trump gas prices

Economics and public policy professor at the University of Michigan, Justin Wolfers, sent the host and an CNBC economics reporter into chuckles describing President Donald Trump policies, particularly on fuel prices, as a kind of Trump two-step.

Speaking to MS NOW's Stephanie Ruhle, CNBC senior economics reporter Steve Liesman said bond market participants aren't happy with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for his recent statement that he's "The House," as in the dealer in a casino.

"Most of the people who I talked to in the bond market kind of laughed at that, because he is specifically not the house, unless he has a very large cache of cash, which he doesn't really have, and the effort of taking on the $40 trillion bond market, it requires a lot of money that Bessent didn't have," said Steve Liesman. "So he said that. And most of the people who trade these bonds and have large trillion-dollar portfolios of them didn't think much of the comment."

"And of course you could see how much they thought of the comment by what you just reported, which is what happened to bond yields," he continued as the screen showed early morning market numbers dropping. "I don't see the market reacting very much to his comment today because, frankly, they didn't think the Treasury was going to do or could do very much about it."

It comes on the heels of another week of rising oil prices, and Wolfers sees Trump's latest plan as the same old thing, just dressed up differently.

"So, let's actually start by asking the question: is there any there-there. So back in March, in fact, the G7 had promised 400 million barrels," Wolfers began. "And so more or less we hadn't gotten the full 400. We got in about 320, which means across the G7 there were 80 million short. They just announced 100 million. So most of this announcement is, we are going to clean up and do what we announced previously. As far as I can tell."

"Second thing I should add, this is actually a very, very small amount. It sounds like a lot if you, you know, a hundred million barrels. I couldn't fit that in my living room. But relative to how much the world uses, it's actually very, very small amount," he explained. "So I think this has turned out to be something of a PR coup, which is I've been asked about it on every network."

"It looks like the president's doing something heredoing something here," Wolfers continued. "It's below the surface that it becomes something else. "It's the old Trump administration bait-and-switch, which is announce first, act later. And what you've already announced, re-announced. And then pretend that's new economic policy and pretend you're doing something about the issue. Look, the issue is pretty straightforward. It's the Strait of Hormuz. It's closed, okay."

Former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s move to Fox News drew mockery Monday from critics who pointed to her continued presence inside President Donald Trump’s political and media orbit just two months after she left the administration to spend time with her family.

Fox News has confirmed that Leavitt, who is 29 years old, will be joining the network as an on-air contributor with her start date being Nov. 1, and she will appear on both its news and opinion programs. Suzanne Scott, CEO of Fox News Media, stated that Leavitt's experience gained during her time in the White House and on the campaign trail gives her a “distinct understanding of today’s political landscape.”

Amy Siskind took notice of the announcement, writing on X that "Karoline Leavitt is going to work at Fox News" and stating that "the cycle of MAGA life and reinforcement loop continues".

Siskind, author of The List: A Week-by-Week Reckoning of Trump’s First Year, has long been a critic of Trump and a political activist.

It also brought back doubts regarding Leavitt's reason for leaving the White House in August. Back then, she had stated that, after the birth of her daughter, she did not think it was possible to give her two young children the things they needed while at the same time spending the time and energy required of a press secretary.

President Trump also announced that Leavitt was resigning so as to spend more time with her children and family, adding that she would still remain one of his top external advisers.

A self-styled "MAGA patriot" on X referred to those statements following the announcement on Monday and claimed that Leavitt had abandoned the reason she had given for her departure.

“Sorry folks, no more integrity left here, someone sold out,” the user wrote, adding, “pray for her children and her family.”

Progressive commentator Jamie Bonkiewicz also hammered Leavitt on the same point, writing on X, "I guess Karoline Leavitt had enough of being a stay-at-home mom and taking care of her grandpa husband."

Greg Gutfeld had already made a joke about exactly this situation the day after Leavitt announced that she was leaving the White House.

“There is a concern that she will join Fox, which would then leave us with three women,” Gutfeld said on The Five in August, when referring to the Fox personalities Dana Perino and Kayleigh McEnany, who had both been White House press secretaries. Co-host Emily Compagno later made the joke that Gutfeld was trying to get her off the show “to make room for Karoline.”

Leavitt has stayed closely linked with Trump ever since she left office. She went back to MAGA Inc., the superPAC that supported Trump and where she had previously worked, and has continued appearing often on Fox.

She said that she intends to bring to her new position at Fox the "unique perspective and candor" gained during her time in the Trump administration.

