Friday, December 26, 2025. Epstein files produce some pushback on lies Chump has told, the non-prince Andrew appears caught making an order for a number of girls to prey on -- making the order to Ghislaine I-Am-As-Innocent-As-Donald Maxwell, more lies from Homeland Security, and much more.
Let's start with the bizarre Gizzy Pants, convicted sex trafficker and pedophile Ghislaine Maxwell. It takes a special kind of trash to prey on others for sex but Ghislaine has always been that trash. Her trashy father disgraced the family and Ghislaine went in a search of a man who could make her whore and maybe something more. She found that in Jeffrey Epstein. She joined in forcing girls and women into sex with men. She preyed on girls and women, she groomed them and so much more. And she's just utter trash. Sarah, Duchess of Nowhere, has learned that the hard way as has No-Longer Prince Andrew.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor asked Jeffrey
Epstein’s fixer Ghislaine Maxwell to arrange meetings with
“inappropriate friends” while she sought “friendly and discreet and fun”
girls on his behalf, the latest documents from the Epstein files appear
to show.
The largest release yet of files
concerning the financier and convicted child sex offender – which also
raise fresh questions for the US president, Donald Trump – include emails in the name of “A” exchanging detailed messages with Maxwell that appeared to identify the author as Andrew.
The
emails from 2001 and 2002 appear to give further insights into the
relationship between the former prince and Epstein, which has been under
scrutiny since it emerged in 2011.
The files also show that the FBI sought to question Mountbatten-Windsor about his links to a second millionaire sex offender, Peter Nygard.
We're ignoring Chump's social media posts.
Yea
I was dictating about one of the posts for this snapshot and we got into the weeds -- specifically outing a Chump supporter who is semi-beloved by those who know his acting. They don't know his life. I'm not opposed to outing him -- and already did earlier this year when he was cozy publicly with Chump. But let's save that for another time. It'll be funnier this way as a mutual friend let's him know that I'm toying with him at present. At present.
A lot of news in the Epstein scandal -- much more than just the fact that Donald was on Epstein's plane much more than had been reported. Sarah Fitzpatrick (THE ATLANTIC) notes:
Nearly two years ago,
Donald Trump kicked off the presidential-campaign season with a
declaration: “I was never on Epstein’s Plane, or at his ‘stupid’
Island,” he posted on Truth Social in January 2024. Reports to the
contrary, he insisted, were the fault of AI—and of his political rivals:
“This is what the Democrats do to their Republican Opponent, who is
leading them, by a lot, in the Polls.”
But
this week, the documents released by Trump’s own Justice
Department—including flight logs and emails—told a different story.
Federal prosecutors determined in January 2020 that Trump had been a
passenger on the notorious private jet owned by Jeffrey Epstein—who
would later be charged with sex trafficking—far more often than they had
realized.
His travels on Epstein's plane spanned the time that would likely be
covered in any criminal charges against Epstein's co-conspirator,
Ghislaine Maxwell. Trump was listed as a passenger on at least eight
flights between 1993 and 1996, and on at least four of those flights,
Maxwell was also there, according to the email.
On one of those eight flights, in 1993, Trump and Epstein were the
only two passengers listed in the flight logs. On another flight, the
three passengers listed in records are Epstein, Trump, and a redacted
individual, who was 20 years old at the time. Two other flights included
two women -- whose names were redacted in follow-up emails — identified
as potential witnesses in a Maxwell case.
This morning, Kanyshai Butun (ANADOLU AJANSI) reports that recently released documents note several alleged co-conspirators who have not been prosecutred, "The list from the recently released Epstein files included two prominent men named as co-conspirators in 2019 Justice Department documents: US billionaire Leslie Wexner – a longtime Epstein business associate – and French modeling scout Jean-Luc Brunel, who committed suicide in 2022. Wexner said through his lawyer that he has been cleared of any wrongdoing. In 2007, four women – Sarah Kellen, Lesley Groff, Adriana Ross and Nadia Marcinkova – were named by prosecutors as co-conspirators." This week's releases included a curious letter -- one that led to outrage from Chump over MEIDASTOUCH NEWS's coverage:
There's been a lot of important coverage over the last two days including the following.
On
Dec. 10, Mr. Gonzalez, 53, was stopped by Florida Highway Patrol while
driving a nephew’s pickup truck. The apparent offense was having tinted
car windows. Mr. Gonzalez was arrested and turned over to U.S. Customs
and Border Protection.
This
is the biggest scam in the world. Chump pretends to protect the
country as he attacks innocents. DHS insists that these people are the
worst of the worst and have various charges against them but it turns
out that th majority do not. It's all smoke and mirrors intended to
make Chump look better while people suffer -- innocent people suffer.
Treybeh's article notes:
“What I have been hearing from people in the community, most of whom are
Trump supporters, is that it went too far,” said Eddie Schmidt, the
owner of Table26, a restaurant in West Palm Beach. “When we’re not
talking about deporting gang members, drug dealers, pedophiles but
members of the community, faces we all know, it’s harder to turn your
back.”
