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‘Should I Fire Him?’ Inside Trump’s Deliberations Over the Fate of Michael Waltz
For much of this week, President Trump was consumed by a single question. What should he do about his national security adviser, Michael Waltz?
“Should I fire him?” he asked aides and allies as the fallout continued over the stunning leak of a Signal group chat set up by Mr. Waltz, who had inadvertently added a journalist to the thread about an upcoming military strike in Yemen.
In public, Mr. Trump’s default position has been to defend Mr. Waltz and attack the media. On Tuesday, the day after Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic broke the story about being included in the chat, the president said Mr. Waltz was a “good man” who had nothing to apologize for.
But behind the scenes, Mr. Trump has been asking people inside and outside the administration what they thought he should do.
He told allies that he was unhappy with the press coverage but that he did not want to be seen as caving to a media swarm, according to several people briefed on his comments. And he said he was reluctant to fire people in the senior ranks so early in his second term.
But for Mr. Trump, the real problem did not appear to be his national security adviser’s carelessness about discussing military plans on a commercial app, the people said. It was that Mr. Waltz may have had some kind of connection to Mr. Goldberg, a Washington journalist whom Mr. Trump loathes. The president expressed displeasure about how Mr. Waltz had Mr. Goldberg’s number in his phone.
On Wednesday evening, Mr. Trump met with Vice President JD Vance; the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles; the White House personnel chief, Sergio Gor; his Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, and others about whether to stick with Mr. Waltz.
Late Thursday, as the controversy swirled, Mr. Trump summoned Mr. Waltz to the Oval Office. By the next morning, the president signaled to people around him that he was willing to stick with Mr. Waltz, three people with knowledge of the president’s thinking said.
People close to Mr. Trump say Mr. Waltz has been able to hang on in part because some in the administration still support him, and because Mr. Trump has wanted to avoid comparisons to the chaotic staffing of his first term, which had the highest turnover of top aides of any presidential administration in modern history.
And while Mr. Trump can always change his mind, the episode shows Mr. Trump’s willingness to disregard external pressures in his second term, while also grappling with the limits of the loyalty tests he imposed for staff across the administration.
Even before the Signal leak, Mr. Waltz was on shaky footing, viewed as too hawkish by some of the president’s advisers and too eager to advocate for military action against Iran when the president himself has made clear he prefers to make a deal.
An association with Mr. Goldberg, however hazy, gave Mr. Waltz’s opponents more fuel to feed the skepticism.
Some of Mr. Trump closest allies have questioned whether Mr. Waltz, a former George W. Bush administration official, was compatible with the president’s foreign policy. Mr. Waltz had gotten crosswise with Mr. Vance and Ms. Wiles in policy discussions, particularly regarding Iran, according to several people briefed on the matter.
In a statement, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Mr. Trump has a team whose members debate each other but know that he is the “ultimate decision maker.” “When he makes a decision, everyone rows in the same direction to execute,” she added.
Weeks ago, a discussion arose among some aides about whether Mr. Waltz was ideologically aligned with the president. Mr. Trump, who has at times been effusive in private about Mr. Waltz, made clear he did not want to start the cycle of dismissals so early in his second administration, according to two people briefed on the conversation. Mr. Trump, who regretted pushing out his first national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, after less than a month in 2017, believed it would feed a narrative that he engenders chaos.
After the Signal thread leaked, someone shared on X a snippet of a 2016 video of Mr. Waltz, produced by a group primarily funded by the billionaire Koch brothers. Speaking as a military veteran, Mr. Waltz looked directly into the camera as he condemned Mr. Trump as a draft-dodger and said, “Stop Trump now.” That snippet drew attention from Mr. Waltz’s critics.
By contrast, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s job appears to be safe, even though he shared detailed information about strike times for the attack on Houthi militants in Yemen in the Signal thread. MAGA stalwarts like Charlie Kirk have defended him online.
Mr. Hegseth “had nothing to do with this,” the president said on Wednesday.
Mr. Hegseth survived a bruising confirmation process in the Senate after being pushed through with help from Mr. Vance, and he has a solid relationship with Mr. Trump.
