Prepared for the Office of Public Affairs (OPA)
U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Editorial Note: The DHS Daily Briefing is a collection of news articles related to Department’s mission. The inclusion of particular stories is not intended to reflect their importance, nor is it intended to endorse the political viewpoints or affiliations included in news coverage.

Reuters [5/2/2025 6:23 PM, David Shepardson, 41523K] reports the Trump administration said on Friday it was revoking the admittance of Romania to the U.S. visa waiver program that allows visa-free travel to the United States, less than four months after the announcement that it would be added. The outgoing administration of then President Joe Biden said on January 9 it was admitting Romania to the program, saying it had met stringent security requirements, including entering into partnerships with U.S. law enforcement to share information on terrorism and serious crimes. The new rules were to take effect around March 31. The Department of Homeland Security in late March paused implementation to conduct a review, which concluded that the designation should be rescinded in order to protect the integrity of the program and ensure border and immigration security. "We are grateful for Romania’s close partnership over the years to enhance security cooperation. Romania may be reconsidered for (visa waiver program) admission in the future," said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. Romania was the 43rd country admitted to the program -- and the fourth added under Biden after Croatia, Israel and Qatar. The program has led to a boost in tourists from the countries that are added because it makes it easier to come to the United States. The Romanian Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Breitbart [5/2/2025 3:50 PM, John Binder, 2923K] reports President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and State Department are announcing the removal of Romania from the Visa Waiver Program (VWP). Former President Joe Biden, in a last-minute move, admitted Romania to the VWP despite national security concerns. DHS and the State Department, Breitbart News has learned, are removing Romania from the VWP after a review of the Eastern European country’s admittance was concluded. The VWP is a coveted benefit that allows foreign nationals from designated countries to bypass having to obtain a visa to secure entry to the United States, and allowing them to stay in the country for up to 90 days visa-free. DHS had paused Romania’s admission to the VWP in March after Biden officials announced in January that the country would be added to the program. Countries eligible for the VWP must meet particular criteria, including having a visa overstay rate that is less than three percent. Romania, in 2024, had an overstay rate of 2.61 percent, but in 2023, its overstay rate was nearly 9 percent, nearly 13 percent in 2022, and more than 17 percent in 2021. “The Administration notes with increasing concern the recent developments across Europe of democratic backsliding,” a senior White House official told Breitbart News. “Efforts to suppress the will of the people draw into question the strength of our shared values.” “Healthy democracies do not fear opposing perspectives. Concerted efforts to delegitimize certain political perspectives draw a striking resemblance to the American experience that President Trump faced, including lawfare and censorship,” the official said. As Breitbart News has chronicled, the VWP has been used by foreign burglary gangs to gain visa-free admission to the U.S. so they can burglarize wealthy Americans. Since 1986, nearly every presidential administration has continued expanding the VWP despite security warnings detailed in the 9/11 Commission Staff Report.

CBS News [5/2/2025 8:14 PM, Margaret Brennan and Camilo Montoya-Galvez, 51661K] Video: HERE reports Rwanda’s government and the Trump administration are discussing details about a potential agreement for Kigali to accept deportees from the U.S., including Africans and other non-Rwandan nationals, CBS News has learned. Decisions on potential financial compensation for taking in the deportees and other details would be discussed within the next two weeks, according to a Rwandan official. A U.S. official and a Rwandan official both confirmed the active talks about sending third-country deportees from U.S. soil to the east African nation. During a televised Cabinet meeting event earlier this week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was actively searching for other countries to take in migrants expelled from the U.S. "We are working with other countries to say, ‘We want to send you some of the most despicable human beings,’" he said while sitting alongside President Trump. Rubio added that the "further away from America, the better.” The Rwanda arrangements were first reported by the Washington Post, which also cited work by an independent journalist who had uncovered the recent deportation from the U.S. of an Iraqi national to Rwanda. The deportation talks with the State Department come at the same time that the U.S. is trying to broker a peace agreement between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In front of the cameras, Rubio also praised Mr. Trump’s envoy to Africa, Massad Boulos, who is Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law, and said he’d recently sent him to the region. Boulos, who has the title of senior advisor for Africa, has publicly spoken of his efforts to broker billion-dollar minerals deals in the region. Rubio also said he recently oversaw the signing of a declaration of peace between the DRC and Rwanda, and stated that he hopes to broker a lasting permanent peace.

Chicago Tribune [5/2/2025 10:22 AM, Moriah Balingit, 5269K] reports the federal government is expanding the reasons international students can be stripped of their legal status in the U.S., where thousands have come under scrutiny in a Trump administration crackdown that has left many afraid of being deported. Attorneys for international students say the new reasons allow for quicker deportations and serve to justify many of the actions the government took this spring to cancel foreign students’ permission to study in the U.S. After abruptly losing their legal status in recent weeks with little explanation, students around the country filed challenges in federal courts. In many cases, judges made preliminary rulings that the government acted without due process. Then the government said it would issue new guidelines for canceling a student’s legal status. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement document shared Monday in a court filing said valid reasons now include the revocation of the visas students used to enter the U.S. In the past, if a student’s visa was revoked, they generally could stay in the U.S. to finish school. They simply would not be able to reenter if they left the country. “This just gave them carte blanche to have the State Department revoke a visa and then deport those students, even if they’ve done nothing wrong,” said Brad Banias, an immigration attorney representing a student who lost his status in the crackdown. The student was once charged with a traffic offense, which appeared in a law enforcement database searched by immigration authorities. Banias said the new guidelines vastly expand the authority of ICE beyond its previous policy, which did not count visa revocation as grounds to take away a student’s permission to be in the country. In the past month, foreign students around the U.S. have been rattled to learn their records were removed from a student database maintained by ICE. Some went into hiding for fear of deportation or abandoned their studies to return home. Lawyers for the government provided some explanation at a hearing Tuesday in the case of Banias’ client Akshar Patel, an international student studying information systems in Texas. Patel’s status was revoked and then reinstated this month, and he asked the court to keep him from being deported. In court filings and at the hearing, Department of Homeland Security officials said they ran the names of student visa holders through the National Crime Information Center, an FBI-run database that contains reams of information related to crimes. It includes the names of suspects, missing persons and people who have been arrested, even if they have never been charged with a crime or had charges dropped. Patel appears in a spreadsheet with 734 students. That spreadsheet was forwarded to a Homeland Security official, who, within 24 hours of receiving it, replied: “Please terminate all in SEVIS,” referring to a different database listing foreigners who have legal status as students in the U.S. Patel “is lawfully present in the U.S.,” Andre Watson of the Department of Homeland Security said. “He is not subject to immediate detention or removal.”

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Bloomberg Law [5/2/2025 10:31 AM, Andrew Kreighbaum, 1085K

The Daily Wire [5/2/2025 9:09 AM, Leif Le Mahieu, 4672K] reports the Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to greenlight its efforts to end a Biden-era immigration program shielding hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan nationals from deportation. Solicitor General John Sauer filed a 38-page emergency appeal to SCOTUS asking it to block a federal judge’s ruling that said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem could not end Temporary Protected Status for 348,202 Venezuelans. Sauer argued that Noem’s decision to end one of the TPS designations for Venezuela was unreviewable and up to her discretion. “The Secretary’s decision whether to designate, extend, or terminate TPS implicates sensitive judgments as to foreign policy and, in this case, the ‘national interest’—a discretionary determination that Congress expressly committed to her judgment,” Sauer wrote in his filing. Noem announced in February that she would end the program, which was started during the Biden administration in October 2023, because she had determined it was not in America’s best interest to continue with it, adding that conditions in Venezuela had improved. Just weeks before leaving office, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas extended the designation until October 2026. “TPS has allowed a significant population of inadmissible or illegal aliens without a path to lawful immigration status to settle in the interior of the United States, and the sheer numbers have resulted in associated difficulties in local communities where local resources have been inadequate to meet the demands caused by increased numbers,” the Department of Homeland Security said. Breitbart [5/2/2025 11:38 PM, Elizabeth Weibel, 2923K] reports Temporary Protected Status (TPS) amnesty for more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants. On Thursday, U.S. Solicitor General Dean John Sauer asked the Supreme Court in an emergency appeal to block a ruling from California-based U.S. District Court Judge Edward Chen and to allow the Trump administration’s plans to revoke the TPS protections to continue, according to Fox News. Per the outlet, Sauer described the ruling from Chen as "untenable": "The district court’s reasoning is untenable," Sauer told the high court, adding that the program "implicates particularly discretionary, sensitive, and foreign policy-laden judgements of the Executive Branch regarding immigration policy.” As Breitbart News reported, the emergency appeal comes after Chen issued a ruling at the end of March barring the Trump administration from revoking TPS amnesty for thousands of Venezuelan migrants, including Tren de Aragua gang members. Chen "cited the migrants’ economic activity as if that entitled them to legal status regardless of U.S. laws": [They] have higher educational attainment that most U.S. citizens (40-54% have bachelor degrees,), have higher labor participation rates (80-96%) [because they are younger, on average] … and annually contribute billions of dollars to the U.S. economy and pay hundreds of millions, if not billions, in Social Security taxes. CBS News reported that in February, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem "revoked the designation" of TPS amnesty status to thousands of Venezuelan migrants. Noem’s cancelation of TPS amnesty for thousands of Venezuelans, which would have been terminated in April, comes after former DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas extended TPS amnesty for roughly 850,000 migrants until 2026. "So long as the order is in effect, the secretary must permit hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan nationals to remain in the country, notwithstanding her reasoned determination that doing so is ‘contrary to National Interest,’" Sauer wrote in the emergency appeal. FOX News [5/2/2025 10:54 AM, Breanne Deppisch, 46189K] reports U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer asked justices on Thursday to allow the administration to proceed, accusing Chen of improperly intruding on the executive branch’s authority over immigration policy. "The district court’s reasoning is untenable," Sauer told the high court, adding that the program "implicates particularly discretionary, sensitive, and foreign-policy-laden judgments of the Executive Branch regarding immigration policy.” "The decision to delay the Secretary’s actions effectively nullifies them, tying them up in the very judicial second-guessing that Congress prohibited," he said of the lower court order. "The district court’s ill-considered preliminary injunction should be stayed.” At issue is the TPS program, which allows individuals to live and work in the U.S. legally if they cannot work safely in their home country due to a disaster, armed conflict or other "extraordinary and temporary conditions.” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem terminated the program for Venezuelan nationals on Feb. 1, prompting the emergency lawsuit and Chen’s order that postponed it from taking force.’

AP [5/2/2025 4:29 PM, Lindsay Whitehurst] reports that the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to clear the way for Elon Musk ‘s Department of Government Efficiency to access Social Security systems containing personal data on millions of Americans. The emergency appeal comes after a judge in Maryland restricted the team’s access under federal privacy laws. Social Security holds personal records on nearly everyone in the country, including school records, bank details, salary information and medical and mental health records for disability recipients, according to court documents. The government says the DOGE team needs access to target waste in the federal government. Musk has been focused on Social Security as an alleged hotbed of fraud, describing it as a “ Ponzi scheme “ and insisting that reducing waste in the program is an important way to cut government spending. An appeals court majority refused to lift the block on DOGE access, though it split along ideological lines. Conservative judges said there’s no evidence that the team has done any “targeted snooping” or exposed personal information. The lawsuit was originally filed by a group of labor unions and retirees represented by the group Democracy Forward. The ruling from U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander in Maryland that blocked DOGE from Social Security systems did allow staffers to access data that has been redacted or stripped of anything personally identifiable.

CNN [5/2/2025 11:27 AM, Karina Tsui and Katelyn Polantz, 22131K] reports Tennessee state law enforcement on Thursday released a video showing a 2022 traffic stop involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an incident Trump administration officials have used to justify the removal of the Maryland man who the government has admitted was wrongly deported to El Salvador in March. US officials have argued the traffic stop in November 2022, during which Abrego Garcia was not detained, supports their claims that Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13 and involved in human trafficking. The stop resulted in no charges, and there was no mention of human trafficking in the parts of the redacted report that have been made available. Yet the 2022 traffic stop now could play into the ongoing political debate and legal standoff over Abrego Garcia, who is still in El Salvador while a federal judge demands answers and more evidence from the Trump administration. So far in the ongoing court proceeding over his custody, his attorneys have said that the US in his 2019 immigration proceedings offered little reason to believe Abrego Garcia was tied to a gang, other than the fact he wore a Chicago Bulls hat and that a confidential informant provided a tip to authorities. In the years since, his attorneys had struggled to get more information from law enforcement on accusations of Abrego Garcia’s possible ties to MS-13, and the federal government hadn’t given him more proceedings before putting him on the plane to El Salvador. "There is no known link or association between him and the MS-13 gang," his lawyers told the federal judge last month. In a statement provided to CNN regarding the bodycam footage, Abrego Garcia’s attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said, his client "has been denied the most basic protections of due process—no phone call to his lawyer, no call to his wife or child, and no opportunity to be heard.” According to a Department of Homeland Security statement released last month about the incident, federal officials released Abrego Garcia with a warning for driving with an expired license. The DHS statement characterized the 2022 traffic stop as a "suspected human trafficking incident," citing it as evidence against what Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin called "the media’s sympathetic narrative" about Abrego Garcia. Breitbart [5/2/2025 2:22 PM, Amy Furr, 2923K] reports Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said, “The facts reveal he was pulled over with eight individuals in a car on an admitted three-day journey from Texas to Maryland with no luggage… The facts speak for themselves, and they reek of human trafficking. The media’s sympathetic narrative about this criminal illegal gang member has completely fallen apart.”The AP [5/2/2025 8:42 PM, Ben Finley and Travis Loller, 34586K] reports that the body-camera footage shows a calm and friendly exchange between officers with the Tennessee Highway Patrol and Abrego Garcia. He was pulled over for speeding in a vehicle with eight passengers and said they’d been working in Missouri. Officers then discussed among themselves their suspicions of human trafficking because nine people were traveling without luggage. One of the officers said: “He’s hauling these people for money.” Another said he had $1,400 in an envelope. Abrego Garcia was never charged with a crime, while the officers allowed him to drive on with only a warning about an expired driver’s license, according to a report about the stop released last month by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The report said he was traveling from Texas to Maryland, via Missouri, to bring in people to perform construction work. The Trump administration has been publicizing Abrego Garcia’s interactions with police over the years, despite a lack of corresponding criminal charges, while it faces a federal court order and calls from some in Congress to return him to the U.S. An attorney for Abrego Garcia, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said in a statement Friday that he saw no evidence of a crime in the released footage. “But the point is not the traffic stop — it’s that Mr. Abrego Garcia deserves his day in court. Bring him back to the United States,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said. When details of the Tennessee traffic stop were first publicized, Abrego Garcia’s wife said he sometimes transported groups of fellow construction workers between job sites. “Unfortunately, Kilmar is currently imprisoned without contact with the outside world, which means he cannot respond to the claims,” Jennifer Vasquez Sura said in mid-April. Abergo Garcia fled his native El Salvador to the U.S. when he was 16 and lived in Maryland for roughly 14 years, court documents state.

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The Hill [5/2/2025 3:23 PM, Elizabeth Crisp, 12829K]
ABC News [5/2/2025 11:27 AM, Staff, 34586K]
NewsMax [5/2/2025 10:54 AM, Charlie McCarthy, 4998K]
Telemundo [5/2/2025 2:45 PM, Rosbelis Quiñonez and Thayma Sánchez, 38K]
(B) CNN News Central [5/2/2025 1:43 PM, Staff]

Washington Examiner [5/2/2025 1:33 PM, David Sivak, 2296K] reports Kilmar Abrego Garcia will return to the national spotlight when the Senate votes on a resolution calling for a report on his detention in El Salvador. In the coming weeks, the Senate will take up a Democratic resolution that would require the Trump administration to detail the human rights record of El Salvador, including its treatment of inmates in the megaprison where Abrego Garcia, a mistakenly deported illegal immigrant, was briefly detained. It also asks for the steps taken to comply with a court order demanding his return to the United States. The resolution does not mention Abrego Garcia by name but refers broadly to Americans or U.S. residents "detained or imprisoned in El Salvador." Ordinarily, the majority party, in this case Republicans, has control over what gets brought to the floor. But the measure, which is privileged under Senate rules, is the latest example of Democrats using the tools of the minority to end-run that control. "We’re going to put all of our colleagues on the record," Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), a lead sponsor of the resolution, told reporters on Thursday. "If Americans are being sent in violation of the rule of law to El Salvador, we should all want to get a human rights report to see whether this nation is following the rule of law, or not.” The resolution represents Democrats’ latest effort to draw attention to the Trump administration’s attempts to evade legal scrutiny with its deportations. The White House has invoked controversial wartime powers to deport hundreds of illegal immigrants to CECOT, the notorious prison in El Salvador, without a court hearing. Democrats to revive Abrego Garcia spotlight with Senate transparency vote

USA Today [5/2/2025 7:08 PM, Nick Penzenstadler, 75858K] reports the Maryland wife of the wrongfully deported Salvadoran immigrant briefly faced a custody challenge over the children she shared with another man. Court documents show Edwin Ramos filed a custody petition in 2018 against Jennifer Vasquez Sura. The pair had children born in 2014 and 2015 that were then raised by Vasquez Sura and Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who is at the center of the immigration debate that has reached the Supreme Court. In the court motion, Ramos wrote: "I’m afraid of my kids live (sic) are in danger because she is dating a gang member.” Abrego Garcia was detained in 2019 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and alleged to be a member of the MS-13 gang. He has vehemently denied the affiliation.

New York Times [5/2/2025 8:43 AM, Juliet Macur, Jazmine Ulloa, Annie Correal, Kirsten Noyes, Alan Feuer and Dan Barry, 145325K] reports Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, all of 16, called his older brother in distant Maryland with startling news. He had made it to the Texas border. He had escaped. In his family’s telling, this is how his American journey began. They say that for years in El Salvador, a gang called Barrio 18 had terrorized them, extorting money from the mother’s small tortilla and pupusa business, threatening to leave them all dead in a ditch — and targeting young Kilmar, in and out of school, with increasing menace. “‘They will appear in black bags,’” his mother said through tears, recalling phone messages from the gang. “Those were the words they would say.” Seeing a dim future, the teenager had slipped away to follow the worn, treacherous path known to so many other migrants before him, including his older brother. North, across desert and river, into Mexico, and then into the United States. Over the next dozen years, Mr. Abrego Garcia would call Maryland his home. He would work in construction. Marry. Help to raise three children, all with special needs. He would also be repeatedly accused by his wife of verbal and physical abuse — and be labeled as a gang member by the president of the United States. On March 15, the tumultuous American journey of Mr. Abrego Garcia returned him to South Texas, in restraints. There, on the tarmac of Harlingen Airport, loomed three large airplanes bound for El Salvador. Two were reserved for undocumented immigrants being deported without the constitutional right to due process, on the allegation that they belonged to a well-known Venezuelan gang. The third plane was for dozens of other immigrants who, according to the government, had at least been given the chance to argue their case in a hearing. Whatever their past, all the detainees — more than 260 — were being sent by the Trump administration to a Salvadoran maximum-security prison notorious for its inhumane conditions. While captors and captives waited for takeoff, some names fell from the third plane’s manifest for various reasons, and Mr. Abrego Garcia’s name was added. This was a mistake — a perverse upgrade.

FOX News [5/2/2025 6:00 AM, Madison Colombo, 46189K] reports Trump administration "border czar" Tom Homan is slamming Democratic lawmakers for continuing to support Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a deported migrant who is now facing new scrutiny over past allegations of domestic abuse. "It supports what we’ve been saying from day one. We removed a public safety threat," Homan told "America Reports" Thursday. A 2020 protective order filed in Maryland accuses Abrego Garcia of repeated physical and verbal abuse against his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, and emotional abuse toward her children. The petition lists multiple alleged incidents over several years, including claims that he kicked, slapped, shoved, and detained her against her will. Vasquez Sura also claimed in the filing that she possessed a recording in which Abrego Garcia allegedly told her ex-mother-in-law that "even if he kills me no one can do anything to him.” She described a 2019 incident where he allegedly grabbed her by the hair in a car, dragged her, and a month later broke doors, shoved her against a wall, and damaged household items. The 2020 order was filed prior to the petition she filed against Abrego Garcia in 2021, where she claimed similar violent behaviors. Homan said Thursday that Democrats were advocating for the wrong person. "I hope Democrats keep going down there [to El Salvador]. I hope they keep playing this game," he said. "They’re showing the American people they’re supporting a gang member, terrorist, public safety threat, wife beater rather than meeting with the angel moms and dads.” The Trump administration continues to defend Abrego Garcia’s deportation, even though it previously admitted it was carried out in error, citing evidence that allegedly links him to the MS-13 gang. According to immigration officials, police assessed that Abrego Garcia was a gang member following a 2019 arrest in Maryland for loitering. His attorneys said Abrego Garcia was looking for labor work. Authorities also cited tattoos, gang-related clothing, an arrest alongside a suspected MS-13 member, and information from an informant as supporting evidence of gang ties. Several Democratic lawmakers have traveled to El Salvador in protest of the deportation. Homan argues their actions highlight misplaced priorities. "They can keep playing that game. It’s a loser for them. We’ll keep doing what we’re doing," he said. Homan also pushed back against ongoing criticism of the Trump administration’s immigration policies and mass deportation agenda. "I knew [on] day one of the inauguration that we’re going to be fighting the courts, we’re [going to] be fighting the Democrats … We knew the fight was coming and we’re [going to] take that fight on," he said. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

FOX News [5/2/2025 11:08 AM, Rachel Wolf, 46189K] reports deported alleged MS-13 member Kilmar Abrego Garcia is facing more allegations of abuse after an audio recording reportedly of his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, begging a judge for a temporary order of protection. In a recording of an August 2020 court hearing obtained by USA Today, Sura describes the abuse she allegedly suffered at the hands of Abrego Garcia. Sura recalled multiple instances of alleged abuse, claiming that Abrego Garcia pushed her, grabbed her by the hair and slapped her. "On Wednesday, he hit me, like around like, three in the morning, he would just wake up and like, hit me," Sura told the court. At one point, Sura said she was trying to escape Abrego Garcia when she saw a neighbor walking their dog and screamed "help." Sura said Abrego Garcia then "grabbed me from my hair, and then he slapped me." The neighbor was allegedly stunned and "didn’t know what to do." Additionally, Sura alleges in the recording that she tried to get an order in December, presumably in 2019, but that Abrego Garcia’s family convinced her not to go through with it because his father was sick. The filing, which was obtained by Fox News Digital, shows that Sura said she was "afraid of being too close to him. I have multiple photos/videos of how violent he can be and all the bruises he [has] left me." The allegations were written in Sura’s handwriting. "The ‘Maryland Man’ Hoax continues to get worse for the fake news, as we always said it would. Just imagine if we had more real journalists in this country who actually cared about digging for facts instead of pushing fabricated narratives to advance their political agenda. And shame on the Democrats for continuing to advocate for this illegal criminal, MS-13 gang member and wife beater," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News in a statement on Friday. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

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NewsMax [5/2/2025 1:13 PM, Charlie McCarthy, 4998K]

Blaze.com [5/2/2025 4:30 PM, Staff, 1668K] reports for years, many have suspected that the Biden administration deliberately allowed criminals to enter the U.S. through lax border policies. A breaking report has just revealed that it’s true — the Biden administration knowingly released illegal immigrant convicted sex offenders into the nation. To get the scoop on this bombshell report, Sara Gonzales spoke with journalist Breanna Morello, host of "The Breanna Morello Show," who just yesterday unveiled exclusive U.S. Department of Homeland Security documents obtained through a lawsuit, documenting the release of convicted sex offenders into the United States. The documents Morello refers to are a series of forms that were used to process illegal alien convicted sex offenders before their release into the country. After suing TSA, she eventually obtained the DHS documents, which not only proved that convicted sex offenders were released into our country but also that TSA agents used their DHS paperwork identifying them as sex offenders to permit boardings.

The New York Times [5/3/2025 3:42 AM, Tony Romm, 330K] reports President Trump on Friday proposed slashing $163 billion in federal spending next fiscal year, a drastic retrenchment in the role and reach of government that, if enacted, would eliminate a vast set of climate, education, health and housing programs, including some that benefit the poor. Issuing his first budget proposal since returning to office, Mr. Trump sketched out a dim view of Washington. His blueprint depicted many core government functions as woke, weaponized, wasteful or radical, as the president looked to justify his request that Congress chop domestic spending to its lowest level in the modern era. Mr. Trump proposed cutting funding for some federal law enforcement, including the F.B.I. He called on lawmakers to slash money meant to police tax evasion at the Internal Revenue Service. He recommended striking billions in funds that help finance clean water projects. And the president reserved some of his deepest cuts for education, health and science, including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which would see their budgets cut by around half. Democrats immediately rebuked Mr. Trump for his proposal. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate minority leader, called it “heartless” and an “all-out assault on hardworking Americans.” Even some Republicans took issue with Mr. Trump’s budget, although others, like Speaker Mike Johnson, endorsed the blueprint. Mr. Trump also asked Congress to reduce, if not eliminate, billions of dollars in federal aid to help the poorest Americans. For one, the White House called for reconfiguring federal programs that provide rental assistance to low-income families, cutting aid by more than $26 billion next fiscal year. And the administration proposed the termination of a federal initiative, backed by some Republicans, that aids needy families in paying their monthly heating bills. In one of the few spending increases included in the budget, Mr. Trump asked lawmakers to bolster spending at the Department of Homeland Security by more than $43 billion, furthering his work to crack down on immigration, conduct deportations and build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border. The president also requested more than $1 trillion for the military next fiscal year. The Detroit Free Press [5/2/2025 2:18 PM, Bart Jansen, 4124K] reports that overall, the budget lays out $1.7 trillion for Trump’s discretionary priorities, which includes the 10% drop to $1.45 trillion for non-defense programs from the amounts approved this year. But the figures are proposals rather than set in stone for the next fiscal year starting Oct. 1. Congress will determine spending levels – which Trump so far has treated as ceilings rather than requirements – during debates that could last until the end of the year. Lawmakers will be debating tax cuts at the same time, which will complicate all the discussions. Trump has proposed extending tax cuts from his first administration, which would otherwise expire at the end of the year, and a slew of new proposals costing trillions more dollars such as no longer taxing Social Security benefits or tips on service jobs.

AP [5/2/2025 7:35 PM, Lisa Mascaro And Josh Boak, 2K] reports the White House released President Donald Trump’s 2026 budget proposal Friday, hoping to slash, if not zero out, spending on many government programs. It seeks a sweeping restructuring of the nation’s domestic priorities, reflective of the president’s first 100 days in office and sudden firing of federal workers. Trump’s plan aims for steep cuts to child care, disease research, renewable energy and peacekeeping abroad, many already underway through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, all while pumping up billions for the administration’s mass deportation agenda. The budget drafters echo Trump’s promises to end “woke programs,” including preschool grants to states with diversity programs. And they reflect his vow to stop the “weaponization of government” by slashing the Internal Revenue Service, even as critics accuse him of using the levers of power to punish people and institutions he disfavors Overall, it’s a sizable reduction in domestic accounts — some $163 billion, or 22.6% below current year spending, the White House said. At the same time, the White House said it is relying on Congress to unleash $375 billion in new money for the Homeland Security and Defense departments as part of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” of tax cuts and spending reductions. His goal is to repel when he calls a “foreign invasion,” though migrant arrivals to the U.S. are at all-time lows. House Speaker Mike Johnson welcomed the proposal as “a bold blueprint that reflects the values of hardworking Americans and the commitment to American strength and prosperity.” Budgets do not become law, but serve as a touchstone for the coming fiscal year debates. Often considered a statement of values, this first budget since Trump’s return to the White House carries the added weight of defining the Republican president’s second-term pursuits, alongside his party in Congress.

Roll Call [5/2/2025 4:56 PM, Chris Johnson, 503K] reports President Donald Trump is proposing a significant boost in funding for the Department of Homeland Security for fiscal 2026 as part of his tough-on-immigration approach. The "skinny" version of the White House’s budget blueprint released Friday would provide $107.4 billion for DHS in the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, an increase of $42.3 billion, or 64.9 percent, above the $65.1 billion fiscal 2025 enacted level. That number assumes enactment of a budget reconciliation package Republicans have begun drafting with $175 billion for border security, including $43.8 billion allocated for fiscal 2026, according to the document. A breakdown of the funding says the new money would enable DHS "to fully implement the President’s mass removal campaign, finish construction of the border wall on the Southwest border, procure advanced border security technology, modernize the fleet and facilities of the Coast Guard, and enhance Secret Service protective operations." The White House at the same time says its proposal would decrease funds for certain agencies within DHS that it says would keep the agencies refocused on their missions. Non-disaster grant programs for the Federal Emergency Management Agency would see a decrease of $646 million, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency would see a decrease of $491 million, and the Transportation Security Administration screening funding would see a decrease amounting to $247 million, the document states.

USA Today [5/2/2025 7:16 PM, Lauren Villagran, 75858K] reports President Donald Trump wants to boost the nation’s border security budget by nearly $44 billion, for one year only. The proposal would raise the Department of Homeland Security budget by two-thirds to $107 billion, from $65 billion, for fiscal year 2026. The one-time funding surge would enable DHS to pay for the president’s planned deportation campaign, build border fencing, modernize the Coast Guard fleet and enhance Secret Service operations, according to the proposal. The proposal would at the same time cut funding for programs that support vulnerable migrants or make investments in migrants’ home countries to create the economic and security conditions that would encourage them to remain. It cuts or eliminates funding for programs that resettle refugees, place unaccompanied minors with sponsors, provide emergency shelter to migrants and for USAID, the State Department entity that funded programs overseas. The president’s proposal is a request; Congress holds the power of the purse to appropriate money to fund the government. DHS is the umbrella agency for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection – two agencies that are key to Trump’s deportation and border security agenda. "ICE, CBP all of these different agencies, have consistently felt underfunded for the missions they are allocated with," said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, associate policy analyst with the nonpartisan Migration Policy Instititute. "For mass deportation, ICE has said it doesn’t have the resources to do it.”

