Trump administration has tightly restricted access to president’s daily intelligence brief
CNN
The Trump administration has tightly restricted the number of people who have access to President Trump’s highly classified daily intelligence report, five sources familiar with the move told CNN.
The Trump administration has tightly restricted the number of people who have access to President Donald Trump’s highly classified daily intelligence report, five sources familiar with the move told CNN. Administration officials planned from the earliest days of Trump’s second term to cut access to the so-called President’s Daily Brief, or PDB — in part because during his first term, details from the report were sometimes leaked to the press, which contributed to the president’s sense that the intelligence community was trying to undermine him. Initially, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles was personally approving who had access, one of the sources said. Now Tulsi Gabbard, who was sworn in as Trump’s director of national intelligence in February, oversees the document and has taken responsibility for who has access. It’s not unusual for new administrations to rejigger who has access to the PDB. And career intelligence officials responsible for putting it together typically approach a new administration to ask who should receive it and officials often move at first to limit access. But Trump, since he was first elected in 2016, has harbored a deep mistrust of the intelligence community, and in his second administration he has appointed officials who openly share his suspicions. Current and former officials say the move to limit access to the PDB comes against the backdrop of the president and his top officials’ determination to quash leaks and bring to heel what they see as subversive elements within the intelligence community — highlighting what one US official described as “ongoing large distrust issues.” That distrust — which reached its full expression in Trump’s sense that the FBI’s investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia was a politically-motivated “witch hunt” and a “hoax” — continues to reverberate in the administration’s muscular approach to managing the intelligence community.
More than 30 million people are under winter weather alerts across the Midwest and Northeast early this week with another storm threatening to upend travelers’ plans on what is expected to be one of the busiest travel days this holiday season.
The night was warm and muggy over New Castle Air Force Base in Delaware, the kind of heat that clung to the metal skins of the alert fighter jets lined along the runway.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrives here Sunday as his frozen capital of Kyiv comes under assault by Russian missiles and drones, a deadly reminder from the war’s aggressor that its attacks would continue even amid accelerated peace talks.
A Cuban immigrant who had built a new life working at a Kentucky scrapyard died on Christmas Day from severe burns suffered in last month’s UPS cargo plane crash, raising the death toll to 15, officials said.
At least 15 people were killed and 19 injured after a passenger bus plunged into a ravine on the Inter-American Highway in western Guatemala, authorities said on Saturday.
A reform-minded mayor is taking charge of New York City just as the largest police department in the country is finding its stride in its stability, touting a drop in gun violence and homicides while its current leadership stays intact.
When patients come to Eric Frankenfeld’s chiropractic practice with insurance woes, his wife, Lisa, the office manager, tells them not to worry because she’ll work with them to keep care affordable.
Emel McDowell was in a New York City jail when a guard yelled out his name. A single envelope slid through the metal bars into his cell. He stared at the return address in disbelief.
Vivek Ramaswamy barreled into politics as a flame-thrower willing to offend just about anyone. He declared America was in a “cold cultural civil war,” denied the existence of white supremacists, and referred to one of his rivals as “corrupt.” Two years later, Ramaswamy says he wants to be “conservative without being combative.”
The “Epstein files” saga will spill into 2026, despite a deadline earlier this month to release the records.
A shooter armed with several guns opened fire in the lobby of an Idaho sheriff’s office and the street outside Friday, injuring three people before being killed in a standoff with law enforcement, the local sheriff said Friday.
Kennedy Center president Richard Grenell lambasted a performer’s decision to cancel an annual Christmas Eve jazz concert, following the addition of President Donald Trump’s name to the Washington, DC, arts venue.
A group of Venezuelans who were sent to a maximum-security El Salvador prison from the US and then returned to Venezuela called on Friday for the United States to comply with a ruling that would allow them to challenge their deportation in US courts.