While Mr. Waltz may keep his job, the controversy has reminded Mr. Trump’s aides that the president’s strategy of crisis management — doubling down and denying, no matter how problematic the facts are — does not seem to work as well for them as it has over the years for Mr. Trump.
When the Atlantic story broke, Mr. Waltz denied meeting, knowing or communicating with Mr. Goldberg. But that claim was quickly called into question by photos that surfaced from a 2021 event at the French Embassy in Washington, where Mr. Goldberg and Mr. Waltz were pictured standing next to one another. Mr. Waltz’s allies dismissed the idea that the photo suggested the two men knew each other.
But the reality is that while Mr. Trump has demanded loyalty from his staff, some top officials are longtime Washington hands who have relationships, past experiences and contacts with people whom Mr. Trump despises.
“I would say the principle of getting a bunch of yes men and yes women around him is the guiding principle, a foundation of which is not having, or renouncing, any past that may be proof to the contrary,” said John R. Bolton, who worked as Mr. Trump’s third of four national security advisers and then wrote a revealing book about his time in the White House.
“Anybody who’s been around Washington 10 years, 15 years, has all kinds of backgrounds,” Mr. Bolton said.
In Greenland on Friday, Mr. Vance, who was traveling with Mr. Waltz on a visit to try to apply pressure for the United States to take over the territory, made clear that Mr. Waltz was at fault for adding Mr. Goldberg to the Signal thread.
But Mr. Vance, who was also in the group chat and has defended Mr. Waltz internally in the past, made a point of doing so again. It was a sign that Mr. Trump was ready to move on, for now.
“If you think you’re going to force the president of the United States to fire anybody, you’ve got another think coming,” he said. “President Trump has said it on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday, on Thursday, and I’m the vice president saying it here on Friday, we are standing behind our entire national security team.”
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Video: At Least Two Killed in Shooting at Brown University
new video loaded: At Least Two Killed in Shooting at Brown University
transcript
transcript
At Least Two Killed in Shooting at Brown University
Students remained locked in their dorms and classrooms as the police searched for the shooter, who was described as a man wearing black. At least two people are dead, and eight are in critical condition.
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At 4:00 in the afternoon, we received a call. 4:05 was when the initial call came in to Brown University of a report of an active shooter. I can confirm that there are two individuals who have died this afternoon, and there are another eight in critical status. We do not have a shooter in custody at this time. There is a shelter in place in effect for the greater Brown University area. If you live on or near Brown’s campus, we are encouraging you to stay home and stay inside. This is a sad state of our country right now where you have to plan for these things. And hopefully the community takes some comfort to know that their Providence leadership has planned for this occurrence, including very recently.
By McKinnon de Kuyper
December 13, 2025
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Multiple people shot near Brown University, police say
In this image from video, law enforcement officials gather outside the Brown University campus in Providence, R.I., on Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025.
Kimberlee Kruesi/AP
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Kimberlee Kruesi/AP
Multiple people have been shot near Brown University in Providence, R.I., on Saturday, police said.
The Providence Police Department said it is actively investigating the situation and is encouraging the public to shelter in place until further notice.
There is no suspect in custody, the university said on X, adding that it’s coordinating with multiple law enforcement agencies to search for a suspect.
The university issued an alert Saturday afternoon that the shooter was spotted near the Barus and Holley building, which houses the School of Engineering and Physics Department.
“Continue to shelter in place. Remain away from Barus & Holley area. Police do not have a suspect in custody and continue to search for suspect(s). Brown coordinating with multiple law enforcement agencies on site,” the university said.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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What to know about Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s release from immigration custody
BALTIMORE — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation helped galvanize opposition to President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, was released from immigration detention on Thursday, and a judge has temporarily blocked any further efforts to detain him.
Abrego Garcia currently can’t be deported to his home country of El Salvador thanks to a 2019 immigration court order that found he had a “well founded fear” of danger there. However, the Trump administration has said he cannot stay in the U.S. Over the past few months, government officials have said they would deport him to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana and, most recently, Liberia.
Abrego Garcia is fighting his deportation in federal court in Maryland, where his attorneys claim the administration is manipulating the immigration system to punish him for successfully challenging his earlier deportation.
