taxable income.
Tax experts consulted by The Times said that not having to pay tax on $5 billion in taxable income was substantial and notable for a company that has relied on contracts with the U.S. government to an unusual degree. SpaceX works closely with the Pentagon, NASA and other agencies, giving it a vital role in national security. In 2020, federal contracts generated almost 84 percent of the rocket maker’s revenue, according to the documents, a figure that had not been previously reported.
Larger tech companies — including some that have taken advantage of the tax benefit — often pay billions in federal income taxes. Microsoft, for one, said it expected to pay $14.1 billion in federal income taxes in its last fiscal year.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/technology/spacex-musk-government-contracts-taxes.html
A tiny agency that coordinates homelessness policy across the federal government has been effectively shut down, with all its staff put on administrative leave.
“The irony here is that the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness is designed for government efficiency,” said Jeff Olivet, the body’s most recent executive director under President Biden.
Congress created it in 1987, he said, “to make sure that the federal response to homelessness is coordinated, is efficient, and reduces duplication across federal agencies.”
There were fewer than 20 employees and a budget of just over $4 million. But President Trump included it in an executive order last month on whittling parts of the federal bureaucracy to the “maximum extent” allowed by law.
Legally, the homeless agency’s authorization continues until 2028. But DOGE, the cost-cutting team overseen by Elon Musk, told its employees Monday that they’d be put on leave the next day, according to an email from one employee that was shared with NPR.
Part of the agency’s mandate is to help states and localities manage homelessness, and Olivet said that under his leadership, it focused on the record-high number of people living outside.
“Even at a time where we saw overall homelessness going up in many places,” he said, “in those communities like Dallas and Phoenix and Chicago and others, we were able to see significant reductions, or at least not increases in unsheltered homelessness.”
The agency also coordinated an intensive push to bring down homelessness among veterans, making sure they were provided housing and healthcare. Over a decade, Olivet said, veterans homelessness dropped by more than half.
“The U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness has been vital in shaping effective policy to end homelessness,” Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said in a statement.
But the Trump administration plans to take a dramatically different approach to the problem.
For decades, since the first Bush administration, there was bipartisan support for getting people housing first and then offering whatever mental or addiction treatments they needed. But there’s been a growing conservative backlash to that as homelessness rates have steadily risen.
During Trump’s first term, his appointee tried to steer the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness more toward treatment options than permanent housing. But the executive director is the only political appointee at the small agency, and all others are career staff.
“He was really working against the current,” said Devon Kurtz of the Cicero Institute, a conservative think tank. “Ultimately, the inertia of it was such that it continued to be sort of a single mouthpiece for housing first.”
Kurtz supports a dramatic shift away from a housing first policy, and thinks that can happen more easily without the homeless agency.
It’s not clear if there will be a legal challenge to the move. Democratic members of Congress objected to Trump’s targeting of the agency, calling it “nonsensical.”
“At a time when housing costs and homelessness are on a historic rise, we need an all-hands-on-deck approach to ensuring every American has a safe and stable place to rest their head at night,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II of Missouri said in a statement to NPR. “Unfortunately, attacks on the [agency], along with damaging cuts to federal housing programs and staff, and the President’s tumultuous tariffs, will only exacerbate this country’s housing and homelessness crisis.”
Democrat-appointed federal judges in Oregon have repeatedly refused to jail suspects charged with violence at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility and an Elon Musk-owned Tesla store.
A court on Monday ordered Robert Jacob Hoopes to be released pending trial after he allegedly tried to ram his way into an ICE facility in Portland and injured an ICE officer’s eye with a rock, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). Between July 8 and July 11, two other Oregon defendants accused of armed assaults on federal agents and a Tesla store were also given supervised release despite the Trump administration’s objections, according to court records and local media reports.
Hoopes, 24, allegedly threw rocks at the ICE building among a crowd of protesters on June 14 and struck an officer “in the head, causing a significant laceration over the officer’s eye,” according to the DOJ. “Later that same day, he and two other individuals were seen using an upended stop sign as a makeshift battering ram, which resulted in significant damage to the main entry door to the ICE building,” according to the department.
Judge Youlee Yim You, appointed by former President Barack Obama, said she decided to release Hoopes with a GPS ankle monitor in part because some in the community showed up to support the defendant in the courtroom, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported.
Before Hoopes’s release, two federal judges rejected the DOJ’s pleas to detain transgender suspect Adam Lansky, who is accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at a Tesla dealership in January, aiming a rifle at a witness who drove away and returning the next month to fire shots into the building, court documents show.
