On Tuesday, the Senate passed President Donald Trump's "One Big, Beautiful Bill Act"—a cruel piece of legislation that strips health care and SNAP benefits from millions of Americans to cut taxes for the wealthy and beef up Trump's immigration gestapo.
After more than 24 hours of debate and amendment votes, the bill passed by a vote of 51-50, with Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie.
Vice President JD Vance, seated center, breaks a 50-50 tie to push forward President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” on July 1.
For a while, it was unclear if the bill could pass, as four GOP Senators—Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaksa—expressed reservations with the legislation.
"My hope is that the House is gonna look at this and recognize that we're not there yet,” Murkowski told reporters, expressing doubt for a bill that she literally voted to pass.
The bill now heads back to the House, which will have to approve the Senate’s changes before it can make its way to Trump's desk.
The Senate’s version of the bill makes even more cuts to Medicaid than the House version, with the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office saying that nearly 17 million people will lose their health insurance if the bill becomes law. The Senate version also cut back on the House’s effort to exempt some tax on tips.
Demonstrators carry cardboard caskets in front of the U.S. Capitol in protest of President Donald Trump's “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” on June 30.
Vance called those devastating cuts to Medicaid “immaterial” as he sought to build Republican support for the legislation.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement that his chamber will convene soon to accept the Senate’s changes and pass the bill before Trump’s arbitrary July 4 deadline.
“The American people gave us a clear mandate, and after four years of Democrat failure, we intend to deliver without delay,” he said.
Meanwhile, House Republicans are crowing about hating the Senate's changes and demanding changes of their own.
For example, Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina called the Senate bill “a non-starter,” while Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said he’s not on board yet.
“I want to vote yes, but I can't vote yes just because they say I have to. I can't vote yes just because everybody says we got to get it done by July 4th,” Roy said.
But, as always, never bet against the naysayers folding when Trump demands their fealty.
On the other hand, Democrats intend to hold Republicans accountable for supporting this overwhelmingly unpopular garbage legislation.
In the words of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, “This vote will haunt Republicans for years to come.”
The Department of Justice is overseeing the next stage in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown: stripping citizenship from naturalized citizens. Regrettably, it’s not surprising that we’ve reached this point, though it is still horrifying.
In aJune 11 memo, DOJ attorneys were told to prioritize denaturalization in cases where a naturalized citizen has committed certain crimes. Approximately25 million Americans are naturalized citizens—individuals who were not born in the United States but have obtained full citizenship.
Protesters in California hold signs that read, “No one is illegal on stolen land,” and “Immigrants are the heartbeat of LA.”
That’s a rich trove of potential deportees for an administration driven by dead-eyed demon Stephen Miller’s demand that Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrest 3,000 people per day. ICE agents have already resorted toarresting immigrants when they show up for scheduled court appearances and detaining people onchurch grounds. And raids of Home Depot stores netted not the fearsome criminal gang masterminds that Trump insists are everywhere, but insteadday laborers looking for work.
Typically,very few denaturalization cases are brought each year, but Trump started ramping up those efforts during his first term, establishing a Denaturalization Section within the DOJ and increasing its investigations of U.S. citizens. Denaturalization was typically reserved for deportingliteral Nazis who concealed their past when obtaining citizenship. The last time it was used by the government on a large scale was during the Red Scare in the 1940s and 1950s.
In 1942, Attorney General Francis Biddle called denaturalization “a most important weapon in dealing with organized subversive and disloyal activities,” and individuals were denaturalized for being suspected of having communist sympathies.
The DOJ memo lists the crimes that can result in denaturalization, including having engaged in torture, espionage, or human trafficking. But then there’s a catch-all. A really bad catch-all. Besides the listed crimes, the DOJ can pursue “any other cases referred to the Civil Division that the Division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue.”
In case it’s not clear that this provision is meant to allow the DOJ to denaturalize someone for any or no reason at all, the memo goes on to say that the listed criminal categories “do not limit the Civil Division from pursuing any particular case” and the Civil Division “retains the discretion to pursue cases outside of these categories as it determines appropriate.”
Additionally, the Trump administrationplans to handle denaturalization cases in civil court rather than criminal. That means that there’s a lower burden of proof for the government and that the person facing denaturalization does not have the right to an attorney.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio
This looks a lot like Secretary of States Marco Rubio’s vague yet vast authority to expel people for “past, current, or expected beliefs.” But while Rubio’s authority is limited to revoking visas, the DOJ can go after naturalized citizens, opening up a new front in Trump’s war on immigrants.
There’s really nothing the Trump administration won’t do to attack immigrants. The nativist impulses that animate this administration mean that Trump hates legal immigrants as much as illegal ones—save, of course, forSouth Africans and former models.
And Vice President JD Vance is just a straight-up Great Replacement theorist whosmeared Haitians in Ohio, saying that they were illegal immigrants who abducted and ate pets. He even declared that Haitians here legally were “illegal aliens” who should be deported.
Of course, the Trump administration was never going to stop at deporting undocumented immigrants who’ve committed violent crimes. And it was never going to stop at deporting undocumented immigrants with no criminal records or immigrants with temporary legal status.
The inevitable next step was to strip citizenship from those who already have it. And after that, who knows? But rest assured Trump will figure out another way to hurt people.
Vice President JD Vance sought to get GOPers on board by saying that all of those negative things are just "immaterial" "minutiae" compared to the money the bill provides to help Republicans deport immigrants.
"The thing that will bankrupt this country more than any other policy is flooding the country with illegal immigration and then giving those migrants generous benefits. The OBBB fixes this problem. And therefore it must pass," Vance wrote in a post on X. "Everything else—the [Congressional Budget Office] score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy—is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions."
Not only is Vance's statement absurd as he claims that actively harming the poorest among us is not important, but his statement is also false.
The nonpartisan CBO has said immigrants actually help lower budget deficits.
"People are rightly noting that kicking millions off of Medicaid is not 'minutiae,' but the premise is wrong here too. Of the reasons to deport undocumented immigrants, federal fiscal health is one of the worst ones. CBO found they *lower* deficits by ~$1T over the next 10 years," Ernie Tedeschi, director of the Budget Lab at Yale, wrote in a post on X. "That’s because undocumented immigrants tend to pay taxes funding programs like Medicare & Social Security (despite the stereotype, most undocumented immigrants who work are above the table) but are often ineligible to receive benefits."
Democrats immediately pointed out the cruelty of Vance's tweet
"The 17 MILLION Americans you’re kicking off their health insurance aren’t 'minutiae,'" Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle, ranking member of the House Budget Committee, wrote in a post on X. "Republicans are about to force the largest loss of health care in American history — and they clearly couldn’t care less about working families."
"Ben, a disabled 14-year-old from Chesterfield, VA, isn’t 'minutiae,'" Warner wrote. "His health insurance isn’t minutiae. His future isn’t minutiae. Medicaid matters and I am fighting to protect it."
Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins have “serious reservations” about the bill.
Vance was needed to help Republicans pass the travesty of a bill with a 51-50 vote—which hurts the poor and working class in order to give tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the richest few.
Republican Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, all either said they were voting no or had “serious reservations” about the bill.
“As I've said from the beginning, I have a lot of serious reservations about the bill,” Collins told reporters Tuesday morning. “I'm going to wait ‘til we're done, know what direction we're going in, before announcing my position.”
Republicans tried to get Murkowski on board by making a specific carveout for Alaska that would keep the state from losing its Medicaid and food stamp benefits—while screwing everyone else.
There was also talk about trying to flip Paul to a yes by lowering the debt ceiling increase from $5 trillion to $500 billion.
However, Erik Wasson of Bloomberg News reported that Senate Majority Leader John Thune was confident he had a deal to get the bill to pass, though it’s unclear what that deal entails.
As we’ve said repeatedly, never bet against Republicans caving to Dear Leader’s will.
Editor’s note: This story was updated after the Senate passed the bill on Tuesday.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt touted the facility, which was announced by Florida's GOP Attorney General James Uthmeier on June 19 and could open as soon as July 1.
"The only way out is a one-way flight. It is isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife. ... This is an efficient and low-cost way to help carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in American history," Leavitt said during a press briefing Monday.
Trump is no doubt excited to visit the facility, as he loves inhumane prisons and has long fantasized about using dangerous wildlife to keep immigrants out of the United States. Trump admitted in an interview with Fox News Tuesday that the concept of the facility is that immigrants who seek to escape are eaten by alligators.
"I guess that's the concept. This is not a nice business. I guess that's the concept," Trump said.
Of course, experts say the facility—which is being constructed with Federal Emergency Management Agency funds—is not likely to be cost effective, as Leavitt claimed.
"As someone who has studied the costs of detention centers, I can tell you for a fact that this facility will run at a cost substantially higher than average," Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, wrote on X. "Detention tent camps are always more expensive to operate than brick and mortar facilities with permanent infrastructure."
The location of Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz”
But Alligator Alcatraz—which sounds disturbingly like a concentration camp—is just the Trump administration’s latest tactic to torture immigrants.
Masked ICE agents have been abducting both undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens, whisking them off to detention centers to meet an arbitrary quota of 3,000 arrests per day, as set by racist, sociopathic White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. Some of the immigrants who have been detained have even died in ICE custody, including a Cuban man who had lived in the United States for 60 years.
Ultimately, Trump’s deportation agenda is unpopular with voters, who view him as being too harsh.
But rather than moderate, Trump and his GOP bootlickers are seeking ways to be even more cruel to immigrants with facilities like Alligator Alcatraz, which Republicans are promoting with merchandise.
A dark money group paid $80,000 to Noem’s personal company when she was governor of South Dakota. She did not include this income on her federal disclosure forms, a likely violation of ethics requirements, experts say.
In 2023, while Kristi Noem was governor of South Dakota, she supplemented her income by secretly accepting a cut of the money she raised for a nonprofit that promotes her political career, tax records show.
In what experts described as a highly unusual arrangement, the nonprofit routed funds to a personal company of Noem’s that had recently been established in Delaware. The payment totaled $80,000 that year, a significant boost to her roughly $130,000 government salary. Since the nonprofit is a so-called dark money group — one that’s not required to disclose the names of its donors — the original source of the money remains unknown.
Kristi Noem is recognized as Donald Trump speaks during an event in the Rose Garden at the White House on April 2.
Noem then failed to disclose the $80,000 payment to the public. After President Donald Trump selected Noem to be his secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, she had to release a detailed accounting of her assets and sources of income from 2023 on. She did not include the income from the dark money group onher disclosure form, which experts called a likely violation of federal ethics requirements.
Experts told ProPublica it was troubling that Noem was personally taking money that came from political donors. In a filing, the group, a nonprofit called American Resolve Policy Fund, describedthe $80,000as a payment for fundraising. The organization said Noem had brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
There is nothing remarkable about a politician raising money for nonprofits and other groups that promote their campaigns or agendas. What’s unusual, experts said, is for a politician to keep some of the money for themselves.
“If donors to these nonprofits are not just holding the keys to an elected official’s political future but also literally providing them with their income, that’s new and disturbing,” said Daniel Weiner, a former Federal Election Commission attorney who now leads the Brennan Center’s work on campaign finance.
ProPublica discovered details of the payment in the annual tax form of American Resolve Policy Fund, which is part of anetwork of political groupsthat promote Noem and her agenda. The nonprofit describes its mission as “fighting to preserve America for the next generation.” There’s little evidence in the public domain that the group has done much. In its first year, its main expenditures were paying Noem and covering the cost of some unspecified travel. It also maintains social media accounts devoted to promoting Noem. It has 100 followers on X.
In a statement, Noem’s lawyer, Trevor Stanley, said, “Then-Governor Noem fully complied with the letter and the spirit of the law” and that the Office of Government Ethics, which processes disclosure forms for federal officials, “analyzed and cleared her financial information in regards to this entity.” Stanley did not respond to follow-up questions about whether the ethics office was aware of the $80,000 payment.
Stanley also said that “Secretary Noem fully disclosed all of her income on public documents that are readily available.” Asked for evidence of that, given that Noem didn’t report the $80,000 payment on her federal financial disclosure form, Stanley did not respond.
As prisoners stand looking out from a cell, Kristi Noem speaks during a tour of the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on March 26.
Before being named Homeland Security secretary, overseeing immigration enforcement, Noem spent two decades in South Dakota’s government and the U.S. House of Representatives, drawing a public servant’s salary. Her husband, Bryon Noem, runs a small insurance brokerage with two offices in the state. Between his company and his real estate holdings, he has at least $2 million in assets, according to Noem’s filing.
While she is among the least wealthy members of Trump’s Cabinet, her personal spending habits have attracted notice. Noem was photographed wearing a goldRolex Cosmograph Daytona watchthat costs nearly $50,000 as she toured the Salvadoran prison where her agency is sending immigrants. In April, after her purse was stolen at a Washington, D.C., restaurant, it emerged she was carrying$3,000 in cash, which an official said was for “dinner, activities, and Easter gifts.” She was criticized forusing taxpayer moneyas governor to pay for expenses related to trips to Paris, to Canada for bear hunting and to Houston to have dental work done. At the time, Noem denied misusing public funds.
Noem’s personal company, an LLC called Ashwood Strategies, shares a name with one of her horses. It was registered in Delaware early in her second term as South Dakota governor, around 1 p.m. on June 22, 2023. Four minutes later, the nonprofit American Resolve Policy Fund was incorporated in Delaware too.
American Resolve raised $1.1 million in 2023, according to itstax filing. The group reported that it had zero employees, and what it did with that money is largely unclear.
Kristi Noem speaks to employees at the Department of Homeland Security on Jan. 28.
In 2023, the nonprofit spent only about $220,000 of its war chest — with more than a third of that going to Noem’s LLC. The rest mostly went toward administrative expenses and a roughly $84,000 travel budget. It’s not clear whose travel the group paid for.
The nonprofit reported that it sent the $80,000 fundraising fee to Noem’s LLC as payment for bringing in $800,000, a 10% cut. A professional fundraiser who also raised money for the group was paid a lower rate of 7%.
In the intervening years, American Resolve has maintained a low public profile. In March, itpurchased Facebook adsattacking a local news outlet in South Dakota, which had been reporting on Noem’s use of government credit cards. Noem’s lawyer did not answer questions about whether the group paid her more money after 2023, the most recent year for which its tax filing is available.
The nonprofit has an affiliated political committee, American Resolve PAC, that’s been more active, at least in public. Touting Noem’s conservative leadership under a picture of her staring off into the sky, its website said the PAC was created to put “Kristi and her team on the ground in key races across America.” Noem traveled the country last year attending events the PAC sponsored in support of Republican candidates.
American Resolve’s treasurer referred questions to Noem’s lawyer. In his statement, Noem’s lawyer said she “did not establish, finance, maintain, or control American Resolve Fund. She was simply a vender for a non-profit entity.”
