Friday, July 25, 2025. Chump's Justice Dept plays footsie with a convicted pedophile, victims come forward to speak of how they are being effected, pieces of the late Epstein's past continue to float to the surface, Chump's war on immigrant is a war on all of us, and much more.
Ben and MEIDASTOUCH NEWS get us up to speed on Donald Chump and his circle jerk buddy dead pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
*DOJ
officials are interviewing Maxwell at a courthouse in Tallahassee,
Florida, on Thursday, with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and
Maxwell’s attorneys reportedly arriving around 9 a.m. EDT on Thursday morning.
*Blanche previously said the agency wanted to speak with her to find out “information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims.”
*The
interview comes as the DOJ has controversially refused to otherwise
release documents about its investigation into Epstein, and as Maxwell
serves a 20-year prison sentence after being convicted on charges of sex
trafficking and transporting minors to participate in illegal sex acts.
*Maxwell
is also still in the process of appealing her conviction, most recently
asking the Supreme Court to take it up, and critics and legal experts
have expressed concern she could use the interview to her own benefit to
get a more lenient sentence from the federal government.
*Those
fears have been amplified by Maxwell’s history of alleged perjury, as
the socialite was charged with perjury in 2020 based on allegedly lying
during a 2016 deposition in a civil lawsuit about Epstein’s alleged
sexual abuse.
*Maxwell was never tried or convicted of perjury: The charges were separated
from her other counts prior to her 2021 trial, and when she sought a
retrial of her sex trafficking charges, prosecutors offered to drop the perjury charges as long as her conviction on the other, more serious, counts was allowed to stand.
Chump still has his lawsuit filed against THE WALL STREET JOURNAL over their report on his birthday greeting to Epstein two decades ago, insisting it wasn't him. On MSNBC this week. Lawrence O'Donnell broke the news that the birthday book still exists -- as do copies of it -- and he continued to report about it on his show last night.
While Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche disgraced himself, his position and the US government yesterday supplicating himself before convicted pedophile Jizzy Pants Maxwell, yesterday Jen Psaki used her time to instead speak with and focus on the women and girls exploited by Epstein and Maxwell.
As Maria Farmer asked last night on MSNBC, "Why would Maxwell be given a voice when she is a convicted pedophile?"
Todd Blanche disgraced everyone yesterday as he rushed to a prison to meet with the convicted pedophile Maxwell -- to meet with her and her attorneys.
As Lawrence has pointed out, Maxwell had plenty of times to speak. She chose not to. When she was on trial, she refused to take the stand. But she'll talk to a Deputy Attorney General now? When her testimony is apparently needed to protect Chump and back up his lies?
Justice Department interview of Ghislaine Maxwell: Deputy
Attorney General Todd Blanche, a former personal attorney of President
Trump's, interviewed Ghislane Maxwell in prison on Thursday. Maxwell is
serving a 20-year sentence for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse
minors. What new information the DOJ is seeking or what it would learn —
and what Maxwell could get out of it, if anything, is unclear.
Whether anyone can believe what Maxwell winds up sharing is another question. Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig told NPR's Morning Edition
that if he were Maxwell's lawyer he'd advise her to share nothing and
invoke the Fifth Amendment, which gives people the right to not
self-incriminate.
"Even though she's already been tried and convicted and sentenced,
she still could at least theoretically have other exposure to additional
crimes," Honig said.
Grand jury transcripts: The
government, encouraged by Trump, also sought to release grand jury
transcripts from the Epstein case. A federal judge denied one of those
requests. Two others are pending.
Getting out of Dodge: In Congress, House Speaker Mike Johnson had Congress get out of town early for its August recess rather than take a vote aiming to force the Trump administration to release the Epstein files.
House Oversight Committee seeks Maxwell interview, too:
After a subcommittee vote in which Republicans joined Democrats to
approve a subpoena to compel Maxwell to speak to the committee,
committee Chairman James Comer, a Republican, issued a subpoena for an
interview to occur Aug. 11.
