A top official at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)—with a federal career spanning 22 years—had to be escorted from her office by security officials on Monday after she refused to leave following her firing by President Donald J. Trump last Friday. Phyllis Fong, the Inspector General for the USDA, told colleagues she would refuse to leave her position following her firing, claiming the Trump White House had not followed proper federal procedures in issuing her dismissal.
According to the fired USDA Inspector General, the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE)—an independent agency under the executive branch—has determined “…that these termination notices do not comply with the requirements set out in law and therefore are not effective at this time.” Fong is among several departmental Inspectors General removed by President Trump last Friday over concerns regarding their lack of partisan independence.
The White House defended the firings, arguing: “…these rogue, partisan bureaucrats… have been relieved of their duties to make room for qualified individuals who will uphold the rule of law and protect Democracy.”
“It is the belief of this White House and the White House counsel’s office that the president was within his executive authority,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday when pressed on the firings. Responding to whether the White House was concerned about legal challenges to the dismissals, she added: “We will win in court.”
A top official at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)—with a federal career spanning 22 years—had to be escorted from her office by security officials on Monday after she refused to leave following her firing by President Donald J. Trump last Friday. Phyllis Fong, the Inspector General for the USDA, told colleagues she would refuse to leave her position following her firing, claiming the Trump White House had not followed proper federal procedures in issuing her dismissal.
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Democrat lawmakers and the corporate media tried and failed to push their first hoax against President Donald J. Trump and his White House just one week after he assumed office again as the 47th President of the United States. One day after Trump’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a memo temporarily halting federal loans, grants, and assistance programs authorized under presidential executive orders, an unconnected federal Medicaid payments portal suffered an access outage.
However, according to the corporate media, being fed by hysterical claims from Democrats on Capitol Hill, the OMB memo resulted in the closure of access to a federal Medicaid funding portal for state governments. Despite the claim, there is no evidence the memo and the portal access issue were remotely connected.
The OMB did not temporarily freeze portal funding or impact Medicaid payments or allocations. In fact, the Trump administration memo explicitly states that “…any program that provides direct benefits to Americans is explicitly excluded from the pause and exempted from this review process.”
SWIFTLY FIXED.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to the portal outage in a post on X (formerly Twitter), stating: “The White House is aware of the Medicaid website portal outage. We have confirmed no payments have been affected—they are still being processed and sent.”
She added: “We expect the portal will be back online shortly.”
While a handful of state governments, including Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, New York, and North Carolina, reported a brief interruption to portal access, they acknowledged that the disruption was quickly resolved. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) did warn that the payments portal was operating slower than usual after restoration—again pointing to a technology problem unrelated to the OMB memo.
ANOTHER DEMOCRAT HOAX.
Despite the obvious technical error, Democrats quickly pushed a media narrative connecting the Medicaid portal problem with the OMB memo. “My staff has confirmed reports that Medicaid portals are down in all 50 states following last night’s federal funding freeze,” Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) wrote in a post on X yesterday afternoon. Meanwhile, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) falsely claimed, “Connecticut’s Medicaid payment system has been turned off.”
Even after the corporate media acknowledged that the OMB memo narrative was false, Democrats in Congress continued to push the hoax that President Trump cut off state Medicaid payments. Throughout the Senate confirmation hearing for HHS Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Democrats repeated the allegations, going so far as to disingenuously claim President Trump violated the Impoundment Control Act. Yet, no such violation occurred, and again—despite the Democrat hysteria—state Medicaid payments were not frozen, halted, or disrupted in any way.
Additionally, Senate Democrats are attempting to demagogue on the portal outage, using it as a cudgel to delay the confirmation of Trump’s pick to lead the OMB, Russ Vought.
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Democrat lawmakers and the corporate media tried and failed to push their first hoax against President Donald J. Trump and his White House just one week after he assumed office again as the 47th President of the United States. One day after Trump's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a memo temporarily halting federal loans, grants, and assistance programs authorized under presidential executive orders, an unconnected federal Medicaid payments portal suffered an access outage.
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President Donald J. Trump is offering a buyout through a deferred resignation for all federal career employees. The move specifically targets civil service employees who refuse to return to in-person work. The buyout offer follows an executive order issued by the President last week ending broad COVID-19-era work-from-home policies.
Federal workers have until February 6 to accept the offer, and in doing so, they effectively tender their resignation at a given date in the Fall of 2025. Until their resignation date, they will continue to be employed by the federal government and allowed to work from home—an incentive to encourage federal employees to take the buyout offer.