While Noem failed to report the fundraising income Ashwood Strategies received on her federal financial disclosure, she did provide some other details. She described the LLC as involving “personal activities outside my official gubernatorial capacity” and noted that it received the $140,000 advance for her book “No Going Back.” The LLC also had a bank account with between $100,001 and $250,000 in it and at least $50,000 of “livestock and equipment,” she reported.
The fact that Ashwood Strategies is Noem’s company only emerged through the confirmation process for her Trump Cabinet post. South Dakota has minimal disclosure rules for elected officials, and Noem had not previously divulged that she created a side business while she was governor.
Noem’s outside income may have run afoul of South Dakota law, according toLee Schoenbeck, a veteran Republican politician and attorney who was until recently the head of the state Senate. Thelaw requirestop officials, including the governor, to devote their full time to their official roles.
“There’s no way the governor is supposed to have a private side business that the public doesn’t know about,” Schoenbeck told ProPublica. “It would clearly not be appropriate.”
Noem’s lawyer said South Dakota law allowed her to receive income from the nonprofit.
Americans’ pride in their country has tumbled to a new low, according to a new poll released on Monday. Not only is pride at its lowest point since Gallup began asking the question in 2001, but the share has fallen 9 points under President Donald Trump this year alone.
Fifty-eight percent of U.S. adults say they feel extremely or very proud to be an American. A year ago, when former President Joe Biden was in office, that number was 67%. The highest level of American pride Gallup has measured came in 2002 and 2004, when 91% of Americans were extremely or very proud following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
While Republicans’ pride in being American has increased by 7 points since last year, the decline was precipitous among Democrats (down 26 points) and independent voters (down 7 points).
There was also a generational divide, with 41% of people in Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012) expressing pride in being American, compared with 58% of millennials, 71% of Generation X, 75% of baby boomers, and 83% of people in the Silent and Greatest generations (people born before 1946).
The decline comes as Americans, includingmillions who backed Trump, are now dealing with the fallout from his second presidential term.
He has started an expensive trade war with much of the world,increasing the costs of doing business for American companies and farmers while alsomaking many household staples more expensive. Trump has responded to these concerns with advice liketelling little children to purchase fewer dolls.
Another pressing concern is Trump’s wholehearted embrace of authoritarianism. He has instructed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to attack American cities, abducting vulnerable people—including students—off the street in broad daylight.
Trump has even chosen toarrest and charge Democratic officeholders for attempting to provide oversight of his actions,or roughing them up for dissenting from his administration.
Everyday Americans brace to see what new way Trump and his team will use their positions of power to enrich themselves, abuse others, or make Americalook clownish on the international stage.
While their senior senator, Republican Thom Tillis, is displaying a shred of decency byretiring from Congress instead of voting for Trump’s tax bill that robs from the poor and gives to the rich, the state Republicans in North Carolina have no such character. Instead, they’re continuing their efforts at politicizing elections in the state.
Their latest move? A House bill that would replaceover a third of the current state elections staff jobs with political appointees.
The new state elections director, Sam Hayes, had a very Trump-ish explanation for why he needs to eliminate experienced nonpartisan staff, NC Newsline reported: “These positions would just allow me the flexibility that I need to conduct that reorganization and make sure that folks that are surrounding me, certainly my direct reports and I, are aligned on the vision for the agency as I set forward.”
That’s just code for “I want a bunch of stooges who will help continue the GOP project of undermining elections in the state.” But somehow, according to Hayes, this will also be nonpartisan. Yes, replacing nonpartisan staff with political appointees is totally nonpartisan indeed. It’s not surprising that Hayes only knows how to operate like a hardcore partisan, as his previous gig was as counsel for the GOP House speaker.
Hayes got the gig after the state elections boardousted its director in May, which the board was able to do thanks to Republicans passing a law that stripped the then-governor, Democrat Roy Cooper, of his power to appoint board members. Instead, the legislaturegave the power to the state auditor, Republican Dave Boliek. Republicans had to dig deep to find a statewide elected official who wasn’t a Democrat—hence, Boliek.
State auditors oversee accounting and financial functions and often have a watchdog role over other state agencies. You’ll note that none of that has anything to do with elections. Nor does Boliek have any background in election administration, but what he does have is conservative culture war credentials. Hiselection page brags of how he “led the fight at UNC to eliminate woke diversity and equity policies” and brought “ideological balance to the notoriously liberal campus.”
State Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin
Boliek used his new powerto install a GOP majority on the state election board and promptly nominatedconservative conspiracy theorists. Boliek also got the power tonominate election officials for all 100 North Carolina county election boards, giving the GOP a 3-2 majority on every board. So nonpartisan!
Meanwhile, the state Supreme Court, which also has a GOP supermajority,blessed this law change even after a lower court found it unconstitutional. That same GOP supermajority also blessed the efforts of state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin inhis quest to overturn his loss to Allison Riggs. Griffin’s GOP pals on the state appellate court and the state Supreme Courtruled in favor of his unhinged demand to throw out more than 68,000 legally cast votes. Griffin only backed off after a federal judge, a Trump nominee, halted his challenge.
North Carolina Republicans genuinely believe that Democrats should have no role in elections, even though their governor, Josh Stein, is a Democrat. And since they can’t win the governor’s race, they’ve had to resort to these sorts of shenanigans to upend the entire structure of elections in the state. This isn’t democracy, and it’s definitely not nonpartisan.
Fox News on Monday continued its crusade against New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, promoting the bizarre Republican idea to have the Democrat deported.
At a White House press briefing, Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy asked if President Donald Trump would be interested in deporting Mamdani. Instead of dismissing the premise of the question, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she hadn’t heard Trump call for that measure but that he “does not want this individual to be elected.”
Doocy explained Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles’ recently expressed the view that Mamdani should be deported over rap lyrics he wrote when pursuing a rap career nearly a decade ago.
Ogleswrote a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, asking her to launch an investigation of Mamdani for the lyric “Free the Holy Land Five / My guys,” a reference to leaders of a Muslim charity who were convicted of funneling funds to Hamas.
Ogles’ letter makes the claim that the rap lyric demonstrates Mamdani’s supposed support for terrorism, which was not disclosed when Mamdani became a naturalized citizen in 2018. (He was born in Uganda.)
The rhetoric from Ogles is part of the fearmongering, demonization, and racism that the right has indulged in against Mamdani, particularly since he became the presumptive winner of the New York Democratic primary for mayor.
Supporters of Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani cheer while he speaks at his primary election party on June 25.
Fox News and the New York Post—both owned by billionaire Rupert Murdoch—have been atthe forefront of these racist efforts against Mamdani. Fox and the Post were unable to dissuade New York voters from backing Mamdani, and since his surprisingly strong performance, they have continued to go after him.
Trumphas expressed his anger at Mamdani’s success and referred to him last week as a “100% Communist Lunatic,” a moniker that provoked laughter and derision from the Democrat. Over the weekend, Trump kept up the attacks, whining to Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that Mamdani is a “communist” and that his win is “very bad for New York.”
Trump went on to threaten New York City, telling the network, “Whoever’s mayor of New York is going to have to behave themselves, or the federal government is coming down very tough on them financially.”
Based on Mamdani’s current standing in the city, it seems unlikely he’s going to “behave” in a way that makes Trump or his allies at Fox happy any time soon.
Rep. Don Bacon, one of just a few moderate Republicans in the House, announced on Monday that he will not run for reelection. That decision cracks open one of the party’s most vulnerable battleground seats just ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
For five terms, the 61-year-old Bacon has represented Nebraska’s 2nd District, which is often referred to as a “blue dot” in reliably Republican Nebraska since it centers on Omaha and its increasingly liberal voters.
“I think it’s time for a new Republican to be your nominee that can do 12, 14 hour a day and hold this seat,” Bacon said at a press conference at Omaha’s airport. “It is disconcerting to get attacked from the right.”
Though Bacon believes he could win another race, he cited family reasons as his main motivation. He wants more time at home with his eight grandchildren, he said.
The stakes are high. Democrats need only a handful of pickups to retake the House, and this one was already on their list. The Cook Political Report calls it a “Republican Toss-Up.”
Bacon’s district has been a swing seat for many years. And a Democrat has won it in three recent presidential races: Barack Obama in 2008, Joe Biden in 2020, and Kamala Harris in 2024.
People register to vote at St. Leo the Great Catholic Church on May 13 in Omaha, Nebraska.
The city’s mood is also changing. This year, voters ousted longtime Republican Mayor Jean Stothert and elected Democrat John Ewing. Democrats have already entered the congressional race, including state Sen. John Cavanaugh, son of former Rep. John J. Cavanaugh III, who held the seat in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Bacon’s announcement comes after another major GOP retirement: Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina. Tillis said this past weekend he won’t seek reelection, citing President Donald Trump’s proposed tax and health care cuts. Both Bacon and Tillis plan to serve out their terms.
While Tillis’ seat might be a slightly longer shot, Democrats are very optimistic about flipping Bacon’s seat. After all, the president’s party usually loses ground in the midterms. Trump did in 2018, and Democrats hope to repeat that in 2026.
However, not being a Trump loyalist has consequences in Republican circles. Bacon criticized the former president’s Ukraine policy, pushed to return tariff powers to Congress, and voiced skepticism about Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” The Nebraska Republican Party endorsed a primary challenger against him in the 2024 cycle.
Now House GOP leaders are scrambling to defend a key battleground, with no incumbent and a weak majority in the chamber.
NPRbroke the news over the weekend that the Department of Homeland Security has teamed up with the so-called Department of Governmental Efficiency to build a centralized citizenship database, complete with Social Security and immigration data.
The Trump administration is pretending that this was done for the benefit of state and local election officials, to give them a one-stop shop to verify the citizenship status of voters.
About that …
First, this effort sounds an awful lot like the same thingWIRED reported roughly two months ago. That’s not meant as a slam on NPR’s reporting, but rather on the Trump administration’s transparent efforts at repackaging what was once clearly intended to be a tool to track immigrants, all in the service of terrorizing them.
Back then, DOGE was uploading IRS, Social Security, and voting data to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services database. This was around the same time that the Trump administrationpurposely marked 6,100 immigrants as dead, despite knowing that they were very much alive. The goal? To prevent immigrants from earning wages.
Protesters hold a sign that reads, “Stop DOGE.”
This time around, DOGE still has access to federal databases, ignoring the Privacy Act of 1974, which limits how government employees can use private data and prohibits sharing it between agencies unless the subject of the data is notified and consents.
Even if we pretend that election security is the real goal behind letting DOGE run wild, framing this as some sort of assistance to election officials is absurd. It’s just part of President Donald Trump’s theory that hewould have won the popular vote in 2016 had non-citizens not voted illegally and that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
The conjoined database is just a high-tech way of doing what Trump tried to do during his first term, when he convened his Election Fraud Commission to demand that every state send complete voter data—to an insecure email address, of course. After a little more than a year, the commissionpacked up, having failed to find any widespread voter fraud, much less the millions of non-citizens who Trump alleged voted illegally.
No matter how many times Republicans insist that non-citizens are voting, it’s actuallyextremely rare, and it certainly doesn’t happen enough to alter an election outcome. The GOP’s repeated attempts to remove the thousands and thousands of alleged non-citizens from voter rolls tend to result in a lot of citizens getting removed instead.
A citizenship database also tracks what Trump was trying to do with hisMarch executive order that forced states to agree to Trump’s fraud theories or lose federal funding. People would need written proof of citizenship to vote, and mail-in ballots received after Election Day would not be counted. Those provisionshave been blocked by a federal judge, but hey, why not just build a citizenship database anyway?
Election officials already have an effective method of checking voter registration data through the Electronic Registration Information Center. But after Trump’s efforts to prove that the 2020 election was stolen, several red stateswithdrew from ERIC when right-wing conspiracy theorists decided that it was “woke.”
If the citizenship database really was intended to ease the burden of state election officials, having the feral rodents of DOGE build it was never going to result in sound data. DOGE employees are the same people who, when asked to review which Department of Veterans Affairs contract should be canceled, decided to let AI handle it.
Now those geniuses have done a quick and dirty compilation of private government data to track citizenship. Surely nothing will go wrong.
Those who oppose President Donald Trump often find themselves in his crosshairs—and Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old democratic socialist who just shocked the political world in his run to be New York City’s mayor, is no exception.
On Sunday, during an appearance on “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo,” Trump once again criticized Mamdani, who recently defeateddisgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary. The victory positioned Mamdani as a potential first Muslim mayor of the nation’s largest city.
“He’s a communist. I think it’s very bad for New York,” Trump said. “But let’s say this: If he does get in, I’m going to be president, and he’s going to have to do the right thing, or they’re not getting any money.”
Trump didn’t stop there—he expanded the threat to all mayoral hopefuls in New York City.
“Whoever’s mayor of New York is going to have to behave themselves, or the federal government is coming down very tough on them financially,” he added.
This isn’t new territory. Trump has a long history of threatening to withhold federal funds from officials he dislikes, especially in blue states. He’s previously targeted California over Gov. Gavin Newsom’s policies on transgender athletes, among other issues.
“It’s finally happened, the Democrats have crossed the line,” he posted on Wednesday. “We’ve had Radical Lefties before, but this is getting a little ridiculous. He looks TERRIBLE, his voice is grating, he’s not very smart. … Yes, this is a big moment in the History of our Country!”
On Fox, he doubled down, branding Mamdani a “radical left lunatic”—a favorite insult he uses for political opponents.
But unlike many Republicans who cave under Trump’s pressure like North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, Mamdani didn’t back down. Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” the same day, he hit back—hard.
“I have already started to get used to the fact that the president will talk about how I look, how I sound, where I’m from, who I am—ultimately, because he wants to distract from what I’m fighting for,” Mamdani said.
He also pushed back on Trump’s “communist” label, calling himself a democratic socialist inspired by the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“When we talk about my politics, I call myself a democratic socialist, in many ways, inspired by the words of Dr. King from decades ago, who said: ‘Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism. There has to be a better distribution of wealth for all of God’s children in this country,’” he added.
“I don’t think that we should have billionaires,” Mamdani said, “because, frankly, it is so much money in a moment of such inequality. ... And I look forward to working with everyone, including billionaires, to make a city that is fair for all of them.”
That message has sparked both excitement and unease. While progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed him, many moderate Democrats have hesitated. Gov. Kathy Hochul offered a chilly reaction.
“There are areas of difference in our positions,” shesaid. “But I also think weneed to have those conversations.”
Asked if moderate Democrats are afraid of him, Mamdani replied: “I think that people are catching up to this election. ... What we’re showing is that by putting working people first, by returning to the roots of the Democratic Party, we actually have a way out of this moment where we’re facing authoritarianism in Washington, D.C.”
That statement says it all. Trump fears challengers who don’t flinch—and Mamdani isn’t backing down.
Senate Republicans are speeding toward passing the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," the bill that's supposed to be President Donald Trump's signature legislative achievement but is more likely to be the death knell of his party in next year’s midterm elections.
Undeterred, though, Senate Republicans advanced the legislation on Sunday by the skin of their teeth, after 51 GOP senators voted to move the bill to the floor for debate.
