https://www.thedailybeast.com/gavin-newsom-bluntly-lists-all-the-ways-donald-trump-79-is-in-decline
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, did not inform the White House that her office was revoking the security clearances of 37 people – including top deputies to the CIA director, John Ratcliffe – before it happened last month, according to three people familiar with matter.
The move caused consternation because it resulted in the White House not having an opportunity to closely vet the list before it became public and there appeared to be no paper trail from the president directing the effort, the people said.
As a result, officials only realized after the fact that Gabbard had managed to pull the security clearances of career CIA officials, at least one of whom was a top adviser to Ratcliffe and had worked on some of the US’s most sensitive military operations, the people said.
The list also included two Democratic congressional staffers – Maher Bitar, the national security adviser to senator Adam Schiff, and Thomas West, an aide on the Senate foreign relations committee – prompting fears the administration would be thrust into a messy separation-of-powers issue.
Weeks later, several of Trump’s top advisers remain deeply frustrated with Gabbard and view the episode as a blunder that comes as Trump is skeptical of the intelligence community and has suggested dismantling the office of the director of national intelligence (ODNI).
It also appears to have deepened existing animosity between Gabbard, whose most important job as the director of national intelligence is delivering the president’s daily briefing and overseeing the intelligence agencies, and the CIA, whose officers actually produce the brief.
Trump advisers inside and outside of the administration have complained that Gabbard’s deputy chief of staff, Alexa Henning, did not explain to them how the list was compiled and the underlying evidence to warrant pulling the security clearances, the people said.
A senior intelligence official disputed this account and said Gabbard told Trump in the Oval Office that she had compiled names of officers who had worked on the intelligence assessments on Russia’s malign influence operations during the 2016 election who should be fired.
Trump replied to Gabbard that if those people had worked on the Russia intelligence assessments and they were still employed in the federal government, they should be removed, and Gabbard was merely executing the president’s agenda, the intelligence official said.
The intelligence official also claimed the list was emailed to the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles; the White House counsel, David Warrington; communications chiefs Steven Cheung and Taylor Budowich; the national security council; and the chiefs of staff at every major intelligence agency.
“The CIA just wants to blame ODNI all the time,” the official said.
A White House spokesperson did not address whether there had been advance notice or when the emails were sent but said in a statement: “Director Gabbard is doing a phenomenal job and the White House has worked closely with her on implementing the President’s objectives.
“The entire administration is aligned on ensuring those who have weaponized their clearances to manipulate intelligence, leak classified intelligence without authorization, and many other egregious acts are held to account,” the spokesperson said.
Rescinding security clearances was supposed to be part of an effort to correct what Trump’s advisers view as flaws in intelligence assessments and to punish Trump’s political enemies for allegedly mischaracterizing intelligence about Russian malign influence operations during the 2016 election.
Gabbard said in the memo announcing the revocations last month that her actions were at Trump’s direction and claimed that the people targeted were involved in the “politicization or weaponization of intelligence” to advance partisan agendas, or had leaked classified information.
“Being entrusted with a security clearance is a privilege, not a right,” Gabbard wrote. “Those in the Intelligence Community who betray their oath to the Constitution and put their own interests ahead of the interests of the American people have broken the sacred trust they promised to uphold.”
It was also in keeping with an executive order and followed the administration pulling security clearances for dozens of Trump’s political adversaries including Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, as well as other figures from Trump’s first impeachment.
Gabbard is not expected to face significant ramifications over the episode, in large part because she has emerged relatively unscathed from other fraught moments, including when Trump in June publicly contradicted her assessment that Iran was far from acquiring nuclear weapons.
“I don’t care what she said,” Trump said in response to a question about Gabbard’s testimony that Iran had decided not to make a nuclear bomb, shortly after she was notably absent from a key meeting at Camp David on the matter. “I think they were very close to having it.”
Gabbard also drew Trump’s ire when she posted a video in June warning of nuclear annihilation. Trump harangued Gabbard, saying it would scare people and that she appeared more engaged in self-promotion in order to set herself up for higher office, a person familiar with the matter said.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/20/tulsi-gabbard-white-house-security-clearances
The US justice department has scrubbed a study from its website concluding that far-right extremists have killed far more Americans than any other domestic terrorist group, just days after a gunman fatally shot the prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The report, now archived, titled What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism, vanished from the Department of Justice website between 11 and 12 September, according to Jason Paladino, an independent investigative reporter who first wrote the story. Kirk, the 31-year-old Turning Point USA founder and Trump ally, was gunned down while speaking at Utah Valley University on 10 September.
The vanished study opened with: “Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives. In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives.”