“After four years of incompetence and failure, President Donald Trump is committed to making our government efficient and productive again,” Karoline Leavitt, President Trump’s White House press secretary, said in a statement. She continued: “American taxpayers pay for the salaries of federal government employees and therefore deserve employees working on their behalf who actually show up to work in our wonderful federal buildings, also paid for by taxpayers.”
“If they don’t want to work in the office and contribute to making America great again, then they are free to choose a different line of work, and the Trump Administration will provide a very generous payout of eight months,” Leavitt added.
The National Pulse previously reported that U.S. Senate investigators found just six percent of the federal workforce was actually working full-time and in person. This has left the average occupancy rate of a federal office building in Washington, D.C., at around 12 percent.
President Donald J. Trump is offering a buyout through a deferred resignation for all federal career employees. The move specifically targets civil service employees who refuse to return to in-person work. The buyout offer follows an executive order issued by the President last week ending broad COVID-19-era work-from-home policies.
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President Donald J. Trump’s nominee to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) told members of the United States Senate Finance Committee that combating drug addiction and substance abuse will be a top priority if he is confirmed. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., scion of the Kennedy political clan and named by Trump to serve as the U.S.’s top health official, testified before the Senate, outlining his agency priorities—including the expansion of addiction services and treatment access to tackle America’s ongoing drug crisis.
“Addiction services and substance abuse services, it is a priority for me—it was a priority for me when I was running for President during my campaign,” Kennedy Jr. stated, responding to questioning by Senator John Cornyn (R-TX). Candidly, the son of Robert F. Kennedy Sr.—who was assassinated by a Palestinian in 1968—admitted that he himself was an addict but is now decades in recovery: “I was a heroin addict for 14 years. I’ve been 42 years in recovery.”
“I hear the stories every day. And I hear the many stories about denial or the barriers to access to care. We need to improve that,” Kennedy Jr. said. He added that access could be expanded by changes to Graduate Medical Education (GME)—which is in part government-funded—requiring medical residents to do rotations providing addiction treatment.
Additionally, Kennedy Jr. testified that using GME to expand access to addiction services access will have the added benefit of ensuring future primary physicians are adequately trained in addiction care. Speaking on addiction, President Trump’s HHS nominee displayed a deep and compassionate knowledge, stressing to the senators that often there is only a fleeting window to convince an addict to seek recovery and save their lives.
President Donald J. Trump's nominee to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) told members of the United States Senate Finance Committee that combating drug addiction and substance abuse will be a top priority if he is confirmed. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., scion of the Kennedy political clan and named by Trump to serve as the U.S.'s top health official, testified before the Senate, outlining his agency priorities—including the expansion of addiction services and treatment access to tackle America's ongoing drug crisis.
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President Donald J. Trump swiftly implemented his agenda during his first week in office through a series of executive orders. The directives—nearly 40 in total—impact a range of federal policy areas, including immigration, environmental regulation, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, lawfare, and health research.
Among the more ambitious executive orders is an attempt to change birthright citizenship, which has already drawn two separate Democrat-backed legalchallenges. President Trump also moved to reverse former President Joe Biden’s restrictions on oil exploration and withdrew federal support for discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and transgender-related directives.
The executive orders vary in scope and authority and are classified as memorandums, proclamations, or directives, each carrying different levels of impact. Memorandums offer guidance but hold less authority, whereas other executive orders require publication in the Federal Register and carry significant weight.
The sweeping nature of these changes underscores the pivotal shift in federal policy direction. The National Pulse has compiled a list of Trump’s major executive orders with brief summaries of what each directive does.
READ:
Unleashing American Energy: This order reverses Biden government environmental orders, ends electric vehicle mandates, and reopens energy exploration on federal land and in federal waters.
Declaring a National Energy Emergency: Directs federal agencies to identify emergency authorities to facilitate energy projects, including the leasing of federal lands for oil and gas production and pipeline construction.
Restoring Names that Honor AmericanGreatness: Directs the Secretary of the Interior to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, as well as rename Alaska’s Denali mountain to Mount McKinley.
Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending FederalCensorship: Bars federal officials from interfering with the First Amendment rights of Americans and directs the Attorney General to investigate Biden government collusion with social media companies aimed at censoring Americans online.
Reevaluating and Realigning United States ForeignAid: Enacts a 90-day freeze on all foreign aid and assistance programs and directs administration officials to review each to ensure they align with American foreign policy priorities.
