FBI Deputy Director Bongino says he will step down next month
Sarah Lynch for Reuters
Summary
- Bongino's conspiracy theories haunted him in FBI role
FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino will step down from his post next month, he said on Wednesday, ending a short and at times tumultuous tenure as the bureau's second highest-ranking official.
- Bongino walked back pipe bomb conspiracy after suspect's arrest
Bongino announced the move on social media hours after President Donald Trump said he thought Bongino wanted to "go back to his show." He hosted a prominent right-wing podcast prior to joining the FBI.
"Dan did a great job. I think he wants to go back to his show," Trump told reporters.
Bongino, a former New York City police officer, member of the Secret Service and right-wing podcaster, was an unusual pick for the FBI's No. 2 post, which historically had been filled by career agents who had worked their way up the ranks. He was made deputy over objections from the FBI Agents Association, a group representing 14,000 primarily current agents, despite earlier assurances from FBI Director Kash Patel that he would install a career agent.
"I want to thank President Trump, AG Bondi, and Director Patel for the opportunity to serve with purpose," Bongino wrote in a post on X, referring to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.
Several people briefed on the matter told Reuters that Bongino's belongings in his office were already boxed up, though another person said he was working on Wednesday at FBI Headquarters.
PROMOTED CONSPIRACIES ABOUT PIPE BOMBS, Epstein
As a podcaster, Bongino had promoted a range of conspiracy theories that came back to haunt him once he was handed a position of power, with notable examples relating to the January 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of Trump as well as to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Bongino had claimed that the planting of pipe bombs at the Democratic and Republican national committee offices on the eve of the January 6 attack was an FBI "inside job." He walked back that assertion after the FBI in December arrested a suspect in the five-year-old case, and said in a Fox News interview afterward that he had been paid to voice controversial opinions.
Bongino's tenure at the FBI has been in question since July, when issues related to Epstein came to a head.
That month, the Justice Department and FBI leadership jointly issued a memo that backtracked on a pledge to release investigative files on Epstein and poured cold water on a variety of long-held conspiracy theories that Bongino had promoted on his podcast.
The memo enraged many of Trump's followers who adhered to the Epstein conspiracy theories and rejected the DOJ's findings that there was no incriminating "client list" to release and that Epstein died by suicide in his jail cell.
Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, Jasper Ward and Bhargav Acharya; Additional reporting by Andrew Goudsward; editing by David Ljunggren and Scott Malone
Trump team plans to break up ‘global mothership’ of climate science
Much of the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s non-climate portfolio will be dispersed, the White House says.
By Alexandra Witze
December 17, 2025
New Orleans, Louisiana
The administration of US President Donald Trump intends to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a world-leading Earth-science centre in Boulder, Colorado. The centre’s modelling and Earth observations underpin a wide range of US and global research, especially on climate.
“This facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country,” wrote Russell Vought, Trump’s budget director, announcing the planned closure in a post yesterday on the social-media platform X. In a statement, the White House called NCAR “the premier research stronghold for left-wing climate lunacy”. The plan was first reported by USA Today.
The White House said that the National Science Foundation (NSF), which provides funding for the centre, “will be breaking up NCAR to eliminate Green New Scam research activities. Any vital functions, such as weather modeling and supercomputing, will be moved under the purview of another entity or location.”
On Wednesday, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) — the non-profit consortium of more than 130 colleges and universities that runs NCAR — received a letter of intent from the NSF regarding the planned break-up of NCAR, consortium president Antonio Busalacchi told Nature. The letter requested information regarding divesting, transferring or restructuring the various components of NCAR. It mentioned NCAR’s research aircraft fleet and its supercomputing center in Cheyenne, Wyoming, as components that might be relocated. “Morale is terrible,” Busalacchi says.
Any such action will be challenged by members of Congress. “I for one am not going to let this take place on my watch,” Joe Neguse, a Democrat who represents Boulder in the US House of Representatives, said Wednesday in a virtual address to the American Geophysical Union meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. Congress sets the federal budget and can direct the US government to fund NCAR.