Senators from both parties will propose amendments to the legislation, in a marathon known as a "vote-a-rama," before the bill will ultimately come up for an up-or-down vote, which could slip to Tuesday. The vote-a-rama began Monday morning after Democrats had Senate clerks read the entirety of the bill before amendment votes could begin—a 16-hour-long process that kept Republicans from debating the bill in the dead of a summer night, when few people would be watching.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, shown on June 27.
Democrats are set to propose amendments to strip the bill of its worst provisions, including those that will lead millions of low-income Americans to lose their Medicaid coverage.
“We will see, once and for all, if Republicans really meant all those nice things they’ve been saying about strengthening Medicare, about protecting middle class families, or if they were just lying,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Monday morning in a speech on the Senate floor.
Meanwhile, Republicans—who are likely to defeat Democrats' amendments—will try to pass their own amendments, including one from Florida GOP Sen. Rick Scott that will slash Medicaid even further. Scott’s amendment would lower federal Medicaid match rates, which would cause more people to lose their Medicaid coverage.
Scott will try to pass that amendment in spite of hospital associations warning that it would lead to the extinction of many rural hospitals, which rely on Medicaid funding to stay afloat.
"This legislation will put at risk the 72 million Americans who rely on Medicaid for their health care and jeopardize the hospitals that serve them," the American Hospital Association, an industry trade group, said in a statement. “It will adversely impact critical care for children, pregnant women, the elderly, disabled and millions of working Americans. The sheer magnitude of these cuts, the largest ever proposed by Congress, will dramatically increase the number of uninsured and undermine the ability of hospitals across America to provide critical services to everyone.”
Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, shown in September 2024.
Republicans are also ignoring warnings from Republican-friendly groups like the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Building Trades Unions, the latter of which declared the GOP bill to be "the biggest job-killing bill in the history of this country" thanks to its cuts to renewable energy credits.
Despite all this, even some Republicans who have crowed about the legislation's provisions will likely cave in the end, in the name of fealty to Trump. Just look at weaselly Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley, who for weeks said he wouldn’t vote for a bill that would cut Medicaid … before he ultimately caved and said he actually will vote for Medicaid cuts.
Still, a look at the math suggests there is a chance this thing goes down.
Already, two Republicans are hard “no” votes: Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
In fact, Tillis announced he won't seek reelection in 2026, after Trump threatened to find a primary challenger to run against him because of his opposition to the bill. Two more Republican “no,” and the bill would fail.
The wildcards who remain include Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and Scott of Florida.
Collins and Murkowski have signaled they could oppose the legislation if Scott’s amendment to further slash Medicaid succeeds. Johnson and Scott, meanwhile, say they could oppose the legislation if Scott’s amendment fails—though those two far-right senators are less likely to defy Dear Leader, no matter what the final product looks like.
We stress the “could” because we never bet against Republicans caving to Trump.
In fact, Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman says he thinks this turd will pass.
“This is going to pass the Senate, I would assume,” Sherman said in a podcast, calling Republicans fickle.
President Donald Trump has reportedly released a man described by the Department of Justice as a leader of the MS-13 criminal gang—who had been charged with crimes, including terrorism—as an apparent political favor to Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. Bukele, an authoritarian leader, has been a key ally for Trump’s mass deportations in the U.S.
The New York Times reported on Monday that the Trump administration made a deal to have U.S. charges against Vladimir Arévalo Chávez, aka “Vampiro,” dropped, then arranged for his return to El Salvador. Reportedly, in exchange, Bukele would allow Trump to deport migrants—includingMaryland father Kilmar Abrego Garcia—to El Salvador.
Sources who were part of the original prosecution of Chávez told the Times that the new deal has imperiled ongoing investigations of MS-13—even though Trump has repeatedly claimed that defeating the criminal gang is a top priority.
Allegedly, Chávez’s release is meant to aid Bukele’s domestic political operation. In its report, the Times said it “found that U.S. officials have had strong indications for years of the troubling relationship between the Bukele administration and MS-13 and its leaders—and had begun scrutinizing Mr. Bukele himself.”
AJune report from ProPublica alleged that Bukele’s administration has worked to impede American investigations of MS-13, after it hinted at possible wrongdoing by Bukele and his inner circle.
The administration of former President Joe Biden was more focused on prosecuting Chávez and his cohorts than helping him out, as Trump has apparently done.
In 2023, under former Attorney General Merrick Garland, Chávez and two others were indicted on multiple charges.They were charged with crimes that included narco-terrorism, racketeering, and alien smuggling that resulted in death. The Department of Justice said the men had “engaged in a litany of violent terrorist activities aimed at influencing the government of El Salvador.”
The department also said the men “authorized and directed violence in the United States, Mexico, and elsewhere as part of a concerted effort to expand MS-13’s influence and territorial control.”
Maryland father Kilmar Abrego Garcia, shown in an undated photo.
In April, Trumphosted Bukele at the White House, and both men claimed they could not arrange for the return of Abrego Garcia to the United States, even though he was wrongfully deported to El Salvador. The Trump administration claimed—without evidence—that Abrego Garcia was a danger and a member of MS-13, doing so apparently while also working with Bukele to secure Chávez’s release.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that his administration is tough on crime, particularly against gangs like MS-13 and Tren de Aragua, but the administration’s deportation efforts related to this have largely been performative and based on sketchy identifierslike tattoos.
Instead, his team has had a soft touch on criminal efforts.
Trump has reportedly moved to cut funding for a federal task force fighting against drug cartels and human trafficking rings,issued pardons to convicted felons who have expressed pro-Trump sympathies, andpardoned hundreds who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump has even helped some criminals through his heavy-handed approach to immigration. As he has increased ICE raids around the country, criminals havebegun posing as ICE agents as a pretext to commit criminal acts.
From international crime to local street thugs, a Trump-powered crime wave may just be rising.
President Donald Trump's "One Big, Beautiful Bill" has already claimed its first victim. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) made the surprise announcement that he will retire from Congress rather than vote for his party’s steaming pile of turd legislation that will kick millions off their health care, slash nutritional assistance, raise energy costs, and make college more expensive.
Tillis announced his retirement on Sunday, after he voted against proceeding to debate on OBBB, saying he could not support legislation that would lead hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians to lose their Medicaid coverage. Senate Republicans are rushing to pass the bill before the July 4 recess, even though everyone from hospitals, to Republican-leaning building trades, to energy groups have warned of the damaging effects the legislation would have if it became law.
"What do I tell 663,000 people in two years, three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding's not there anymore, guys?" Tillis said in an angry speech on the Senate floor on Sunday. "The people in the White House advising the president, they're not telling him that the effect of this bill is to break a promise."
Tillis’ vote led Trump to slam him and declare he would be finding a primary opponent to oust Tillis from the seat.
"Numerous people have come forward wanting to run in the Primary against 'Senator Thom' Tillis. I will be meeting with them over the coming weeks, looking for someone who will properly represent the Great People of North Carolina and, so importantly, the United States of America. Thank you for your attention to this matter!" Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
And rather than stay and fight in the primary, Tillis announced he is not seeking reelection.
"Too many elected officials are motivated by pure raw politics who really don't give a damn about the people they promised to represent on the campaign trail. After they get elected, they don't bother to do the hard work to research the policies they seek to implement and understand the consequences those policies could have on that young adult living in a trailer park, struggling to make ends meet," Tillis wrote in a statement. “As many of my colleagues have noticed over the last year, and at times even joked about, I haven't exactly been excited about running for another term. That is true since the choice is between spending another six years navigating the political theatre and partisan gridlock in Washington or spending that time with the love of my life Susan, our two children, three beautiful grandchildren, and the rest of our extended family back home. It's not a hard choice, and I will not be seeking re-election."
Tillis also threw shade at Trump in a subsequent tweet, razzing Trump for having once supported former North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson—who lost the 2024 North Carolina governor’s race in a landslide in November after CNN uncovered racist and sexually explicit comments Robinson made on a porn website forum.
“Thanks for the retirement wishes, Mr. President, looking forward to working with you for a successful 2026. Word to the wise, let’s avoid minisoldr,” Tillis wrote, referring to the screen name Robinson used on the porn forum.
North Carolina's Senate contest was already set to be one of the most competitive on the map in the 2026 midterms, even before Tillis’ announcement. Former Democratic Rep. Wiley Nickel has already announced he’s running, while former Gov. Roy Cooper is mulling a bid.
But now that it's an open-seat race, Democrats have a greater chance of flipping the seat—especially if Republicans nominate a hard-right Trumper who does not fit the purple nature of the Tar Heel state.
And NBC News' Vaughn Hillyard reported that Lara Trump, wife of Eric Trump, is "strongly considering" a bid, and would likely clear the field if she did decide to jump in the race.
Lara Trump—who earlier this year was seeking an appointment to a Senate seat in Florida, hundreds of miles away from North Carolina—represents the exact kind of figure who would make the seat more difficult for Republicans to hold if she was the nominee.
“Lara Trump v. Cooper would be over before it begins. That might be one of the worst imaginable candidates, other than minisoldr,” elections analyst Lakshya Jain wrote in a post on X.
Cook Political Report currently rates the race a toss-up.
There is no foreign leader that MAGA loves more than Hungary’s authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has turned his country into a testing ground for the far-right’s darkest impulses.
Who needs a think tank like the Heritage Foundation when MAGA can just follow the Orbán blueprint?
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has broadcasted from Budapest. The Conservative Political Action Conference has held meetings there. Former White House adviser Steve Bannon treats Orbán like a prophet, calling him “one of the great moral leaders in this world.” MAGA influencers openly pine for their leaders to rule the way Orbán does: with vengeance, zero accountability, and a chokehold on dissent. Is it any wonder President Donald Trump and Orbán have a fierce bromance?
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, right, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán pose for a photo prior to talks in Beijing in October 2023.
But what has all this ethno-nationalism and authoritarianism gotten Hungary?
Furthermore, Hungary is hemorrhaging young people. Its economy is increasingly dependent on authoritarian allies, like China and Russia. It’s isolated from its neighbors, distrusted by democratic partners, and rapidly becoming a cautionary tale for the rest of Europe.
Things are so bad that despite all the constitutional roadblocks in its path, the primary opposition party, Tisza, holds a 15-percentage-point lead in polling, 51% to 36%, ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections (though a date has yet to be set). In Hungary’s system, where the legislative majority selects the prime minister, defeating Orbán’s party would mean removing Orbán himself.
That’s what MAGA-style authoritarianism gets you: economic destitution, political isolation, and moral rot.
Just like how Trump doesn’t care about the economic challenges faced by his working-class base, MAGA doesn’t seem to care that their idol Orbán has crushed Hungary’s economy.
For them, it’s enough to simply hate the right people.
Few U.S. adults support allowing religious schools to become tax-funded public charter schools, but a majority favors allowing religious chaplains to provide support services for public school students, a new poll finds.
The survey fromThe Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Researchshows the complexity of Americans’ attitudes toward religious expression in schools, which varies depending on the kind of expression and sometimes crosses partisan lines.
The findings also highlight tension points in the country’s long-standing debate over the role of religion in public schools, which continues to drivelegislationandlegal action. Recent examples includea lawsuit against a new Arkansas measurethat requires the display of the Ten Commandments in classrooms,a push by lawmakersin multiple states to allow religious chaplains to serve in student support roles in public schools, andthe U.S. Supreme Court’s 4-4 decisionthat blocked plans for a publicly funded Catholic charter school in Oklahoma.
On some issues like teacher-led prayer, white evangelical Protestants and Black Protestants — who traditionally find themselves on opposite sides of the political aisle — are both largely supportive, dividing them from other religious groups. White evangelical Protestants are more likely than many other religious groups to say religion has “too little” influence on what children are taught in public schools.
Chaplains in schools are popular, but not teacher prayer
About 6 in 10 U.S. adults say that religious chaplains should be allowed to provide support services for students in public schools, but most do not think teacher-led prayer or a mandatory period during school hours for private prayer should be allowed in public schools.
Texas becamethe first stateto allow chaplains, in 2023. After that, lawmakers inseveral statesconsidered similar bills. It's illustrative ofan ongoing conservative pushto bring more religion into the classroom, which advocates of church-state separation are countering.
Sally Hacker, 61, a Republican and nondenominational Christian from Michigan, supports having chaplains in schools. They could help students use the Bible as a moral guide, she said.
“If they have problems, these students could go and talk to these preachers and these chaplains, and maybe they could help them figure out a way to get out of those problems,” Hacker said.
A 6-foot-tall privately funded Ten Commandments monument on the Arkansas Capitol grounds in Little Rock.
School chaplains are only somewhat divisive among religious Americans, although they’re still opposed by a majority of nones, the term for atheists, agnostics and those with no religion in particular. But white evangelical Protestants and Black Protestants stand apart from Catholics, white mainline Protestants and nones in their support for teacher prayer and mandatory prayer periods in public schools.
For public schoolteacher Cameron Thompson, 47, of Ohio, teacher-led prayer is not OK if it's part of classroom instruction, but he doesn't see an issue if teachers choose to lead students in prayer as part of an extracurricular activity, like a Fellowship of Christian Athletes event.
“As an optional activity, I feel like it is something that, yeah, it should be allowed for sure,” said Thompson, a Republican and a Lutheran.
The questions exposed fault lines among partisans on both sides of the political spectrum. Democrats are firmly opposed to teacher-led prayer and mandatory school prayer periods but divided on chaplain support services in public schools, while Republicans are firmly in favor of chaplain support services and teacher-led prayer but divided on a mandatory school prayer period.
Public school psychologist Gary Leu, 64, of Utah, believes adding chaplains is misguided.
Leu, a Democrat, questions the motives behind it, wondering if chaplain programs are more about giving religious watchdogs access to schools or have some other agenda. He also is concerned about what, if any, professional standards and ethics the chaplains would be held to.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish that isn’t already being accomplished,” said Leu, who is not affiliated with a particular religion but has a background in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Opposition to tax-funded religious charter schools, but more openness to vouchers
Americans are more likely to oppose allowing religious schools to becometax-funded public charter schoolsthan to favor this. About 4 in 10 are opposed, while roughly one-quarter are in favor and about one-third are neither in favor nor opposed.
In general, U.S. adults are more divided on tax-funded vouchers that help parents pay for tuition for their children toattend private or religious schoolsof their choice instead of public schools. Similar shares oppose and favor this; about one-quarter are neutral.
In May, the Supreme Court's tie decision effectively ended what would have been the nation’sfirst religious charter school, but it left the issue unresolved nationally.
There isn’t majority support for allowing religious schools to become tax-funded public charter schools among any of the major religious groups analyzed, although about 4 in 10 white evangelical Protestants are in favor, compared with about 3 in 10 Catholics and Black Protestants and about 2 in 10 white mainline Protestants. Substantial shares of all of these groups neither favor nor oppose this idea. Most nones oppose allowing religious schools to become tax-funded public charter schools.
Jess Tichenor, 39, of Oregon, is among the nones who strongly oppose tax-funded religious charter schools as she is wary of favoritism for Christianity.
