Phelan is a businessman with no prior military service; he and his wife previously fundraised millions of dollars for Trump’s campaign before he was confirmed as Navy secretary in 2025.
“John will be a tremendous force for our Naval servicemembers, and a steadfast leader in advancing my America First vision,” Trump said at the time. “He will put the business of the US Navy above all else.”
(March 14, 2026)
As my big piece on Starmer last month revealed, even after Mandelson was appointed, Starmer never quizzed him about how to deal with Trump. All this exposes a Prime Minister with Olympic levels of detachment. It has been known for a while that he has little interest in politics but those who have worked with him have been genuinely surprised at his lack of interest in the detail of governing.
(…)
The book also reveals that the decision to sack Mandelson was taken by McSweeney, not Starmer. On the day the PM defended Mandelson in the Commons, McSweeney was in a secure basement conference room without his phone when two of Starmer’s closest aides – Paul Ovenden and Stuart Ingham – came to find him. Ingham told him: ‘We just can’t answer these questions.’
McSweeney’s response – ‘It’s unsustainable’ – was the moment the decision was effectively made.
He was later pushed on who had ordered him to look into getting Doyle a position, and who had ordered him not to tell the foreign secretary (which at the time was David Lammy).
Robbins said: “I don‘t know what the origin of the suggestion was, and I don‘t know who exactly was behind it or how serious it was.
“It was serious enough for the No 10 private office to ring up the head of the diplomatic service and ask for a forward look of available head of mission jobs, and that‘s the point at which I thought that I needed to lay down some markers.”
Testifying to MPs at parliament’s foreign affairs select committee on Tuesday, Olly Robbins said he had several conversations with No 10 about finding a role for Matthew Doyle, who was later suspended as a Labour peer after it emerged he had campaigned for a friend charged with possessing indecent images of children.
Robbins said he had been asked not to mention the idea to David Lammy, who was foreign secretary at the time.
Robbins described the conversations as part of more general pressure from people at the top of the government to place senior political figures in senior diplomatic posts.
(February 8, 2026)
With Morgan McSweeney’s enforced departure over the Mandelson scandal, his former deputies Vidhya Alakeson and Jill Cuthbertson have both been promoted to replace him as joints chiefs of staff
Asked who in No 10 had applied pressure, he said it was mainly the prime minister’s private office, which is staffed by civil servants. But he added: “I think that the private office would only have been [putting on] this pressure themselves if they were under pressure.”
The former top civil servant in Britain’s foreign office, who was fired by Prime Minister Keir Starmer last week, said on Tuesday that Mr. Starmer’s office had a “dismissive attitude” about the security vetting of Peter Mandelson, an associate of Jeffrey Epstein who became ambassador to the United States despite concerns raised during the vetting process.
The former civil servant, Olly Robbins, testified in Parliament that he and other officials in charge of deciding whether to grant Mr. Mandelson a high-level security clearance were working in “an atmosphere of pressure” to ensure that nothing got in the way of Mr. Mandelson’s appointment.
During the opposition years, his defenders countered that a stolid technocrat was exactly what the country needed. They sold the former head of the Crown Prosecution Service as the polar opposite of Boris Johnson, who was driven from Downing Street in part by Starmer’s own forensic questioning. If only Starmer had lived up to the billing of his detractors, reluctantly conceded by his allies, he wouldn’t be in the hole he finds himself this weekend.
Instead, he now has to rely on a defence that is lawyerly in the worst sense of that word. To have knowingly misled parliament is, in political terms, a capital crime. So the PM has to proceed on two tracks, one for “knowingly” the other for “misled”.
The BBC understands Sir Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper lost confidence in Sir Olly Robbins and was effectively sacked after a Guardian investigation revealed Mandelson had not been security cleared.
The PM is facing calls to resign amid claims he misled MPs when he told them „full due process“ had been followed.
Senior minister Darren Jones said Sir Keir had not been told of the vetting recommendation until Tuesday this week, had not misled MPs and would not be resigning.
(April 16, 2026)
„Es ist unverzeihlich, dass kein Minister, nicht einmal Downing Street, informiert wurde“, kommentierte Premierminister Keir Starmer. Doch Starmer selbst geriet ins Visier der Opposition, die seinen Rücktritt fordert. Der Chef von Downing Street scheint jedoch nicht zurücktreten zu wollen. „Er wird nicht zurücktreten“, versicherte Starmers engster Vertrauter, Darren Jones.
(Thu 16 Apr 2026 19.16 CEST)
In September, in a letter co-signed with foreign secretary Yvette Cooper, Robbins told MPs that “conducted to the usual standard set for developed vetting.
The Guardian understands that Robbins was told he had to resign after Starmer and Cooper lost confidence in the civil servant.
Mandelson’s failure to secure vetting approval has not previously been publicly revealed, despite intense scrutiny over his appointment and the release by the government of 147 pages of documents supposed to shed light on the case.
(April 2, 2026)
There are discussions about FBI Director Kash Patel, Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer leaving the Trump administration, the Atlantic reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with White House plans.
The timing is uncertain and President Donald Trump has not yet made up his mind, the Atlantic reported.
George found out in a phone call from Hegseth on Thursday while he was in a meeting, a second US official said. He later spoke to his staff in person about the announcement, and his staff was “very stoic” when receiving the news, the official said.
As the Army chief, George has worked closely with Army Secretary Dan Driscoll — a senior official close to the White House whom Hegseth has perceived as a threat and at times had a contentious relationship with.