Here’s what to know about the latest developments in the case:
Abrego Garcia is a Salvadoran citizen with an American wife and child who has lived in Maryland for years. He immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager to join his brother, who had become a U.S. citizen. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him protection from being deported back to his home country.
While he was allowed to live and work in the U.S. under Immigration and Customs Enforcement supervision, he was not given residency status. Earlier this year, he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, despite the earlier court ruling.
When Abrego Garcia was deported in March, he was held in a notoriously brutal Salvadoran prison despite having no criminal record.
The Trump administration initially fought efforts to bring him back to the U.S. but eventually complied after the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in. He returned to the U.S. in June, only to face an arrest warrant on human smuggling charges in Tennessee. Abrego Garcia was held in a Tennessee jail for more than two months before he was released on Friday, Aug. 22, to await trial in Maryland under home detention.
His freedom lasted a weekend. On the following Monday, he reported to the Baltimore immigration office for a check-in and was immediately taken into immigration custody. Officials announced plans to deport him to a series of African countries, but they were blocked by an order from U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland.
On Thursday, after months of legal filings and hearings, Xinis ruled that Abrego Garcia should be released immediately. Her ruling hinged on what was likely a procedural error by the immigration judge who heard his case in 2019.
Normally, in a case like this, an immigration judge will first issue an order of removal. Then the judge will essentially freeze that order by issuing a “withholding of removal” order, according to Memphis immigration attorney Andrew Rankin.
In Abrego Garcia’s case, the judge granted withholding of removal to El Salvador because he found Abrego Garcia’s life could be in danger there. However, the judge never took the first step of issuing the order of removal. The government argued in Xinis’ court that the order of removal could be inferred, but the judge disagreed.
Without a final order of removal, Abrego Garcia can’t be deported, Xinis ruled.
The only way to get an order of removal is to go back to immigration court and ask for one, Rankin said. But reopening the immigration case is a gamble because Abrego Garcia’s attorneys would likely seek protection from deportation in the form of asylum or some other type of relief.
One wrinkle is that immigration courts are officially part of the executive branch, and the judges there are not generally viewed as being as independent as federal judges.
“There might be independence in some areas, but if the administration wants a certain result, by all accounts it seems they’re going to exert the pressure on the individuals to get that result,” Rankin said. “I hope he gets a fair shake, and two lawyers make arguments — somebody wins, somebody loses — instead of giving it to an immigration judge with a 95% denial rate, where everybody in the world knows how it’s gonna go down.”
Alternatively, the government could appeal Xinis’ order to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and try to get her ruling overturned, Rankin said. If the appeals court agreed with the government that the final order of removal was implied, there could be no need to reopen the immigration case.
In compliance with Xinis’ order, Abrego Garcia was released from immigration detention in Pennsylvania on Thursday evening and allowed to return home for the first time in months. However, he was also told to report to an immigration officer in Baltimore early the next morning.
Fearing that he would be detained again, his attorneys asked Xinis for a temporary restraining order. Xinis filed that order early Friday morning. It prohibits immigration officials from taking Abrego Garcia back into custody, at least for the time being. A hearing on the issue could happen as early as next week.
Meanwhile, in Tennessee, Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty in the criminal case where he is charged with human smuggling and conspiracy to commit human smuggling.
Prosecutors claim he accepted money to transport, within the United States, people who were in the country illegally. The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee for speeding. Body camera footage from a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer shows a calm exchange with Abrego Garcia. There were nine passengers in the car, and the officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling. However, Abrego Garcia was eventually allowed to continue driving with only a warning.
Abrego Garcia has asked U.S. District Court Judge Waverly Crenshaw to dismiss the smuggling charges on the grounds of “selective or vindictive prosecution.”
Crenshaw earlier found “some evidence that the prosecution against him may be vindictive” and said many statements by Trump administration officials “raise cause for concern.” Crenshaw specifically cited a statement by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on a Fox News Channel program that seemed to suggest the Justice Department charged Abrego Garcia because he won his wrongful-deportation case.
The two sides have been sparring over whether senior Justice Department officials, including Blanche, can be required to testify in the case.
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