"While the Justice Department
undertakes efforts to uncover and publicly disclose additional
information related to your and Mr. Epstein's cases, it is imperative
that Congress conduct oversight of the federal government's enforcement
of sex trafficking laws generally and specifically its handling of the
investigation and prosecution of you and Mr. Epstein," Comer wrote in a letter
to Maxwell released by the committee. "In particular, the Committee
seeks your testimony to inform the consideration of potential
legislative solutions to improve federal efforts to combat sex
trafficking and reform the use of non-prosecution agreements and/or plea
agreements in sex-crime investigations."
Trump knew his name was in the files in May, according to the Wall Street Journal and others: The Journal reported
that Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy briefed Trump two months
ago, letting him know that his name appeared in the Epstein files.
NPR
has not confirmed that reporting, and the appearance of Trump's name
alone is not an indication of wrongdoing. He and Epstein were friends
for years; they were seen on video partying together; and Trump was even
on flight logs for Epstein's plane before a falling out over a property
dispute.
Honig told Morning Edition that it was highly unusual
for an attorney general in the modern era to tell a president the
details of an investigation it is conducting, particularly when it involves the president himself.
"Not at all," it's not normal for an attorney general to do so, Honig
said. "And the question that this begs to me is, why? Why would the
attorney general go and tip off the president — 'Hey, you're named in
these criminal, closed criminal investigative files,' whatever 'named'
may mean. That is highly abnormal, and if we look back at the history of
attorneys general, through both parties, that would be seen as a breach
of the attorney general's independence."
We're going to move over to the topic of Chump's War on Immigrants because we've got a lot there to cover. I hope there will be time and space after that for Loose Lips Hegseth but we may have to put Pete on hold for next week's snapshot. Chump's war on immigrants never ends. Priscilla Alvarez (CNN) reports:
The
Trump administration is moving to rapidly deport some migrant children
who arrived in the US without a parent or guardian by having federal
agents ask teens whether they want to voluntarily depart the country,
according to two Homeland Security officials and a source familiar with
the discussions.
The latest directive, which
comes as the administration seeks to ramp up deportations, marks a
departure from long-standing protocol which required that federal
authorities turn over most unaccompanied children to the Health and
Human Services Department, the agency charged with their care. Up until
now, federal authorities didn’t ask unaccompanied kids from countries
other than Mexico and Canada if they wanted to self deport.
This
week, US Customs and Border Protection personnel were directed to ask
children they encounter in immigration enforcement operations across the
country whether they want to voluntarily depart the United States, the
officials said. If the child agrees, agents will turn that child over to
Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation. But if ICE doesn’t
pick them up from CBP custody within 72 hours, agents will refer them
to HHS.
[. . .]
While
existing policy generally allows for the swift removal of children
arriving from Mexico and Canada because they’re contiguous countries,
that’s not true for children of other nationalities. And the targeting
of those kids from other countries — many of whom are living in the US
with family — marks an escalation of the administration’s deportation
efforts.
“A child is in no position to
understand the consequences of self-deporting, particularly without the
guidance of an attorney,” said Neha Desai, managing director of
Children’s Human Rights at the National Center for Youth Law.
“Unaccompanied children are being used as pawns in an effort to deport
as many people as possible, regardless of the human toll it takes on the
most vulnerable members of our community.”
The question for Chump remains: Have you no shame? Grasp that there's not even a pretense here, when it comes to deporting children, that the deported are criminals. He uses that lie over and over to cover up deporting innocent adults. But he offers no justirication for deporting children. He's just cruel and fat headed. Robert Davis notes DHS is insisting this is "fake news."
\
Chump's
administration really has become the little boy that cried wolf,
haven't they? At this point, "Fake news!" from the Chump administration
is basically a confirmation that the report is true.
Esteban L. Hernandez (AXIOS) notes ICE
is bragging over an 8-day operation in Denver where they claim to have
arrested 243 immigrants. ICE insists that they are all criminals but ICE
tends to lie. Back in March, for example, Chump was bragging about the
230 'violent criminal' immigrants that they were sending to the
concentration camp in El Salvador. However, yesterday a joint-investigation by PROPUBLICA, THE TEXAS TRIBUNE and ALIANZA REBELDE INVESTIGA revealed, "We
obtained internal data showing that the Trump administration knew that
at least 197 of the men had not been convicted of crimes in the U.S. —
and that only six had been convicted of violent offenses. We identified
fewer than a dozen additional convictions, both for crimes committed in
the U.S. and abroad, that were not reflected in the government data." And remember this month's California operation that led to them beating Iraq War veteran and American citizen George Retes and ICE holding him for three days? Julie Watson, Amy Taxin and Olga R. Rodriguez (AP) note,
"The government said four of the 361 arrested had prior criminal
records, including convictions for rape and kidnapping." The government
says they nabbed 361 people. And the government says four "had prior
criminal records."