Auf seiner Plattform Truth Social schrieb Trump, dass Vize-Justizminister Todd Blanche nun Bondis Aufgaben übernehmen werde. Blanche war früher Trumps persönlicher Anwalt. Bondi werde wiederum einen „wichtigen neuen Job in der Privatwirtschaft“ übernehmen, so der Republikaner. Details dazu nannte er nicht.
Donald Trump informed Pam Bondi that her days as attorney general were over during their car ride to the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
“I think it’s time,” Trump told Bondi, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The axe fell on the 54-year-old Homeland Security secretary almost immediately after her humiliating performance on Capitol Hill. Noem testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday and the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. They were her first congressional appearances since federal agents under her command killed two U.S. citizens, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, both 37, during Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis in January.
Already facing backlash for Good’s killing when Pretti was shot dead just a few days later, Noem sparked outrage by falsely describing Pretti as a domestic terrorist—and then privately trying to pin the blame for the fiasco on White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
“She was blaming Miller for a lot. No way Trump lets her stay after that,” the DHS insider said.
Das politische Genick brach Noem eine Anhörung vorgestern im Senat. Es ging um eine TV-Werbekampagne für die Arbeit ihres Ministeriums, bei der vor allem Noem zu sehen war, auf einem Pferd, zu Füßen des Mount Rushmore. Kostenpunkt der Werbung: 220 Millionen Dollar.
Noem has faced waves of criticism as she’s overseen Trump’s immigration crackdown, especially since the shooting deaths of the two protesters in Minneapolis at the hands of immigration enforcement officers. In the immediate aftermath of the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Noem portrayed both of them as aggressors, contradicting widely viewed videos and descriptions of their deaths from bystanders. She declined to apologize for her description over two days of Congressional testimony.
The former South Dakota governor was also criticized over the way her department has spent billions of dollars allocated to it by Congress.
(February 19, 2026)
In mid-2025, when the Trump administration suddenly felt compelled to downplay the Jeffrey Epstein files, officials said they didn’t have enough evidence to prompt any additional investigations of third parties.
The memo didn’t just say there wasn’t evidence to charge anyone else, mind you; it said there wasn’t even evidence to investigate “uncharged third parties.”
That broad assertion in an unsigned FBI memo has proved to be a rather rash conclusion — most recently and emphatically by Thursday’s arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince Andrew, in the UK.
Washington, DC — Representative Ro Khanna (CA-17), author of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, released the following statement on the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor:
„Even princes are not above the law. Rep. Thomas Massie and I forced the release of an email showing former Prince Andrew allegedly shared state information with Epstein. On February 9th, I called on King Charles to investigate and answer questions. Andrew is being held accountable because of the survivors, like Virginia Giuffre, who bravely spoke up.
“We’ve also seen Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem resign from DP World, the former Norwegian Prime Minister be charged with gross corruption, Peter Mandelson be fired as ambassador and step down from the House of Lords, Kathryn Ruemmler step down from Goldman Sachs, and other examples of accountability around the world. But why isn’t more being done here? We should start with Howard Lutnick resigning,“ said Rep. Ro Khanna.
Apart from the former Prince Andrew, none of them face claims of sexual wrongdoing. They have been toppled for maintaining friendly relationships with Epstein after he became a convicted sex offender.
Here’s a look at some of those caught up in the scandal:
Pressure had been building on the Emirati logistics firm after two organisations, the UK development finance agency and Canada‘s second-largest pension fund, said this week they would suspend all new investment with DP World over Bin Sulayem‘s alleged Epstein ties.
Epstein affectionately described bin Sulayem, whose name appears thousands of times in the latest batch, as “funny,” “educated,” “a master” and a “best and trusted friend.”
The messages between Epstein and bin Sulayem reveal an intimate, yearslong friendship replete with misogynistic descriptions of women and girls, sexually explicit material, business proposals and a reference to an alleged torture video that has drawn scrutiny in the US Congress.
(June 19, 2025)
Other Democrats cited what they described as Martin’s ham-handed approach to the DNC’s influential rules and bylaws committee, which is charged with setting the 2028 presidential primary calendar. Martin purged members of the panel, including Weingarten and Saunders, who had supported Martin’s top opponent in the February election for DNC chair.
Of the 15 Democrats he took off the panel, 13 of them hadn’t voted for Martin, according to an internal record obtained by POLITICO.
A man attacked Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar tonight, spraying an unknown substance with a strong odor toward her, just seconds after the Democratic congresswoman called for DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to resign and urged the abolishment of ICE.
Audience members of the town hall meeting with local and state officials started to clap as she made her remarks. Then the man rushed her podium, yelling at the congresswoman and appearing to spray the substance through a syringe at her.
A pair of Senate Republicans are demanding that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem lose her job in the wake of a pair of fatal shootings in the midst of the agency‘s immigration operations in Minnesota.
Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., are no strangers to being critical of the Trump administration, and have again broken from their party in calling for Noem to either step aside or be fired by President Donald Trump.
(December 9, 2025)
Adm. Alvin Holsey, who was pushed out of his post as the top U.S. military commander overseeing operations in Latin America, spoke privately with several lawmakers on Tuesday, according to three people familiar with the meeting — an indication that Congress is quietly pursuing a bipartisan inquiry into the Sept. 2 boat strike in the Caribbean Sea.
(…)
Also on Tuesday, House and Senate leaders known as the „Gang of Eight“ are hearing separately from President Donald Trump‘s national security team: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.