“In an ideal situation, the publicly funded schools would be a safe place for any religion to be recognized or even practiced,” said Tichenor, who practices Buddhism. She feels similarly about school vouchers.
Supporters say these programs help families make the best choice for their children’s education. At the Republican National Convention, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee called it the “civil rights issue of our time.”Tennessee expandedits school voucher program in February.
Besides discrimination concerns and church-state issues, opponents worry that school vouchers take money from public schools, which serve most U.S. students, and benefit higher-income families that already use private schools.
“If they’re going to end up sending their kids to a special private school, they need to fund that out of their own pocket,” said Hacker, the nondenominational Christian from Michigan.
Other views on religion and public schools
About 3 in 10 U.S. adults say religion has “too much” influence on what children are taught in public school. About two-thirds of white evangelical Protestants say religion has “too little” influence.
About half of Americans favor requiring public schools to provide parents with lists of books that are available to students, while about one-third neither favor nor oppose this and 14% are opposed.
Nearly half, 45%, of U.S. adults oppose religious exemptions for childhood vaccines that are required for students attending public schools, while roughly one-quarter are in favor and about 3 in 10 are neutral.
Most adults say freedom of religion and church-state separation are “extremely” or “very” important to the United States' identity as a nation, but 81% say religious freedom is important, compared with 64% who say this about separation of church and state.
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Survey Says is a weekly series rounding up the most important polling trends or data points you need to know about, plus a vibe check on a trend that’s driving politics.
Republicans flip-flop-flip on same-sex marriage
June 26 marked the 10-year anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. The court was catching up to the American public’s changing attitudes on the issue. But now those attitudes are changing again, at least among Republicans.
In 1996, just 27% of Americans thought same-sex marriages were valid and worthy of the same legal rights as heterosexual marriages, according to Gallup. By May 2015, the month before the Obergefell ruling, that share had slowly and pretty steadily risen to 60%. Now it’s 68%.
Even Republicans came around on the issue. In 1996, just 16% supported same-sex marriage, but in 2021 and 2022, their support hit a high of 55%. Since then, however, it has tumbled. This year, just 41% of Republicans support same-sex marriage.
Because 88% of Democrats support same-sex marriage, there is now a stunning 47-percentage-point gap between the parties—the largest since Gallup has tracked the question. Oddly, though, this homophobic backsliding seems contained to Republicans. Independents support same-sex marriage at nearly the same level as Democrats do—76%—and it’s grown since 2022, when support was at 72%.
This Republican backlash is likely the result of the GOP’s viciously negative attacks on LGBTQ+ people and rights more broadly. Around 2022, when the Republican electorate was most supportive of same-sex marriage, their party’s leaders coalesced around smearing queer people and their Democratic allies as “groomers,” reviving a homophobic lie about queer adults sexually abusing children.
People participate in the World Pride Rally at the Lincoln Memorial on June 8 in Washington, D.C.
In the fall of 2022, Republicans underperformed in the midterm elections. But rather than learn from their bigoted mistakes, the party has leaned into them, further demonizing one of the LGBTQ+ community’s most marginalized groups: transgender people, and trans youth in particular. Last year, then-candidate Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans viciously attacked trans people, trying to scare voters into backing the GOP.
And it might’ve worked. The electoral success of the anti-trans message is disputable. In the days before the 2024 election, 80% of likely voters wanted both Democratic and Republican candidates to focus less on transgender issues and more on the economy, according to a poll from Data for Progress.
Nevertheless, it seems clear that the Republican Party’s anti-LGBTQ+ messaging is igniting a backlash, though it remains to be seen how far this wildfire of hate will spread. After all, the Supreme Court is now much more conservative than it was in 2015, and its right-wing majority has evinced little respect for precedent or civil rights.
A big miss in the Big Apple
This past Tuesday night, Zohran Mamdani, a state lawmaker and self-described democratic socialist, pulled off what appears to be a shock victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary against disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. And perhaps none were more shocked than pollsters, which, with one exception, predicted a large Cuomo win.
In polls conducted since the start of April, Cuomo led Mamdani by an average of 14 points in the first round of the city’s ranked-choice voting process. And yet Mamdani ended up winning the first round by 7 points, with 93% of votes counted as of Friday.
Many pollsters say the error mainly stemmed from surveys including only those who’d voted in previous primaries, which caused them to miss first-time voters this year. Just one pollster—the left-leaning Public Policy Polling—showed Mamdani leading the first round of voting. Because PPP accurately recognized that Mamdani was energizing young and first-time voters, they gave extra weight to those groups and included people regardless of whether they’d voted previously.
Disgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo
“Tens of thousands of people voted in their first Mayoral election this year,” the firm said in a statement published Tuesday night, after Mamdani’s presumptive victory. “We found those who didn’t vote in 2021 breaking 63-18 for Mamdani. We included them in our poll.”
The primary’s final results are expected on July 1, after ranked-choice tabulations occur. If Mamdani has indeed won, he’d face Mayor Eric Adams in the general election this November. Adams, who ditched the Democratic Party and is running as an independent, has an atrocious approval rating largely due to him buddying up to Trump, which he seemingly did so that the federal government would drop his corruption indictment. That apparent quid pro quo may keep Adams out of prison, but it could also kick him out of Gracie Mansion.
In November, Mamdani would also go up against Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, who founded the volunteer crime-prevention group Guardian Angels and lost the 2021 mayoral race by nearly 40 points. He may also face … Andrew Cuomo, who refuses to rule out running as an independent, because this asshole is just like that.
Iran, Iran so far away (from my recently held political beliefs)
America first, no longer. The Republican base appears to be following Trump wherever he stumbles, even if it’s into the middle of a war between Israel and Iran.
But in a YouGov/Economist poll fielded June 20 to 23—i.e., right before, during, and after the strikes—29% of Americans supported the U.S. attacking Iran’s nuclear sites, driven largely by a majority of Republicans (57%) who supported the strikes. Just 9% of Democrats and 21% of independents felt the same way. This icy reaction in the broader electorate may have persuaded the Pentagon to confusingly claim that despite directly attacking a hostile foreign nation amid an ongoing war, it didn’t want to be part of that war.
And now a newer poll, conducted by Quinnipiac University entirely after the U.S. strikes on Iran, finds that 81% of Republican voters support the U.S. joining Israel’s attacks on Iran. Talk about a flip-flop. Meanwhile, Democrats and independents didn’t change their beliefs that much: 75% and 60%, respectively, oppose the attacks.
There’s less need for the GOP to manufacture consent these days. Not only do they not really care what the public wants, they also have a base of voters willing to follow them wherever, ideological consistency be damned.
Any updates?
Americans hate Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, but they’re sure to hate them once it comes time for back-to-school shopping. Early shoppers are already getting slapped with higher prices, according to a new poll from Morning Consult. Among the 34% of American parents who have started back-to-school shopping, 62% say clothes are more expensive than last year, while majorities also say the same thing about electronics (61%), home goods (61%), school supplies (57%), and books (54%). While most (59%) hold inflation responsible for the higher prices, more than 1 in 3 blame tariffs directly.
The paywall: You know it, you hate it, you try to find the information elsewhere because now everything is a subscription. New data from Pew Research Center backs that up: 53% of Americans who hit a paywall will search for the news elsewhere, while another 32% will just give up looking. Only 1% of Americans who bump into a paywall will pay for access. Trouble is, news ain’t free, and advertising dollars are withering. So please, if you can, chip in to Daily Kos and keep the site paywall-free. You can even buy your own subscription, ditch the ads, and help Daily Kos fight Trump’s Justice Department as it comes after us.
Vibe check
The news is a bad place these days, and that’s bad news for Trump when it comes to all his favorite policy topics. The president is underwater on his handling of inflation, trade, the economy, and even immigration, according to election analyst Nate Silver’s polling averages.
The United Nations, a collaborative global dream built into reality out of the ashes of World War II, marks its 80th anniversary this month. There’s little to celebrate.
Its clout on the world stage is diminished. Facing major funding cuts from the United States and others, it has been forced to shed jobs and start tackling long-delayed reforms. Its longtime credo of “multilateralism" is under siege. Its most powerful body, the Security Council, has been blocked from taking action to end the two major wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
Four generations after its founding, as it tries to chart a new path for its future, a question hangs over the institution and the nearly 150,000 people it employs and oversees: Can the United Nations remain relevant in an increasingly contentious and fragmented world?
With its dream of collaboration drifting, can it even survive?
An act of optimism created it
When the United Nations was born in San Francisco on June 26, 1945, the overriding goal of the 50 participants who signed the U.N. Charter was stated in its first words: “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”
Earlier this year, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sounded that same theme: “Eight decades later, one can draw a direct line between the creation of the United Nations and the prevention of a third world war.”
There has been no such war — thus far. But conflicts still rage.
They continue not only inGazaandUkrainebutSudan, easternCongo,HaitiandMyanmar– to name a few – and, most recently,Iran and Israel. The needs of tens of millions of people caught up in fighting and trapped in poverty have increased even as rich donor nations, not just the United States, are reducing their aid budgets.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks in Nov. 2024 during a plenary session at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit in Baku, Azerbaijan.
The U.N. General Assembly is planning a commemoration on the 80th anniversary on June 26. This week an exhibition on the San Francisco meeting opened at U.N. headquarters with a rare centerpiece — the original U.N. Charter, on loan from the U.S. National Archives in Washington.
But the mood in the halls of the U.N. headquarters in New York is grim.
“It’s not something to celebrate,” Kazakhstan’s U.N. Ambassador Kairat Umarov said of the upcoming anniversary.
“This should be united nations — not disunited,” he said. “Collectively, we can do a lot,” but today “we cannot agree on many things, so we agree to disagree.”
A changing world accommodated a changing UN
In a different world of land-line telephones, radios and propeller planes, the U.N. Charter was signed by just 50 nations — mainly from Latin America and Europe, with half a dozen from the Mideast, and just a few from Asia and Africa.
Over the decades, its membership has nearly quadrupled to 193 member nations, with 54 African countries now the largest bloc followed by the 54 from Asia and the Pacific. And the world has changed dramatically with the advent of computers and satellites, becoming what the late former Secretary-General Kofi Annan called a “global village.”
The U.N. system has also expanded enormously from its origins, which focused on peace and security, economic and social issues, justice and trusteeships for colonies.
Today, the map of the U.N. system looks like a multi-headed octopus with many tentacles — and miniature tentacles sprouting from those. In 2023, its secretariat and numerous funds, agencies and entities dealing with everything from children and refugees to peacekeeping and human rights had over 133,000 staff worldwide.
U.N. peacekeepers patrol on the Lebanese side of the Lebanese-Israeli border in the southern village of Kfar Kila, with the Israeli town of Metula in the background in Oct. 2023.
Kishore Mahbubani, who served twice as Singapore’s U.N. ambassador, credited the United Nations with thus far preventing World War III. While there are still wars, deaths have continued a long-term decline “and the world is still, overall, a much more peaceful place,” he said.
“And many small states still live in peace, not having to worry about the neighbors occupying them,” said Mahbubani, a respected geopolitical analyst.
Mahbubani and others also point to successes in the 71 U.N. peacekeeping operations since 1948, including in Angola, Cambodia, Sierra Leone (which is currently a member of the Security Council) and Liberia (which will join in January).
There is also wide praise for specialized U.N. agencies, especially those dealing with hunger, refugees and children as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the U.N’s nuclear watchdog, and the International Telecommunications Union. Among numerous responsibilities, it allocates the global radio spectrum and satellite orbits and brings digital connectivity to millions.
As Guterres told the Security Council earlier this year, “The United Nations remains the essential, one-of-a-kind meeting ground to advance peace, sustainable development and human rights.”
What actually gets done at the UN?
Every September, world leaders get aglobal platform at the General Assembly. And every day their ambassadors and diplomats meet to debate issues from conflicts to climate change to the fight for gender equality and quality education. Sometimes, such talks produce little or no results. At others, achievements get overlooked or ignored by the broader world community, far from the hubs of diplomacy.
And the Security Council is the only place where Russia and Ukraine regularly face off over the ongoing war following Russia’s 2022 invasion — and where the Palestinian and Israeli ambassadors frequently confront each other.
The United Nations Security Council meets in June 2023.
Despite its successes and achievements over past decades, Singapore’s Mahbubani called the U.N. today “a very sad place,” lamenting that Guterres had failed “to inspire humanity” as the latePope Francisdid. “But,” Mahbubani said, “it should celebrate the fact it is alive and not dead.”
John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who was national security adviser during Trump’s first term, was also critical of the state of the U.N. in 2025. “It’s probably in the worst shape it’s been in since it was founded,” said Bolton, now an outspoken Trump critic.
He pointed to gridlock in the Security Council on key issues. He blames rising international tensions that divide the council’s five veto-wielding powers – withRussiaandChinafacing off againstU.S., Britain and Franceon many global challenges.
Richard Gowan, U.N. director of the International Crisis Group, a think tank, said the United Nations has bounced from crisis to crisis since the 1990s. With the gloomy geopolitical picture and U.S. funding cuts impacting humanitarian operations, he said this “is not just another blow-up that will blow over."
"Everyone seems to be resigned to the fact that you’re going to have a smaller U.N. in a few years’ time," Gowan said. "And that is partially because virtually every member state has other priorities.”
What happens in the UN's next chapter?
Guterres has launchedseveral major reform efforts, getting approval from U.N. member nations last September for a “Pact for the Future” – a blueprint to bring the world together to tackle 21st-century challenges. Gowan said Guterres’ successor, who will be elected next year and take over in 2027, will have to shrink the organization. But many cuts, consolidations and changes will require approval of the divided U.N. membership. Possible radical reforms include merging U.N. aid and development agencies to avoid duplication.
Don’t forget, says Gowan, that a huge amount of diplomatic business — much of it having nothing to do with the United Nations — gets done because it is in New York, a place to have those conversations.
“If you were to close the U.N., there would also be a lot of intelligence people and spies who would be deeply disappointed. Because it’s a wonderful place to cultivate your contacts,” Gowan said. “Americans may not realize that having the U.N. in New York is a bonanza for us spying on other nations. So we shouldn’t let that go.”
Flagpoles in front of the United Nations building in Geneva, Switzerland.
Ian Bremmer, who heads the Eurasia Group, a political risk and consulting firm, said the Trump administration’s attempts to undermine the United Nations — which the United States conceived in 1945 — will make China more important. With Trump exiting from theWorld Health Organization, the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees known as UNRWA and cutting humanitarian funding, he said, China will become “the most influential and the most deep-pocketed” in those agencies.
Bremmer, who calls himself a close adviser to Guterres, insisted the United Nations remains relevant — “with no caveats.”
“It’s a relatively poorly resourced organization. It has no military capabilities. It has no autonomous foreign policy,” Bremmer said. “But its legitimacy and its credibility in speaking for 8 billion people on this little planet of ours is unique."
He added: "The important thing is that as long as the great powers decide not to leave the United Nations, every day that they stay is a vote of confidence in the U.N."