The most recent agreement between the NSF and UCAR, which was signed in 2023, provides US$938 million to run NCAR for five years. Cancelling that award would eliminate the majority of NCAR’s annual budget. The rest of the budget comes from an array of federal and non-federal sources.
Central resource
News of the intended closure rippled quickly through the Earth-science community, with many starting a #SaveNCAR discussion across social-media platforms. “Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet,” wrote Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, on social media, adding that the laboratory is the “global mothership” of atmospheric science.
“To me personally, it’s just another unbelievably reckless blow to American science”, says Dawn Wright, an oceanographer and geographer at Esri, a geographic-information-system company in Redlands, California. “If the NSF does follow through with these plans to break up NCAR, that’s just going to decimate a huge chunk of the US climate research that we all depend on.”
The NSF established NCAR in 1960 to support US atmospheric-science research that requires computing or other resources beyond the means of any single institution. “If you cancel this, you will devastate atmospheric science,” says a researcher who formerly worked at the NSF and requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. “That’s different from other sciences that are more distributed.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-04134-w
Again, stupidity is the hallmark of Trump voters, and Trump himself.Jersey Girl wrote: ↑Sat Dec 20, 2025 1:32 amWe need to get something up here about him defacing The Kennedy Center. His name was being put up over JFK's (and in larger letters) this afternoon (?). Probably done and defaced by this time.
Maybe he doesn't know he's alive. You'd have to have a human heart to check for a pulse. There's (what's it called) laws or something in place that strictly prohibits what he's done. Congress is the only entity that can change the name of the building. Now we're going to see yet another flurry of law suits.Some Schmo wrote: ↑Sat Dec 20, 2025 7:18 amAgain, stupidity is the hallmark of Trump voters, and Trump himself.Jersey Girl wrote: ↑Sat Dec 20, 2025 1:32 amWe need to get something up here about him defacing The Kennedy Center. His name was being put up over JFK's (and in larger letters) this afternoon (?). Probably done and defaced by this time.
Hey moron. Memorials are for dead people, you stupid damned idiot. Christ, he's a damned moron.
Sure, most normal people wish he was dead, but he isn't. Pure damned moron.
@westsidelester
14 hours ago
Bats have started using the phrase "Trumpshit crazy"
Katharine Hayhoe is one of the premier scientists working on climate research, and she is far from a flaming liberal. She happens to be a devout,canpakes wrote: ↑Fri Dec 19, 2025 11:20 pm.
In order to please the MAGA voting base, science and research that they don’t like must be snuffed out, even when it risks destroying important facilities and organizations that do much more than simply comment on climate data.
Trump team plans to break up ‘global mothership’ of climate science
Much of the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s non-climate portfolio will be dispersed, the White House says.
By Alexandra Witze
December 17, 2025
New Orleans, Louisiana
The administration of US President Donald Trump intends to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a world-leading Earth-science centre in Boulder, Colorado. The centre’s modelling and Earth observations underpin a wide range of US and global research, especially on climate.
“This facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country,” wrote Russell Vought, Trump’s budget director, announcing the planned closure in a post yesterday on the social-media platform X. In a statement, the White House called NCAR “the premier research stronghold for left-wing climate lunacy”. The plan was first reported by USA Today.
The White House said that the National Science Foundation (NSF), which provides funding for the centre, “will be breaking up NCAR to eliminate Green New Scam research activities. Any vital functions, such as weather modeling and supercomputing, will be moved under the purview of another entity or location.”
On Wednesday, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) — the non-profit consortium of more than 130 colleges and universities that runs NCAR — received a letter of intent from the NSF regarding the planned break-up of NCAR, consortium president Antonio Busalacchi told Nature. The letter requested information regarding divesting, transferring or restructuring the various components of NCAR. It mentioned NCAR’s research aircraft fleet and its supercomputing center in Cheyenne, Wyoming, as components that might be relocated. “Morale is terrible,” Busalacchi says.
Any such action will be challenged by members of Congress. “I for one am not going to let this take place on my watch,” Joe Neguse, a Democrat who represents Boulder in the US House of Representatives, said Wednesday in a virtual address to the American Geophysical Union meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. Congress sets the federal budget and can direct the US government to fund NCAR.
