Detained U.S. Citizen Says Immigration Agents Lied About Everything

One aspect of the Republicans’ big, ugly bill that didn’t get enough attention until Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez elevated it over the last few days is the massive amounts of money it directs to the apprehension and detention of immigrants. On Thursday, right after the bill passed the House, AOC posted on Bluesky: The next day—the Fourth of July, as fate would have it, when President Trump signed the bill into law—historian Timothy Snyder posted a column on Substack under the blunt headline “Concentration Camp Labor.” If AOC’s post and Snyder’s headline sound hyperbolic to you, consider what’s actually in this new law. It includes $170 billion for immigration enforcement: about $50 billion to build a wall on the southern border, $30 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and $45 billion for detention camps. A little perspective: ICE’s existing annual budget has been around $8 billion , so $30 billion is nearly quadruple. As AOC noted, it will make ICE into a huge police force that will indeed be larger than the FBI ($11.3 billion ), the Bureau of Prisons ($9 billion ), and the Drug Enforcement Administration ($3.3 billion ) combined. What is ICE going to do with all that

As Donald Trump has rapidly expanded immigration enforcement, he and his administration have also begun stripping government oversight—and people are already dying, according to a report published by CNN Tuesday. Court documents filed in April as part of a lawsuit against the Trump administration revealed that the Trump administration effectively shuttered three watchdog organizations at the Department of Homeland Security. Employees at the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, or CRCL; the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, or CISOMB; and the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, or OIDO, were abruptly suspended in March and given a separation date of May 23. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s budget requests for the fiscal year 2026, zeroed out the OIDO budget. The Trump administration has claimed that the budget request was merely a recommendation from the president, according to CNN. While the DHS has claimed to have plans to reconstruct department oversight, rebuilding the watchdogs would likely take time—time that immigrant detainees don’t have. The new Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman Ronald Sartini, the person charged with reassessing the DHS’s oversight efforts, was stranded as the only employee assigned to CISOMB, CRCL, and OIDO, according to CNN. As DHS carries out

Per government notices published Monday, the Trump administration plans to end temporary protected status, or TPS, for Honduras and Nicaragua. The move, set to take effect in early September, would strip lawful status from about 72,000 people from Honduras and 4,000 people from Nicaragua, according to the administration’s estimates. Considering these two TPS designations were first issued in 1999, the decision will affect tens of thousands who have been living, working, paying taxes, and undergoing regular security screenings for over two and a half decades in the United States. This includes Brajan Funes of North Carolina, who was featured in a WFDD report in May. Funes came to the country when he was 4, as his parents fled Honduras in the wake of Hurricane Mitch. Funes, whose arm bears a tattoo of a bald eagle with an American flag backdrop, says “his roots” are in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, according to WFDD. “I wasn’t born on this land, but I want to be buried on it,” he told the station. “This is home.” Jackey Baiza of Massachusetts, who came to the U.S. from Honduras at 3 years old in similar circumstances, told WGBH last week that, if the Trump administration cancels

Donald Trump said he may fold on his new deadline for tariff negotiations … again. While sitting across the dinner table from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday evening, Trump was asked by a reporter whether the copy-paste “tariff letters” announcing the tariff rates for various countries were “final offers” or whether they were negotiable. “More or less final offers,” Trump said . “We’re always subject to negotiate something that’s fair.” “I would say the final—but if they call with a different offer and if I like it, we’ll do it,” he explained . “Is the August 1 deadline firm now? Is that it?” the reporter pressed. “No, I would say firm, but not a hundred percent firm,” Trump replied. “If they call up and say we’d like to do something a different way, we’re gonna be open to that. But essentially, that’s the way it is right now.” Trump never seemed all that interested in committing to August 1. He dodged a question Sunday about extending the deadline, forcing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to step in and set one. The United States sent out a total of 14 letters Monday, announcing a tariff rate as high as 40 percent

