President Donald Trump’s second term White House has been marked by far less palace intrigue and personnel drama at the senior staff and Cabinet level than his first.
And yet, the firings are piling up.
More than a dozen high ranking officials across the administration have been forced to leave their jobs or had their nominations or promotions derailed in the first six months of Trump’s return to Washington. Nearly all of the ousters have come after individuals were targeted by outside allies who convinced the president that they weren’t sufficiently loyal. And in many of those cases, the axe came down after officials found themselves in the crosshairs of right-wing activist Laura Loomer.
In an interview with POLITICO, Loomer said she is now fielding tips from administration officials about colleagues they want exiled amid what she called “a serious vetting crisis,” predicting there are “hundreds” more she expects to purge.
“I’m happy to take people’s tips about disloyal appointees, disloyal staffers and Biden holdovers,” Loomer said. “And I guess you could say that my tip line has come to serve as a form of therapy for Trump administration officials who want to expose their colleagues who should not be in the positions that they’re in.”
Loomer has emerged as a blunt enforcer of allegiance to Trump.
“Donald Trump has always valued loyalty,” said one presidential ally outside the White House granted anonymity to speak candidly about the approach to personnel. “But what you’re seeing now is on another level — there’s zero tolerance for anything else.”
The purges have rippled through the Pentagon, the White House national security council and several other executive branch agencies. To a large degree, the firings align with the approach taken by the Department of Government Efficiency to slash the federal bureaucracy — or with eradicating diversity, equity and inclusion efforts that were a point of emphasis for the last administration. The at times ruthless firings also reflect the ethos of Trump’s sharp-elbowed personnel director, Sergio Gor, who has blocked several individuals whose MAGA credentials were at all suspect. Gor did not respond to a request for comment.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the administration’s staffing decisions: “President Trump has put together the best Cabinet and staff in history, and the historic achievements over the past six months prove it,” she said.
In certain cases, firings based on accusations of leaking also laid bare the strain of paranoia that’s long been a feature inside Trump-run organizations.
Trump is famous for asking friends and outside allies for their opinions about his own staff. So much so that, during his first term, former chief of staff John Kelly tried to limit access to the Oval Office in an effort to exert some control over who was influencing the president. It backfired.
Trump often refers to his current chief of staff, Susie Wiles, during Cabinet meetings as “the most powerful woman in the world.” The now familiar riff almost always elicits chuckles in the room. But Wiles’ power comes from not attempting to rein in the president’s impulses or restrict his circle in any way.
“I know this from working for John Kelly, it’s just impossible to control Trump this way. He has lots of different telephones,” said Kevin Carroll, a former CIA officer and lawyer representing intelligence officials fired by the Trump administration. “He’s just on some random cell phone…and it could be with Laura Loomer.”
One of his clients, Terry Adirim, the former top doctor at the CIA, has alleged that Loomer played a key role in her dismissal. Adirim was terminated by the Trump administration earlier this year after some of the president’s supporters criticized her for her role in the mandatory Covid vaccination of members of the military.
This week, the White House requested that Congress delay a hearing for Brian Quintenz to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission after cryptocurrency billionaires Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss urged Trump to dump Quintenz in a conversation last weekend.
Also this week, Trump ordered the removal of the FDA’s top vaccine regulator, Vinay Prasad, after just three months on the job. He did that despite opposition from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary — and after hearing from Loomer.
Loomer engineered a public backlash to Prasad that began with her labeling him on her website a “progressive leftist saboteur undermining President Trump’s FDA.” Other conservative voices, like former GOP Sen. Rick Santorum and The Wall Street Journal editorial board, piled onto the criticism of Prasad and his approach to rare disease therapies — a concern that Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) raised with the White House on Monday, a day before Prasad was fired.
Also on Tuesday, Trump removed the National Security Administration’s top lawyer, April Doss, after Loomer shared the conservative magazine Daily Caller’s investigation into Doss, which called her a “transparently partisan activist.”