DailySignal [5/2/2025 2:23 PM, Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell, 495K] reports President Donald Trump’s 2026 budget proposal would increase border security funding by 65%, marking the largest investment in homeland security in history, a senior White House official said. The White House unveiled its $1.7 trillion budget for the 2026 fiscal year, proposing about $163 billion in cuts to domestic programs, as well as a 13% increase in defense spending and that 65% increase in border spending. Fiscal year 2026 begins Oct. 1. The federal budget deficit for fiscal year 2025 was $1.83 trillion. On average, federal agencies will face budget cuts of 35%.The budget commits $175 billion to fully secure the border. For defense spending, the president proposes an increase of 13% to $1.01 trillion for fiscal year 2026, an amount on par with the defense spending of the Reagan administration and the first Trump administration. The budget cuts also reduce foreign aid by $49 billion. Foreign aid was destabilizing the countries receiving it because nonprofits receiving funding pushed radical woke ideology and sometimes advocated for regime changes, a White House official said on a background call for members of the media. Rather, the budget “ensures that foreign aid spending is efficient and consistent with U.S. foreign policy under the America First agenda,” according to a White House fact sheet.

NBC News [5/2/2025 12:36 PM, Sahil Kapur, 44742K] reports President Donald Trump released a budget proposal Friday calling for a mix of cuts to domestic programs involving public health, education and clean energy, while seeking to increase spending on his priorities like border security and a bigger military. The 40-page request was addressed to congressional leaders and accompanied by a letter from Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought addressed to Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Overall, Vought said the proposal contains a 23% cut ($163 billion) in discretionary funding, and a 13% increase in military spending. The White House budget comes as the Republican-led Congress is seeking to craft a massive bill for Trump’s priorities of tax cuts, higher spending on immigration enforcement and the military, spending cuts in other parts of the federal government, and a debt limit increase. Vought mentioned the calls for border funding in the new budget blueprint. White House budgets are usually symbolic and never become law as written. But they represent the president’s vision for spending and tend to influence the debate on Capitol Hill. They also tend to be a vehicle for messaging on the White House’s most popular priorities — and often propose difficult policy compromises or cuts that become the basis for political attacks from the opposition party. The budget also calls for various cuts to clean energy funding, education funding, scientific research and international aid. And it proposes a funding boost for Trump priorities, including a $43.8 billion boost to the Department of Homeland Security, a $113.3 billion for the Defense Department and $500 million for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s "MAHA" — "make America healthy again" — priorities like promoting nutrition and exercise.

CNN [5/2/2025 1:42 PM, Tami Luhby, Ella Nilsen, Andrew Freedman, Samantha Delouya, Sarah Owermohle, and Jennifer Hansler, 22131K] reports the White House unveiled a budget blueprint Friday that would pump more money into defense and homeland security, while taking an ax to programs the Trump administration has already targeted, including education, foreign aid, environment, health and public assistance programs. The proposal outlines President Donald Trump’s vision and provides recommendations to Congress for fiscal year 2026 spending, but lawmakers are not required to follow it. The blueprint released Friday is an outline, otherwise known as a “skinny budget,” with a more comprehensive plan expected to be released in coming weeks. The proposal follows Trump’s priorities of beefing up the nation’s defense and immigration enforcement capabilities. It would increase defense spending by 13% to $1 trillion. It would also provide a “historic” $175 billion investment to “fully secure the border,” according to an Office of Management and Budget letter sent to Sen. Susan Collins, who chairs the Appropriations Committee, which was obtained by CNN. The administration is pushing to have these increases – which includes $119 billion in defense spending – included in the budget reconciliation bill Congress is currently assembling, which would allow it to be approved without Democratic votes in the Senate. Democrats have typically objected to raising defense funding without corresponding increases to certain non-defense spending.

Bloomberg Law [5/2/2025 10:10 AM, Jack Fitzpatrick and Ken Tran, 1085K] reports President Donald Trump is banking on Republicans slashing domestic funds and successfully shepherding a fraught tax-and-spending package through Congress, as he sends lawmakers a budget proposal focused heavily on military and border priorities. Trump released a fiscal 2026 spending proposal — called a "skinny budget" because it’s light on details — Friday morning, allowing Congress to start preliminary work to fund the government beyond Sept. 30. The plan calls for a 17% cut to nondefense discretionary spending, including steep cuts to environmental, agricultural, and housing programs. Trump is seeking a 13% boost for national security spending, though that’s dependent on a broader, complex tax-and-spending package Republicans aim to enact through the reconciliation process, which allows them to sidestep the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster. Overall, the figures equate to a freeze in federal discretionary spending, which would equate to a reduction in purchasing power, adjusted for inflation. The budget outline arrives as GOP lawmakers are getting antsy to start government-funding work. The House Appropriations Committee has a series of hearings set for next week on cabinet officials’ spending priorities. That includes subcommittee hearings with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. "There is a big hurry on the ‘skinny budget,’" House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told reporters Thursday. "We’ve got a lot of cabinet officials coming up literally next week. It’s hard to ask them intelligent questions if you don’t have some idea of what we’re going to have in it.” Trump’s austere approach to domestic spending may face challenges, even in a friendly GOP-controlled Congress. Cole and other Republicans have pushed back on some spending-cut proposals that would affect their own districts. And a separate proposal to claw back $9.3 billion in old foreign-aid and public broadcasting money "sounds like a lot of money to me," Cole told reporters Thursday. Nondefense spending would fall by $119.3 billion under Trump’s plan. That includes adjustments based on Republicans’ reconciliation proposals, which would be passed separately from the usual government-funding bills.

Washington Examiner [5/2/2025 11:13 AM, Mabinty Quarshie, 2296K] reports President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget proposal calls for $163 billion in cuts to multiple federal programs. The symbolic skinny budget, released Friday, is a key indicator of the president’s political priorities for the federal government, but it is not expected to be passed in full. It also gives direction to the GOP-led House and Senate on which policies to turn into spending legislation. The skinny budget, coming during the president’s first year of his second administration, is not as detailed as a normal budget. While fiscal hawks might tout the proposed cuts in the White House budget and Democrats are sure to blast it over the deep spending reductions, the budget is essentially aspirational. The decision on how much money each federal agency should receive in appropriations comes down to Congress, so the budget proposal can be seen as a White House messaging vehicle. In the budget, Trump proposed $557 billion in nondefense discretionary spending, which amounts to a decrease of $163 billion, or a 22.6% cut, in projected spending in fiscal 2025. The cuts will likely affect education, transportation, and public health funding, but not Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Yet the administration is also calling for an increase in spending for veterans, Social Security, Make America Healthy Again initiatives, and law enforcement. In contrast, the administration proposed a 13% increase, or to $1.01 trillion, in border security and defense spending. The White House also called for a nearly 65% increase for the Department of Homeland Security to help crack down on illegal immigration and secure the southern border. The big increase at DHS is to "ensure that agencies repelling the invasion of our border have the resources they need to complete their mission," according to the White House.

The Hill [5/2/2025 11:36 AM, Alexander Bolton, 12829K] reports Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) on Friday slammed President Trump’s 2026 budget, which would make substantial cuts across government, as a "gut punch" to families. "Donald Trump’s days of pretending to be a populist are over. His policies are nothing short of an all out assault on hardworking Americans," Schumer said in his statement. "As he guts healthcare, slashes education and hollows out programs families rely on — he’s bankrolling tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations. It’s not just fiscally irresponsible, it’s a betrayal of working people from a morally bankrupt president," Schumer said in the release from his office. He described the plan as a "gut punch to American families.” The president’s budget would cut nondefense discretionary spending by $163 billion, or 22.6 percent, and increase defense spending by 13 percent. It would cut the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by $3.5 billion and education spending by $12 billion. It also calls for $175 billion in funding for the Department of Homeland Security to step up the pace of deportations and secure the border.

Bloomberg Law [5/2/2025 11:33 AM, Ellen M. Gilmer, 120K] reports the Department of Homeland Security would see an eye-popping increase of more than $40 billion — dependent on Republicans passing a sweeping reconciliation package — in annual funding under a proposal from President Donald Trump’s administration. The White House released the plans Friday in a document that won’t become but law but signals the administration’s priorities, with border security and immigration enforcement chief among them. The department would get $107 billion in fiscal 2026, an unprecedented 65% above current levels, while many other agencies are poised to see cuts.

Washington Post [5/2/2025 3:34 PM, Aaron Blake, 31735K] reports amid all the controversy over the Trump administration’s deportations, it’s always important to emphasize where these undocumented migrants are being sent. It’s not just that the administration has deported people without legal due process; it’s that it has deported people without legal due process to a brutal prison in El Salvador. The administration says these are gang members and even “terrorists.” But its evidence has been suspect. It has made established mistakes. And a “60 Minutes” report found that most of the deportees had no apparent criminal records. All of which raises the prospect that the administration has sent not just noncriminals but even non-gang members to one of the world’s most notorious prisons. The brutality of the conditions there works for the administration in a way, of course. And that’s as a deterrent. The administration has been happy to play up the severity of El Salvador’s Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT), as best evidenced by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem’s photo op there. But in a remarkable new legal filing, the administration has now attempted to walk away from the idea that it is sending people to CECOT to punish them or deter others. And it downplays the rhetoric of Noem and others as “vague statements” that don’t actually signify its intent. One clear incentive for trying to recast the comments: This being about punishment and deterrence could be a legal problem. And that’s not even the only public statement they’re distancing themselves from in what has increasingly become a losing legal battle.

FOX News [5/2/2025 1:58 PM, Breanne Deppisch, 46189K] reports last month, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., blocked key parts of President Donald Trump’s executive order on election integrity – a move that underscores how deeply divided the country remains over what "election integrity" really means. Though the executive order Trump signed was titled, "Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections," the Democratic National Party (DNC), which led a group of plaintiffs in challenging the order in federal court, argued that it was an attempt to encroach on elections and disenfranchise voters. In the end, both sides won out – sort of, and at least for now. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ultimately left in place three key parts of Trump’s executive order, including a provision requiring states not to count mail-in ballots received after Election Day, in a partial victory for the Trump administration. But she sided with Democratic plaintiffs in blocking, for now, both a new proof-of-citizenship requirement for federal voter registration forms and a provision directing election officials to verify the citizenship of would-be voters. The Trump administration is, of course, free to appeal the decision to higher courts, should it choose to do so.

Federalist [5/2/2025 7:10 AM, M.D. Kittle, 1033K] reports "Voter Rights" activists, like the leftists at the Brennan Center Justice, and their pals in the accomplice media have spent a lot of time and credibility telling us that foreign nationals never vote in U.S. elections. If they do, it’s extremely rare. A myth. But we’ve seen a lot of "extremely rare" pop up in recent years on the battleground of election integrity. "It amounts to a vanishingly rare phenomenon that is not going to impact the outcome of our elections in any real way, and where the people who actually are violating the law are held accountable," Sean Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center, a group of election integrity deniers that claims to be nonpartisan, told ABC News just days before November’s election. The organization is about as nonpartisan as ABC News is unbiased. Of course, it’s amazing what you’ll find — if you’re willing to look. President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security is looking. This week, the U.S Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida announced charges against two Ukrainian women, a mother and a daughter, accused of voting in November’s presidential election. "In partnership with DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency], Immigration & Customs Enforcement arrested two Ukrainian nationals for illegally VOTING in the 2024 election," DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement to The Federalist. Svitlana Demydenko, 53, and her daughter, Yelyzaveta Demydenko, 22, appeared in federal court this week in West Palm Beach on charges of unlawfully voting in a presidential election as an illegal alien. In an affidavit provided to The Federalist, Special Agent of Homeland Security Investigations Ashley Olson details the alleged crimes. Olson states the Florida Supervisor of Elections revealed that the women registered to vote on Aug. 18. Svitlana and Yelyzaveta each voted on Oct. 31 in Boynton Beach, Palm Beach County, in the Southern District of Florida, the affidavit asserts. In consensual interviews with the suspects at their residence, Yelyzaveta said she accompanied her step-father and mother to vote at a library in Boynton Beach, Olson stated. Yelyzaveta told law enforcement authorities she had to show her ID to vote. She provided them with her voter registration card, claiming that "she voted in the election because she wanted to make a difference," according to the affidavit in support of the criminal complaint. "Svitlana Demydenko confirmed that she had registered to vote online a few months before she voted in November 2024," the affidavit states. The Ukrainian woman claimed that she did not know that she couldn’t vote. She could not. The Demydenkos were admitted to the United States on nonimmigrant visas in April 2021, according to the affidavit. They became lawful permanent residents of the United States more than two years later. While permanent residents have the right to live and work in the U.S. through their alien registration cards, or "green cards," they continue to hold citizenship of their native countries. And they are not allowed to vote in federal elections. Only U.S. citizens are allowed to vote in U.S. elections, although several communities in left-led states allow foreign nationals, including illegal immigrants, to vote in local elections. But an increasing number of noncitizens have been showing up on state voter registration rolls, even as Democrats and leftist "nonpartisan" organizations vehemently fight against passage of the SAVE Act, a bill that aims to ensure only U.S. citizens vote in federal elections. As my Federalist colleague Brianna Lyman reported earlier this week, the Department of Justice in recent weeks has charged multiple foreign nationals for illegally voting in U.S. elections.

The AP [5/2/2025 6:17 PM, Lindsay Whitehurst, 48304K] reports the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to clear the way for Elon Musk ‘s Department of Government Efficiency to access Social Security systems containing personal data on millions of Americans. The emergency appeal is the first in a string of applications to the high court involving DOGE’s swift-moving work across the federal government. It comes after a judge in Maryland restricted the team’s access to Social Security under federal privacy laws. The agency holds personal records on nearly everyone in the country, including school records, bank details, salary information and medical and mental health records for disability recipients, according to court documents. The government says the team needs access to target waste in the federal government. Musk, now preparing to step back from his work with DOGE, has been focused on Social Security as an alleged hotbed of fraud. The billionaire entrepreneur has described it as a “ Ponzi scheme” and insisted that reducing waste in the program is an important way to cut government spending. Solicitor General John Sauer argued Friday that the judge’s restrictions disrupt DOGE’s important work and inappropriately interfere with executive-branch decisions. “Left undisturbed, this preliminary injunction will only invite further judicial incursions into internal agency decision-making,” he wrote. He asked the justices to block the order from U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander in Maryland as the lawsuit plays out. An appeals court previously refused to immediately to lift the block on DOGE access, though it split along ideological lines. Conservative judges in the minority said there’s no evidence that the team has done any “targeted snooping” or exposed personal information. The lawsuit was originally filed by a group of labor unions and retirees represented by the group Democracy Forward. The Supreme Court asked them for a response to the administration’s appeal by May 12. CBS News [5/2/2025 5:34 PM, Melissa Quinn, 51661K] reports that "the issue here is not the work that DOGE or the agency want to do. The issue is about how they want to do the work," U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander wrote in her 145-page decision. "The DOGE Team seeks access to the [personally identifiable information] that millions of Americans entrusted to SSA, and the SSA defendants have agreed to provide it. For some 90 years, SSA has been guided by the foundational principle of an expectation of privacy with respect to its records. This case exposes a wide fissure in the foundation.” She did allow DOGE team members to have access to redacted or anonymized information from the Social Security Administration, but only if they met certain conditions, such as receiving trainings and undergoing background investigations. The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit declined a Trump administration request to halt that injunction, leading it to seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court. In asking the high court to lift the district court’s injunction, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that it is forcing the executive branch to stop federal employees tasked with modernizing government systems from accessing the data contained within them. "The government cannot eliminate waste and fraud if district courts bar the very agency personnel with expertise and the designated mission of curtailing such waste and fraud from performing their jobs," he said.

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AP [5/2/2025 5:03 PM, Amanda Seitz and Alanna Durkin Richer, 48304K] reports President Donald Trump’s administration is conducting a nationwide, multi-agency review of 450,000 migrant children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without their parents during President Joe Biden’s term. Trump officials say they want to track down those children and ensure their safety. Many of the children came to the U.S. during surges at the border in recent years and were later placed in homes with adult sponsors, typically parents, relatives or family friends. Migrant advocates are dubious of the Republican administration’s tactics, which include dispatching Homeland Security and FBI agents to visit the children. Trump’s zero-tolerance approach to immigrants in the U.S. illegally, which has resulted in small children being flown out of the country, has raised deep suspicion his administration may use the review to deport any sponsors or children who are not living in the country legally. Trump officials say the adult sponsors who took in migrant children were not always properly vetted, leaving some at risk for exploitation.

Reuters [5/2/2025 6:00 AM, Ned Parker, Mike Spector, Peter Eisler, Linda So and Nate Raymond, 41523K] reports that, when U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled in April that Trump administration officials could face criminal contempt charges for deporting migrants in defiance of a court order, the blowback was immediate. The president’s supporters unleashed a wave of threats and menacing posts. And they didn’t just target the judge. Some attacked Boasberg’s brother. Others blasted his daughter. Some demanded the family’s arrest – or execution. U.S. District Judge John McConnell’s family endured similar threats after he ruled that President Donald Trump overstepped his authority in freezing grants for education and other services. Far-right provocateur Laura Loomer tweeted a photo of the judge’s daughter, who had worked at the U.S. Education Department as a policy advisor, and accused McConnell of protecting her paycheck. Billionaire Elon Musk amplified the post to his 219 million X followers. Neither mentioned the daughter had left her job before Trump’s inauguration. Loomer continued her attacks with nine more posts in the ensuing days – and more than 600 calls and emails flooded McConnell’s Rhode Island courthouse, including death threats and menacing messages taunting his family, according to a court clerk and another person familiar with the communications. Boasberg and McConnell are among at least 11 federal judges whose families have faced threats of violence or harassment after they ruled against the new Trump administration, a Reuters investigation found. The broadsides are part of an intimidation campaign directed at federal judges who have stood in the way of Trump’s moves to dramatically expand presidential authority and slash the federal bureaucracy. As Trump and his allies call for judges to be impeached or attack them as "radical left" political foes, the families of judges are being singled out for harassment. Since Trump returned to power in January, at least 60 judges or appeals courts have slowed or blocked some of his administration’s initiatives. Reuters spoke with a dozen federal judges who raised concerns about the security of their own families or of the relatives of colleagues handling Trump-related cases. They included jurists appointed by both Republican and Democratic presidents. Most requested anonymity, citing the potential for further inflaming security fears or raising questions about their impartiality. Additional information was gleaned from legal records and interviews with half a dozen officials involved in court security. Threats against judges and their families "are ultimately threats to constitutional government. It’s as simple as that," U.S. Circuit Judge Richard Sullivan, who chairs a security committee for the federal judiciary’s policymaking arm, said in an interview. The judiciary has emerged as a powerful constraint on a range of Trump’s initiatives, from dismantling government agencies to deporting migrants and targeting law firms. As Trump’s White House threatens to defy some court orders, legal scholars warn the country may already be in a constitutional crisis. The White House has said judges are the ones overreaching, not the president, but that threats against the judiciary are "unacceptable.” "No one takes security threats more seriously than President Trump – a leader who survived not one, but two assassination attempts," White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in response to questions for this story. "The safety of every American is his top priority, and anyone who endangers that safety will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” Reuters identified more than 600 posts on social media and right-leaning message boards since February targeting family members of judges who ruled against the Trump administration. The commentators attacked everything from their physical appearance to their patriotism. Amplified on X and other platforms by some of Trump’s most prominent allies, including Musk, those posts have been viewed more than 200 million times. At least 70 posts explicitly called for judges’ family members to face violence, retaliation or arrest.

Law Enforcement Today [5/2/2025 6:56 PM, Jenna Curren, 96K] reports it’s now being reported by the Washington Post that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been using polygraph tests to identify information leaks to the media, following other departments such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). An FBI spokesperson said that FBI Director Kash Patel ordered the bureau to administer polygraph tests to identify the sources of those information leaks. Declining to elaborate, the spokesperson said, "The seriousness of the specific leaks in question precipitated the polygraphs, as they involved potential damage to security protocols at the bureau." Attorney General Pam Bondi has also issued new guidelines, allowing the Department of Justice (DOJ) to subpoena reporters’ personal communications and the potential criminal prosecution of leaks regarding classified material and "privileged and other sensitive" information that the administration says is "designed to sow chaos and distrust" in the government. Back in March, NBC News reported that DHS had begun performing polygraph tests on its employees to determine who might be leaking information to the media about immigration operations. At the time, DHS said in a statement, "The Department of Homeland Security is a national security agency. We can, should, and will polygraph personnel." Border Czar Tom Homan and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem blamed the lower-than expected ICE arrest numbers on the leaks that allegedly revealed the cities where it planned to conduct its operations. According to CNN, FEMA, which is under DHS, has also given polygraph tests to dozens of its employees. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement, "We are agnostic about your standing, tenure, political appointment, or status as a career civil servant. We will track down leakers and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law."

Breitbart.com [5/2/2025 6:23 PM, Olivia Rondeau, 2923K] reports Mohsen Mahdawi, the Columbia University anti-Israel activist who was arrested and released from a deportation facility this week at the direction of an Obama-appointed judge, allegedly said that he likes to "kill Jews," despite being painted as a "peaceful" protester by left-wing media. Mahdawi, a 34-year-old Jordan-born green card holder, was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on April 14 after he went to a Vermont immigration office to take a citizenship test, Breitbart News reported. While the Columbia student’s attorney, Luna Droubi, claimed to the Intercept that he was "unlawfully detained today for no reason other than his Palestinian identity," the Washington Free Beacon revealed his deep support of Hamas terrorism: … Mahdawi, an undergraduate who was expected to enroll in a Columbia graduate program in the fall, has also said he "can empathize" with Hamas over the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 slaughter and has publicly called for the destruction of Israel. Last year, he honored a commander in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, a U.S.-designated terror group that participated in the attack alongside Hamas. Most recently, Mahdawi served as co-president of Columbia’s Palestinian Students Union, a coalition of anti-Israel student groups, including Columbia’s suspended Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace chapters.Despite his Hamas support, the New York Times published a puff-piece on Mahdawi titled "He Wanted Peace in the Middle East. ICE Wants to Deport Him," and he was released from deportation jail on Wednesday by Judge Geoffrey Crawford, a 2014 nominee of former President Barack Obama. Buried in Crawford’s opinion were allegations from a Vermont gun shop owner and another gun enthusiast who reported alarming, violent opinions shared by Mahdawi while he was shopping for firearms in 2015: In its response, the Government directs the court’s attention to an incident in summer 2015 when a gun shop owner told Windsor, Vermont police officers that Mr. Mahdawi had visited his store twice, expressing an interest in learning more about firearms and buying a sniper rifle and an automatic weapon and that he "had considerable firearm experience and used to build modified 9mm submachine guns to kill Jews while he was in Palestine." (Doc. 42-2.) The store owner stated that Mr. Mahdawi took photos of the store and its merchandise. (Id.) The store owner gave the police the name of a fellow gun enthusiast who stated that he had a similar conversation with Mr. Mahdawi at the "Precision Museum" in Windsor where the enthusiast served as a volunteer tour leader. During that conversation, Mr. Mahdawi allegedly told the gun enthusiast, "I like to kill Jews." (Id.).

CBS News [5/2/2025 4:54 PM, Melissa Quinn, 52225K] reports President Trump said Friday that his administration will be rescinding Harvard University’s tax-exempt status, further escalating the ongoing feud with the Ivy League school. "We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!" the president said in a post to Truth Social. Mr. Trump did not provide further details about the effort to strip Harvard of its designation as a 501(c)(3) organization, but he has floated taking such a step as recently as last month. Roughly 2 million organizations have received tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service, including charities like churches, environmental groups and universities. The designation means the groups are exempt from paying federal income taxes and the IRS considers donations to 501(c)(3) organizations to be tax-deductible. Harvard president Alan Garber expressed doubt about the legality of revoking the status. After the Trump administration announced it would be freezing the funding to Harvard, the university sued and alleged the move was unlawful. It’s likely a withdrawal of Harvard’s tax-exempt status will prompt further legal action. The Department of Homeland Security also demanded Harvard turn over information on certain foreign student visa holders or risk losing its certification in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. There were more than 6,700 international students enrolled at the school as of October, according to data from the university. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Harvard in a letter to the school of creating a "hostile learning environment for Jewish students due to Harvard’s failure to condemn antisemitism."

Reported similarly:
CNN [5/2/2025 12:05 PM, Andy Rose and Taylor Romine, 908K] r

New York Times [5/2/2025 11:12 AM, Andrew Duehren, Maggie Haberman and Alan Blinder, 145325K] reports Harvard University signaled Friday that it would resist President Trump’s renewed threat to revoke the school’s tax-exempt status, a move for which it said there was “no legal basis” as the president escalated his bitter dispute with the nation’s oldest university. Harvard stopped short of explicitly pledging a legal challenge to a revocation of its tax status, a change that would upend the university’s finances. But a spokesperson for the university said in a statement that there was “no legal basis to rescind Harvard’s tax-exempt status.” “Such an unprecedented action would endanger our ability to carry out our educational mission,” the statement said. “It would result in diminished financial aid for students, abandonment of critical medical research programs and lost opportunities for innovation. The unlawful use of this instrument more broadly would have grave consequences for the future of higher education in America.” Mr. Trump declared Friday morning on social media that the government would be “taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status.” Mr. Trump added, “It’s what they deserve.” Despite Mr. Trump’s assertion online and Harvard’s sharp response, it was not immediately clear Friday whether the I.R.S. was in fact moving forward with revoking Harvard’s tax-exempt status, a change that could typically occur only after a lengthy process. Federal law prohibits the president from directing the I.R.S. to conduct tax investigations, and I.R.S. employees who receive such a command are required to report it to an internal government watchdog. After Mr. Trump first publicly called for Harvard to lose its tax exemption last month, White House officials said that the I.R.S. would make its own conclusion about whether to do so. Representatives for the I.R.S. and Treasury Department, which oversees the tax collector, did not respond to a request for comment.

CNN [5/2/2025 10:30 AM, S Jeff Winter and Nicki Brown, 908K] reports as Harvard University students hunker down for spring semester finals, dozens of students rallied on campus on Tuesday urging the school’s leadership to hold firm in their fight with the Trump administration. It was the latest public display of support the Harvard community has shown following the school’s rebuke of the White House. "We are all very proud of the administration for the way it has stood up against the Trump administration – and stood strong," said sophomore Caleb Thompson, co-president of the Harvard Undergraduate Association. Last month, Harvard publicly rejected demands for policy changes that impacted academic freedoms and their rules over campus protests amid claims of antisemitism following contentious campus protests over Israel’s handling of its war in Gaza. The government, in response, announced it would freeze more than $2 billion in grants and contracts to the university. More than a dozen students interviewed by CNN said, like Thompson, they stand with Harvard President Alan Garber in his declaration that Harvard won’t "surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights," even as it faces steep consequences and high scrutiny. Harvard’s recent actions, however, threaten to jeopardize that support. The university announced Wednesday it shared data with the Department of Homeland Security in response to the agency’s request for information on the illegal activity and disciplinary records of international students, but did not provide details about what records were shared. DHS had given Harvard until Wednesday to respond to the demand or risk losing its ability to host foreign students. And on Monday, Harvard renamed its diversity, equity and inclusion office in a change that nods to President Donald Trump’s effort to eliminate DEI practices. The Ivy League university also said it would no longer host or fund affinity group celebrations during commencement on May 29, The Harvard Crimson reported. The decision came after the Department of Education threatened funding cuts if the school didn’t cancel graduation celebrations that could separate students by race, according to the report.

New York Post [5/2/2025 2:52 PM, Craig McCarthy and Matt Troutman, 54903K] reports more than 3,200 migrants housed in Big Apple taxpayer-funded shelters were busted — including for violent crimes such as assaults — over a nearly two-year span, police data obtained by The Post on Friday reveals. The new NYPD numbers provide the first data-driven and most detailed look to date at how the protracted migrant crisis – which saw more than 200,000 asylum seekers flow into the city – affected crime in New York City. A troublesome cadre of 3,219 migrants living in 48 city shelters across the city were arrested a total of 4,884 times between Jan. 1, 2023, and Oct. 31, 2024, the data shows. Their alleged crimes included 1,285 petit larcenies, or minor thefts, 544 assaults and 497 cases for dangerous drugs – the top three on a long list of offenses that also included robberies and sex crimes, according to the data. The miscreant migrants account for just 4% of the total number of asylum seekers who made their way to New York City, but their alleged crimes count as another cost to the city – in addition to the $7.7 billion that officials revealed this week has been spent. Mayor Eric Adams has all but declared the migrant crisis over as President Trump’s border policies – or fear of his harsh measures against immigrants – slowed the flow into the city. The dwindling number of arrivals prompted City Hall officials to shutter massive migrant shelters Randall’s Island, Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field and the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan. But the hangover from the influx of migrants arguably remains, especially as Adams and city officials hope to maintain law-and-order. Mayhem sparked by the influx of migrants, who began arriving to the city in spring 2022, have grabbed headlines and sparked political outrage. Those shocking incidents have included the shooting of two NYPD officers in Queens last June, the scuffle between a group of migrants and cops in Times Square in January 2024 — as well as the recent takedown of 27 suspected members of the violent Venezuelan gang Tren De Aragua gaining a foothold in the city. Suspected Tren de Aragua members – and those affiliated with its ‘Anti-Tren’ offshoot – allegedly plotted murders, extortion and sex-trafficked young women whom they called "multadas" across the city, the feds and NYPD alleged. Prosecutors and police sources have said Tren de Aragua members were behind a rash of robberies by moped-riding crooks who snatched phones and purses from unsuspecting New Yorkers.