Tyler Robinson, 22, has been charged with Kirk’s murder and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. In the aftermath of the shooting, Donald Trump and other Republican leaders have blamed “radical left” elements for the attack.
The National Institute of Justice study, which was based on research spanning three decades, represented one of the most comprehensive government assessments of domestic terrorism patterns. It found that “militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States” and that “the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism”.
Where the report once appeared, the justice department wrote it was “reviewing its websites and materials in accordance with recent executive orders”, according to 404Media, though the page is now unavailable.
But the findings align with independent research from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which analyzed 893 terrorist plots between 1994 and 2020. That study concluded: “Rightwing attacks and plots account for the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994.”
In congressional testimony in 2023, Heidi Beirich, the executive vice-president of Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told lawmakers as an expert witness that “data on acts of political violence clearly shows that it is the far right that is driving terrorism in the US, including targeting and, in certain cases, murdering law enforcement”.
“That is not to say there is no violence from far-left actors,” she continued, “it is just simply not on the scale or as deadly as what is coming from far-right actors.”
Kirk had built Turning Point USA into a major conservative youth organization and spoke at last year’s Republican national convention. He was addressing students when he was shot.
The justice department has not responded to requests for comment about the study’s removal.
Following Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the Trump administration’s promise to go after the “radical left” a study showing most domestic terrosim is far-right was disappeared. Attorney General Pam Bondi. Image: DOJ The Department of Justice has removed a study showing that white supremacist and far-right violence “continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism” in the United States.
The study, which was conducted by the National Institute of Justice and hosted on a DOJ website was available there at least until September 12, 2025, according to an archive of the page saved by the Wayback Machine. Daniel Malmer, a PhD student studying online extremism at UNC-Chapel Hill, first noticed the paper was deleted.
“The Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs is currently reviewing its websites and materials in accordance with recent Executive Orders and related guidance,” reads a message on the page where the study was formerly hosted. “During this review, some pages and publications will be unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”
https://www.404media.co/doj-deletes-study-showing-domestic-terrorists-are-most-often-right-wing
US defense officials have blocked Ukraine from using US-supplied long-range missiles to strike targets inside Russia since late spring as part of a Trump administration effort to get Vladimir Putin to engage in peace talks , according to a report on Saturday.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Pentagon has blocked Ukraine from using US-made Army Tactical Missile Systems, or Atacms.
Two US officials told the outlet that on at least one occasion, Ukraine had sought to use Atacms against a target but was denied under a “review mechanism” developed by Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for policy, that governs how US long-range weapons or those provided by European allies that rely on American intelligence and components can be used.
The review process also applies to Britain’s Storm Shadow cruise missile because it depends on US targeting data, according to two US officials and a British official, the Journal said.
The review system reportedly gives US defense secretary Pete Hegseth approval over the use of the Atacms, which have a range of nearly 190 miles (305km). Ukraine was previously given authority by the Biden administration to use the missile system against targets inside Russia in November after North Korean troops entered the war.
Before the inauguration in January, Trump told Time magazine that the decision to allow Ukraine to use US weapons systems to attack targets inside Russia had been a mistake.
“I disagree very vehemently with sending missiles hundreds of miles into Russia. Why are we doing that? We’re just escalating this war and making it worse. That should not have been allowed to be done,” he said.
It is unclear whether the US defense department’s review process amounts to a formal policy change. But it comes alongside increasing control of munitions to Ukraine as US stocks are themselves depleted.
In a statement to the Journal, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump “has been very clear that the war in Ukraine needs to end. There has been no change in military posture in Russia-Ukraine at this time.”
But last week, amid efforts to broker talks between the Russian president and Voldomyr Zelenskyy, Trump said that Ukraine couldn’t defeat Russia unless it could “play offense” in the war.
“It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invader’s country,” Trump wrote on Thursday. “It’s like a great team in sports that has a fantastic defense, but is not allowed to play offense. There is no chance of winning.”
Last month, the US agreed to supply Ukraine with new weapons systems but only if European nations paid for them. While Trump has said that the US is “not looking” to provide longer-range weapons that could reach Moscow, US officials told the Journal that the administration has approved the sale of 3,350 Extended Range Attack Munition air-launched missiles, or Erams, which have a range of 280 miles (400km).
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/23/pentagon-ukraine-russia-missiles
The Trump administration said it would cut terrorism prevention funding for New York City, according to a grant notice posted days after a gunman killed four people inside a Manhattan skyscraper.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) stated in a grant notice posted on Friday that New York City would receive $64m less this year from its urban area security fund. The amount was listed in a single line of an 80-page Fema notice on the grant program.
US Congress created the program to help cities prevent terrorist attacks.