Expansion of the U.N. Security Council is probably the most fertile area for potential change. Decades of discussions have failed to agree on how to enlarge the 15-member council to reflect the global realities of the 21st century, though there is wide agreement that Africa and Latin America deserve permanent seats.
Singapore’s Mahbubani said he believes the United Nations “will definitely survive.” The “genius” of its founders, he said, was to give the big powers after World War II a veto in the Security Council, preventing the global body from dying as its predecessor, the League of Nations, did. That survival, Mahbubani believes, will continue: “It will," he said, "outlast us all."
Want to be on good terms with President Donald Trump? Expect to pay a lot.
According to The Wall Street Journal, a mediator has suggested a $20 million settlement to resolve Trump’s lawsuit against Paramount Global. The deal reportedly includes a $17 million donation to Trump’s future presidential library, along with millions for legal fees and airtime on Paramount-owned networks to run public service announcements condemning antisemitism.
But the negotiations haven’t progressed yet, and they might not. Trump’s team also demands an apology, which Paramount isn’t currently willing to provide. Settlement talks remain uncertain, and a resolution is still elusive.
Vice President JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz prepare to debate on Oct. 1, 2024.
Nevertheless, it raises an urgent question: In an era of media retreat and Trump appeasement, will CBS News be the next to give in?
At the core of the legal dispute is an October 2024 interview that CBS aired with Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump accused the network of editing the segment to make Harris look better, which CBS outright denies, stating that it simply aired a shortened version of her remarks. But that didn’t stop Trump’s Federal Communications Commission from reopening an investigation into the network—a clear intrusion into editorial judgment with serious implications for press freedom.
FCC Chair Brendan Carr cited a third-party news distortion complaint as the basis to scrutinize CBS’ editing. He’s demanded the raw footage and full transcript, which CBS released earlier this year. Meanwhile, Trump has filed a separate$20 billion defamation lawsuit against the network.
Paramount, CBS’ parent company, reportedly offered Trump $15 million to settle, but he countered with $25 million. The ongoing exchange has put Paramount executives in a tough spot, with internal divisions over how to settle without risking shareholder lawsuits or future legal issues.
To evaluate their legal risks, Paramount consulted Gibson Dunn, a top-tier law firm, which concluded that a $20 million settlement would likely avert criminal or civil repercussions and fall within the range of what other companies have paid to settle Trump’s lawsuits.
And those payments have accumulated.
In December, Disney quietly settled a defamation case involving ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos by paying $15 million to Trump’s presidential foundation and $1 million in legal fees. And in January, Meta paid $25 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit after suspending Trump’s accounts following the Jan. 6 insurrection. X settled a similar claim for $10 million.
Meanwhile, other outlets have shifted their stance to appease Trump—just look at The Washington Post under Jeff Bezos.
Wendy McMahon, former CEO and president of CBS News
Trump already has loyalty from Fox News and One America News, but CBS’ situation is unique: Its lawsuit affects the network’s planned merger with Skydance Media, and insiders say pressure to settle has caused significant internal tensions.
In fact, Wendy McMahon left her role as CEO and president of CBS News last month, partly because she disagreed with how the company was handling the lawsuit. It was the second major leadership exit from the network this year.
The FCC has authority over the Paramount-Skydance merger because it involves broadcast license transfers, meaning Carr could delay or block the merger entirely to give Trump more leverage.
But for now, signs suggest that CBS might stand firm. In a filing Monday responding to Trump’s latest legal motion, Paramount and CBS jointly called the case “a meritless lawsuit.”
“President Trump and Representative [Ronny] Jackson attempt to evade bedrock First Amendment principles establishing that public officials like themselves cannot hold news organizations like CBS liable for the exercise of editorial judgment,” they wrote.
Let’s hope they stay firm—because few outlets will.
Retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is very concerned about what is happening with the courts, you guys. No, he didn’t have anything to do with it. Why do you ask?
Kennedy’s remarks came during his Thursday speech ata forum titled “Global Risks to the Justice System—A Warning to America.” He was one of several speakers, includingjudges from countries where authoritarian crackdowns threatened the independence of the judiciary.
The bravery of those judges most definitely did not rub off on Kennedy, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan. In the face of repeated and ongoing attacks on the judiciary by President Donald Trump and his administration, the best Kennedy could do waspraise judicial independence, as if that exists on the nation’s highest court any longer.
In this Oct. 8, 2018, file photo, President Donald Trump watches as retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, right, ceremonially swears-in Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, left, in the East Room of the White House. Kavanaugh's wife Ashley is second from right with daughters Margaret, left, and Liza.
“Judges decide issues which have political consequences, but they don’t decide in a political way,” Kennedy claimed. “We have to honor the fact that judicial independence does not mean judges are put on the bench so they can do as they like—they're put on the bench so they can do as they must.”
Come on, Tony. Your cute little deal with Donald Trump in 2018, where youpersonally lobbied him to choose your former clerk Brett Kavanaugh to succeed you, was step two in Trump’s transformation of the court into a conservative grievance machine, following on the heels of Justice Neil Gorsuch’sconfirmation the previous year.
You were perfectly aware that opposition to abortion was one of Trump’s litmus tests for Supreme Court nominees—he evencampaigned on it. You were also perfectly aware thatmany of his lower court picks during his first term openly held anti-LGBTQ+ views. Trump explicitly chose judges because they would rule “as they like” instead of ruling “as they must.”
Indeed, when judges do rule as they must, and Donald Trump doesn’t like it, he attacks them personally. Hecalled for Judge James A. Boasberg to be impeached after he blocked the administration from deporting Venezuelan immigrants.
At least 11 judges have had theirfamilies threatened with violence after they ruled against the Trump administration. Many of the threats occurred over at Elon Musk’s Nazi bar, X, where Musk himself amplified some of them. High-profile Trump supporter Laura Loomer shared a photo of Judge Boasberg’s daughter, alleging that she was helping undocumented gang members and calling for Boasberg and his daughter to be arrested and his entire family to be deported. James Boasberg was born in California to U.S. citizens, so the deportation demand is equal parts chilling and weird.
U.S. District Judge John Coughenour faced both a bomb threat and a swatting incident after he ruled Trump’s birthright citizenship order was unconstitutional. During his speech, Kennedyfretted that “Judges must have protection for themselves and their families. Our families are often included in threats” without ever acknowledging who is whipping up those threats.
Congressional Republicans have attacked judges on every front. They’vecalled for the impeachment of judges who block Trump’s illegal actions. The Senatetried to get a provision in the Big Beautiful Bill restricting lower courts from issuing preliminary injunctions against the government unless the plaintiff posted a bond equal to whatever the government said were its costs and damages from not being able to do illegal things right away.
Whenever conservatives want to both-sides the threats to the judiciary, they have literally one example: At a 2020 rally outside the Supreme Court, Sen. Chuck Schumer called out Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch and said, “You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You will not know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” Roberts immediately issued a statementquoting Schumer and saying that “threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous.”
But when Trump relentlessly attacks the judiciary, including routinely defying court orders, and elected officials call for judges to be impeached, the best Roberts could come up with was, “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
This is equally as mealy-mouthed as Kennedy’scomments that the judiciary should stand for the rule of law and “we must always say no to tyranny and yes to truth.” Notably absent is any mention of who is attacking the rule of law. Notably absent is any mention that the rule of law went out the window when the conservative majority granted Trump immunity. Notably absent is any mention of who is saying yes to tyranny and no to truth.
Kennedy doesn’t deserve praise or a cookie for these vague statements. If he genuinely cared about attacks on the rule of law, he would need to challenge his former colleagues. He would need to challenge Trump, the man he cut a deal with to get Kavanaugh a lifetime appointment. He would need to say that the threats of violence against judges only occur when they rule against the administration. He would need to call out the ceaseless attempts by GOP elected officials to knee-cap the courts.
Kennedy is not going to do any of those things, but he’s probably going to continue to make a lot of high-minded speeches. Feel free to ignore him until he tells the truth.
In avideothat recentlymade its way onto social media, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrest a man from Afghanistan in the hallway of the San Diego Immigration Court as he calmly repeats that he worked with the U.S. military as an interpreter.
“I have all the documents,” Sayed Naser says, as two officers put him in handcuffs.
Through his attorney Brian McGoldrick, Sayed Naser asked not to be fully identified over concerns for his family’s safety.
The officers walk Sayed Naser down the hallway, ignoring requests from the man’s attorney and community advocates to see the warrant before they take him into the elevator down to the ICE offices and holding cells.
“For more than three years, I worked with the U.S. military back in my home country,” Sayed Naser continues, his voice never breaking its calm tone. “I came here to make a better life. I didn’t know that it was going to happen like this for me. I never thought about this. I have all the evidence.”
x
An Afghan ally who served alongside U.S. forces was legally paroled into the U.S. and showed up for his first hearing.
DHS detained him anyway—using a vague “improvidently issued” excuse.
He followed the rules.
We have the video.
This must stop.
#AfghanEvac #DueProcess
His is one of a growing number of cases of people seeking protection from potentially life-and-death situations in their home countrieswho have been arrestedwhen they show up for court hearings to make those asylum requests.
“It’s so terrifying to go to court because you have no idea if you’ve been selected today,” McGoldrick said. “It’s like playing Russian roulette.”
ICE, in an emailed statement attributed to an unnamed spokesperson, said that the agency believes all of the people arrested should have been placed in expedited removal to begin with when they entered the country during the Biden administration.
“Immigration courthouse arrests are just another example of a dragnet approach to enforcement that has gone completely off the rails,” said Sirine Shebaya, executive director of the National Immigration Project. “It looks and feels like kidnapping.”
When the arrestsbegan, attorneys representing ICE in court hearings would ask immigration judges to dismiss the cases before them. In the past, that often meant that the government would no longer actively seek deportation in those cases. However, in this ongoing operation, ICE officers immediately arrest the people leaving their hearings and put them into expedited removal — a faster way to deport someone without a judge’s order.
As word spread about the dismissals, people have fought to keep their cases open, but in many instances, ICE has arrested them anyway.
Several cities besides San Diego have seen similar arrests, includingLos Angeles,New York,ChicagoandSan Francisco. Shebaya estimated that, nationwide, at least several hundred people have been arrested after their hearings.
Benjamin Remy, senior staff attorney at New York Legal Assistance Group, said that ICE officers have entered New York courtrooms to make arrests instead of waiting in the hallways.
“We had ICE officers that violently tackled an individual in front of the immigration judge,” Remy said. “That is the level of violence that we’re seeing on the ground.”
Volunteers in San Diego have filmed ICE officers going into the women’s bathroom at the court to make an arrest as well as taking a woman away from her pregnant sister, who cried inconsolably because she was now left alone in a country she did not know. They said they’ve also seen ICE officers go into at least one courtroom.
Luis, a former lawyer from a Latin American country who asked not to be fully identified due to safety and retaliation concerns, said he thinks ICE is detaining people who are easy to find to increase its arrests. The agencyhas a quotaof 3,000 per day.
“I thought the United States wasn’t like Latin American countries where there’s a lot of corruption,” Luis said in Spanish in a call from Otay Mesa Detention Center. “I thought the processes here were more organized, that they respected the processes. But now I see that they don’t respect the processes just the same. It’s just about numbers.”
Luis said he told the judge he was concerned about the officers in the hallway detaining him when he went to his court hearing in downtown San Diego. The judge kept his case open. Luis had already submitted an asylum application, and all he needed to get through was the hearing where he would tell his story and present his evidence for asylum.
He said his father had been disappeared when he was a child, and after he faced threats himself, he fled so that his own son would not know that same pain.
Still, ICE detained him in May in the court hallway and took him to Otay Mesa Detention Center.
“It’s uncomfortable because they transport you as though you were Hannibal Lecter,” Luis said, noting that he was shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles. “One feels like an assassin. What did I do?”
He waited for a bond hearing in front of an immigration judge, getting a rash in the meantime from the detention facility uniform. At Luis’ hearing, the government argued that he had to remain detained mandatorily. His attorney, Tracy Crowley of Immigrant Defenders Law Center, who took his case pro bono the day he was detained, pointed out that the government’s own documents classified him in a way that would allow an immigration judge to set a bond in his case for him to get out of custody.
The judge asked for written briefs on the issue, extending Luis’ time in detention. Sitting back on a courtroom bench, he appeared devastated.
“I want to fight my case, but I don’t want to fight it in these conditions of being locked up because I was present in all my proceedings. I haven’t missed any,” Luis said. “I’m locked up here waiting. It’s complicated. It stresses me out.”
People like Luis who were arrested with cases still open are now continuing their hearings from inside the detention center. People whose cases were dismissed can request a screening about their fear of returning to their home countries.
A Dominican man, left, and an activist, right, are detained by ICE officers after an immigration hearing in New York on June 6.
Michael Hirman, an immigration attorney in San Diego representing a Venezuelan man who was one of the first people detained, said that his client went through a credible fear screening.
The Venezuelan man left his country’s military rather than commit the abuses he said he’d been ordered to do, and the government has hunted him since, Hirman said.
“I would imagine what he’s got waiting for him in Venezuela is a bullet,” Hirman said.
Hirman said his client passed the screening and was eventually put back in immigration court proceedings, starting over the process he was already in — but this time from inside the detention center.
“What a waste of money and time,” Hirman said.
When asked about Hirman’s client’s case, ICE said that the man’s proceedings are ongoing.
McGoldrick said that in the case of his client Sayed Naser, a government attorney argued that his case should be dismissed because the document that initiated his case in court, known as a Notice to Appear, had been “improvidently issued.”
McGoldrick called the government’s argument a ruse.
“If this one is improvident, they’re all improvident,” he said.
The judge kept Sayed Naser’s case open so McGoldrick could respond in writing to the government’s argument, the attorney said. She also set a hearing date for Sayed Naser to present his evidence and finish his case. Then, ICE arrested him.
McGoldrick said Sayed Naser was in shock for days over what happened to him.
“He can’t understand why an ally of the United States has been put in jail,” McGoldrick said. “He can’t fathom why this is happening. He’s disgusted by the conditions. He said to me, ‘I never thought America was a place where they would put you in a room where you have to sleep in the same place that you go to the bathroom.’”
The Afghan man’s wife found out what had happened to him when a video of his arrest went viral, McGoldrick said. She feared that he would be tortured and disappeared — that’s what happens when someone in Afghanistan is detained, McGoldrick said.
Sayed Naser’s brother recently won asylum in Texas, McGoldrick said, and Sayed Naser’s case is just as strong.
Sayed Naser was living in hiding when Taliban members killed his brother at a wedding that his wife was attending, according to a press release about his arrest from #AfghanEvac, an organization that has helped Afghans flee the Taliban if they had previously helped the U.S. military. Sayed Naser escaped Afghanistan, making his way to Brazil and then up the Western Hemisphere, crossing through the notoriousDarién Gap.