AP [5/2/2025 5:24 PM, Alanna Durkin Richer, 24727K] reports the Trump administration has reached a preliminary agreement to settle a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of Ashli Babbitt over her shooting by an officer during the U.S. Capitol riot, attorneys said on Friday. Lawyers for Babbitt’s estate and the Justice Department told a judge in Washington’s federal court that they have reached a settlement in principle, but the details are still being worked out and the final agreement has not yet been signed. The terms of the settlement have not been disclosed. Babbitt’s estate filed the $30 million lawsuit last year over her fatal shooting when she attempted to climb through the broken window of a barricaded door leading to the Speaker’s Lobby inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The Capitol Police officer who shot her was cleared of wrongdoing, by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, which concluded that he acted in self-defense and in the defense of members of Congress. The Capitol Police also cleared the officer. Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran from San Diego, was unarmed when she was shot by the police lieutenant when she tried to climb through the door as others in the mob pressed to get into the lobby outside the House chamber. The lawsuit alleges that the officer, who was not in uniform, failed to de-escalate the situation and did not give her any warnings or commands before opening fire. It also alleges negligence on the part of Capitol Police. The lawsuit says the department "should have known" that the officer was "prone to behave in a dangerous or otherwise incompetent manner.” "Ashli posed no threat to the safety of anyone," the lawsuit said.

Reported similarly:
Reuters [5/2/2025 6:04 PM, Staff, 41523K]

Washington Examiner [5/2/2025 1:50 PM, Ashley Oliver, 2296K] reports the Trump administration told a Washington, D.C., court on Thursday that the president was the sole person who could decide whether the conditions of the Alien Enemies Act had been met. The argument comes as the government has faced a string of legal setbacks over its decision to invoke the powerful deportation law. Attorneys for the government wrote in court papers that President Donald Trump can declare a war or invasion, one of which is required to use the AEA, and that the courts have no authority to review Trump’s decision. "As for whether the Act’s preconditions are satisfied, that is the President’s call alone; the federal courts have no role to play," the attorneys said. The Department of Justice’s argument was at odds with a ruling issued by a judge in the Southern District of Texas hours earlier in a similar case.

Washington Examiner [5/2/2025 9:46 PM, Alan Wooten, 2296K] reports assistance from one of North Carolina’s 100 county sheriffs helped a freshman congressman craft legislation to assist law enforcement’s fight against international cartels. If passed, the Financial Intelligence and National Security, or FINS, Act would amend Section 5312 of Title 31, classifying wire transfer service providers as financial institutions under the Bank Secrecy Act and the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020. "This is a vital step in addressing the national drug crisis that is taking American lives every single day," Iredell County Sheriff Darren Campbell said. Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-NC), author of the bill, said drug traffickers, human smugglers, and terrorist financiers use wire transfer companies such as Western Union and Ria as "a backdoor into our financial system.” "It’s been a gift to the worst people in the world — and Washington let it happen," Harrigan said. "The FINS Act shuts that door. It brings accountability, oversight, and puts our national security first.” Harrigan says billions of dollars are moving with little to no oversight. He says it funds fentanyl, human trafficking and organized crime. In examples, Harrigan said three cellphone stores in Ohio laundered $44 million in cartel drug proceeds. Fake names were used, and heroin and fentanyl profits went across the border. In Atlanta, $40 million was used in drug money for trafficking and organized crime, he said. In Oakland, the representative from the 10th Congressional District said, a shop called Rincon Musical used WhatsApp to shift thousands of dollars in street drug profits. A woman in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa, Harrigan said, got what appeared to be legitimate transfers even though it was thousands of dollars for a cartel from fentanyl and heroin sold in American cities. "This bill requires wire services to follow the same anti-money laundering rules as banks — so these kinds of operations can’t happen," Harrigan said.

Breitbart.com [5/2/2025 3:42 PM, John Binder, 2923K] reports an illegal alien is accused of going on a random shooting spree on a Memphis, Tennessee, highway, injuring three people. Enoc Martinez, a 24-year-old illegal alien from Honduras, was arrested in Shelby County, and charged with five counts of attempted first-degree murder. According to police, Martinez showed up at a Memphis residence and shot a man before then making his way onto Interstate 240 and shooting at random drivers and passengers. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) revealed Thursday that Martinez illegally crossed the United States-Mexico border in June 2014 as an Unaccompanied Alien Child (UAC). From there, Martinez was turned over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement and placed with an adult sponsor in the U.S. In 2022, he was ordered deported by a federal immigration judge. Martinez is in Shelby County Jail on a $1 million bond. His next court date is May 19.

Blaze [5/2/2025 11:50 AM, Joseph MacKinnon, 1668K] reports Georgia authorities arrested 19 men over the course of a four-day sting operation aimed at flushing out sexual predators keen to molest and/or traffic children. Among those charged was a failed Democratic politician who apparently previously discussed killing President Donald Trump online. While ultimately executed from April 24 to 28 by the Muscogee County Sheriff’s Office, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and the Georgia Internet Crimes against Children Task Force, Operation Lights Out was apparently the result of months of planning and the collaboration of 12 law enforcement agencies at the federal, state, and local levels, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Secret Service. Undercover investigators posing as children engaged in conversation with various suspects on social media, dating websites, and other online platforms. In a number of exchanges, suspects allegedly "directed conversations with the child toward sex.” According to the GBI, 35 cases were established that met the threshold for arrest on the basis of the investigators’ interactions online. However, in the 19 cases that ultimately resulted in arrests, suspects attempted to meet the "child" in person. In some of these cases, suspects provided authorities additional cause to make an arrest, allegedly sharing pornography and other obscene content to the individual they figured for a child or asking the "child" to produce and send child pornography. The arrestees, whose ages range from 21 to 68 and included at least three illegal aliens, "traveled from areas around Columbus, Georgia, with the intent to meet a child for sex," said the GBI. "GBI digital forensic investigators were on hand during the operation to forensically process 21 electronic devices that were seized as evidence during the operation.”

FOX News [5/2/2025 10:51 AM, Charles Creitz, 46189K] reports Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier will rebut a judge’s demand that his office order state law enforcement to halt enforcement of a state immigration law she ordered paused under suspicion of unconstitutionality. The law allows for misdemeanor charges against illegal immigrants who enter Florida and hope to avoid federal immigration officials. "The judge wants me to put my stamp of approval on an order prohibiting all state law enforcement from enforcing Florida’s immigration laws when no law enforcement are party to the lawsuit," he said, as the ACLU’s suit is being adjudicated before Obama-appointed Miami federal judge Kathleen Williams. "I’m just not going to do that. We believe the court has overstepped and lacks jurisdiction there, and I will not tell law enforcement to stop fulfilling their constitutional duties," Uthmeier, who is being threatened with contempt actions, told Fox News Digital. "I do not believe an AG should be held in contempt for respecting the rule of law and appropriate separation of powers. The ACLU is dead set on obstructing President Donald Trump’s efforts to detain and deport illegals, and we are going to fight back. We will vigorously defend our laws and advance President Trump’s agenda on illegal immigration.” The lawsuit that spurred the injunction alleges Florida’s law violates the Supremacy Clause that designates federal laws and authorities as taking precedence over state laws. Bacardi Jackson, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, told the AP that politicians in Tallahassee "tried to turn fear into policy and made it a crime simply to exist as an immigrant in this state.” "The court rightly reminded them: immigration enforcement is a job for the federal government, not a political weapon for states to use," Jackson said in a statement.

Breitbart [5/2/2025 3:23 PM, Christian K. Caruzo, 2923K] reports Narciso Amador Fernández Ramírez, a known propagandist of Cuba’s communist Castro regime, is allegedly living in the United States thanks to the Biden-era "Humanitarian Parole" program, Cuban-American journalist Mario Pentón reported on Thursday. The outlet Cubanet described Fernández Ramírez, 65, as a former deputy director of Vanguardia, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) in the central province of Villa Clara, who also served as columnist for the state propaganda outlet Cubahora. The communist propagandist is known in Cuba for vehemently insulting the Cuban diaspora in the United States, branding its members as "rats," gusanos ("maggots"), and "mercenaries.” Most notably, Fernández Ramírez appears listed as the author of two pieces published on the official website of late murderous dictator Fidel Castro. One such piece, dated 2019, in which Fernández Ramírez is listed as an author refers to the veterans of the Bay of Pigs liberation attempt as "rats." In another piece, dated 2017, Fernández Ramírez praised late murderous communist dictator Fidel Castro and claimed that Castro is "seated, vigilant, next to [Cuban founding Father Jose] Martí, in the sacred Olympus of the heroes of the Homeland.” Pentón reported that Fernández Ramírez has resided in Homestead, Florida, since March 2024 after he became a beneficiary of "humanitarian parole," a now-extinct and fraud-riddled program launched in 2023 by the administration of former U.S. President Joe Biden that allowed up to 30,000 Cubans, Haitiaians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans per month to request entry to the United States by means of a "sponsor," granting them legal stay and work permits for a period of "up to two years.” "He is waiting for a green card to apply for benefits such as Social Security and Medicare. He, who was the most unconditional communist in Villa Clara, is now enjoying his old age in the country he despised so much," a source told Pentón on condition of anonymity. According to Pentón, Fernández Ramírez presently lives in Homestead with his wife Elizabeth Leal and their daughter, who already resided in the United States. "A simple Google search was enough to know that this man was a propagandist for the Communist Party of Cuba. That makes him ineligible for immigration benefits," Florida-based immigration attorney Ismael Labrador told Pentón.

Axios [5/2/2025 6:20 AM, Troy Smith, Sareen Habeshian, 13163K] reports the recent spotlight on "sanctuary cities" could put Cleveland’s immigration policies in the crosshairs of the Trump administration and state Republicans. Earlier this week, President Trump signed an executive order calling for federal agencies to document cities and states with laws and ordinances that don’t comply with Trump’s federal immigration laws. "Sanctuary cities" that don’t comply "may" lose federal funding, the White House said. At the same time, Ohio lawmakers are considering House Bill 26, a Republican-sponsored bill that would require cities to cooperate with federal immigration laws or face state funding restrictions. Cleveland is not considered a "sanctuary city" by the Center for Immigration Studies, which tracks local governments that "obstruct immigration enforcement and shield criminals from ICE." However, Mayor Justin Bibb has been vocal in his opposition to federal immigration policies. "My administration will not engage in the deportation of individuals who have not committed violent crimes ... No law requires that we do so," Bibb said after Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids swept across Northeast Ohio in January. City Council passed a resolution in 1987 declaring Cleveland a sanctuary city. A resolution is not legally enforceable in the same way as a law or ordinance. Trump’s order directs Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Department of Homeland Security to identify non-compliant cities and states within a month. They are to publish a list of jurisdictions and notify them, providing an opportunity to correct it. Meanwhile, HB 26 had its first hearing, which featured sponsor testimony, in front of the Public Safety Committee earlier this week. A vote has yet to be held. "Our role as the state and federal government is still to enforce reasonable laws, make sure that people’s rights are protected," bill co-sponsor Rep. Tex Fischer (R-Boardman) said in February, per the Columbus Dispatch. "There is not a constitutionally protected right to illegally enter and reside in this country." What about those ‘oops’ moments where the sheriff goes, picks someone up, the person is detained, maybe detained for a long period of time, loses their job and loses their benefits, things of that nature?" Rep. Darnell Brewer (D-Cleveland) asked in questioning the bill, per the Statehouse News Bureau. "Where is the due process to make sure we are not using it one — as a moneymaker, and two — just as a retaliation piece as well?"

AP [5/2/2025 12:32 PM, Staff, 48304K] reports that a Michigan police officer who killed a man with a shot to the back of the head testified in his own defense Friday, telling jurors at his second-degree murder trial that he feared for his life after losing his Taser during an intense fight. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Chicago Tribune [5/2/2025 7:10 AM, Caroline Kubzansky and Nell Salzman, 5269K] reports that, when a converted Kenwood hotel opened its doors to migrants in the summer of 2023, officials who announced the news received vociferous pushback from residents. They had numerous concerns about the shelter at 4900 S. DuSable Lake Shore Drive: whether migrants would be vaccinated and fingerprinted; how their children would be educated; the food they would eat. And many wanted to know what Chicago was doing for the large and growing homeless population that predated the migrants’ arrival. Almost three years later, buses sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have stopped arriving from the more closely surveilled southern border. The city has closed down most of the facilities it scrambled to stand up to meet waves of asylum-seekers, mostly from Venezuela. Thousands have transitioned to permanent housing. Police stations, once overflowing with newly arrived people, are empty. What remains is a new, merged shelter network officials have dubbed the One System Initiative, which houses anyone, from anywhere, who doesn’t have a place to go. The city and state were running 28 migrant-exclusive facilities at the peak of arrivals in January of last year, according to city census data. They have collaborated with nonprofits to run 51 total sites across the system, city officials said. Homeless advocates have long championed the idea of a combined system, saying it would spread out resources to a wider range of people. The first few months under the new system brought changes those advocates hailed as triumphs, including the opening of a new no-barrier emergency shelter on the Lower West Side that works as a gateway to the social service network for anyone. Challenges remain. The number of people who need a short-term place to sleep still exceeds the 7,400 beds available in the merged systems. Some facilities are still dealing with bilingual staff shortages. Even if Chicago’s emergency shelters were perfectly equipped to meet demand, advocates say that issues with homelessness will persist unless the city addresses its inadequate supply of affordable housing. And in Kenwood, some residents are pushing back and may take legal action to try to prevent a shelter that once opened for migrants from becoming a permanent fixture in their area.

Chicago Tribune [5/2/2025 5:59 PM, Jeremy Gorner, 5269K] reports President Donald Trump’s administration has filed a lawsuit alleging the state of Illinois is undermining federal immigration laws with a measure passed by the General Assembly last year aimed at protecting the privacy of workers who are non-U.S. citizens. The lawsuit is the latest challenge to Illinois’ progressive immigration policies from Trump’s Justice Department. Earlier this year, the department sued the state and city of Chicago over so-called sanctuary policies that limit the cooperation of local police with federal law enforcement on immigration matters. The lawsuit filed Thursday challenges amendments the state made to the state’s Right to Privacy in the Workplace Act, which lays out a number of privacy-related workplace requirements including guidelines that govern employers’ use of systems to check workers’ employment eligibility, such as the federal E-Verify program. The federal lawsuit alleges that changes made to the state law last year violate the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, which bars state and local governments from impeding the federal government’s ability to enforce federal laws. The Justice Department accuses the state of Illinois, Attorney General Kwame Raoul and Jane Flanagan, the head of the Illinois Department of Labor, of unlawfully carrying out changes to the E-Verify portion of the privacy and workplace law meant to protect workers without U.S. citizenship. Pritzker was not named as a defendant. The Justice Department is requesting the court to halt enforcement of the state law’s amendments.

New York Times [5/2/2025 7:28 PM, Mitch Smith and Hamed Aleaziz, 145325K] reports a dispute over a memo about how Wisconsin state workers should interact with federal immigration agents escalated this week into sharply worded warnings from the president’s border czar, Thomas Homan, and the state’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers. Mr. Evers and others interpreted comments by Mr. Homan to suggest that he and other elected officials could face arrest over local immigration policies, leading the Wisconsin governor to say he was “not afraid” of what he described as “chilling threats.” The Wisconsin dispute was the latest chapter in a long-running fight between President Trump’s administration and Democratic-led cities and states over whether local officials must cooperate with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. In Wisconsin, Republicans had for days pushed for Mr. Evers to rescind a message to state employees, issued on April 18 by the state’s Department of Administration. The single-page memo instructed workers to call a state lawyer if an ICE agent or other federal official visited their workplace. The memo told state workers to stay calm and notify their supervisors, to not immediately answer an agent’s questions and to not give them access to nonpublic areas. Chicago officials issued similar guidance to city workers earlier this year. The disagreement over the memo intensified outside the White House on Thursday when a person who identified himself as being from The Gateway Pundit, a right-wing website, asked Mr. Homan why the government was not simply arresting “the leaders who are harboring and shielding” people who should be deported. Mr. Homan responded, “Wait till you see what’s coming.” When the reporter followed up by asking specifically about Mr. Evers and the Wisconsin memo, Mr. Homan expanded on his first response. “Wait to see what’s coming,” he said, according to video of the exchange posted by C-SPAN. “I meant what I said: You can not support what we’re doing. And you can support sanctuary cities if that’s what you want to do. But if you cross that line of impede-ment, or knowingly harboring and concealing an illegal alien, that is a felony and we’re treating it as such.”

Reported similarly:
CBS Chicago [5/2/2025 4:33 PM, Staff, 51661K]

New York Times [5/3/2025 3:42 AM, Mattathias Schwartz, 330K] reports Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., a bespectacled, soft-spoken 56-year-old nominated by President Trump, turned his high-backed leather chair toward a government lawyer at the federal courthouse in Brownsville, Texas, and asked a question. Can the president define what counts as an invasion, then declare that an invasion is happening, and then use a 1798 war powers law to expel the so-called invaders? “Yes,” answered Michael Velchik, a Justice Department lawyer. Judge Rodriguez followed up: Wouldn’t that make Mr. Trump’s powers under the wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, “effectively limitless?” The question hinted at a groundbreaking ruling that Judge Rodriguez issued on Thursday when he found that Mr. Trump was wrong to claim that the activities of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang in the United States, amounted to an “invasion” that justified invoking the wartime law. The decision was the most sweeping ruling issued so far by a federal judge blocking the most aggressive prong of Mr. Trump’s effort, one that was already used to deport nearly 140 Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador on March 15. It comes after a Supreme Court decision in early April that Venezuelan detainees facing potential deportation under the Alien Enemies Act could file lawsuits in the district courts where they were being held. The result of the court’s order has been that challenges to a key piece of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda, which began in Washington, are spreading around the country, filling the dockets of federal judges and drawing tough and skeptical questioning — even from jurists with impeccable conservative credentials. Judge Rodriguez’s order came after five other judges hearing challenges of detainees related to the Alien Enemies Act issued temporary orders that blocked deportations for some or all of those held in their districts. In Colorado, a judge found that there cannot be an “invasion” without “military and wartime action” and that the administration had “improperly” relied on the words as a legal basis for deportations.

Los Angeles Times [5/2/2025 12:00 PM, Fidel Martinez, 13342K] reports S-O-S. That’s what 31 male detainees in red and orange jumpsuits, all Venezuelan nationals, spelled out with their bodies on Monday as a Reuters drone flew over the immigration detention center in Anson, Texas. The image — you can see it here — quickly spread on social media. According to the news agency, the men had been handed notices from immigration officials 10 days ago accusing them of belonging to Tren de Aragua, the transnational gang founded in Venezuela, and were therefore subject for removal under the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 wartime law that grants the president the authority to deport noncitizens without an immigration hearing. The last time the law was invoked was during World War II, resulting in the mass incarceration of people of Japanese descent, including American citizens. The men were then transported by bus from the Bluebonnet Detention Facility to the Abilene Regional Airport, where they were to be flown to the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT. The notorious maximum security prison in El Salvador is currently housing more than 100 Venezuelan nationals sent there by the Trump administration in March. But before they could be placed on a plane, the Supreme Court intervened and temporarily blocked their removals. Several of the men being held at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility deny belonging to Tren de Aragua, and immigration officials have yet to provide any substantial evidence that proves otherwise.

AP [5/2/2025 2:52 PM, Staff, 48304K] reports that the U.S. meatpacking industry has long relied on immigrants fleeing poverty and violence around the world. Texas - the nation’s leading cattle producer - is home to many of them. But with Trump’s immigration crackdowns, workers are facing uncertainty. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

FOX News [5/2/2025 8:00 AM, Cameron Arcand, Bill Melugin, 46189K] reports California state Sen. Tony Strickland believes policy reforms are warranted after federal authorities intervened in the planned early release of an illegal immigrant convicted in a 2021 DUI manslaughter that killed two Orange County teenagers in his district in Seal Beach. The Republican told Fox News Digital that changes are needed to programs like the in-prison credit system that may have allowed Oscar Eduardo Ortega-Anguiano to be released back into the community in July if the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) did not quickly get involved. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said last week that California will "coordinate" with ICE to "transfer him before release," as he is slated to only spend three and half years of his 10-year sentence behind bars at the state level. "We need to reform these programs. We need to reform some of this. Again, I think the most essential role of government is public safety, and we need to bring accountability back into our system here in California. If you make a mistake, you can commit a crime. You should do the time. And again, we are not more safe by these programs, we’re less safe," Strickland told Fox News Digital in an interview. The senator said the plan for early release was "a slap in the face of the parents and everybody who loved those children who ended up passing away.” Ortega-Anguiano, 43, was driving drunk and high, and speeding at nearly 100mph on the 405 freeway in Orange County in November 2021, when he crashed into a car being driven by a young couple, 19-year-olds Anya Varfolomeev and Nicholay Osokin, killing them both as they burned alive. In spring 2022, he was convicted of two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated. Fox News reported that the victim’s families were informed on Easter Sunday about an early release. However, following the report, the DOJ said they would be prosecuting Ortega-Anguiano on federal charges to keep him behind bars longer. "For safety and security reasons CDCR cannot provide information on an incarcerated person’s release date or location in advance of their release. Incarcerated persons may earn credits for participating in rehabilitative programming, which may move their parole dates to an earlier date," the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation stated last week.

CNN [5/2/2025 5:30 AM, Stephanie Elam, Kat Jaeger and Norma Galeana, 908K] reports all Carlos could do was cry. He watched as other day laborers in a Home Depot parking lot in Pomona, California, were detained by Customs and Border Protection agents April 22. Later, Carlos – who withheld his last name – stood before microphones at a news conference covered by CNN affiliates KCBS/KCAL and KABC. His face was obscured by a baseball cap, a mask and sunglasses, which he temporarily moved to wipe away tears. "We are here. We are human beings. We’re only here to support ourselves and to maintain our families," Carlos said through an interpreter in the news conference, which was held by advocates of day laborers. While Carlos wasn’t detained, day worker advocates say operations like the one in Pomona have long-lasting impacts on those who are apprehended, as well as their families and communities. Many day laborers are undocumented immigrants looking for work and a fair wage in appropriate and safe working conditions. Organizers who work with day laborers in the Pomona area say the raid that day was an anomaly, but it still sent a shockwave of fear through the migrant community. "A raid like what happened at Home Depot hasn’t happened in Pomona in the last decade," explained Alexis Teodoro, the worker rights director for the Pomona Economic Opportunity Center, a non-profit that helps day laborers find work and job training. The action falls in line with President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to crack down on illegal immigration and the executive orders on immigration he signed on his first day in office. More than 66,000 undocumented immigrants were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement during Trump’s first 100 days in office, the agency announced Tuesday; that’s nearly half the number arrested by ICE during the entire 2024 fiscal year. Teodoro and other day laborer advocates say the fear of more of these operations is having a "chilling effect," changing these workers’ behavior and keeping them from so-called "soft targets" where undocumented immigrants could easily be apprehended – places such as houses of worship, their children’s schools and locations where they normally find work. ‘I was afraid I was going to end up in detention in El Salvador or Guantanamo’. Undocumented individuals such as Martin Majin Leon are also getting picked up in targeted operations. In surveillance camera footage from the same day as the Pomona raid, the 59-year-old from Guerrero, Mexico, is seen arriving at the Pomona barbershop he’s owned for more than two decades, getting out of his car to open the gate, and being blocked in by two vehicles. Agents apprehended him in just a few minutes, parked his car off the road and drove away with him in a van.

Wall Street Journal [5/2/2025 1:50 PM, José de Córdoba and Santiago Pérez, 646K] reports President Trump is pressuring Mexico to allow deeper U.S. military involvement in the fight against drug cartels, people familiar with the discussions said, making security a sticking point for neighbors that are also negotiating over trade and immigration. Tension rose toward the end of a 45-minute telephone conversation with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on April 16 when Trump pushed to have U.S. armed forces take a leading role in battling Mexican drug gangs that produce and smuggle fentanyl to the U.S., the people said. Sheinbaum told Trump her administration would cooperate on matters such as intelligence sharing but not accept a direct military presence, the people added. Trump has said publicly that the U.S. would take unilateral action if Mexico doesn’t dismantle cartels. “Mexico is very, very afraid of the cartels,” Trump told the Spanish-language network of Fox News shortly after the April 16 conversation. “We want to help her. We want to help Mexico, because you can’t run a country like that. You just can’t.” Trump and Sheinbaum have said their call was productive. White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said robust bilateral cooperation is delivering results and creating a historically secure border. “But Mexico still must do more to protect Americans from dangerous foreign terrorist organizations and the drugs and violence they flood into communities on both sides of the border,” she said. Mexican officials said Mexico won’t consent to a U.S. military presence because of the nations’ fraught history, which includes two invasions since 1846.

NewsMax.com [5/2/2025 3:17 PM, Jim Mishler, 4998K] reports cooperative efforts between the U.S. and Mexico to combat drug cartels appear to have hit some snags, as evidenced by no new announced actions. The Wall Street Journal reported that since an April 16 call between President Donald Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, there have been no new agreement announcements or documented actions. Trump’s request to get U.S. military operatives inside Mexico for confrontation with cartels was rejected by Sheinbaum. But Trump has not given up. The report indicated that despite Sheinbaum’s refusal to allow U.S. forces to operate in Mexico, the Trump administration has considered the deployment of armed drones or unmanned aerial vehicles to conduct attacks on cartel bosses. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin told Newsmax that international drug cartels are "increasingly desperate." She said they have begun to use drones over U.S. territory to help coordinate attacks on US Border enforcement agents.

CNN [5/2/2025 6:30 AM, Isobel Yeung and Norma Galeana, 22131K] reports the man sitting in front of us belongs to the Sinaloa Cartel — one of the most powerful and feared criminal networks in the world — and one the US government recently designated a foreign terrorist organization. This is a gang that "murder, rape, torture and exercise total control… posing a great threat to (the United States’) national security," according to US President Donald Trump, who has promised to "wage war" against Mexico’s cartels. It’s taken weeks to reach this man, verify his identity, and persuade him to talk with us. Our contact on the ground here in the Mexican state of Sinaloa has repeatedly reassured him we are not the police. Or DEA agents. Or the CIA. We arrive at a nondescript house in a residential area on the southern side of Culiacán city and are instructed to cover our camera on the way in. It’s a neighborhood that’s known to be populated by cartels. Once inside, we’re taken to a dimly lit bedroom at the back of the house. A giant painting of Jesus Christ is nailed to the wall, above a rusty looking bed caked in dust. An older, beefy man stands by the window, holding a walkie-talkie close to his ear and anxiously glancing up and down the street where cars and military vehicles pass by. The cartel member — now a terrorist in the eyes of the US government — sits in one corner of the room. He has a firm handshake and a hefty build. He wears a "Joker" movie baseball cap pulled down over his head, a scarf wrapped tightly around his face, sunglasses to disguise his eyes, and blue latex gloves to cover the tattoos on his hands. Propped up by his chair is an assault rifle. Next to that are two more walkie-talkies, from which cartel look-outs provide a constant stream of feedback on the movements of the Mexican military. He says he produces fentanyl — the synthetic opioid that has become the most common drug involved in overdose deaths in the United States. "Of course, of course, things are sad," says the man, who didn’t give his real name. "(But) you have to continue… Families have to eat," he shrugs. For nearly two decades, Mexican authorities have been waging a battle against the cartels, with limited results. And for over five decades, various US presidents have declared wars on drugs. But amid fresh waves of cartel violence and pressure from Trump in the form of threatened US military intervention and higher import tariffs, President Claudia Sheinbaum has adopted a more head-on approach to tackling the issue. (Her predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s "hugs, not bullets" stance proved woefully ineffective.). Around 10,000 members of Mexico’s National Guard have been sent to their northern border, in part to stop the flow of narcotics from entering the US. And hundreds of soldiers are believed to have joined preexisting armed forces, marines, National Guards and law enforcement already stationed in Sinaloa state, home to the infamous Sinaloa drug cartel previously led by the notorious drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.

CNN [5/3/2025 12:00 AM, Staff, 22131K] reports US President Donald Trump is pressuring the Mexican government to crack down on Mexican cartels, blaming them for fomenting America’s drugs crisis. He’s threatened tariffs and even military strikes. Mexico has sent hundreds of troops to the state of Sinaloa, where a war rages between two factions of the infamous Sinaloa Cartel, putting civilians at risk. CNN’s Isobel Yeung visits the region – speaking to a member of the Sinaloa cartel, meeting families impacted by the violence and seeing the work soldiers are doing to destroy drug production in the rural countryside. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

CBS News [5/2/2025 6:42 AM, Staff, 51661K] reports a former Mexican federal agent who testified against the drug trafficker son of the country’s most wanted man was shot dead in the central state of Morelos, authorities said Thursday. Ivan Morales was a prosecution witness in the U.S. trial of Ruben Oseguera Gonzalez, a leader of Mexico’s violent Jalisco New Generation cartel, who was jailed for life by a Washington court in March. Gonzalez’s father is Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes -- better known as "El Mencho" -- who heads the cartel and has a $15 million U.S. bounty on his head. Morales and his wife were shot dead on Wednesday morning as they were traveling in their vehicle in the Temixco area, around 60 miles from Mexico City, according to a police report. State prosecutors are investigating the crime and have not ruled out revenge as a possible motive, local media reported. Morales had a decade ago, on May 1, 2015, survived one of Mexico’s bloodiest drug trafficking attacks, when a military helicopter carrying 16 soldiers and two federal police officers was shot down in the western state of Jalisco. Nine people died but Morales managed to escape from the burning wreckage, though he suffered severe burns that left part of his face disfigured. That helicopter was flying in an ultimately unsuccessful mission to arrest "El Mencho.” In September, a federal jury convicted the younger Oseguera -- nicknamed "El Menchito" -- of conspiring to distribute cocaine and methamphetamine for U.S. importation and using a firearm in a drug conspiracy. "El Menchito led the Jalisco Cartel’s efforts to use murder, kidnapping, and torture to build the Cartel into a self-described ‘empire’ by manufacturing fentanyl and flooding the United States with massive quantities of lethal drugs," former U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in September. Ruben Oseguera ordered the killings of at least 100 people, personally shot and killed at least two people and ordered subordinates to shoot down the Mexican military helicopter in 2015, prosecutors said.