The lies were obvious for many from the
start. The number of people who can see reality has only increased
throughout 2025. If Chump really thinks he can continues these attacks
for a four year term, he is rudely mistaken.
Before the 2024 election, the idea that Kristi Noem would someday head
the Department of Homeland Security seemed beyond unlikely. But her
cruelty once handed this power was foreseeable. If Noem’s name rang any
bells for most people before the Senate confirmed her to head DHS this January (to their enduring shame), it was because she shot her 14-month-old dog to death in a gravel pit and included the grisly scene in her election-year memoir. She defended the book, No Going Back,
as “a blueprint for America of what citizens can do here to take their
country back.” In the past year, she has emerged in what will likely go
down in history as her true form: an entity first caught on camera in
March 2025 in a torture prison in El Salvador, and now shorthanded as
“ICE Barbie.” Heavily made-up, styled
in a tight white shirt, $50,000 Rolex watch, and an Immigration and
Customs Enforcement ball cap atop long, flowing locks, she stood in
front of cells filled with men imprisoned on her orders, and delivered
a direct-to-camera threat to immigrants in the United States: “This
facility,” she said, “is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will
use if you commit crimes against the American people.”
Under Noem, ICE has become the most lavishly-funded law enforcement agency in the United States. ICE agents have arrested around 220,000 people,
between Trump taking office and October 15. (That doesn’t include
arrests by Border Patrol agents, a separate DHS agency who often
accompany ICE; since January 20, the administration has claimed to have arrested 595,000 immigrants.) On any given day, Noem’s DHS is responsible for holding around 65,000 people in immigration detention—a record high. Breaking another record, ICE has detained at least 600 children this year. The agency claimed to have deported
more than 600,000 people since Trump returned to office. Noem has
overseen the opening and expansion of several new immigrant detention facilities and camps; two Florida facilities notorious for employing torture techniques borrowed from CIA black sites are now under her purview. Other DHS agencies have indefinitely suspended immigration applications from a growing number of countries Trump has targeted, and abruptly canceled immigration ceremonies. Noem has purchased
planes for DHS to use for deportation flights, including two new luxury
G700 Gulfstream jets for $200 million, and ten Boeing 737’s from a
bankrupt budget airline, each without an engine. DHS press releases are
now filled with open taunting of immigrants; their social media accounts are dominated by white nationalist slop. Noem has since admitted she directed the removal—more a mass abduction than deportation—of 261 people to the prison camp in El Salvador in March, in defiance of a court order.
While
DHS anti-immigration agents may hide their faces in balaclavas, Noem is
front-and-center promoting the agency and Trump’s promised mass
deportations. ICE Barbie is somewhere between the enabler and the cover
for the agency’s campaign of “assault and kidnapping”—the words
used by one woman who was grabbed by masked, armed agents on her
commute in Chicago. Tens of thousands of people have been taken by
masked and armed men working for DHS on the streets of Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Baltimore, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Charlotte, and others. Thousands of people across the country have been vigilant in identifying and tracking
these agents as they terrorize their neighbors. In the last few weeks
alone, federal immigration agents loosed an attack dog on a Washington
state resident, according to his senator; chased a Louisiana woman (a U.S. citizen) while she was walking home from the corner store; unleashed pepper spray on residents in a Somali neighborhood in Minneapolis; violently yanked a Key Largo woman from her car on her way to work, still wearing her hospital scrubs; and chased a man out of a Home Depot parking lot and into the street, where he was reportedly hit by a car.
If
you celebrated Christmas today, how did you celebrate it? Shared time
with loved ones? Well there's no love in Kristi's faux heart so she
celebrated it with a shooting. Sarah Fortinsky (THE HILL) reports ICE admits to shooting a man in a car in Baltimore.
Sarah does some strong work. This isn't strong work. This is
pathetic. It's a betrayal of journalism. Maybe she was on the clock
and didn't want to be? I don't know. I don't care. I had announced last night, "In 2026, we're
going to start putting a real spotlight on those journalists who repeat
Homeland Security's lies without (a) noting they're claims and not
factual proven statements and that (b) Homeland Security lied non-stop
in 2025 and so they aren't to be believed."
Yea! I don't have too. This morning, MEIDASTOUCH announced that they're going to do that.
Yea! They'll do it better and I'll use it as an excuse to focus on something else. My plate is full and, like Vanessa, I got work to do.
Back to the lies of Homeland Secuirty, that is how
it works and that is why you're told not to lie. If you are caught
lying -- and Homeland Security has been caught lying repeatedly in 2025
-- no one has to believe you. It's a truism that the courts are
beginning to enforce. It's a shame that journalists -- who are supposed
to traffic in the truth -- are so slow to note a habitual liar when
were talking about the government.
A Meriden 16-year-old is back in Connecticut after being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for six months.
With the help of three law firms in Connecticut, one in Texas, and a
senator, Maloney High School graduate Kevin is released from one of the
federal government's ICE detention facilities in Texas.
