Trump fired Pam Bondi
In less than a month, Trump removed Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi. The shake-up has spurred the possibility that the president’s desire to project stability among his top appointees has passed, and more changes are coming in the near future.
I expect something in terms of the next several weeks, and the president is mulling both changes and reorganizations,” said a person directly familiar with Trump’s thinking, who added that they didn’t know who could be next.
Nothing, of course, is certain, and individuals who are in his favor may suddenly find themselves out, and vice versa.
It’s a stark departure from Trump’s previous term. Then, several high-level administration officials left during his first year in office, including Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price, national security adviser Michael Flynn and White House chief of staff Reince Priebus.
This time, some top administration officials have faced high-profile scandals or missteps, but Trump opted not to remove them.
“For the first year, they wanted to avoid the bad optics — the stuff that comes with high-level staff churn,” said a Trump ally, who, like others in this article, was granted anonymity to speak freely. “That is ending. He no longer seems to care about the perception issue.”
Among those who have been at the center of public controversies or missteps are Department of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, each of whom has received varying degrees of public backlash for personal scandal or decisions their agencies have made.