NewsNation [5/2/2025 2:32 PM, Ali Bradley, 6866K] Video HERE reports Terrance Cole, who is President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, met with the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this week. During the meeting, Cole made allegations about the Mexican government, claiming that when it comes to Mexico’s law enforcement agencies, the cartels are the ones who are in control of everything. The DEA has said before the cartels were in all 50 U.S. states but is now also saying that the criminal organizations essentially control Mexico. Cole said he believes the cartels govern a majority of Mexico. “We’ve seen, traditionally, the military working hand in hand, we’ve seen police officers working hand in hand with cartel members,” Cole said. “I saw the cartels’ coercion of government institutions, intimidation of law enforcement and their brutal enforcement of control over entire communities.” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum regularly refutes the claims, pointing the finger back to the U.S. and the flow of fentanyl, saying, “Start with your own country first.” Sheinbaum has taken a stance on cracking down on cartels and discovering who distributes the drugs and where the money from it goes. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Bloomberg [5/2/2025 9:45 AM, Nathan Risser, 16228K] reports The US Treasury Department announced sanctions on three Mexican nationals and two Mexican companies involved in fuel theft and smuggling by the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion. The new batch of sanctions are the latest in ongoing efforts by Mexico and the US to curtail stolen fuel shipments that have cost the Mexican government billions of dollars and become the most significant non-drug revenue for the Cartels according to a Thursday statement from the Treasury’s financial crime enforcement division. Last year, Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned nine Mexican nationals and 26 Mexico-based entities linked to fuel theft, known colloquially in Mexico as huachicol.

Daily Wire [5/2/2025 1:47 PM, Zach Jewell, 4672K] reports President Donald Trump is pressuring Mexico to allow the United States military to get further involved in the fight against drug cartels, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The Journal, citing "people familiar with the discussions," reported that a 45-minute phone call between Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on April 16 got heated after Trump pushed for the U.S. military to lead in the fight against cartels. Sheinbaum reportedly was not willing to allow the United States to take direct military action against the cartels inside Mexico. Trump has made fighting the cartels a top priority of his goal to secure the southern border and stop the flow of fentanyl into the United States, vowing to "wage war on the cartels" and designating them as foreign terrorist organizations. Shortly after his April 16 phone call with Sheinbaum, Trump told Fox News’ Spanish-speaking network that "Mexico is very, very afraid of the cartels.” "We want to help her. We want to help Mexico, because you can’t run a country like that. You just can’t," he added. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, "The deadly reach of the Mexican Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels into U.S. communities is extended by the wholesale-level traffickers and street dealers bringing the cartels’ drugs to market, sometimes creating their own deadly drug mixtures, and exploiting social media and messaging applications to advertise and sell to customers.” After Trump designated numerous cartels as terrorist organizations, Sheinbaum pushed for a constitutional reform to further protect Mexico’s sovereignty, Reuters reported. "The Mexican people will under no circumstances accept interventions, intrusions, or any other action from abroad that are detrimental to the integrity, independence, or sovereignty of the nation… (including) violations of Mexican territory, whether by land, sea, or air," the Mexican president said. The Trump administration has reportedly considered using drone strikes against cartels in Mexico, and Trump’s border czar Tom Homan told The Daily Wire in March that Trump would "use the full might of the federal government to take them out.” "We’re not just going to attack them on the southern border, we’re going to attack them across the globe," Homan added. Trump is negotiating with Mexico on two fronts, seeking to increase military cooperation while also pushing for a trade deal with the country. The president slapped a 25% tariff on Mexico on February 1, pushing the country to do more to stop fentanyl trafficking and secure its border with the United States. After Mexico was hit with the tariff, Sheinbaum agreed to send 10,000 troops to the border.

FOX News [5/2/2025 6:00 AM, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, 46189K] reports that, when the Founding Fathers drafted the Aliens Act of 1798, they intended it to act as an antibody against foreign armies, criminal networks, and individuals who sought to do America harm. They understood something we have forgotten. Every nation has not just a right to act in self-defense, but a duty to do so. When a nation neglects that duty, it risks becoming a haven for vile criminal elements from across the globe, and a battleground in other nation’s conflicts. No nation is obligated to harbor foreign criminals from justice in their home nations, much less allow them to continue their crime spree right here in the United States. Until President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, that was what the United States was doing. Harboring criminals like Adrian Rafael Gamez Finol, Miguel Oyola Jimenez, and Edgar Javier Benitez Rubio, the three members of Tren de Aragua charged with kidnapping, torturing, and murdering Ronald Ojeda in Chile. Ojeda was a genuine political refugee, a lieutenant in the Venezuelan army, who protested the criminal tyranny of Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship and dreamed of one day returning home. That day would never come. Rather than facing justice for those crimes, Ojeda’s three murderers currently reside in the United States, making a mockery of an asylum process designed for men like Ronald Ojeda. Thanks to President Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, Ojeda’s family may finally receive justice in Chile, and these murderers will no longer threaten the American people in their midst. Ojeda’s murderers and their fellow members of Tren de Aragua are exactly who the Founding Fathers had in mind when they passed the Alien Enemies Act in 1798. They are not merely murderers, but members of a hostile Foreign Terrorist Organization that has committed "a predatory incursion" into the territory of the United States and engaged in "crime against the public safety," while in league with a foreign government. The evidence is clear. TdA operates in conjunction with Cártel de los Soles, the Maduro regime’s-sponsored narco-terrorism enterprise based in Venezuela and was closely aligned with Tareck El Aissami, the Venezuelan regime’s former Vice President. Whether TdA exclusively murders, smuggles drugs, and traffics illegal immigrants over our borders on the orders of Venezuelan leaders, or freelances for self-enrichment is beside the point. It has killed on behalf of a hostile foreign government, that government has fostered its growth, and that government has encouraged it to invade the United States to advance its interests. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

New York Times [5/2/2025 4:18 PM, Mohsen Mahdawi, 153395K] reports on April 14, 2025, I was detained during what should have been my citizenship naturalization interview. After more than two weeks of unjust imprisonment, a federal judge ruled in favor of releasing me. In a major victory for democracy, I may be the first of the many student activists who have been detained by the Trump administration to be freed from detention. The Department of Homeland Security had effectively orchestrated a trap. It dangled the prospect of becoming an American citizen, only for masked agents to apprehend me after I finished the interview and signed a document saying I was willing to take an oath of allegiance. Government agents separated me from my lawyer, who had gone to the appointment with me. They planned to whisk me from my home state, Vermont, to a detention facility in Louisiana. The trap was not a complete surprise to me. It came after other arrests of students for exercising their right to free speech in opposing Israel’s relentless killing and destruction in Gaza. I had prepared by contacting lawyers, my Vermont senators and my House representative, the media and a group of community members. The Department of Homeland Security’s plan did not go smoothly, as we missed the flight to Louisiana by minutes. Those few minutes changed the course of my legal case and, ultimately, led to my freedom from detention because I was able to fight for my rights on fair ground. Unlike other students who continue to languish in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, I’ve been afforded the “privilege” to seek justice while not in prison. Despite spending 16 nights in a jail cell, I never lost hope in the inevitability of justice and the principles of democracy. I wanted to become a citizen of this country because I believe in the principles that it enshrines. When Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford ruled in my favor, he reassured me, along with the American people, that there is still reason to hope in those principles. But the road to justice is long. My freedom is intertwined with the freedom of the other students, who exercised the same free speech rights as I did yet languish in jail, and is intertwined with that of the Palestinians, who are fighting for their right to life and justice, too.

The Hill [5/2/2025 11:30 AM, Duncan Wood, 12829K] reports America’s border policy has long been trapped in a false choice between security and commerce. But history shows us that smart policies grounded in technology and risk management can enhance both. The aftermath of 9/11 provides a blueprint: When terrorists exploited gaps in aviation security, the U.S. responded with a major overhaul that improved both safety and efficiency. The creation of new programs that mitigated the risk from travelers visiting the U.S. allowed commerce and business, as well as legitimate travel for professional and personal reasons, to flourish. Today, the challenge is different but no less urgent. Our borders must be secure not just from illegal crossings but from economic threats — counterfeit goods, supply chain vulnerabilities and adversarial state influence. This is doubly true in the era of higher tariffs and geoeconomic competition.

New York Times [5/3/2025 3:42 AM, Shayna Kessler, 330K] reports President Trump’s assertion that people should be denied hearings in immigration court is unconstitutional and an affront to due process. No matter where they are from, all people in the United States are entitled to due process when their freedom is at risk. When due process is denied, people face threats to their safety and our democracy is jeopardized. Due process requires notice and a fair hearing, as well as legal representation in immigration court. Deporting people who have the right to stay safely rooted in the United States — parents, children, business owners and people seeking safety from persecution — exposes them to grave harm. Rather than slamming shut the courthouse doors in an effort to expedite a mass deportation agenda that upends our democratic values, we should advance sensible and humane solutions to build a fair immigration system. Immigrants are central to our families, communities and economy. The real danger to our country is a government that denies anyone a fair day in court.

San Diego Union Tribune [5/2/2025 8:03 AM, Staff, 1682K] reports that, perhaps the best hope that President Donald Trump will rein in the erratic excesses that have unnerved many liberals, moderates and constitutional conservatives alike is that more and more MAGA believers are losing the faith. A new Navigator Research poll shows that 11% of Trump voters regretted their support and 16% were disappointed by his first 100 days. It’s not just business owners and CEOs who have been horrified to realize that Trump truly believes that trade deficits are always a sign of national weakness — not a fact of life in a global economy in which countries run surpluses in fields where they have built-in advantages that enable them to more efficiently produce certain goods. More Americans no longer think tariff zig-zags reflect “the art of the deal.” The potential for this to be the foundation of a broad turn against Trump is backed by poll numbers showing that millions of independent voters — the kingmakers of U.S. politics — have already begun discounting the importance of his success at ending the border chaos of the Biden years by aggressively enforcing existing laws. Two polls show clear majorities of independents now have a net negative view of his overall immigration policy. They don’t like the precipitous ready-fire-aim deportations of many individuals (including U.S. citizens) with scanty or nonexistent justifications. They don’t like the signs that the White House is eager for a confrontation over these deportations not just with rogue federal judges but with the Supreme Court. And their third concern has particular resonance in San Diego. It’s the White House’s broad contempt for international students at U.S. universities, leading to cruel, abrupt revocations of visas and other needed paperwork for thousands of such students, including dozens at local colleges. The White House’s April 25 decision to restore legal status for many of these students can be seen as an admission of error — or just one more sign of chaos. For decades, motivated, talented international students have been an overwhelming plus for America. Many fill critical roles in graduate-level research, then go on to be wealth-creating entrepreneurs and innovators — in the U.S., not their home nations — in bioengineering, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data analytics and more. Their presence is crucial to our global competitiveness. Why drive them away?

FOX News [5/2/2025 8:20 PM, Staff, 46189K] reports Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin reports on how ICE is targeting deportations in sanctuary cities and how the acting director Todd Lyons views the media on ‘Special Report.’ [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Washington Post [5/3/2025 6:00 AM, Silvia Foster-Frau, 31735K] reports that, when Yorely Bernal landed in Venezuela’s capital last week after her deportation from the United States, the first call she made was on video to her mother, Raida Inciarte. “The first thing I asked her is, ‘Where is the girl? Where is the girl?’” recalled Inciarte. “She only moved her head side to side, crying.” “They didn’t give her to you? They didn’t give her to you?” Inciarte said, becoming emotional. Bernal told her mom that despite signing off on her 2-year-old’s deportation with her, U.S. officials did not reunite her with her toddler before they shackled Bernal’s wrists, ankles and waist and forced her onto a deportation flight to her home country. The girl’s father, Maiker Espinoza Escalona, had been sent to El Salvador’s megaprison a month earlier, disappearing from the family’s life. The toddler’s only remaining parent in the United States had been her mother, who was in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody until her deportation last week. But now, 2-year-old Maikelis Antonella is in a precarious limbo: She is detained in U.S. government care in El Paso, but without a removal order or immigration status and no clear future. Her fate lies in the hands of the Trump administration. “The government has her in this weird purgatory where they know she’s here, but they’re not moving to do anything to execute her repatriation,” said Imelda Maynard, legal director for Estrella del Paso, which provides legal aid to migrant children. “So right now, Antonella is just … here.” Immigration lawyers and experts said the family’s harrowing situation is what can happen when due process is cut short in President Donald Trump’s race to reach 1 million deportations in his first year as president. The administration has fast-tracked deportations via executive orders and escalated gang accusations against immigrants, often with scant evidence or formal charges — and in some cases, experts say, prioritizing their deportation even if it means separating families and eroding parental rights. “If you’re rapidly deporting parents, it’s going to result in separations,” said Michelle Brane, executive director of the immigration nonprofit Together and Free and who served as executive director for the Department of Homeland Security’s Family Reunification Task Force under President Joe Biden. DHS alleges that Espinoza, the father, is a lieutenant in the Venezuela-based criminal organization Tren de Aragua who “oversees homicides” and “operates a torture house” and that Bernal “oversees recruitment of young women for drug smuggling and prostitution.” The Trump administration said it was for the “safety and welfare” of the child that she was not deported with her mother. “We will not allow this child to be abused and continue to be exposed to criminal activity that endangers her safety,” said a senior DHS official in a public statement. But the agency has not provided evidence backing up its Tren de Aragua allegations to the couple’s lawyer and did not provide evidence at the request of Washington Post. “Gang members typically deny being in a gang,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for DHS.

Washington Post [5/2/2025 8:32 PM, María Luisa Paúl, 31735K] reports as the Trump administration races to fulfill its promise of mass deportations, over a dozen U.S. citizens have already been swept up in the immigration crackdown. The cases have alarmed attorneys, civil rights advocates and immigration scholars, who warn that citizens are becoming increasingly vulnerable in a system moving faster and operating with fewer safeguards, The Washington Post previously reported. Yet the true scope remains unknown because the federal government does not release data on how often U.S. citizens are wrongfully detained or even removed from the country. Since the creation of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2003, investigations have found the agency has detained, removed or issued detainers for thousands of U.S. citizens. A 2011 study estimated that citizens make up roughly 1 to 1.5 percent of all removals. When reached by The Post, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said: “We don’t have data to provide you on the deportation of U.S. citizens because we don’t deport U.S. citizens.” According to a Government Accountability Office report from 2021, ICE carried out removal operations against at least 65 potential citizens during Trump’s first term. The Post drew from court records, interviews and news reports to document how U.S. citizens have gotten caught in the immigration dragnet since Trump was inaugurated in January. Last week, three children who are U.S. citizens — aged 2, 4 and 7 — were removed to Honduras along with their undocumented mothers, according to attorneys and court records. One child, a 4-year-old boy with Stage 4 cancer, was sent without medication or access to his doctors. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin denied the children were “deported.” “We didn’t and don’t deport children,” she said in an email to The Post. “Their mothers chose to take them with them.”

Daily Caller [5/2/2025 1:53 PM, Hailey Gomez, 1082K] reports during the week marking President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, ICE agents carried out a series of high-profile arrests of migrants with criminal records, according to a document first shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. Starting the week of his 100-day mark, booking photos of illegal migrants with convictions or pending charges were displayed along the White House north lawn’s perimeter. Throughout the week, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) made major arrests across the country, with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) releasing details and photos of five of their most significant cases. “Every single day I receive a report on my desk of the murderers, rapists, child abusers, and other sickos that our ICE enforcement agents are arresting around the country,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem wrote on a social media post while showing additional arrests. “Under President Trump, we have arrested over 150,000 aliens—including more than 600 members of the vicious Tren de Aragua gang. If you are here illegally and break the law, we will hunt you down, arrest you and lock you up.”

FOX News [5/2/2025 5:51 AM, Elizabeth Pritchett, 46189K] reports the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) pushed back on Wednesday against claims that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have been removing children from school. In a "100 Days of Fighting Fake News" news release from DHS, the agency responded to many narratives that have been reported by various media outlets since President Donald Trump was inaugurated – one of them being that ICE agents are entering elementary schools to conduct immigration enforcement. "ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) works relentlessly to protect Americans, especially children, who are put in danger by illegal alien activity," DHS said. "This includes investigations into potential child sex trafficking.” Addressing incidents at three elementary schools specifically, DHS explained that ICE agents were on campus for reasons not related to "enforcement action.” Local news outlets in Washington, D.C., reported at the end of March that HSI agents were seen on the campus of HD Cooke Elementary School, prompting concerns over their presence. Though DHS did not share what the agents were doing, the agency said, "ICE did not conduct any enforcement action at the school. HSI agents were present at the school unrelated to any kind of enforcement action.” There were also reports in early April of HSI agents at Russel Elementary School and Lillian Elementary School in Los Angeles. Agents were "conducting wellness checks on children who arrived unaccompanied at the border" and that the visits "had nothing to do with immigration enforcement," DHS said. Homeland Security said it is "leading efforts to conduct welfare checks" on unaccompanied children to "ensure that they are safe and not being exploited, abused, and sex trafficked.” "Unlike the previous administration, President Trump and Secretary Noem take the responsibility to protect children seriously and will continue to work with federal law enforcement to reunite children with their families," DHS said. Nearly 5,000 unaccompanied children have been reunited with a relative or safe guardian in the past 70 days, the agency said, crediting the reunification to Noem and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

The National News Desk [5/2/2025 7:16 PM, Christopher White, 416K] reports President Donald Trump hit the ground running in his second term, moving quickly on attempts to dismember parts of the federal government and imposing broad tariffs on most nations. But experts are questioning how well his administration is doing at fulfilling one of his big promises -- mass deportations. The White House has tried to deport students over speech and activism regarding the war in Gaza, and U.S. officials also attempted to banish hundreds of Venezuelan and Central American migrants to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador before the courts blocked that move. But on the larger question of how Trump is doing on his deportation promises, immigration experts argue the data show White House officials could be working the figures to create the impression they are hitting high marks. So far, in Trump’s first 100 days, there’ve been 400 Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation flights, according to Tom Cartwright, an analyst who tracks daily flights. That’s roughly 125 people per airplane or 50,000 people in total, a far cry from the 140,000 the White House is touting. The White House is standing by its numbers, with Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin telling USA Today the deportations include those done by Customs and Border Protection. "We are confident in our numbers," she said.

CNN [5/2/2025 4:07 PM, Jeff Winter] reports a Harvard Medical School researcher currently detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement says she should have reviewed customs protocols before attempting to enter the US with "non-hazardous" frog embryo samples but insists what she told immigration agents was misunderstood. Petrova is accused of "lying to federal officers" about what she was carrying, according to a Department of Homeland Security statement. The agency also alleges she "broke the law and took deliberate steps to evade it." Messages on Petrova’s phone "revealed she planned to smuggle the materials through customs without declaring them," the statement said. Petrova said she was never asked if she had any "biological material," and that she asked for that part of her inspection statement to be corrected, as well as "other inaccuracies." She said those changes were never made and, because of that, she was detained. Petrova has spent more than 10 weeks in an ICE detention facility in Louisiana. Later this month she has a federal court hearing in Vermont challenging her detention. If the court decides the government acted unlawfully, the judge could release her, according to her attorney Greg Romanovsky. If not, she faces deportation to Russia, where, according to her attorney, she would face immediate arrest over her previous outspoken opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

CNN [5/3/2025 4:00 AM, Nicquel Terry Ellis, 22131K] reports that, for the past 45 years, Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood has celebrated Cinco de Mayo with a parade featuring Mexican bands, floats and dancers, and a festival at a local park. But this year’s celebration, which attracts up to 300,000 people annually, has been canceled. Chicago is among several communities across the country that have canceled or scaled back cultural events due to President Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants. Event organizers said many Latinos, whether legal or undocumented, fear being arrested if they gather publicly in large crowds. Advocates also report that some are afraid to attend church, go to work or take their children to school. Since January, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has carried out raids in so-called "sanctuary" cities like Chicago, which limit cooperation with the federal government in enforcing immigration law. Trump has also authorized ICE to target schools and churches, as well as deport undocumented immigrants for alleged gang ties, often based on limited evidence. ICE has arrested nearly 66,500 undocumented immigrants and removed about 65,600 in the president’s first 100 days, according to newly released agency data. "We don’t want to take a chance and put our community at risk," Hector Escobar, president of the Casa Puebla and Cermak Road Chamber of Commerce, said. "It’s a loss economically, but we put safety over money.” UnidosUs, the nation’s largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization, found that 43% of Latino voters fear immigration authorities will arrest people, even if they are US citizens. The city of Philadelphia also canceled its El Carnaval de Puebla festival this year, an annual event in April that celebrates Mexican culture. Festival organizer Olga Renteria said people in the community were concerned that ICE officers might show up at the event and target attendees. "We are not going to take a chance," Renteria told CNN. "Everyone is being cautious, no celebrating, no big gatherings.” In central Oregon, organizers have canceled the annual Latino Fest, which was scheduled for September in Madras. Catalina Sánchez Frank, executive director of the Latino Community Association, said the event typically attracts 3,000 people and features parades, musical performances and booths representing different countries in Latin America.

Politico [5/2/2025 5:36 PM, Gregory Svirnovskiy, 11599K] reports Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers sharply criticized the Trump administration on Friday, calling the White House’s actions “chilling” after border czar Tom Homan threatened consequences — and alluded to criminal charges — over guidance issued to state employees confronted by federal immigration authorities. “In this country, the federal government doesn’t get to abuse its power to threaten everyday Americans,” Evers, a Democrat, said in a video released Friday. “In this country, the federal government doesn’t get to arrest American citizens who have not committed a crime. In this country, we don’t threaten to persecute people just because they belong to a different political party.” Evers’ message comes on the heels of the Trump administration targeting another Wisconsin official over immigration, with federal law enforcement charging a county judge with obstructing an arrest of an undocumented person last week. The Trump administration has threatened to investigate and prosecute officials who refuse to cooperate with the administration’s deportation agenda. The memo from the governor’s office, issued in April, among other things directs employees to speak with their agency’s attorney before engaging with federal officials and to refrain from allowing an agent to enter a nonpublic area. Evers on Friday argued that its purpose was to arm state employees with “clear, consistent” advice and make sure they have a lawyer. “But Republicans and their right-wing allies, including Elon Musk, lied about this guidance, spread misinformation, accused me of doing things I didn’t do or say, and fueled a fake controversy of their own creation,” he said. Homan on Thursday suggested that Evers could be a target for the administration. “Wait till you see what’s coming,” he told reporters outside the White House when asked about the guidance. “I meant what I said. You can not support what we’re doing. And you can support sanctuary cities if that’s what you want to do. But if you cross that line of impediment or knowingly harboring and concealing an illegal alien, that is a felony. And we’lll treat it as such.”

New York Post [5/3/2025 1:05 AM, Victor Nava, 54903K] reports Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Friday requested the public’s help in locating an illegal Jordanian migrant who allegedly trespassed onto a major Marine Corps base in Virginia last year — and was let go by the Biden administration. "ICE Homeland Security Investigations needs help locating Mohammad Khair Hasan Mohammad Dabous," ICE said in the notice posted on X. Dabous, 28, entered the US as a foreign student on Sept. 11, 2022, but failed to attend classes, according to ICE. Dabous and fellow Jordanian national Hasan Yousef Hamdan, 32, were arrested on May 3, 2024, for allegedly trespassing at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. Dabous allegedly drove onto the base in a box truck with Hamdan in the passenger seat and refused Marine Corps Police orders to stop his vehicle at a checkpoint for inspection. Officers were forced to deploy "vehicle denial barriers" to stop Dabous’ vehicle from continuing. Both men were detained and handed over to ICE. They were cut loose the following month after posting bond on their immigration cases. Hamdan has since been re-arrested by ICE, but Dabous remains at large. ICE believes Dabous "moved to the Los Angeles region & is likely living in Orange County, Calif.” The agency, describing Dabous as a "person of interest," asked the public to contact 866-DHS-2-ICE if they have information on his whereabouts. Capt. Michael Curtis, a spokesman for the base, previously revealed to The Post that Dabous told the military police officers guarding the entry gate that "they worked for a company subcontracted by Amazon and were making a delivery to the U.S. Post Office located in the Town of Quantico.” However, the pair lacked "approved credentials" to enter the military installation, said Curtis. Dabous’ argued the whole incident was "due to a language barrier.”

Breitbart [5/2/2025 2:36 PM, Warner Todd Huston, 2923K] reports Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) asked for custody of an arrested illegal alien charged with attempting to sexually assault a corpse on a New York subway train. ICE has reported in a press release that illegal migrant Felix Rojas has illegally entered the U.S. multiple times dating back to 1998, but his most recent arrest found him accused of rape and grand larceny. Rojas, 44, was arrested and charged with robbing a man on the R train early in April. Surveillance cameras reportedly recorded Rojas picking through the pockets of a man who was lying unresponsive on the train. The recording also appeared to show Rojas sexually assaulting the victim who was later determined to be dead, according to USA Today. Rojas has crossed the border illegally on at least five previous occasions, according to a New York Post report. The accused alien turned himself in on April 27 and was arraigned on Tuesday. “With impunity, open border policies have allowed violent criminal aliens to terrorize America’s towns and cities,” said Assistant Secretary Tricia Mclaughlin. “Under President Trump and Secretary Noem’s leadership, ICE is working around the clock to remove the worst of the worst from our communities. If you are here illegally and break the law, we will hunt you down, arrest you and lock you up.”

Reported similarly:
Breitbart [5/2/2025 2:22 PM, John Binder, 2923K]

Daily Caller [5/2/2025 11:36 AM, Jason Hopkins, 1082K] reports immigration authorities are seeking custody of an illegal migrant caught on camera allegedly sexually assaulting and robbing a dead body on a subway train, but local Democrats may have created a roadblock for them. Felix Jeronimo-Rojas was arrested by New York City authorities Sunday after he was caught on video April 9 allegedly raping a male corpse for over thirty minutes while riding a Manhattan subway train. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said they have lodged a detainer with Rikers Island for Jeronimo, but a New York City Council lawsuit has so far kept ICE agents out of the prison complex. Jeronimo first allegedly assaulted the dead body around 11:44 p.m. that night before moving the corpse to the floor, where he would then momentarily pause his attacks whenever the train would reach a station, according to prosecutors. Local authorities say the corpse was orally and anally violated during the incident. Following the alleged rape, camera footage caught a woman later robbing the dead body for a second time before an MTA employee eventually discovered the corpse face-down on the subway around 12:30 a.m. Federal immigration authorities have since confirmed Jeronimo is an illegal migrant with a long history of unlawfully entering the U.S. “Felix Jeronimo-Rojas is an illegal alien from Mexico who unlawfully entered the United States on several occasions,” an ICE spokesperson stated Friday to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “U.S. Border Patrol encountered Jeronimo three times in 1998 and once in 1999.” “He was voluntarily returned to Mexico on each occasion,” the spokesperson continued. “Jeronimo illegally reentered the U.S. without admission on a later unknown date and remained unencountered until [the New York Police Department] arrested him April 27, for allegedly raping a corpse on the subway April 8.” Jeronimo reportedly turned himself into police after his son recognized him in video footage released by the New York City Police Department. A judge ruled Tuesday that he would be held in custody without bail. ICE officers Wednesday lodged an immigration detainer for Jeronimo with the NYC Department of Corrections at Rikers Island, the agency confirmed to the DCNF. However, this detainer request could prove difficult for immigration authorities, as ICE agents are — once again — prohibited from entering Rikers Island.

AP [5/2/2025 11:12 PM, Jake Offenhartz, 48304K] reports New York City’s police department provided federal immigration authorities with an internal record about a Palestinian woman who they arrested at a protest, which the Trump administration is now using as evidence in its bid to deport her, according to court documents obtained by The Associated Press. The report — shared by the NYPD in March — includes a summary of information in the department’s files about Leqaa Kordia, a New Jersey resident who was arrested at a protest outside Columbia University last spring. It lists her home address, date of birth and an officer’s two-sentence account of the arrest. Its distribution to federal authorities offers a glimpse into behind-the-scenes cooperation between the NYPD and the Trump administration, and raises questions about the city’s compliance with sanctuary laws that prohibit police from assisting with immigration enforcement efforts. Kordia, 32, was among the earliest people jailed in President Donald Trump’s crackdown on noncitizens who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. She was detained during a voluntary check-in with immigration officials in Newark, New Jersey, on March 13, then flown to an immigration jail in Texas. Her arrest was announced by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security the next day in a statement that cited an expired visa and her role in "pro-Hamas protests.” It remains unclear how immigration authorities were able to learn about Kordia’s presence at the protest near Columbia last April. At the demonstration, police cited Kordia with disorderly conduct. But the charge was dismissed weeks later and the case sealed. City law generally prohibits police from sharing information about arrests with federal immigration officials, although there are exceptions for criminal investigations. On March 14, an NYPD officer generated a four-page report on Kordia and shared it with Homeland Security Investigations, a division of U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. In an emailed statement, an NYPD spokesperson said the department "received a request from a federal agency related to a criminal investigation and shared relevant information in accordance with our sanctuary city policies.” "The NYPD does not participate in programs that are designed for visa revocation or any civil immigration matter," the statement added. The department declined to say what the investigation entailed. Inquiries to the DHS and ICE were not returned.