“It makes absolutely no sense, and no justification has been given to cut NY’s allocation given the rise in the threat environment,” a spokesperson for the New York state division of homeland security and emergency services said in a statement on Monday afternoon.
Manhattan has been the site of two attacks on high-profile corporate executives in the last year. The most recent attack came from a gunman armed with an assault-style rifle in late July, who killed four people inside an office building that houses the headquarters of the NFL and several major financial firms.
New York governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, highlighted the attack in her late July letter to the US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem, asking why the Trump administration had not announced the amounts each city would receive from the program this year. Fema is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
Noem’s office did not respond to two messages from Reuters asking why the federal government cut New York’s funding.
In December 2024, the chief executive of insurance giant UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, was shot dead on the street in Manhattan in a targeted attack. And security has been particularly tight in New York City ever since the al-Qaida terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, which killed almost 3,000 people in lower Manhattan when Islamist extremists flew hijacked passenger jets into the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
Fema uses “an analysis of relative risk of terrorism” to decide how much money cities will receive, according to the grant notice posted on Friday. The agency may change the amounts later, according to the notice.
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In 2023, the agency considered city visitor counts, population density and proximity to international borders, among other factors, to determine the totals, according to a report signed by then Fema administrator Deanne Criswell.
Fema has been decreasing terrorism prevention money for New York City each year since at least fiscal year 2022. The drop is much more drastic this year at 41% year-over-year.
The New York City police department has used the funding in the past to pay for the Domain Awareness System, a network of cameras, license plate readers and detection devices, according to a 2016 statement from the former mayor Bill de Blasio’s office.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/05/new-york-city-anti-terrorism-funding-trump-cuts
The owner of a Donald Trump-themed hamburger restaurant chain in Texas is facing deportation after immigration authorities under the command of the president detained him.
Roland Mehrez Beainy, 28, entered the US as “a non-immigrant visitor” from Lebanon in 2019 and was supposed to have left the country by 12 February 2024, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) spokesperson told the Guardian.
Citing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Texas’s Fayette County Record newspaper reported that Beainy applied for legal status after purportedly wedding a woman – but the agency maintained there is no proof he ever lived with her during the alleged marriage.
Ice said its officers arrested Beainy on 16 May – five years after he launched the first of multiple Trump Burger locations – and placed him into immigration proceedings, an agency statement said.
“Under the current administration, Ice is committed to restore integrity to our nation’s immigration system by holding all individuals accountable who illegally enter the country or overstay the terms of their admission,” the agency’s statement also said.
“This is true regardless of what restaurant you own or political beliefs you might have.”
In remarks to the Houston Chronicle, Beainy denied Ice’s charges against him, saying: “Ninety percent of the shit they’re saying is not true.” He is tentatively scheduled for a hearing in immigration court on 18 November.
Trump Burger gained national attention after Beainy opened the original location in Bellville, Texas, in 2020, the same year Trump lost his bid for a second presidential term to Joe Biden. Replete with memorabilia paying reverence to Trump as well as politically satirical menu items targeting his enemies, Beainy’s chain expanded to other locations, including Houston.
Trump won a second presidency in January, and his administration summarily began delivering on promises to pursue mass deportations of immigrants. Political supporters of Trump in the US without papers, at least in many cases, have not been spared.
One case which generated considerable news headlines was that of a Canadian national who supported Trump’s plans for mass deportation of immigrants – only for federal authorities to detain her in California while she interviewed for permanent US residency and publicly describe her in a statement as “an illegal alien from Canada”.
In another instance, Ice reportedly detained a Christian Armenian Iranian woman who lost her legal permanent US residency, or green card, after a 2008 burglary conviction and incarcerated her at a federal detention facility in California despite her vocal support of Trump. Her husband, with whom she is raising four US citizen children, subsequently blamed the couple’s plight on Biden’s “doing for open borders”, as Newsweek noted.
Beainy’s detention by Ice is not his only legal plight, according to the Houston Chronicle. He sued the landlord of a Trump Burger location in Kemah, Texas, whom Beainy claimed forcibly removed staff and took over the restaurant.
The landlord responded with his own lawsuit accusing Beainy of unpaid debts and renamed the Kemah restaurant Maga Burger.
In 2022, Beainy told the Houston Chronicle he endured threats to have Trump Burger burned down when the first one opened its doors. But the brand had since gained a loyal following and a portion of its profits were set aside to aid Trump’s fundraising, Beainy said to the outlet.
“I would love to have [Trump’s] blessing and have him come by,” Beainy said at the time. “We’re hoping that he … sees the place.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/09/trump-burger-ice-arrest
