After reclaiming the White House last year, President Trump largely steered clear of the internal drama and high-profile firings that had marked his first term, intent on building a circle of loyalists to carry out his agenda.
That period of stability may be ending.
Mr. Trump’s abrupt ousters of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem last month and Attorney General Pam Bondi this week have cast a cloud of uncertainty over the president’s cabinet, exposing his newly regained willingness to cut ties with top officials who displease him.
The changing dynamic comes as Mr. Trump faces a dwindling amount of time to win confirmation of new cabinet members without bipartisan support. Republicans are staring down the prospect of significant losses in the upcoming November midterm elections, potentially jeopardizing the GOP hold on the Senate. And Mr. Trump is hoping to swiftly implement his agenda ahead of those elections, which could drastically alter the political dynamic in Washington.
The president has been contemplating more changes to his cabinet and has been quizzing allies about the performance of specific individuals, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive internal conversations
Inside the White House, top aides have discussed possibly moving on from Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who is under investigation for professional misconduct, according to the people. The job performance of Howard Lutnick, Mr. Trump’s brash commerce secretary, has also been questioned, they said.
In recent weeks, Mr. Trump also expressed frustration about Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, whose views on Iran have occasionally put her at odds with the president. For now, however, her focus on promoting baseless claims about fraud during the 2020 election have appeared to have given her a lifeline with Mr. Trump.
Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman, defended the current standing of each of those officials.
“Patriots like DNI Gabbard, Secretary Lutnick, and Secretary Chavez-DeRemer are tirelessly implementing the President’s agenda and achieving tremendous results for the American people,” Mr. Ingle said in a statement. “They continue to have the president’s full confidence.”
Mr. Trump, of course, has been known to consider jettisoning top officials in moments of frustration, only to abruptly change his mind. And he has often asked allies for status updates on his top officials and not always subsequently made a decision based on that advice.
But the fact that other changes are being considered inside the White House in the immediate wake of such high-profile departures is a signal that Mr. Trump’s unwritten no-drama rule of his second term may be over.
Jason Miller, a longtime Trump adviser, said it was up to Mr. Trump alone to decide on any staffing changes.
“We’re in the middle of a war and people start voting in the midterms in less than six months,” Mr. Miller said. “The president is going to continue fine tuning his team until he feels that he has it perfect.”
The recent rounds of firings do not come close to the shake-ups in Mr. Trump’s first term in office, which had the highest turnover of top aides of any presidential administration in modern history.
In his first term Mr. Trump ousted both his attorneys general, his first secretary of state and went through a carousel of leaders at other cabinet agencies like the Department of Homeland Security. He also cycled through four different chiefs of staff. Some of those departed officials later became critics of the administration, such as his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and his former national security adviser John Bolton.
Mr. Trump last year mostly avoided high-profile departures. The notable exception was national security adviser Michael Waltz, who organized a group chat on the commercial messaging app Signal to discuss a sensitive military operation in Yemen and accidentally included a journalist in the conversation. But Mr. Trump gave him a soft landing and made him ambassador to the United Nations.
It remains to be seen which, if any, of Mr. Trump’s current cabinet members could be the next to leave.
Ms. Chavez-DeRemer has come under particular scrutiny amid mounting turmoil at the Labor Department and questions about her leadership. The agency’s inspector general has opened an investigation into allegations of professional misconduct by Ms. Chavez-DeRemer and her closest aides. That investigation is expected to be completed in coming weeks, according to two people familiar with the investigation.
Four people have already been forced out of their jobs at the Labor Department amid the inquiry, which is expected to reveal details of overspending on official trips, among other potentially embarrassing details, according to the people.
Also, Ms. Chavez-DeRemer’s husband has been blocked from the Labor Department headquarters after multiple female staffers accused him of making unwanted sexual advances.
Her husband’s lawyer has said the accusers were working with department employees to force Ms. Chavez-DeRemer out of office. Police and prosecutors have said they would not bring charges.
A lawyer for Ms. Chavez-DeRemer has said that she is not privy to the inspector general’s investigation and will cooperate with any inquiry as required.
Politico reported earlier that Mr. Trump has expressed frustration with both Ms. Chavez-DeRemer and Mr. Lutnick.
Even though the president has privately questioned the performance of Mr. Lutnick and Ms. Gabbard, according to people familiar with his remarks, some viewed them as being safe in the short term. Mr. Lutnick is a “survivor, and the fact is the Commerce Department has delivered win after win for President Trump,” Mr. Miller said.
Mr. Lutnick has a personal relationship with Mr. Trump, who appreciates his work securing trade deals with foreign governments, according to one senior White House official. But Mr. Lutnick’s brazen, impulsive approach to his work has caused some internal frustration, people said.
In a text message to the Times, Mr. Lutnick described reports about internal discussions about his role as “fake news.”
As for Ms. Gabbard, Mr. Trump voiced frustration about her congressional testimony last month when she declined to say if Iran’s nuclear program presented an “imminent threat” to the United States as Mr. Trump had asserted as his justification for going to war with Iran, according to two officials familiar with the matter.
In her testimony before the Senate, Ms. Gabbard insisted that it was up to the president to determine what was an imminent threat. A person familiar with her thinking noted that John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, agreed with her on that point. Unlike Ms. Gabbard, however, Mr. Ratcliffe made clear he personally saw Iran as an immediate threat.
Since then, however, Mr. Trump has spoken to Ms. Gabbard about her personal views opposing foreign intervention overseas and is comfortable with her role for now, urging her to continue her focus on potential threats to the upcoming midterms, officials said. He regards her loyalty as a plus, as well as the value of having figures inside his cabinet who are skeptical of overseas conflicts, people familiar with the matter said.
Ms. Gabbard won particular favor with Mr. Trump when she was on hand for the FBI’s search of an election center in Fulton County, Ga., part of an investigation that the president has seized on to promote false claims of voter fraud.
Investing in the president’s personal grievances has been be a requirement for those who wanted to join his administration.
Mr. Trump has told advisers that his biggest regret from his first term was appointing “traitors,” including some officials who have since said he poses a threat to democracy.
The two cabinet members the president fired this year committed other sins, in his view. Ms. Noem presided over an agency whose tactics drew significant public backlash, and then came under criticism for being featured in an expensive advertising campaign, which she made a point of telling lawmakers that Mr. Trump approved. Ms. Bondi’s management of the Epstein files sparked sharp anger amid Mr. Trump’s base, and he was unhappy with her failures in prosecuting his political enemies.
“The standard for firing is slightly different, because he has loyalists in place,” said Max Steir, the president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that advocates for best practices in the federal government.
This time, Mr. Steir noted, “they’re not delivering on what exactly he wants,” while in Mr. Trump’s first term, “he did not have all the loyalists that he wanted, and he pushed out people that didn’t demonstrate that loyalty.”
Tyler Pager contributed reporting.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
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