Trump Guts Federal Protections for Whistleblowers

The White House is close to implementing a new rule that would effectively eradicate congressionally approved whistleblower protections.

Congress has passed several laws since the 1970s extending protections to federal workers who call out governmental wrongdoing. But the Trump administration is planning on chipping away at that by updating its policy on accountability, which would “exclude senior employees from legal protections that prohibit U.S. government agencies from retaliating against whistleblowers,” reported Reuters Tuesday.

Federal employment attorneys noted that the new policy would make targets out of the people most likely to find themselves in positions to uncover serious corruption.

“Translation: Trump can fire federal employees who point out that he’s broken the law. That’s pretty damn dark,” wrote Miles Taylor, an ex–Homeland Security official who drew national attention in 2018 when he anonymously penned an op-ed for The New York Times claiming to be part of the internal “resistance” against Trump’s first-term agenda.

It would follow through on Donald Trump’s April proposal to create a new federal employee category to “enhance accountability.”

“This rule empowers federal agencies to swiftly remove employees in policy-influencing roles for poor performance, misconduct, corruption, or subversion of Presidential directives, without lengthy procedural hurdles,” reads a White House fact sheet from the time on the proposed changes.

The Office of Personnel Management estimated at the time that the switch-up could affect as many as 50,000 positions across government agencies.

The Trump administration told Reuters Tuesday that the new rule would not strip employees of their current protections but would “put individual federal agencies in charge of enforcing those safeguards.”

“This administration is making good on its determination to silence dissent in all forms, creating a culture of fear, silence and intimidation,” Andrew Bakaj, chief legal counsel of the nonpartisan group Whistleblower Aid, told Reuters in a statement.

President Trump joked (we think) about firing Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent while Bessent was sitting right in front of him.

“Interest rates are down despite the Fed. I mean Scott, you gotta work on this guy. He’s got some real mental problems. He has something wrong with him,” Trump said while addressing the Kennedy Center on Wednesday, referring to current Fed Chair Jerome Powell. “I’ll be honest, I’d love to fire his ass. He should be fired. Guy’s grossly incompetent. And he should be sued for spending $4 billion to build a little building. I’m building a ballroom that’s gonna cost a tiny fraction of that.

“You gotta work on him, Scott,” Trump continued. “The only thing Scott’s blowing it on is the Fed. Because … the rates are too high, Scott. And if you don’t get it fixed fast, I’m gonna fire your ass, OK?” The crowd roared with laughter. “I wanna get him out, Scott!”

This is a pretty stunning undermining of his own staff, even for Trump. And if the economy is doing so well, why is he so pressed about rates getting cut?

“Translation: the economy isn’t bad enough, let’s speedrun a recession!” California Governor Gavin Newsom’s press office posted in response.

Trump has been after Powell for months now, threatening to fire him over and over again for not cutting interest rates and refusing to fully capitulate to Trump’s aggressive economic plans.

It’s unclear how much power Bessent has to influence Powell’s job security, if any at all. Bessent is one of the front-runners for Powell’s job, although he has told the president he doesn’t want it. That’s probably a smart decision.

“I get that Treasury Secretary is a cool job ... but if I were a billionaire, there is [no] way I’m staying in a job that requires me to spin indefensible, economically-illiterate policies for a morally-corrupt boss who tries to humiliate me publicly,” Manhattan Institute senior fellow Jessica Riedl wrote on X. “I’d be on a beach somewhere.”

President Donald Trump’s newest plan to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would give President Vladimir Putin exactly what he wants—and Ukraine isn’t happy.

Trump’s sweeping new proposal would require Ukraine to give up Donbas, an industrial region in the eastern part of the country, the Financial Times reported Wednesday. The framework deal would also require Ukraine to reduce the size of its armed forces, and not to use certain weapons. The deal would make it significantly harder for Ukraine to defend itself from Russian military incursion, and move the country’s border with Russia closer to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

A senior White House official told Politico that a peace agreement could come “as soon as this week.” But it’s not looking likely that Ukraine will accept.