Breitbart [5/2/2025 1:15 PM, Randy Clark, 2923K] reports despite the best efforts of Maryland law enforcement authorities to protect a known criminal alien gang member, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Brayan Eleazar Angulo-Barrios, 26, in Hyattsville, Maryland. Angulo-Barrios was shielded from arrest by ICE when he was released by the Prince George’s County Department of Corrections. Officials released the criminal alien despite the filing of an immigration detainer by ICE. ICE agents say Angulo-Barrios is a known 18th Street gang member who has been convicted of possession of a loaded handgun and possession of narcotics with the intent to distribute. ICE arrested Angulo-Barrios last week in Hyattsville. Authorities say Angulo-Barrios entered the United States illegally on an unknown date at an unknown location without being inspected, admitted, or paroled by an immigration officer. Angulo-Barrios has no legal immigration status in the United States.

FOX News [5/2/2025 4:36 PM, Cameron Arcand, 46189K] reports Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Virginia State Police arrested an illegal immigrant after he was released as a result of a plea deal made by the Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney’s Office. Guatemalan national Wilmer Osmany Ramos-Giron, 34, faced numerous felony charges in January, including abduction by force, assault on a family member and felony strangulation causing injury to a Virginia woman, according to ICE, which has Ramos-Giron in custody. Ramos-Giron spent only two months in an adult detention center in Fairfax County. The county attorney’s office, led by Democrat Steve Descano, arranged a plea deal dropping Ramos-Giron’s charges to misdemeanors. Ramos-Giron would have faced up to 16 years behind bars on the felony charges if convicted, according to ABC 7. The outlet reported that even though the county attorney’s office said the plea deal was what the victim wanted, the victim said that’s not true. Ramos-Giron was deported two other times but found his way back into the U.S. despite being convicted in a federal gun case. But it’s not clear when he returned to the country, according to ICE.

USA Today [5/2/2025 5:31 PM, Eduardo Cuevas, 75858K] reports a federal judge has dismissed a gun charge against a 24-year-old Virginia man the Trump administration called a top MS-13 leader. Henrry Josue Villatoro Santos still faces removal to his native El Salvador after Senior Judge Claude Hilton’s brief April 30 order dismissing the felony charge, as requested by federal prosecutors. Villatoro Santos doesn’t have legal status in the United States and remains at risk for being sent to a notorious mega-prison in his native El Salvador, despite the drop in charges, his lawyer said in court filings. Villatoro Santos is now in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody at the Farmville Detention Center, in Virginia, according to court records. He has an immigration court hearing June 3. In emergency motions he acknowledged as "unusual," Elsayed sought to delay the federal case being dismissed against his client. He worried Villatoro Santos would be removed and held without due process in the Salvadoran prison, known as CECOT. Elsayed said Villatoro Santos has now had a hearing before district and magistrate judges, and now an immigration judge.

Telemundo Amarillo [5/2/2025 6:24 PM, Staff, 2K] Video: HERE reports a Mexican citizen is accused of driving under the influence (DUI) and assaulting in the first degree in connection with a five-vehicle crash in Summerdale, in southern Alabama, in which a woman was seriously injured, police said. The multiple crash occurred at an intersection of Highway 59 in Summerdale on April 18. According to authorities, four vehicles were waiting for the red light at a traffic light when a fifth vehicle approached the intersection. In it was driving Domingo Tomás, 43, who was going down the outer lane. According to the crash report, Thomas was heading north on Highway 59 as he approached the red light of the intersection with the 32nd Drawn Road. He did not slow down and crashed into the cars waiting at the traffic light, causing a chain reaction. Officers arrested Thomas for driving under the influence. Last Friday, April 30, an arrest warrant was issued against Thomas. In it, he says Hali Smith was a passenger in the first vehicle the Mexican allegedly crashed. Smith was seriously injured with fractures to his ribs, pelvis and right arm. Thomas remains in custody at the Baldwin County Jail and also has a restraining order from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE).

AP [5/3/2025 12:06 AM, Safiyah Riddle, 48304K] reports Sama Ebrahimi Bajgani and her fiance, Alireza Doroudi, had just spent an evening celebrating the Persian new year at the University of Alabama when seven armed immigration officers came to their apartment before dawn and arrested Doroudi. In a moment, the young couple’s life was upended. “I was living a normal life until that night. After that nothing is just normal,” Bajgani said. Details about Doroudi’s detention spread through the small Iranian community in Tuscaloosa, where Bajgani and Doroudi are doctoral students. Other Iranian students say they have been informally advised by faculty to “lay low” and “be invisible” — instilling fear among a once vibrant cohort. Doroudi is among students across the U.S. who have been detained in recent weeks as part of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Bajgani said the couple does not know why Doroudi faces deportation and that Trump’s recent visit to the school made her feel like the university was “ignorant of our crisis.” One Iranian civil engineering student and close friend to Doroudi said he has lost over 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) due to stress and depression in the six weeks since Doroudi was detained. “It’s like all of us are waiting for our turn. It could be every knock, every email could be deportation,” said the student, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns about losing his legal status. He now avoids unnecessary trips outside. When he was in a car crash last month, he begged the other driver not to call the police, even though he wasn’t at fault, because he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. Bajgani said Doroudi, 32, is an ambitious mechanical engineering student from Shiraz, Iran. He entered the United States legally in January 2023 on a student visa. Bajgani said he often worked 60-hour weeks while still making time to run errands for loved ones. “If someone like him doesn’t get to the place he deserves, there is nothing called the American dream,” she said. Doroudi’s visa was revoked in June 2023, but the embassy didn’t provide a reason and ignored his inquiries, Bajgani said. The university told him he could stay as long as he remained a student but that would not be allowed to reenter the U.S. if he left, she said. He was operating under that guidance when immigration officers came to the couple’s door in March. The University of Alabama didn’t comment on Doroudi’s case, but said it offers resources to help immigrants on campus comply with federal law. It also offers guidance to students whose visas are revoked. “Our international students are valued members of our campus community,” university spokesperson Monica Watt said in a statement.

CBS News [5/2/2025 9:24 AM, Staff, 51661K] Video: HERE reports more than 1,000 people were detained last week during "Operation Tidal Wave," which officials say is the largest immigration enforcement operation in Florida history. It comes from joint agreements between the Department of Homeland Security and all Florida counties that allow state and local authorities to enforce federal immigration laws.

(B) Good Morning America [5/2/2025 8:57 AM, Staff] reports that a first of its kind partnership between federal and state law enforcement agencies resulted in the arrest of over 1000 illegal immigrants. Operation Tidal Wave was conducted by the State of Florida, ICE, DHS, and US Customs and Border Protection. Governor DeSantis’ office said officers arrested violent offenders, gang members, fugitives, and those who pose a significant safety threat. A majority of those arrested came from Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, and Venezuela. Those arrested with final orders of removal are subject to immediate removal from the US. The rest remain in ICE custody.

Blaze.com [5/2/2025 3:30 PM, Julio Rosas, 1668K] reports Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’ administration has offered the federal government an extensive plan as to how Florida can marshal its assets and resources to increase the number of deportations, a key campaign promise made by President Donald Trump as a solution to the Biden-Harris border crisis. The Florida Immigration Enforcement Operations Plan, obtained by Blaze News, outlines the efforts being made at the state level now, the problems the state is running into, and the solutions the state can provide if given approval from the federal government. One part of the removal process that has been cited as a big obstacle is the lack of detention space that would be required to hold the number of illegal aliens necessary to carry out mass deportations. The report calls for the Department of Homeland Security to suspend the NDS while ensuring detainees’ needs are met. FDEM would also be the agency responsible for carrying out state-run deportation flights, but ICE "must specifically request assistance and must reimburse the state for actual costs." DeSantis revealed on Thursday that he is recommending using the Judge Advocate General’s Corps within the National Guard to act as immigration judges. Training for the JAGs would be conducted by the Department of Justice, not DHS.

Washington Times [5/2/2025 2:27 PM, Stephen Dinan, 1814K] reports Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis released a blueprint for immigration enforcement Friday that proposes having the state deputize National Guard lawyers to serve as immigration judges and to orchestrate its own deportation flights to oust migrants. Mr. DeSantis said the state also has capacity to run migrant detention facilities that are up to Homeland Security’s standards. And he said state agencies and local sheriff’s departments are ready to help with transporting migrants around the state or to airports for deportation. The Republican governor said Florida is leading the way in forging cooperation with a willing Trump administration, and he challenged other red states to follow his lead. "You really need to be in the game, you need to be partnering with ICE and you need to be conducting your own operations," the governor told reporters Friday. His blueprint came a day after Mr. DeSantis stood with Homeland Security officials to announce the results of a massive federal-state operation to round up illegal immigrants with criminal records. They said they made 1,120 arrests. Mr. DeSantis earlier this year signed an aggressive law that imposes state-level penalties on illegal immigrants who enter Florida, and also directed state and local law enforcement to sign cooperative agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Those deals, known as 287(g) agreements because of the section of federal law that governs them, will allow state and local police to be deputized to conduct immigration enforcement and start the deportation process. But the governor said Florida can do much more to help speed those deportations. His blueprint calls for training lawyers from the Florida National Guard’s Judge Advocate General staff to act as immigration judges. He said there are nine JAG officers "suitable for training.” The blueprint also says the state, with its experience in emergency preparedness, has 12 vendors ready to provide up to 10,000 detention beds for migrant detention. Florida is ready to offer help to migrants who are prepared to self-deport. For those who go through a formal deportation, the governor’s blueprint said the state has vendors "on standby" to fly "small to large quantities of individuals" either to a detention center in the U.S., or back to their country of origin in a full deportation.

CBS Miami [5/2/2025 11:30 AM, Staff, 51661K] reports that two South Florida representatives toured U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Pompano Beach where a woman from Haiti died a week ago. On Friday, Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick and Rep. Frederica Wilson visited the Broward Transitional Center to investigate the conditions of the facility and learn more about the circumstances surrounding the death of Marie Ange Blaise. The 44-year-old died at the facility on Friday. April 25. The cause of death is under investigation, but she had been complaining of chest pains. Speaking on the House floor on April 30, Cherfilus-McCormick suggested that the facility did not provide Blaise with adequate medical care. She said Blaise had complained of chest pains for hours, and the staff gave her some pills and told her to go lie down. The congresswoman said she never woke up. In response, ICE said that at no time was Blaise denied "emergent care." The agency stated that all detainees receive comprehensive medical care throughout their custody, including 24-hour emergency services. After the tour, the lawmakers said many questions they had went unanswered and some answers were distressing. Cherfilus-McCormick said they were told there is only one doctor on call for about the 500 people who are held there. "Clearly one doctor on call for this amount, over 500 people, is not enough. In addition, when we talked to people who were there, they told us she complained of heart pains, or chest pains, several times and that she was seen by the doctor. In fact, that morning she got her prescription at 8 a.m. and then she died at 8:34 a.m.," she said. The congresswomen noted it is a privately run facility operating as an ICE holding center. Wilson said it’s time for Congress and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to pull that contract.

Chicago Tribune [5/2/2025 6:00 AM, Nell Salzman, 5269K] reports that, when President Donald Trump took office and declared Chicago "ground zero" for the largest deportation operation in U.S. history, Alma Duran, 43, said her 10-year-old twins asked why their classes at an elementary school in Pilsen were deserted. She told them some kids and parents were scared to come in for fear of getting detained and deported, and she explained the concept of the United States border to her children for the first time — that they were born in Chicago and had documents that some of their classmates might not have. "And even then, my kids were like, ‘How is this possible? How can they be so afraid that they don’t even want to come to school? … Mommy, you always say going to school is good. How is it not good now for some friends?’" Duran remembered them asking her. Trump’s hard-line immigration policy has taken a deep emotional toll on communities with large undocumented populations. And though attendance at Perez has slowly recovered in the months since Trump took office, fear and anxiety linger among parents, teachers and students at some Chicago public schools. Data obtained by the Tribune through a Freedom of Information Act request shows that attendance rates fell at all schools across the district the week of Jan. 20, when the 47th president was sworn in. Over 50% of students attending the 10 schools that experienced the biggest attendance drops are Latino, according to enrollment data on the district’s website. The names of the schools are being withheld at Chicago Public Schools’ request, out of concern for potential retaliation from the federal government. While the district has taken steps to respond, parents and those working with students describe the effect of Trump’s immigration policy changes as insurmountable. It will likely have long-term effects, they say. Students carry a heavy burden worrying about whether their parents will be swept up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Meanwhile, the counseling support they need to relieve their worry is spread thin, said Roy, a teacher at a South Side elementary school whose last name is not being used out of safety concerns for his students. "We do have counselors, but they don’t speak Spanish," he said. "That’s a resource that a lot of schools need now, especially with newcomers.” CPS did not respond to a request for comment.

(B) NBC News Daily [5/2/2025 2:55 PM, Staff] reports ICE was active again in Duluth. On Thursday morning, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested two people in the Duluth Heights neighborhood. The roofers were working on a home yesterday. About 45 minutes after the incident, the two workers were then returned to the job site. These ICE arrests come two months after several other roofers were taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

New York Times [5/3/2025 3:42 AM, Jack Herrera, 330K] reports Juan Antonio Gomez Torres was earning barely $80 a week shaping mud into bricks in the dusty hills above San Felipe, Mexico. When his wife became pregnant with their fourth child, he decided to try his luck crossing into the United States to look for better-paying work. Weeks later, Mr. Gomez called his cousin from jail, desperate for money. After swimming across the Rio Grande, Mr. Gomez had been arrested by armed state police officers in Kinney County, Texas, on a trespassing charge. Bail was set at $1,000 — more than a quarter of his yearly income. Mr. Gomez promised to repay his cousin after he appeared in court on the trespassing case, when under normal circumstances his bail money would be returned to him. But that never happened. No sooner had Mr. Gomez been released than officials handed him directly over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities, who promptly deported him back to Mexico. Unable to show up in court, he was told his bail would be forfeited and the $1,000 deposited into Kinney County’s accounts. He was not the only one. Since Gov. Greg Abbott stepped up the state’s own immigration operations during a surge in unauthorized border crossings in 2021, Kinney County has forfeited bail from hundreds of migrants, many of whom, like Mr. Gomez, were trying to escape poverty in their home countries. The arrests, which are continuing despite a significant reduction in border crossings, are part of a contentious and potentially lucrative new dynamic on the southern border as states like Texas attempt to take on a larger role in immigration enforcement, traditionally the purview of the federal government. More than 39,000 migrants have been arrested in counties along the border on charges of trespassing on private land and other state violations, part of Governor Abbott’s multi-billion-dollar effort to step up policing on the border, known as Operation Lone Star. Few counties have been as aggressive about enforcing trespassing laws as Kinney County, where ranchers complained that migrants were cutting holes in their fences and walking in groups outside their homes. The county has held some migrants in custody for as long as a year before trial. Over the past four years, the county has refused to return $1.7 million in bail from migrant trespass cases, according to a Times analysis of county budget records obtained through a public records request. The forfeitures are the equivalent of what it would take to pay for the entire sheriff’s department for a year, or the county judge and county attorney’s office combined for over three years.

DailySignal [5/2/2025 7:13 PM, Virginia Allen, 495K] reports more than 300 law enforcement officers from 13 federal, state, and local agencies busted an illegal after-hours nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, at the end of April, arresting 104 illegal aliens. "Under President [Donald] Trump and [Homeland Security Secretary Kristi] Noem, the days of unchecked cartel violence are over," Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, told The Daily Signal. Among the more than 100 illegal aliens Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested were "suspected members of the Sinaloa Cartel," McLaughlin said. The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now. The operation "was part of an investigation into drug- and sex-trafficking networks," she added. The Department of Homeland Security reports that law enforcement seized large quantities of drugs in the raid, including cocaine, pink cocaine, and methamphetamine. Authorities also apprehended 12 guns. The illegal aliens arrested are in ICE Enforcement & Removal Operations custody pending removal proceedings. The DHS provided The Daily Signal with photos and background ICE compiled on six of the criminal illegal aliens arrested. Robles is 38 and from Mexico and currently "has convictions for dangerous drugs possession and heroin smuggling," according to Denver’s Enforcement & Removal Operations.

CBS Colorado [5/3/2025 12:23 AM, Logan Smith, 51661K] reports legislation which further insulates state and local officials from federal immigration enforcement and denotes public buildings where Colorado immigrants can seek temporary refuge from federal immigration agents advanced on a preliminary vote Friday in the State House. An amendment to Senate Bill 25-276 was voted down. The amendment was introduced an hour after legislators learned of two moves made by the federal government Friday to pressure Colorado state leaders on their "sanctuary" policies. The first, an executive order from President Donald Trump which threatened the loss of federal funding for local law enforcement agencies which defied federal immigration law. Second, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against City and County of Denver and the State of Colorado - including Gov. Jared Polis, Mayor Mike Johnston, the Denver Sheriff and Colorado’s Attorney General - in order to "put an end to those disastrous policies and restore the supremacy of federal immigration law," as stated in the lawsuit’s complaint. The amendment introduced by state Rep. Jarvis Caldwell, a Republican from El Paso County, asked for the bill to be nullified should any department of the state government lose federal funding due to the changed proposed in the bill. The amendment was voted down 41-22, with two legislators abstaining. Last month, the bill made it through the Colorado Senate in a unanimous vote. It now remains under consideration in the House. SB 25-276 strengthens data privacy for immigrants by preventing local governments, courts and schools from sharing certain personal information. Likewise, law officers from the Colorado state patrol, municipal police departments, town marshal’s offices, and county sheriff’s offices are prohibited from arresting or detaining any individuals on the basis of a immigration detainer request. Additionally, it prevents federal immigration agents from entering public schools and colleges, hospitals and health care and child care facilities, churches, libraries, and jail without a warrant. "Colorado is stronger when we all can contribute to our economy without fear," state Rep. Elizabeth Velasco, a Democrate from Glenwood Springs and one of the bill’s sponsors, stated in a press release. "The Trump administration’s attacks on our civil liberties have sparked chaos among our immigrant communities - parents are afraid to pick up their children from daycare, workers are scared to show up to their jobs. This fear doesn’t just hurt our families, but our entire community and Colorado’s economy. We’re taking steps today to strengthen Colorado laws around personal data sharing and reaffirm our existing protections to ensure due process for all, regardless of immigration status.” The Denver Sheriff’s Department decided to stop honoring federal immigration detainers in 2014.

AP [5/2/2025 10:49 PM, Thomas Peipert, 48304K] reports the Department of Justice sued Colorado and Denver on Friday for allegedly interfering with federal efforts to enforce immigration laws, the latest attempt by the Trump administration to crack down on what some call sanctuary cities and policies. The lawsuit claims the state and its most populous city, Denver, have passed "sanctuary laws" violating the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. "The United States has well-established, preeminent, and preemptive authority to regulate immigration matters," according to the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Denver. There is no strict definition for sanctuary policies or sanctuary cities, but the terms generally describe limited local cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE enforces U.S. immigration laws nationwide but seeks state and local help, particularly for large-scale deportations, and requests that police and sheriffs alert ICE to people it wants to deport and hold them until federal officers take custody. The Department of Justice has filed similar lawsuits against Chicago and Rochester, New York. Justice Department attorneys argue Colorado’s "sanctuary policies" allowed the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to seize control of an apartment complex in the Denver suburb of Aurora. Local officials have called Trump’s claims that the gang had taken over large swaths of the city exaggerated, but acknowledged the apartment complex was terrorized, including by people linked to Tren de Aragua. Friday’s lawsuit lists as defendants Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, the state Legislature, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser. Polis spokesperson Conor Cahill said in an email that Colorado is not a sanctuary state and regularly works with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. "If the courts say that any Colorado law is not valid then we will follow the ruling," he said. "We are not going to comment on the merits of the lawsuit.” Republicans in Congress have pressured officials in Democratic-led cities to cooperate with the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. Lawmakers summoned the mayors of Denver, Boston, New York and Chicago to testify last month before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The mayors pushed back, defending their communities as welcoming places, not lawless danger zones, and called on Congress to pass immigration reform.

CBS News [5/2/2025 12:24 AM, Jesse Sarles, 51661K] reports the Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against the state of Colorado, the city of Denver and a list of local leaders. The suit claims state and city laws labeled as "sanctuary" policies are dangerous and hurting the Trump Administration-led efforts to deport people who are here illegally. The lawsuit was filed Friday in federal court in Denver and states "The United States has well-established, preeminent, and preemptive authority to regulate immigration matters." It specifically mentions the controversial apartment complex in Aurora which President Trump claimed last year had been taken over by a Venezuelan gang. Justice Department attorneys argue Colorado’s policies allowed Tren de Aragua to seize control of the building. Local officials have called Trump’s claims that the gang had taken over large swaths of the city exaggerated, but acknowledged the apartment complex was terrorized, including by people linked to Tren de Aragua. The lawsuit calls out city ordinances and state laws like the one blocking local law enforcement agencies from helping federal immigration authorities. It claims Denver and Colorado’s policies "by intent and design interfere with and discriminate against the Federal Government’s enforcement of federal immigration law," as stated in the lawsuit’s complaint. The suit asks the court to rule those laws are illegal and a violation of the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. A spokesperson for the governor’s office reponded to the lawsuit saying they "will not comment on the merits of the lawsuit" but declared that Colorado is not a "sanctuary state.” "The State of Colorado works with local, state and federal law enforcement regularly and we value our partnerships with local, county and federal law enforcement agencies to make Colorado safer. If the courts say that any Colorado law is not valid then we will follow the ruling," the spokesperson said. A Denver mayor’s office spokeperson released a comment as well, saying the city "will not be bullied or blackmailed, least of all by an administration that has little regard for the law and even less for the truth." It went on to say that "Denver follows all laws local, state, and federal and stands ready to defend its values.”

New York Times [5/3/2025 3:42 AM, Jack Healy, 330K] reports shattered glass and spilled beer coated the floors of the nightclub. More than 100 people had been taken into custody by federal immigration agents, and Colorado Springs’s mayor, Yemi Mobolade, had a decision to make. Law enforcement officials said their operation in the Sunday morning darkness cleared out a club that was rife with drugs, guns and prostitution. Liberal voters who helped elect Mr. Mobolade, a Nigerian-born pastor and political independent, to lead their historically conservative city were disturbed by the mass arrest of so many immigrants. Mr. Mobolade made his choice. “This immigrant mayor says, if you’re here illegally and you’re committing a crime, there should be consequences,” he said in an interview. “You should be deported.” The raid, led by the Drug Enforcement Administration, came the week after a large-scale operation in Florida that led to the arrests of more than 1,100 people. But this one was conducted in Democratic Colorado, in an increasingly purple city, Colorado’s second largest. The aftermath of the raid reflects the deep divisions over President Trump’s mass deportation efforts. Mr. Mobolade and other mayors in Colorado, New York and Massachusetts have faced frustration and criticism from voters over their response to record-breaking migrant arrivals under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Now they face a backlash from the left, as the Trump administration steps up its immigration crackdown and presses local officials to cooperate. Some of Mr. Mobolade’s left-leaning voters felt betrayed by the raid. The arrests and a lack of information about what had become of the detainees unnerved many immigrants. What’s more, the city of Colorado Springs had participated by sending about 50 police officers to assist federal agents. On Tuesday, about 30 people protested outside the local sheriff’s office, waving banners that condemned Immigration and Customs Enforcement and shouting, “Immigrants are welcome here!” “These raids are not about public safety,” said Brandon Rincon, an organizer with the Colorado Springs Peoples Coalition. “These are terror attacks on our community.” But Mr. Mobolade, who first came to the United States on a student visa, said he saw a clear difference between immigrants who came to the United States to work and the people who were scooped up and put on buses Sunday. “I know there’s a bigger immigration story going on, but this is about criminal behavior,” he said.

New York Post [5/2/2025 5:32 PM, Jennie Taer, 54903K] reports a migrant woman allegedly tried to sneak a drugged child across the southern border with a fake birth certificate Wednesday, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. ICE officers from the agency’s Homeland Security Investigations unit busted Gloria Lopez-Corona — a 24-year-old US resident from Mexico — as she was driving her car through the San Luis port of entry with a child in tow, according to court documents. Lopez-Corona claimed they were going to see her son’s father and his family in Los Angeles. Feds later found "sleep gummies" they believe were used to sedate the child. Lopez-Corona presented the border officers with a birth certificate, which listed her name as the mother and stated that the child was born in 2023. Agents with Homeland Security Investigations arrested Lopez-Corona and charged her with alien smuggling. Officers were able to contact the child’s mother, Reyna Cecilia Hernandez Reyes, in Mexico, and bring her in for an interview, according to the documents. Hernandez Reyes stated that she arranged to smuggle her child across the border illegally after her husband was smuggled in the same place three years ago. Federal agents later discovered that her husband was deported three times before his last entry, the documents state. Officers at the border returned the child to Hernandez Reyes, who they also charged with smuggling.

FOX News [5/3/2025 3:59 AM, Landon Mion, 46189K] reports a U.S. lawful permanent resident was arrested on Wednesday after she allegedly attempted to smuggle a drugged child into the country through the Southern Border using a fake birth certificate, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Gloria Lopez-Corona, 24, from Mexico, attempted to enter the U.S. with a five-year-old boy through the San Luis port of entry in Arizona, where she presented a birth certificate that was revealed to be for a different child based on the age, as the birth certificate was for a two-year-old. The child was determined to be an unaccompanied child from Mexico who was sedated. The child had been given melatonin gummies and was sleepy and disoriented. Homeland Security Investigations seized the items believed to have been used to drug the child. Lopez-Corona later admitted she was not the child’s mother and that the birth certificate was fake. Lopez-Corona said she was the mother to a two-year-old back home in Mexico. Immigration officials found the drugged five-year-old child’s mother, Reyna Cecilia Hernandez Reyes. Lopez-Corona claimed she was forced to smuggle the child into the U.S. by a person who threatened her family and that she did not contact police because "she did not trust the police in Mexico," according to the New York Post. She said she was told to drive to a location where the child was placed into a car seat in her back seat by an unnamed individual. The woman said she was offered $1,500 to transport the child but turned the money down. The child at one point told agents "that he was given gummies by his mother," according to the outlet. Reyes, a Mexican citizen, admitted to giving her child to an unknown woman to be smuggled into the U.S. Reyes, who the child was returned to, was charged in connection with the attempted smuggling. The plan was to have the child taken to Reyes’ husband in Los Angeles, according to the New York Post. The man was smuggled into the country three years ago. Federal agents later found that he was deported three times before his last entry. Lopez-Corona, who was arrested by Homeland Security Investigations, faces charges for Alien Smuggling. "This depraved individual drugged an innocent child and trafficked them into our country," Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to Fox News. "Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, DHS will protect children and stop the traffickers and smugglers that exploit children.”

Univision [5/2/2025 3:10 PM, Staff, 5325K] reports U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted an operation Thursday morning at a home in the Turtle Rock neighborhood as part of a criminal investigation involving the disclosure of personal information about federal agents. The goal was to gather evidence about a case that occurred in recent months, where several Spanish-language posters appeared in different areas of Southern California, revealing the identities of several ICE agents, as well as Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents. The ads included photos, names, phone numbers, and work locations, accompanied by warnings in Spanish such as: “BE CAREFUL WITH THESE FACES. These armed agents work in Southern California. ICE and HSI racially terrorize and criminalize communities.” The posters, which began circulating earlier this year, accused agents of participating in raids, separating families, and detaining immigrants due to Trump administration policies. Federal authorities were specifically searching for a man identified as 29-year-old Michael Chang after agents established a connection to the investigation by tracing his IP address back to his home; however, they discovered he had moved to New York. Authorities made no arrests during the operation, but confirmed that the investigation remains active. ICE issued a statement confirming the raid, without offering further details.

Reported similarly:
Blaze.com [5/2/2025 3:55 PM, Staff, 1668K]

Bloomberg Law [5/2/2025 4:51 PM, Andrew Kreighbaum, 1085K] reports the Department of Homeland Security will renew temporary protections for South Sudanese nationals in the US through Nov. 3, the agency announced Friday. About 200 South Sudanese immigrants are currently covered by Temporary Protected Status, which allows people from designated countries to live and work in the US for up to 18 months when it’s deemed unsafe for them to return home. The protections were set to expire Saturday. If the DHS doesn’t determine whether a country meets criteria for renewing TPS at least 60 days before expiration of a designation, it is automatically extended for six months.

