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On Tuesday’s Squawk Box appearance, Sen. Bill Cassidy let the cat out of the bag with a Freudian slip, admitting DOGE is looking to cut Medicare benefits to help pay for Trump’s massive tax cuts.

QUICK: So which of those things would you take out and say this is not going to be allowed or accepted or how do you make how do you pay for all of those things that are in it?

CASSIDY: President has said, for example, that he doesn’t want to touch Medicare and Medicaid.

What he means is not don’t go after things which was inappropriate spending. He’s saying don’t cut benefits to beneficiaries.

And so anyone who thinks that we can’t find savings in the federal government I mean, the federal government’s got savings all over the place.

And so if we can’t go to the federal government, say we can do something more efficient than might you just not looking DOGE, which has some excesses, but some of what those is doing is quite on point is an example of taking three agencies with similar functions and trying to combine them to one agency that that kind of spans the breadth saving the taxpayer lots of money.

Let’s bring that approach not to just what DOJ is doing discretionary spending, but let’s look at Medicare. Is there some way that we can cut Medicare so that it’s — excuse me — reform Medicare so that benefits stay the same, but that is less expensive, more efficient?

I would say that there is. And that’s where our opportunity lies.

Busted!

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It looks like Signalgate has expanded and now includes Gmailgate. Or Emailgate. Why, you ask? Because it is being reported by the Washington Post that new reporting shows that “members of President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, including White House national security adviser Michael Waltz, have conducted government business over personal Gmail accounts.”

GMAIL.

Google Mail.

A nonsecure account that only requires a short password.

Not 2FA. Not an authenticator app. NOTHING. Just a password.

Gmail is even LESS secure than Signal.

The Post reports that a “senior Waltz aide used the commercial email service for highly technical conversations with colleagues at other government agencies involving sensitive military positions and powerful weapons systems relating to an ongoing conflict,” and used his Gmail account for these communications.

Officials said that Waltz only had “less sensitive, but potentially exploitable information sent to his Gmail, such as his schedule and other work documents.” I mean, adversaries would love to know the schedule of the head of NSA. You know, if they wanted to harm him or intercept his calls or honeytrap him.

Just a reminder that the thing that SANK Hillary Clinton’s campaign was the constant reminder (and lies) about her using an insecure server and sending classified docs over email (which she did not).

In this case, IT IS ACTUALLY TRUE.

In addition to the Houthi Chat Group over Signal, reports also came out that Waltz
“created and hosted other Signal chats with Cabinet members on sensitive topics, including on Somalia and Russia’s war in Ukraine, said a senior administration official.”

Oh, more usage of Signal for classified discussions about national security matters. Perfect.

What is next? Passing notes in Starbucks? Conversations on speakerphone while walking around Whole Foods? I mean, how much worse can it get? Wait, don’t answer that.

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Former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra announced Wednesday that he is running for governor, joining a crowded field of Democrats hoping to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Becerra said he had been pondering running for some time and decided to jump into the race because of his experience fighting President Trump and managing disasters, two traits he believes are crucial for the state’s next leader.

“Watching what’s unfolding before our eyes made it clear this is not a time to sit on the sidelines,” Becerra said in an interview.

He said his experience dealing with natural disasters, notably the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, makes him uniquely suited to navigate the man-made disasters created by Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, a top advisor to the president, as they indiscriminately slash essential federal government agencies and services.

“Americans are being punished,” he said, “whether it’s the cancer patients who are no longer going to see that fruitful research completed, whether it is the seniors who live in nursing homes who will not have the inspectors coming by to investigate elder abuse, or whether it’s seeing lead in the toys that our children buy and put in their mouths.”

He said he believes California is at a tipping point, and — in an apparent swipe at the state’s Democratic leadership — needs sensible executive leadership that draws businesses back and makes it easier for wildfire victims in areas such as Pacific Palisades and Altadena to rebuild. Although protecting the environment must remain a priority, laws such as the California Environmental Quality Act, the power of the Coastal Commission and the state’s regulations should be open to review, Becerra said.

The looming question in the race is whether former Vice President Kamala Harris decides to run, a decision she is not expected to make until the summer. If she does enter the contest, the move is expected to winnow the field because of her national profile, fundraising ability and her multiple successful statewide campaigns.

Becerra said he would remain in the race if Harris runs.

Other announced candidates include the following Democrats: Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, state Controller Betty Yee, state schools chief Tony Thurmond, former Rep. Katie Porter, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, former state Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins and businessman Stephen Cloobeck. Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco is also running.

Becerra joins another prominent Latino, Villlaraigosa, in a race in which the Latino vote could be crucial. Becerra said he believes his credentials and experience speak for themselves.