"I’m happy, very happy,” Kevin said. “Thank you all,” he said in Spanish.
You might remember Kevin’s story. He was detained at a scheduled,
non-criminal immigration hearing in Hartford in June with his father. It happened days before his high school graduation,
sparking outrage in the community from his classmates, teachers, and
city officials, who held a march in his honor and left his seat open at
the graduation ceremony.
“ICE took Kevin in the middle of the night with his father to deport
him in secret. The agent told him he could make one last call, and he
called me. While other kids might have called their family or friends,
he made a call to his lawyer at 3 a.m.,” said Meagan Faitsch, one of
Kevin’s attorneys.
16 years old, kidnapped and imprisoned. What a proud moment for Kristi and Chump.
One morning in mid-November, Mario Guerrero, the executive director
of the South Texas Builders Association, was checking a group chat when a
video of federal agents detaining people from a construction site
popped up.
He watched the video
of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detaining workers who
were pouring cement in front of a home in an idyllic neighborhood here
in the Rio Grande Valley.
For nearly a year, Guerrero had seen similar videos or read news reports of arrests and raids. This was the last straw.
The raids and the specter of more to come have struck fear in
construction workers, causing many to stay home. ICE agents have
arrested more than 9,100 people in South Texas — nearly one-fifth of all
such arrests in the entire state since Trump took office, according to
government data provided by ICE in response to a FOIA request to the
Deportation Data Project and analyzed by the Texas Tribune.
Without enough workers, construction has slowed, sending a ripple effect
throughout the economy. Economists suggest that this will drive housing
costs up — even as Texas officials focus on bringing such costs down.
Let's wind down with this from THE BLACK COMMENTATOR:
On
Dec. 10, Mr. Gonzalez, 53, was stopped by Florida Highway Patrol while
driving a nephew’s pickup truck. The apparent offense was having tinted
car windows. Mr. Gonzalez was arrested and turned over to U.S. Customs
and Border Protection.
This is the biggest scam in the world. Chump pretends to protect the country as he attacks innocents. DHS insists that these people are the worst of the worst and have various charges against them but it turns out that th majority do not. It's all smoke and mirrors intended to make Chump look better while people suffer -- innocent people suffer. Treybeh's article notes:
“What I have been hearing from people in the community, most of whom are
Trump supporters, is that it went too far,” said Eddie Schmidt, the
owner of Table26, a restaurant in West Palm Beach. “When we’re not
talking about deporting gang members, drug dealers, pedophiles but
members of the community, faces we all know, it’s harder to turn your
back.”
The lies were obvious for many from the start. The number of people who can see reality has only increased throughout 2025. If Chump really thinks he can continues these attacks for a four year term, he is rudely mistaken.
Before the 2024 election, the idea that Kristi Noem would someday head
the Department of Homeland Security seemed beyond unlikely. But her
cruelty once handed this power was foreseeable. If Noem’s name rang any
bells for most people before the Senate confirmed her to head DHS this January (to their enduring shame), it was because she shot her 14-month-old dog to death in a gravel pit and included the grisly scene in her election-year memoir. She defended the book, No Going Back,
as “a blueprint for America of what citizens can do here to take their
country back.” In the past year, she has emerged in what will likely go
down in history as her true form: an entity first caught on camera in
March 2025 in a torture prison in El Salvador, and now shorthanded as
“ICE Barbie.” Heavily made-up, styled
in a tight white shirt, $50,000 Rolex watch, and an Immigration and
Customs Enforcement ball cap atop long, flowing locks, she stood in
front of cells filled with men imprisoned on her orders, and delivered a direct-to-camera threat to immigrants in the United States: “This facility,” she said, “is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.”
Under Noem, ICE has become the most lavishly-funded law enforcement agency in the United States. ICE agents have arrested around 220,000 people,
between Trump taking office and October 15. (That doesn’t include
arrests by Border Patrol agents, a separate DHS agency who often
accompany ICE; since January 20, the administration has claimed to have arrested 595,000 immigrants.) On any given day, Noem’s DHS is responsible for holding around 65,000 people in immigration detention—a record high. Breaking another record, ICE has detained at least 600 children this year. The agency claimed to have deported
more than 600,000 people since Trump returned to office. Noem has
overseen the opening and expansion of several new immigrant detention facilities and camps; two Florida facilities notorious for employing torture techniques borrowed from CIA black sites are now under her purview. Other DHS agencies have indefinitely suspended immigration applications from a growing number of countries Trump has targeted, and abruptly canceled immigration ceremonies. Noem has purchased
planes for DHS to use for deportation flights, including two new luxury
G700 Gulfstream jets for $200 million, and ten Boeing 737’s from a
bankrupt budget airline, each without an engine. DHS press releases are
now filled with open taunting of immigrants; their social media accounts are dominated by white nationalist slop. Noem has since admitted she directed the removal—more a mass abduction than deportation—of 261 people to the prison camp in El Salvador in March, in defiance of a court order.