Ex-Republican pollster Sarah Longwell and election forecaster Charlie Cook on Monday both discussed a "red undertow" in the 2026 midterm election, where it's not just a blue wave, but also an undertow also pulling Republicans down.

Politico's Dash Burns cited more leaked audio from Ken Paxton's lobbyist fundraiser, saying Washington is running his campaign and that everything he does is to appease the president. Burns noted the irony, since Paxton attacked his opponent for being a Beltway hack.

Elliott Morris, co-founder of "FiftyPlusOne," thinks there's also something else afoot in the state races that are just as close as the Senate ones.

"I'm just reminded, you know, Texas is a competitive governor's race right now. Greg Abbott (R), who won by 12 points just four years ago, is now trailing in his New York Times poll of the race. I believe, up for 3 or 4 percentage points. And that is as much an indictment of red state government as you're going to get. And I'm from Texas. I'm from south Texas, where we're having a water crisis right now," said Morris.

He noted that his Republican family members are "exasperated" and desperately looking for officials who can help them. Currently, he said, they don't feel like Texas is stepping up.

"And that, sort of, red state governance, I think, breeds a lot of discontent over time, where people don't feel like they're really getting their needs met," Morris said. "And that just fosters this sense of sort of anti-incumbency, anti-status quo bias we see at the national level too. So, it's unsurprising to me that places like Texas are competitive in this current environment, where people just don't feel like their needs are being met by government."

It's also unfolding at a time when President Donald Trump, the least popular president during a midterm in the 21st century, decided that he would campaign in red states to try and help save some of his candidates.

USA Today reporter Bart Jansen called it a "double-edged sword."

"Trump, saddled with the lowest approval ratings of his presidency, could actually have the unintended consequence of energizing Democrats if he traveled to more competitive states," political experts told Jansen. "His rallies aim to spur turnout beyond where he appears. And Republicans enjoy an enormous fundraising advantage to spend on television ads that can spread his message."

“Trump is a double-edged sword,” said Jessica Taylor, the Senate and governors editor for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “Does he have the potential to rile up Democrats and be used as a motivator to get them to turn out? Yes. But Republicans at this point have to focus on turning out their own voters.”

Democrats are keen to begin "aggressive oversight" of the Trump administration if and when they regain power in the midterms, but according to a new Politico report, the party has descended into squabbling over how to crack down on a specific issue: corporate capitulation.

As the Monday report explained, Democrats are poised to gain "broad subpoena powers over companies with ties to [President Donald] Trump and his family" if they take the House majority, as they are widely predicted to. Should they also retake the Senate, Politico noted that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a potential candidate for the Senate Banking Committee, "has already pressed major corporations over their contributions to Trump-linked causes."

Despite the evident desire among certain Democratic lawmakers and voters to see corporations brought to task, others in the are trying to pump the brakes on the idea, creating a new "tension" going forward.

"But some Democrats are cautioning that the party shouldn’t use investigative authority too broadly against corporate America to avoid steering into retribution," the report explained. "The divide is setting up tension over how Democrats should treat some of the largest and most powerful American companies, from technology giants like Meta and Amazon to cryptocurrency leaders like Coinbase and Ripple, if they return to power next year."

“We don’t want to turn into a banana republic where you lose an election and it’s all about retribution,” Rep. Bill Foster, an Illinois Democrat and senior member of the Financial Services Committee, told Politico. “A lot of the companies did things because Trump had a gun on their head. We’re going to have to be a little bit wise about when companies simply did something they had to do to survive this unprecedented level of corruption, compared to companies that actually got on board and profited more by being a partner in his corruption.”

I don’t look at the federal government to ever be used as a weapon,” Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a moderate Nevada Democrat, added. “Our focus should be solving problems that we’re seeing happening. That’s where our focus should be — not weaponizing the federal government."

Others, like Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, support a bigger push to investigate these companies, citing "questions he posed at a recent Senate hearing taking aim at a donation that a leading tobacco company, Reynolds American, made to Trump’s super PAC just before the administration unveiled new e-cigarette rules."

"We should get to the bottom of the corrupt relationship that exists between corporations in this country and the Trump administration," Murphy said.

One anonymous former House Democratic aide said that leading technology giants — Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft — should be specifically investigated for their donations to Trump's ballroom project, which have been criticized as thinly-veiled bribes.

"If you funded the ballroom — any of those names, I think, are on the table," the source said."

The corruption is everywhere, and it infects all parts of our government," Warren said about potential corporate oversight. “We can’t know how bad it is until we get an independent investigation."

