Trump's top officials retreat behind military gates as ex-FBI deputy points to what's fueling threats

Trump's top officials retreat behind military gates as ex-FBI deputy points to what's fueling threats

Ashley J. DiMella

Military bases around Washington, D.C., have become an increasingly common refuge for some of President Donald Trump's most powerful officials, as threats linked to Iran and a surge in threats against public officials raise security concerns across the administration.

"So you have this combination of a permission structure on the left for violence, combine it with the ability to track it and create a long paper trail, and the numbers explode, and these threat matrices go crazy," former Secret Service agent and former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is the latest senior administration official to relocate to a military installation, joining a growing number of top Trump officials living behind military gates as federal authorities confront security threats that extend well beyond the White House.

"After The Wall Street Journal published an article featuring an online photo that allowed the location of the Secretary’s Georgetown home to be geo-located, security concerns began to increase which have now forced the Secretary to relocate to a military base for his safety. The news media has an obligation to act responsibly amid growing threats against public officials," a source familiar with the situation told Fox News Digital.

Threats against Bessent had reached "more than an advanced stage" amid reported Iranian assassination threats, a senior administration official told Fox News Digital on Tuesday, but did not elaborate.

The Iranian threats against Bessent come amid a documented history of alleged Tehran-backed assassination plots targeting senior U.S. officials.

Attorney General Todd Blanche also relocated to a military base from his home around March, a different source familiar with the arrangements told Fox News Digital on Thursday.

The Justice Department charged a member of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in 2022 in an alleged murder-for-hire plot targeting former Trump national security adviser John Bolton, while prosecutors disclosed in 2024 that another Iranian operative had allegedly been tasked with developing a plan to assassinate Trump.

Bongino said federal protection decisions are generally driven by threat assessments that account for threatening communications, social media activity and intelligence gathered by security personnel. Agencies responsible for protecting senior officials use those assessments to determine what level of protection is necessary.

Secret Service Director Sean Curran said last month that threats against the agency's full-time protectees had increased more than 40% from the previous year, with roughly 10,000 threat cases recorded in 2026 at the time.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House and Secret Service for comment.

"Pretty much, sadly, anyone at the cabinet, or even sub-cabinet level, with any kind of public persona in the Trump administration, needed a detail," Bongino said.

The assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and multiple attempts on President Donald Trump's life have heightened concerns about political violence, as security officials confront a growing volume of threats against public officials.

Bongino pointed to his own experience as FBI deputy director, saying his security needs were comparable to those of some of the government's highest-ranking law enforcement officials.

"Mine was on par with the attorney general and the FBI director that we had to expand it," Bongino said of his threat assessment and security detail. "It was an independent analysis."

Bongino said social media has made threats against public officials easier to track, but the sheer volume of online activity has also created more work for investigators trying to determine which threats are credible.

More...

As France’s Cities Burn, French Author Michel Houellebecq is Indicted for Hate Speech

As France’s Cities Burn, French Author Michel Houellebecq is Indicted for Hate Speech After Daring to Criticize Islam as Censorship Spreads Across Europe and into the US

Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Those speaking out against Islam are being systematically silenced across the globe. As France’s cities are literally on fire, instead of going after communists and Jihadists, the French elitist authorities are going after iconic novelist Michel Houellebecq for daring to write and speak the truth about Islam. On Nov. 10, he was charged with hate speech for remarks he made four years ago in a 2022 interview with Front Populaire in which he criticized Islam and expressed concerns about mass immigration into France. 

Ken Timmerman, wrote on the travesty this week in his newsletter:

The news from Paris is awful, of course. Muslim groups this week convinced a French judge to file criminal charges against French novelist Michel Houellebecq, whose 2015 novel, Submission, paints a devastating picture of how France increasingly “submits” to its Muslim immigrant population.

They say Houellebecq should be prosecuted for hate speech for a 2022 interview in which he dared say that “the wish of the population with French roots” is “for the violence to decrease, for [Muslim immigrants] to respect the law and people. Or, another good solution, for them to leave.”

Houellebecq’s book appeared the day after an Islamist attack on the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris, during which 12 staff members were slaughtered.

Houellebecq’s book is a fictional account of France electing a Muslim president who slowly unleashes radical political and social transformation on the nation. 

He lost a close friend in the Islamic slaughter of Charlie Hebdo staffers and was forced into hiding, suspending his book tour and leaving his home in Paris. The author was even ultimately given police protection. 

More...