Washington Post [5/2/2025 5:00 AM, Susan Svrluga, Maham Javaid, and Mikhail Klimentov, 31735K] reports about two months ago, Sierra Moran started to panic. She had been accepted into graduate programs at Duke and Georgetown universities, but her professors at Louisiana State University warned her that federal funding cuts were hitting labs hard, and that research and job prospects were highly unstable. Her backup plan, to stay at LSU for her master’s degree in coastal environmental science, fell apart when she learned about a hiring freeze. And with a growing sense that skepticism about climate change was becoming federal policy, Moran, who was just named to a list of 12 outstanding seniors at LSU, decided she had to get out of the country. She applied to University College Dublin this spring and plans to attend in the fall. “I was freaking out, and I’m still kind of freaking out,” she said, because the mentors she turned to for reassurance were worried about their own jobs. She had wanted to stay close to family in Baton Rouge. “But I’m just done,” she said. “I’m tired.” College decision day — the May 1 deadline at many schools across the country for accepted students to commit to attend — coincided with a time of head-spinning upheaval, reversals and uncertainty in the first months of the Trump administration. Some students, like Moran, are turning down U.S. colleges for overseas options. And some international students are newly hesitant about studying in the United States amid news of visa revocations and deportations. “International students who have been admitted to colleges and universities in the United States are rethinking their choices,” said Elora Mukherjee, a professor and director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School. “These are among the best and brightest students in the world, and the United States may no longer be their top destination in light of immigration changes in recent months.” It’s too soon to know what enrollment will look like in the fall, experts agreed, but college presidents are concerned about both retention and recruitment. Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for DHS, said in response to questions about international students that it is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the U.S. “When you break our laws and advocate for violence and terrorism, that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country.” State Department officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Washington Examiner [5/2/2025 8:53 AM, Brady Knox, 2296K] reports the tariff exemption for low-value packages from China ended on Friday, meaning online shoppers will soon feel President Donald Trump’s tariffs tangibly. Trump’s blanket 145% tariff against Chinese goods came with a "de minimis exemption," a law that waived tariffs on packages under $800. The end of the exemption on Friday will cause prices for goods on Chinese online shipping outlets such as Temu to skyrocket, one of the tariff’s most obvious consequences. The change could be a major political risk for Republicans, given the impact inflation had on the 2024 election. While Trump has worked to bring down inflation on products such as eggs, he suggested that tariffs on luxury products such as toys could be beneficial. "I told you before, [China is] having tremendous difficulty because their factories are not doing business. They made a trillion dollars with Biden … selling this stuff. Much of it we don’t need," Trump said on Wednesday. "You know, somebody said, ‘Oh, the shelves are going to be empty’. Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.” He then argued that cheap goods weren’t worth the economic cost. "But we’re not talking about something that we have to go out of our way — they have ships that are loaded up with stuff, much of which — not all of it, but much of which we don’t need. And we have to make a fair deal," Trump said. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has echoed similar points, saying, "Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream.” Congress passed the de minimis exemption in 1938, with lawmakers reasoning that screening and collecting duties on low-value packages wasn’t worth the time and effort. The Trump administration had to reverse its first removal of de minimis after it was found that Customs and Border Protection couldn’t efficiently process all the items. The Department of Commerce is developing a system to process all the low-value packages from China, which was estimated to be operational by Friday, according to Politico. "U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) certainly has a huge task on its hand," a CBP spokesperson said in a statement. "However, the agency is uniquely positioned to implement and enforce the president’s tariffs using all our enforcement and revenue collection authorities.”

NBC News [5/2/2025 6:34 PM, Dan De Luce and Julia Ainsley, 44742K] reports a former senior cybersecurity official who refuted President Donald Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was "rigged" is under federal investigation, according to a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson. Chris Krebs is facing an unspecified government investigation, the DHS spokesperson said. As a result, Krebs was expelled from a U.S. customs program that allows expedited clearance for pre-approved American travelers at airports, known as Global Entry. "Chris Krebs is under active investigation by law enforcement agencies," the DHS spokesperson told NBC News. "That is a fact disqualifying him for global entry.” Officials declined to say why Krebs was under investigation or which federal agencies were leading the probe. CNN first reported Krebs’ suspension from the Global Entry program. The White House referred NBC News to the DHS and Justice Department for comment. The Justice Department declined to comment. Krebs, who served as head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency during Trump’s first term, declined to comment. Trump fired Krebs after he said in a statement that the 2020 election was the "most secure in American history.” Krebs added, "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” The investigation of Krebs comes after President Trump issued a memorandum on April 9 directing the attorney general and the homeland security secretary to "take all appropriate action to review" Krebs’ activities during his time in government. The memo also revoked Krebs’ security clearance. The memo targeting Krebs, and a similar memo naming former senior DHS official Miles Taylor, marked an escalation in President Trump’s campaign of retribution against perceived political enemies. It was the first time the president had requested possible government investigations against individuals.

NewsNation [5/2/2025 12:29 PM, Anna Kutz, 6866K] reports the Trump administration has now created two “National Defense Areas” along the nation’s southern border. The patrolled zones — located in New Mexico and Texas — are part of the White House’s plans to militarize the U.S.-Mexico border. Typically, it would take Congressional approval to establish such a large military area, according to Just Security, a nonpartisan digital law and policy journal. But Trump has circumvented the process via his national emergency declaration at the border, made hours after his inauguration. The establishment of NDAs and his emergency declaration barely scratch the surface of the border policy changes Trump has implemented during his first 100 days in office. Other actions include an executive order designating some cartels and other criminal organizations as foreign terrorist organizations, and the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to carry out deportation flights. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the zones are property of the DOD, and anyone who attempts to illegally enter the “federally protected area” will be detained. “You will be interdicted by U.S. troops and border patrol working together,” Hegseth said, according to the Defense’s official news site.

Detroit Free Press [5/2/2025 4:16 PM, Christina Hall, 4124K] reports a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer is facing federal child pornography charges after videos that appeared to depict children and teens engaged in sex acts were found at his Macomb County home, according to an FBI agent in a court document. Scott James Rocky of Center Line is charged with receipt and distribution of child pornography and possession of child pornography, according to a criminal complaint dated May 1 in U.S. District Court in Detroit. It indicates the violations occurred April 15 and May 1 in Wayne County. Rocky was arrested May 1 as a result of an investigation by the FBI in coordination with Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Professional Responsibility, according to a customs statement. He is on administrative leave without pay. He has worked for customs for 17 years, according to a LinkedIn account. His attorney, Arthur Weiss, had no comment May 2. Rocky was being detained and is scheduled for a detention hearing Monday. "CBP stresses honor and integrity in every aspect of our mission, and the overwhelming majority of CBP employees and officers perform their duties with honor and distinction, working tirelessly every day to keep our country safe," according to the Customs and Border Protection statement. "CBP will cooperate fully with all criminal or administrative investigations of alleged misconduct by any of our personnel, whether it occurs on or off duty.” According to an affidavit in federal court, an FBI agent was signed into a BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing program April 29. Peer-to-peer file sharing systems allow internet users to share electronic files, including images and videos, with users, generally anonymously to each other. The agent wrote that he identified a specific computer as a potential download candidate because about 4,141 files of investigative interest − files associated with keywords or hash values related to material consistent with the federal definition of child pornography − were observed. He identified the computer on an FBI undercover computer that monitors child pornography shared on BitTorrent. He determined a computer using that IP address shared about 530 files with the undercover computer April 15, according to the affidavit. It indicated the files contained images and videos that met the federal definition of child pornography, with many appearing to depict children between the ages of 4 and 10 engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

Reuters [5/2/2025 4:19 PM, Idrees Ali, Phil Stewart and Andrew Hay, 41523K] reports the U.S. military has created a second military zone along the border with Mexico, adding an area in Texas where troops can temporarily detain migrants or trespassers after doing the same in New Mexico. President Donald Trump launched an aggressive immigration enforcement campaign after taking office, increasing troops at the southern border and pledging to deport millions of immigrants in the United States illegally. The Trump administration earlier this month designated a 60-foot-wide (18.3-meter-wide) strip along a base in New Mexico as a "National Defense Area." Late on Thursday, the U.S. military said that it had designated a second area along the border as the "Texas National Defense Area." Eighty-two migrants have been charged for crossing into the buffer area. So far, U.S. troops have not detained any and it has been carried out by CBP officials. The buffer zone allows the Trump administration to use troops to detain migrants without invoking the 1807 Insurrection Act that empowers a president to deploy the U.S. military to suppress events like civil disorder.

(B) CNN News Central [5/2/2025 8:49 AM, Staff] reports that the US Army is creating a second expanded military zone along the Texas-Mexico border where soldiers can detain migrants before handing them over the US Customs and Border Protection. This is part of the administration’s latest push to militarize the southern border as they work to slow the flow of migrants. The narrow strip of land will be 63 miles long and is located at Fort Bliss, near El Paso.

The AP [5/2/2025 3:23 PM, Tim Sullivan] reports civil rights groups have filed a lawsuit on behalf of the family of an 8-year-old girl who died in Border Patrol custody in 2023 despite her mother’s repeated pleas for medical care. The girl died nine days after the family had surrendered to border agents after crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico. Anadith Danay Reyes Alvarez, who had chronic heart problems and sickle cell anemia, died after medical personnel in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection detention facility refused to summon an ambulance, according to U.S. officials, lawyers and her family. Her death came amid a flood of illegal crossings into the U.S. and criticism of U.S. authorities for overcrowded detention facilities. It led to investigations into what went wrong during Anadith’s custody, which far exceeded the agency’s own limit of 72 hours, and into medical care for detained immigrants. The Texas Civil Rights Project and Haitian Bridge Alliance are seeking $15 million in damages in the lawsuit, which was filed Thursday and comes amid renewed scrutiny on treatment of immigrants during the Trump administration’s crackdown. An internal investigation found that medical personnel were informed about Anadith’s medical history but declined to review her file before she had a seizure and died May 17 in Harlingen, Texas. NewsNation [5/2/2025 4:01 PM, Sandra Sanchez, 6866K] reports that the wrongful death lawsuit was brought Thursday against the Department of Homeland Security, CBP and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement by the nonprofits Texas Civil Rights Project, the Haitian Bridge Alliance, and the Texas A&M University School of Law Civil Rights Clinic. Anadith Danay Reyes Álvarez died on May 17, 2023, in a CBP processing facility in the border town of Harlingen. The Panamanian-born girl suffered from sickle cell disease and a heart condition. The plaintiffs claim that she died because she did not get "the medical treatment and life-saving emergency care that she deserved and was entitled to under the law" while in CBP custody, according to the lawsuit obtained by Border Report. The New York Times [5/3/2025 3:42 AM, Jazmine Ulloa, 330K] reports Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, one of the groups that filed the claim, said Anadith’s family wanted to ensure there was accountability and transparency in Customs and Border Protection facilities, which she described as “one of the most obscure and opaque types of detention in our American immigration system.” “They do not want their daughter to have died in vain,” Ms. Garza said. Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment on the wrongful death claim. After Anadith’s death, Troy Miller, then acting head of the border agency, requested a review of CBP facilities and made recommendations to address the medical care issues.

San Diego Union Tribune [5/2/2025 11:36 AM, Alex Riggins, 1682K] reports ever since María Puga saw the cell phone recording of her husband screaming in anguish as he lay on the ground surrounded by federal border agents, she knew he was tortured before he died, she testified Thursday. This week, in a groundbreaking decision, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights agreed, finding that federal agents tortured Anastasio Hernández Rojas by beating him with batons, using Tasers multiple times, and kneeling on him while he was handcuffed at the San Ysidro Port of Entry. This historic decision marked the first time the commission, an international body within the Organization of American States that investigates massacres, extrajudicial killings, and other human rights violations throughout the Western Hemisphere, has issued such findings in a case involving a death at the hands of U.S. law enforcement officers. The commission also determined that federal officials conducted a biased and incomplete investigation into Hernández Rojas’s death, used excessive force while he was restrained, discriminated against him, and denied justice to his family, all in violation of international protocols to which the United States has signed. “The acts of police violence against Mr. Hernández at the San Ysidro Port of Entry were perpetrated intentionally, with the goal of intimidation, control, and punishment, and… caused intense suffering to the victim, and (the commission) concludes that they constituted acts of torture,” the commissioners wrote in the 43-page report released Wednesday.

SFGate [5/2/2025 11:42 AM, Staff, 12335K] reports that a 54-year-old man was arrested this week on suspicion of smuggling 12 parakeets inside his boots and vehicle seat compartments while crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, officials said. The Mexican citizen is accused of hiding the orange-fronted parakeets, a protected species from Western Mexico and Costa Rica, in his boots and in his car, the U.S. Attorney’s Office Southern District of California said in a news release. Officials discovered the birds when the man attempted to cross the border with a Global Entry card at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry in San Diego just after 3 p.m. on April 29, the attorney’s office said. At the inspection booth, the man was asked to step out of his car and undergo a secondary inspection, where authorities noticed a bulge in his ankles. The border officer patted him down and found three birds in each boot, tied by their feet and stuffed in nylon stockings, the attorney’s office said. The birds had injuries to their feet. The man was arrested and booked into custody that same day. But on April 30, when Border Patrol officers heard more birds crying in the impounded vehicle, they found six more parakeets in the passenger side seat cushion, also wrapped in nylon stockings. Two birds were dead, one had a broken neck and three were alive but in "poor health," the attorney’s office said. The man was charged with importation contrary to law, and if convicted, he could face 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. "Smuggling at the border takes many forms, but the tragic impact on animals forced into such perilous conditions is deeply troubling," U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon said in the news release. "We are committed to holding accountable those who endanger wildlife and public health through these reckless and inhumane smuggling practices.”

The Daily Caller [5/2/2025 3:47 PM, Floyd Buford, 1082K] reports the Trump administration has officially closed a tariff loophole which China had long exploited to flood the U.S. with cheap goods and increasingly, deadly drugs. President Donald Trump’s April 2 executive order ended the de minimis loophole effective Friday. The loophole had allowed imports under $800 to enter the U.S. duty-free and with little to no customs scrutiny, according to a White House fact sheet. In 2022, over 80% of all U.S. imports qualified for this exemption. Last year alone, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) processed more than 1.3 billion de minimis packages, nearly four million every day, government statistics show. But it wasn’t just about cheap imports. Federal agents say the loophole became a key smuggling route for synthetic drugs like fentanyl. Since Congress raised the de minimis threshold in 2016, fentanyl overdose deaths in the U.S. have surged by 350%, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). Much of the fentanyl in the United States enters via the southern border, but the chemicals often originate in China and are increasingly shipped through de minimis channels. And drugs are just the start. Customs agents have intercepted AK-47s hidden in food containers, and seized prohibited animal products from countries ravaged by African swine fever and bird flu, according to the press release. In one case, CBP agents in Florida discovered a disassembled helicopter shipped from Venezuela — packed into 21 separate crates — all under de minimis. FOX Business [5/2/2025 7:32 AM, Michael Dorgan, 10702K] reports that the change comes into effect one month after Trump signed an executive order to end the loophole which has been in place since 1938. The goods now face up to 145% tax rate or are subject to a flat fee which will likely be passed on to the consumer. Nearly half (48%) of de minimis shipments from sites like Shein and Temu go to the poorest U.S. zip codes, while only 22% reach the wealthiest, according to research by UCLA and Yale economists. The executive order said it was a "critical step in countering the ongoing health emergency posed by the illicit flow of synthetic opioids into the U.S.” The White House said that many Chinese-based shippers hide illicit substances, including synthetic opioids, in low-value packages to exploit the de minimis exemption. Figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate a staggering 107,543 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. during 2023. Prior to the closing of the loophole, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) processed over 4 million de minimis shipments into the U.S. each day, the White House said. Last fiscal year, CBP apprehended more than 21,000 pounds of fentanyl at our borders, enough fentanyl to kill more than 4 billion people. An investigation by Reuters reporters last year found that they were able to use the de minimis loophole to import the main precursor chemicals for at least 3 million fentanyl tablets due to overseas shippers intentionally mislabeling the packages as electronics. Fast-fashion giant Shein sought to reassure customers in a post on its U.S. Instagram account on Thursday, saying: "Some products may be priced differently than before, but the majority of our collections remain as affordable as ever." Shein sells clothes mostly manufactured in China, and the U.S. is its biggest market.

New York Post [5/2/2025 4:30 PM, Taylor Herzlich, 54903K] reports Temu on Friday said it has stopped shipments of cheap goods from China to the US as President Trump axed a trade loophole that allowed the fast-fashion giant to sidestep tariffs and customs checks. The end of the de minimis exemption is a massive blow to Temu, which is owned by China-based PDD Holdings, and rival Shein, both of which used the loophole to send packages worth less than $800 into the US duty-free. As the two Chinese e-commerce giants have exploded in popularity, thanks to their cheap, speedy deliveries of $5 shirts and $10 dresses, so has usage of the de minimis rule. A massive 1.36 billion shipments made their way into the US under the exemption in 2024, up from 637 million just four years earlier, according to US Customs and Border Protection. But Trump ended the exemption for goods made in China and Hong Kong after midnight on Friday.

Reuters [5/2/2025 3:00 PM, David Shepardson, 41523K] reports the White House said on Friday it wants to cut funding for the Transportation Security Administration by $247 million, while boosting spending on rail and air safety. The 2026 budget proposal seeks another $360 million for the Federal Aviation Administration to support air traffic controller hiring and salary increases and updates to its outdated telecommunications systems, and $400 million in new rail safety and infrastructure, citing a 2023 Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. The proposal also calls for cutting funding by $308 million for Essential Air Service, which subsidizes commercial air service to rural airports and is popular with Republican lawmakers. In its proposal on Friday to cut TSA officer levels, the White House said, "TSA has consistently failed audits while implementing intrusive screening measures that violate Americans’ privacy and dignity." It was not immediately clear how many positions the White House wants to cut. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy next week plans to ask Congress for "tens of billions" of dollars over several years to fund a revamped air traffic control system. The budget calls for another $4 billion over several years, including $450 million for 2026 on a multiyear, multibillion-dollar radar replacement program.

Washington Examiner [5/2/2025 7:00 AM, Annabella Rosciglione, 2296K] reports Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) have introduced the Abolish the TSA Act, which would eliminate the Transportation Security Administration and privatize airport security by 2028. Experts, however, warn that privatizing the TSA and bringing the United States back to security standards that were in place before the 9/11 terrorist attacks would not result in efficiency as the senators hope. "There’s a reason we haven’t had a major attack on our aviation system since 9/11. It’s because of the TSA, DHS, DOD, the FBI, and other agencies and actions we’ve taken to prevent it from happening," Jeff Price, a professor of aviation management at the Metropolitan State University of Denver, told the Washington Examiner. TSA was born in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to standardize airport security under the federal government. The agency was established by the Aviation and Transportation Security Act and signed into law on Nov. 19, 2001, becoming part of the Department of Homeland Security the following year. Before that, airports hired private security via government contractors overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration. Price, who was an airport screener in the 1980s, warned that if airlines have to hire contractors for security, they will hire "them at the lowest bid and allow them to operate at the minimal levels of performance.” "Pre 9/11 it was often more cost efficient to allow the airline contract screeners to miss FAA test weapons and pay the fines, than it was to improve the system and the personnel so they didn’t miss the items in the first place," Price said. "If you hire a brand new workforce, they’re going to miss things at a much higher rate than TSA employees are, because they don’t have the background, training, or experience," John Pistole, former Obama TSA administrator, told Flying. Price also noted airfares would likely rise if airlines were tasked with this additional responsibility. "Airports don’t have the revenue to hire contractors, so the costs will be passed along to the consumer," Price said. Price did offer some improvements to current TSA procedures. He said most of his proposals would "be administrative in nature, allowing technologies to get to the airports faster and better throughout at the checkpoints.” "TSA needs to continue to build the trusted traveler programs, such as PreCheck, and do a better job of taking care of its workforce," Price said. He noted that turnover at TSA remains high and that "fair wages" need to be paid. DHS under Secretary Kristi Noem ended the department’s collective bargaining with thousands of TSA employees. The previous landmark labor agreement was seen as a major expansion in collective bargaining for transportation security officers. The TSA currently offers a level of privatization through its Screening Partnership Program. Less than 5% of the 400 eligible airports participate in the program.

CBS News [5/2/2025 12:29 PM, Kris Van Cleave, 51661K] Video: HERE reports the deadline for Americans to have a Real ID for air travel is approaching, and the Transportation Security Administration is preparing for potential delays in the coming days. CBS News’ Kris Van Cleave reports.

(B) CBS Mornings [5/2/2025 7:23 AM, Staff] reports that the REAL ID deadline will start Wednesday. The TSA encourages flyers to show up at least three hours early. While the plans will vary airport by airport, there will be additional staff outside the checkpoint trying to help explain the differences but there is potential for confusion and delays. The TSA says about one in every five flyers is showing up without a compliant ID. TSA officers will use a secondary process to try to confirm the identity of flyers without a REAL ID, passport, or other compliant identification but that can take time or may result in denial.

New York Times [5/2/2025 5:02 AM, Michael Levenson, 145325K] reports some have logged on late at night. Others have driven for hours. And some have just given up. All in the hunt for a coveted appointment for a Real ID. Starting on Wednesday, travelers in the United States will need a Real ID, passport or other federally recognized document to board domestic flights, a requirement that has sent many Americans scrambling for the security-enhanced, star-emblazoned identification cards. Perhaps nowhere is the search for appointments as intense as it is in New Jersey, where just 17 percent of state-issued IDs are Real IDs, according to a recent CBS News analysis of data from state motor vehicle agencies across the country. No other state had a lower compliance rate. Melissa Sussko, 26, of Nutley, N.J., said the only reason she had managed to find an appointment for a Real ID at the Motor Vehicle Commision office in Wayne, N.J., was because a friend had recommended looking for openings on the agency’s website at midnight. So she logged on at midnight and snagged one. Another friend, she said, was planning to drive to Cape May, on the southern tip of New Jersey, to get her Real ID at the only Motor Vehicle Commission office where she could find an appointment. “Everyone I know is fighting to get one,” Ms. Sussko said. “You can’t find any, at all.” Al Sohi, 54, a driving instructor in North Caldwell, N.J., said he had given up looking for an appointment and planned to use his passport if he needed to travel. “I wanted to get a Real ID; I can’t find the appointment,” he said. “It’s terrible. They should do something to accommodate all the people who want a Real ID.” Some other states say they are also struggling to handle a surge of interest in Real IDs, as news spreads that the Department of Homeland Security will require the identification cards at airport checkpoints and federal facilities starting on Wednesday, after repeatedly extending the deadline for years. Some other states say they are also struggling to handle a surge of interest in Real IDs, as news spreads that the Department of Homeland Security will require the identification cards at airport checkpoints and federal facilities starting on Wednesday, after repeatedly extending the deadline for years.

FOX News [5/2/2025 10:00 AM, Breanne Deppisch, 46189K] reports a stricter identity verification requirement for U.S. residents is slated to take force next week after 20 years of delay. And for many, the law will require a visit to one of the nation’s most notorious, time-honored places of dread: the Department of Motor Vehicles. These facilities can vary slightly both in name and in acronym: Texans, for example, have a Department of Public Safety or DPS; Floridians dub theirs the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles or HSMV. (Add to the mix the DDS, the BMV and the MVD, it’s a veritable alphabet soup.). Despite the different names, each of these state-run facilities serves the same purpose: to license drivers and issue identification cards to residents living in the state. They share the same wait times and inspire the same feelings of burden and loathing. But for individuals in some states, things are about to get a lot worse, fast. On May 7, all U.S. residents will be required to show a "REAL ID-compliant" form of identification to board any flights, including international and domestic travel, or to enter any federal buildings in compliance with a long-stalled federal law passed by Congress in 2005. A REAL ID is a state-issued driver’s license or state-issued identification card that meets certain federal standards, and it requires individuals to provide additional documentation, such as several documents proving current state residency — a utility agreement and lease, for example — as well as a certified birth certificate, among other things. REAL IDs are now issued by all state DMVs (or BMVs or HSMVs) in anticipation of the fast-approaching enforcement date. REAL ID-compliant ID cards and licenses are marked with a star or other symbol in the right-hand corner, and some states, including Texas and Florida, have been issuing them for years. But because DMVs are operated at a state and not federal level, compliance with the tighter verification standards has until recently been optional. That’s prompted a patchwork of compliance across the U.S. and a recent, frenzied panic from residents in states whose DMVs have not met the REAL ID standards. In the final days before the new law takes effect, some U.S. residents are learning for the first time, to their horror, that their IDs are not up to snuff. In Kentucky, a group of state lawmakers led by Senate Transportation Committee Chair Jimmy Higdon, R-Lebanon, urged Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to delay the REAL ID enforcement date, citing "growing concerns" from state residents who have been unable to access driver’s licensing services due to "limited appointment availability and long lines for walk-ins.”

FOX 54 Huntsville [5/2/2025 4:01 PM, Jonathan Shelley, 81K] reports in a letter addressed to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Alabama Congressman Shomari Figures has formally requested a six-month extension to the impending REAL ID enforcement deadline, currently set for May 7. The congressman’s request highlights significant challenges that many Americans — particularly those in rural areas — are facing as they attempt to obtain REAL ID-compliant identification before the deadline. According to Figures, DMV offices across the country are overwhelmed with long wait times, limited appointment availability, and persistent staffing shortages. "The current timeline presents significant challenges that could undermine both public confidence and the efficiency of our transportation systems," Figures said in his letter to Secretary Noem. The letter is signed by six congressional Democrats. The Department of Homeland Security has not yet issued a formal response to the extension request. This marks the latest in a series of deadline extensions for REAL ID implementation, which has faced numerous delays since its original implementation timeline.

San Diego Union Tribune [5/2/2025 9:03 AM, Lori Weisberg, 1682K] reports the long-postponed deadline for getting a Real ID for boarding domestic flights is fast approaching, and San Diego International Airport is warning air travelers to arrive early and be prepared. Starting Wednesday, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will require Real ID-compliant, state-issued identification for passengers over 18 years old before boarding a U.S. commercial aircraft. A Real ID card is essentially an upgraded driver’s license or state identification card that in California is issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles and is marked with a golden bear and star in the top right corner. If you procrastinated on getting your Real ID card, there’s no need to panic. There are other forms of acceptable identification in lieu of the card, including a passport; Department of Homeland Security Trusted Traveler cards like Global Entry; active-duty and retired military ID; identification cards issued by any federally recognized tribe; and a Transportation Worker Identification Credential. "We encourage passengers to plan ahead if they intend to fly out of SAN (the San Diego airport) on May 7 and bring proper identification," said Kimberly Becker, president and CEO of the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority. "More than 40,000 passengers depart from SAN each day and with the beginning of REAL ID enforcement we anticipate possible delays. To ensure a smooth experience through SAN, we advise travelers to arrive two hours before domestic flights and three hours for international flights.” The Airport Authority says it will be staffed with extra people in the terminals Wednesday to help address any issues travelers may have. Signs are also posted at checkpoints in both Terminal 1 and 2 reminding passengers about Real ID requirements. Once enforcement begins, travelers who do not have a Real ID card or another TSA-acceptable form of identification will likely face delays, additional screening, and the possibility of not being allowed into the security checkpoint. There may, however, be some wiggle room. The TSA website notes that an officer may ask passengers who don’t have acceptable identification to complete an identity verification process that includes collecting information such as one’s name and current address. If the traveler’s identity is confirmed, that person would then be allowed to enter the screening checkpoint, where there may be additional screening, the website states. Even the DMV is suggesting holding off for now on getting a Real ID given how busy offices will be, stating, "if you already have a current U.S. passport or don’t need to fly within the U.S. in the next few months, you can wait to get your Real ID until you renew your California driver’s license or ID.”

CNN [5/2/2025 9:44 AM, Andrew Freedman, 908K] reports the National Weather Service is in worse shape than previously known, according to interviews with current and former meteorologists, due to a combination of layoffs, early retirements and preexisting vacancies. The nation’s forecasting agency is in tatters as what could be a destructive hurricane season nears. Several current and former agency meteorologists told CNN they are concerned forecasts and life-saving warnings are not going to be issued in time. Responsible for protecting life and property from severe weather impacts, the National Weather Service is headed into hurricane season with 30 of its 122 weather forecast offices lacking their most experienced official, known as the meteorologist-in-charge. These include offices that cover major population centers such as New York City, Cleveland, Houston and Tampa. There is not a single manager in place at the hurricane-prone Houston-Galveston forecast office, according to a NOAA staff member who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal.

New York Times [5/2/2025 6:30 PM, Camille Baker, 145325K] reports five former National Weather Service directors have taken the unusual step of signing onto an open letter warning that cuts to the organization by the Trump administration may soon endanger lives. “N.W.S. staff will have an impossible task to continue its current level of services,” they write in the letter, dated Friday. “Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life.” Hundreds of Weather Service employees, or about 10 percent of the agency’s total staff, have been terminated or accepted buyout offers since President Trump began his second term, according to the letter. The letter notes that the coming weeks are “the busiest time for severe storm predictions like tornadoes and hurricanes,” and it points to a wide range of activities that rely on accurate forecasting: “Airplanes can’t fly without weather observations and forecasts; ships crossing the oceans rely on storm forecasts to avoid the high seas; farmers rely on seasonal forecasts to plant and harvest their crops which feed us.” “Perhaps most importantly,” they write, “N.W.S. issues all of the tornado warnings, hurricane warnings, flood warnings, extreme wildfire conditions and other information during extreme weather events.” The loss of staff is already affecting local forecast offices, said Joe Friday, who led the Weather Service from 1988 to 1997 and who signed the letter. “You have offices that cannot maintain their balloon launch schedules,” he said. “You have offices that cannot maintain 24-hour-a-day operations fully staffed.” The more than 100 Weather Service offices around the country have traditionally launched at least two balloons a day to collect data that helps them produce forecast models. In an interview, Dr. Friday said he was concerned that meteorologists who are stretched increasingly thin will be left to issue severe weather warnings with less lead time. “There’s going to be fewer people keeping their eyes on what’s going on,” he said.

TIME [5/2/2025 11:55 AM, Simmone Shah, 33298K] reports severe storms hit the Pittsburgh area earlier this week—killing three and causing widespread power outages in the region. It’s the latest in a string of deadly storms in the U.S.—at least 24 people were killed after storms hit the south and midwest in early April, and at least 32 people were killed when storms swept through much of the country in mid-March. Following both storms, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), stepped in to provide assistance to individuals and counties. While Pittsburgh might not need FEMA aid, if the Trump Administration has it their way, many communities across the country could be left in the lurch on disaster recovery aid, as the administration looks to dismantle the agency and shift disaster response onto states. Trump first posed the idea of overhauling FEMA while visiting North Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in January. “I’d like to see the states take care of disasters, let the state take care of the tornadoes and the hurricanes and all of the other things that happen. And I think you’re going to find it a lot less expensive. You’ll do it for less than half and you’re going to get a lot quicker response," he said. One of his first executive orders was establishing a council to assess the effectiveness of the disaster response agency. Just days before the Pittsburgh storm, Trump appointed 13 people—including Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem—to review FEMA. The group is expected to submit a report to the president within 180 days, according to the executive order. Trump’s move to dismantle the agency comes as extreme weather events are only becoming more common—and more costly. In 2024, the U.S. saw 27 weather and climate disasters with at least $1 billion in damages each—second only to 2023, which had 28 billion-dollar events. And researchers predict an above-average hurricane season is on the horizon.