Politico reporter and analyst Jonathan Martin thinks that the GOP may see some of its gubernatorial races go down simply because the anti-Republican sentiment is so strong.

"Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough said he's always believed Texas is "fool's gold," but the trend lines have been moving toward the middle.

On the Senate races, Martin said the smartest thing Republicans did last week was to cut and run in North Carolina and instead dump that money into Kansas, where they have a well-liked Democratic candidate going up against a Republican voters fear doesn't even live in the state anymore, the Kansas Reflector reported.

Martin noted that many of the races will be saved because Republicans are dumping buckets of cash into races where Democratic donors long since abandoned.

"And I wrote about this over the weekend, a lot of these races because of money, but they can't save all of them," Martin said. "And some of these races are just going to go down with the cycle. Because when the wind blows, Joe. It just — it takes down some places you wouldn't have otherwise expected. And the wind's blowing."

One of those is David Jolly, a former Republican running for governor in Florida, who Scarborough said is more like the people in Florida than the GOP's own candidate. Scarborough said that everyone, including him, has assumed that no Democrat could ever win statewide again, but Jolly is a real possibility.

"He just, I mean, every ad that's out there is an ad bashing him for some made-up hurricane tax or some other stupid thing, because they can't run against David as a radical because he's a former Republican congressman," Scarborough said. "He's as moderate as the day. As the day is long, he fits Florida voters probably far better than the Republican nominee. And yet Democrats, for some reason, they, you know, they like the exciting races. They like the national races. They like the senate races. They don't understand the importance of having a Florida governor and a Texas governor changes political maps for years to come or at least stops republicans from gerrymandering. Those maps in the biggest sunbelt states."

Martin agreed, noting that Democrats can't be competitive in a lot of these places every four years, but this year they can.

"But they have a shot this year. Joe, and you mentioned it at the top of your comments, which is that 2024 there was a snapback to Trump and the Republicans in Texas, and Florida for that matter. And why was that? Well, because younger and nonwhite voters, and there are lots in both Florida and Texas, came back to the Republican Party. Well, guess what? Because of ICE, because of the economy, because of the Iran war, a lot of those same nonwhite young voters are now up for grabs or leading Democrats."

It's one of many reasons that Democrats now have a shot in those states, but unlike Republicans they simply don't have the money.

"They're getting wildly outspent on the air in the races in those two states, because you just can't get Democratic donors nationally to engage in governors' races. They don't know who the candidates are. They can't understand why it matters to them. And they just see a straightforward question of, if we control the senate, we can block Trump," said Martin.

He called it understandable, but said that Democratic donors don't see the chess moves down the board.

"You can block Donald Trump for two years, or you can control the future. That's how Republicans think," said Scarborough.

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Republican Senator Susan Collins' vote to confirm one of President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominees is once again coming back to haunt her in Maine, eight years after Brett Kavanaugh was appointed to the Court and a few weeks before Collins faces voters in another tough reelection campaign.

The vote on Kavanaugh's confirmation in 2018 was one of the key votes of Collins' time in the Senate and has been frequently used against her during her 2020 reelection campaign, something she has not yet reconciled with.

“The Kavanaugh thing was disgusting,” Michael Luck, a 66-year-old Maine voter who previously supported Collins but backed her Democratic opponent in 2020, told The Washington Post. He accused the veteran Maine senator of being “really far out of touch.”

The matter has come back up since Justice Samuel Alito, who is 76, has recently stated that he is considering retiring. Should Alito step down during Trump's presidency, the president would then have another chance to alter the composition of the Supreme Court – bringing senators like Collins once again to the heart of a confirmation battle.

When the Post asked her if she would apply the same procedure to another Trump nominee as she had done with Kavanaugh and the other Supreme Court nominees, Collins replied, "Yes."

She stated that she carries out a thorough background check, personally interviews the people who are being considered and speaks to those who know them before deciding how to vote. Moreover, Collins mentioned that she had supported the Democratic nominees Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

But her vote for Kavanaugh comes with special baggage in Maine.

When discussing Kavanaugh's statement, Collins said that he had described Roe v. Wade as settled law. In 2022, he was part of the Supreme Court majority that overruled Roe and thus ended the federal constitutional right to abortion. Collins has since criticized that decision but has still refused to withdraw his vote in support of her confirmation.

“I do not regret the vote,” Collins said earlier this year.

Her Democratic opponent, Troy Jackson, who was previously Senate President of Maine, is now attempting to revisit that past with the voters.