Again, they lie. Over and over, they lie. George shared the details of ICE's assault on him to CBS EVENING NEWS this week.
ICE
agents are increasingly showing up at Richmond-area courthouses and
arresting immigrants at routine check-ins once considered safe, local
immigration lawyers tell Axios.
The big
picture: ICE arrests at the Chesterfield courthouse have put a spotlight
on the county in the past month, sparking concerns from some county
leaders and conservative Sheriff Karl Leonard, who told WTVR it's
straining efforts to build trust with immigrant communities.
But
it's not happening only in Chesterfield. Henrico's Commonwealth's
Attorney Shannon Taylor told Axios there have been three instances since
June where federal agents showed up at Henrico's courthouse.
While
Richmond's Commonwealth's Attorney Colette McEachin told Axios that ICE
hasn't been spotted at city courthouses yet, "victims have expressed
concerns about coming to court."
McEachin also says defense
attorneys have begun calling her office asking if there are any ICE
agents "in or near Richmond's three courthouses."
Zoom in:
Then there are the arrests happening at routine check-ins in ICE's
Midlothian field office — something Richmond-based immigration attorney
Miriam Airington-Fisher says she hadn't seen before in her 16 years of
practice.
These required check-ins are
scheduled appointments for people with pending immigration cases where
officers confirm their address and that they haven't had any criminal
charges.
Airington-Fisher says even people with no criminal history who have "done everything right" are getting detained.
She's now advising clients to not attend these check-ins without an attorney.
You are not safe taking care of a legal matter in a court. In America, you are no longer safe doing that. Grasp that. Grasp the black eye our legal system has now.
Daniel
Fuentes Espinal has been pastor of Iglesia del Nazareno in Easton since
2015 — he is also an undocumented immigrant who fled the violence in
his native Honduras in 2001 and put down roots on the Eastern Shore
where he has ministered and raised a family.
Fuentes
Espinal has no criminal record and has been trying to get approval to
become a U.S. citizen, said his daughter, Clarissa Fuentes Diaz.
The
unpaid pastor works construction to support his family, Fuentes Diaz
said Wednesday. She said her father was on a routine errand to the
hardware store for building materials when he was arrested by
unidentified agents Monday.
“I’ve heard stories
about [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] at Lowe’s in the morning,
picking up whoever seems to fit their narrative or racial profiling,”
she said.
[. . .]
Len
Foxwell, a longtime Easton resident and family friend, said the pastor
led his congregation as a volunteer and regularly provided food,
shelter, clothing and toys to those who needed help.
“He is known for his unconditional generosity to those who are the most vulnerable,” he said.
“It’s
personal for me. Our sons were best friends,” Foxwell said, in the wake
of his 18-year-old son’s death last month in a car accident. “Pastor
[Fuentes] Espinal was at my son’s deathbed and spoke at his funeral.”
Horror stories like that emerging day after day. And most are not covered on the news. But though these stories may fall through the media cracks, in the neighborhoods and communities impacted, the horror stories are known. Americans feel revulsion over what Chump is doing, over the innocents being kidnapped, over the assault on our freedoms and on our legal system.
The
U.S. Army has hired a contractor to build the nation's largest ICE
detention center, the latest move by President Donald Trump to use the
military to deliver his promised mass deportations.
Virginia-based
Acquisition Logistics LLC will erect a temporary immigration detention
center on Fort Bliss, in El Paso, Texas, near the southern border, with
5,000 beds, under a $232 million contract, according to the Department
of Defense.
The cost will
likely rise. A similar tent city built to house unaccompanied migrant
children on Fort Bliss in 2021 during the Biden administration ballooned
within months to nearly $1 billion.
Around
23 out of every 10,000 Americans -- 771,480 people --experienced
homelessness in January 2024 according to the Department of Housing and
Urban Development (HUD) annual point-in-time report, which measures
homelessness across the US on a single night each winter. That’s an 18%
increase from the same report in 2023.