Carroll said Loomer’s influence created a “dangerous situation” with “somebody outside the government, no national security experience, who’s got hire and fire authority over some of these really, really important jobs.”
In the White House, administration officials appear unwilling to overlook the disruption associated with frequent staff changes. And Loomer says she has strong relationships in the West Wing.
“It is not only appropriate, but critical for the Administration to recruit the most qualified and experienced staffers who are totally aligned with President Trump’s agenda to Make America Great Again,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said.
Desai added that the administration’s record of “peace deals to trade deals” show that Trump “has assembled the best and brightest talent to put Americans and America First.”
Loomer has reportedly visited Trump at the White House on multiple occasions. Her Oval Office meetings have more than once preceded presidential decisions to cut people loose.
“I have people in the West Wing,” Loomer said, adding that she gets along with Wiles “very well.” “I have people in pretty much every single agency within the federal government like me, every main agency coming to me with concerns.”
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll on Wednesday directed the U.S. Military Academy to terminate an agreement with Jen Easterly, the onetime head of the nation’s cyber defense agency under former President Joe Biden. It came hours after Loomer posted on X, tagging Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, that Easterly’s West Point hiring was “horrendous.”
While an Army spokesperson told POLITICO this was part of “crafting a deliberate approach to ensure that our future officers are best prepared to meet the demands of the modern battlefield,” Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell later posted on X that “we are not turning cadets into censorship activities.”
Easterly wrote on LinkedIn the day after the termination that her job at the academy was “a casualty of casually manufactured outrage that drowned out the quiet labor of truth and the steady pulse of integrity.”
In May, Trump pulled the nomination of former Fox News contributor Janette Nesheiwat to be surgeon general after Loomer encouraged the president to go in a different direction.
“@DoctorJanette is not ideologically aligned with Donald Trump or his admin’s health initiatives,” she posted on X. “How can she be confirmed in front of the US Senate on Thursday? She can’t.”
The next day, her nomination was yanked.
Six officials on the National Security Council, including senior director for intelligence Brian Walsh and senior director for international organizations Maggie Dougherty, were all fired by Trump in April, a day after Loomer reportedly met with Trump. She later took credit for the firings, writing on X: “You know how you know the NSC officials I reported to President Trump are disloyal people who have played a role in sabotaging Donald Trump?”
Former national security adviser Mike Waltz also felt the wrath of Loomer, who persuaded Trump to dump his staff. In reality, according to two people familiar with the matter and granted anonymity to discuss it, Waltz’s departure stemmed more from his alienation of Wiles and others inside the White House because of his often brash behavior and attempts to push policy, especially in the Middle East, in a more hawkish direction.
Loomer acknowledges she has made some enemies with her approach.
“Professional jealousy is a terrible disease, and there are many people in the White House who have been infected,” Loomer said. “I think it’s just human nature to dislike people who maybe pose a threat to your job because they’re better at your job than you are.”
Among other people who were fired shortly after Loomer’s intervention was Adam Schleifer, an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles; and Maurene Comey, a prosecutor in the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office who had handled some of its highest-profile cases, including those against Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
Loomer’s outsized influence with the president came under heightened scrutiny in April after she reportedly encouraged him to oust Gen. Timothy Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, and his deputy, Wendy Noble, who were largely seen by lawmakers on both sides as uncontroversial and nonpartisan.
Haugh received minimal pushback during his confirmation hearing. But reportedly after Loomer told Trump Haugh was chosen by Gen. Mark Milley, the former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with whom Trump has repeatedly butted heads, the president abruptly fired him with little public explanation. This move was widely condemned by Democratic lawmakers and cybersecurity experts, with many accusing Trump of undermining the nation’s cybersecurity.
Jake Traylor, Kelly Hooper, Erica Orden, Maggie Miller, Eric Bazail-Eimil, Nahal Toosi and Jack Detsch contributed to this report.
