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Bondi and Hegseth might be messing up — but they’re doing what Trump picked them to do

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2 days ago

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CNN
 — 

When President Donald Trump searched for his top Cabinet secretaries, a flair for running a smooth governing machine was nowhere on the job description.

So rising frustration among White House aides about chaos coming from the offices of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Attorney General Pam Bondi seems a bit rich.

Trump is getting exactly what he should have expected after spurning traditional public servants and filling top roles with high-wattage Fox News performers, MAGA favorites, conspiracy theorists and central-casting archetypes with little knowledge of how Washington works.

The most disruptive president in modern history never showed much interest in governing. His administrative arson is vital to his image as an elite establishment scourge. But even in his unorthodox administration, there comes a time when incessantly playing to the outlandish fringe of the conservative media machine clashes with Trump’s and the nation’s interests.

Hegseth, after an accident-prone six months at the Pentagon, is feeling heat again — this time for halting US arms shipments to Ukraine without telling the president. This followed his towel-snapping boasts about US strikes on Yemen on a group chat that leaked earlier this year.

Bondi is paying the price for a habit of exaggeration and trying to feed the MAGA media beast after failing to stand up her earlier promises of stunning revelations from files about the death and clients of child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Two other top officials, FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy Dan Bongino, who made their names fanning right-wing conspiracy theories before joining the “deep state” they once demonized, also found themselves in damaging climbdowns on the issue.

They are not the only Trump favorites under rising scrutiny. The president’s choice of vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the department of Health and Human Services is becoming even more controversial after measles cases hit their highest levels since the disease was eradicated in the US a quarter-century ago. Kennedy has recommended that parents vaccinate their kids against the disease. But he recently dismissed an expert panel of vaccine advisers who have shaped government policy on inoculations, causing widespread concern among the US public health community.

RFK Jr. is not directly responsible for the current measles outbreak. But a president who appoints the country’s best-known vaccine skeptic is clearly sending a message to families who mistrust government public health guidelines. If the breakout gets worse and the administration gets the blame, Trump will reap what he sowed for trying to play into his base’s suspicion of federal health advice dating at least back to the Covid-19 pandemic.

But Kennedy can’t hold a candle to the ultimate example of Trump appointing a wild iconoclast who then, in the president’s words, “went off the rails.” The only surprise with Elon Musk is that the chainsaw-wielding Tesla chief lasted as long as he did at the Department of Government Efficiency before his and Trump’s bromance imploded.

There’s so far no public sign that the White House is getting ready to jettison Trump’s controversial Cabinet picks.

But there’s barely concealed fury in the presidential mansion over another Trump appointment for a big Washington job. Federal Reserve Chief Jerome Powell is frequently berated for refusing to slash interest rates and unleash what Trump insists is massive pent-up economic growth.

Trump chose Powell — who fears the US economy has yet to fully vanquish inflation as Trump risks price hikes with his tariff policy — in his own first term. But he’s long since turned on the man who was instrumental in ending an inflationary crisis without triggering a recession and widespread unemployment, a feat many economists predicted was impossible.

Powell is being slammed by the president for doing his job — rather well, in contrast to Bondi, Hegseth and other top Trump acolytes, whose inexperience is glaring.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sits down at the Pentagon on July 9, in Arlington, Virginia.

The latest storm around Hegseth has recharged speculation as old as Trump’s second administration: How long is he going to last at the Pentagon?

CNN reported Tuesday that the defense secretary failed to inform the White House before he authorized a pause on weapons shipments to Ukraine last week. The move, confirmed by five sources, set off a scramble in the administration to work out what was going on and what to tell Congress and the Ukrainian government.

It was the latest demonstration of administrative mayhem around Hegseth, who has no experience in government, is charged with running one of the world’s most complex bureaucracies and has already fired several top aides in a purge that likely worsened the disarray in his policy apparatus.

