ABC News reports that President Donald Trump is expected to name FBI Director Kash Patel as the acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, according to sources familiar with the matter.

A Justice Department official told ABC News that Patel is expected to be sworn in as acting director early next week.

The move follows Attorney General Pam Bondi’s dismissal of the ATF’s general counsel, Pamela Hicks, late last week.

Bondi said in an interview with Fox News on Friday that it was because the agency’s lead lawyer was “targeting gun owners.”

The White House has released a readout of President Donald Trump’s call with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada:

Today, President Donald J. Trump held a call with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada. The leaders expressed pride in the excellence of both nations’ teams that faced off in a hard-fought hockey championship. The discussion turned to Monday’s G7 call that will mark the third anniversary of the invasion and war in Ukraine. Prime Minister Trudeau echoed President Trump’s desire to see an end to the war and acknowledged that President Trump is the only world leader who can push through a just and lasting peace. President Trump reminded the Prime Minister that the war should never have started and would not have had he been President at the time. The Prime Minister agreed. Prime Minister Trudeau then informed President Trump that Canada has enforced a 90 percent reduction in fentanyl crossing the U.S. Northern Border, and that the Canadian Border Czar would be in the United States next week for meetings with his American counterpart. The leaders said they both looked forward to Monday’s call.

Saturday night at the White House, and Donald and Melania Trump are hosting the nation’s governors, with the president promising: “It will be interesting, and fun!!!”

Melania and I are looking forward to dinner tonight, at the White House, with our Nation’s Governors, both Republican and Democrat. Maybe this will be the start of UNITY for our Nation. It will be interesting, and fun!!!

Donald Trump has promoted his daughter-in-law’s new Fox News show on his Truth Social platform.

Remember, LARA TRUMP opens her big new show tonight at 9:00 P.M., on FoxNews. I may be slightly prejudiced, because Lara is my wonderful daughter-in-law, the wife of my equally wonderful son, Eric, but she really is an amazing person! Remember, she ran, along with Michael Whatley, the Republican National Committee during our great Presidential run of 2024 – SUCH A BIG WIN. She is fantastic — WATCH HER SHOW TONIGHT!!!

Did Melania Trump laugh off efforts to get her on the 2024 campaign trail in support of her husband?

Michael Wolff makes this claim in his upcoming book about the 2024 election, titled All or Nothing, according to excerpts published by Newsweek.

Wolff, who has authored several books critical of President Donald Trump over the years, has been accused of fabricating stories that appeared in his various behind-the-scenes looks at Trumpworld.

In writing about the now-first lady’s absence from the 2024 campaign, Wolff writes:

“Since the first indictment in New York, when Melania had simply laughed at the campaign’s effort to get her to accompany her husband (‘Nice try’), it had been clear that she wasn’t going to show up. During the past year, she had yet to make a single campaign appearance. In only one instance in 2023 did she even appear on the plane—and then only hitching a ride. Magically, the Melania issue had not, in the White House years nor the Mar-a-Lago years—with both staffers and press quite aware of the Trumps’ nontraditional living arrangements and their careful distance from each other— become an issue.”

Another passage about the rise of “Where’s Melania? in the media, reads:

“Melania continued to be an additional freak-out, absolutely refusing every entreaty to speak or even to appear side by side with her husband. He had never faced point-blank questions from the media about their relationship. But what if ‘Where’s Melania?’ started now in earnest? But that was all before the shooting…now the attempt on Trump’s life not only made him again incontrovertibly the central figure of the moment, if not the age, giving him a maximum hero’s electoral mantle, but it also repositioned his convention as the joyous and abject coronation of which he dreamed.”

Since returning to the White House, the first lady has not been seen for almost a month. However, she will return to the public eye this evening at a reception and dinner for the National Governors Association.

Numerous people have questioned Wolff’s credibility, including Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (formerly White House press secretary), who said his previous book contained “mistake after mistake after mistake.”

Communications director Steven Cheung told Newsweek today that Wolff is “a lying sack of s*** and has been proven to be a fraud” who “fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination” as a result of his “severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”

Other people who have denied quotes or events featured in Wolff’s books include Tony Blair, Sean Hannity, Anna Wintour, Tom Barrack, and Alan Dershowitz.

All or Nothing is released on February 25.

Here’s the email some federal workers have received concerning their future employment as apparently ordered by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (and sent by the Office of Personnel Management):

On arrival at the White House after speaking at CPAC, President Donald Trump headed straight into the residence with National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt answered a couple of questions from the assembled pool reporters.

On the possibilities of a deal being reached to end the fighting in Ukraine, she said: “[The president] believes very strongly that Russia is willing to make a deal, and he’s fighting to make a deal. And Mike Waltz, who you just saw him go inside, is going to be working around the clock all weekend to get a deal and end this conflict in Ukraine.”

She continued: “The President said he wants the killing to stop, he wants to stop seeing innocent men die, and he wants peace. And that’s his ultimate goal right now, and that’s on his mind tonight.”

Asked specifically about the minerals deal between Ukraine and the U.S., Leavitt said: “Well, as you know, Secretary Bessent has been involved in negotiating with the Russians on — the Ukrainians, on that front. When it comes to the critical minerals, this is an important piece for the President. It’s very important for the president because it will recoup American tax dollars. And it also will be a great economic partnership between the United States of America and for the Ukrainian people as well as they rebuild their country following this brutal war.”

Leavitt was asked about any details of a possible Putin-Trump meeting, perhaps in Saudi Arabia.

She replied: “I don’t have anything to detail or to read out right now. The president, his team are very much focused on continuing negotiations with both sides of this war to end the conflict and the president is very confident we can get it done this week.”

With regard to the news about Pope Francis’s health, Leavitt said the president had been updated on his status, adding: “We’re praying for the Pope, and I’ll let the President put out his own statement. But of course, our thoughts and prayers are with him.”

Watch her full remarks below:

Coupled with approximately 75,000 buyouts, this dramatic reshaping of the 2.3 million-strong federal workforce appears to be gaining momentum, spearheaded by President Trump and advisor Elon Musk.

The administration has yet to release official figures on the total number of dismissals. The layoffs have disproportionately affected employees with less than one year of service, who lack the job security afforded to longer-serving staff members.

Here’s what we know so far…

As of Saturday evening, emails were sent to employees at federal agencies including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others with the subject line “What did you do last week?”

The email, seen by Reuters, asks employees to reply to the email they have received with five bullet points summarizing “what you accomplished at work last week” and copy their managers.

The email gives employees until 11:59 p.m. EST on Monday to respond.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, former governor of South Dakota, said during CPAC that she was “bringing DOGE chainsaws” to her department.

She then followed up with a tweet telling Elon Musk and Argentine President Javier Milei, “I have a flamethrower if you need help cutting and burning the government waste!”

Here’s Andrew Feinberg on the moment Milei handed Musk a bejeweled chainsaw on stage at CPAC: