May 2, 2025 | Shake up in the White House and a brand new wire service

Hi everyone!
 

The big news yesterday was that Mike Waltz is out as National Security Advisor and in as Ambassador to the UN, pending Senate approval. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a man who is wearing even more hats than Elon Musk, has been tapped to serve as interim NSA, all while he's juggling heading up USAID and serving as Secretary of State. The last person to be both NSA and Secretary of State was Henry Kissinger, who did both jobs for Nixon over two years in the 1970s.

Waltz ditched his Florida congressional spot to take on the job with the Trump administration and is now out of a job until the Senate decides to schedule confirmation hearings. New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik had been expected to serve as UN Ambassador, so much so that she'd dropped out of leadership in the House while waiting for her hearings to begin. In a recent shuffling, with concerns about the slim GOP majority in the House, Stefanik conceded to Trump's ask for her to stick it out in the House just to ensure legislation should actually get through.




The removal of Waltz, and his deputy Alex Wong, comes after the SignalGate debacle. Editor-in-chief for The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently added to a high-level chat on national security, namely the bombing of some Yemeni Houthi rebels in the Red Sea. Then he wrote about it, exposing to the world what looked to be a rather sloppy handling of national security communications.  Goldberg laid off and got an exclusive interview with Trump.


Trump held off on letting Waltz go, likely to keep big media from thinking they'd got a scalp, but there was apparently rumbling ahead of the Signal chat disaster that Trump was unhappy with Waltz, who is much more hawkish than Trump himself. Trump's first term saw four National Security Advisors in the White House: Michael Flynn lasted for 24 days, Acting NSA Keith Kellogg was on the job for 7 days, H.R. McMaster held the post for 1 year and 48 days, before John Bolton finished off the term with 1 year and 154 days on the job. During his second term, Trump stripped him of his security clearance.

After axing the wire spot from the White House press pool, the White House has launched their own wire service, or aggregation service, where they can share articles that they see as essential reading. The war of the wires began after the AP refused to use Trump's new name the Gulf of America for that body that sits on America's southeast coast, touching many states from Texas to Florida. In reaction to the AP's refusal to adopt the new lingo, the Trump team banned the AP from their special status. Previously, they had covered the Oval Office, Air Force One, and Mar-a-Lago, with front-row access no matter what.

After they were banned, they sued, and a judge said they had to be given their access back. So instead of banning the outlet, the White House axed the seat they sat in. Quite the workaround. AP reporters still all have their creds and they're part of the pool, but they don't get the special treatment they had enjoyed for many, many years.

The new White House wire is part of many changes the White House has made to its relationship with the press. They've added spots for reporters in new media, added press briefings for those in that group, and restored over 400 press badges that were revoked by the Biden administration. Also, you'll never see Trump taking scripted questions or calling on reporters from a pre-approved list of names.

Here's what's on my desk today:

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