Donald Trump has just given a MAGA podcast host who has been banned on some platforms for spreading ‘misinformation’ a top FBI job.

The president has picked a former US Secret Service agent to take on an enviable position in the upper ranks of the FBI as the Bureau’s new deputy director, under only Kash Patel in the chain of command.

While neither of the top two people running the agency have FBI experience, Donald Trump lauded Bongino as a ‘man of incredible love and passion for our country’, who will work well under the ‘best ever’ boss, Patel, on his Truth Social platform.

However, some see the move as controversial as the former agent turned conservative pundit has rustled some feathers over the years.

Dan Bongino, who now lives in Florida, worked for the New York police department for two years followed by a hefty stint at the Secret Service in 1999 through to 2011, where he worked on protection details for former US presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

As well as his failed Senate run in 2012, he lost races in Maryland and Florida for congressional seats in 2014 and 2016, during which he emerged as a staunch right-wing commentator and Trump ally, launching his daily podcast and landing a Saturday night segment on Fox News.

His podcast, The Don Bongino Show, saw Trump feature as a guest ahead of the election last year, while his Fox News show, ‘Canceled in the USA’ ran from 2021 to 2023, the premise of which involved him interviewing ‘victims’ who believed they were ‘canceled’ by the media.

According to the BBC, Bongino’s Facebook posts attract more attention than those of Fox News and CNN combined.

Meanwhile, YouTube banned the father-of-two for allegedly pushing ‘misinformation’ during the pandemic, as did Google’s AdSense for ‘persistently violating publisher policies against COVID-19 and election misinformation,’ notably peddling that the 2020 election was rigged in Joe Biden’s favor.

Many of his episodes, now aired on Rumble, seem to take fire at so-called ‘libs’ (liberals), remarking once in 2018 that his life is ‘all about owning the libs now.’

He also publicly challenges Trump’s critics on social media, including an on-going spat with the horror author, Stephen King.

In an episode last week, Bongino praised Patel’s appointment as chief of the FBI, saying his new boss will ‘make the FBI great again’ and dubbed him the ‘change agent’ the Bureau needs.

He added: “How amazing would it be in four years to look back with a good, high-quality, reformed FBI free of woke culture and DEI that goes out making headline, big arrests of real bad guys destroying your community. How good would that be?”

Now, he will be hanging up his podcasting hat to serve for the government.

The president wrote: “He was a member of the New York Police Department (New York’s Finest!), a highly respected Special Agent with the United States Secret Service, and is now one of the most successful Podcasters in the Country, something he is willing and prepared to give up in order to serve.

“Working with our great new United States Attorney General, Pam Bondi, and Director Patel, Fairness, Justice, Law and Order will be brought back to America, and quickly. Congratulations Dan!”, he added.

Bongino is the latest of a hefty line-up of other Fox News personalities to land a role in the Trump administration, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Tammy Bruce, Tulsi Gabbard, Sebastian Gorka and Transport Secretary Sean Duffy.

For the last decade, Annie Holland has survived solely on nutrients fed to her through her veins.

The 24-year-old hasn’t dined on a meal in her adult life, and has now spoken out about her heartbreaking symptoms that led to a terminal diagnosis at just 22 years old.

Giving a timeline of how her short life has gone so far, the Australian explained: “At just age 12 I started getting sick not thinking much of it. By age 15 it was getting worse I had been back and forth to doctors with numerous issues.

“By age 16 my life started to change forever. By age 18 I was given a diagnosis. By age 22 I became terminal.”

Annie gets her food through IV nutrition, which according to the University of California’s Medical School, is the administration of nutrients directly into the bloodstream through a vein – and is used to deliver a high concentration of nutrients that the body needs to function properly.

“When I was a teen, I started struggling with dizziness, fainting spells and digestive issues,” Annie, of Adelaide, shared.

“Doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me until eventually a urine and blood test confirmed I had Autoimmune Autonomic Gangliopathy (AAG).”

The disease is chronic and causes her immune system to attack healthy nerve cells, but in Annie’s condition it has worsened over the years and has meant medics have had to remove more than 10 feet of her bowel, leading her to develop ‘intestinal failure’.

It means her intestines cannot absorb enough nutrients and fluids to sustain the body.

“It’s hard to explain to people what it feels like to never be able to eat,” she said.