He might have been forgiven, however, for failing to anticipate Trump’s sudden reversal on Ukraine. After criticizing former President Joe Biden for arming Kyiv as it fights for survival after a Russian invasion, the president has suddenly and belatedly gotten fed up with President Vladimir Putin, who embarrassed Trump over a push for peace that he’d hoped would end in a Nobel Prize.

The White House denied that Hegseth failed to tell Trump about pausing the shipments to Ukraine, and the administration said that they will resume. Wider uncertainty remains, however, about whether Trump’s turn against Putin — to whom he has always genuflected — will be sustained, or even whether it’s a negotiating ploy to get the Russian president to the table.

But until Hegseth crosses Trump’s invisible red line, he could survive. That’s because he might keep messing up, but he constantly delivers on what Trump really wants.

Hegseth shows total fealty to the president and is the only Cabinet member who comes close to his boss’s mastery of stunt politics.

After reports that early intelligence assessments contradicted Trump’s claims to have “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program in B-2 bombing raids, Hegseth put on a wildly theatrical show in a Pentagon briefing, slamming the media and pouring exaggerated praise on the president in a made-for-television tirade that rivaled any of his former work on Fox News.

Hegseth’s outspoken loyalty to Trump is a cause for concern across Washington because he is such a departure from the president’s first-term secretaries of defense, James Mattis and Mark Esper, who reined in some of the president’s riskiest impulses. If Trump ousts Hegseth, he’d have to find someone else who’d implement his orders unquestioningly.

The Pentagon chief’s defenders can argue that the sophisticated US raid on Iran’s nuclear plants went off without a hitch operationally, in a way that suggests the pandemonium in the secretary’s office is not yet hurting US readiness.

But every time Hegseth shows up on Capitol Hill, he’s asked by Democrats whether he’d carry out an order from the president to open fire on protesters. And he’s yet to give a straight answer.

Attorney General Pam Bondi looks on as President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on July 8.

Bondi has a record as an accomplished lawyer and public official in Florida, and, like anyone who aspired to a job in the Trump Cabinet, she is good on TV.

But her willingness to foster the MAGA movement’s obsession with conspiracy theories — which helped her get her job in the first place — has tripped her up.

It’s long been an article of faith on the fevered extreme of the conservative movement that Epstein, who died in jail awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges, was murdered and that he had once kept a list of famous people who used him to gain access to underage girls.

Bondi promised she’d expose the truth. But the truth turned out to be prosaic: Epstein was not murdered and that there was no list.

Bondi’s problems started with a Fox interview in February in which she implied the Epstein list was sitting on her desk. And she orchestrated a big photo op at the White House where conservative influencers were handed files on Epstein. The plan backfired because those files didn’t contain any revelations. As is the way with conspiracy theories, the opacity only fueled the conspiracy machine.

This may be one case where a lack of experience in national politics is to blame. There may not be a line between governance and conservative opinion television anymore, but Bondi’s loose comments on the case raised expectations and created a political mess.

The White House tried to fudge the issue by saying her quotes on Fox were misinterpreted. But that has not stopped fringe influencers such as Laura Loomer — who previously convinced Trump to fire top staffers on the National Security Council — from calling for Bondi’s dismissal.

Bondi also said on Wednesday that she could not release large amounts of video from the Epstein case because it contained child pornography. But the online crowd is now fixated on a “missing minute” on prison surveillance tapes.

Trump appeared frustrated at the story, which is detracting from a purple patch of political success.

“Are people still talking about this guy, this creep?” Trump said of Epstein on Tuesday. He may have had a point. While this is a huge issue for certain conservative media influencers, it’s not clear at all that most Republican voters really care that much about it.

Trump did not express public frustration with Bondi. But CNN reported on Tuesday that there’s impatience inside the West Wing about how the issue has been handled.

It’s not the first Bondi misstep. Earlier this year she faced ridicule after claiming in a previous Cabinet meeting that Trump’s crackdown on fentanyl coming across the border had saved 258 million lives — in a country of about 340 million people.