Kim, an aircraft mechanic, joined the military in 2019, at age 18. She and her mother had struggled to survive, even living in their car at times. She didn’t think she could afford college, so she didn’t apply. Like so many young Americans in that situation, she enlisted “to get a stable paycheck, a roof over my head, food in my stomach at the end of the day.” Deployed only once, Kim spent most of her time on base, but she enjoyed the routine: waking up early for 15-hour workdays, staying up late to earn an associate’s degree, making lifelong friends and “amazing mentors.” But in 2024, she began to worry about what a new administration might ask the military to do. As Kim read Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for Trump’s far-right authoritarian government, she became increasingly troubled about the prospect of unlawful orders, fearing especially that the president would use the military against American civilians. Though she’d been planning on staying 20 years in the Air Force, she decided to get out; now, she’s no longer active duty, but because she didn’t serve a full eight years, she could be redeployed. Kim is not her real name;

The rumors about Elon Musk’s rampant White House ketamine use have circled back to a source: Donald Trump. The world’s richest man and ousted Trump adviser was reputed to be a regular pill popper in May, when The New York Times reported that Musk’s drug use went “well beyond occasional use.” He allegedly took so much ketamine that it was affecting his bladder, took ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, and kept a daily medication box on hand stacked with Adderall, according to photos obtained by the Times . Musk has repeatedly denied the alleged drug use, posting a clean drug test on X two weeks after the story ran. But that report, per Trump biographer Michael Wolff, was planted by the president himself. Wolff told The Daily Beast Podcast Wednesday that he came across Trump’s recent braggadocio by catching up with the president’s associates. “Trump speaks to them, and then they speak to other people,” Wolff said. “Whoever he calls, he says the same thing to everybody. So you know exactly what is on his mind.” And, in the wake of the billionaire’s vocal rejection of the president’s “big, beautiful bill,” Musk was apparently on Trump’s mind. That was clear by

House Republicans on Thursday passed Donald Trump’s sweeping, 887-page budget bill, an unpopular piece of legislation that is poised to further enrich the wealthiest Americans while tattering the social safety net. The House of Representatives passed the bill 218-214, with every “yes” vote coming from a Republican. Only two Republicans, Representatives Thomas Massie and Brian Fitzpatrick, were brave enough to join Democrats and vote against the legislation. The bill includes historic rollbacks of social programs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates it will strip 17 million people of their health insurance by 2034 due to its cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, and deal the most severe blow to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, in the program’s history . By some estimates , the bill’s Medicaid cuts alone are projected to cause 51,000 avoidable deaths per year. And it will staggeringly transfer wealth from less-wealthy to ultra-wealthy Americans. According to the Washington Center for Equitable Growth , it is “the most regressive tax and budget law in at least the past 40 years.” Trump and other Republicans are sure to try to distract from this by pointing to the bill’s sops to those expecting populist reforms—such

I saw a lot of chortling after Elon Musk’s announcement last week that he intends to start a third party, the America Party. Chortle away if you like. But this effort, at least according to what Musk said his goals are, is completely different from other third-party bids in recent U.S. history, and I’ve been amazed these last couple of days at how few people seem to understand that. Third parties in the United States are jokes for one simple reason: They are built around presidential candidacies. That is a ridiculous goal, and it always has been. The reason? At the presidential level, we are indeed locked in a two-party duopoly, and it’s nearly impossible for a third-party candidate to garner enough support to win 270 electoral votes. Let’s look at the most successful third-party presidential candidate in modern American history: Ross Perot in 1992. He struck a nerve among folks who were then referred to collectively as “ the radical center .” He even led in the polls for a short time. Then he withdrew from the race for 10 crucial weeks (mid-July to October 1). But he ended up winning 19 percent of the vote. Impressive! However: In

A nearly 40-year-long public-private partnership between the Episcopal Church in the United States and the federal government to resettle and support immigrants will end this year.

President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. military to attack three of Iran’s key nuclear sites early Sunday. Trump claimed that these 3 targets – Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan – were “completely and fully obliterated” in a televised address to the nation from the White House. The U.S. military used 30,000-pound bunker busters on Fordo, while U.S. submarines also participated in the attacks, launching about 30 Tomahawk land attack missiles, a U.S. official told the Associated Press.