Protecting the Meaning and Value of AmericanCitizenship: Clarifies that children born in the United States whose parents are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents do not automatically receive American citizenship.
Securing Our Borders: Restarts construction of the border wall and directs federal law enforcement to assist in pursuing illegal immigrants.
Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety: Orders the Attorney General to resume pursuing the death penalty whenever applicable in federal cases and to seek the death penalty against illegal immigrants accused of capital crimes.
Protecting the American People AgainstInvasion: Directs federal agencies to begin the mass deportation of illegal immigrants and authorizes civil fines and funding cuts for sanctuary cities.
President Donald J. Trump swiftly implemented his agenda during his first week in office through a series of executive orders. The directives—nearly 40 in total—impact a range of federal policy areas, including immigration, environmental regulation, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, lawfare, and health research.
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Doug Emhoff, the husband of former Vice President Kamala Harris, is joining the New York-based law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP as a partner. The move, coming shortly after Harris lost the 2024 presidential election to now-President Donald J. Trump, is throwing the former Vice President’s political future into question. There had been rampant speculation that Harris and Emhoff would return to California in preparation for the former Vice President seeking the state’s gubernatorial office, but this will be near-impossible if her family relocates to the East Coast.
“I am delighted to be joining Willkie, where I am looking forward to working alongside trusted and innovative legal counselors,” Emhoff said in a statement. The former second gentleman added: “I couldn’t be more thrilled to join this talented and collaborative team.”
Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP employs approximately 1,200 attorneys worldwide and is headquartered at the Axa Equitable Center on New York City’s Seventh Avenue. Emhoff, a longtime attorney, previously worked with DLA Piper and served as a partner at the Venable law firm. During his tenure, the former second gentleman was accused of exhibiting misogynistic behavior and favoritism. His former colleagues allege he used expletives toward female colleagues, organized male-only office gatherings, and showed preference towards younger and more attractive associates.
Meanwhile, during the 2024 presidential campaign, it came to light that Emhoff had allegedly physically assaulted an ex-girlfriend at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012. In addition, Kamala Harris’s husband has been accused of cheating on his first wife with the family’s nanny, which reportedly resulted in a pregnancy.
Doug Emhoff, the husband of former Vice President Kamala Harris, is joining the New York-based law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP as a partner. The move, coming shortly after Harris lost the 2024 presidential election to now-President Donald J. Trump, is throwing the former Vice President's political future into question. There had been rampant speculation that Harris and Emhoff would return to California in preparation for the former Vice President seeking the state's gubernatorial office, but this will be near-impossible if her family relocates to the East Coast.
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Corporate media fixture Chris Cillizza is admitting President Donald J. Trump was correct about the Chinese lab origin of the COVID-19 pandemic and that former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, was wrong to dismiss the possibility. In a mea culpa posted on X (formerly Twitter), Cillizza—a former CNN reporter and editor-at-large—laments that he and his corporate media colleagues were duped by Fauci and other public health officials.
“My belief back then was that if this was a debate between Donald Trump and Anthony Fauci on the origins of a pandemic-level virus, I was going to go with the guy who spent his entire career studying this stuff, not the reality TV-star-turned-president,” the former CNN reporter writes. “Except, it now appears that the reality TV-star-turned-president was right. And Anthony Fauci was wrong.”
The National Pulse previously reported the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic revealed that Fauci was snuck into the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters to influence their findings on the origins of COVID-19. Under the Biden government, intelligence community officials were dismissive of evidence the COVID-19 pandemic was caused by a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. However, the CIA has reversed course and, over this past weekend, stated the pandemic was likely the result of the mishandling of virus samples at the Wuhan lab.
“I deferred to expert voices at a moment—May 2020—when even they were making it up on the fly,” Cillizza admits, while defending his past reporting in light of the CIA’s determination on the pandemic origins. He adds: “The other major mistake I made was that I let my belief that Trump just, well, said stuff, get in the way of the possibility that he could be right.”
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Corporate media fixture Chris Cillizza is admitting President Donald J. Trump was correct about the Chinese lab origin of the COVID-19 pandemic and that former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, was wrong to dismiss the possibility. In a mea culpa posted on X (formerly Twitter), Cillizza—a former CNN reporter and editor-at-large—laments that he and his corporate media colleagues were duped by Fauci and other public health officials.
