Kash Patel, the newly appointed FBI director, has told senior officials that he plans to relocate 1,000 employees from Washington to field offices across the US, the Associated Press reports, citing an individual familiar with the matter.
According to the AP, Patel also said he plans to move an additional 500 employees to a bureau facility in Huntsville, Alabama.
The plans were communicated on Friday when Patel was sworn in at the White House, the AP reports.
Good morning,
Donald Trump is expected to address the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday at the National Harbor in Maryland – his speech largely expected to demonstrate how his “Make America great again” movement has moved from the fringes to the mainstream, as the Guardian’s David Smith writes.
Trump’s appearance at CPAC will follow a chaotic week of domestic and global politics during which federal workers in the US continued to face mass layoffs by his administration while European geopolitics remained in a precarious position as Trump lambasted the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for being a “dictator” over Zelenskyy’s grievances that Ukraine was not invited to US-Russia talks about the future of Ukraine.
In 2023, Trump made a dark promise to his supporters during his CPAC speech in which he said: “I am your retribution.” With Trump set to take center stage again, his speech two years ago – laden with threats and a framing of his White House bid at the time as a “final battle” for America – foreshadowed what some describe as the “deification of Trump [that] will be complete” at CPAC this Saturday.
Here are other developments in US politics:
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A Republican lawmaker from Missouri has proposed a registry of pregnant women “at risk” for abortions.
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Texas’s congresswomen Jasmine Crockett has said she is “rooting” for Canada and Mexico amid Trump’s threats.
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A New York judge on Friday rejected calls from the justice department to immediately dismiss the city’s mayor Eric Adams’ corruption case.