While
DHS anti-immigration agents may hide their faces in balaclavas, Noem is
front-and-center promoting the agency and Trump’s promised mass
deportations. ICE Barbie is somewhere between the enabler and the cover
for the agency’s campaign of “assault and kidnapping”—the words
used by one woman who was grabbed by masked, armed agents on her
commute in Chicago. Tens of thousands of people have been taken by
masked and armed men working for DHS on the streets of Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Baltimore, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Charlotte, and others. Thousands of people across the country have been vigilant in identifying and tracking
these agents as they terrorize their neighbors. In the last few weeks
alone, federal immigration agents loosed an attack dog on a Washington
state resident, according to his senator; chased a Louisiana woman (a U.S. citizen) while she was walking home from the corner store; unleashed pepper spray on residents in a Somali neighborhood in Minneapolis; violently yanked a Key Largo woman from her car on her way to work, still wearing her hospital scrubs; and chased a man out of a Home Depot parking lot and into the street, where he was reportedly hit by a car.
If you celebrated Christmas today, how did you celebrate it? Shared time with loved ones? Well there's no love in Kristi's faux heart so she celebrated it with a shooting. Sarah Fortinsky (THE HILL) reports ICE admits to shooting a man in a car in Baltimore.
That's all she knows. And it would be great if she'd stick to what she knows and not try to masquerade that she's teasing out a press release from DHS as actual reporting. It's not. The two people injured? They're not quoted. Witnesses? They're not quoted. Its all what Homeland Security says -- Homeland Security run and staffed by known liars with a record for lying to the people and to the courts.
Sarah does some strong work. This isn't strong work. This is pathetic. It's a betrayal of journalism. Maybe she was on the clock and didn't want to be? I don't know. I don't care. In 2026, we're going to start putting a real spotlight on those journalists who repeat Homeland Security's lies without (a) noting they're claims and not factual proven statements and that (b) Homeland Security lied non-stop in 2025 and so they aren't to be believed.
That is how it works and that is why you're told not to lie. If you are caught lying -- and Homeland Security has been caught lying repeatedly in 2025 -- no one has to believe you. It's a truism that the courts are beginning to enforce. It's a shame that journalists -- who are supposed to traffic in the truth -- are so slow to note a habitual liar when were talking about the government.
A Meriden 16-year-old is back in Connecticut after being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for six months.
With the help of three law firms in Connecticut, one in Texas, and a
senator, Maloney High School graduate Kevin is released from one of the
federal government's ICE detention facilities in Texas.
"I’m happy, very happy,” Kevin said. “Thank you all,” he said in Spanish.
You might remember Kevin’s story. He was detained at a scheduled,
non-criminal immigration hearing in Hartford in June with his father. It happened days before his high school graduation,
sparking outrage in the community from his classmates, teachers, and
city officials, who held a march in his honor and left his seat open at
the graduation ceremony.
“ICE took Kevin in the middle of the night with his father to deport
him in secret. The agent told him he could make one last call, and he
called me. While other kids might have called their family or friends,
he made a call to his lawyer at 3 a.m.,” said Meagan Faitsch, one of
Kevin’s attorneys.
16 years old, kidnapped and imprisoned. What a proud moment for Kristi and Chump.
One morning in mid-November, Mario Guerrero, the executive director
of the South Texas Builders Association, was checking a group chat when a
video of federal agents detaining people from a construction site
popped up.
He watched the video
of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detaining workers who
were pouring cement in front of a home in an idyllic neighborhood here
in the Rio Grande Valley.
For nearly a year, Guerrero had seen similar videos or read news reports of arrests and raids. This was the last straw.
The raids and the specter of more to come have struck fear in
construction workers, causing many to stay home. ICE agents have
arrested more than 9,100 people in South Texas — nearly one-fifth of all
such arrests in the entire state since Trump took office, according to
government data provided by ICE in response to a FOIA request to the
Deportation Data Project and analyzed by the Texas Tribune.
Without enough workers, construction has slowed, sending a ripple effect
throughout the economy. Economists suggest that this will drive housing
costs up — even as Texas officials focus on bringing such costs down.
Wednesday, December 24, 2025. ICE prepares to ramp up for 2026, courts grow increasingly doubtful of statements made on behalf of ICE, the Supreme Court rebukes Chump, and much more.
The
US Supreme Court has rejected the Trump administration's bid to deploy
National Guard troops in the Chicago area, over the objections of local
and state officials.
In an unsigned
order, the top court said the president's ability to federalise the
National Guard likely only applies in "exceptional" circumstances.
The
National Guard consists of primarily state-based troops that typically
respond to major issues like natural disasters or large protests.
The
ruling marks a rare departure for the conservative-majority court
which has largely sided with the Trump administration in recent months.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker called it "a big win for Illinois and
American democracy".
