
Corey Lewandowski has only worked 69 days under Kristi Noem — with 61 still to go — DHS says after concerns over ‘special' status
Lewandowski, 51, has served as Noem's de facto chief of staff since late January, and fellow administration aides were puzzled when he remained on the job well past what they believed to be his end date in early June — leading to theories that he was using colleagues' badges to clock into work.
5 Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's de facto chief of staff Corey Lewandowski has worked just 69 days, DHS says.
POOL/AFP via Getty Images
5 Lewandowski's continued presence has drawn intrigue due to the usual 130-day limit on unpaid special employees.
James Keivom
The Department of Homeland Security told The Post Thursday that 69 working days had been recorded by Trump's former 2016 campaign manager, confirming a figure first reported by Axios.
'Mr. Lewandowski's time is kept by a career DHS employee who submits the paperwork on a bi-weekly basis,' the department said.
A White House official hailed plummeting illegal immigration numbers under Noem and Lewandowski's leadership when asked about his status.
5 Noem, left, and Lewandowski, right, participate in immigration raid on April 8 in Phoenix.
James Keivom
5 Noem, right, and Lewandowski, center, attend a June 25 meeting in Costa Rica.
POOL/AFP via Getty Images
5 Noem and Lewandowski, center-left, attend a June 26 meeting in Guatemala.
Getty Images
'The Tremendous results coming from the Department of Homeland Security — a historically secure border, safer American communities, and successful deportations of criminal illegal aliens — speak for themselves,' she said.
Lewandowski reportedly was denied the permanent role of DHS chief of staff due to widespread allegations that he and Noem, 53, are having an extramarital affair.
Both are married to other people and have repeatedly denied an improper relationship.
The pair have traveled extensively together on official business this year, including trips to Argentina, Bahrain, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Poland and Italy.

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New York Post
2 hours ago
- New York Post
Melania Trump sends letter to Putin about abducted children
US President Donald Trump's wife, Melania Trump, raised the plight of children in Ukraine and Russia in a personal letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, two White House officials said on Friday. President Trump hand-delivered the letter to Putin during their summit talks in Alaska, the officials told Reuters. Slovenian-born Melania Trump was not on the trip to Alaska. The officials would not divulge the contents of the letter other than to say it mentioned the abductions of children resulting from the war in Ukraine. 3 Melania Trump raised the plight of children in Ukraine and Russia in a personal letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Getty Images 3 Russia's President Vladimir Putin speaks during a joint press conference with President Donald Trump at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, on Aug. 15, 2025. AP The existence of the letter was not previously reported. Russia's seizure of Ukrainian children has been a deeply sensitive one for Ukraine. Ukraine has called the abductions of tens of thousands of its children taken to Russia or Russian-occupied territory without the consent of family or guardians a war crime that meets the UN treaty definition of genocide. Previously Moscow has said it has been protecting vulnerable children from a war zone. 3 People from U.S.-based nonprofit organization avaaz light candles beside teddy bear in Schuman Roundabout, the heart of the EU district on February 24, 2023 in Brussels, Belgium. Getty Images The United Nations Human Rights Office has said Russia has inflicted suffering on millions of Ukrainian children and violated their rights since its full scale invasion of Ukraine begun in 2022. Trump and Putin met for nearly three hours at a US military base in Anchorage without reaching a ceasefire deal in the war in Ukraine.