Report: Hamas losing its grip on Gaza

Report: Hamas losing its grip on Gaza

Israel National News

Hamas is losing its grip on the Gaza Strip even in areas outside Israeli control and is struggling to assert its authority.

Sources in Hamas and other terrorist organizations in Gaza acknowledge that Hamas can no longer control large parts of the territory, the Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported.

According to the report, Israel currently controls about 67% of the Gaza Strip, but Hamas also lacks full control of the remaining territory beyond the Yellow Line. One Palestinian Arab source estimated that Hamas effectively controls only 17% to 20% of the entire Strip.

Despite these difficulties, Hamas continues to try to maintain its influence among Gaza residents. The group is promoting humanitarian initiatives in an effort to preserve its standing and presence among the local population.

Hamas is also trying to counter the growing strength of local militias backed by Israel. According to the report, Hamas operatives have staged ambushes in an effort to disrupt the militias’ activities and prevent them from gaining a foothold in Gaza.

Residents reported that Hamas operatives remain active west of Salah al-Din Street and in areas beyond the Yellow Line. Central Gaza is now considered the group’s main stronghold, where its security apparatus continues to operate and retains a significant foothold.

The War On Wealth Is Accelerating - And British Taxpayers Are Heading For The Exits

The War On Wealth Is Accelerating - And British Taxpayers Are Heading For The Exits

Kelly Caro

According to P85 forms (the paperwork you file when you tell the taxman you're gone), almost 69,000 taxpayers told HMRC last year they were done with the nonsense and leaving Britain for good.

That's up from 52,000 the year before - a 32% jump in a single year.

These are the productive, the mobile, and the solvent. They ran the numbers on the British "tax deal" and concluded, quite rationally, that rape wasn't for them and they could do better elsewhere.

When a country's most capable citizens start voting with their passports, look at who benefits from making them go.

Since the last general election, the Treasury has reached for nearly every lever on the panel. Each one was sold as modest, targeted, and fair. But when added up, they're a sustained assault on anyone who saves, builds, employs, or plans for the next generation.

Notice the pattern?

Not one of these measures taxes unbridled consumption, speculation by the connected, or the state's own bloated overhead. Every one of them taxes accumulation: the people who turn income into capital and capital into jobs.It's an assault on the entire mechanism of what makes a society productive and wealthy.

A government looking to grow the economy would do the opposite. But a government looking to manage decline, and make the population more dependent on it, would do exactly this.

Under the old regime, new arrivals got preferential treatment on Income Tax and Capital Gains Tax for up to 15 years. That window's been cut to four. Inheritance Tax went from 15 years to 10.

These are, by definition, the most mobile taxpayers on earth. They already live across borders. Their advisers already have files open in Hong Kong, Zurich, Dubai, Cayman, and Singapore. Italy and Switzerland are openly marketing competitive regimes to exactly this crowd... and they're winning.

The politics was irresistible: a small, unpopular group that few voters would defend. Brilliant!

Economics is another matter.

A non-dom who leaves takes their own tax bill with them, along with the house purchases, the staff, the school fees, the charitable giving, the restaurant tabs, and the companies they'd have started. As for the companies they already run, they shift focus and redomicile.

It might be tempting (and comfortable) to call all this incompetence, because incompetence can be fixed at the next election (for those who still, remarkably, believe elections matter). But British policy has moved in the same direction under governments of every color for the better part of two decades. When the outcome's this consistent, you can no longer chalk it up to a coincidence.

A controlled demolition looks orderly. The charges go in, the load-bearing walls come out one at a time, and the building drops into its own footprint while the crowd watches from behind the tape.

Who places the charges? Not the voters. Look instead at who actually has access to the podium:

• Donors and their lobbyists, whose interests are rarely the small business owner or the family farm. Large incumbents can absorb higher employer costs and compliance burdens. Their smaller competitors can't. Regulation and tax complexity are a moat, and moats are purchased.
• The permanent administrative class - the quangos, regulators, and consultancies whose budgets, headcount, and influence grow with every new rule and every new form.
• The asset-light financial center, which profits from churn, fees, and state-backed debt issuance, and couldn't care less whether a domestic manufacturing or farming base survives.
• The political class itself, which finds a dependent population easier to govern than an independent one.

None of this requires a bunch of crusty old men sipping cognac in a smoke-filled room.

What it does require, however, are aligned incentives. Every actor on that list gains a little from a bigger, more intrusive state, and loses nothing when a builder in Kent or a farmer in Devon sells up and leaves. The people paying the bill have no lobbyist. It's the people drafting it that do.