I say the big story of the week. Under a Barack Obama presidency or a George HW Bush presidency, I could make that statement. With the Convicted Felon in the White House, I really can't. Yes, it's Wednesday, the middle of the week. Yes, tomorrow is Christmas and that should also mean it's less likely that big news is emerging. But we have an apparently dementia plagued crook -- a convicted on several felonies crook -- in the White House so who knows?
But this verdict is a big news.
First off, the verdict was not at all expected -- not from a Court whose image is they grant Chump everything he wants. As William Brangham (PBS NEWSHOUR) noted, "The court's conservative majority has frequently sided with the administration on previous tests of presidential power. " Leila Fadel (NPR's MORNING EDITION) pointed out earlier today, "It was an interim ruling, the sort of preliminary case in which the
court majority has deferred to the Trump administration again and again.
This time, the court said the president failed to cite any law that
would justify using the Guard under federal control to enforce the law." :Second, it's news because it is based on and it backs the Constitution -- something that cannot be said of many of the Court's decisions in this decade. Third, it overturns a nightmare Chump has put into play. Fourth, it has impact beyond Illinois. Kate Riga (TAKING POINTS MEMO) explains, "The brief ruling radically changes the landscape for Trump’s Guard
deployments, likely meaning the end of similar occupations in other blue
cities. It also all but goads Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act,
something he’s been talking about doing since his first term."
How did it happen?
On yesterday's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, Kat Lonsdorf provided this walk through, "Yeah, so this case stems from back in September when President Trump federalized the National Guard against Illinois Governor JB Pritzker's wishes and sent them into Chicago for what Trump said was protection of federal immigration officers and facilities. Just a reminder, this all happened as the administration launched a new and increasingly aggressive immigration operation in the city. Two lower courts ruled against Trump's deployment of the Guard there, blocking troops from the streets. And in October, the administration issued an emergency appeal up to the Supreme Court." Alex Nguyen (MOTHER JONES) picks up the baton there, "In October, Trump called 300 members of the Illinois National Guard
into federal service to protect federal agents enforcing immigration
policies in Chicago under a federal law
that allows the president to federalize members of the Guard if they
are “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United
States” or if “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion.” He
federalized members of the Texas National Guard the next day. The state of Illinois and the city of Chicago challenged the deployment in court, arguing that Trump abused that federal law to punish his political opponents." As for how the decision happened, Adam Liptak (NEW YORK TIMES) details one factor:
The Supreme Court’s refusal on Tuesday to let the Trump administration deploy National Guard troops in the Chicago area was in large part the result of a friend-of-the-court brief submitted by a Georgetown University law professor named Martin S. Lederman.
The
argument Professor Lederman set out, and the court’s embrace of it,
could help shape future rulings on any further efforts by President
Trump to use the military to carry out his orders inside the United
States.
Professor Lederman’s brief said that the government had misunderstood a key phrase in the law it had relied on,
which allows deployment of the National Guard if “the president is
unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United
States.”
The administration said “the
regular forces” referred to civilian law enforcement like Immigration
and Customs Enforcement. Professor Lederman argued that the great weight
of historical evidence was to the contrary.
The regular forces, he wrote, was the
U.S. military. And, he added, “there is no basis for concluding that the
president would be ‘unable’ to enforce such laws with the assistance of
those forces if it were legal for him to direct such a deployment.”
Professor Lederman wrote his brief over a weekend. “I hesitate to acknowledge that,” he said on a podcast last month, “but it’s really true that I didn’t have like some great background knowledge in this statute.”
A
veteran of the Office of Legal Counsel, the elite Justice Department
unit that advises the executive branch on the law, Professor Lederman
identified what he called a glaring flaw in the administration’s
argument. “None of the parties were paying attention to it,” he said.
LONSDORF: So the
court ruled 6-3 against Trump, which is rare. It's one of only a handful
of times the conservative court has ruled against the president in the
emergency docket this term. It was an unsigned opinion, and it was
really technical, but basically, the court wrote that the president
failed to explain why the situation in Chicago warranted an exception to
what's called the Posse Comitatus Act. That's a law that prohibits
using the military for domestic law enforcement.
Conservative
Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented,
writing that they, quote, "strongly" disagreed with the way the court
handled this case. They said the court should've remained focused on the
narrow question in the administration's appeal, which they said was
specifically around using troops to protect federal officers and
facilities and not domestic law enforcement more generally.
INSKEEP:
I guess we should remember the basic principle here is that federal
troops shouldn't be used on civilians to enforce civilian laws except...
LONSDORF: Right.
INSKEEP: ...In certain cases. So how did this particular case end up before the court?
LONSDORF:
Right, so this case stems from back in September when President Trump
federalized the National Guard against Illinois Governor JB Pritzker's
wishes and sent them into Chicago for what Trump said was protection of
federal immigration officers and facilities. Remember, Steve, this all
happened as the administration launched a new and increasingly
aggressive immigration enforcement operation in the city and there were
protests. But two lower courts blocked that deployment, so in October,
the administration issued an emergency appeal up to the Supreme Court.
