US News

White House insiders said this week that President Donald Trump and his closest allies are in turmoil trying to keep House Republicans from jumping ship — and it's not working.

People familiar with closed-door conversations told the Wall Street Journal in a report published late Friday that Republican lawmakers, coalition leaders, and even some of Trump's own friends are privately telling the White House that his mass deportation policies are too extreme and need to be immediately scaled back. Sources said GOP members are growing increasingly nervous about the political fallout heading into midterms.

MS NOW's Jen Psaki ruthlessly mocked Department of Homeland Security official Corey Lewandowski's efforts to pressure department officials to let him carry a government service gun with him, despite him not in any way meeting the criteria to be armed on duty.

This comes after extensive reporting about the friction caused behind the scenes by Secretary Kristi Noem's alleged romantic affair with Lewandowski, whom she has effectively let run massive parts of department policy. Among other things, Noem is said to have fired a pilot over a missing blanket and to have made extensive use of a luxury plane with a private cabin in the back for herself and Lewandowski to travel in.

New images released Friday offer the clearest look yet at President Donald Trump’s proposed White House ballroom addition, a sweeping project that would mark the most significant change to the White House grounds in decades – even as it faces legal challenges and increasing criticism on Capitol Hill.

The updated renderings were shared with the National Capital Planning Commission, which oversees major federal construction projects in the region, according to The Washington Post. The plans depict a roughly 90,000-square-foot structure, described by the White House as an “East Wing modernization,” that would house a ballroom and offices for staff.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has created a nightmare for some servicemembers with a new policy that seeks to blacklist several colleges and universities from military tuition assistance, CNN reported on Friday.

Under the new policy, outlined in a memo last week, "Military officers could soon find dozens of top colleges and universities across the United States abruptly off limits for tuition assistance," as a part of Hegseth's "campaign against schools he describes as being biased against the US military and sponsoring 'troublesome partnerships with foreign adversaries.'"

The Department of Homeland Security has expanded efforts to identify Americans who criticize or track Immigration and Customs Enforcement, sending hundreds of legal requests to major tech companies seeking information behind social media accounts, according to a report in The New York Times.

In recent months, DHS has issued administrative subpoenas to Google, Meta, Reddit, and Discord requesting names, email addresses, phone numbers, and other identifying data tied to accounts that comment on or monitor ICE activity. Four government officials and tech employees familiar with the requests told The Times the subpoenas have targeted accounts that lack real names and have criticized ICE or shared the locations of agents.

Trump is full steam ahead with his State of the Union address scheduled for Feb. 24 despite alarm bells ringing among GOP insiders over the timing, as the speech lands smack in the middle of an expected partial government shutdown.

Behind closed doors, nervous Republicans quietly sweat the optics, Politico reported Friday.

The campaign communications chief for Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) launched an explosive allegation that primary rival Rep. Wesley Hunt illegally voted in 2016, and the post may have landed the Cornyn campaign in hot water.

The allegation, brought by staffer Matt Mackowiak, was that Hunt lied to election officials in a sworn statement on a provisional ballot in 2016 about the date of his discharge from military service, so that he could cast a vote in an election he was not registered for.

Mental health experts are aghast at the training Social Security Administration workers are receiving from the Trump administration on how to handle suicidal callers.

According to Government Executive, "SSA recently began shifting new swaths of its workforce to phone answering duty, including those who normally receive and process retirement and disability claims, manage the agency’s technology and work in the agency's finances unit. Those employees received brief, three-hour training before they began answering calls. As part of that training, they were warned some callers may express suicidal ideation and presented with examples using a theoretical employee named Fiona."

TMZ founder Harvey Levin said a third email to his outlet contains a striking warning that investigators may need to look beyond the United States to find Nancy Guthrie.

Levin said the email’s author – a man claiming to know the identity and location of the kidnapper – wrote that authorities should “be prepared to go international.”

Social media users reacted with shock and concern Friday after Rep. Thomas Massie posted a startling message declaring, “I am not suicidal,” amid an escalating public feud with conservative media figures.

The post – in which Massie referenced his health, vehicle brakes, and swimming ability – quickly drew stunned reactions, including from allies who defended him.

A mystery tipster has once again emailed news outlets demanding $100,000 in bitcoin in exchange for the identification of the kidnapper in the Nancy Guthrie case.

An anonymous emailer reached out to TMZ again on Friday, claiming to know the identity of Guthrie's abductor, this time raising the stakes.

A simmering President Donald Trump privately fumed over the weekend at Mar-a-Lago at Republicans who dared to criticize his social media post sharing a racist video about the Obamas, according to a new report Friday.

After refusing to apologize, Trump spent days stewing and plotting payback against GOP allies who spoke out, CNN's Alayna Treene reported.

Former Donald Trump attorney Ty Cobb expressed his astonishment on MS NOW's "The Beat" Friday evening about how badly the Trump administration's Justice Department is bungling the legal cases against the president's political enemies and critics.

"I'll put those faces right back up here, Mr. Cobb, because between the last time you and I spoke and now about a week, we've got those six new lawmakers, most of whom are veterans or intelligence veterans of some kind, and they tried to charge them this week. They just failed," said anchor Ari Melber. "How do you look at that in concert with [former CNN journalist Don] Lemon as a defendant and these other individuals?"