The newest proposal was tantamount to surrendering Ukraine’s sovereignty, one person familiar with the deal told the FT. They said that Russia was attempting to “play” the United States, which was eager to “show progress” had been made on the deal.

The 28-point plan was reportedly drafted by Trump’s special envoy and business partner Steve Witkoff in collaboration with Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev, as a follow-up to the president’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza, according to Axios. Of course, Trump’s plan for Gaza was a resounding failure, as Israel has continued its campaign of deadly military strikes.

Earlier this week, Witkoff discussed the plan with Ukraine’s Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov, a Ukrainian official told Axios. Dmitriev said that Moscow is likely to accept the plan, saying, “We feel the Russian position is really being heard.”

Trump has already tried and failed to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to agree to concede territory during a disastrous meeting at the White House last month. Trump also reneged on an offer to supply Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles, and claimed that he didn’t think Ukraine stood a chance against Russia.

After Texas news outlets made a public records request to see emails between the office of Texas Governor Greg Abbott and tech oligarch Elon Musk’s companies, state officials took months fighting and delaying their release.

Then, they released 1,374 pages of mostly redacted documents, with all but 200 of those pages entirely blacked out.

According to The Texas Newsroom, a collaboration between NPR and Texas public radio stations that made the request, the emails don’t reveal much about the relationship between Musk and Abbott, or how the tech oligarch influences Texas’s government. The unredacted documents contained little new information, consisting mostly of things like old incorporation records and some meeting agendas.

Abbott’s office claimed over the summer that the governor’s emails with Musk were private and too “intimate or embarrassing” to be released to the public, which begs the question of what law protects that reasoning. Musk has also fought against disclosing communications, claiming that releasing emails could hurt his competitive advantage.

Musk has relocated many of his businesses to Texas and has lobbied for new state laws to help those companies, making his communications with the state of vital public interest to Texans. But thanks to a June court ruling, Texas officials have increased protections from having to disclose public records, leaving news outlets with little recourse to get more documents released.

In effect, Musk’s activities in Texas are taking place with little oversight or scrutiny. It seems that his presence in Texas shields him from accountability, and Abbott is only too happy to protect him.

Saudi Arabia is so invested in U.S. development that the country’s leadership is apparently willing to give more than they’ve got.

Hours after the U.S. president penned a $1 trillion economic agreement with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Donald Trump told a crowd at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum Wednesday that he had actually pressed for $1.5 trillion, billions more than the nation’s gross domestic product.

“While we were taking the picture, I said, ‘Could you make it $1.5 trillion?’ So he’s got something to think about,” Trump said, to laughs. “We’ll get something, I think we’ll get something.”

Given that Saudi Arabia’s GDP is $1.24 trillion, that seems unlikely.

The deal came as an enormous upgrade to Saudi Arabia’s previously pledged investment of $600 billion, the details of which included “investments and trade” but were otherwise vague. It also came after Trump promised to sell highly coveted F-35 fighter jets to the newly appointed non-NATO ally, ignoring Pentagon concerns that the sale could provide China with a golden opportunity to steal U.S. military technology.

“We will be doing that, we’ll be selling F-35s,” Trump told reporters at the White House Monday, adding that the Saudis “want to buy them, they’ve been a great ally.”

Trump has touted several major investment deals over the span of his second administration to detract from the failures of his wildly unpopular tariff plan, claiming that he has reeled in $17 trillion in just eight months. But that figure is fiction, even according to the digits highlighted on the White House website, which lists $8.8 trillion in active investment.

That includes the Saudi sum, as well as $600 billion from firms in the European Union, though the coalition of countries has made clear that the amount is simply an estimate of potential investment rather than a legitimate commitment.

It also includes a $1.2 trillion deal with Qatar, which was an “economic exchange” rather than direct investment; a seemingly impossible $1.4 trillion investment from the United Arab Emirates that is more than double that nation’s GDP, and $1 trillion from Japan, which in actuality is roughly half that and will be predominantly composed of loans.