“I feel very comfortable knowing who I am, what I’ve done, what I can tell people I did, what I built, how I protected, how we achieved,” he said. “It’s one of those things where you try to give people a choice. That’s what elections are about.”

Becerra, 67, has been in public office for 35 years. He served in the state Assembly for two years before being elected in 1992 to Congress. He ultimately served 12 terms in the House and held multiple leadership positions under former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco).

In 2016, he was nominated by then-Gov. Jerry Brown to become the state’s attorney general, a traditional springboard to higher office, after Harris was elected to the U.S. Senate. During his tenure as the state’s top prosecutor, he filed more than 120 lawsuits against Trump during the president’s first term. Trump is expected to be a major focus of the governor’s race in a state that is once again expected to be a leading force in efforts to fight the Trump administration.

“I’ve seen this B-rated movie before, and we’re ready to take it on,” he said.

Becerra, who was the first Health and Human Services secretary to visit a Planned Parenthood clinic, pointed to the administration’s work to push back on Trump administration policies, such as those about reproductive care, during his tenure in the Cabinet. The Biden administration, he noted, went to the Supreme Court to protect access to mifepristone, one of two drugs used to medically end pregnancy.

“We’ve clearly played strong defense,” he said in an interview earlier this year in the formal conference room outside his office days before Trump was inaugurated.

Becerra took the oath of office in March 2021 to lead the sprawling Health and Human Services bureaucracy of 95,000 people, at a time when COVID was a top concern. He said one of his agency’s top accomplishments was getting 700 million COVID vaccination shots into the arms of Americans.

He also highlighted the launch of the 988 hotline that provides round-the-clock suicide and crisis counseling as well as providing more than 300 million people access to healthcare, with 46 million Americans getting health insurance coverage because of the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare.

But Becerra also faced criticism as secretary over his handling of issues including the monkeypox outbreak, including from members of the Biden administration who argued that he lacked urgency and sought to offload responsibility to the states, according to reports published by the New York Times, Washington Post and others. He defended his response, arguing that his department was ahead of the curve in distributing monkeypox vaccines across the nation, and that state and local jurisdictions ultimately made decisions about how they were distributed.

“We can’t control how the states and local jurisdictions distributed the vaccine, but we made sure they got it,” he said.

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WASHINGTON — Markets and foreign capitals have braced themselves for a broad set of tariffs from President Trump on Wednesday, anxious for details on a dramatic shift in U.S. trade policy that is expected to supercharge the costs of cars, houses and everyday goods for Americans.

It is unclear whether the Trump administration plans to impose a universal, baseline rate for import taxes on trading partners, or to customize tariff policy to each foreign nation, imposing “reciprocal” rates on a case-by-case basis. It is also unclear whether there will be any exceptions. A White House official told The Times that exact details of the plan are “still being perfected.”

The lack of clarity has rattled markets in recent weeks, driving the worst first annual quarter in three years and erasing gains on the Standard & Poor’s 500 index made since Trump’s election victory in November.

The White House said Trump would announce his plans at 1 p.m. Pacific time on Wednesday, precisely when closing bells ring on Wall Street.

After that, the new policy will be “effective immediately,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at a Tuesday news briefing.

Costs could rise immediately on perishable goods caught in limbo at international ports, including avocados and pineapples, said Sung Won Sohn, a former commissioner at the Port of Los Angeles. Prices on larger items with dwindling inventories, such as foreign cars and washing machines, are likely to rise within weeks.

For Los Angeles, in particular, the tariffs are “coming at a very bad time,” Sohn said. “We’re in kind of bad shape, because you need a lot of lumber to rebuild from the fires, and the construction hasn’t started yet. It’ll probably start in three to four months, and that’s exactly when we’re going to be hit by higher prices for lumber.”

Top European Union leaders have alluded to potent retaliation that could extend beyond American whiskey and hit directly at Silicon Valley, core to the U.S. and Californian economy. And California’s agricultural economy — the nation’s largest — could become a target as well.

Retaliatory tariffs are expected to come from nations across the world affected by the new rates, risking further response from the Trump administration, thus prompting a spiral into a trade war with few winners.

Leaders in Canada, the second largest U.S. trading partner, have said Ottawa will react swiftly to any new tariff actions. But Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum suggested Tuesday that her administration will not retaliate immediately if Washington slaps new taxes on Mexican imports.

“We don’t believe in an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, because that always leads to a bad situation,” Sheinbaum told journalists at her daily news conference.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum addresses supporters at a March 9, 2025, rally at the Zocalo, Mexico City’s main square.

