Trump Is Starting to Turn on the People He Handpicked
Multiple Senate-confirmed Trump officials face ouster while longtime aides come under scrutiny
Aug. 29, 2025
Trump allies, like Corey Lewandowski, are facing scrutiny over ethics.
- President Trump is removing officials, including some of his own picks, due to alignment issues and clashes within agencies.
After months of pushing out career government officials and Democratic holdovers, President Trump is starting to turn on some of his own picks.
On Wednesday, the White House said it was firing Trump’s director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a top public health agency, one month after she was confirmed by the Senate. The White House said she wasn’t aligned with the president. Several other top officials at the agency resigned in response.
This week’s turmoil followed ousters at other agencies. Trump replaced the head of the Internal Revenue Service less than two months into the job because the appointee, Billy Long, clashed with officials at the Treasury Department. Two top Justice Department antitrust officials were removed from their roles after clashing with senior officials at the agency who they accused of cutting deals with favored lobbyists. One of them has publicly questioned the integrity of other Justice officials. The White House also removed the acting FEMA administrator after he said the emergency management agency should continue to exist, contradicting others in the administration.
In recent days, Trump also pushed his Treasury secretary to fire the agency’s second-in-command and installed a second deputy at the FBI after the White House soured on the first.
The firings are separate from his attempts to remove dozens of other personnel he didn’t appoint, including a Federal Reserve governor, a top official at the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, prosecutors who investigated him and a coterie of leaders across the government, such as the National Archivist.
“No administration has seen more chaos in its leadership ranks than the Trump administration other than Trump one. He begins by being right, and if anyone challenges his worldview, they need to go away,” said Max Stier, who leads the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that tracks hiring and firing.
Brad Todd, a Republican strategist with ties to the Trump administration, said the firings are part of Trump trying to implement an aggressive agenda. “The voters pick one person to lead the executive branch and that means that person gets to choose every other person,” Todd said.
Trump approached his second term seemingly determined to avoid the high-level turnover that defined his first, when officials from the Republican establishment tried to curb some of his most dramatic impulses and quit in protest. In January, Trump stacked his new administration with officials vetted for loyalty, and hasn’t removed any cabinet secretaries yet. The White House has been run more effectively than his first administration, allies say. White House officials said Trump had only grown frustrated with one cabinet secretary, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and she has buttressed her position with Trump in recent weeks by focusing on pursuing other perceived Trump foes.
The White House also has started to look into one of Trump’s longest-serving aides, Corey Lewandowski, who once ran Trump’s 2016 campaign and is now in an unpaid advisory role at the Department of Homeland Security, according to people familiar with the matter. The inquiry stems from allegations Lewandowski tried to skirt rules that limit how long he can stay in the role, the people said.
White House spokeswoman Liz Huston didn’t address any of the particular departures but said the president “assembled the best and brightest administration in history to deliver on his promise to ‘Make America Great Again’ from securing the border to delivering the largest middle class tax cuts in history to restoring law and order on our streets.”
The firings stem from different reasons, White House officials say.
In some cases, officials explicitly attributed the departures to what they viewed as improper political interference. An associate of the fired CDC Director, Susan Monarez, said she was pushed out in part because she wouldn’t dismiss senior leaders, which she believed was illegal without cause. “The president has the authority to fire those who are not aligned with this mission,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. White House officials said that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. originally approved of her nomination but quickly soured on her over vaccines and fights over grants and asked for authority to remove her.
Michael Faulkender, Trump’s choice for deputy Treasury secretary and confirmed by the Senate in March, departed from the administration last week after Trump was convinced he wasn’t aligned with the overall vision of his second term, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Faulkender’s departure was announced by Laura Loomer, the right-wing Trump ally who often highlights what she argues is disloyalty within his administration. Faulkender didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Cameron Hamilton, the acting head of FEMA who was removed from his post, also clashed with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who ordered him to take a polygraph exam after public reports surfaced about her efforts to dismantle the agency.
Long, who served as Trump’s Internal Revenue Service chief for less than two months, was quickly reassigned to serve as Trump’s pick for U.S. Ambassador to Iceland following disputes with Trump’s Treasury secretary. A senior administration official said Long fought with other Treasury Department officials and privately told the White House he was overwhelmed in the job and the Byzantine bureaucracy of the IRS. The official said Trump continued to like Long, who didn’t respond to a request for comment.
In the first major demotion in Trump’s second term, the president reassigned Mike Waltz, his first national security adviser, to serve as his U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
Other Trump allies are facing new scrutiny from White House officials.
White House lawyers have looked into whether Trump’s former campaign manager, Lewandowski, has bent the rules to prolong his time at the DHS, people familiar with the matter said, including avoiding swiping in to get into department buildings so his presence isn’t recorded. As a special government employee, a status under federal ethics laws that permits private-sector employees to work inside the government without having to relinquish their outside salaries or investments, Lewandowski’s government service is capped at 130 days a year.
Lewandowski, who was expected to serve in an unofficial and temporary capacity at DHS, has amassed power at the department in a way that has concerned top officials, according to people familiar with the matter. Until recently, the chief of staff position at the department was still vacant and Lewandowski was considered de facto chief of staff or even “shadow secretary” by employees.
DHS officials told the White House recently that he had worked fewer than 30 days since the start of the new administration in January, though he is a constant presence by Noem’s side.
A spokeswoman for DHS said a career official tracks Lewandowski’s work days. The White House Counsel’s Office recently disseminated a memorandum reminding special government employees of the 130-day limit. A White House official said the memo was circulated governmentwide and not directed at a specific individual.
Write to Josh Dawsey at Joshua.Dawsey@WSJ.com, Olivia Beavers at Olivia.Beavers@wsj.com and Tarini Parti at tarini.parti@wsj.com
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Appeared in the August 30, 2025, print edition as 'President Is Turning On Officials He Picked'.
President Trump is removing officials, including some of his own picks, due to alignment issues and clashes within agencies.
Firings occurred at the CDC, IRS, Justice Department, and FEMA, with some officials alleging political interference.