He's never been motivated to help the homeless. He's never given a damn. But he'll build bigger prisons for immigrants.
He is divorced from reality and refuses to grasp how he is repeatedly harming this country. We started noting months ago that his actions were going to impact tourism.
We've been noting for some time how Chump has destroyed tourism to
the US. He's fat and ugly and hated around the world and that's enough
to stop some from visiting. He's also cheap and common and people don't
spend money to travel to a country run by trash. Then we get into all
of his attacks on various counties and nationalities, his war on
immigrants, his was on the LGBTQ+ population, every repulsive thing
about him and people don't want to come.
That
is a huge financial blow to this country. Tourism generates so much
money -- travel, lodging, food, souvenirs, etc. At the start of this month, Bailey Schulz (USA TODAY) reported:
Las Vegas’ hotel-casino operators are all about the deals this summer.
Resorts World is offering up to 40% off room rates and a $75 daily resort credit, plus free self-parking through Aug. 28. The Strat's summer value package includes room rates starting at $49, plus a $25 daily dining credit. Other operators are dropping prices for locals to boost staycations.
The discounts come at a time when international
and budget-conscious travelers are hesitating to book their next trip to
the Strip.
May was the fifth consecutive
month Las Vegas has seen a year-over-year decline in tourism traffic,
with visitor volume down 6.5% to just under 3.5 million people for the
month, according to figures from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
“I
think there’s an uptick (in deals) due to the environment we’re in,”
said Steve Hill, president and CEO of the LVCVA. "The operators here
have the ability to turn a number of dials based on demand, and we’re –
like the rest of the United States – down a little bit from where we
were the past couple of years.”
The American tourism industry is being brought to its knees by President Donald Trump.
According to NBC News,
foreign travel to the United States has fallen by 10 percent since
Trump took office, and it's already having measurable effects on the
U.S. economy.
"Oxford Economics estimates
spending among international visitors to the U.S. will fall $8.5 billion
this year, as negative perceptions of the U.S. tied to trade and
immigration policy lead travelers to other destinations."
All
of this was forecast in a grim report earlier this year, which showed
Trump's tariffs alone could cause $90 billion in losses from
international tourism boycotts of the United States.
But one area that's being hit especially hard, the report noted, is LGBTQ tourism.
"Bookings
for queer-friendly housing accommodations in the U.S. on the LGBTQ+
travel platform misterb&b saw a 66% decline among Canadian users and
a 32% decline among European users from February to April, compared
with the same period last year."
There has been no improvement and the damage he has done to tourism just grows more obvious. Yesterday, STYLE ON MAIN reported:
The
United States is experiencing a clear and measurable decline in its
dominance of the travel industry. This is a financial gut-punch, not
hyperbole or economic scare tactics. The collapse of America's inbound
tourism industry is expected to cost up to $29 billion in 2025 alone,
with repercussions for local economies, transportation, and hospitality.
While other countries are setting new records, the United States, one
of 184 economies, is seeing a complete drop in foreign visitor spending.
This isn't a statistical anomaly. Policy, perception, and the
psychology of foreign tourists who are collectively opting to spend
their money elsewhere are all contributing factors to this dramatic
reversal.
Geopolitical tensions, shifting
global alliances, and competitive destinations that have taken advantage
of America's current difficulties are some of the underlying factors
that go beyond simple economic conditions. The effect spreads further
into the service sectors that depend significantly on foreign visitors,
escalating regional inequalities and compounding losses in sources of
income that have historically been thought of as steady.
According to Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority data,
the first four months of this year showed a decrease in the overall
number of visitors. Mark Wayman, a recruiter for executives in the
gaming and casino industries, told Business Insider in May that Las
Vegas bookings through the summer are “the worst I’ve ever seen.”
He is destroying our country, our economy and our image.
It's
the cruelty and the hate that comes out of the Chump administration and
that hate is embraced by a minority of Americans. That hate exists to
take advantage of immigrants, to harm them. So if, for example, they
speak out about poor living conditions, hate mongers try to have them
deported. Josh Marcus (THE INDEPENDENT) reports:
A
Los Angeles area family of Latino renters suing their landlord over a
2024 eviction claim they were met with a thinly veiled threat that they
would be picked up by immigration agents, amid the ongoing, high-profile
campaign of raids across the city.