The DOJ warned in court that Lansky was “a competitive shooter” and former member of the Socialist Rifle Association, a left-wing firearm education and training group with chapters across the U.S. “The [improvised explosive devices] used by Lansky were all manufactured by him using everyday items, empty glass bottles, gasoline, fabric, etc., all these items remain easily accessible to Lansky in the community if released,” prosecutors wrote in a July 9 filing.
Obama-appointed Judge Stacie Beckerman nonetheless ordered Lansky’s release to a halfway house, where individuals receive more freedom to pursue employment and other activities than in jail. Beckerman argued in court that Lansky’s alleged behavior was an “outlier event,” according to The Oregonian.
The DOJ appealed the decision to Judge Adrienne Nelson, who also rejected its request. Former President Joe Biden appointed Nelson as the first black woman to serve on Oregon’s U.S. District Court.
Judge Beckerman also moved anti-ICE defendant Julie Winters on July 8 to a halfway house, The Oregonian reported. Winters tried to light an incendiary device next to a Portland ICE building, threw a large knife at a federal officer without hitting the officer and pulled a second knife on officers who were restraining him at an anti-ICE protest on June 24, the DOJ has alleged.
An attorney for Lansky did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. Court records do not yet list attorneys for Hoopes or Winters.
Beckerman said Winters, who identifies as transgender, should be released from jail because officers put him in solitary confinement rather than house him with male or female inmates, according to The Oregonian. The DOJ, however, said his behavior is “extraordinarily concerning” because he is also charged in a state case with assaulting a police officer in December.
The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment.
https://dailycaller.com/2025/07/29/blue-state-judges-refuse-jail-leftists-charged-violent-attacks
Immediately after Zohran Mamdani became the presumptive Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City last month, one Republican congressman had a provocative suggestion for the Trump administration: “He needs to be DEPORTED.”
The Uganda-born Mamdani obtained U.S. citizenship in 2018 after moving to the United States with his parents as a child. But Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., argued in his post on X that the Justice Department should consider revoking it over rap lyrics that, he said, suggested support for Hamas.
The Justice Department declined to comment on whether it has replied to Ogles’ letter, but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said of his claims about Mamdani, “Surely if they are true, it’s something that should be investigated.”
Trump himself has claimed without evidence that Mamdani is an illegal immigrant, and when erstwhile ally Elon Musk was asked about deporting another naturalized citizen, he suggested he would consider it.
The congressman’s proposal dovetails with a priority of the Trump administration to ramp up efforts to strip citizenship from other naturalized Americans. The process, known as denaturalization, has been used by previous administrations to remove terrorists and, decades ago, Nazis and communists.
But the Trump DOJ’s announcement last month that it would “prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings” has sparked alarm among immigration lawyers and advocates, who fear the Trump administration could use denaturalization to target political opponents.
Although past administrations have periodically pursued denaturalization cases, it is an area ripe for abuse, according to Elizabeth Taufa, a lawyer at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.
“It can be very easily weaponized at any point,” she said.
Noor Zafar, an immigration lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said there is a “real risk and a real threat” that the administration will target people based on their political views.
Asked for comment on the weaponization concerns, a Justice Department spokesperson pointed to the federal law that authorizes denaturalizations, 8 U.S.C. 1451.
“We are upholding our duty as expressed in the statute,” the spokesperson said.
Immigrant groups and political opponents of Trump are already outraged at the way the Trump administration has used its enforcement powers to stifle dissent in cases involving legal immigrants who do not have U.S. citizenship.
ICE detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist engaged in campus protests critical of Israel, for more than 100 days before he was released. Turkish student Rümeysa Öztürk was also detained for two months over her pro-Palestinian advocacy.
More broadly, the administration has been accused of violating the due process rights of immigrants it has sought to rapidly deport over the objection of judges and, in cases involving alleged Venezuelan gang members and Salvadoran man Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Supreme Court.
Denaturalization cases have traditionally been rare and in past decades focused on ferreting out former Nazis who fled to the United States after World War II under false pretenses.
But the approach gradually changed after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Aided by technological advances that made it easier to identify people and track them down, the number of denaturalization cases has gradually increased.
It was the Obama administration that initially seized on the issue, launching what was called Operation Janus, which identified more than 300,000 cases where there were discrepancies involving fingerprint data that could indicate potential fraud.
But the process is slow and requires considerable resources, with the first denaturalization as a result of Operation Janus secured during Trump’s first term in January 2018.
That case involved Baljinder Singh, originally from India, who had been subject to deportation but later became a U.S. citizen after assuming a different identity.
In total, the first Trump administration filed 102 denaturalization cases, with the Biden administration filing 24, according to the Justice Department spokesperson, who said figures for the Obama administration were not available. The new Trump administration has already filed five. So far, the Trump administration has prevailed in one case involving a man originally from the United Kingdom who had previously been convicted of receiving and distributing child pornography. The Justice Department declined to provide information about the other new cases.