(Eduardo Verdugo / Associated Press)

Instead, she called for further negotiations with the U.S., even while acknowledging that she has no plans to speak to Trump in the coming days.

“The dialogue must continue,” Sheinbaum said. “It’s not a matter of ‘You put that, so I’ll put that,’ but rather what’s best for Mexico.”

‘Shorter-term pain’

Trump’s advisors say the new policy will bring about an overdue correction, returning fair trade practices, ultimately raising significant revenue for the federal government and bringing back manufacturing to U.S. shores.

It is, in many ways, the culmination of a years-long campaign by Trump to increase tariffs going back to the 1980s, when as a real estate developer and celebrity, he accused Japan and China of “laughing at” and “ripping off” the United States.

In his address to a joint session of Congress on March 4, Trump complained that countries across the globe place tariffs on U.S.-made goods. “On average, the European Union, China, Brazil, India, Mexico, and Canada — have you heard of them? — and countless other nations charge us tremendously higher tariffs than we charge them. It’s very unfair,” he said.

In his first term, Trump negotiated a detailed trade deal, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, that replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement and governed trade practices among the United States and its closest trading partners.

Susano Cordoba sells peanuts to truck drivers lining up in Tijuana to cross the border into the United States on March 4, 2025.

(Gregory Bull / Associated Press)

But since resuming office in January, Trump has repeatedly threatened new rounds of tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods, often retreating from his plans at the last moment.

The “on-again, off-again” threat of tariffs have contributed to the instability jolting stock markets, which closed on Tuesday slightly up after a day of volatile trading.

Allies of the White House have acknowledged that short-term “pain” can be expected for U.S. households in the wake of the new policy implementation, which Trump has referred to as “Liberation Day.”

“There’s absolutely going to be short-term pain,” Republican Sen. Tim Sheehy of Montana told CNN on Monday. “The president’s been clear about that. Everyone has.”

“If you’re going to remodel your house to make it better in the end, it’s going to be really annoying in the short term, when your house is getting remodeled and there’s drywall dust everywhere and there’s workers in your living room,” Sheehy added. “The reality is that remodel’s got to happen in order to make things stronger and more stable in the back end.”

Already, American consumers have begun to cut back on their spending and boost their savings. A Friday report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, a government agency, showed that the personal savings rate rose 4.6% in February. Consumer spending increased just .4%, after decreasing by .3% in January.

Leavitt added Tuesday that many countries have been calling the president, asking for relief from the anticipated tariffs. She said the president is open to taking their calls.

“It’s simple: If you make your product in America, you will pay no tariffs,” Leavitt said.

It is unclear how the administration will measure the success of the new tariffs. Leavitt called the stock market, which has experienced volatility in recent weeks over tariff turmoil, a “snapshot in time.” The White House has repeatedly pointed to companies that have newly invested in the U.S. since Trump took office as evidence of tariffs working.

A pause on other 25% tariffs against Canada and Mexico is also set to expire Tuesday, and the White House would not confirm whether it would be lifted.

Trump’s announcement comes the same day that 25% tariffs were set to take effect on auto imports at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday.

Times staff writer Kate Linthicum in Mexico City contributed to this report.

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The law firm that employs Doug Emhoff, husband of former Vice President Kamala Harris, is the latest to strike a deal with the Trump administration and agree to conform with the president’s policies.

On Tuesday, Trump announced that Willkie Farr & Gallagher, which Emhoff joined as a partner in January, agreed to provide at least $100 million in pro bono legal work during President Trump’s time in the White House and beyond. The president said the services will be dedicated to helping veterans, Gold Star families, law enforcement members and first responders.

Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform, that the firm agreed to combat antisemitism and not engage in “DEI” efforts.

“Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP proactively reached out to President Trump and his Administration, offering their decisive commitment to ending the Weaponization of the Justice System and the Legal Profession,” the White House said in a statement. “The President is delivering on his promises of eradicating Partisan Lawfare in America, and restoring Liberty and Justice FOR ALL.”

Emhoff told his law firm’s leadership that he disagreed with making a deal with Trump, according to a source familiar with the conversations who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Harris and Emhoff did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday

Trump’s agreement with Emhoff’s firm is the latest in a stretch of deal-making between the White House and major American law firms the president has accused of liberal bias, frivolous or fraudulent litigation or other malpractice.

The president’s efforts have raised widespread alarm among Democratic elected officials as well as constitutional and campaign attorneys about their impact on the separation of powers embedded in the United States Constitution and the independence of the judiciary.