“It’s not fair for him to
take advantage of that,” former tenant Yicenia Morales told The Los
Angeles Times. “I was born here. I have a birth certificate. I pay
taxes.”
“I was already depressed over the
eviction,” she added. “Now I’m hurt, embarrassed and nervous as well.
Will he really call ICE on us?”
“It’s racist,”
her attorney, Sarah McCracken, added in an interview with the paper.
“Not only is it unethical and probably illegal, but it’s just a really
wild thing to say — especially since my clients are U.S. citizens.”
The
controversy stems from a June message from attorney Rod Fehlman, whom
Morales and her lawyers at the firm Tobener Ravenscroft said they saw in
state records was the legal point of contact for landlord Celia Ruiz
and her real estate agent David Benavides.
This
is not funny. Stephen Miller probably thinks it is. We've all seen
his video from high school where he's giggling about torture and making
it clear why he never had any friends and still doesn't. Mia Maldonado (OREGON CAPITAL CHRONICLE) reports:
Threatening
to call federal immigration authorities on employees after they raised
concerns about their working conditions is considered illegal
retaliation, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries is warning
employers.
Oregon law
prohibits employers from discriminating or retaliating against workers
because of their national origin, which includes actions that target
workers based on their immigration status, ethnicity, language, ancestry
or cultural traits.
While the federal
government is cracking down on immigration enforcement across the
country, the state of Oregon has policies protecting people living and
working in Oregon regardless of their immigration status. State agencies
including the labor bureau and Department of Justice have pledged to
take “aggressive action” to enforce the law in these cases.
The
agency did not immediately specify how many complaints it received
involving threats to call Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
“Intimidating
and silencing workers who simply want to be treated fairly by
threatening or actually calling immigration officials on them is one of
the most egregious forms of retaliation,” agency commissioner Christina
Stephenson said in a July 16 statement.
Again,
don't be a bottom feeder like Stephen Miller and don't act like any
'jokes' about this being done to someone is funny. Chump has worked very
hard to normalize hate. He wants to terrorize. Don't help him do
that.
Chump and company are terrorizing immigrants -- those with green cards and those without. They're inflicting very real harm and destroying lives. Don't help them normalize their cruelty. Patricia Lopez (BLOOMBERG) notes:
Mandatory
detention is the newest and potentially most powerful weapon in the
White House’s arsenal for turbo-charging deportations. Once arrested,
immigrants without legal status will, with few exceptions, be held in
custody until they are deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
That means they are no longer eligible, as in the past, to post bond at a
hearing and have an immigration judge decide their fate. ICE alone will
be the decider.
That threatens to transform
temporary detention centers into long-term prisons - and to strip
immigrants of the constitutional rights that are due to every person in
the US, regardless of legal status.
Acting ICE Director Todd M. Lyons wrote in a July memo obtained by the Washington Post
that immigrants should be detained “for the duration of their removal
proceedings,” a process that can stretch out for months, or even years,
given judicial backlogs. That could affect millions of immigrants.
It
is an aggressive move from an agency that is becoming increasingly
reckless in its handling of immigrants. The policy is already expected
to draw a court challenge questioning the constitutionality of
sidestepping judges.
David Bier, director of
immigration studies for the libertarian Cato Institute, told me it is
part of a strategy to gain “total control” over the removal process.
“Judges make an independent determination based on facts,” he said.
“They’re not going to just do what ICE wants.” Once the norm, such
independence now seems to strike this administration as an intolerable
act of defiance.
Judge
Ila Deiss, who had been working for San Francisco’s immigration court
since 2017, was fired Thursday, according to the San Francisco
Immigration Court.
Judges Roger Dinh, Elisa
Brasil and Jami Vigil were all fired in April, according to the San
Francisco Immigration Court. That was one month shy of the standard
two-year probationary period which, for all three judges, would have
ended in May 2025.
That leaves a total of nine vacancies across 26 courtrooms, according to the San Francisco Immigration Court.
This
should frighten everyone. This inhumane and cruel. It's already
happening to immigrants as well as to a few US citizens. This is not
the way the law is supposed to work; however, if you silently go along
with it, grasp that this is how all US citizens will be treated because
we are on a very slippery slope.