After years of litigation, a March ruling set the stage for criminal defendants in Maine to get released from jail or have their charges dismissed because the state had failed to provide them with attorneys.

Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks Attorney General Pam Bondi and the DOJ have “more explaining to do” regarding their dismissal of the Jeffrey Epstein case. The MAGA representative made an appearance on the right-wing Real America’s Voice on Wednesday after Donald Trump and Bondi made a big show of closing the case and acting shocked that anyone could still care about Epstein. “I think the Department of Justice and the FBI has more explaining to do. This is Jeffrey Epstein; this is the most famous pedophile in modern-day history,” Taylor Greene said. “And people are absolutely not going to accept just a memo that was written that says there is no client list. “Ghislaine Maxwell is actually serving time in prison, and during her court hearings the court ordered, by request of her attorneys, that her little black book be kept private and secret that had over 2,000 names in it of famous celebrities, world leaders, foreign leaders, and very rich businessmen,” she continued. “So we’re not accepting the fact that there is no so-called client list, or a group of people that may have been blackmailed by Jeffrey Epstein, given it was evidence that he had gathered on them with

Last year, President Trump told donors that he had a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin in which he threatened to “bomb the shit out of Moscow” if Putin invaded Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov (mostly) denied that the phone call ever happened. “It’s hard to say. There were no phone calls at that time,” Peskov said , according to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “As far as I understand, we’re talking about a period when Trump was not yet president of the United States.” According to the recording obtained by CNN’s Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf, Trump told donors: “With Putin I said, ‘If you go into Ukraine, I’m gonna bomb the shit out of Moscow. I’m telling you I have no choice.’ “So he goes like, ‘I don’t believe you.’ He said, ‘No way,’ and I said, ‘Way,’” Trump continued. “ And then he goes like, ‘I don’t believe you,’ but the truth is he believed me 10 percent.” There are a lot of questions here. It would not be shocking if Trump was lying about all of this just to impress some donors. But if he wasn’t, then why was he on the phone with Putin

Three years ago, a man with white hair and a ruddy grin went around one neighborhood in Jackson, Mississippi, daring residents to drink the tap water. He’d buy you a drink, but only if you had a glass of water first. He’d buy your groceries, but first you had to take the case of bottled water out of your shopping cart. Residents of the capital city had been under a boil-water notice for weeks, and it had just been lifted: Distrust was still high, and the water was still brown. Not everyone took Ted Henifin up on the drink, but Jacksonians were more than willing to let this guy buy their groceries—even if it meant going back for the bottled water. In August 2022, Jackson entered a state of emergency after flooding overwhelmed the city’s fragile infrastructure, leaving residents without running water to drink, cook, brush their teeth, or even flush their toilets. Periods of low pressure and subpar service were nothing new for Jacksonians, 27 percent of whom live in poverty and 82 percent of whom are Black . They have been deprived of resources by the state legislature, which is overwhelmingly white and conservative, for decades—forever, really. By

Sandy Paws Rescue Inc., a foster-based dog rescue in Massachusetts, is seeking help to find a permanent home for Ava, a 5-year-old Rottweiler who continues to wait for her forever family. "Ava is still waiting for her love match! Can you share her post?" The rescue shared with their communiy. Despite her challenging past, Ava has blossomed in her foster home and is ready to find her forever family. Ava's journey began in a rural shelter in central Texas, where she was rescued after years of being used for breeding and living in a garage. "Rescued from a neglectful situation—shockingly, at the hands of a former police officer—Ava is now beginning her journey toward healing," the rescue organization shared on her profile.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has cleared the way for a ban on LGBTQ+ conversion therapy, deciding that a Republican-controlled legislative committee rule blocking bans on the practice was unconstitutional. The court ruled 4 – 3 Tuesday that the powers granted to the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules had violated the state constitution. At the heart of the case, brought by Governor Tony Evers, was the committee’s decision to block a 2020 rule by the state administration that listed conversion therapy—the practice of forcibly convincing LGBTQ+ people that they are straight—as “unprofessional conduct.” The committee decided that the rule was “arbitrary and capricious,” and failed to comply with “legislative intent.” Republicans in support of the committee’s decision insisted that the issue wasn’t the conversion therapy policy, but whether the state licensing board had the authority to ban the practice. The state Supreme Court’s decision effectively blasted a hole in the issue, stripping the committee of its ability to independently impede the executive branch. And the decision will have long-lasting implications for Wisconsin, far beyond the scope of conversion therapy. The court’s ruling has effectively upended several other attempts by the committee to block Evers’s agenda, including blocks on new