“The actions against law firms are blatantly illegal. Capitulating just encourages going after more law firms,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley Law, who tried to rally other law school deans to speak out with him against the White House’s targeting of individual law firms, with limited success. “The best hope was their sticking together and fighting the illegal, retributive orders.”

The head of Emhoff’s firm — which has 1,200 employees across six countries — confirmed the agreement, according to Trump’s post.

“The substance of that agreement is consistent with our Firm’s views on access to Legal representation by clients, including pro bono clients, our commitment to complying with the Law as it relates to our employment practices, and our history of working with clients across a wide spectrum of political viewpoints,” said Thomas M. Cerabino, the chairman of firm, according to Trump’s post.

Emhoff, 60, has worked as an entertainment, media and intellectual property attorney, and was hired to help advise corporations, entities and people in the midst of crisis or dealing with shifting legal ground, according to the firm’s announcement when he was brought on board in January.

Cerabino said at the time that Emhoff was “a trusted counselor to many global business leaders across a broad range of industries.”

Shortly before Trump announced the agreement on social media Tuesday, Emhoff spoke to Georgetown Law School students.

“The rule of law is under attack. Democracy is under attack. And so, all of us lawyers need to do what we can to push back on that,” he said. “Us lawyers have always been on the front lines, fighting for civil rights, for justice. … I love being a lawyer, this is what we do: We fight for people. We fight for what’s right.”

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Trump has attacked major law firms for employing attorneys who have participated in cases against him and his allies in the past, including supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He has also targeted them for promoting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, including in hiring, and for allegedly showing a liberal political bias in selecting pro bono clients.

Trump issued a presidential memorandum threatening all law firms with sanctions, revoked security clearances and other punishments if his administration determines that they have improperly sued the federal government.

Several firms have struck deals to preempt or avoid further reprisal, while others have sued, alleging they are being unlawfully targeted for retribution.

The firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison agreed to contribute $40 million in legal services to causes Trump has championed and to represent clients regardless of political affiliation. The firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom agreed to provide more than $100 million in free services for Trump-backed initiatives.

Leaders of those firms have defended the deals, arguing the work promised as part of them serve the interests of the firms.

Several other firms have sued the administration over its attacks.

“For more than 100 years, Jenner has stood firm and tirelessly advocated for our clients against all adversaries, including against unlawful government action. We once again go to court to do just that,” the firm Jenner & Block wrote in a recent statement about its decision to litigate. “To do otherwise would mean compromising our ability to zealously advocate for all of our clients and capitulating to unconstitutional government coercion, which is simply not in our DNA.”

The firm WilmerHale hired the prominent conservative attorney Paul Clement to handle its case.

Many in the legal world, including prominent academics, have balked at the agreements that law firms have struck with the Trump administration, worrying that they represent a major threat to the legal profession and the core tenet of American law, that everyone deserves representation from competent counsel in court — whether or not a political ally resides in the White House.

“The way the system of justice is supposed to work is that everyone has a right to counsel and you don’t get punished for representing people who are politically unpopular,” said a veteran Washington, D.C., campaign lawyer, who requested anonymity to speak candidly because they feared retaliation. “It’s a chink out of our system of government to villainize law firms like this.”

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Conservative cable news channel Newsmax is getting a Trump bump on Wall Street.

The Boca Raton, Fla., outlet‘s stock price surged after its initial public offering Monday. Shares offered at $10 closed at $233 a share Tuesday afternoon, giving the company a market valuation of over $20 billion.

Newsmax itself tracked the stock’s movement onscreen throughout the day.

The Newsmax performance is surprising, considering the company — whose business is pure-cable play — has scant revenue from pay TV operators, according to analysts. (Chris Ruddy, Newsmax founder and chief executive, told CNBC Monday that the network is getting carriage fees).

Newmax has no blue chip advertisers, making it largely dependent on direct-to-consumer marketers, many of whom sell Trump-related products. The commercials that air on Newsmax often have conservative TV personalities as spokespeople.

The IPO comes at a time when the traditional cable business is eroding, as consumers are bypassing pay TV subscriptions. A 10-K filing ahead of the public offering warned that “changes in consumer behavior and evolving technologies and distribution platforms may adversely affect the company’s business, financial condition and results of operations.”

The company does offer a direct-to-consumer digital product, Newsmax+, which subscribers can use to stream the network’s programming for $4.99 a month.

The early performance of the stock is likely being driven by President Trump’s enthusiastic supporters, who are super-served by Newsmax commentators providing a positive narrative for the White House throughout the day. Newsmax touted the IPO in its programming.

Wall Street saw similar movement with Trump Media Technology Group, the president’s social media venture that owns Truth Social, which traded as high as $100 a few months after its IPO in 2022 but then fell dramatically. The stock rose again during his 2024 presidential campaign. It’s now trading at around $20.

Newsmax had a brief period in 2020 and early 2021 when its ratings surged to all-time highs as it attracted conservative viewers despondent over Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Many Trump supporters were angry with Fox News after it correctly called the state of Arizona for Biden several days before its rivals. Newsmax waited weeks before calling Biden the president-elect.

Fox News eventually bounced back and currently has 70% of the audience for cable news, its most dominant share ever, according to Nielsen.

Newsmax‘s audience grew last year and the company touts its position as the fourth most-watched cable news channel behind Fox News, MSNBC and CNN. In the first quarter of 2025, Newsmax averaged 305,000 viewers in prime time according to Nielsen, ranking 18th among all cable networks.

The network lost $72 million in 2024, despite an increase in revenue. Last year, Newsmax paid $40 million to voting software company Smartmatic to settle a defamation lawsuit. Smartmatic was also given an option to buy shares in the company.

Smartmatic’s suit said Newsmax provided a platform for its hosts, Trump and his attorneys and allies to falsely claim that the company’s software was manipulated to deliver the election for Biden.

Newsmax is facing a similar $1.6 billion lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion reached a $787.5 million settlement with Fox News in 2023 after it sued over the network’s presentation of Trump’s false claims.

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Amber Ruffin isn’t going to perform for the White House Correspondents’ Assn.’s dinner later this month after the group’s board decided unanimously to un-invite her as its featured entertainer.

WHCA President Eugene Daniels — who recently joined MSNBC as a weekend host — said in a Saturday email to members that the organization’s board had unanimously decided to lose the comedian and refocus the event on journalistic excellence rather than “the politics of division,” Politico reported.

He didn’t mention that Ruffin said on a podcast last week that the Trump administration was “kind of a bunch of murderers” who wanted the “false equivalency that the media does” because it “makes them feel like human beings, but they shouldn’t get to feel that way, because they’re not” — and that there was “no way” she was going to mock both parties at the dinner. Or that Trump’s deputy chief of staff had called out the organization Friday for featuring a “2nd rate comedian” at the dinner and the next day referred to Ruffin as a “garbage, hate-filled comedian.”

To comment on events — sort of — Ruffin popped up Monday on “Late Night With Seth Meyers,” the show where she’s worked as a writer and performer since 2014.

Meyers was talking about a supposed robbery at a bodega when the comedian materialized on set, saying, “Honestly, I’m concerned with how you’re going to end that joke.”

“Obviously, I’m going to make a punchline to make fun of the guy who robbed the bodega,” the host replied.

“See, Seth, the problem is, that’s divisive,” Ruffin said with sarcasm. “Take it from me. If there’s one thing I learned from this weekend, it’s you have to be fair to both sides.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t make sense in this case,” Meyers said, playing the straight man. “There’s an innocent bodega owner. There’s a burglar.”

“Or — hear me out — there are very fine people on both sides,” she said. The audience laughed as she invoked comments made by President Trump when he was asked in 2017 about violence around the tearing down of a Confederate statue in Charlottesville, N.C. Demonstrations for and against the removal of the statue had happened amid a far-right rally organized by white nationalists.

Not mentioned, perhaps because Ruffin is in the business of jokes, was the part where Trump also said, “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, OK?”

Back on the late-night show, Meyers and Ruffin went back and forth. “Yeah, but he shattered the front door of a bodega,” Meyers said.

“Did he?” Ruffin replied. “Or did he provide an innovative ventilation system?”

Stealing from the till? “He received a micro-loan.” Setting fire to the ATM? “He bravely fought inflation.”

Finally, Meyers said, “Amber, when people are objectively terrible, we should be able to point that out on television.”

“I thought that too,” she said. “On Friday. But today is Monday. And Monday’s Amber Ruffin knows that when bad people do bad things, you have to treat them fairly and respectfully. When you’re watching ‘The Sound of Music,’ you have to root for the singing children and the other people.”

“You mean the Nazis?” Meyers asked.

“Calling them that is so one-sided!” she answered.

The exchange continued apace with Ruffin ultimately saying that she was glad she had been stopped from making her speech at the dinner, because “Ooh baby, I would have been so terrifically mean.”

Then Ruffin said she had to run because she had to return the dress she planned to wear to the correspondents dinner.

“I already took the tags off,” she said, “but I’m gonna just say they blew off in the wind.”

