Former journalist Kush Desai, an Indian-American, has been appointed by US President Donald Trump as his Deputy Press Secretary, according to a White House announcement. Desai previously worked as the Deputy Communications Director for the 2024 Republican National Convention and as the Communications Director for the Republican Party of Iowa.

Desai also served as the Republican National Committee's Deputy Director of Communications for Pennsylvania and Battleground States. He was instrumental in developing the story and messaging in the crucial battleground states, especially Pennsylvania, in this role. Trump won all seven of the key battleground states. On Friday, the White House announced his appointment. Deputy White House Chief of Staff and Cabinet Secretary, Taylor Budowich, will be in charge of the White House Office of Communications. The appointments of Assistant to the President and White House Communications Director Steven Cheung and Assistant to the President and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt were previously announced by Trump. 

On the other hand, in a rather controversial move, the U.S. Senate approved Pete Hegseth as President Donald Trump’s nominee for defence secretary with a mostly party-line vote of 51-50 on Friday. Vice President J.D. Vance cast the deciding vote, breaking the 50-50 tie in the 100-member Senate. This marked only the second time in U.S. history that a vice president had to break a tie for a nominee. The vote came after several days of Senate debate about Hegseth's qualifications for the top civilian position in the U.S. military, overseeing the nation’s armed forces. Hegseth promised to restore accountability to the country's military at his confirmation hearing earlier this month. 

Roger Wicker, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, endorsed him, saying, "Pete Hegseth has the determination and the tools to achieve real change. He will inject a new warrior ethos into the Pentagon, a spirit that can cascade from the top down." Hegseth faced criticism from Senate Democrats for his comments about women and transgender people in the military, as well as accusations of sexual assault, drunken behaviour and financial mismanagement at two nonprofits he led that supported U.S. veterans. Earlier this week, senators received an affidavit from Danielle Hegseth, his former sister-in-law, claiming that he was abusive toward his second ex-wife, Samantha Hegseth. However, she did not provide details about the abuse or said that she personally witnessed it.

As Samantha Hegseth put it in a statement to NBC News, the outlet that broke the story first, "There was no physical abuse in my marriage." On Thursday, Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, expressed his dissatisfaction with Hegseth's responses to his inquiries over rumours that the Trump administration will establish a board to evaluate senior military officers' leadership abilities. "We've seen it happen in other places around the world, where militaries are undermined and subjected by political leaders that have a particular political point of view and passion, and they become essentially not an army but an extension of the political aspirations of the Great Leader. We can't see that here in America," Reed said.