15 Charged in New Jersey as Part of $14.6 Billion National Health Care Fraud Crackdown. Federal authorities target physicians, pharmacies, and clinics across New Jersey in coordinated effort to curb widespread medical fraud affecting Medicare and Medicaid.

The deadly flooding in Texas that took at least 80 people, including children, may have been avoided if the state legislature hadn’t killed a bill for an emergency siren alert system because it was too expensive. House Bill 13, which would have established a state council to implement an emergency response plan and run a first-responder grant program, was struck down in the state Senate earlier this year. H.B. 13 would have helped create “the use of outdoor warning sirens,” like “emergency alert systems.” Some Texas lawmakers have since expressed deep regret for voting against the legislation, while others lamented that the effects of the bill, particularly the warning sirens, would not have kicked in in time to save lives given how fast the floodwaters rose. “All the focus right now is let’s save all the lives we can,” Republican state Representative Wes Virdell told The Texas Tribune . “I can tell you in hindsight, watching what it takes to deal with a disaster like this, my vote would probably be different now.… I think even if you had a warning system there, this came in so fast and early in the morning it’s very unlikely the warning system would

Moments after Donald Trump was shot at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July, he demanded something unexpected from his doctors: a CT scan of his brain. The then-presumptive Republican presidential nominee claimed that he wanted the image as proof of his intelligence, likening the scan to an IQ test, according to an excerpt of the upcoming book 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America , obtained by The Washington Post . “Back in Trump’s room, he told the doctor he wanted a CT scan. The doctor asked why, and Trump said he felt like he needed it. He went down the hall with a squad of Secret Service agents to get the scan,” the excerpt reads. Trump then pressed for the image while ignoring a call from President Joe Biden, who had rung him via Trump’s then-campaign cochair Susie Wiles. “He asked to see the ‘film’ from the scan. The doctor said that wasn’t done anymore, and offered him a written report,” the excerpt continues, but Trump was dead set. “I want the film,” he said, according to the book. Wiles then went to retrieve a copy of the scan image. While she

Ajay, an Indian American engineer (name changed for privacy), has called the United States home for over 35 years. His 90-year-old mother, however, lives alone in Mumbai, cared for by a full-time nurse and domestic staff. In the past, she would visit and stay with him, but as she grew older and her health became more fragile, she chose to remain in India full-time. This choice, while practical for her comfort and continuity of care, has brought its own set of challenges for Ajay. Like many others in the diaspora, he now finds himself deeply involved in coordinating his elderly parents’ healthcare and daily needs from afar—a responsibility that brings emotional, logistical, and financial challenges.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement official revealed Wednesday that the agency’s efforts to deport foreign students for their purportedly “radical,” pro-Palestinian beliefs relies on Canary Mission—an anonymously run website that seeks to dox and render unemployable students and academics accused (often falsely) of promoting “hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews.” During a federal trial in which numerous academic groups are challenging Trump’s ideological deportations, ICE official Peter Hatch, who compiles background reports on agency targets, testified that the Department of Homeland Security’s so-called “Tiger Team,” in early 2025, “rapidly compiled over 100 reports based on a list of 5,000 people identified on the Canary Mission website,” the Knight First Amendment Institute reports. Though there were other sources, Hatch said “most” of the names he was given to investigate came from Canary Mission, CNN reports. Canary Mission is notorious for frequently conflating pro-Palestinian advocacy or criticisms of Israel with antisemitism. Take, for instance, the case of Tufts University Ph.D. student Rümeysa Öztürk, who in March 2024 wrote a pro-Palestinian op-ed in the school’s newspaper—which was enough to earn her a listing on the website. Then, this March, she was plucked off the street by masked, plainclothes ICE agents, and the

This article was originally published on DadisFIRE. AI was used for light editing, formatting, and readability. But a human (me!) wrote and edited this. College isn’t the only way. And for many, it’s not even the best way. You can get a license or certification in months, weeks, sometimes days, and qualify for real jobs that actually pay.