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When the White House fired a federal prosecutor last week in Los Angeles, it could’ve been dismissed as an isolated case, with the administration targeting a one-time Democratic congressional candidate who had slammed President Trump on the campaign trail.

But in the days since, it’s become clear the dismissal is part of a broader campaign against Trump’s perceived enemies that has roiled the Justice Department and some of the nation’s highest-powered law firms.

Last Friday, the White House terminated Adam Schleifer, an assistant U.S. attorney on the corporate and securities fraud strike force who had been leading an investigation into a pro-Trump business executive. After The Times reported on the matter, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a statement that said the Justice Department had eliminated at least 50 U.S. attorneys and deputies nationwide in the past few weeks.

“The American people deserve a judicial branch full of honest arbiters of the law who want to protect democracy, not subvert it,” Leavitt said.

Leavitt did not explain how those fired were allegedly subverting democracy, and White House officials didn’t respond to requests for more information.

Trump has authority over federal prosecutors because U.S. attorney’s offices are part of the Department of Justice, which falls under the executive branch, not the judicial branch. While it is normal for U.S. attorneys, who are political appointees, to resign or be forced out when a new administration takes power, several lawyers said line prosecutors like Schleifer are career employees who can only be terminated for poor performance or misconduct.

By firing an individual prosecutor with an email that sources said was “on behalf of President Donald J. Trump,” the White House took a norm-shattering step that might be illegal and could cripple the independence of individual prosecutors throughout the Department of Justice if repeated, according to several current and former prosecutors. The sources familiar with Schleifer’s firing, along with several others who spoke to The Times, requested anonymity citing concerns about backlash.

The White House and U.S. Department of Justice have not said exactly why Schleifer was fired. Both Schleifer and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles declined to comment.

Multiple federal law enforcement sources said they suspect Schleifer’s firing was tied to critical comments he made about Trump during his congressional campaign and his prosecution of a fast-food CEO who donated roughly $40,000 to Trump and Republican causes in recent years.

Connie Woodhead, a 30-year veteran of the Department of Justice and former first assistant U.S. attorney in the office where Schleifer worked, called the circumstances of his departure “unprecedented.”

“I think it’s extremely chilling… especially without further explanation, for any assistant U.S. attorney charging anyone who might be a friend of the [Trump] administration, or a donor to the administration,” she said.

Trump’s team has made no secret of his intention to rid the government of employees who have challenged the president or his allies and their interests. An hour before Schleifer was fired, Laura Loomer, who has at times served as an advisor to Trump, began calling for his ouster on social media. Loomer later celebrated the firing on X on Saturday, stating that “Biden holdovers who openly express bias against President Trump” should all be fired.

The job of assistant U.S. attorney is not typically glamorous, involving the mundane but crucial legal grunt work of prosecuting all manner of federal crimes, ranging from white-collar scams to international narcotics conspiracies and public corruption. It has been a career launching point for many prominent legal figures, with major law firms frequently poaching the top talent. Retaining the best prosecutors, whose casework is largely apolitical, has been a longstanding challenge for the government.

Several former federal prosecutors said the firing of an assistant U.S. attorney would normally be a laborious process that involves the employee’s supervisor and higher-ups at their district office. A prosecutor might be put on a “performance improvement plan,” for instance, before termination was even considered.

“Career prosecutors who are past their probationary status have public service protections. That ordinarily means that before one of them could get fired, there would be a long, well-documented process,” said Carley Palmer, a former supervisor in the federal prosecutor’s office in Los Angeles who is now a partner at Halpern May Ybarra Gelberg LLP. “To fire someone who is past their probationary period is hard to do.”

Multiple sources told The Times over the weekend that Joseph T. McNally, the acting U.S. attorney for Los Angeles, was not involved in the decision to terminate Schleifer. The sources, who were not authorized publicly and feared reprisals, suspected Schleifer’s firing was motivated, in part, by a case he was assigned involving Andrew Wiederhorn, former chief executive of the company that owns fast-food chains Fatburger and Johnny Rockets.

A grand jury indicted Wiederhorn last May on charges that he hid taxable income from the federal government by disbursing “shareholder loans” from the company to himself and his family, money which was then used for personal gain. He has pleaded not guilty.

Wiederhorn’s lawyers have aggressively pushed Justice Department officials to drop the case, according to two sources. The case against Wiederhorn, who donated approximately $40,000 to Trump’s political action committees and the Republican National Committee in the last two years, is still pending in federal court. The defense team did not respond to a request for comment following Schleifer’s dismissal.