Still, like Hegseth, Bondi offers Trump real value. She’s an enthusiastic partner in the president’s effort to enact revenge against prosecutors, legal firms and political foes who investigated or crossed him.

In a new bombshell Wednesday, CNN reported that former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan — both vehement Trump critics — are under investigation by the Justice Department for possible false statements to Congress. The probe arises from one of Trump’s longstanding obsessions — an intelligence community finding that Russia’s 2016 election interference operation was meant to help him beat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Bondi’s Justice Department prosecutors have been infuriating district court judges for months as the tip of the spear of Trump’s war on the justice system. Her team has won several big Supreme Court victories as Trump pushes his power to its limits.

So, as with Hegseth, there are good reasons for Trump to keep her around.

In any case, if promoting conspiracies; engaging in bombast and exaggerations; and politicizing the legal system and the military while creating chaos in government were disqualifications for high office, Trump would never have made it back to the White House.



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Europe

As South Korea becomes a key arms supplier to US allies, its best customer is on the edge of a warzone

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7 hours ago

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July 12, 2025

By


Seoul, South Korea
CNN
 — 

Poland has finalized a deal to acquire a second batch of 180 South Korean tanks under a 2022 agreement that will eventually see Warsaw boost its arsenal with almost 1,000 of the armored vehicles.

The deal underlines Poland’s emergence as a substantial European military force, as well as South Korea’s status as a major arms supplier – especially to US allies as wars around the world exhaust American stockpiles.

It comes as Russia ramps up attacks on Ukraine, some of which have come within 100 miles of Polish territory on Ukraine’s western border.

Warsaw has been increasing defense spending since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, acquiring new weaponry while also helping Kyiv with its defense.

As a NATO member bordering Ukraine, it is seen part of the alliance’s first line of defense should Russian leader Vladimir Putin decide to expand his aggression beyond Ukraine.

Poland’s Defense Ministry announced the tank deal, which still needs to be formally signed, in a post on social media platform X earlier this month.

It put the price tag at $6.7 billion and said that includes 80 support vehicles, ammunition, and logistics and training packages for the Polish Army.

The deal for the K2 main battle tanks, regarded as among the world’s most powerful, includes units to be made in South Korea by defense giant Hyundai Rotem and the establishment of a production line in Poland for a Polish variant, the K2PL, according to South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA), which oversees Seoul’s foreign military sales.

A K9 Thunder self-propelled howitzer takes part in an Armed Forces Day military parade in Warsaw, Poland, on August 15, 2023.

Sixty of the batch of 180 tanks will be built in Poland, the Polish Defense Ministry’s post on X said. The first 30 of the South Korea-made tanks included in the new contract are expected to arrive in Poland next year, it said.

In 2022, the two countries signed a deal for Poland to get 180 K2s. All but about 45 of those have been delivered, with the remainder expected to arrive in Poland by the end of the year, Hyundai Rotem said.

That framework was considered South Korea’s biggest overseas defense deal ever. It included a total of 980 K2s, 648 self-propelled K9 armored howitzers, and 48 FA-50 fighter jets, the Polish Defense Ministry said at the time.

The ministry said the armored vehicles would, in part, replace Soviet-era tanks that Poland has donated to Ukraine to use in its fight against Russia.

A March report from the Wilson Center based in Washington, DC, said Poland has given Ukraine more than 300 tanks and more than 350 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers.

Poland has been on edge in recent days after Russia ramped up drone attacks on Ukraine.

A Russian drone barrage against the northwestern Ukrainian city of Lutsk was so intense it caused Warsaw to scramble fighter jets as a precaution. Lutsk is about 50 miles from the Polish border.

A NATO report from April cited Polish efforts to dramatically increase defense spending in the face of the Russian threat. Warsaw’s defense spending has grown from 2.7% of GDP in 2022 to an expected 4.7% in 2025, according to the report.

“Of all NATO allies, it spends the highest percentage of its GDP on defense,” the NATO report said.

It noted Poland’s purchase of South Korean arms to quickly fill gaps left by donations to Ukraine.