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission. It can be tempting to reach for comfort foods when your arthritis is acting up, but it turns out that your food choices can impact the discomfort levels of arthritis. In this article, I’ll share the worst foods for arthritis pain, plus what you should eat instead.

US authorities battling Mexican Cartel smuggling operations along the Texas Border are increasingly arresting "Cartel Kids" - Mexican teens guiding illegal aliens or smuggling drugs across the Rio Grande. The 15 and 16-year-olds in the photo above were arrested by Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) officers and US Border Patrol Agents after helping five migrants illegally cross into the state. All of the illegal aliens they were smuggling were wearing wristbands signifying payment to the Mexican Cartel the teens were working for.

This article was originally published on DadisFIRE. AI was used for light editing, formatting, and readability. But a human (me!) wrote and edited this. The future of work is already here, and it’s about to thin out a lot of job listings. Automation and AI are speeding up fast. And this time, it’s not just factory jobs.

The MAGA base is still irate at the Trump administration’s decision to essentially drop the Jeffrey Epstein case. Trump made a dubiously timed Truth Social post on Monday praising FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino for “locking up criminals, and cleaning up America’s streets.” The praise came after a day of excoriation from the deep MAGA base, as they called for the heads of Patel, Bongino, and Attorney General Pam Bondi. And they have a point—all three of the senior Trump officials (and even Vice President JD Vance ) either outright pushed or fanned the flames of the idea that Epstein didn’t kill himself. When Bongino replied to Trump’s praise with a nonchalant “We are doubling down. No letting up,” the supporters who once felt represented by Bongino came for him. Nearly every reply to the post was a reference to Epstein and Bongino’s broken promise. “Sorry sir, today is not a good day to try and inspire confidence. How did we go from ‘the client list is on my desk’ to there is no list and he killed himself?” said one dismayed loyalist. “How is [Ghislaine] Maxwell in prison for trafficking to no one?” “Dan we

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult a healthcare provider regarding dietary concerns or symptoms related to sugar consumption.

Great Dog Rescue New England (GDRNE), a dedicated foster-based dog rescue in Massachusetts, recently introduced Tish, a sweet one-year-old chihuahua mix who is looking for her forever home. Tish recently came into Great Dog Rescue New England’s care through unspecified means. After entering their care, the local rescue was able to set Tish up with a loving foster home where she can wait in safety and comfort until the day comes when the next chapter of her life can begin.

Well, folks, it’s official — starting July 1st, modifying the weather in Florida is banned. That’s right. No more amateur cloud whispering. No more budget Dr. Evils trying to tweak the thermostat or juice the humidity. The dream is dead. RIP Florida’s Supervillain Starter Kit.

In a 15-page dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson torched the Supreme Court’s Tuesday ruling allowing President Trump’s mass government layoffs to resume. Trump in February issued an executive order directing agencies to implement “large-scale reductions in force,” or RIFs, per DOGE’s plan to slash the federal government. A number of unions and nonprofit groups challenged the order in court, and a district court issued an injunction temporarily blocking it as legal proceedings continued. Trump turned to the Supreme Court with an emergency request to lift the freeze, which the majority granted Tuesday (without yet weighing in on “the legality of any Agency RIF and Reorganization Plan produced or approved pursuant to the Executive Order”). Justice Jackson said the lower court’s injunction had been a “temporary, practical, harm-reducing preservation of the status quo,” which was nonetheless “no match for this Court’s demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this President’s legally dubious actions in an emergency posture.” She added that the Supreme Court ought to defer to lower court judges, who “have their fingers on the pulse of what is happening on the ground and are indisputably best positioned to determine the relevant facts.” In this case, the lower court carefully reviewed the evidence