“Food is such a normal part of everyday life for most, but for me, it’s something I can’t even consider. There’s a lot of isolation that comes with it. I can’t join in on social meals, and the smell of food cooking can make me feel incredibly sick.

“It’s hard to be around something that’s a normal part of life for everyone else but a danger to me.

“I isolated myself from society because I was stuck going through hell whilst everyone moved on with their life’s. Spending months and months on end in hospital, going months with no visitors. I didn’t want anyone to know I was sick. I just gathered I would get better and I could remove that ‘era’ from my life. How wrong was I.”

She continued: “I never thought this would be it. I never saw my life ending soon but not being able to plan or even think about the future just breaks my soul.

“Months of horrible torturous symptoms, procedures, surgeries and awful medications. One of those being high dose steroids. Anyone who has had steroids know the awful side effects that come along with it. One of the most obvious moon face and fluid retention. Leaving me sometimes gaining 20 plus kilos in one week.

“The pain, the suffering , the loneliness no one can understand until they have been in that position.”

Annie has now created a GoFundMe page to help support the facility where she has received treatment.

The funds raised will go towards hiring additional nurses, providing training for medical staff, supporting families of Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN) patients, and purchasing essential equipment like a Fibroscanner, which can cost $20,000 to monitor liver health.

“My illness may be terminal, but I want my legacy to be about helping others. I’m not giving up. There’s so much more I want to do to help others, even if my time is limited,” she added.

Warning: This article contains discussion of sexual assault which some readers may find distressing.

The legal team representing Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs has challenged the search warrants used to investigate two of the rapper’s properties and called for the evidence obtained there to be suppressed.

Combs’ defense attorneys made their claims in a new court filing on Sunday (February 23), as Combs faces charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and prostitution following allegations made by at least three different women.

As part of the investigation into Combs, authorities searched two of the rapper’s properties in Los Angeles and Miami.

An indictment later alleged that during these searches, investigators uncovered items which appeared to relate to allegations of ‘Freak Off’ events which involved sex-trafficking victims taking part in group sex acts.

The items are said to have included lubricant, more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil, drugs and three AR-15 rifles.

However, Combs’ attorneys have now argued that the evidence federal prosecutors obtained by searching his homes, as well as his iCloud accounts, phones and a hotel room, must be suppressed because the search warrants they were acting on were ‘unconstitutional’.

According to ABC News, the defense has claimed that the applications for the search warrants left out facts that could have otherwise worked in Combs’ favor, in turn presenting what the defense described as a ‘grossly distorted picture of reality’.

The defense argued that the judge who approved the warrants should have had access this additional context, with lawyers calling attention to details featured in the applications that came from an unnamed person identified as ‘Producer-1’.

The accusations regarding Producer-1’s time working for Combs were ‘never credible’, the lawyers claimed, while also noting that prosecutors did not plan to call Producer-1 to testify.

The motion, which has been heavily redacted, does not publicly state what facts were allegedly left out by the prosecutors when making their applications.

The defense wrote: “It worked — the government got its warrants, leaked damaging information, and then executed its military-style raids at Combs’s residences. Here, rather than giving the reviewing magistrate a fair summary, the government hid exculpatory evidence to bolster its case.”

In filing the motion, the defense attorneys aim to either suppress all evidence obtained through the searches, or grant a hearing to examine the government’s conduct in obtaining the warrants.

Combs has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, with attorneys previously claiming that the ‘truth will prevail’ when his case goes to court.

Elon Musk has warned that federal employees could be forced into ‘resignation’ if they don’t respond to a six-word demand, and NASA workers have received particular guidance on how they should respond.

The SpaceX founder and billionaire is leading Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and has been tasked with cutting federal spending.

And he’s most certainly been doing that, with cuts among diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) programs and foreign aid among those being axed.

DOGE itself claims its cost-cutting moves have saved the US public $55 billion in federal funds, although this figure is yet to be verified, as per ABC News.

Anyway, Elon Musk’s most recent tactic came in the form of a seemingly innocuous e-mail asking employees about their week.

If ignored, though, it could see people lose their jobs, he warned.

What does the DOGE email say?

An email with the simple subject line: “What did you do last week?” should’ve hit federal worker’s inboxes today over the weekend.

In a post shared to Twitter, one person revealed the content of the email, sent from HR.

“Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager,” it read.

“Please do not send any classified information, links, or attachments. Deadline is this Monday at 11:59pmEST.”

If you ask me, it looks like one of those dodgy phishing emails and I’d certainly be thinking twice about replying to it.

There’s no real indication it’s from DOGE, either.

Anyway, Musk took to social media on Saturday to forewarn employees.

He wrote: “Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week.

“Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”

According to the BBC, the email landed in people’s inboxes following Trump’s appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), with emails obtained by CNN also showed they were marked as highly important, with Musk’s mention of resignation as a result of a non-response similarly not included.

How have NASA employees been asked to respond?

Bloomberg reports that managers at NASA’s Space Operations Mission group told employees to hold off responding to Musk until they could establish they were ‘in compliance’, adding that workers should ‘try to continue to enjoy your weekend’.

Another email to engineers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston told them to ‘PAUSE on any response to the subject email’, adding they should ‘not disclose proprietary or pre-decisional information to unknown recipients without a need to know’.

Yesterday (February 23), a NASA spokesperson told Bloomberg ‘anticipating sending some guidance to our workforce tomorrow’.

NASA and SpaceX

Musk has sparked controversy not only by taking on the DOGE role, but because his space exploration company, SpaceX, has been awarded billions of dollars of federal funded contracts over the years by NASA.

As of February 13, Musk’s company had been awarded $57,460,047 from NASA – and that’s just so far this year.

The US’ Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) shows one contract, issued on January 17, was valued at $18,874,069, while a second, signed off earlier this month on February 10, came in at $38,858,978.

In fact, SpaceX is NASA’s second-largest private provider, racking up contracts worth a total of $2.25 billion from the agency in the fiscal year of 2024, as per Statista.

So, the fact that NASA employees could be forced into resignation over an email Musk has been in charge of implementing, is pretty ironic.

This all comes as NASA launches its highly-anticipated PUNCH mission to examine the sun’s atmosphere this week – launching on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, no less…

Apple has announced plans to invest a staggering $500,000,000,000 into the US over the next four years in what the company has described as its largest-ever spend commitment.

The announcement comes as the tech giant continues to roll out new products for customers, with the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16e among the latest drops helping to contribute to the company’s $3.73 trillion value.

It’s hard to imagine where such a huge company could go from here, but Apple and CEO Tim Cook clearly have big plans as the new investment has been described as an ‘extraordinary new chapter in the history of American innovation’.

Why has Apple chosen to invest in America?

Apple has a presence across the globe, but with its roots and headquarters stationed in California, the company has a ‘long history of investing in American innovation and advanced high-skilled manufacturing’.

In a press release announcing its investment plans, the company explained that the $500,000,000,000 pledge will build on this existing history, as well as supporting a ‘wide range of initiatives’ including artificial intelligence, silicon engineering, and skills development for students and workers from across the US.

Explaining the decision to invest in the US, Cook said: “We are bullish on the future of American innovation, and we’re proud to build on our long-standing U.S. investments with this $500 billion commitment to our country’s future.

“From doubling our Advanced Manufacturing Fund, to building advanced technology in Texas, we’re thrilled to expand our support for American manufacturing.

“And we’ll keep working with people and companies across this country to help write an extraordinary new chapter in the history of American innovation.”

How will the investment create new jobs?

In its press release, Apple explains that the company currently supports ‘more than 2.9 million jobs across the country through direct employment’, adding that it’s set to make 20,000 additional hires over the next four years.

The ‘vast majority’ of these hires will be focused on research and development, silicon engineering, software development, and AI and machine learning.

As part of the pledge, Apple plans to open up a new manufacturing facility in Houston which will be designed to produce servers that support Apple Intelligence – a job that was previously done outside the US.

The facility is set to open in 2026.

In Michigan, the company will create an academy intended to ‘train the next generation of US manufacturers’, as well as growing research and development investments in the US with the goal of supporting fields like silicon engineering.

What else will the investment fund?

As well as ‘direct employment’, the investment is set to include Apple’s work with suppliers across the US, as well as Apple Intelligence infrastructure and data centers, corporate facilities, and Apple TV+ productions.

Apple is also set to increase its US Advanced Manufacturing Fund, which supports high-skilled manufacturing jobs across the US, from $5 billion to $10 billion.