Beyond the Wiederhorn case, there are also concerns that Schleifer was targeted for political reasons. Schleifer made several unflattering remarks about Trump when he ran for an open congressional seat in New York’s 17th District in 2020. In one 2020 tweet, Schleifer accused Trump of eroding constitutional integrity “every day with every lie and every act of heedless, narcissistic corruption.”

One of Schleifer’s former colleagues said that despite his political ambitions outside the office, he focused only on the law when he came to work.

“He is very smart. He’s hardworking. And he is impartial. He judges cases based on the evidence,” Woodhead said. “He was apolitical in the office.”

Schleifer left his post during his 2020 political campaign but was hired back to the office ahead of Biden’s inauguration in 2021 by former U.S. Atty. Nicola Hanna, a Trump appointee. Hanna is now part of Wiederhorn’s defense team. None of Wiederhorn’s attorneys have responded to requests for comment from The Times.

Schleifer’s firing appears to be just the latest case roiling the Justice Department.

Reagan Fondren, the acting U.S. attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, was also fired recently in a one-line email from the White House, according to the Daily Memphian. Fondren could not immediately be reached for comment.

Adam Cohen, director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, wrote last month on LinkedIn that he was abruptly fired after more than 26 years pursuing “old school mobsters, street gang members, cartel bosses, terrorists” and others for the Justice Department in Washington.

“Putting bad guys in jail was as apolitical as it gets,” Cohen wrote. “I served under five Presidents and 11 Attorneys General… my personal politics were never relevant.”

In January, more than a dozen prosecutors were fired after working on criminal cases against Trump. That included Gregory Bernstein, who worked in the Major Frauds Section of the U.S. attorney’s office in L.A.

Bernstein had previously aided special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into allegations that Trump mishandled classified documents after leaving office and fostered an insurrection with lies about the results of the 2020 election. Bernstein declined an interview request.

The special counsel prosecutors each received a letter from the Justice Department stating that given their “significant role” in prosecuting Trump, “I do not believe that the leadership of the Department can trust you to assist in implementing the President’s agenda faithfully.”

Those attorneys have since retained counsel and challenged the legality of the firings through an appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board, which bills itself as an independent, quasi-judicial agency in the executive branch. Palmer said if the board doesn’t overturn Schleifer and Bernstein’s firings, they will likely have to sue in federal court to get their jobs back.

Jack Smith was among hundreds of former Justice Department lawyers who signed a February open letter to career federal prosecutors that expressed “alarm” over recent actions by the department’s leadership. The letter followed the Justice Department’s order to dismiss corruption charges against Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, despite high-level prosecutors from both ends of the political spectrum resigning in protest of that order.

“We were taught to pursue justice without fear or favor, and knew our decisions to investigate and charge should be based only on the facts and the law,” the letter stated. “We knew these values were more than just requirements in a manual — they were foundational to a fair and just legal system. And we upheld them no matter who was President.”

Current and former federal prosecutors have raised concerns over the ability of fired federal prosecutors to find work in the private sector after Trump issued several executive orders targeting firms who had ties to some of his political enemies, including ex-special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and Hillary Clinton, his opponent in the 2016 election.

Although district court judges have ruled some of the Trump orders targeting law firms are likely unconstitutional, some firms have sought to appease him.

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP — which has a partner that once tried to build a criminal case against Trump while working at the Manhattan district attorney’s office — agreed to contribute $40 million in legal services to causes Trump supports, including “the President’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, and other mutually agreed projects.”

The firm, which reportedly employs about 2,000 people, also agreed to audit its hiring practices and pledged to “not adopt, use, or pursue any DEI policies.”

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California and a coalition of other states sued the Trump administration Tuesday over its plans to cut billions of dollars in federal public health grants designed to make states more resilient to infectious disease, and accused the administration of overreaching its authority by clawing back funding already allocated by Congress.

The pullback in funding is a devastating hit to local health departments, many of whom are dealing with large and novel outbreaks ranging from COVID-19 to bird flu and measles. Agencies in California alone stand to lose nearly $1 billion.

“Congress explicitly authorized funding for the grants at issue to help keep our country healthy and protect us from future pandemics,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said, and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “cannot unilaterally do away with that critical federal funding.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month notified health agencies in all 50 states — including the California Department of Public Health — that it was suspending more than $11 billion in grants it had previously provided to support state infectious disease responses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the pandemic has subsided, the states have continued using the funding for a range of infectious disease initiatives.

The lawsuit, filed against Kennedy and the Health and Human Services Department in federal court in Rhode Island by California, 23 other states and the District of Columbia, is the latest in a string of litigation filed by Democratic-led states against the administration amid a wave of policy enactments and other funding cuts that Trump has attempted to initiate through executive orders and other White House dictates since taking office in January.