He crossed into the U.S. with an appointment through the now-defunct CBP One application that the Biden administration used to process asylum seekers at ports of entry, #AfghanEvac said.
Shawn VanDiver, who leads #AfghanEvac, called Sayed Naser’s arrest horrific.
“What I’m getting from inside the government is they’re trying to say he wasn’t vetted because he crossed through CBP One — which is bullshit,” VanDiver said.
Some attorneys have filed habeas corpus petitions to get their clients released after immigration court arrests.
Other Stories to Watch
The Supreme Court on Monday lifted a Boston-based U.S. district court judge’s order that had blocked the Trump administration from deporting people to third countries where they have no affiliation, according toReuters. That could mean that ICE will go ahead with its deportation of a group of people from several countries to South Sudan. The order paused their removals partway through the journey, and they have been waiting in Djibouti.
ICE released Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder whom the Trump administration sent to immigration custody because of his involvement with pro-Palestinian protests at Colombia University. Khaliltold NPRthat missing the birth of his son while he was in ICE custody was the most tragic experience he had had in his life.
TheTexas Tribunereportedthat ICE claimed one of the Venezuelan men that the Trump administration sent to a Salvadoran prison was a gang member because officers found a photo of him standing next to someone else who had tattoos.
ICE deported a Guatemalan father of four living in Florida even though he’s in the process of obtaining a U visa, according toTV outlet WESH. U visas are supposed to allow undocumented people who are victims of crimes to come forward to police without fear of deportation, but because there is an annual cap on how many the U.S. gives out, people who are eligible wait in ayears-long backlog.
ICE also deported a pastor’s wife who lived in Florida and who has not been in her home country of Mexico since the ’90s, according totheTallahassee Democrat. The woman had been issued a stay of removal and was in the process of getting a family-sponsored visa.
The agency is also trying to deport a journalist who has covered its activities in Atlanta, according to theAtlanta Journal-Constitution.
TheNew York Timesreportedon additional ICE arrests of U.S. citizens in the Los Angeles area in recent days. It appears that officers were profiling anyone they considered to be Latino.
L.A. TACO continues to cover the protests in Los Angeles closely, particularly on itsInstagram account. The outletreportedthat the “No Kings” protest in the city was peaceful until authorities escalated with violence. L.A. TACO is also covering ICE arrests in the region closely, includingat a taco truckin East L.A.
The Los Angeles Press Club is one of the plaintiffs in a new lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union against the Trump administration. Thecomplaintsays that the plaintiffs “seek to prevent the Department of Homeland Security from using unnecessary and excessive violence to prevent them from exercising their First Amendment rights to report on, observe, and protest government actions.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced on Monday a trip to Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras and Guatemala that includes witnessing a deportation flight, visiting a detention center and observing Department of Homeland Security operations in one of the country’s airports, according to a tentative schedule.
Black Music Sunday is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music, with over 260 stories covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.
I love celebrating musician’s birthdays, especially when we can give them their flowers while they are still with us. Today I’m honoring Stanley Clarke, who was born on June 30, 1951, and look forward to many more years of doing so.
Clarke became a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2020. Here’s how they introduce him:
Stanley Clarke’s bass-playing, showing exceptional skill on both acoustic and electric bass, has made him one of the most influential players in modern jazz history. In addition to his solo career, Clarke, as a founding member of the legendary jazz-rock fusion band Return to Forever, has helped redefine the sound of jazz over the last 50 years. Return to Forever—Clarke with fellow seminal members Chick Corea, Lenny White, and Al Di Meola—would become one of the most popular jazz bands of its day, pulling fans from the rock world to achieve commercial success. As part of his strong belief in giving back, he also established the Stanley Clarke Foundation, a charitable organization which awards scholarships to talented young musicians each year.
Clarke grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with his mother encouraging him to study music. He first played the violin and cello before settling on the bass, attending the Settlement Music School, where his focus was on studying classical bass repertoire. Clarke made his professional debut at age 15, joining saxophonist Byard Lancaster at the Showboat jazz club. Following studies at the Philadelphia Musical Academy, Clarke moved to New York City, soon working with legendary performers such as Art Blakey, Gil Evans, Stan Getz, Dexter Gordon, and Horace Silver.
Give a listen to “Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers—Song for a Lonely Woman” which was written by Clarke.
In his early teens, Stanley moved from the violin, his fingers were too big for, and the cello that never sat well with him, to an abandoned acoustic double bass in the corner of a school band room. It was the first of many moments that would shape his future and the role of the bassplayer for years to come. [...]
Stanley made his professional debut at 15-years old, when he was invited by saxophonist Byard Lancaster to join him for a week of shows at the landmark Showboat Lounge, where many of the greats like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Art Blakey, Stan Getz and others would play and record. The gig, for which Stanley and drummer Darryl Brown were paid about $75, was an experience which sparked the flame of inspiration that would propel the nascent ambitions of the young bassist like a rocket.
With the arrival of the British Invasion bands and his Roxborough High School years, the electric bass, a Kent electric bass purchased for around $50, found its way into Stanley’s hands and so did opportunities to play parties and shows with many bands across the City of Brotherly Love.
Upon leaving the Philadelphia Musical Academy (now part of the University of the Arts), Stanley made his way to New York City where he very quickly landed opportunities to work with such greats as Horace Silver, Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon, Joe Henderson, Pharaoh Saunders, Gil Evans and Stan Getz. He would also find himself playing again with Chick Corea. The two had met when Chick came to Philadelphia to sit in for a keyboard player in a band in which Stanley was playing. Almost immediately, the two recognized something in the talents of the other that night that would form the basis of their musical friendship and the creation of the groundbreaking jazz-rock fusion unit, Return to Forever.
Give a listen to Return to Forever’s first album, which was titled simply “Return To Forever:
Digging through the great multitude of accolades bestowed upon Stanley reveals an interesting phenomenon. It is difficult to remember how limited the potential career path of a bass player was before he came on the scene. Stanley almost single-handedly took the bass out of the shadows and brought it to the very front of the stage, literally and figuratively. [...]
Certainly there were great and celebrated bass players before Stanley like Ron Carter, Scott LaFaro, and the pioneering composer Charles Mingus. But Clarke became the first bassist in history to headline sold-out world tours and have gold albums. He was also the first to double on acoustic and electric bass with equal virtuosity, power, and fire. By the time he was 25 years old, he was already regarded as a pioneer in the jazz fusion movement.
Clarke cites Mingus as a great influence personally and professionally. “The greatest moment in my life that changed me was having dinner with the great Charlie Mingus. He had the personality of a revolutionary that could have run a paramilitary group. He was very intense, heavy! That’s when I realized exactly what I wanted to do with the bass. I was going to approach my career completely like a revolutionary. Whatever was there, I was going to do the opposite.” The rest, as they say, literally is history.
Interestingly electric bass, for which Stanley is most renowned, is not his principal instrumental. His first passion, which carries to this day, is for the acoustic bass. “Electric bass is my secondary instrument. When I first started playing electric it was at parties and just for having fun. But I made records and got famous more as an electric bass player than as an acoustic bass player.”
In 1973, Chick Corea produced Clarke’s first solo album, “Children of Forever.” Thom Jurek reviewed the album for AllMusic:
Stanley Clarke's debut solo effort was issued when he was already a seasoned jazz veteran, and a member of Chick Corea's Return to Forever, which at the time of this recording also included Joe Farrell on soprano sax and flute, and the Brazilian team of vocalist Flora Purim and drummer/percussionist Airto Moreira. Produced by Corea, who plays Rhodes, clavinet, and acoustic piano on Children of Forever, the band included flutist Art Webb, then-new RtF drummer Lenny White, guitarist Pat Martino, and a vocal pairing between the inimitable Andy Bey and Dee Dee Bridgewater on three of the five cuts -- Bey appears on four. Clarke plays both electric and acoustic bass on the set; and while it would be easy to simply look at this recording as an early fusion date, that would be a tragic mistake. If anything, Children of Forever is a true cousin to Norman Connors' classic Dance of Magic and Dark of Light albums, which were also released in 1973; Clarke played bass on both. This is basically funky, spiritual jazz in the best sense. Yes, jazz. That wonderfully mercurial, indefinable force that brings into itself the whole of music, from popular to classical and folk forms, and makes something new out of them. The long title track with its killer vocal interplay between Bridgewater and Bey is seductive from the jump. Add Clarke's big fat bassline, which is mellow and meaty at the beginning, but after the long piano and guitar breaks in the middle becomes dirty, fuzzy, and spacy by the end as the cut leans into souled-out funk.
The "message" tunes that make up this music balance the dawning of the future as the logical place of Black consciousness -- where a new day was indeed emerging from the struggles of the '50s and '60s. Add to this the cosmic looking cover, and its weighed electric and acoustic underpinnings, and you have the makings of a timeless classic
Bugle: Does your style of playing differ from acoustic to electric bass?
Clarke: Sure, but it all depends on what emotions I'm creating. With the acoustic bass I can create real soft, subtle emotions or I can get very intense on the acoustic — try to kill, beat the instrument. And it’s the same with the electric bass.
Bugle: How did you choose the bass as your instrument?
Clarke: At the age of 13 I was given a violin, but I couldn’t make it because my hands were too big. The cello had the similar problem — just too small. I even played some tuba in school but I finally came to an upright bass and stuck with that.
Bugle: How did your jazz influences enter?
Clarke: My parents bought a new stereo and with the system came a demonstration record. It was a jazz record with all the great jazz artists of the time — Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus. And I listened to that shit and I said, “Man, I don’t know what this is!” But I liked it and I tried to play along with it until I finally I wore that record out.
Bugle: How did you first get involved on the jazz scene?
Clarke: I went to college at the Philadelphia Music Academy for about two years, then decided it wasn't what I really wanted to do. I wanted to play in front of people, so I left college and came to New York. I joined a band with Horace Silver and stayed with him for about a year. From that point I just played with everyone who came along — Stan Getz, Pharoah, Lonnie Liston Smith and others.
I searched the web looking for a documentary on Clarke, discovered this short trailer, and much to my regret found out that sadly the full film doesn’t exist.
Lest you assume that Clarke’s genre is solely jazz fusion, this tune from 1984 on “Time Exposure” with George Duke and soul singer Howard Hewett belies that notion.
Clarke’s catalogis too big for me to post much more of his work in this story—I’ll have lots more for you to sample in the comments section below. I’ll close with this live performance this month on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert forBlack Music Month:
NPR Music has these notes on Clarke’s Tiny Desk Concert:
Once the Tiny Desk logo fades away, one of the things you'll notice is a wall of amps. Robust sound has always been a hallmark of bassist Stanley Clarke's musicality; he reminded our audio team not only to pay attention to what the soundboard says but also if it sounds good.
Clarke's storied career has been awash with showcases in his virtuosity on the acoustic and electric basses. He's worked with fellow music titans like Chick Corea, George Duke, Jean-Luc Ponty and Al Di Meola, and has scored for film and television. From 1974-1976, Clarke dropped a series of solo albums ("Stanley Clarke," "Journey to Love" and "School Days") that would herald his status as a force in music and foreshadow his 2022 designation as an NEA Jazz Master.
Indicative of his passion for spotlighting young musicians, Clarke's latest ensemble, 4EVER (a callback to his band Return to Forever), features saxophonist Emilio Modeste, guitarist Colin Cook, drummer Jeremiah Collier, violinist Evan Garr and keyboardist Cameron Graves.Opening the set is "Song to John" from 1975's "Journey to Love," with Graves and Cook proving they're more than up to the task laid before them. "Yesterday Princess," from Clarke's 1974 self-titled album, gives violinist Garr the chance to shine as his fingers dance over the fingerboard. The performance moves into the electric realm with 2003's "1, 2, to the Bass," a track that manages to be both smooth (hat tip to Modeste) and funky at the same time. Collier's toms build up to the entry of Clarke at work as they close with one of his biggest hits, "School Days." A little over 50 years since his solo debut, Clarke reminds the audience that there are still new ways to be dazzled by the innovative and solid fullness of his instrument.
Join me in wishing Clarke a happy birthday and please post your favorite tunes of his in the comments below.
Senate Republicans voting in a dramatic late Saturday session narrowly cleared a key procedural step as they race to advance President Donald Trump's package oftax breaks, spending cuts and bolstered deportation fundsby his July Fourth deadline.
The tally, 51-49, came after a tumultuous session with Vice President JD Vance on hand if needed to break the tie. Tense scenes played out in the chamber as voting came to a standstill, dragging for hours as holdout senators huddled for negotiations. In the end, two Republicans opposed the motion to proceed to debate, joining all Democrats.
It’s still a long weekend of work to come.
Republicans are using their majorities in Congress to push aside Democratic opposition, but they have run into a series ofpolitical and policy setbacks. Not all GOP lawmakers are on board with proposals to reduce spending onMedicaid,food stampsand other programs as a way to help cover the cost of extendingsome $3.8 trillion in Trump tax breaks.
Donald Trump speaks to the media on June 27 at the White House.
Ahead of the expected roll call, the White House released a statement of administrative policy saying it “strongly supports passage” of the bill that “implements critical aspects” of the president's agenda. Trump himself was at his golf course in Virginia on Saturday with GOP senators posting about it on social media.
"It's time to get this legislation across the finish line," said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.
But as the day dragged, billionaire Elon Musk lashed out, calling the package “utterly insane and destructive.”
“The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!” the former top Trump aide said in a post.
The940-page billwas released shortly before midnight Friday, and senators are expected to grind through the hours of all-night debate and amendments in the days ahead. If the Senate is able to pass it, the bill would go back to the House for a final round of votes before it could reach the White House.
With the narrow Republican majorities in the House and Senate, leaders need almost every lawmaker on board in the face of essentially unified opposition from Democrats. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky voted against.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Republicans unveiled the bill “in the dead of night” and are rushing to finish the bill before the public fully knows what’s in it. He is expected to call for a full reading of the text in the Senate, which would take hours.
Make-or-break moment for GOP
The weekend session could be a make-or-break moment for Trump's party, which has invested much of its political capital on hissignature domestic policy plan. Trump is pushing Congress to wrap it up and has admonished the “grandstanders” among GOP holdouts to fall in line.
The legislation is an ambitious but complicated series of GOP priorities. At its core, it would make permanent many of the tax breaks from Trump's first term that would otherwise expire by year's end if Congress fails to act, resulting in a potential tax increase on Americans. The bill would add new breaks, including no taxes on tips, and commit $350 billion to national security, including for Trump'smass deportation agenda.
But the cutbacks to Medicaid, food stamps and green energy investments, which a top Democrat, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon said would be a “death sentence” for America's wind and solar industries, are also causing dissent within GOP ranks.
The Republicans are relying on the reductions to offset the lost tax revenues but some lawmakers say the cuts go too far, particularly for people receiving health care through Medicaid. Meanwhile, conservatives, worried about the nation's debt, are pushing for steeper cuts.
Tillis, who said he spoke with Trump late Friday explaining his concerns, announced Saturday he cannot support the package as is, largely because he said the health care changes would force his state to “make painful decisions like eliminating Medicaid coverage for hundreds of thousands.”
