Trump revokes Biden’s security clearance, fires art centre’s board and declares himself its chairman
US President Donald Trump is revoking his predecessor’s access to government secrets and ending the daily intelligence briefings former president Joe Biden receives in payback for Biden doing the same to him in 2021.
Trump announced his decision in a post on his social media platform shortly after he arrived at his Mar-a-Lago home and private club in Palm Beach for the weekend.
Donald Trump and Joe Biden in January, before the start of Trump’s inauguration.Credit: AP
“There is no need for Joe Biden to continue receiving access to classified information. Therefore, we are immediately revoking Joe Biden’s Security Clearances, and stopping his daily Intelligence Briefings,” Trump wrote. “He set this precedent in 2021, when he instructed the Intelligence Community (IC) to stop the 45th President of the United States (ME!) from accessing details on National Security, a courtesy provided to former presidents.”
The move is the latest in a vengeance tour of Washington that Trump promised during his campaign. He has previously revoked security clearances from more than four dozen former intelligence officials who signed a 2020 letter saying that the Hunter Biden laptop saga bore the hallmarks of a “Russian information operation”. He’s also revoked security details assigned to protect former government officials who criticised him, including his former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, who faces threats from Iran, and former infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci.
Biden didn’t immediately comment on the move.
Biden ended Trump’s intelligence briefings after Trump helped spur efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and incited the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. At the time, Biden said Trump’s “erratic” behaviour should prevent him from getting the intel briefings.
Trump also dismissed Colleen Shogan as the archivist of the United States, White House aide Sergio Gor posted on X.
This image, part of the indictment against Trump, shows boxes of records stored in a bathroom and shower at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.Credit: AP
Trump said before returning to the presidency in early January that he would replace the head of the National Archives and Records Administration. The government agency drew his anger after it informed the Justice Department about issues with Trump’s handling of classified documents in early 2022. That led to an FBI raid at Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago and the charging of federal crimes against him. The government has since dropped the charges against Trump due to his return to the presidency.
Shogan, the first woman in the post, wasn’t the archivist at the time the classified documents issue emerged. David Ferriero, who had been appointed by then-president Barack Obama in 2009, announced in January 2022 that he’d be retiring effective that April.
Trump also announced he was firing members of the board of trustees for the Kennedy Centre for Performing Arts, one of the nation’s premier cultural institutions, and naming himself chairman.
“Art and Ideals: President John F. Kennedy” - a permanent exhibition at the Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts in Washington.Credit: Alan Karchmer
He also indicated that he would be dictating programming, specifically declaring that he’d put an end to events featuring performers in drag.
“At my direction, we are going to make the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC, GREAT AGAIN. I have decided to immediately terminate multiple individuals from the Board of Trustees, including the chairman, who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture,” Trump wrote on his social media website.
“We will soon announce a new board, with an amazing chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!”
In a statement on its website, the Kennedy Centre said it was aware of Trump’s post. “We have received no official communications from the White House regarding changes to our board of trustees,” the statement said. “We are aware that some members of our board have received termination notices from the administration.”
US Attorney-General Pam Bondi at her confirmation hearing.Credit: AP
Trump also signed an executive order calling for a broad review of all of Biden’s executive actions on guns, along with other federal government rules, plans, reports and lawsuits, to “assess any ongoing infringements of the Second Amendment rights” of Americans.
The order calls for Attorney-General Pam Bondi to conduct the review within 30 days and formulate an action plan for protecting the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment.
And he froze aid to South Africa, alleging discrimination against the white minority.
“The government of South Africa blatantly discriminates against ethnic minority Afrikaners,” the White House said in a summary of the executive order. Trump would also move to resettle white South African farmers and their families as refugees, the White House said.
“As long as South Africa continues to support bad actors on the world stage and allows violent attacks on innocent disfavoured minority farmers, the United States will stop aid and assistance to the country,” the summary said in a reference to South Africa’s referral of the Gaza genocide case against Israel at the International Criminal Court, and the country’s land policy. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said his country would “not be bullied”.
Trump’s moves also encountered other protests.
Nineteen Democratic attorneys-general started to sue Trump to stop Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Treasury Department records containing sensitive personal data such as Social Security, tax refunds, Veteran’s benefits and bank account numbers for millions of Americans.
Separately, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from placing 2200 employees of the US Agency for International Development on paid leave.
High School students rally in Los Angeles on Friday against Trump’s mass deportations, and demand immigration reform.Credit: AP
US District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, sided with two federal employee associations in agreeing to pause plans to put the USAID employees on paid leave as of midnight on Friday.
The workers’ associations argue that Trump lacks the authority to shut down an agency enshrined in congressional legislation.
And protests and walkouts in southern California against his immigration crackdown, led mainly by high school students, continued for the sixth consecutive day.
Students from high schools in East LA marched downtown, waving Mexican, Guatemalan, and El Salvadorean flags while passing cars honked in support. Roughly 1000 students were peacefully gathered in front of City Hall.
The student walkouts began on Monday and have involved high schools all over the greater Los Angeles area. They carried signs that read, “We fight for our parents who fought for our futures”.
Thousands of people protesting mass deportations planned by Trump marched in Southern California on Sunday, including in downtown Los Angeles, where demonstrators blocked a major freeway for several hours.
And in Alaska, the Legislature passed a resolution urging Trump to reverse course and retain the name of North America’s tallest peak as Denali rather than change it to Mount McKinley.
Trump, on his first day in office, signed an executive order calling for the name to revert to Mount McKinley, an identifier inspired by a former president, who was from Ohio and never set foot in Alaska.
He said he planned to “restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs”. He said McKinley “made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent”.
AP
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