The head of a presidential library resigned this week after a tug-of-war with the Trump administration over gift selection and a sword for King Charles III, sources familiar with the matter told CBS News.

Todd Arrington, a career historian who previously held posts with the National Park Service and National Archives and Records Administration, said he stepped down on Monday under pressure as director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home.

In an interview with CBS News, Arrington said he was told on Monday, "Resign — or be fired." 

"Apparently, they believed I could no longer be trusted with confidential information," he said. When asked what specific confidential information he'd shared, Arrington said it was "about the sword" and an unrelated matter.

Arrington's departure came after he resisted taking an original Eisenhower sword out of the library's collection to give to King Charles last month during President Trump's unprecedented second state visit to the United Kingdom.

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FBI Director Kash Patel announced he is ending the bureau's partnership with the Anti-Defamation League, saying he disliked former FBI Director James Comey's approving comments about the Jewish advocacy group.

"James Comey wrote 'love letters' to the ADL and embedded FBI agents with them," Patel alleged in the Oct. 1 post on X. He accused the organization of spying on Americans, without providing specific details.

The Anti-Defamation League, which describes itself as the "leading anti-hate organization in the world" with a mission to stop the defamation of Jewish people and secure justice for all, said in a statement that it has "deep respect for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and law enforcement officers at all levels across the country."

"In light of an unprecedented surge of antisemitism, we remain more committed than ever to our core purpose to protect the Jewish people," the league said.

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Retired US supreme court justice Anthony Kennedy fears “democracy is not guaranteed to survive” as “partisanship is becoming much more prevalent and more bitter” in the legal opinions coming from his former institution, he tells NPR in an upcoming interview.

Strikingly, for the interview set to publish in October, NPR’s Nina Totenberg said she asked Kennedy whether he was still sure the supreme court’s major decisions would remain intact – as he told a small group of journalists that he was when he retired in 2018 during Donald Trump’s first presidency.

NPR reported that Kennedy “demurred”, seven years after that prediction – and three years after the federal abortion rights once granted by the Roe v Wade ruling were eliminated by a supreme court with a conservative supermajority anchored by three Trump appointments.

“We live in an era where reasoned, thoughtful, rational, respectful discourse has been replaced by antagonistic, confrontational conversation,” Kennedy, who was appointed to the supreme court during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, remarked.

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The Trump administration has filed a first-of-its-kind civil rights lawsuit against pro-Palestinian groups and activists, accusing the advocates of violating a law that has traditionally been used to protect reproductive health clinics from anti-abortion harassment and violence.

The lawsuit, filed on Monday by the justice department’s civil rights division, alleges that two advocacy groups and six people broke the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (Face) Act when they protested against an event at a West Orange, New Jersey, synagogue in November 2024. The event at the Ohr Torah synagogue promoted the sale of property in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are widely considered illegal under international law. Similar events have sparked protests in the years since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, but this event escalated into violence.

One man, a pro-Israel counterprotester, pepper-sprayed a pro-Palestinian demonstrator, while another counterprotester bashed the same demonstrator in the head with a flashlight, according to a local news outlet. Local New Jersey prosecutors ultimately filed charges against the two counterprotestors on multiple counts, including aggravated assault. (The pair have denied the accusations against them.)

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