Trump calls Putin 'crazy,' warns of Russia's 'downfall'

As Trump touted his purge of diversity, equity and inclusion programs in his address to West Point’s graduating cadets on Saturday, a longtime West Point professor who resigned in protest of the administration’s changes to the academy said he objected to the president’s choice to wear his signature red Make America Great Again hat.

“Making cadets salute him in the hat – that crosses a line for me,” Graham Parsons said. “He seems really to struggle separating the office of the presidency from himself, and that sort of captured it in a microcosm.”

In the first days of his second term, Trump signed an executive order ending DEI programs in the armed forces. Parsons published an op-ed in May, saying that West Point began “eliminating courses, modifying syllabuses and censoring arguments to comport with the ideological taste of the Trump administration.”

“These orders are to indoctrinate, not educate. They’re telling us what to think,” said Graham Parsons, who was a professor of philosophy at West Point focusing on military ethics. Parsons spent 13 years on the faculty before resigning.

“It just became professionally untenable – no longer able to pursue the questions that I find important, that my discipline fins important. And it’s not just me, it’s the entirety of the academy,” Parsons told me. “It felt like a real professional betrayal.”

Parsons said the administration is telling professional scholars what “areas of inquiry are legitimate and illegitimate”, calling it “a very dangerous removal of the boundary between politics and education.”

“My research agenda was effectively banned. The message to cadets was this is not ok, and sometimes you have to put your career aside to do the right thing.”

-ABC News’ Selina Wang

President Donald Trump delivered a commencement address to the graduating class of West Point on Saturday, donning a red "Make America Great Again" cap and telling graduates his foreign policy will prioritize efforts to "make peace and to seek partnership, even with countries where our differences may be profound."

Trump told the graduating class that it is a crucial moment in the Army's history, claiming that political leaders from both parties have misused the military for unintended missions over the past two decades and that he's a "peacemaker."

Referring to the cadets as "winners," Trump again touted his "Golden Age" agenda and hit out at his predecessors for having "dragged our military into missions."

"It was never meant to be," Trump said. "It wasn't meant to be. People would say, why are we doing this? Why are we wasting our time, money and souls. In some cases, they sent our warriors on nation building crusades to nations that wanted nothing to do with us, led by leaders that didn't have a clue in distant lands, while abusing our soldiers with absurd ideological experiments here and at home. All of that's ended."

"As president, I am laser focused on our core national interests, my preference will always be to make peace and to seek partnership, even with countries where our differences may be profound," Trump continued.

The president criticized the business world as "boring" and highlighted the qualities of "honor" and "sacrifice," telling graduates their choice to serve in the military was "better" than pursuing high-paying careers on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley.

"Instead of sports teams and spreadsheets and software, you chose a life of service, very important service," Trump said.

-ABC News' Kelsey Walsh

The Trump administration put more than half of the officials at the National Security Council at the White House on administrative leave on Friday afternoon, according to a source familiar with the matter. This is part of a restructuring under interim national security adviser and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Staffers included career officials and political hires by the administration.

The restructuring attempts to transfer the office to the State and Defense departments. Most notably, the National Security Council's communications staff no longer exists.

-ABC News' Kelsey Walsh

U.S. District Judge John Bates permanently barred the Trump administration from enforcing a March executive order targeting the law firm Jenner & Block.

"This case arises from one of a series of executive orders targeting law firms that, in one way or another, did not bow to the current presidential administration’s political orthodoxy," Bates wrote. "Like the others in the series, this order -- which takes aim at the global law firm Jenner & Block -- makes no bones about why it chose its target: it picked Jenner because of the causes Jenner champions, the clients Jenner represents, and a lawyer Jenner once employed."

The decision from the Republican-appointed judge is the latest legal setback for the Trump administration's effort to retaliate against what it says are law firms that engaged in "lawfare."

Trump issued his executive order targeting Jenner & Block in March, and the firm quickly sued, arguing the order is part of an effort to "coerce law firms and lawyers into renouncing the Administration's critics and ceasing certain representations adverse to the government."

Bates wrote that Trump's order "is doubly violative of the Constitution" because it not only targets a law firm because of its legal work but also sends a broader message to any lawyer who has challenged "government-imposed orthodoxy."

"This order, like the others, seeks to chill legal representation the administration doesn'’tlike, thereby insulating the Executive Branch from the judicial check fundamental to the separation of powers," he wrote.

-ABC News' Peter Charalambous