The most recent agreement between the NSF and UCAR, which was signed in 2023, provides US$938 million to run NCAR for five years. Cancelling that award would eliminate the majority of NCAR’s annual budget. The rest of the budget comes from an array of federal and non-federal sources.
Central resource
News of the intended closure rippled quickly through the Earth-science community, with many starting a #SaveNCAR discussion across social-media platforms. “Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet,” wrote Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, on social media, adding that the laboratory is the “global mothership” of atmospheric science.
“To me personally, it’s just another unbelievably reckless blow to American science”, says Dawn Wright, an oceanographer and geographer at Esri, a geographic-information-system company in Redlands, California. “If the NSF does follow through with these plans to break up NCAR, that’s just going to decimate a huge chunk of the US climate research that we all depend on.”
The NSF established NCAR in 1960 to support US atmospheric-science research that requires computing or other resources beyond the means of any single institution. “If you cancel this, you will devastate atmospheric science,” says a researcher who formerly worked at the NSF and requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. “That’s different from other sciences that are more distributed.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-04134-w
It’s impossible for Lutnick to say what he did without knowing that he’s lying, and assuming that Americans are all idiots. Good play, Trump Administration.Jersey Girl wrote: ↑Sat Dec 20, 2025 9:55 pmDavid Pakman. Run time just over 5 minutes. I'm 800% serious.
I CAN’T BELIEVE a Fox Host FINALLY did it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E1JjviHCbE
White men urged to file discrimination claims in anti-DEI escalation
JESSICA GUYNN, USA TODAY
4:02 pm EST Dec. 18, 2025
The federal agency that fights workplace discrimination is calling on White men to come forward with bias allegations.
“Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex? You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws,” Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chair Andrea Lucas said on the X social media platform this week. “The EEOC is committed to identifying, attacking, and eliminating ALL race and sex discrimination – including against white male employees and applicants.”
The social media call to action is the latest escalation in the EEOC’s efforts to identify discrimination claims in line with the Trump administration’s view that "unlawful" and “woke” diversity, equity and inclusion practices permeating the American workplace are not balancing historic inequities but creating new ones.
This week, Vice President JD Vance described DEI as a “deliberate program of discrimination primarily against White men.”
He also promoted an online essay claiming DEI policies ruined the career prospects of some White male millennials. Responding to the article, Lucas tweeted: “This is a story chock full of unlawful discrimination.”
The EEOC has emerged as a powerful tool in the Trump administration’s arsenal to unwind Civil Rights-era laws put in place decades ago to remedy racial inequities.
When the president tapped Lucas to lead the EEOC, she pledged to restore “evenhanded enforcement of employment civil rights laws for all Americans” including "unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination.”
“I intend to dispel the notion that only the ‘right sort of’ charging party is welcome through our doors,” Lucas said in a statement after her appointment.
DEI case 50 years later: Why the nation is still divided over 'reverse discrimination'
Now that Lucas has a quorum – the minimum three out of five commissioners needed – she can move aggressively to enforce White House priorities.
'Reverse discrimination' rise?
Though White workers account for about two-thirds of the U.S. workforce, their discrimination claims make up only about 10% of race-based claims, according to data USA TODAY obtained in 2023 from the EEOC.
This week, a money manager at Carl Icahn’s investment firm sued Bausch + Lomb Corp. and his employer, alleging he was denied a board seat because he is White – the latest in a series of lawsuits alleging “reverse discrimination.”
“This is a massive shift, with the federal civil rights office now explicitly naming the problem of anti-White racism and calling on individuals to take action,” Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal, tweeted.
Diversity advocates said the comments from the Trump administration deliberately distort the purpose of DEI.
“In my view, it’s a set of practices aimed at removing bias to create a fair and level playing field so that people of all identities and backgrounds have equal opportunity at achieving success,” said David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at the NYU School of Law and author of “How Equality Wins: A New Vision for an Inclusive America.”
“It would be truly wonderful to see people who are so passionate about the value of equality when it comes to White men demonstrating the same passion when it comes to eradicating inequalities affecting people of color, women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and other marginalized groups in society,” he wrote in an email.