Several of the states’ prior lawsuits have also alleged that Trump is illegally seizing funding powers that belong to Congress, and not to the executive branch. Tuesday’s lawsuit alleges the Trump administration is in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, and seeks a temporary restraining order that would immediately restore the public health funding to its previously allocated levels.

Bonta’s office said the cuts — which include $972 million in funds for California — would cause “irreparable harm” to the states if allowed to stand.

It said the California Department of Public Health would lose $800 million that it planned to use in part to vaccinate 4.5 million children and improve logistical preparation for directing sick and injured patients from hospitals to other available health facilities during emergencies.

The office said the California Department of Health Care Services would lose $119 million that it intended to use for substance use prevention and other early intervention health services for youth across the state. It also said the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health would lose $45 million that it intended to use in part to prevent the spread of measles and bird flu.

A spokeswoman for the county said the funding cuts would eliminate staff that work to mitigate disease spread in homeless shelters, schools, jails and worksites; curtail work by the county mobile infectious disease team to provide vaccines and other healthcare to homebound residents, seniors at housing developments, senior centers and others confined to living facilities; and forestall upgrades to county data systems and other infrastructure needed to track infectious diseases and share timely outbreak information with the public.

Some of those system upgrades are already underway, meaning cutting the funding now will waste past investments, in addition to increasing the likelihood of system failures during emergencies, the spokeswoman said.

The CDC funding cuts are part of a much larger effort by the Trump administration and Trump’s “efficiency” advisor Elon Musk to radically reduce federal spending, in part to pay for tax cuts that critics allege will disproportionately benefit the rich.

Musk, the world’s richest man, and his Department of Government Efficiency, which is not a real government department, have been granted access to sensitive government facilities, computer networks and other data and have been empowered to slash away at government budgets — which California is also suing over.

The CDC cuts are not the first to public health. Kennedy also has announced plans to reduce the health department workforce by some 20,000 employees, and the Trump administration reportedly intends to close various Health and Human Services buildings — including in California.

On Tuesday, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) issued a statement denouncing what she called a “reported decision to close” a Health and Human Services regional office in San Francisco by Kennedy, whom she called “the Trump administration’s leading vaccine denialist” — a nod to his past adoption of vaccine pseudoscience that medical experts have widely rejected and criticized.

“By closing our regional office, the Trump Administration would choose to put the health and safety of Bay Area residents and all Californians in jeopardy, gut vital public health initiatives like the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, and potentially axe hundreds of career civil servant jobs held by hardworking Californians,” Pelosi said.

She said Kennedy’s “extreme views on public health are out of step with the vast majority of the American people,” that the “shortsighted” closure would “directly harm our most vulnerable communities and make America sicker,” and that she and others would be fighting the closure and other cuts to public health.

Tuesday’s lawsuit is the ninth that Bonta’s office has filed against the current Trump administration. It has also filed its support for litigants against the administration in at least a half-dozen other cases.

California has been ground zero for the H5N1 bird flu since last March. Thirty-eight people in the state have been infected with the virus, most of them dairy workers who were exposed while working with infected cows or milk. However, two of the people were children; the cause of their infection has not been determined. The virus has also infected 758 dairy herds — or more than 75% of the state’s total dairy herds.

There have been eight measles cases in California since the beginning of the year, in addition to thousands of seasonal flu, COVID-19, norovirus and other respiratory virus cases.

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I see many articles claiming Tuesday’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election is a referendum on the MAGA cult and Donald Trump, but they downplay the obvious. Will the public allow the richest man in the world and his wealth to determine US elections?

The AP: “Majority control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court will be decided Tuesday in a race that broke records for spending and has become a proxy battle for the nation’s political fights, pitting a candidate backed by President Donald Trump against a Democratic-aligned challenger.”

Washington Post: Wisconsin Supreme Court race is MAGA movement’s first test since Trump win

Early in any new presidential administration, the winner would likely have an advantage in this type of special election. Since Wisconsin is always very close, it would tip in Trump’s direction.

However, having Elon Musk hand out millions of dollars to people at his rallies and paying for incredible publicity is more about his effect on US Democracy. Yes, democrats have poured in heavy resources too, but not in the history of this country have we seen a man like Musk try and dictate how we live.

No individual has ever poured in $277 million to turn a presidential election to his preferred candidate like Musk did in 2024. The courts should rule this illegal electioneering and put a halt to it.

What Musk is doing is threatening all politicians that if they oppose his draconian DOGE operations, and plans to take over federal agencies for himself, he will spend millions to defeat them in upcoming elections.

Wisconsin, do not let that happen.