Donald Trump has been convinced not to deploy federal troops to the city of San Francisco, as he has in other cities across the country. 

In a Truth Social post Thursday afternoon, Trump wrote that he was persuaded by a phone call with San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie and conversations with tech industry leaders such as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff. 

“They want to give it a ‘shot.’ Therefore, we will not surge San Francisco on Saturday. Stay tuned!” Trump’s post read.  

The post confirms a statement from Lurie Thursday morning that Trump assured him he “was calling off any plans for a federal deployment in San Francisco.” Last month, Trump named the city as one of many places where he planned to deploy the U.S. military for “training,” and on Wednesday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the administration planned to send 100 federal agents, including from the Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection, there within days. 

Those plans appear to be on hold for now, thanks to Trump’s tech baron allies talking him out of targeting San Francisco as he has other cities across America, including Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. The city may also have benefited from the fact that unlike the other cities Trump has targeted, it doesn’t have a Black mayor. 

Whatever the reasoning, California’s Bay Area has momentarily been spared from Trump’s heavy-handed federal agents, a surprise considering that California governor (and former San Francisco mayor) Gavin Newsom has positioned himself as a persistent Trump critic. Maybe other cities should try to convince a wealthy tech CEO or two to keep the president from siccing his agents on them. 

House Democrats have formally begun an investigation into President Trump’s brazen attempt at a $230 million payout from his own Justice Department.

The probe is led by Representatives Jamie Raskin and Robert Garcia.

“If either of your claims had any merit, you could have taken them to court by now and litigated them publicly,” wrote Raskin and Garcia, the top Democrats on the House Oversight and Judiciary committees. “You did not do that. Instead, you waited until you became President and installed your handpicked loyalists at DOJ, knowing that you could instruct them to co-sign your demand notes in secret behind closed doors, and then you could present the notes to the U.S. Treasury for cold hard cash courtesy of the American taxpayer. That isn’t justice, it is theft.”

The president is seeking reimbursement for DOJ investigations into Russian election interference and Russian ties to Trump’s 2016 campaign, as well as for the 2022 FBI search of Mar-a-Lago for classified documents. Trump made the claims in 2023 and 2024, but now his own DOJ is in charge of resolving the matter. The $230 million payout would come from taxpayer funds.

Republicans, however, don’t seem to be too worried about the high levels of potential fraud and corruption associated with an unprecedented move like this.

“I don’t know the details about that, I’ve just read it, I didn’t talk with him about that,” House Speaker Mike Johnson replied when asked about the payout on Wednesday. “I know that he believes he’s owed that reimbursement. What I heard yesterday was if he receives it, he was gonna consider giving it to charity, he doesn’t need those proceeds.”

Donald Trump is apparently so proud of the ballroom he’s building at the White House that he doesn’t want anyone to see the construction in progress. 

On Thursday, the Secret Service closed off access to the Ellipse park, where journalists were taking pictures and video of the demolition of the White House’s East Wing. Both CNN and Reuters photojournalists had to leave the area, according to CNN’s Jim Sciutto.

Images of the ongoing destruction of a major section of the White House seem to have caused enough of a backlash that Trump is trying to keep the public from seeing them. It’s easy to see why: Trump previously claimed that the ballroom would result in no demolition of any part of the White House, and ignored the normal legal process for making any changes to the building. 

a live look this morning at the demolished East Wing of the White House pic.twitter.com/qSswoRt2ki

The ballroom itself is going to be a garish 90,000-square-foot construction full of Trump’s trademark gold decor. Gone will be a guest entrance as well as offices for the first lady’s staff and other White House employees. A majority of Americans are opposed to the demolition, but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has called the backlash “

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