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Raheem Kassam, Editor-in-Chief of The National Pulse, has hit back at New York Magazine for an article disparaging MAGA supporters, highlighting his new project, a venue and space that rejects the ugliness of modernity and the left. It labeled young Trump supporters during President Donald J. Trump’s inauguration as “casually cruel.”
The article also discussed a new haute-cuisine bistro, Butterworth’s, of which Kassam is a part-owner. It is located just two blocks from the U.S. Congress.
Describing his vision for the venue on Stephen K. Bannon’s War Room show, Kassam said, “We’re running an operation here now on Capitol Hill, which is kind of the centerpiece of where a lot of these people who kind of want to reject the modernity, who want to reject the ugliness, are flocking to for their events, for their dinners.”
He stressed that the space is not meant to be exclusively right-wing but explained, “What we are trying to do is bring a little bit of beauty back, bring a little bit of truth, which is inexorably linked to beauty. And it’s working.”
Kassam noted that the front page was a win for MAGA, saying, “Yes, they’re insulting you, yes they’re biting their thumb at you, but that’s because they fear you. You should embrace it.”
Raheem Kassam, Editor-in-Chief of The National Pulse, has hit back at New York Magazine for an article disparaging MAGA supporters, highlighting his new project, a venue and space that rejects the ugliness of modernity and the left. It labeled young Trump supporters during President Donald J. Trump's inauguration as "casually cruel."
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A group of 19 state attorneys general is pushing retail warehouse giant Costco to abandon its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, the group—in a letter to Costco CEO Ron Vachris—alleges the company is maintaining DEI policies deemed illegal by some courts and likely in contravention of a recent executive order signed by President Donald J. Trump.
“We… urge Costco to end all unlawful discrimination imposed by the company through diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) policies,” the attorneys general write. They add: “Although Costco’s motto is ‘do the right thing,’ it appears that the company is doing the wrong thing—clinging to DEI policies that courts and businesses have rejected as illegal.”
In addition, the letter cites recent Supreme Court precedent on race-based college admissions, suggesting Republicans at the state level may soon push for a broader ruling on DEI and other discriminatory programs. “The Supreme Court has repeatedly warned against using race-based preferences and classifications. Most recently, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard explained that ‘Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality,'” the attorneys general contend.
Costco has not yet responded. Previously, the company’s shareholders rejected a proposal by the National Center for Public Policy Research to assess the risks associated with DEI practices. This proposal suggested that DEI could conceal a radical agenda.
Meanwhile, other companies like Target and Walmart are either scaling back their diversity initiatives or shuttering them entirely. This trend follows criticism from conservative activists, backed by court decisions and the subsequent Trump White House ban on DEI programs.
A group of 19 state attorneys general is pushing retail warehouse giant Costco to abandon its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, the group—in a letter to Costco CEO Ron Vachris—alleges the company is maintaining DEI policies deemed illegal by some courts and likely in contravention of a recent executive order signed by President Donald J. Trump.
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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt holds her inaugural official press briefing today at 1:00 PM in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room. A key aide to President Donald J. Trump on the 2024campaign trail, the 27-year-old now holds the distinction of being the youngest individual to be appointed White House press secretary—a title previously held by the 29-year-old Ron Ziegler, who served in the same capacity under President Richard Nixon in 1969.
Leavitt, a native of New Hampshire, previously served as the national press secretary for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Additionally, she ran for New Hampshire’s first congressional district in 2022—aiming to unseat incumbent Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH)—but was ultimately unsuccessful.
Unlike her predecessors Jen Psaki and Karine Jean-Pierre in the Biden government, Leavitt is unlikely to enjoy a corporate media honeymoon period. Instead, the Trump White House press secretary is expected to face a more hostile media environment than that afforded to the Biden government press officials, especially with the national press focus on President Trump’s ongoing immigration enforcement actions.
The Trump White House and Leavitt are emphasizing the need to overhaul the traditional press environment at the White House to include more independent and alternative news outlets. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump successfully harnessedmajor podcasts and Internet-based media to reach a younger and more diverse audience—effectively expanding the MAGA movement and political coalition.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt holds her inaugural official press briefing today at 1:00 PM in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room. A key aide to President Donald J. Trump on the 2024 campaign trail, the 27-year-old now holds the distinction of being the youngest individual to be appointed White House press secretary—a title previously held by the 29-year-old Ron Ziegler, who served in the same capacity under President Richard Nixon in 1969.
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