USA Today [5/2/2025 8:51 AM, Jeanine Santucci, 75858K] reports days on end of a severe weather outbreak walloping the south-central United States will on May 2 stretch up through Tennessee and Kentucky with "intense clusters of thunderstorms," forecasters said. The severe thunderstorms are expected in the afternoon to evening and could also bring corridors of strong wind gusts and hail, the largest of which will come over central Texas, the Storm Prediction Center said. A tornado or two is also possible, according to the National Weather Service. More than 1.1 million people in north Texas and Oklahoma were under a severe thunderstorm watch early May 2. Flooding remains a concern with a slight risk of excessive rainfall in the south-central region after days of heavy rains have already saturated the ground, leading to deadly flooding in Oklahoma. The end of April and beginning of May have brought intense rounds of storms across a large swath of the country from Texas through upstate New York. At least five people have died in recent days from storms that brought severe winds to Pennsylvania and flooding in Oklahoma. Oklahoma City and other parts of the state had the wettest April on record as the rounds of storms bore down, bringing excessive rainfall in recent days to areas that already flooded earlier in the month. In April 2025, Oklahoma City received 12.55 inches of rainfall in total. That put Oklahoma’s rain total for 2025 at 15.54 inches, up from almost 3 inches at the start of April. Before 2025, the title was held by April 1947, which saw 11.91 inches of rain in Oklahoma City. The relentless rain caused a patched dam to fail in northeast Oklahoma and triggered creeks to overflow, closing roads and highways across the state, the Oklahoman, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported. Gov. Kevin Stitt on April 30 declared a state of emergency for three Oklahoma counties because of continued heavy rain, flooding and severe weather that began on April 19.

CBS New York [5/2/2025 6:30 PM, Mark Prussin, 51661K] Video: HERE reports crews in New Jersey are responding to a wildfire that broke out Friday near Hackettstown in Warren County. The wildfire along Route 46 is currently burning 100 acres and 0% contained, the New Jersey Forest Fire Service said Friday afternoon. Twenty-five structures are threatened, but no one has been evacuated, according to the forest fire service. Route 46 in Independence Township was closed in both directions because of the wildfire, the Allamuchy Fire Department said, but it has since reopened. People are being told to avoid the area as fire crews from across Warren, Sussex and Morris counties are on the scene. It comes as firefighters continue battling the Jones Road Wildfire in Ocean County, which was approximately 80% contained as of Friday.

ABC News [5/2/2025 11:26 AM, Staff, 34586K] reports that a second teenager has been arrested for arson in connection with a massive New Jersey wildfire as prosecutors reveal more details about how the fire allegedly began. The second suspect -- an unidentified 17-year-old boy -- was taken into custody on Thursday and charged with arson and aggravated arson for allegedly helping set wooden pallets on fire and leaving the area when the fire wasn’t fully extinguished, Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley Billhimer said. The 17-year-old was also charged with hindering apprehension for allegedly giving "misinformation to law enforcement about how the fire started," Billhimer said in a statement. The first suspect, 19-year-old Joseph Kling, was arrested on April 23 in connection with the Jones Road Wildfire, which ignited in Ocean Township on April 22, prosecutors said. On the night of April 21, Kling picked up his friends and then took multiple wooden pallets, which were outside of a recycling center, and drove to a wooded area, prosecutors said at Kling’s detention hearing Friday. Kling allegedly lit multiple wooden pallets on fire, using gasoline in a pit to create a bonfire, prosecutors said. During that time, Kling’s friend was involved in a dirt bike accident, and the prosecutor said in Kling’s haste to leave and meet his friend, he allegedly disposed of the remaining pallets on the fire and left the blaze burning.

Houston Chronicle [5/2/2025 3:10 PM, Rebekah F. Ward, 1769K] reports a long-awaited update to FEMA’s flood maps for Harris County has been delayed again, eight years after Hurricane Harvey revealed how the current renderings drastically underestimate homeowners’ vulnerability to extreme weather. Officials now plan to release a draft of the new maps by early 2026. Last May, FEMA said a draft would be public by the beginning of 2025, which already represented a three-year setback from the original timeline. With this newest delay, Harris County residents will likely have to wait four extra years to see whether their homes fall within a previously-undocumented floodplain. FEMA said in a statement that the agency is still partnering with "a strong team" at the Harris County Flood Control District that is equipped to complete pieces of a new flood insurance rate map. The county is responsible for developing the flood-risk data and modeling, though ultimately, "the floodplain maps sit with FEMA," flood control district spokeswoman Emily Woodell said.

Washington Post [5/2/2025 4:33 PM, Matthew Cappucci, 31735K] reports a family of strong tornadoes tore through areas south of Killeen, Texas, on Thursday, leading to swaths of destruction — all as no tornadoes were officially predicted to occur. At least three tornadoes, probably all possessing winds greater than 120 mph, touched down near Briggs, a town in eastern Burnet County south of Killeen. Five homes were damaged along County Road 223, and one driver was reported injured. The National Weather Service in the Austin-San Antonio area planned to survey the damage Friday. Copperas Cove, on the extreme west side of Killeen, reported hail up to 4.5 inches in diameter — roughly the size of a grapefruit. Had the storm been shifted just five miles east-northeast, the damage could have been much more significant. Hail is by far the most expensive thunderstorm hazard in Texas and causes orders of magnitude more financial loss than tornadoes annually. The same parent storm system that drove these tornadoes is shifting east Friday, with an enhanced (Level 3 out of 5) risk of severe weather from Texas to central Kentucky. It includes Houston; Austin; San Antonio; Jackson, Mississippi; Birmingham, Alabama; and Lexington, Kentucky. The main concern will be damaging straight-line winds, though large hail could be a problem, especially in Texas.

San Diego Union Tribune [5/2/2025 6:00 AM, Staff, 1682K] reports that, in the wake of recent natural disasters, state leaders across the country are finding that emergency support from the federal government is no longer a given. Under President Donald Trump, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has denied federal assistance for tornadoes in Arkansas, flooding in West Virginia and a windstorm in Washington state. It also has refused North Carolina’s request for extended relief funding in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. While it’s not uncommon for the feds to turn down some requests for disaster declarations, which unlock federal aid, state leaders say the Trump administration’s denials have taken them by surprise. White House officials are signaling a new approach to federal emergency response, even as Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem threaten to shut down FEMA altogether. "The Federal Government focuses its support on truly catastrophic disasters—massive hurricanes, devastating earthquakes, or wide-scale attacks on the homeland," Brian Hughes, a spokesman for the National Security Council, which advises the president on issues of national security, said in a statement to Stateline. Hughes said state and local governments "often remain an impediment to their own community’s resilience." He called on states to take on a more extensive role. "States must have adequate emergency management staff, adoption and enforcement of modern building codes, responsible planning and strategic investment to reduce future risk, commonsense policies that prioritize preparedness over politics, disaster reserve funds to handle what should be routine emergencies, pre-negotiated mutual aid and contingency contracts that speed up recovery, and above all, an appetite to own the problem," the statement said. State emergency management leaders say the federal retreat from disaster response has upended a long-established system. "This is very unusual," said Karina Shagren, communications director with the Washington Military Department, which oversees the state’s emergency management division. "This is the first time in recent memory that we have hit all the indicators to get FEMA’s public assistance program and we’ve been denied.” Michael Coen, who served as chief of staff at FEMA during the Obama and Biden administrations, said the president has "broad discretion" to approve or deny disaster requests, regardless of whether they meet specified conditions. If Trump intends to curtail federal support, Coen said, he should give states clear guidelines. "They should have a dialogue with the states, so the states aren’t spinning their wheels making requests that are going to get denied," Coen said.

Breitbart [5/2/2025 1:23 PM, Alana Mastrangelo, 2923K] reports a Maine high school teacher called on the U.S. Secret Service to “take out” President Donald Trump and members of his administration in a series of Facebook posts, adding that she would do it herself if she could. “I believe Trump and every sycophant he has surrounded himself with needs to die,” the teacher said, before comparing the president to Adolf Hitler. JoAnna St. Germain, an English teacher at Waterville High School in Maine, called on the U.S. Secret Service to “take out” Trump and “every single person who supports” his agenda — which was mandated by the American people — suggesting that her violent rhetoric is justified by claiming the president is actually a dictator. “The Secret Service has the perfect opportunity, if they choose to step up and take it. You are the ones with power. Coordinate. Take out every single person who supports Trump’s illegal, immoral, unconstitutional acts,” St. Germain began in a Tuesday Facebook post.

USA Today [5/2/2025 3:53 PM, Tom Vanden Brook, 75858K] reports the Army’s plans for a massive parade on June 14 – its 250th anniversary and President Donald Trump’s 79th birthday – will roll armored vehicles and nearly 7,000 troops past a reviewing stand for Trump on Constitution Avenue near the White House, according to documents. Parade units will mark critical mileposts in the Army’s history from soldiers in Revolutionary War attire to Army Rangers and Stryker armored vehicles to commemorate the Global War on Terror. There appears to be no apprehension this time from the Army about combining its anniversary with Trump’s birthday. The parade, according to a U.S. official, was an idea pushed by the White House. The official spoke on condition of anonymity. This time the Army is all in on the concept, according to the documents. Plans call for 6,686 soldiers, 50 aircraft, seven bands and 152 vehicles, including 92 categorized as “heavy.” Those include M-1 Abrams tanks and vintage World War II Sherman tanks.

Breitbart [5/2/2025 11:08 PM, Elizabeth Weibel, 2923K] reports a Georgia Democrat who ran for a seat in Georgia’s State House last year, and previously called for the assassination of President Donald Trump, was arrested in a multi-agency human trafficking operation focused on child sex trafficking, according to a press release from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI). The “four-day” operation, called “Operation Lights Out,” which ran from April 24 – April 28, 2025, was coordinated by the Georgia Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force, the GBI, and the Muscogee County Sheriff’s Office. The operation “took months of planning and involved the collaboration of 12 law enforcement agencies.” The operation’s goal is to “identify persons who engage in sexually explicit communication with children” online and who “arrange to engage in a sex act with” minors and “travel to meet the child for the purpose of having sex.” As a result of the operation, 19 people, including Carl Sprayberry, 32, who ran for Georgia’s District 139 in the November 2024 election, were arrested, according to the press release. Sprayberry was charged specifically with Human Trafficking. The multi-agency operation also “targeted those who are willing to exploit children by purchasing sex with a minor”: “The goal of ‘Operation Lights Out’ was to identify persons who engage in sexually explicit communication with children on the Internet, arrange to engage in a sex act with the child, and then travel to meet the child for the purpose of having sex. Additionally, the operation targeted those who are willing to exploit children by purchasing sex with a minor. Online child predators use social media sites, messaging apps, and websites on the Internet to find children, begin conversations with them, introduce sexual content, and arrange a meeting with the child for the purpose of having sex. Boys and girls are both targeted by these predators.”

NewsMax.com [5/2/2025 4:17 PM, Jim Thomas, 4998K] reports federal prosecutors revealed new evidence this week connecting the man accused of attempting to assassinate now-President Donald Trump the second time last year to a Mexican human trafficker, alleging the man sought to flee the country with help from a smuggling network if his plan succeeded, The Daily Mail reported. According to a Monday court filing from the Department of Justice, Ryan Routh, who was then 58, exchanged text messages with a smuggler known as "Ramiro" about taking a family of Afghans from central Mexico to the Texas border. Prosecutors say the messages show Routh was laying the groundwork for an escape route months before he allegedly targeted Trump while he was on a golf outing in West Palm Beach, Florida. The messages were disclosed as part of a DOJ motion opposing Routh’s attempt to block the evidence from trial. Prosecutors assert that Routh spent weeks planning to assassinate the president. He allegedly aimed a rifle from a hidden position as Trump played golf at his Florida country club. A Secret Service agent spotted Routh before Trump came into view and opened fire after Routh allegedly aimed the rifle at him. Routh dropped the weapon and fled, leaving a note outlining his intentions. He was arrested shortly after. His trial is scheduled to begin Sept. 8.

Waterways Journal [5/2/2025 12:58 PM, Shelley Byrne, 9K] reports U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters announced May 1 that the Department of Homeland Security has approved full production of the first of its Polar Security Cutters (PSC). Additionally, low-rate initial production of the Waterways Commerce Cutter has been approved. “This is a significant milestone for the nation as it brings the Coast Guard closer to renewing and enhancing operational capabilities in both the American heartland and the polar regions,” the Coast Guard stated. Approval for full production of the polar cutters enables the Coast Guard and Navy’s integrated program office to maintain program momentum and for the shipbuilder to accelerate hiring, the Coast Guard said. The PSC is the first heavy polar icebreaker to be built in the United States in nearly 50 years. The Coast Guard is the sole federal agency responsible for icebreaking.

DVIDS [5/2/2025 1:57 PM, Staff, 777K] reports the crew of Coast Guard Cutter Alert (WMEC 630) returned to their home port in Cape Canaveral, Friday, following a 55-day deployment in the Gulf of America. Alert’s crew deployed under tactical command of the Eighth Coast Guard District to counter illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in the region. During patrol, the crew enforced federal law at sea and defended the United States’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) by interdicting illegal fishing in U.S. territorial waters. While underway, crew members conducted law enforcement boardings, which ranged from routine safety inspections to federal fisheries enforcement in order to deter illicit activity such as illegal maritime migration, fishing and smuggling.

CBS News [5/2/2025 3:51 PM, Dan Ruetenik, Kati Weis, 51661K] reports former federal disaster response specialists and national environmental groups warn that DOGE job cuts may hamper the response to a major oil spill off Louisiana’s Gulf Coast this week, a leak that is fast contaminating marshlands and threatening vital wildlife habitats and fisheries. Although the amount of crude oil currently leaking out of the well is not yet known, a report from the U.S. Coast Guard’s National Response Center earlier this week said "the amount discharged could potentially reach the threshold of a major spill for coastal waters (over 100,000 gallons)." The leak was first reported on Friday, April 26, as a "well blowout." The cause is not yet known. On Thursday, the Coast Guard reported more than 30,000 gallons of an "oily watery mixture" had been collected from the spill site, and while more than two miles of booms had already been deployed, crews were waiting for more containment materials to arrive.

CyberScoop [5/2/2025 2:01 PM, Tim Starks] reports President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget proposal would slash $491 million from the budget of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, according to a summary released Friday. That would amount to a nearly 17% reduction to the agency’s approximately $3 billion budget. The administration did not release a detailed itemization of the cuts, only an outline. “The Budget refocuses CISA on its core mission — Federal network defense and enhancing the security and resilience of critical infrastructure — while eliminating weaponization and waste,” a summary reads. In broad strokes, if approved by Congress, the budget would target for reduction what it identified as “so-called” disinformation and misinformation programs and offices; “duplicative” programs of other programs at the state and federal level; “external engagement offices such as international affairs”; and consolidate “redundant security advisors and programs.” Neither CISA nor the Office of Management and Budget immediately answered questions about what specific programs or offices would face elimination or reduction.

The Hill [5/2/2025 1:40 PM, Miranda Nazzaro, 12829K] reports President Trump proposed shuttering the disinformation offices and programs at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), alleging in the White House budget request that they contributed to the censorship of the president and his supporters. The president’s budget proposal, released Friday, claimed CISA’s disinformation offices and programs “functioned as a hub in the Censorship Industrial Complex.” “CISA was more focused on cooperating with Big Tech to target free speech than our nation’s critical systems,” the White House wrote in a fact sheet. “Even CISA’s own systems have fallen prey to attacks.” CISA, formed in 2018 during the first Trump administration, is tasked with securing the nation’s infrastructure, including election voting systems. It is housed under the Department of Homeland Security. The proposal calls for slashing the agency’s budget by about $491 million. This would be a nearly 16 percent reduction in funding from what the agency received last year. It currently has a budget of about $3 billion.

Axios [5/2/2025 12:18 PM, Sam Sabin, 13163K] reports if the cybersecurity sector and government officials learned anything this week in San Francisco, it’s that they’re stuck with one another. But their uneasy marriage isn’t guaranteed to stay intact. Tensions are high amid federal workforce layoffs, high-profile firings, contract cuts and rising partisan tensions. Many executives saw their meetings with government officials and political nominees at the RSA Conference this week — the cybersecurity industry’s big annual gathering — as a test of whether their public-private partnerships will survive the new administration. These partnerships were always a tough but essential balancing act. Companies have long feared retribution if they disclose security failures that let hackers in.

CyberScoop [5/2/2025 4:59 PM, Matt Kapko] reports threat intelligence sharing is flowing between the private sector and federal government and remains unimpeded thus far by job losses and budget cuts across federal agencies that support the cyber mission, according to executives at major security firms. Top brass at Amazon, CrowdStrike, Google and Palo Alto Networks said there’s been no change to interactions with the federal government since President Donald Trump was inaugurated earlier this year. Across multiple interviews and media briefings during the RSAC 2025 Conference this week, none of the leaders at these top cybersecurity companies conveyed any concern about or experience with communication breakdowns. Each of them dismissed the idea that collaboration has slowed down amid significant workforce reductions and strategic changes across the federal government. “We haven’t seen any change in that regard,” said CJ Moses, Amazon’s chief information security officer. “We’re monitoring the situation just like everybody else, to see if there’s any changes. But as it stands today, there hasn’t been any impact to our ability to share the information that’s needed.” This broad messaging asserting that threat intelligence sharing remains as robust as ever comes amid steady cuts that would seemingly bear some impact on federal agencies’ ability to keep up in an ever-growing threat landscape. Trump’s proposed fiscal 2026 budget calls for a nearly 17% cut to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a $491 million decrease from the agency’s roughly $3 billion annual budget. Cost-cutting measures, staffing cuts and strategic changes at the national and international level have created a dynamic environment that’s pushed cybersecurity companies to adapt how they communicate with their peers in government, said Wendi Whitmore, chief security intelligence officer at Palo Alto Networks.

FOX News [5/2/2025 6:57 PM, Jasmine Baehr, 46189K] reports a new report warns that NATO is unprepared for modern digital warfare. Without stronger leadership, especially from the U.S., the alliance could face serious security risks. The Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) released a study showing that many NATO members are failing to modernize their military data systems. Although NATO leaders talk about the importance of secure and shared cloud infrastructure, most countries still store critical military information in local servers that are vulnerable to cyberattacks. The report calls data the "currency of warfare" and urges NATO to improve how it stores and shares military information. At the moment, most NATO countries are building separate national cloud systems. France uses Thales, Germany uses Arvato, and Italy is working with Leonardo to develop sovereign defense cloud services, according to the CEPA report Defend in the Cloud: Boost NATO Data Resilience. The U.S. has its own approach, using Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle to build a sovereign cloud for the Department of Defense, as noted in the same CEPA report. This fragmented setup is creating major problems. The CEPA report explains that many of these national systems are not interoperable, which makes it difficult for NATO allies to share intelligence or respond rapidly in times of crisis. Although 22 NATO members have pledged to build shared cloud capabilities, progress has been slow. CEPA describes a gap between what leaders promise and what is actually getting done, and the process remains slow and overly bureaucratic. Some of the hesitation stems from political tensions. Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has reinforced his long-standing position that NATO members must meet their defense spending commitments.

San Diego Union Tribune [5/2/2025 11:58 AM, Matthew Schumer, 1682K] reports attorneys defending accused killer Luigi Mangione in his New York case are seeking to dismiss charges related to terrorism, and suppress evidence seized during police officers’ search of the Towson native. In a New York Supreme Court filing Thursday, Mangione’s lawyers argued that state prosecutors’ terrorism charges fail to accurately describe the nature of his actions, and that the evidence obtained by law enforcement during the search of his backpack is inadmissible, given the fact that they conducted the search without a warrant. The filing in the state’s case comes after Mangione pleaded not guilty to federal murder charges carrying the death penalty last week. During the search, officers found a two-and-a-half page handwritten note, as well as a handgun magazine loaded with bullets. In bringing terrorism charges against Mangione, state prosecutors assert that Mangione’s writings indicate that his actions were an attempt to intimidate or coerce a civilian population. But Mangione’s lawyers state in their filing that his intention was not to terrorize any civilians, and suggested that the writings that are publicly referred to as his manifesto shouldn’t be described as such because he never meant for them to be released.

FOX News [5/2/2025 11:45 AM, Peter D’Abrosca, Alexis McAdams, and Maria Paronich, 46189K] reports attorneys for the man accused of assassinating UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson filed a motion to the New York Supreme Court on Thursday to suppress evidence in the state’s case against him, and to have the case dismissed completely. Luigi Mangione’s attorney, Karen Friedman Angifilo, said in the filing that statements her client made to Altoona, Pennsylvania police before his arrest on Dec. 9, should be excluded from his trial. She claims that two police officers, who located the alleged murderer inside a McDonald’s, "effectively had Mr. Mangione in custody" by blocking the exit to the restaurant while they questioned him, all before arresting him and reading him his Miranda rights. Friedman Angifilo argues that such questioning violated her client’s Fifth Amendment rights, and thus, his statements made to those officers should be excluded from the trial. The motion also says evidence collected from Mangione’s backpack at the scene of his arrest should be suppressed because police officers did not have a warrant to search the bag, in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. "The officers continued their warrantless search through Mr. Mangione’s backpack at McDonald’s even after he was removed from the restaurant by other officers and driven to the precinct," according to the motion. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

AP [5/2/2025 6:48 PM, Travis Loller and Jonathan Mattise, 24727K] reports a Nashville high school student who fatally shot a classmate before killing himself in January was on probation after threatening a student with a box cutter months earlier, according to juvenile court files obtained through an open records request. Solomon Henderson, who was 17 at the time, was charged with carrying a weapon on school property with intent and reckless endangerment with a weapon after a confrontation on Oct. 24, 2024. The victim said she was walking to lunch with a group when she said "hey" to Solomon. When he did not respond, she said "hey" again. Solomon, who is Black, then turned around and told her to get away, using an expletive, and called her the N-word, the victim told police. He pulled a box cutter out of his pocket and exposed the blade before walking to a table in the cafeteria and sitting down. When an administrator confronted Solomon, "he became upset saying stuff like I’ll cut anyone that walks up on him," according to the court filings. He also said he believed that the victim and her friends were going to jump him. As part of his probation, he was not allowed to possess guns. Solomon’s juvenile record also includes charges from November 2023, when he was 16 years old, for downloading and distributing sexual images of minors. The record does not give any indication of the ages of the minors in the images. In that case, he was released to his parents with strict conditions including no use of social media, a cellphone, the internet, or a computer, with the exception of school work. Juvenile court records have been unavailable to the public in Tennessee until recently. Citing the Antioch High School shooting and a desire to know more about the shooter’s history, Tennessee lawmakers this year passed a bill that allows someone’s juvenile court records to be made public if the person committed a homicide on school grounds and has died. The records released to The Associated Press on Friday show that Solomon was given judicial diversion after his arrest for brandishing the box cutter. Court documents from the day after the incident indicated he was to have no contact with the victim and that his mother was planning to homeschool him. It is unclear exactly when he returned to Antioch High School, but on Jan. 22, Solomon shot and killed Josselin Corea Escalante, who was 16 and Hispanic, in the school’s cafeteria before turning the gun on himself. Another student who was grazed by a bullet was treated and released from the hospital the same day. Police said Henderson fired 10 shots from a 9 mm pistol within 17 seconds of entering the cafeteria. The pistol was loaded with nine rounds when recovered by police. The gun was bought by someone in Arizona in 2022, and it was not reported stolen, police said. The gun’s origins are still under investigation.

FOX News [5/2/2025 8:19 AM, Bradford Betz, 46189K] reports a suspect in a mass shooting earlier this week that left four people dead and another person injured has been arrested, Minneapolis police announced late Thursday. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara announced the arrest of 34-year-old James Ortley at a Thursday night news conference. One of the injured people died at the hospital from his injuries, police said. Ortley was behind the first of six separate shootings in a violent 24-hour span in the city that left six dead and five others injured, police said, adding that investigators are determining if some of the shootings are connected. Police do not believe the Tuesday night shooting that Ortley is charged with was random. Investigators are also looking into whether there were others involved in the mass shooting. The U.S. Marshals Service said Ortley was arrested around 3:30 p.m. local time on a warrant charging him with multiple counts of second-degree murder. He was also wanted on a federal warrant for being a felon in possession of a firearm. Online records show Ortley was arrested in February on suspicion of being involved in a violent robbery spree in Minneapolis. Authorities later arrested Ortley without charges after holding him for two days. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

AP [5/2/2025 2:37 PM, Dánica Coto, 48304K] reports the U.S. on Friday officially designated a powerful gang coalition in Haiti as a foreign terrorist organization, raising concerns the move could deepen the country’s humanitarian crisis at a critical time. The Viv Ansanm coalition, which means "Living Together," joins a list of eight Latin American criminal organizations under that category. Gran Grif, the biggest gang to operate in Haiti’s central Artibonite region, also was added to the list, as reported by The Associated Press on Tuesday. "The age of impunity for those supporting violence in Haiti is over," U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement Friday. The U.S. Department of State warned that "persons, including American citizens, that engage in certain transactions or activities with these entities, or these individuals may expose themselves to sanctions risk.” But it’s nearly impossible for aid groups and others to avoid dealing with gangs in Haiti. The Viv Ansanm coalition controls at least 85% of the capital, Port-au-Prince. This forces nonprofits and other groups to negotiate with gangs so they can gain access to communities to provide food, water and other critical supplies. "The first consequences (of the designation) will be on the humanitarian and international cooperation, which is basically the only thing preventing the people in Haiti from starving," said Romain Le Cour, with Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. The designation comes as Haiti faces record hunger, with more than half of its nearly 12 million inhabitants expected to experience severe hunger through June, and another 8,400 people living in makeshift shelters projected to starve. Those who do business in Haiti also could be affected by the new designation. Gangs control the areas surrounding a key fuel depot and the country’s biggest and most important port, as well as the main roads that lead in and out of the capital, where they charge tolls. "It could function as a de facto embargo," said Jake Johnston, international research director at the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research. "The gangs exercise tremendous control over the commerce of the country," he said. "Doing any kind of business with Haiti or in Haiti is going to carry much greater risk.” The designation comes as gang violence surges in Haiti.

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New York Times [5/2/2025 1:39 PM, Emiliano Rodríguez Mega and David C. Adams, 145325K]
Los Angeles Times [5/2/2025 3:17 PM, Dánica Coto, 13342K]
NBC News [5/2/2025 4:09 PM, Michelle Garcia and Yamiche Alcindor, 44742K]
FOX News [5/2/2025 9:58 PM, Jasmine Baehr, 46189K]
NewsMax [5/2/2025 3:32 PM, Michael Katz, 4998K]

Washington Examiner [5/2/2025 1:36 PM, Mike Brest, 2296K] reports Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth directed Undersecretary of Defense Elbridge Colby to begin developing the 2025 National Defense Strategy. The NDS serves as a road map for the Department of Defense, providing broad guidance for military planning, strategy, force posturing, modernization, and more. "It will provide clear direction for the Department to implement President [Donald] Trump’s America First and Peace Through Strength agenda," Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement. "Consistent with the President’s intent, the NDS will prioritize defense of the U.S. homeland, including America’s skies and borders, and deterring China in the Indo-Pacific." The secretary has already begun changing the department into a force for his and Trump’s vision. They have cut all diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, including positions in the building and programs offered to service members. The DEI purge also involved removing all mention of the initiatives from online. Hegseth has deployed thousands of U.S. troops to the southern border to aid the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to stem illegal immigration. In that vein, the Department of the Interior has transferred land along the border to the DoD, a workaround temporarily allowing active military personnel to detain trespassers.

Wall Street Journal [5/2/2025 7:56 PM, Michael R. Gordon and Alexander Ward, 646K] reports President Trump may have just replaced his national security adviser, but the counsel he values most is his own. Even as he vowed to put “America First,” he has struggled to end the bloody conflict in Ukraine and to secure the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza. He has pushed to negotiate a complex nuclear deal with Iran against a self-imposed deadline. All the while, he has stepped up U.S. airstrikes against Houthi militants in Yemen, who he reports have been “decimated” in a nearly 50-day campaign that shows little sign of ending. Getting rid of Mike Waltz makes it simpler for Trump to follow his instincts, but it might not make achieving foreign-policy wins any easier. From the day he returned to the Oval Office in January, Trump has made it clear that he was the one calling the shots on foreign policy and was prepared to solicit advice from a broad circle that went beyond the traditional interagency team to include business executives and MAGA-world personalities. It is possible that Marco Rubio, the secretary of state who will serve temporarily as national security adviser, will take control of the foreign-policy process. But chances are more likely that Trump will continue to solicit advice from outside the traditional national security system, even when his government advisers have doubt

NPR [5/2/2025 7:06 AM, Franco Ordoñez, 29983K] reports Trump sending national security adviser Mike Waltz to the UN in White House shakeup Mike Waltz is out as national security adviser in the first big shakeup in White House staff since Trump started his second term. Trump will nominate Waltz to serve as ambassador to the UN. [Editorial note: consult audio at source link]

New York Times [5/2/2025 7:46 AM, Isabella Kwai, Julian E. Barnes and David E. Sanger, 145325K] reports Michael Waltz got himself in trouble with the White House when, as national security adviser, he inadvertently added a journalist to a sensitive chat on Signal, a commercial messaging app. Now, as he leaves that job, he has raised a new set of questions about White House use of the encrypted app. A photograph of him looking at his phone on Wednesday during a cabinet meeting makes it clear that he is communicating with his colleagues — including the secretary of state and the director of national intelligence — using a platform originally designed by an Israeli company that collects and stores Signal messages. This discovery of the new system came when a Reuters photographer, standing just over Mr. Waltz’s left shoulder, snapped a photo of him checking his phone. He was not using a privacy screen, and when zoomed in, the photo shows a list of messages and calls from several senior officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Steve Witkoff, the special envoy who is negotiating on three fronts: the Israel-Hamas talks, the increasingly tense dance with Vladimir V. Putin about Ukraine and the Iran nuclear talks. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, are also on his chat list. While the app that Mr. Waltz was seen using on Wednesday looks similar to Signal, it is actually a different platform from a company that advertises it as a way to archive messages for record-keeping purposes. That is critical, because one concern that came up when senior officials were using the app was whether it complied with federal record-keeping rules. One of Signal’s benefits is that it is both encrypted and can be set to automatically delete messages. But while that is a feature for users seeking secure communications, it is a problem for the National Archives, as it seeks to retain records. It is not clear if Mr. Waltz began using the alternative app when he became national security adviser or after a nonprofit watchdog group, American Oversight, sued the government for failing to comply with records laws by using Signal. While the real version of Signal gets constant security updates and messages are kept encrypted until they reach a user’s phone, security experts question how secure the alternative app is. “This is incredibly dumb,” said Senator Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who is a longtime member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “The government has no reason to use a counterfeit Signal knockoff that raises obvious counterintelligence concerns.”