Agents
from the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, or ICE, are carrying out part of Trump's campaign promise
of mass deportations by arresting people suspected of being in the
country without authorization.
It’s a tactic that has been met with growing alarm by the Republican president’s critics.
In
Lansing Thursday, a group of Democratic state lawmakers introduced
legislation to ban local, state and federal law enforcement officers
from wearing masks.
State Representative Betsy
Coffia (D-Traverse City) said the law would apply to all levels of law
enforcement, but is specifically in response to ICE’s tactics.
“We
must have clear, transparent practices by law enforcement. Our
constituents demand it,” Coffia told reporters, “Anonymity makes
enforcing accountability, enforcing the law and protecting civil rights
damn near impossible.”
In this
week's "Media: Why America's turned on Chump's war on immigrants," Ava and I served up two mythical sequences from cop dramas to
underscore how what ICE is doing is not the arrest procedure that has
been worked out over years within the United States. But grasp that it can become the new procedure if we don't speak out. If we go along with these kidnappings and these assaults as normal when the victims are immigrants, it won't be long before the same tactics are openly used on US citizens. You speak up now or you risk losing whatever's left of democracy.
Masked
federal agents in unmarked vehicles have stoked fear in the immigrant
community, with fewer people frequenting grocery stores and businesses,
emptier streets in East San Jose and sparse showings for community
events. Some undocumented residents are choosing to self-deport.
The
operations have also given rise to ICE impersonators, including
reported incidents at a Philadelphia university, the arrest of an
impersonator in North Carolina for sexually assaulting a woman and an
impersonator in Florida conducting a traffic stop and asking people for
their documents, among others.
Something
unusual is happening in U.S. immigration courts. Government lawyers are
refusing to give their names during public hearings.
In
June 2025, Immigration Judge ShaSha Xu in New York City reportedly told
lawyers in her courtroom: “We’re not really doing names publicly.” Only
the government lawyers’ names were hidden – the immigrants’ attorneys
had to give their names as usual. Xu cited privacy concerns, saying,
“Things lately have changed.”
When one immigration
lawyer objected that the court record would be incomplete without the
government attorney’s name, Xu reportedly refused to provide it. In
another case, New York immigration Judge James McCarthy in July referred
to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, attorney as
merely “Department” throughout the hearing.
New
York immigration Judge Shirley Lazare-Raphael told The Intercept that
some ICE attorneys believe it is “dangerous to state their names
publicly.” This follows a broader pattern of ICE agents wearing masks
during arrests to hide their identities.
This secrecy violates a fundamental principle that has protected Americans for centuries: open courts.
That is not acceptable. None of it is. And what they do to immigrants today, they will try to to citizens at a later date.
The government can not hide in the shadows in a democracy. That's not how it works.
U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has directed personnel to sharply
increase the number of immigrants they shackle with GPS-enabled ankle
monitors, as the Trump administration widens surveillance of people it
is targeting for deportation, according to an internal ICE document
reviewed by The Washington Post.
In
a June 9 memo, ICE ordered staff to place ankle monitors on all people
enrolled in the agency’s Alternatives to Detention program “whenever
possible.” About 183,000 adult migrants are enrolled in ATD and had
previously consented to some form of tracking or mandatory check-ins
while they waited for their immigration cases to be resolved. Currently,
just 24,000 of these individuals wear ankle monitors.
One
exception would be pregnant women, who would be required to wear
wrist-worn tracking devices, Dawnisha M. Helland, an acting assistant
director in the management of non-detained immigrants, wrote in the
letter. “If the alien is not being arrested at the time of reporting,
escalate their supervision level to GPS ankle monitors whenever possible
and increase reporting requirements,” Helland wrote.
The
new ankle monitor guidance, which has not been previously reported,
marks a significant expansion of a 20-year-old surveillance practice
steeped in controversy. While tracking devices are cheaper and arguably
more humane than detention, immigrants and their advocates have long
criticized the government’s use of the bulky black ankle bands, which
they say are physically uncomfortable, impose a social stigma and invade
the privacy of the people wearing them, many of whom have no criminal
record or history of missed court appointments.