The Wilson Center report said Poland has “arguably emerged as Europe’s most capable military power.”

But a May report from the RAND Corp think tank expressed caution over the financing of Poland’s arms buildup.

Many of its purchases are “financed through direct loans from countries supplying equipment,” RAND said, adding: “If securing such loans proves impossible, market financing might be too expensive to turn framework agreements into binding contracts.”

RAND also said Poland faces recruitment challenges, needing to increase troop strength by almost 50% in the next 10 years.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Poland's President Andrzej Duda greet each other as they arrive for their meeting outside Mariinskyi Palace in Kyiv, Ukraine on June 28, 2025.

Meanwhile, South Korea has emerged as the world’s 10th-largest arms exporter over the past five years, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Over that span, Poland has received 46% of South Korean military exports, followed by the Philippines at 14% and India at 7%, according to the SIPRI’s Trends in International Arms Transfers 2024 report.

As the war in Ukraine has dragged on, as well as Israel’s war in Gaza, US military aid for Ukraine and Israel has drained its arms stockpiles. South Korea is therefore increasingly seen as an option for US allies in need of weapons, according to a 2024 report from the DC-based Stimson Center.

And Seoul’s arms industry may become important to Washington in the future, the report said.

“Increased South Korean defense industrial base capacity, particularly in arms and shipbuilding, has the potential to directly support the United States,” the report said.

Shipbuilding is seen as a particular area of South Korean military industrial strength, and Washington has already seen contracts for maintenance of US Navy supply ships go to South Korean yards as the Navy grapples with a backlog in US shipyards.

Along with the K2 tanks, South Korea has sent 174 K9 howitzers to Poland under the 2022 framework, with 38 remaining to be delivered, according to contractor Hanwha Aerospace.

A second tranche of 152 K9s is in the works, Hanwha said.

Of the 48 FA-50 jets ordered, only 12 have been sent so far, according to manufacturer Korean Aerospace Industries.



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Scotland faces up to its drug crisis by offering the UK’s first supervised injection facility

Published

19 hours ago

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July 11, 2025

By



CNN
 — 

In a quiet corner of Glasgow’s East End, a radical public health experiment is underway. For the first time in the United Kingdom, people who inject illicit drugs such as heroin and cocaine can do so under medical supervision – in a safe environment and indoors.

No arrests. No judgment. No questions about where the drugs came from – only how to make their use less deadly.

The facility, known as the Thistle, opened in January amid mounting political and public health pressure to confront Scotland’s deepening drug crisis. With the highest rate of drug-related deaths in Europe, Scottish health officials say, there have long been calls for a more pragmatic, compassionate response.

Funded by the devolved Scottish government and modelled on more than 100 similar sites across Europe and North America, the pilot safe drug consumption facility marks a significant departure from the UK’s traditionally punitive approach to illegal drug use.

Dorothy Bain, who heads Scotland’s prosecution service and advises the government, told a UK parliamentary committee in May that “it would not be in the public interest to prosecute users of the Glasgow safer drug consumption facility for possession of drugs for personal use.”

She added that the approach would be kept under review to ensure it “is not causing difficulties, raising the risk of further criminality or having an unlawful impact on the community.”

Supporters describe it as a long-overdue shift toward harm reduction. Critics warn it risks becoming a place where damaging addiction is maintained, not treated.

Located in a low-slung clinical building near the city center, the Thistle is a space where individuals bring their own drugs, prepare them on site, and inject under the watchful eyes of trained staff.

The service provides no substances, nor does it allow drug sharing between users. What it offers instead is clean equipment, medical oversight, and a protected environment for a population who might otherwise use in alleyways, public toilets or dumpster sheds, with the associated risks for themselves and the wider community.

“We’ve had almost 2,500 injections inside the facility,” Dr. Saket Priyadarshi, the clinical lead of the Thistle, told a CNN team who visited the facility in early June. “That’s 2,500 less injections in the community, in parks, alleyways, car parks.”

sakat intw.jpg

Dr. Saket Priyadarshi tells CNN about types of drug use at the Thistle

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All users must register before receiving support, providing only their initials and date of birth. Staff ask what drugs they plan to use and how. Then, they observe – not intervene – ready to act in the event of an emergency.