HOWE: Not necessarily. You know, this case came to the court. The solicitor general, the government's top lawyer in the Supreme Court, was asking the justices to rule based on one question - whether the federal courts can decide whether the president can deploy the National Guard troops at all. And after a little bit, the Supreme Court asked the litigants on both sides for additional briefing on a question raised in a friend-of-the-court brief by a Georgetown law professor named Marty Lederman, who said, you don't need to get into really the question that the SG's office has asked you to decide. The real question at the center of this case is a technical question about whether or not the term, regular forces, in the statute on which the president relied refers to the regular forces of the U.S. military. And, you know, even if the president has the power to deploy, he said, the regular U.S. military forces to execute federal laws in Illinois, he hasn't tried to do that in this case. And so that's what they asked the litigants on both sides to brief, and that suggests that they were looking at this case skeptically.
FADEL: This ruling is part of the emergency docket. It's preliminary. It's temporary. But the justices did explain their reasoning. What do the opinion and the dissents tell us about the court's thinking on presidential authority here?
HOWE: So as Kat said, this was a rare loss. The justices had given the Trump administration another loss just a couple of days earlier on another temporary ruling. And the majority opinion didn't say a lot. But I think what this majority opinion and the decision signals is that the Supreme Court is certainly willing to give the president a lot of leeway, a lot of presidential power, but there are limits in how far they're going to let the Trump administration and the president go.
FADEL: How significant is the decision? I mean, we heard Kat say this isn't a precedent-making decision. Does it then have no impact on other cases involving the deployment of U.S. troops to U.S. cities where the governor doesn't ask for help?
HOWE: The cases that the Supreme Court decides on the emergency docket are sort of a weird animal because, on the one hand, they are preliminary, as Kat said, but they will still carry significant weight.
FADEL: OK.
HOWE: And we saw that over the summer when the Supreme Court decided a case involving the termination of National Institute of Health grants. And Justice Gorsuch's decision, joined by Justice Kavanaugh, actually chastised a lower-court judge for not following an earlier decision on the court's emergency docket. He said decisions by the Supreme Court on the emergency docket may not necessarily be conclusive on the merits, but they really do carry a lot of weight going forward. So I would expect that this would really carry a lot of weight in the litigation going forward, although not necessarily in the litigation regarding troops in the District of Columbia, where I live, because those are a slightly different animal.
FADEL: Would it have impact on the administration's decision-making right now? I mean, Trump said he'd like to send National Guard troops to San Francisco and other cities. Does this ruling stop him from ordering future guard deployments in these other cities or not?
HOWE: I think it's going to make it a lot more complicated because the Supreme Court, in ruling that the Trump administration hadn't shown that it was able to send the troops, in the case of Chicago, said that the president must determine that he's unable with the U.S. military to execute U.S. laws. And there really only are going to be exceptional circumstances in which he can legally call in the military to do so, so the Supreme Court is setting a really high bar.
GILBERT: Ray is Mexican American and has spoken publicly about the
challenges immigrants face, including in his 2023 song, "Jesus At The
Taco Truck."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JESUS AT THE TACO TRUCK")
RAY: (Singing) I met Jesus at the taco truck.
GILBERT:
But this time, it's personal. On Thanksgiving Day, Ray woke up to a
panicked call from his sister. Her husband, a Mexican national named
Juan Nevarez, had been stopped by border patrol at the airport.
RAY:
She's in tears. She's like, they just detained Juan at the El Paso
airport, saying that his work visa no longer gives him legal status in
the United States.
GILBERT: Nevarez has a five-year work
permit, which he renewed just this spring. Still, he was detained and
taken to an ICE processing facility in Otero County, New Mexico. That's
where he's being held now, waiting for a hearing that will decide if he
can stay in America with his wife and four children, all of whom are
U.S. citizens.
ALYSSA NEVAREZ: We don't understand why this happened.
GILBERT:
That's Alyssa Nevarez. She and Juan have been married since 2007. They
grew up in neighboring border towns - one in Mexico, the other in the
United States. Nevarez crossed the southern border illegally several
times. And because those are still on his record, they've not applied
for a green card.
NEVAREZ: He has that authorization to be here, to work, to provide for his family, you know? Why did they do this?
Why?
No answer to that. But we do know why Juan and Alyssa's lives are being destroyed, like so many others across the country -- this once great country. It's a two-word answer: Donald Chump. Our modern day Hitler will be remembered historically but it will be for all the wrong reasons. nd his children and their children will live with the shame that the Chump name will bring them.
The US government has offered imprisoned Dallas resident Yaa’kub Ira
Vijandre $3,000 to leave the country, a move that decisively exposes the
fraudulent character of the Trump administration’s claim that he is a
“terrorist.”
[. . .]
Vijandre was not an “illegal alien” when ICE abducted him in October,
just as he was not a “terrorist” when the government revoked his
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) protections in December.
He entered the United States as a 14-year-old child and lived in the US
without documentation for over two decades. His DACA status was
terminated only after federal agents targeted his social media posts
opposing genocide and prison abuse.