“This election will determine who confirms the next Supreme Court justice,” Jackson wrote on X while attacking Collins’ record.

Alito has not declared any intention of retiring and has stated that he wants to stay on the court for the present. However, the possibility of another vacancy has provided Democrats with an opportunity to revive one of Collins’ politically damaging votes.

Trump has become dissatisfied with Kavanaugh and some of his other Supreme Court appointments during his first term. Recently, the president stated that he regretted each of his three appointments during his first term after the justices had ruled against him in various cases.

However, Collins is sticking to the vote that enabled Kavanaugh to be appointed to the court, thus bringing the decision she made eight years earlier right back into the heart of her most recent campaign.

Republicans were fuming as they spoke to The Hill on Monday, saying they were "blindsided" by the Trump administration's huge military purge and demanding greater transparency from the Pentagon.

At his "State of the Force" address this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the military would be firing around 20 percent of its generals and admirals. While Hegseth claimed that a purge of "fat generals" and "weak" officers was needed, critics have accused him of going after officers for ideological disagreements. Over half of his dismissals up to this point have also been either women or people of color.

In its Monday report, The Hill found that "Key Republican senators" were fuming at the Trump administration and the Pentagon, "voicing concerns about the lack of consultation with Congress and the possibility that qualified senior officers were sacked for political or ideological reasons." Concerns are also being raised about Hegseth potentially damaging military readiness for future conflicts by forcing out top officers on political grounds.

"I wouldn’t have made that a priority if I had been asked,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, told the outlet, adding that he only found out about the 20 percent purge shortly before it was announced last week. “I didn’t get a long lead."

"Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is handling the Pentagon’s request for an emergency supplemental spending package as well as the annual defense spending bill, said the sudden and large reduction of generals and admirals raises questions and concerns," The Hill explained further. "Collins said she didn’t get advanced notice of the steep reduction in military leadership ranks. She noted she told Hegseth at a hearing earlier this year that his ouster of senior military officials was 'deeply troubling' and risked 'depriving us' of the 'talent, dedication and patriotism' of women and people of color who were disproportionately pushed out."

"Our system for promoting officers has always been an example of one of the greatest meritocracies that we have," Collins said after Hegseth's address on Wednesday. “I think that we should adhere to a system that has served us well. There may be a need to reduce the overall number of flag officers at the Pentagon, but this approach seems to be targeted on ideology. It also disturbs me that there’s a disproportionate number of Blacks and females who are not being promoted."

Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican and vocal critic of Trump's cabinet, ripped Hegseth and said that he "failed to respect Congress."

"Too much time has passed, and he’s failed to respect Congress," Tillis said. "He’s never really given us fulsome briefings."

He added: "When you’re the head of the Department of Defense or any agency, you at least engage your committees. When you hear Sen. Wicker and other people express frustration — we’re his stakeholders. We control his purse strings, and he’s almost treating us like we’re some line workers down in the manufacturing facility that he doesn’t want to spend time with. It’s a huge problem, and I think he’s the face of the problem."

"Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough probed Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) on Monday morning as he began promoting his book about his time in elected office. Tillis tried to dodge questions about corruption in the White House.

Tillis was asked about the profits seen by those connected to the administration, but the Senator downplayed the seriousness, saying instead there should be investigation.

"Well, I think next year we'll probably have a Congress that's going to look into that," said Tillis. "I think every administration has some corruption problem. I think it's a fair it's fair game. It's no different than the oversight hearings that we've had in Judiciary. When Democrats or Republicans held the gavel. The American people deserve an answer to that. And I have no problem with a well-thought-out, fair process."

He said one of the reasons he's opposed impeachment in the past is that people treat it as a "vote of no confidence."

"And so let's be methodical. Let's not be quick. Let's take the time. And if the Democrats win the congressional race, they take over the gavels in the House. I have no problem with them performing their oversight role," he said.

That's when Scarborough stepped in to question whether Tillis can surly see a difference in what's unfolding during this administration.

"Where the president's family has taken at least $2 to $3 [billion], where sons of the president are getting, what, $600, $700 million loans on new companies that are starting up from the Pentagon. Is there any moral equivalency because you said, well, every administration has problems," said Scarborough. "You would agree this administration's problems are far more extreme on the issue of corruption than any that we've seen in our lifetime. Right?"

Tillis said that there's a difference between corruption and something that simply looks bad.

"There's a lot of bad looks, but you've got to prove corruption. And I have no problem with going through the due diligence and to provide counsel and to let people go through a process of discovery," Tillis said.