San Francisco Chronicle
2 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Trump's aggressive push to take over DC policing may be a template for an approach in other cities
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'If our capital is dirty, our whole country is dirty, and they don't respect us.' He then upped the stakes by declaring federal control of the district's police department and naming an emergency chief. That set off alarms and prompted local officials to sue to stop the effort. 'I have never seen a single government action that would cause a greater threat to law and order than this dangerous directive,' Police Chief Pamela Smith said. On Friday, the Trump administration partially retreated from its effort to seize control of the Metropolitan Police Department when a judge, skeptical that the president had the authority to do what he tried to do, urged both sides to reach a compromise, which they did — at least for now. Trump's Justice Department agreed to leave Smith in control, while still intending to instruct her department on law enforcement practices. In a new memo, Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the force to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement regardless of any city law. In this heavily Democratic city, local officials and many citizens did not like the National Guard deployment. At the same time, they acknowledged the Republican president had the right to order it because of the federal government's unique powers in the district. But Trump's attempt to seize formal control of the police department, for the first time since D.C. gained a partial measure of autonomy in the Home Rule Act of 1973, was their red line. When the feds stepped in For sure, there have been times when the U.S. military has been deployed to American streets, but almost always in the face of a riot or a calamitous event like the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Trump's use of force was born of an emergency that he saw and city officials — and many others — did not. A stranger to nuance, Trump has used the language of emergency to justify much of what he's done: his deportations of foreigners, his tariffs, his short-term deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles, and now his aggressive intervention into Washington policing. Washington does have crime and endemic homelessness, like every city in the country. But there was nothing like an urban fire that the masses thought needed to be quelled. Violent crime is down, as it is in many U.S. cities. Washington is also a city about which most Americans feel ownership — or at least that they have a stake. More than 25 million of them visited in 2024, a record year, plus over 2 million people from abroad. It's where middle schoolers on field trips get to see what they learn about in class — and perhaps to dance to pop tunes with the man with the music player so often in front of the White House. Washington is part federal theme park, with its historic buildings and museums, and part downtown, where restaurants and lobbyists outnumber any corporate presence. Neighborhoods range from the places where Jeff Bezos set a record for a home purchase price to destitute streets in economically depressed areas that are also magnets for drugs and crime. In 1968, the capital was a city on fire with riots. Twenty years later, a murder spree and crack epidemic fed the sense of a place out of control. But over the last 30 years, the city's population and its collective wealth have swelled. A cooked-up emergency? Against that backdrop, Philadelphia's top prosecutor, District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat, assailed Trump's moves in Washington. 'You're talking about an emergency, really?' Krasner said, as if speaking with the president. 'Or is it that you're talking about an emergency because you want to pretend everything is an emergency so that you can roll tanks?" In Washington, a coalition of activists called Not Above the Law denounced what they saw as just the latest step by Trump to seize levers of power he has no business grasping. 'The onslaught of lawlessness and autocratic activities has escalated,' said Lisa Gilbert, co-chair of the group and co-president of Public Citizen. 'The last two weeks should have crystallized for all Americans that Donald Trump will not stop until democracy is replaced by vindictive authoritarian rule.' Fifty miles northeast, in the nearest major city, Baltimore's Democratic mayor criticized what he saw as Trump's effort to distract the public from economic pain and 'America's falling standing in the world.' 'Every mayor and police chief in America works with our local federal agents to do great work — to go after gun traffickers, to go after violent organizations,' Brandon Scott said. 'How is taking them off of that job, sending them out to just patrol the street, making our country safer?' But the leader of the D.C. Police Union, Gregg Pemberton, endorsed Trump's intervention — while saying it should not become permanent. 'We stand with the president in recognizing that Washington, D.C., cannot continue on this trajectory,' Pemberton said. From his vantage point, 'Crime is out of control, and our officers are stretched beyond their limits.' The Home Rule Act lets a president invoke certain emergency powers over the police department for 30 days, after which Congress must decide whether to extend the period. Trump's attempt to use that provision stirred interest among some Republicans in Congress in giving him an even freer hand. Among them, Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee drafted a resolution that would eliminate the time limit on federal control. This, he told Fox News Digital, would 'give the president all the time and authority he needs to crush lawlessness, restore order, and reclaim our capital once and for all.' 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Time Magazine
2 hours ago
- Time Magazine
Trump and Putin Didn't Make a Deal, but Putin Still Won