Responding to an immigration judge who accused him of “endorsing or espousing terrorist activity,” in an interview with TheGuardian
earlier this month from inside the Folkston detention center, Vijandre
said, “I never expected anything like that … being accused of
‘glorifying terrorism;’ they attacked my religion, my faith.”
He
described degrading and abusive conditions inside the ICE facility. He
said guards treated detainees “like animals” and recounted being denied
basic human needs. While visiting the detention center’s library,
Vijandre said he asked a guard for permission to use the bathroom. The
guard responded by instructing the Filipino American photojournalist to
“just piss on yourself.”
A
disabled U.S. veteran was reunited with his family on Monday after
spending four months in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
detention in Washington state.
Green-card
holder Muhammad Zahid Chaudhry, originally from Pakistan, had been held
at the Tacoma Processing Center since he went for a citizenship
interview in August. On Monday, U.S. District Judge David G. Estudillo
ordered his release and barred ICE from detaining him again until his
case is fully heard in court.
“I
am a patriotic American solider. I thought that it would never happen,
that this kind of erroneous thing, that four months, two days in this
kind of detention, would never happen, should never happen to any
disabled decorated American veteran,” Chaudry told KCPQ in Tacoma
outside the detention center.
I'm thrilled Muhammad is free and thankful for justices like Estudillo. But let's not pretend for one moment that Muhammad's life wasn't destroyed with four months of being held, four months away from his friends and family. Kidnapped and imprisoned. Lives are being destroyed. Where's Chump's payout on that? I mean try to overthrow our democracy on January 6th and Chump's leaving you pardons and payouts and probably chocolates on your pillow too. But what about what he owes -- what we as a country -- owe these people we are wrongly imprisoning, these people we are kidnapping off the streets? What do you think your life would e like if you had been kidnapped and imprisoned? Let's say you were lucky enough to be released, what would you life be like after that? How safe do you now feel on the streets of your own country?
And what about the trauma being inflicted as a result of what's taking place? Especially if you are an immigrant or could be racially profiled as possibly one? Billy Witz and Kevin Williams (NEW YORK TIMES) note today, "Naturalized citizens in Ohio’s capital, Columbus, have taken to carrying
passports with them. Businesses and nonprofits that serve immigrants
around the city are delivering goods to customers who are afraid to
venture outside their homes. Churches in immigrant neighborhoods are all
but empty." How do you get over that trauma?
And make no mistake, this illegal operation is about inflicting trauma and terror. Tom Latchem (DAILY BEAST) notes, "Leaked internal chats show President Donald Trump’s team ordering ICE officials to 'flood the airwaves' with 'propaganda' videos of migrants being chased, shackled, and mocked—regardless of their veracity."
And the plan for 2026 is not to stop this illegal program but instead to expand it. This was addressed in two segments of MORNING EDITION today. First:
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The Trump administration says it
wants to accelerate efforts to take away the citizenships of some
naturalized Americans. As NPR's Lilly Quiroz reports, it's part of the
administration's efforts to remove immigrants - Americans, in this case -
they say should not be in the U.S.
LILLY QUIROZ, BYLINE:
In a document circulated recently to the U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services Department, the administration says it wants to
denaturalize 100 to 200 people per month in 2026. It also says USCIS
should work with the Department of Justice to meet that quota. NPR
hasn't seen the document, which was first obtained by The New York
Times. USCIS spokesman Matthew J. Tragesser told NPR that the goal is to
prioritize the denaturalization of people who have been found lying or
misrepresenting themselves in the naturalization process. Now, the Trump
administration wanting to denaturalize people is not new. Establishing a
quota is. Elizabeth Taufa is with the San Francisco-based Immigrant
Legal Resource Center. She says denaturalization has historically been
used in rare cases.
ELIZABETH TAUFA: The traditional
example was, like, Nazis who had lied about their Nazi membership and
come to the United States and assumed a different identity. And later
on, it was found out that they were war criminals, and so they were
denaturalized as a result of that.
We've called up Mariam Masumi
Daud, who is an attorney who specializes in immigration law. She's based
in Northern Virginia. Good morning.
MARIAM MASUMI DAUD: Good morning.
INSKEEP: Well, what do you think about the idea of a quota?
MASUMI
DAUD: I think a quota is something that's going to have a chilling
effect, especially on eligible immigrants who may want to apply for
citizenship. This really pulls away USCIS agency resources from its core
functions. Giving this as a priority to the Immigration Service will
essentially cause individuals to not only not apply for citizenship, but
create backlogs for other types of immigration cases that people may
want to pursue. And citizenship is something that's really supposed to
be secure. And a policy that emphasizes denaturalization by having
quotas and having this high volume really risks creating more of a
two-tier system of citizenship, where naturalized Americans might
feel...
INSKEEP: Yeah.
MASUMI DAUD: ...Conditionally American, and that's a problem.