“We’ve had to manage over 30 medical emergencies inside the facility,” Priyadarshi said. “Some of them were severe overdoses that most likely would have ended in fatalities if we hadn’t been able to respond to them immediately here.”

Nurses work with patients to reduce harm wherever possible, advising on injection technique, equipment, and vein placement.

“We’ll spend a bit of time with them. Just (to) try and get the vein finder working,” said Lynn MacDonald, the service manager at the facility, referring to a handheld device that uses infrared light to illuminate veins beneath the skin.

“People have often learnt technique from other people who are using it and it’s not particularly good,” she told CNN. With equipment such as vein finders, she said, the staff at the Thistle are able to highlight “better” sites of injection to “reduce harm and make the injection safer.”

Service manager Lynn MacDonald demonstrates how to use the vein finder.

The Scottish government told CNN that the service has already delivered results in terms of public health.

“Through the ability of staff to respond quickly in the event of an overdose, the Thistle service has already saved lives,” Scottish health secretary Neil Gray said. The service, he said, is “helping to protect people against blood-borne viruses and taking used needles off the street.”

The Thistle bears little resemblance to a medical clinic. There are no fluorescent white lights, no clinical uniforms, and no sterile white rooms. Even the language has been reimagined: users aren’t brought into “interview rooms,” but welcomed into “chat rooms.”

The space itself is soft and deliberate, – furnished with books, jigsaws, warm lighting and a café-style area where people can sit, drink tea, shower, or have their clothes washed.

“The whole service is just designed to that ethos of treating people with a bit of dignity, a bit of respect, bringing them in, making them feel welcome,” Macdonald told CNN. “We want them to leave knowing somebody cares about them and we’re looking forward to seeing them safe and well again.”

For Margaret Montgomery, whose son Mark began using heroin at 17, the existence of the Thistle offers a degree of solace that once felt impossible.

Margaret Montgomery says her son struggled with drug addiction for 30 years.

Now in his fifties, Mark is no longer using – but it took years, and distance, to get there.

“My son went into treatment and it’s like six weeks, three months, six months. That’s not enough time. There’s no aftercare,” Montgomery told CNN.

She added that she’d asked her son whether he would have used the Thistle “all those years ago.”

“He said, ‘yes, I probably would have used it because of the other facilities that they’re offering in there.’” Mark declined to speak with CNN himself but was happy for his mother to recount his experience.

What the Thistle represents, for Montgomery, is not approval – but reprieve. “Nobody wants to think their children are taking drugs anywhere,” she said. “There must be parents that are sat out there and they’re going, ‘well thank god he’s going in there and he’s doing that in there, not in a bin shed.’”

Her support is unflinching – and practical. She is the chairperson of a family support group that was consulted about the Thistle.

“I think the Thistle’s the best thing that’s happened in Glasgow,” she told CNN.

‘Ethical and moral question’

Others see the facility not as an act of compassion, but as a quiet surrender.

Annemarie Ward, who has been in recovery for 27 years, believes that without a clear route to abstinence, harm reduction risks becoming a form of institutionalized maintenance.

“Have we given up trying to help people? Are we just trying to maintain people’s addictions now?” she told CNN.

Ward, who is from Glasgow, is the chief executive of the charity Faces and Voices of Recovery UK (Favor UK), and a campaigning voice for better access and treatment choices for those seeking help with addiction.

For Ward, the danger lies not in what the Thistle does, but in what it omits: a vision of freedom from dependency. Without that, she argues, the ethics of such facilities become blurred.

Discarded paraphernalia used by drug users is pictured in Glasgow in December 2020.

“If our whole system is focused on maintaining people’s addiction and not giving them the opportunity to exit that system,” she said, “I think there’s an ethical and moral question that we need to ask.”