Scarborough wasn't buying it.

"Do you not think these meme coins, where the Trumps made billions of dollars and 98 percent of their supporters lost their money? Is that not corrupt?" he asked.

But Tillis refused to say whether he considered that corruption.

"I think it's worth looking at," Tillis said. "Again, there's a difference between breaking a law and a bad look. I'll give you a good example. And it's this nonsense of an oligarch helping pay for a wedding for Don Jr.'s wedding. My God. Who that's working with Trump, or Don Jr. would have thought that was a good idea? Should that be elected, too? Sure, I think so."

He said that people should defend themselves in the "clear light of day."

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Utah's Republican lieutenant governor, already under investigation by President Donald Trump’s Justice Department after refusing to hand over private voter data, is intensifying her criticism of Trump and his allies' efforts to alter election rules ahead of the midterms.

Deidre Henderson, who is Utah's chief election officer, said to KUER that trying to quickly introduce new voting requirements could have the effect of disenfranchising voters and causing chaos just a few weeks before the November election.

Henderson was especially critical of the move to put into immediate effect the SAVE Act, a piece of legislation supported by Republican Senator Mike Lee from Utah, which would introduce new proof-of-citizenship requirements.

She stated that the aim in trying to implement such far-reaching changes at once is “just to disenfranchise people.”

“And that’s crappy,” Henderson said. “That should not happen. That’s despicable.”

Henderson, a Republican who represents one of the nation’s most reliable red states, has become more and more at odds with the Trump administration regarding elections.

The Justice Department has asked Utah to hand over its complete voter registration list, which would include private details. However, Henderson has declined to do so, on the grounds that the federal government has no legal right to get the protected data.

Last month Henderson found out that the Department of Justice was looking into her regarding that refusal. The department issued a warning that she could face civil or criminal sanctions if she failed to preserve relevant information. However, Henderson shows no intention of retreating.

“I’ll comply with anything that’s lawful, of course,” she told KUER. “I don’t think their request is lawful, and 23 courts now have agreed with me.”

Spencer Cox, the Republican governor of Utah, has backed her resistance by stating that disagreements between the state and the federal government should be settled in court.

“It is wrong for the DOJ to investigate or threaten the lieutenant governor for carrying out her responsibilities under Utah law,” Cox said in September.

She has also opposed the Trump administration's attempts to change the procedures for mail-in voting. Together with election officials from both Republican and Democratic states, she has opposed a rule of the Postal Service which they claimed would be almost impossible to carry out before the midterms without leading to errors and delays.

For many years, Utah has depended heavily on voting by mail, and Henderson has on numerous occasions defended the system as secure.

The thing that troubles her most, she said, is what she called political "gamesmanship" concerning the voting rules.

“There are so many forces — forces much greater than me, greater than the Legislature, greater than our state — that are trying to muck things up for our voters,” Henderson said.

She stated that she does not know what the administration's "end game" is, but cautions that the consequences are already visible.

“I don't think it matters, even if the motivations are really good, right?” Henderson said of the Trump admin’s demands. “The chaos and confusion that's being created, the guardrails that are being destroyed — it's not worth any motivation.”

A farmer from a rural area of Georgia who voted for President Donald Trump in 2024 has now decided to support Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff in November, citing the human cost of Trump's immigration crackdown as the reason for her change of heart.

Laura Leigh Taylor, a 37-year-old farmer from Smithville, Georgia, has said, per KFF Health News, that she now regrets having voted for Trump after having seen the effect of his administration's immigration policies on people in her community.

Taylor stated that a friend's father, whom she referred to as a hardworking man who supported his family, was deported as a result of the administration's wide-ranging enforcement campaign. She said that she can understand the idea of removing violent criminals from the country but thinks that the crackdown has gone far beyond that.

Taylor now intends to vote for Ossoff since the Democrats have spoken about families being separated as a result of immigration enforcement.

“Just because of that simple fact, I’m going to go with him,” Taylor said.

The fact that she has made this decision comes at a time when a new survey by KFF-AP shows that voters in rural areas, a core voting block of Trump's political base, are deeply split on his key immigration policies.

The survey, which interviewed 2,241 registered rural voters, showed that about one-third of them think that Trump's immigration enforcement has had a positive effect on their community, another third believe it has had a negative effect, and roughly three out of ten say it has had no impact.

Immigration is still a significant issue in areas outside the major cities, since about three-quarters of voters in rural areas said that it was extremely or very important for candidates to talk about immigration before the midterms, even though a larger proportion want candidates to discuss the cost of living, health care costs and fraud in government programs.