After setbacks, Republicans revise some proposals
The release of that draft had been delayed as theSenate parliamentarianreviewed the bill to ensure it complied with the chamber’s strict “Byrd Rule,” named for the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va. It largely bars policy matters from inclusion in budget bills unless a provision can get 60 votes to overcome objections. That would be a tall order in a Senate with a 53-47 GOP edge and Democrats unified against Trump’s bill.
But over the past days, Republicans have quickly revised those proposals and reinstated them.
The final text includes a proposal for cuts to the Medicaid provider tax that had run into parliamentary hurdles and objections from several senators worried about the fate of rural hospitals. The new version extends the start date for those cuts and establishes a $25 billion fund to aid rural hospitals and providers. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who had opposed the cuts, vowed “to do everything I can” to make sure the reductions never go into effect.
Thenonpartisan Congressional Budget Officehas said that under the House-passed version of the bill,some 10.9 million more peoplewould go without health care and at least 3 million fewer would qualify for food aid. The CBO has not yet publicly assessed the Senate draft, which proposes steeper reductions.
Top income-earners would see about a $12,000 tax cut under the House bill, while the package would cost the poorest Americans $1,600,the CBO said.
SALT dispute shakes things up
The Senate included a compromise over the so-called SALT provision, a deduction for state and local taxes that has been a top priority of lawmakers from New York and other high-tax states, but the issue remains unsettled.
The current SALT cap is $10,000 a year, and a handful of Republicans wanted to boost it to $40,000 a year. The final draft includes a $40,000 cap, but limits it for five years.
Many Republican senators say that is still too generous. At least one House GOP holdout, Rep. Nick LaLota of New York, had said that would be insufficient.
Trump's deadline nears
HouseSpeaker Mike Johnson, who sent his colleagues home for the weekend with plans to be on call to return to Washington. But as the Senate draft was revealed, House GOP support was uncertain. One Republican, Rep. David Valadao of California, said he was opposed.
This may be the most challenging secret I have ever had to decipher. I think to understand the full confession we need to reassemble these strips. Is it possible? Could AI help? Post your ideas and solutions here. Thanks!
Explaining the Right is a weekly series that looks at what the right wing is currently obsessing over, how it influences politics—and why you need to know.
Following the decision to bomb Iranian nuclear targets without first seeking congressional approval, the Trump administration renewed its ongoing war against the media for reporting factual information.
Republicans want cheerleading, not journalism
President Donald Trump, Defense SecretaryPete Hegseth, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, and other Republicans challenged reporting that revealed that the Pentagon did not believe Iran’s nuclear capability had been decimated. In fact, the Trump administration argued that journalists should celebrate Trump’s actions.
“How about we take a beat, recognize first the success of our warriors, hold them up, tell their stories, celebrate that, wave an American flag, be proud of what we accomplished,” Hegsethinsisted during a briefing at the Pentagon.
Hegsetheven complained about the reporting of one his former Fox News colleagues, Pentagon correspondent Jennifer Griffin, for asking a mild question meant to verify the Trump administration’s claims about the strike.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
Republicans, particularly Trump and his orbit, have spent more than a decade whining about media coverage—which has largelybeen laudatory of him and has promoted his favored (false) narratives—but this week’s behavior explicitly argued that the press should “cheer” for Trump, as Hegseth said.
Trump ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia made a similar demand of the press.
John McCormack, senior editor of the conservative outlet The Dispatch, asked Greene a series of follow-up questions following her mild criticism of Trump’s bombing.Greene alleged, without evidence, that McCormack sought to “twist” her words and said she would tell the Capitol police “you’re harassing me.”
In 2000, when he was first running for the presidency, President George W. Bushwas caught on a live mic referring to The New York Times reporter Adam Clymer as a “major league asshole.” And Vice President Dick Cheney agreed, responding, “Big time.”
Decades before that, Vice President Spiro Agnewwent after the media in a press conference in 1969. He fumed that the media responded to President Richard Nixon’s “silent majority” speech about the Vietnam War with “querulous criticism,” and he argued that the press was not effusive enough in its praise of Nixon.
Both Nixon and Agnew would later separately resign from their positions due to scandal.
The right works the media refs
The right has spent decades beating up on the media, with Trump repeatedly calling them the “enemy of the people.” The entire conservative movement has dedicated itself to the falsehood that the “liberal media” is an arm of the Democratic Party designed to take down the right.
Organizations like the Media Research Centerhave been funded with millions of dollars to hammer at this false narrative, with reports and other media releases purportedly showing media bias.
Trump complains about “fake news” when unflattering facts are reported about him, but he thinks nothing of lying as easily as he breathes. This has taken the form ofracist conspiracies about President Barack Obama,the argument that climate change is a made-up “hoax,” andthe insistence that COVID-19 would simply melt away in early 2020.
The “liberal media” is a GOP fantasy
The “liberal media” talking point is easily debunked.
Mainstream media isfar more likely to broadcast and print false right-wing assertions without pointing out the lies to the public. It also loves to regurgitate narratives meant to harm Democrats, like Hillary Clinton’semails,Joe Biden’s age, or the Bush administration’sserial lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
Meanwhile, supposed “liberal media” bastions like The New York Times haveopenly portrayed an “age of Trump,”regurgitated easily debunked Trump spin, andlied to their readers by portraying GOP political operatives and their opinions as ordinary everyday Americans.
The world deserves ruth—not capitulation
Trump’s actions have serious consequences. He has a presidentialtrack record of actions that led to thousands of unnecessary deaths during the coronavirus pandemic, and his rhetorichas inspired terrorism, racism, and crime.
People need to know the truth about someone like Trump and the sycophants in his orbit. There are early signs that outlets like The New York Times and CNN aresomewhat pushing back against Trump’s cheerleading demands, but their track records on this type of resistance are spotty.
Honest journalism is vital and necessary—cheerleading is absolutely not.
A new poll shows support is shared across political party lines — and comes as Health and Human Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. could reshape the future of vaccines.
Most Americans support routine childhood vaccine requirements even as they become more politically charged, according to a new poll released Wednesday.A survey by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the de Beaumont Foundation found that 79 percent of Americans believe parents should be required to vaccinate their children against preventable diseases to attend school. That includes 72 percent of all parents.
The support cuts across political party lines, with backing from 90 percent of Democrats, 68 percent of Republicans and 66 percent who say they agree with “Make America Great Again,” the political ideology movement aligned with President Donald Trump.
“This just shows that routine vaccination policy is not as controversial as you would believe if you were just reading news and watching influencers,” said survey lead Gillian SteelFisher, director of the Harvard Opinion Research Program and principal research scientist at Harvard Chan School. “This is pretty well agreed ground.”
The poll was conducted online and via telephone between March 10 and March 31,as measles cases soared around the country. The poll had a sample of 2,509 adults aged 18 or older, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.3 points. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish.
Brian C. Castrucci, president and CEO of thede Beaumont Foundation, a private philanthropy that supports public health including vaccination, said the new polling shows that the medical community must continue to hone its messaging about the need for vaccines. An increase in vaccine hesitancy —people who delay or refuse vaccination—is among the reasonsfora decline in childhood vaccination rates. That can preventherd immunity, the indirect protection of a community from an infectious disease. Some of the most contagious diseases require more than 90 percent of a population to be immune.
“While we do show really strong support for vaccines, 79 percent is a little low compared to what we actually need to getherd immunity,” Castrucci said. “And so there’s a lot of work to be done in taking something that we know protects our country and protects our children.”
Among those who support childhood vaccine requirements, vaccine effectiveness in protecting most children (90 percent) and family responsibilities to keep schools safe (87 percent) were major reasons for their positions.
American adults also overwhelmingly, at 91 percent, believed in the safety of vaccines for most children. The poll distinguished vaccines that prevent childhood diseases such as measles, mumps and rubella from vaccines that prevent COVID-19. Sixty-three percent percent believe vaccines are very safe and 28 percent believe they are somewhat safe. Just 9 percent questioned their safety — 5 percent believe they are not very safe and 4 percent believe they are not safe at all.
About 1 in 5, or 21 percent, do not support childhood vaccine requirements, with more citing the need for parental choice rather than safety concerns as a major reason for that. Among parents surveyed, 88 percent believe vaccines are safe.
SteelFisher said the polling on parental choice can be revealing for policymakers and the medical community as they shape related health legislation and try to promote collective health choices.
“If people bring empathy to it, you can kind of tamper down some of that vitriol which we see so much and just kind of say, ‘Hey, I hear you.’ We should make space for that conversation,” she said. “To me, these kind of data are a reminder you have to know what people are thinking.
Castrucci agreed, adding that confronting the issue of parental choice will help public health professionals “in how we actively engage with people around, ‘How do you make that choice? Why is this choice important?’ And what are the downsides for any one person not choosing to make this choice for themselves, their child and their family?”
The polling comes amid an inflection point in vaccine policy under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
ACIP has long made recommendations that help determine Americans’ access to vaccines. Vaccine experts say they’ll be closely tracking the panel’s actions.
“We need folks to opt in to these vaccines that we know work and that we know are safe and effective, but just citing data is not helping our argument,” he said. “And so we have to create spaces where these conversations can happen and we can gain trust of parents so that they will opt into childhood vaccinations instead of contribute to the growing pushback that some have against them.
Injustice for All is a weekly series about how the Trump administration is trying to weaponize the justice system—and the people who are fighting back.
Republicans are very unhappy that lower courts keep ruling against the Trump administration. How dare the courts stand in the way of President Donald Trump doing whatever he wants?
Unfortunately for the GOP, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonoughthrew out the provision designed to make it nearly impossible for plaintiffs to sue the federal government.
Because conservatives no longer believe in the separation of powers, they’ve floated eliminating lower courts entirely andbegged the Supreme Court to block lower courts from issuing nationwide injunctions.
A cartoon by Clay Bennett.
They’re furious that courts keep ruling against Trump, and it seems to have never crossed their minds to contemplate why that is. It can’t be that Trump is wildly exceeding his power and destroying the government, so it must be that the judges are in cahoots to deny Trump his rightful authority.
GOP senators approached this in a different—but no less anti-democratic—way. They attempted to include a provision in the budget bill that would havebarred lower courts from issuing a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction against the federal government unless plaintiffs posted a bond. The bond would have to cover whatever the federal government said were its costs and damages resulting from not being allowed to do what it wanted.
On major policies, like stripping birthright citizenship from hundreds of thousands of Americans, the government could argue that its costs and damagesran into the billions due to its deportations being thwarted. It’s explicitly designed to make it more difficult for individuals and nonprofit groups to sue the government or to obtain nationwide relief.
At least for now, the Senate isn’t going to get its way, as MacDonough ruled that this provisionviolated the Byrd Rule, which limits provisions in reconciliation bills to only those with a budgetary effect.
But never fear: Republicans will keep trying to ensure that nothing stands in Trump’s way—not even the federal courts.
“Can you tell me how a bunch of allergy researchers are going to violate national security by using their time at work for collective bargaining?”
That’s U.S. District Judge James Donato, talking about the absurdity of Trump’sexecutive orderintended to strip union protections from more than 1 million federal employees.
The pretense Trump used here was to say that more than 40 agencies primarily functioned as national security organizations and were therefore exempt from the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Act. But that list included agencies that obviously don’t have national security as their primary function, including the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Donatoblocked the order, saying that there’s a serious question about whether the Trump administration violated the First Amendment rights of federal employees by retaliating against them for their protected speech.
Donato’sruling points out that Trump’s executive order literally admits to that behavior. Trump complained of “hostile Federal unions” who have “declared war on President Trump’s agenda” and that he “will not tolerate” unions that oppose him.
Donato also noted that Trump’s order could chill the speech of federal employees, as they may “feel pressure to conform to the administration’s political views” or risk retaliation.
For the moment, Trump is barred from enforcing the order and cutting union protections. But who knows what will happen when this eventually ends up at the Supreme Court, which is busy giving Trump everything he wants by blocking lower court rulings.
At least someone will go after SpaceX when its rockets explode
Not in the United States, though.
Both Texas and the federal government seem to be standing aside whenever one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets explodes in spectacular fashion, no matter what damage they cause.
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX
A2023 explosion resulted in a cloud of concrete covering Port Isabel, Texas, a 3.5-acre fire, and chunks of metal and concrete dropped thousands of feet from the launch site. And a 2024 launch destroyed the nests of shorebirds and dumped thousands of gallons of industrial wastewater nearby.
The environmental destruction of SpaceX doesn’t magically stop at the border, which is why the Mexican government is consideringpursuing legal action for the garbage that SpaceX is spewing across Mexico’s northern border.
Both the May 27 and June 19 SpaceX explosions dropped debris and microplastics over Tamaulipas, a northern border state in Mexico. The debris eventually made its way to marine areas, where environmental activists say it caused a die-off of fish, dolphins, and sea turtles.
It’s unclear what legal action against SpaceX would look like, though it is very clear that Musk will go scorched earth on any litigation. But at least someone is going to try to rein him in.
Trump’s DOJ intervenes on the side of child abuse
Calling it an “anti-Catholic law,” the Department of Justice sued to join Catholic bishops in their suit against Washington state, which has a newly passed law that requires priests to disclose child abuse even if they learned about it in a confessional.
There certainly is a credible argument about whether this intrudes on religious practices, but not from the Trump administration, which has framed itself as the guardian of children’s safety. In practice, that seems to only apply to attacking schools that don’t sufficiently humiliate trans kids.
Indeed, Trump’s Aprilproclamation for National Child Abuse Prevention Month boasts of how he’s protecting children by “prohibiting public schools from indoctrinating our children with transgender ideology.” He’s also taken “historic action” to secure the southern border and end child trafficking. But it’s not at all clear how those actions actually address child abuse.
Meanwhile, the Trump administrationwithdrew funding from investigating child sexual abuse, internet crimes against minors, and reports of missing children. The DOJ also removed grant applications, despite having plenty of funds, for services like helping local police investigate child exploitation on the internet and paying for court-appointed advocates for abused children.
The DOJ didn’t intervene in this case because it feels strongly about child abuse. It didn’t even really intervene to preserve the sanctity of the confessional—though that’s its ostensible reason.
The DOJ is in this case because it wants to advance a theocratic worldview—to keep carving out protections for conservative Christians and conservative Christians alone. And, hey, if that means that children endure abuse because priests keep quiet, that’s just the cost of doing religious business.
Texas loves passing laws that violate the Constitution
It really, really does.
Last week, Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a requirement that every classroom display a poster of at least 16 inches by 20 inches with the text of the Ten Commandments.
Texas knew full well that this would be challenged because it’s blatantly unconstitutional. A group of faith leaders and familiessued the day after Abbott signed the bill, saying that it violates the separation of church and state.
The plaintiffs also pointed out that there are multiple translations and interpretations of the Ten Commandments, so even if one were totally down with forcing that into the classroom, there’s still the problem of which version would be used.