During the press conference at the end of his brief and lukewarm summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, an uncharacteristically subdued Donald Trump said something painfully honest: "There's no deal until there's a deal." There was no deal. In many ways, Trump and Putin got the show they wanted. The ubiquitous television graphics, TRUMP-PUTIN SUMMIT, with fluttering American and Russian flags. The split-screen of Air Force 1 and Russia's executive plane landing at a remote airport in Alaska, and then the two protagonists walking down a skinny red carpet like the end of a buddy movie. The grip-and-grin handshakes, with Trump patting Putin's hand in a gesture known to maître d's everywhere. The cosy ride in "the Beast," a prize not even offered to close allies. Trump is likely happy because the eyes of the world are upon him and he was executive producing the images on the world's television screens. (And no one was talking about Jeffrey Epstein). Putin is happy because a Russian president is always happy when they are treated as equal to American presidents. Remember, Barack Obama said Russia was a second-rate, "regional power." Putin got what he wanted: a summit with an American president, something normally you have to make elaborate compromises to get. An indicted war criminal who cannot travel to over 100 nations, the Russian President literally had a red carpet rolled out for him on United States territory by an American president. And he didn't have to give up anything for it—he just had to show up. Read More: The Real Danger of the Trump-Putin Summit At the press conference, Putin talked about how close Russia was to America (shades of Sarah Palin) and claimed that Russian trade with American has increased by 20%. He made sure to praise Trump in the over-the-top way that has become customary in diplomacy with America. Trump was uncharacteristically restrained and circumspect. Even though Putin had alluded to an agreement, Trump did not do so. The self-professed world's greatest dealmaker left without a deal. He did, however, get in several references to the 'Russia hoax,' while Vlad smirked. The truth is, Trump needed a deal more than Putin did. 'Deals are what I do,' he said, and he didn't do one. In a larger way, the nothing-burger outcome exposes the flaws in Trump's theory of diplomacy. Trump seems to believe personal warmth between leaders will make his adversary more likely to compromise or agree with him. That is naïve and delusional. Earlier this week a White House spokesperson described Trump as a 'realist.' This is the classic foreign policy term, in contrast to a foreign policy idealist, whose legacy comes from Woodrow Wilson and his quest for a League of Nations. But Henry Kissinger, the ultimate American realist, said nations have no permanent friends or enemies, they have interests. That's something Donald Trump doesn't quite understand. Trump stands for himself. Putin stands for Russia. Putin's goals are unchanging; his smile and his handshake are fleeting. Long before Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin wanted to Make Russia Great Again. I spent several hours with Putin in 2006 for TIME's Person of the Year cover, and it was in that interview that he said the greatest tragedy of the 20th century was the disintegration of the Soviet Union. I remember we all wondered for a moment whether that was really what he had said, but the transcript bore it out. He believes it, devoutly. He was a KGB officer in Dresden when the Wall came down, and he was bereft. The Russian President has always wanted to put the Soviet Union back together again. (His foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, was spotted wearing a USSR sweatshirt ahead of the Summit.) Putin believes in a kind of Russian exceptionalism with Russia as the great power between East and West. Putin is nostalgic not just for the Cold War, but the Russian empire of the czars. He has a profound and angry grievance about the West and America. He told me Westerners regard Russians as monkeys. (Yes, he said that.) But then he also told me Russian voters were not sophisticated enough to choose their own leaders. (Yes, he said that too.) Under his leadership, Russia has been trying to destabilize the West for decades. Just last week the U.S. Justice Department announced that Russian hackers had penetrated the federal court system. Putin has been trying to put space between the US and Europe for decades. In his eyes, West and America are always the aggressors and Russia is always the victim—even when negotiating about the war in Ukraine. Read More: Trump's Make-or-Break Moment with Putin Normally, in any wartime negotiation, the country gaining territory does not want to negotiate or give up anything, while the country losing territory wants to negotiate and is willing to compromise. Russia is gaining territory, slowly; Ukraine is losing territory, grudgingly. Russia has a 50-year goal, to re-unite parts of the old Soviet Union; Ukraine has a more immediate goal, to stop the war and not give up any territory to do so. When Putin said during the press conference that they still needed to address the 'root causes' of the conflict, that was a hint to what may have transpired inside. Putin can talk for hours about the idea that Ukraine is not a nation, that the Kievan Rus is the basis of Russia, that the Russian Orthodox Church grew out of the Ukrainian one, and he could have spent the whole time on any of those subjects. And maybe he did. According to the 2020 Senate Intelligence Committee report, after the TIME Person of the Year cover came out, Trump sent Putin a handwritten note of congratulations to saying, 'As you probably heard, I am a big fan of yours!' Putin is still milking Trump's fanboy affection. He was the big winner today because he didn't have to compromise before or after the meeting. He got the superpower treatment even though he is a war criminal. He got equivalence with an American president on the world stage. Zelensky won by not losing. Ukraine could have been crippled today, and instead they live to fight another day. It's true that no deal is better than a bad deal. But what is the Dealmaker-in-Chief without a deal?