The study also indicates that voters in rural areas understand the extent to which some local economies rely on labor from immigrants.

Around seven out of ten people stated that immigrants who are legally residing in the United States are at least to some degree important to their local economies. The same proportion said that temporary and seasonal agricultural workers are important, particularly those voters who are connected with farming, considering those workers to be essential. Even 45% believed that immigrants who are in the country illegally were at least somewhat important economically.

Trump still enjoys considerable support among rural MAGA Republicans. Two-thirds of that group stated that his immigration policies have benefited their communities, and about half said the administration has not gone far enough in carrying out deportations.

Taylor's case shows the other side of that divide.

She said that in Smithville, a community of about 600 people, seeing a family affected by the crackdown influenced how she would vote the next time she put her name on the ballot in November.

The FBI wants to keep its revealing training videos hidden until after the 2026 election, but legal analyst Allison Gill continues to fight to get the details.

The FBI had a series of nine training videos that show agents how to redact the investigation files around trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Gill submitted a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request for the videos and the PowerPoint decks that embedded them.

In August, the Justice Department asked the court to delay its response to Gill's lawsuit by another 90 days. She said it was an effort to push it past the midterm elections. It has already been a year since the initial lawsuit was filed. Gill noted it's remarkably similar to Katie Phang's lawsuit that would have pushed her FOIA request until after the election as well.

"The judge said no, and set a due date for September 25th," she wrote on Sunday night. "DOJ asked for an additional week due to a vacation and it was granted."

Then late on Friday, they filed another last-minute brief with a sworn declaration by a woman who managed the FBI's redaction efforts with over 1,000 agents tasked to review the files they'd taken from the Southern District of New York when they'd closed down the ongoing investigation into possible coconspirators that began under President Joe Biden's administration. The then-new President, Donald Trump, fired the prosecutors involved, Gill noted, outlining the timeline.

"I can see why they wanted to hold this until after the midterms," Gill wrote on Substack. "In it, they outline that there are NINE training videos, that TWO of them instruct agents on how to flag files for supervisory review (ones that contain certain names including Trump), and that they relied on a search from over a year ago conducted in someone else’s case to satisfy my FOIA request."

In March 2025, the FBI paid millions in overtime after bringing in more than 1,000 agents to sift through the files and redact them. The redactions at the time were very different than what Congress ordered be redacted after it passed the law mandating that the files be released with only the victims' names redacted.

The ordeal began after Gill noticed that Bloomberg reporter Jason Leopold scored a cache of emails in a different FOIA request that included a PowerPoint attachment. Gill had sources saying that there were training videos embedded in the PowerPoint decks, so it sparked the FOIA request into motion in December 2025. Gill wanted the decks and the videos.

A source told her last summer that one of the videos demanded that Trump's name be hidden.

According to the FBI, they did have the videos, totaling about 75 minutes. She recalled that they didn't want to release the videos in their entirety in July.

"They also said they rejected our email from 6 months prior because they felt we were inappropriately trying to expand the scope of our FOIA," wrote Gill.

The FBI's brief is available here, and the FBI declaration is available here.

"I can see now why they wanted to push it back until after the midterm elections," Gill said in a video explaining the situation.

In two videos, agents were instructed to flag documents containing specific names.

"And that they're withholding them from us in their entirety to protect the identities of the FBI and Department of Justice personnel who appear in the videos," said Gill.

In the sworn declaration, the FBI agent created a table listing the nine training videos and their descriptions. In video four they show how to redact names of people who claimed to be victims. But the FBI allowed anyone to indicate they were a victim. That's how three people who were going to be charged as co-conspirators were hidden in the files, Gill explained. They self-identified as victims.

Videos four and five instruct agents how to flag a document for a supervisor. That's the key piece that dates back to the agents who leaked to Gill last March, who said they were told to flag mentions of Donald Trump by document and page number and log them in an Excel spreadsheet at the end of their shifts. A whistleblower report to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) confirmed that. Those videos in particular give guidelines for how to flag documents with certain people, including Trump.

"Notice they are admitting these are investigative files," Gill pointed out. "There was an investigation going on that was shut down. Also notice in the middle column, all of these videos include B61 and B7C1 exemptions."

Those are the exemptions they're using to hide pieces of the video. They claim the exemptions are because the video shows DOJ and FBI employees whose identities could be exposed to the public. They consider voices and faces personally identifying information for those employees.

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