People hold signs that read, “Restore Roe.”
Texas also knew full well that this would be challenged because the incredibly conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Texas,held that a similar Louisiana law was unconstitutional just last week.
What Texas is hoping for here is something like what happened with its so-called “Heartbeat Bill,” which banned all abortions after a heartbeat could be detected—around 6 weeks—and created a bounty hunter system where anyone could sue someone who “aided and abetted” someone getting an abortion.
This law openly violated Roe v. Wade, which held that the government could not ban abortion before viability, which is around24 weeks, but the Supreme Courtallowed it to take effect anyway. Then, the court took upDobbs v. Jackson over Mississippi’s 15-week ban, which also deliberately violated the viability requirement. The court used that to overturn Roe.
Texas is gambling that the Supreme Court is now stuffed with enough religious theocrats who may very well be perfectly happy to force children to look at the Ten Commandments every day, all while explaining that this somehow doesn’t violate the First Amendment.
It’s not a bad gamble for Texas, but it’s terrible for the rest of us.
The Trump administration is wreaking havoc in seemingly random ways, but if you put their actions together like a carefully curated, MAGAfied puzzle, it appears to spell out something more nefarious.
On May 15, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin said during a hearing that he planned to make the United States the “AI capital of the world,” giving a glimpse into the Trump administration’s broader plans for dirty energy.
President Donald Trump is giving artificial intelligence the red carpet treatment, but he needs dirty energy to do it. To make this happen, “Daddy Trump” can’t just sign an executive order and go on his merry way—even if that seems to be the status quo these days.
Instead, each Cabinet member is chipping away at pieces of green legislation, regulations, closed coal mines, and more to make sure that energy-guzzling corporations have the resources they need.
For Zeldin, he’s making sure that coal factories don’t have pesky regulations on pollution. In fact, corporations can now submit their complaints to an email serverif they feel that any green regulation is particularly bothersome, which is great news for Big Coal, considering it will soon have a lot more raw material coming down the assembly line.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin
Thanks to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, coal mines that were once shut down have been reopening. Even new uranium mines—a vital energy source for AI—are bypassing environmental checks.
But moves like cracking open once-protected lands in Alaska to harvest dirty energy have raised eyebrows among environmentalists. Earlier this month, Burgum flaunted a hardhat as he toured the icy terrain of Alaska to brag about a new venture: tapping into protected lands.
But the goal for Alaska’s oil isn’t just to fuel AI but to become a supplier for other countries. As for the coal mines, however, convincing young people to dive into the mines has become increasingly difficult. And with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cutting resources for current miners to obtain free lung health screenings, it probably doesn’t help.
Then again, the Trump administration is prioritizing energy output over career viability—because to become the “AI capital of the world,” the United States will need to produce a lot more energy.
Even Energy Secretary Chris Wright agrees with that sentiment.
"We have to lead and win the AI race, just like we did Manhattan Project,” he said last month. “This is Manhattan Project 2.”
That’s certainly good news for the Trump administration’s goal of becoming the “AI capital of the world”—and bad news for everyone else.
This is an occasional roundup of people who voted for Donald Trump and are shocked to find out no one is immune from the damage and pain he causes. Many are now grappling with the consequences of their choice as it affects them and their loved ones—and possibly regretting their vote.
NBC News went to Miami’s Republican strongholds—Cuban and Nicaraguan communities—and found something remarkable: Trump supporters realizing they’ve been used.
“What did you think was going to happen when Trump won?” NBC News reporter Morgan Radford asked one immigrant at a Texas ICE detention facility, in a phone interview. He believed Trump when he said “he was going to deport criminals,” Radford translated.
While he couldn’t vote, obviously, his whole family did the honors. His wife says on camera, “They used us.”
No shit.
Everyone paying attention heard Trump loud and clear. To him, every brown immigrant is a criminal. Legal status doesn’t matter. The Marshall Project documented thousands of instances where Trump linked immigrants to crime, and it literally started on Day One, when he said, during his campaign kickoff, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.”
They held these signs up at their convention:
Members of the Texas delegation wave "mass deportation now" signs at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on July 17, 2024.
And at his rallies:
Colorado GOP chairman Dave Williams speaks before Trump at a campaign rally at the Gaylord Rockies Resort and Convention Center on Oct. 11, 2024, in Aurora, Colorado.
See anything there that exempts non-criminal immigrants? Because I sure as hell don’t. The message has always been crystal clear. But we’ve seen this delusion play out time and time again.
“Erika Gonzalez, who manages a nearby barbershop with her husband, voted for Mr. Trump because she liked his tough immigration policy. Born in the U.S. to Mexican parents, she’s concerned about the strain put on public services in Chicago by large numbers of new migrants from Venezuela under President Biden,” the Christian Science Monitor reported. “‘There are a lot of people who come to the USA to work, to have a better life. People follow the rules, pay taxes,’ she says. ‘Some people have been here 30 years. They have their own house, they have a small business. ... What’s going to happen to them?’”
Yeah, Erika, what’s going to happen to them because of your vote?
“I thought they were going to be targeting criminals,” Trump supporter Estefany Peña told CalMatters. “‘No one mentioned during the campaigning of Donald Trump that residents … legal residents … were going to have to go through this,’ she said. Her husband, who came to the country legally in 1999 and has a green card, went to an immigration office in San Francisco for a check-in in late January and still hasn’t come home, she said.”
Except we did mention it. Repeatedly. But you didn’t care. You thought your family would be safe. You were fine with Trump hurting other people—as long as they weren’t your people. You just assumed the cruelty wouldn’t reach you.
In 2020, Biden won Latinos by a healthy 2-to-1 margin, 65-32. In 2024, Harris scraped by with 51-46. As a Latino, I find it unfathomable that so many of my people turned toward a man who’s made bashing Latinos the defining feature of his political career—from the moment he came down that golden escalator to his final screamfest at Madison Square Garden.
And now? Of course they feel used. Because they were used. Trump doesn’t respect anyone, and certainly not anyone brown. He’s probably laughing his ass off at how easy it was to manipulate them into voting against their own families.
He told us exactly who he was. They just didn’t believe it meant them.
We’ve covered the devastation of recent Caribbean and Atlantic hurricanes, some of which the island nations are still recovering from. In 2017, Hurricanes Irma and Maria slammed into the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico and wiped out Barbuda. Similarly, Hurricane Dorian in 2019 and Hurricane Beryl in 2024 caused widespread regional damage.
Sadly for the victims, during President Donald Trump’s first term, there were many delays in federal aid. And now during his second term, things are about to get even worse.
Vox Environmental Correspondent Benji Jones writes:
Hurricane season in the Atlantic has officially begun.
And while this year will likely be less extreme than in 2024 — one of the most destructive seasons ever, with the earliest Category 5 hurricane on record — it’s still shaping up to be a doozy.
Forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predict “above-average” activity this season, with six to 10 hurricanes. The season runs from June 1 to November 30.
...
Even when government agencies that forecast and respond to severe storms — namely, NOAA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) — are fully staffed and funded, big hurricanes inflict billions of dollars of damage, and they cost lives.
Earlier this month, a forecast from Puerto Rican Meteorologist John Morales in Florida went viral:
John Morales of WTVJ in Miami said the Trump administration’s recent cuts to the National Weather Service could leave television forecasters like him “flying blind” this hurricane season. “We may not exactly know how strong a hurricane is before it reaches the coastline,” he warned.
The clip cuts to him in present day, slightly older and now wearing glasses. He recalled the confidence he used to have in delivering an accurate forecast to his viewers.
Grimly, he added: “And I am here to tell you that I am not sure I can do that this year, because of the cuts, the gutting, the sledgehammer attack on science in general.”
He told of staffing shortages at the Weather Service’s Florida offices; “From Tampa to Key West, including the Miami office, 20 to 40 percent understaffed,” he said.
“The quality of the forecast is being degraded” because of those cuts, he said.
But Trump’s cuts to federal aid go far beyond hurricane preparedness. As María Mónica Monsalve reported for El País:
If a potential lack of information is a cause for concern, there is even greater dismay about how the first hurricane season will be experienced after the pause in USAID assistance throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Calculations made by the Center for Global Development (CGD) based on the latest documents shared by Congress in March estimate that $265,038,208 was cut for disaster preparedness worldwide.
“USAID has been a very reliable source of funding for various disaster reduction, preparedness, and response activities,” Salgado insists. “In the region, one of the initiatives that has been greatly affected is the early warning system for all people, which is also an initiative mandated by the United Nations Secretary-General.” A 24-hour warning, he recalls, can reduce economic and livelihood losses by up to 30%.
That entire chain, from early warning to hurricane recovery, has been shaken in the region. Knowing the extent is difficult due to the lack of transparency from the United States government, but there are specific cases. Science journalist Justine Calma revealed in The Verge that the Regional Disaster Assistance Program (RDAP), funded by USAID since 1989, was terminated in Latin America and the Caribbean. It included activities such as running drills with community members, purchasing supplies for evacuation shelters, and making sure people with disabilities can access services.
As Earth.org Editor-in-Chief Martina Ignini reported, Trump’s dismantling of FEMA will begin at the end of hurricane season.
The Trump administration will begin dismantling the country’s federal emergency agency at the end of the hurricane season, which scientists have forecast to be “above-normal” this year.
“We’re going to give out less money,” Trump said at the White House, adding that he would like to see the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) – an agency within the US Department of Homeland Security – largely dismantled “after the hurricane season” to “bring it down to the state level.”
Speaking next to Trump from the Oval Office, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the move will “empower” state governors to respond to emergency situations. But experts have warned that while large counties and cities may be able to take over some of the agency’s services and responsibilities, small and rural governments lack the personnel and resources to do so.
But, of course, there was no mention of what that means for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Island. While we are all aware of the damage wrought by hurricanes, a recent study in Puerto Rico provides insight into long term effects damaging people, not property.
The study, entitled “Enraizando ante la Crisis Climática (Rooting in the Face of the Climate Crisis),” was based on 684 responses to an online questionnaire (quantitative scope) and 52 people interviewed in the six regions of Puerto Rico (qualitative scope). In the analysis, Amigxs del M.A.R. found that 44% of the total identified Hurricane María (2017) as the main event responsible for their climate trauma.
“This means that people live in a state of constant hypervigilance,” said Erimar Landrón Irizarry, community and educational organizer for Amigxs del M.A.R. “The body constantly experiencing anxiety and stress has adverse effects on both physical and mental health. But beyond that situation, the fact that it is adverse also causes a constant landscape of illness in the population, and when you, in one way or another, feel every day that you cannot fight that illness, it creates immobilization. So, what actions are being taken to ensure that populations and people in communities truly feel empowered, and that it doesn’t just remain a nice phrase uttered by a government official?”
Here’s hoping that the Caribbean dodges the wrath of major storms this season. I’ll provide updates and a roundup of other Caribbean news in the comments section below.
President Donald Trump said he granted Iran permission to fire missiles at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the U.S. Central Command’s regional headquarters.
Incredibly, not one Republican has expressed even the slightest hint of dismay over this horrifying revelation.
Trump’s admission came on Wednesday as he spoke at a NATO summit in the Netherlands.
“You saw that, where fourteen missiles were shot at us the other day. They were very nice. They gave us warning, they said, ‘We’re going to shoot them, is one o’clock okay?’ I said, ‘It’s fine’ and everybody was emptied off the base so they wouldn’t get hurt,” Trump said.
Most of thepersonnel were evacuated ahead of the attack, while 44 soldiers stayed behind to operate the system that successfully intercepted the Iranian barrage. If anyone had been hurt, that would have happened after Trump apparently gave the go-ahead for an American military facility to be bombed.
“What would have happened if a Democratic president, particularly one named Joe Biden, had said he let a foreign adversary fire on an American military installation?”asked Josh Marshall, a longtime political commentator and the publisher of Talking Points Memo.
Trump has not received criticism or condemnation from his fellow Republicans for reportedly giving his blessing for the attack. Instead, GOP leaders like House Speaker Mike Johnsonhave touted the administration’s unverified claims that the U.S. attack on Iran significantly degraded —or even “obliterated”—that nation’s nuclear program.
But the confirmation that the attack got a thumbs-up from Trump casts another shadow over the entire episode.
Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegsethhave complained and whined that the media reported on a preliminary Pentagon assessment that said Iran’s nuclear facilities were degraded but not obliterated, as Trump has claimed.
Attorney General Pam Bondi is celebrating a new milestone in her efforts to deport men accused of having too many tattoos. Bondi said during a press briefing Friday that the Trump administration has officially arrested 2,711 accused Tren de Aragua members since President Donald Trump took office.
"You should all feel safer now that President Trump can deport all of these gangs and not one district court judge can think they are an emperor over this administration and his executive powers and why the people of the U.S. elected him,” she said to reporters.
Bondi seems to be referring to the efforts of judges like James Boasberg, who has butted heads with the administration on more than one occasion in recent months. Boasberg was at the forefront of the battle between the Department of Justice and those seeking the release of the 252 Venezuelan men who were taken from the U.S. and imprisoned in an El Salvador terrorist facility, known as CECOT, without any due process.
“Perhaps the President lawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act,” Boasberg wrote in a court filing earlier this month, citing the act Trump used to rush the Venezuelan men into their cells. “Perhaps, moreover, Defendants are correct that Plaintiffs are gang members.”
Continuing, he said, “But—and this is the critical point—there is simply no way to know for sure, as the CECOT Plaintiffs never had any opportunity to challenge the Government’s say-so.”
Boasberg ruled that these imprisoned men should have a means to prove their innocence while behind bars before they were deported. However, the U.S. government, and El Salvador, have maintained that neither of them have any way of carrying out their release. In other words, both countries are denying any accountability for the men they’ve abandoned behind bars.
But as Bondi is tossing around confetti for all of these arrests, it seems as if the only public-facing “proof” of these men’s gang involvement is their tattoos.
For many of them, like 24-year-old Widmer Josneyder Agelviz Sanguino who is currently behind bars in CECOT, they have no past criminal record in this or any other country. However, Homeland Security claims that they have evidence that they can’t share due to national security reasons.
Only one man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, has made it out of CECOT since being placed there by the Trump administration. And despite being able to dodge America’s attempts at labelling him as a dangerous terrorist, they’re now trying him in the U.S. for human smuggling charges. His court case is ongoing and the DOJ has said they will try to deport him again. Abrego Garcia has become a symbol of these unlawful deportations, with Trump pointing out his guilt with doctored images of his tattoos.
For the rest of the men accused of being Tren de Aragua members, many family members are advocating for their innocence around the world. While they cannot speak for themselves from behind bars, supporters are fighting for their stories to be told.
Things I need to remember: • Asking for help is not, as it turns out, fatal. • Laughing is easier than pulling your hair out, and doesn't have the unfortunate side effect of making you look like a plague victim. • Even the biggest tasks can be defeated if taken a bit at a time. • I can write a paper the night before it's due, but the results are not all they could be. • Be thorough, but focused. • Trust yourself. • Honesty, always.
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