The Thistle is “just prolonging the agony of addiction,” she said. “If you know anybody who’s suffered in that way or loved anybody that’s suffered that way you would see how inhumane this actually is.”

But Glasgow City Council says that the facility is one strand of a broader strategy.

The council says that the Thistle does not divert “from other essential alcohol and drug services in the city,” adding that the local authority “also invests heavily in treatment and care and recovery services.”

“Comparing these interventions is not helpful,” the council said in a statement. “All services are equally important – and needed – to allow us to support people who most need them.”

The idea itself is not new.

The world’s first safer drug consumption room opened in Switzerland in 1986 -– a clinical counterpoint to street-level chaos. Since then, the model has spread across Europe, from Portugal and the Netherlands to Germany, Denmark and Spain, and beyond to Canada and New York City.

The Thistle, the UK’s first iteration, operates 365 days a year, and shares its premises with addiction services and social care teams.

The

As of June, 71.9% of drugs injected inside were cocaine, with heroin making up a further 20%. The users are overwhelmingly male. Most have been injecting for years; all are at risk.

Still, resistance remains. CNN spoke to several people in the area who were concerned about the facility’s opening and said it had encouraged more drug users to come to the area in the six months since opening.

Others, however, told CNN that they had noticed there were fewer needles and less discarded drug paraphernalia on the ground since the clinic opened.

Chief Inspector Max Shaw, of Police Scotland, told CNN that the force was “aware of long-standing issues in the area” and was “committed to reducing the harm associated with problematic substance use and addiction.” He added that officers would continue to work with local communities to address concerns.

For the nurses, doctors and support staff who work in the building, the mission remains immediate: delivering potentially life-saving support to those in need.



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German tourist found alive 12 days after she was lost in the Australian Outback

Published

22 hours ago

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July 11, 2025

By


Melbourne, Australia
AP
 — 

German tourist Carolina Wilga was found alive in Australia’s remote Outback on Friday, 12 days after she went missing and a day after her abandoned van was discovered, police said.

The last known sighting of the 26-year-old backpacker, and the last day family and friends heard from her, was June 29. She was seen at a general store in the wheat farming town of Beacon, 320 kilometers (200 miles) northeast of the Western Australia state capital Perth. Beacon had a population of 123 during the 2021 census.

A member of the public found Wilga wandering on a forest trail late Friday, Western Australia Police Force Insp. Martin Glynn said.

She was in a “fragile” state but had no serious injuries and was flown to a hospital in Perth for treatment, Glynn told reporters.

“I think once we do hear her story, it will be a remarkable story,” Glynn said, adding it was a “great result” for the backpacker’s family and those involved in the search.

“You know, she’s obviously coped in some amazing conditions,” he said. “There’s a very hostile environment out there, both from flora and fauna. It’s a really, really challenging environment to cope in.”

Carolina Wilga in an undated image posted to social media by police.

The reserve where Wilga was lost covers more than 300,000 hectares (740,000 acres). The Thursday-Friday overnight temperature was 2.6 degrees Celsius (36.7 Fahrenheit) in the area with no rain.

The crew of a police helicopter spotted her van Thursday in wilderness in the Karroun Hill Nature Reserve, 36 kilometers (22 miles) north of Beacon, Glynn said.

“Very difficult country. Huge area. So it’s a miracle they’ve actually spotted the car, to be honest,” Glynn told reporters before she was found.

Ground searchers on Friday scoured a heavily wooded radius of 300 meters (1,000 feet) beyond the van. Police assume Wilga’s van, a 1995 Mitsubishi Delica Star Wagon, became stuck in mud on the day she left Beacon, Glynn said.

The van, which has solar panels and reserves of drinking water, had recovery boards under its rear wheels that are used to give vehicles traction when they are stuck.

Police believed Wilga became lost and was not the victim of crime.

Australian serial killer Ivan Milat, who died in prison in 2019, notoriously kidnapped and murdered seven backpackers from 1989 to 1992, including three Germans, two Britons and two Australians.



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