This is still a democracy and this is still our country. If you don't speak out, that might not be the case for much longer. Again: We have to turn out in the mid-terms in November (and October for early voters) of 2026 and put Democrats in charge of Congress.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office:
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray
(D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, issued the
following statement on another Government Accountability Office (GAO) decision
announced this morning, which concludes that President Trump has
illegally impounded funding provided by Congress for Head Start programs
across America, in violation of the Impoundment Control Act (ICA):
“Today, a top government watchdog confirmed what we’ve known
for months: President Trump has illegally held up vast sums of funding
for Head Start programs across America—blocking funding that working
families count on every day for pre-K and so many critical services Head
Start offers.
“Because of Trump’s illegal impoundment of this funding that
Congress provided, we have seen Head Start centers temporarily close,
families scramble to make alternate plans, and needless stress and panic
in communities nationwide—including in Washington state.
“Stealing money from preschool programs? No President in
modern history has demonstrated such contempt for working and low-income
American families as Donald Trump.
“Trump has signaled he would like to eliminate Head Start—but
that’s not his choice to make. Congress delivered this funding for Head
Start on a bipartisan basis, and instead of trying to destroy preschool
programs and breaking our laws to hurt working families, President
Trump needs to ensure every penny of these funds get out in a timely,
consistent way moving forward—and he must also finally get out the rest
of the investments he has been robbing the American people of.”
In its decision, GAO also highlighted the Trump administration’s
complete unwillingness to provide any explanation or justification for
their actions, which, in this case, impact hundreds of thousands of
children and families in Head Start programs across the country. This is
further evidence that claims by this administration of a commitment to
radical transparency are a farce—as this administration continues to try
to hide what it is doing, and how it is spending taxpayer dollars, from the American public.
In April, Senator Murray raisedalarm bells about how President Trump was withholding nearly $1 billion in Head Start funding, and she led her colleagues
in demanding that the funds get moving. A Head Start center in Lower
Yakima Valley, Washington state, was forced to temporarily close because
of the chaotic delays. Senator Murray has also consistently warned of how President Trump’s dismantling of the Office of Head Start is hurting families nationwide.
In its decision today, the GAO concluded that:
“As explained below, we conclude that HHS withheld these funds from expenditure in violation of the ICA.
The Head Start Act requires the Secretary to prescribe procedures to
assure that ‘financial assistance under this subchapter shall not be
suspended, except in emergency situations, unless the recipient agency
has been given reasonable notice and opportunity to show cause why such
action should not be taken’. HHS’s actions here were inconsistent with
this legal requirement. … As of 2024, there were approximately
1,600 grant recipients across all 50 states, the District of
Columbia, five territories, and Palau. Grant recipients, known as Head
Start agencies, can generally receive federal funds that cover up to 80
percent of the approved costs of an agency’s Head Start program. …. The Constitution grants the President no unilateral authority to withhold funds from obligation.
…. In addition, plaintiffs in numerous cases before federal district
courts reported Head Start agencies’ inabilities to access Head Start
grant funding. While we accept that the rate of an agency’s obligations
or disbursements of a given appropriation may vary from year to year, we
expect that an agency’s obligations and expenditures, at any time
throughout the fiscal year, will reflect a ‘reasonable attempt by the
agency to carry out the purposes of the appropriation.’ Moreover, we
would not expect substantial variations in disbursement rates in this
case, where disbursements are directed by the Head Start Act. …. If
the Administration wishes to make changes to the appropriation provided
for Head Start, it must propose legislation for consideration by
Congress.”
Presidents do not wield the power
to unilaterally withhold or block investments that have been enacted
into law through what’s known as “impoundment.” This foundational
principle has been affirmed time and again. The Impoundment Control Act
(ICA) of 1974 makes this plain and establishes limited procedures the
president can and must follow to propose delaying or rescinding enacted
funding. The Impoundment Control Act also charges the GAO with the
responsibility of investigating and reporting to Congress when the
president illegally withholds funding.
Since his first hours in office, President Trump has illegally
blocked funding owed to communities across the country through a variety
of different means. Senate and House Appropriations Committee Democrats
have been tracking Trump’s illegal funding freeze and found that, as of
June 3, President Trump is blocking at least $425 billion in funding owed to the American people.