Overall, denaturalization cases are brought against just a tiny proportion of the roughly 800,00 people who become naturalized citizens each year, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
‘Willful misrepresentation’
The government has two ways to revoke citizenship, either through a rare criminal prosecution for fraud or via a civil claim in federal court.
The administration outlined its priorities for civil enforcement in a June memo issued by Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate, which listed 10 potential grounds for targeting naturalized citizens.
Examples range from “individuals who pose a risk to national security” or who have engaged in war crimes or torture, to people who have committed Medicaid or Medicare fraud or have otherwise defrauded the government. There is also a broad catch-all provision that refers to “any other cases … that the division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue.”
The denaturalization law focuses on “concealment of a material fact” or “willful misrepresentation” during the naturalization proceeding.
The ACLU’s Zafar said the memo leaves open the option for the Trump administration to at least try to target people based on their speech or associations.
“Even if they don’t think they really have a plausible chance of succeeding, they can use it as a means to just harass people,” she added.
The Justice Department can bring denaturalization cases over a wide range of conduct related to the questions applicants for U.S. citizenship are asked, including the requirement that they have been of “good moral character” in the preceding five years.
Immigration law includes several examples of what might disqualify someone on moral character grounds, including if they are a “habitual drunkard” or have been convicted of illegal gambling.
The naturalization application form itself asks a series of questions probing good moral character, such as whether the applicant has been involved in violent acts, including terrorism.
The form also queries whether people have advocated in support of groups that support communism, “the establishment in the United States of a totalitarian dictatorship” or the “unlawful assaulting or killing” of any U.S. official.
Failure to accurately answer any of the questions or the omission of any relevant information can be grounds for citizenship to be revoked.
In 2015, for example, Sammy Chang, a native of South Korea who had recently become a U.S. citizen, had his citizenship revoked in the wake of his conviction in a criminal case of trafficking women to work at a club he owned.
The government said that because Chang had been engaged in the scheme during the time he was applying for naturalization, he had failed to show good moral character.
But in both civil and criminal cases, the government has to reach a high bar to revoke citizenship. Among other things, it has to show that any misstatement or omission in a naturalization application was material to whether citizenship would have been granted.
In civil cases, the government has to show “clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence which does not leave the issue in doubt” in order to prevail.
“A simple game of gotcha with naturalization applicants isn’t going to work,” said Jeremy McKinney, a North Carolina-based immigration lawyer. “It’s going to require significant materiality for a judge to strip someone of their United States citizenship.”
Targeting rap lyrics
In his June 26 tweet, Ogles attached a letter he sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking her to consider pursuing Mamdani’s denaturalization, in part, because he “expressed open solidarity with individuals convicted of terrorism-related offenses prior to becoming a U.S. citizen.”
Ogles cited rap lyrics that Mamdani wrote years ago in which he expressed support for the “Holy Land Five.”
That appears to be a reference to five men involved in a U.S.-based Muslim charitable group called the Holy Land Foundation who were convicted in 2008 of providing material support to the Palestinian group Hamas. Some activists say the prosecution was a miscarriage of justice fueled by anti-Muslim sentiment following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Ogles’ office and Mamdani’s campaign did not respond to requests seeking comment.
Speaking on Newsmax in June, Ogles expanded on his reasons for revoking Mamdani’s citizenship, suggesting the mayoral candidate had “failed to disclose” relevant information when he became a citizen, including his political associations. Ogles has alleged Mamdani is a communist because of his identification as a democratic socialist, although the latter is not a communist group.
The Trump administration, Ogles added, could use a case against Mamdani to “create a template for other individuals who come to this country” who, he claimed, “want to undermine our way of life.” (Even if Mamdani were denaturalized, he would not, contrary to Ogles’ claim, automatically face deportation, as he would most likely revert his previous status as a permanent resident.)
In an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on June 29, Mamdani said calls for him to be stripped of his citizenship and deported are “a glimpse into what life is like for many Muslim New Yorkers and many New Yorkers of different faiths who are constantly being told they don’t belong in this city and this country that they love.”
Targeting Mamdani for his rap lyrics would constitute a very unusual denaturalization case, said Taufa, the immigration lawyer.
But, she added, “they can trump up a reason to denaturalize someone if they want to.”
McKinney, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the relatively low number of denaturalization cases that are filed, including those taken up during Trump’s first term, shows how difficult it is for the government to actually strip people of their citizenship.
“But what they can be very successful at is continuing to create a climate of panic and anxiety and fear,” he added. “They’re doing that very well. So, mission accomplished in that regard.”