INSKEEP:
I do want to put this in the perspective of the numbers, however. There
are tens of millions of Americans who are naturalized citizens. I just
was looking it up. In fiscal 2024, 800,000 people were naturalized. And
this quota would be between 1,200 and 2,400 people a year - a tiny
fraction of the number of people who are actually out there as citizens,
right?
MASUMI DAUD: It is a tiny number. But again, I
think the problem here is that it's going to create fear in a lot of
people. So although, you know, the numbers here are very small, the
broader implications are that individuals will really feel anxiety and
unsafe about whether or not their citizenship is going to be intact. And
I think that's really the big problem here.
INSKEEP: When
you have worked denaturalization cases in the past - defending someone, I
presume - what sorts of violations or alleged violations have there
been?
MASUMI DAUD: Those have involved cases where there
have been serious problems with respect to an individual's identity and
very strong allegations regarding fraud. And so as someone who has seen
individuals go through the denaturalization process, I want to stress
that it is traditionally something that's used in rare cases and in
extreme situations. It is not something that has been meant to be used
in a sweeping way. And that's where this policy becomes very concerning
because when there are quotas given, that's where there is a concern for
an abuse of the policy.
We have got to stand as a nation and oppose the illegal actions of ICE. They run into people's cars and then lie that the car was surging towards them. They break into homes, they break into cars. They kidnap. They beat up women in the halls of our courtrooms. They're now invading in use bathrooms -- Malcolm Ferguson (THE NEW REPUBLIC) notes, "A bunch of masked male Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents
in tactical gear broke into the women’s bathroom of Cato nutrition bar
factory in New York, even forcing a stall open while a woman in there
used the toilet. They can be heard telling her to pull her pants up." They threaten, they bully, they assault -- and on this one, I'm just talking about what they do to witnesses, not what they do to suspected immigrants. Chump has created a Gestapo force that he presides over. Remember that when the human rights lawsuits start coming in.
Lawsuits? We've noted since the start of the year that ICE is forever lying and lying to the press, lying to the courts, lying to the American people. Back in October, Ava and I noted:
Footage
obtained by Newsweek appears to show armed federal agents detaining
Figueroa, dragging her by the legs to remove her from her vehicle. Some
agents brandish guns, and bystanders can be heard shouting, “You hit
her,” as the situation unfolds.
Additional
video obtained by Figueroa’s family from another witness provides a
different angle of the encounter. The bystander who is filming tells
federal agents: “You hit her. We all saw it.”
“You
guys are f*****g scumbags, f*****g Nazis. They hit her car. You guys
hit her, and you f*****g know it,” the bystander is heard saying.
“As
agents were departing, the driver, a U.S. citizen, struck an unmarked
government vehicle,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told
Newsweek.
A
senior ICE official is under fire after publicly sharing a 13-year-old
child's information — and an expert warns it "could lead to serious
consequences."
DHS spokesperson Tricia
McLaughlin, 31, who is the most senior public affairs official under
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, revealed the identity, alleged
criminal history and a photo of the child detained by ICE, The Daily
Beast reported Monday.
McLaughlin is accused of sharing children's information not just once, but multiple times.
Her
social media post and the DHS actions “could lead to serious
consequences inside the government, such as an Inspector General
investigation, disciplinary action, or even congressional scrutiny," Los
Angeles-based criminal defense attorney Arash Hashemi told The Beast.
Public
anger was rising after a Brazilian-born seventh-grader in Massachusetts
was reportedly taken by federal agents to a juvenile detention center
more than 500 miles away from his family.
In an attempt to stop the public criticism, McLaughlin and DHS tried to use social media.
"They
claimed that the boy had an 'extensive rap sheet,' while listing some
of his apparent past offenses. They also stated—falsely, it
transpired—that he had been in possession of a firearm," The Beast
reports.
It's illegal for DHS or law enforcement to share a child's information.
And
here's where the media keeps failing us. Homeland Security officials
have been caught in one lie after another. It's so bad that judges
can't really take their claims seriously at this point. But the media
too often repeats claims regarding ICE without noting the long pattern
of lies from them this year.
We were all taught about
the little boy who cried wolf. You don't lie because you'll be known as
a liar and the time will come when you need to be believed but you're
known as a liar.
A lesson we're taught as children is
too much for ICE and the officials over ICE to grasp. That might be
shocking if we hadn't already addressed the relaxed 'standards' when it
comes to hiring ICE agents.
The courts have grown increasingly tired of the lies and they are treating ICE reps and attorneys like anyone else who is caught lying while appearing before them. Tom Latchem (DAILY BEAST) reports:
A Trump-appointed federal judge has accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement of brazenly lying in court filings and defying court orders in a lawsuit over conditions in a federal detention facility.
U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown, who was commissioned to the Eastern District of New York in December 2019 during Donald Trump’s first term, is threatening the federal agency with contempt after ICE refused to provide photographs of a holding cell used for unlawful, days-long detention—and made claims to the court he said were “evasive and demonstrably false.”
Brown issued a 24-page order on Dec. 18 describing the hold-room at the federal courthouse in Central Islip as “putrid and cramped.”