That's what capture looks like: the podium answers to the donors in the front row, and the taxpayer peasants at the back are expected to keep footing the bill.

Britain's income tax take is heavily concentrated at the top. A small slice of earners pays most of the bill, so you don't need many of them to make the hole in the Treasury's accounts even bigger.

But here's the catch...

Raise rates on the mobile and some of them move. Revenue falls short of forecast. The shortfall gets met with more tax hikes, on a smaller base, which prompts more departures. Each turn of the screw produces less, all while the bond market reprices the risk and sends the cost of capital higher and higher.

The people who can't leave - the pensioner in Swindon, the nurse in Leeds, the young couple still renting - get left holding the bill: the higher prices, the frozen thresholds, the fiscal drag, and the degraded public services. The exodus of the productive is a transfer of burden onto the immobile.

This policy mix is marketed as making the "rich pay their fair share." In practice, the rich are the only ones with the option to not pay at all. The real answer is massively shrinking the government, but the odds of that are right up there with snowballs surviving in hell, so...

More...

Israel's National Missions Minister Orit Strock calls for unity government, warns against reliance on Arab parties

Live Updates: Joint List calls for Jewish-Arab unity to oust Netanyahu as Katz warns against Ra'am joining gov't

JP

Democrats chairman Yair Golan warned on Sunday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could lead Israel into another war with Iran to ensure his political survival rather than protect the country's security interests, in an interview with 103FM.

Golan also addressed Thursday's security briefing between Netanyahu and Gadi Eisenkot, expressing confidence that the meeting would not pave the way for a national-unity government.

"I am convinced that Gadi learned the historical lesson from his experience with Benny Gantz. He understands that you cannot do business with Netanyahu. I don't know what the purpose of this meeting was, but I cannot imagine any government headed by Netanyahu, if we're being honest. It seems completely unimaginable to me. I remind you that Netanyahu cannot serve as a minister."

Golan also dismissed the possibility of alternative political arrangements that would allow Netanyahu to remain in government.

"There is no feasible basis for that, and in any case, I ask why we should even discuss this seriously?" he wondered. "All of Netanyahu's partners are responsible for the worst disasters that have befallen Israel over the past four years."

He argued, however, that an alternative coalition was within reach, particularly if the opposition could secure support from Arab parties or bring a haredi (ultra-Orthodox) party into the government.

"If we manage to secure the support of the Arab parties, and certainly if even one haredi party joins the coalition, there is no doubt that we have a stable and solid majority. I remind all our listeners: Netanyahu's bloc received only 53 seats. That is the voters' mandate, and that is what the Israeli electorate wants," he said.

"This will be a super-stable government, and if we manage to chip away further at Netanyahu's bloc, all the better."

Golan urged his political allies to move quickly to form a government, warning that failure to do so could have serious consequences.

"We need to form a government, and quickly. If not, history will judge us for failing to prevent another war when the person conducting it is interested not in Israel's security interests, but solely in his own personal interests."

"First of all, we need to establish a new government, and then decide whether the overriding security interest is to launch a campaign now or not," he explained.

He also questioned Netanyahu's credibility given his previous declarations of military success.

"Someone who took us into two military campaigns and declared a historic victory at the end of them cannot convince us a third time."

Golan went further, accusing Netanyahu of allowing his political survival to influence decisions that could expose Israelis to another round of missile attacks.

"This is simply political survival, and I say this with grave concern and deep anxiety," he said.

Iran retains up to 2,500 missiles as deadly explosion hits near Damascus

The Jerusalem Post's must-listen news roundup with Gadi Zaig - the top stories, clear and concise.

Strock calls for unity government, warns against reliance on Arab parties

Settlement and National Missions Minister Orit Strock called for the establishment of a broad national unity government on Sunday, urging political leaders to abandon their boycotts of one another and warning against forming a government dependent on Arab parties, in an interview with the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) radio station Kol Chai.

Strock also sharply criticized the appointment of Yisrael Beytenu’s Avigdor Liberman as head of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

"A red line has already been crossed: Liberman, who initiated the Nakba Law, was appointed chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee with the votes of the nationalist Arab parties," Strock said.

"As far as they are concerned, the existence of the state is a catastrophe, and they openly say they will demand payment for every vote. There is no such thing as a minority government. It can only be established with the votes of the nationalist Arab parties in the Knesset. It is a disgrace and a scandal