Axios [5/2/2025 11:39 AM, Marc Caputo, 13163K] reports President Trump’s top policy adviser, Stephen Miller, is garnering buzz inside the White House as a top candidate to be the next national security adviser, five sources familiar with the situation tell Axios. Miller — the deputy chief of staff and the brain behind Trump’s controversial immigration crackdown — is one of the president’s longest-serving and most-trusted aides. Miller’s name surfaced shortly after Trump removed Mike Waltz as national security adviser on Thursday and nominated Waltz to become the next United Nations ambassador. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is temporarily taking over Waltz’s responsibilities, but sources familiar with his thinking say he’s busy enough running the State Department. Miller already is the administration’s Homeland Security adviser, and is an aggressive defender of the administration’s legal push for immediate deportations of unauthorized immigrants without court hearings. One White House source told Axios via text that Miller has made the Homeland Security Council run "like clockwork," and that it’s "infinitely more effective than the NSC [National Security Council] with a tiny fraction" of the staff.

The Hill [5/2/2025 12:34 PM, Filip Timotija and Colin Meyn, 12829K] reports national security adviser Mike Waltz is out, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio replacing him on an interim basis. President Trump announced Thursday afternoon that Waltz, a former House GOP lawmaker, would instead be his next nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. “From his time in uniform on the battlefield, in Congress and, as my National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz has worked hard to put our Nation’s Interests first. I know he will do the same in his new role,” Trump said in a Thursday post on Truth Social. Alex Wong, Waltz’s deputy, is also expected to depart. Both have been targeted by far-right influencers in the MAGA movement, and Waltz was at the center of the Signal scandal that embarrassed the Trump administration in March. Here are the leading candidates to replace Waltz in a permanent capacity: Marco Rubio, Steve Witkoff, Ric Grenell, Stephen Miller, Michael Anton, Sebastian Gorka, Robert O’Brien, Fred Fleitz, Keith Kellogg, Christopher Landau, and Elise Stefanik.

AP [5/2/2025 11:24 AM, Matthew Lee and Farnoush Amiri, 48304K] reports Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been thrown into two top national security jobs at once as President Donald Trump presses forward with his top-to-bottom revamp of U.S. foreign policy, upending not only longstanding policies that the former Florida senator once supported but also the configuration of the executive branch. Trump’s appointment of Rubio to temporarily replace Mike Waltz as national security adviser is the first major leadership shake-up of the nascent administration, but Waltz’s removal had been rumored for weeks — ever since he created a Signal group chat and accidentally added a journalist to the conversation where top national security officials shared sensitive military plans. So, just over 100 days into his tenure as America’s top diplomat, Rubio now becomes just the second person to hold both positions. He follows only the late Henry Kissinger, who served as both secretary of state and national security adviser for two years under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford in the 1970s.

Univision [5/2/2025 5:39 AM, Staff, 5325K] reports long gone are the days when Donald Trump referred to Marco Rubio as ‘little Marco’. It was during the acrimonious Republican primaries for the 2016 presidential election. Almost a decade later, in the first major cabinet reshuffle, the then senator turned Trump loyalist has been given the rare assignment of two of the highest diplomatic posts in the country. In addition to Secretary of State, Rubio assumes on an interim basis the position of National Security Advisor following the President’s decision to dismiss Mike Waltz, in the spotlight since the Signal chat scandal, and appoint him to the post of ambassador to the United Nations, a position that requires the Senate’s approval. Unheard of since the days of Henry Kissinger, Rubio’s case is fourfold striking since he is also the acting administrator of USAID and head of the National Archives Administration. As New York Times has dubbed him, "secretary of everything" or evidence of his ability to make himself appear to Trump as a faithful ally and great asset in foreign policy, leaving behind his historic positions as an advocate of foreign aid and the promotion of democracy abroad that he flaunted in the Senate. Now the Secretary of State appears as the perfect ‘America First’ ambassador, with a winning political formula: not to compete for monopolizing ground, but to take advantage of the issues that he handles and that earn him the support of Trump’s base, as is the case of deportations of irregular migrants. Rubio has won over the hard core of Trump’s supporters, who greeted him with doubts seeing him as a "warmongering hawk" and aligned with the foreign policy of traditional elite conservatism. And he did so early on. On one of his first official trips, the first secretary of state of Hispanic descent struck a deal to send hundreds of migrants to a mega-prison in El Salvador, whose president, Nayib Bukele, has advocated mass incarceration to curb crime. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

CNN [5/2/2025 6:42 PM, Alayna Treene, 22131K] reports just over 24 hours after President Donald Trump announced Secretary of State Marco Rubio would be taking on yet another role as interim national security adviser, the White House is actively sorting out how Rubio will juggle it all. The lack of answers on how Rubio will function in the role is at least partially attributable to how quickly the decision came together Thursday morning. As multiple media outlets began reporting that the president was planning to oust Michael Waltz as national security adviser and nominate him as United Nations ambassador, the Trump team had not yet decided to name Rubio as his replacement, multiple people familiar with the decision told CNN. Now, the White House is sorting through a litany of logistical questions, those people said. Will Rubio move into Waltz’s former West Wing office, a coveted first-floor space down the hall from the Oval Office? Will he hire new staff to serve on the national security team? And how much of his State Department portfolio will he hand off to deputy Chris Landau? And on a more existential level: Will the United States’ international standing and safety suffer if the president’s top foreign affairs adviser is also his top adviser on national security? Playing both roles could be incredibly difficult, especially for a president known for shooting from the hip on policy decisions. Henry Kissinger held both titles from 1973-1975, but current and former US officials say that today’s global challenges cannot compare with what the nation faced decades ago. What is clear: Trump’s closest advisers believe Rubio truly will only serve in the role for a temporary period as Trump weighs a more permanent replacement. Rubio is preparing to stay in the role for up to six months, a person who spoke with him said, though that could always change based on Trump’s demands. "The job of national security adviser is like the most important job in Washington," said Brett McGurk, who has served on multiple national security councils, most recently as former President Joe Biden’s Middle East coordinator. "It is totally different than the secretary of State job. Rubio really cannot do both these jobs. So right now, unless Rubio decides to delegate to his deputy Chris Landau at State, we really don’t have a national security adviser," he added. "This is a full-time, full-time job.” Unlike Waltz, Rubio already has buy-in from the top levers of the White House. Trump and the people he listens to most, like chief of staff Susie Wiles and Vice President JD Vance, have grown increasingly impressed with Rubio in recent months, according to four people familiar with White House dynamics. The praise demonstrates the close relationship the two have developed over the course of Trump’s second term, and how much the president has come to rely on Rubio to handle the most sensitive issues of his new administration. In addition to those two roles, Trump had Rubio assume the position of national archivist and acting administrator of USAID. But the demands on Rubio are piling up. There are only 10 days left to prepare for Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabi, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. There are drawn out ceasefire negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. There are talks to end the conflict between Israel and Hamas. And there are the ongoing efforts to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Rubio would be involved in all of those issues under both jobs, but fulfilling different roles. Serving in both at the same time is next to impossible, a White House official said.

Axios [5/2/2025 10:51 AM, Colin Demarest, 13163K] reports the White House said Friday that President Trump is seeking $1.01 trillion in defense spending for fiscal year 2026 — a whopping amount meant to sustain his national security blueprint, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon overhaul. It’s an aggressive number to match aggressive goals. It’s also a 13% increase at a time when Trump is calling for domestic spending to be slashed. Trump in April said nobody "has seen anything like it." Yes, but: Budget requests are wishlists. Congress ultimately cuts the check. The White House plan calls for the additional $119 billion in defense spending to be included in the reconciliation bill currently being debated in Congress, while otherwise keeping the Pentagon budget at the same level as last year ($893 billion).

CBS Austin [5/2/2025 4:31 PM, Staff, 602K] reports over 100 days into the Trump administration, the State Department is focused on projecting the president’s message of strength and global leadership at home and abroad. Deputy spokesperson for the State Department Tommy Pigott credits the partnership between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Donald Trump for why the department has accomplished so much at the start of the year. "We’re going to continue seeing that vision with President Trump directing this America First Foreign policy, and then Secretary Rubio and others implementing that vision in collaboration across agencies," said Pigott. But Rubio’s role in the Trump administration continues to grow. In addition to his responsibility as State Secretary, he was named the interim National Security Advisor after Mike Waltz was nominated as ambassador to the United Nations on Thursday. Pigott says that the secretary can handle the added responsibilities. "We have seen so many results already because of President Trump, Secretary Rubio, the collaboration across the entire team," he said. "I think what’s happening now is a testament to the collaboration, the communication and the fact that we’ve delivered results and we’ll keep on delivering results.” Tariff negotiations with China are a big priority both for the President and the American people. "We’re going to put the American worker first," PIgott said. "Another important problem of many that we’re dealing with is the flow of fentanyl.” Trump has issued tariffs against China both for the trade deficit and the country’s role in Fentanyl production that makes its way to the United States across the border. "Fentanyl is a leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45," Pigott said. "President Trump took action from the beginning of his administration to combat that flow, and many of the precursors, of fentanyl. Start in China, that’s where they start, and then they flow across our border through various means, usually with cartels.”

NewsMax [5/2/2025 6:49 PM, Michael Katz, 4998K] reports the CIA is planning to cut at least 1,200 jobs with thousands of other jobs being eliminated in other parts of the U.S. intelligence community, including the National Security Agency, as part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to streamline the federal government. The staff reductions would take place over several years and be accomplished in part through reduced hiring, The Washington Post reported Friday. No firings are envisioned. The goal of a roughly 1,200-person staff reduction at the CIA includes slightly more than 500 individuals who have opted for early retirement, a person familiar with the matter told the Post. "These sweeping, reckless cuts of experienced intelligence personnel by the Trump administration will undoubtedly undermine our ability to detect and respond to threats and make America less safe," Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va., ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told the Post. A former senior intelligence official told the Post the staff reductions at the CIA, if managed properly, would not be disruptive — particularly if they are focused on underperforming employees. The reductions appear to represent roughly 5% of the CIA’s approximately 22,000-member workforce. "That does not seem that out of line," the former official said. At the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, more than 100 people have taken an early resignation offer that would see them get paid through Sept. 30. Tulsi Gabbard, who leads the agency, has been reviewing the numerous intelligence centers under her purview — focused on topics such as terrorism, counterintelligence and weapons proliferation — for either staff reductions or folding them into other agencies. A total of several thousand positions would also be cut from the NSA; the Defense Intelligence Agency; the National Reconnaissance Office, which designs and operates spy satellites; and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which analyzes satellite imagery and provides targeting data to U.S. troops, according to the plans described to the Post. The reductions are separate from the efforts of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency that is restructuring the federal government by eliminating waste and fraud. "Director [John] Ratcliffe is moving swiftly to ensure the CIA workforce is responsive to the Administration’s national security priorities," a CIA spokesperson said in a statement to the Post. "These moves are part of a holistic strategy to infuse the Agency with renewed energy, provide opportunities for rising leaders to emerge, and better position CIA to deliver on its mission.”

The Hill [5/2/2025 1:45 PM, Ellen Mitchell, 12829K] reports a group of 42 Democratic lawmakers wants the Pentagon’s watchdog to look into billionaire Elon Musk’s role in the contracting process for the “Golden Dome” missile defense shield, a project pushed by President Trump meant to protect the U.S. homeland from incoming missiles. In a letter sent to the Defense Department inspector general on Thursday, the House and Senate lawmakers asked for a review into the Pentagon’s procurement process for Golden Dome, citing concerns over whether contracts for the system are “meant to enrich Mr. Musk and other elites.” The letter follows a Reuters report last week that found Musk’s company SpaceX and its two partners, Palantir and Anduril, were front-runners to win a major contract in building out Golden Dome. All three companies were founded by men who politically supported Trump in his bid for the White House, with Musk donating more than a quarter-billion dollars to the president’s campaign and now serving as a special adviser as he runs the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). “This is a deeply troubling report,” the lawmakers wrote. “All of this raises concerns about whether defense contracts to build a Golden Dome are an effective way to protect Americans or are meant to enrich Mr. Musk and other elites.”

Reuters [5/2/2025 9:03 AM, Divya Rajagopal, 41523K] reports Agnico Eagle Mines (AEM.TO), Canada’s biggest gold miner, wants the new government to develop a formal Arctic strategy in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to make Canada its 51st state, the company’s Chairman Sean Boyd said. Earlier this year, Agnico overtook Barrick Mining’s market capitalization to become the world’s second-largest gold miner, just below Newmont Corp, the largest extractor of bullion by production and market capitalization. Agnico is expanding its Hope Bay Gold project in Nunavut, the northernmost province of Canada that borders the Arctic Ocean and Greenland and wants the incoming Canadian government to promote investment in infrastructure in the Arctic. "It’s noise (Trump’s threats), but as a country, we have to take it really seriously... and we have been calling for a more formalized, structured Arctic strategy in this country," Boyd told Reuters in an interview. He said the company would be "way more forceful" going forward to advocate for the Arctic strategy with Ottawa, because it sees the opportunity for growth in the North. "It’s pretty clear, based on the U.S. interest in Greenland and the U.S. administration’s comments around Canada and critical metals, that Canada needs to focus more on the opportunity that exists in Canada’s far north and in the communities and in the people that live in the far north," Boyd said. Hope Bay is expected to come back into production by early next year after the company put the mine in care and maintenance in 2023 to focus on drilling its resources. Agnico, one of the few gold miners with assets in Canada, is betting big on the country even as some of its other peers look to sell their domestic assets. Its strategy has paid off with investors as its share price has jumped by 45% year to date, making it one of the best-performing mining companies among its peers, Refinitiv data show.

Bloomberg [5/3/2025 4:35 AM, Daryna Krasnolutska, 16228K] reports Ukraine wants to host a meeting of national security advisers from the US, UK, France and Germany at a yet-to-be-determined date to discuss further steps in the peace process, said President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The advisers held gatherings in London and Paris in April to exchange views on how to end Russia’s war in Ukraine that’s well into its fourth year. At the same time, President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff has traveled to Moscow in recent weeks to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and other top officials. Mike Waltz, US national security adviser, was abruptly ousted this week, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio was named as his interim replacement. “I am not ready to tell you the date now as there were some changes in the US,” Zelenskiy told reporters late Friday in his office in Kyiv. “Secretary of State Rubio has the powers of the national security adviser, and I don’t think anyone will wait for a new appointment.” Advisers from the US, Europe, Ukraine are in constant contact, Zelenskiy added. The meeting with Trump at the Vatican a week ago, minutes ahead of the funeral of Pope Francis, was “the best we had,” Zelenskiy said. The two leaders discussed Ukraine’s proposal for 30-day ceasefire, sanctions against Russia, air defense needs and the deal that gives US access to Ukrainian natural resources, he said. That pact was signed in Washington this week. “I raised a question of the US sanctions steps. I cannot tell you the details, but what he told me sounds very strong,” Zelenskiy told reporters. Moscow has so far refused to accept US demands for a truce lasting at least 30 days, and Putin has maintained maximalist positions for any ceasefire, including that Russia is granted control of four eastern and southeastern Ukrainian regions it annexed illegally in 2022 but doesn’t fully occupy. Meanwhile, Zelenskiy agreed to grant the US control over some future resource revenues in order to maintain Trump’s support, and has backed calls for an unconditional truce.

NewsMax [5/2/2025 7:03 AM, Staff, 4998K] reports two top U.S. officials have renewed calls on Russia and Ukraine to reach a peace deal, with one saying there was no clear end in sight to the conflict in Ukraine and the other warning that President Donald Trump needed a breakthrough "very soon.” The comments, made separately by Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Fox News, underscored the impatience in Trump’s administration over the intractability of the war, now in its fourth year. Trump, who had pledged to strike a peace deal on his first day back in the White House before his advisors rowed back, has appeared to side with Russia but made comments more favorable to Ukraine in the run-up to a minerals deal being struck. Vance and Rubio said peace was up to both sides. "It’s going to be up to them to come to an agreement and stop this brutal, brutal conflict," Vance said in an interview on Fox News’ "Special Report with Bret Baier" show. "It’s not going anywhere, Bret. It’s not going to end any time soon," Vance added. He said that it was difficult to be confident that an end to the war was in sight, because the Russians and Ukrainians "have to take the final step.” "For the Ukrainians, yes, of course they are angry that they were invaded, but are we going to continue to lose thousands and thousands of soldiers over a few miles of territory this or that way?". Rubio told Fox News separately on Thursday that Trump would have to decide how much time to devote to resolving the war if there was not a significant breakthrough in negotiations very soon. "I think we know where Ukraine is, and we know where Russia is right now ... They’re closer, but they’re still far apart," he added during an interview on Fox News’ Hannity program. Rubio has been named as interim replacement for Mike Waltz, who was ousted as U.S. national security adviser on Thursday in the first major shakeup of Trump’s inner circle since he took office in January. It remains to be seen how his ouster could affect Ukraine’s turbulent relationship with the Trump administration.

NewsMax [5/2/2025 4:35 PM, Staff, 4998K] reports U.S. officials have finalized new economic sanctions against Russia, including banking and energy measures, to intensify pressure on Moscow to embrace President Donald Trump’s efforts to end its war on Ukraine, according to three U.S. officials and a source familiar with the issue. The targets include state-owned Russian energy giant Gazprom and major entities involved in the natural resources and banking sectors, said an administration official, who like the other sources requested anonymity to discuss the issue. The official provided no further details. It was not clear, however, whether the package will be approved by Trump. In the past he has voiced some sympathy for Moscow’s statements and actions, touting a working friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. That relationship has shown indications of strain of late, though, as Putin has spurned the president’s calls for a ceasefire and peace talks. The U.S. National Security Council "is trying to coordinate some set of more punitive actions against Russia," said the source familiar with the issue. "This will have to be signed off by Trump.” "It’s totally his call," confirmed a second U.S. official. "From the beginning, the president has been clear about his commitment to achieving a full and comprehensive ceasefire," said National Security Council spokesman James Hewitt. "We do not comment on the details of ongoing negotiations.” The U.S. Treasury, which implements most U.S. sanctions, did not respond to a request for comment. An approval by Trump of new sanctions, which would follow the Wednesday signing of a U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal that he heavily promoted as part of his peace effort, could signify a hardening of his stance toward the Kremlin. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the United States and its allies have added layer upon layer of sanctions on the country. While the measures have been painful for Russia’s economy, Moscow has found ways to circumvent the sanctions and continue funding its war. Trump "has been bending over backwards to give Putin every opportunity to say, ‘OK, we’re going to have a ceasefire and an end to the war,’ and Putin keeps rejecting him," said Kurt Volker, a former U.S. envoy to NATO who was U.S. special representative for Ukraine negotiations during Trump’s first term. "This is the next phase of putting some pressure on Russia. "Putin has been escalating," he continued. Trump "has got the U.S. and Ukraine now in alignment calling for an immediate and full ceasefire, and Putin is now the outlier.”

Reported similarly:
Reuters [5/2/2025 4:28 PM, Jonathan Landay, et al., 41523K]

Reuters [5/2/2025 6:50 AM, Lucy Papachristou, 41523K] reports Russia said on Friday its forces were continuing to create a "security strip" in border areas of Ukraine’s Sumy region after driving Ukrainian troops out of the Kursk region, just across the border in western Russia. Ukraine says its forces still have a foothold in Kursk, where it staged an incursion in August to try to distract Russian forces and win leverage in any future peace talks, but that it is concerned about a possible Russian advance into Sumy. Russian President Vladimir Putin said in March that Russia should look to create a buffer zone in the Sumy region to guard against any future potential Ukrainian incursions. "Units of the North group of forces have completed the rout of Ukrainian Armed Forces formations in the Kursk region," the Russian defence ministry said in a statement. "The creation of a ‘security strip’ in the border areas of Ukraine’s Sumy region continues.” Two Majors, a Russian war blogger with over 1.2 million subscribers, said Russia was developing an offensive from Zhuravka to Bilovody, two villages just over the border in Sumy. "Our paratroopers, having broken the stubborn resistance of the enemy, advanced in the area of Loknya and in the border forest belts" in the Sumy region, the blogger wrote on Friday. A commander of a Russian airborne assault brigade told the TASS state news agency that Ukrainian troops fighting in Sumy were demoralised. "We have disorganised their command system," the commander was quoted as saying. Reuters was unable to verify the reports. Sumy Governor Oleh Hryhorov said on Tuesday that Russia was having little success in carving out a buffer zone but acknowledged that four border villages in the region - including Zhuravka - were in a "grey zone" due to Russian attacks. Deep State, a Ukrainian open-source data project, indicated about 82 sq km of the Sumy region are in a contested zone. Separately, the Russian defence ministry said that its troops had seized four villages in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Kharkiv regions over the past week.

Axios [5/2/2025 6:40 PM, Barak Ravid, 13163K] reports the U.S., Israel and representatives of a new international foundation are close to an agreement on how to resume the delivery of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza without it being controlled by Hamas, two Israeli officials and one U.S. source familiar with the plan said. After the Gaza ceasefire deal collapsed two months ago, Israel halted all humanitarian aid delivery of food, water and medicine into the enclave, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis. UN aid agencies say food supplies in Gaza will run out within days. Israeli officials claim they will completely run out in three to four weeks. The suspension of aid deliveries and the resumption of Israeli strikes have once again displaced thousands of Palestinian civilians, delving the enclave further into a chaotic situation that has resulted in widespread looting and lawlessness. President Trump on Sunday said he pushed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow food and medicine into the devastated Gaza Strip.

AP [5/2/2025 1:26 PM, Lolita C. Baldor, 48304K] reports Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier to remain in the Middle East for a second time, keeping it there another week so the U.S. can maintain two carrier strike groups in the region to battle Yemen-based Houthi rebels, according to a U.S. official. In late March, Hegseth extended the deployment of the Truman and the warships in its group for a month as part of a campaign to increase strikes on the Iran-backed Houthis. The official said Hegseth signed the latest order Thursday and it is expected the Truman and its strike group warships will head home to Norfolk, Virginia, after the week is up. Gen. Erik Kurilla, head of U.S. Central Command, requested that the Truman be extended again, according to officials. The San Diego-based USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier and its strike group arrived in the region a few weeks ago and are operating in the Gulf of Aden. The Truman, along with two destroyers and a cruiser in its strike group, is in the Red Sea.

AP [5/2/2025 11:18 PM, Jon Gambrell, 34586K] reports the United States has given initial approval to sell $3.5 billion worth of air-to-air missiles for Saudi Arabia’s fighter jets, the latest proposed arms deal for the region ahead of President Donald Trump ‘s planned trip to the region later this month. The sale, announced early Saturday, likely will be one of several heralded by Trump on his visit to the kingdom. Saudi Arabia has already said it wants to invest $600 billion in the United States over the next four years, likely as a way to woo Trump to again pick the kingdom for his first formal trip as president. Trump traveled to Italy briefly for Pope Francis’ funeral. Trump’s 2017 trip to Saudi Arabia upended a tradition of modern U.S. presidents typically first heading to Canada, Mexico or the United Kingdom for their first trip abroad. It also underscored his administration’s close ties to the rulers of the oil-rich Gulf states as his eponymous real estate company has pursued deals across the region. The arms sale involves 1,000 AIM-120C-8 advanced medium range air-to-air missiles, guidance sections and other technical support. The missiles will be built by RTX Corp of Tucson, Ariz. The Royal Saudi Air Force has the world’s second-largest fleet of F-15 fighter jets after the U.S. "This proposed sale will support the foreign policy goals and national security objectives of the United States by improving the security of a partner country that contributes to political stability and economic progress in the Gulf Region," the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a statement. The proposed sale now goes to the U.S. Congress. Lawmakers typically weigh in on such sales and, in some cases, can block them.

Reuters [5/2/2025 7:40 AM, Lucy Papachristou, 41523K] reports Russia will help the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan fight against the Afghan branch of Islamic State, Moscow’s special representative for the country was quoted as saying on Friday. Zamir Kabulov, a former Russian ambassador to Afghanistan, referred to Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K) as the "common enemy" of Moscow and Kabul. "We see and appreciate the efforts that the Taliban are making in the fight against the Afghan wing of ISIS," Kabulov told the RIA state news agency in an interview. "We will provide our best assistance to the authorities of (Afghanistan) through specialised structures.” No country currently recognises the Taliban government that seized power in August 2021 as U.S.-led forces staged a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years of war. But in a step towards recognition, Russia last month formally removed the Taliban from its list of terrorist organisations, to which it had been added in 2003. Kabulov’s comments underscore the dramatic rapprochement in recent years between Moscow and Kabul, which President Vladimir Putin said last year was now Russia’s "ally" in combating terrorism. Russia has been left reeling from multiple Islamic State (ISIS)-linked attacks, including the shooting of 145 people at a concert hall outside Moscow in March 2024 which was claimed by ISIS. U.S. officials said they had intelligence indicating ISIS-K was responsible. The Taliban says it is working to wipe out the group’s presence in Afghanistan. Kabulov said Moscow and Kabul were building up ties in multiple spheres and told RIA that Russia had offered to accredit an Afghan ambassador in Moscow and was waiting for Kabul’s response. He said Moscow’s suspension of the ban on the Taliban "finally removes all obstacles to full cooperation between our countries in various fields". "The arrival of the Afghan ambassador in Moscow will put a final end to this issue.” Russia said last month it aims to strengthen trade, business and investment ties with Kabul, leveraging Afghanistan’s strategic position for future energy and infrastructure projects. Kabulov said joint economic projects would be discussed at a Russia-Afghan business forum later this month in the Russian city of Kazan, naming mineral development and gas pipeline projects as possible areas of cooperation.

NewsNation [5/2/2025 11:16 PM, Melissa Moon, 6866K] reports a University of Memphis alumnus and grandfather of six was among 10 more Americans freed from Kuwait this week. In 2022, Tony Holden was working as an HVAC technician for a U.S.-based defense contractor at Camp Arifjan U.S. Army Base when his family said he was arrested on fabricated drug charges. The Memphis native returned to the United States on Wednesday and, in a video circulating online, he thanked President Trump for bringing him home. "I wanted you to be able to meditate on how you’ve affected, personally, lives and the difference that you’ve made," Holden said. "I give all the grace and honor to God. He uses instruments, and there have been a lot of people behind the scenes who have done a great job.” According to a website set up to raise awareness about his case, Holden was approached by two men who were so violent he thought he was being kidnapped. Family members said the corrupt officers who were after bonuses beat Holden and trashed his apartment looking for drugs. They said the men also took Holden, his wife, and his then three-year-old daughter into the Kuwaiti desert and physically threatened them and eventually coerced Holden into signing a written confession in Arabic to protect his family. His family said even though they never found any drugs and Holden’s drug test came back negative, he was charged with drug possession, drug trafficking, and attempting to flee the country. They said the trial judge believed the police report was fabricated, but Holden was still sentenced to five years in prison. He was detained for more than 900 days. Since March, Kuwait has pardoned 23 Americans as part of a goodwill gesture by a U.S. ally. In a post on ‘X’, Sebastian Gorka, Deputy Assistant to the President, Senior Director for Counter Terrorism, National Security Council, said 47 hostages had been released in 100 days thanks to the President. Holden’s family members are celebrating his release and say they never gave up hope he would be released.

New York Times [5/3/2025 3:42 AM, David Pierson and Joy Dong, 330K] reports that, in a potential softening of the bruising trade war between China and the United States, Beijing said on Friday that it was considering holding talks with the Trump administration after repeated attempts by senior U.S. officials to start negotiations. China’s Commerce Ministry said in a statement that China was “evaluating” the U.S. offer to talk, but it said Beijing’s position remained consistent: It will only engage in negotiations if Washington cancels its tariffs on Chinese goods first. “If the United States does not correct its wrong unilateral tariff measures, it means that the United States has no sincerity at all and will further damage the mutual trust between the two sides,” the ministry said. China’s signaling about its willingness to talk comes as the tariffs appear to have already taken a toll on Chinese producers. An official report on manufacturing activity in April showed that factories in China had experienced their sharpest monthly slowdown in more than a year. The two countries have been sparring since President Trump ratcheted up tariffs on Chinese goods to a minimum of 145 percent last month, while omitting China from a 90-day pause on his tariffs that he granted to all other countries. China has responded with its own sky-high tariffs on U.S. goods, while blocking some American companies from doing business in China and restricting exports of critical minerals that U.S. manufacturers rely on to make things like semiconductors, drones and cars. The clash, which has doubled as a battle of wills between Mr. Trump and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has shaken global markets and accelerated a decoupling of the world’s two largest economies. Many countries are under growing pressure to pick sides, with the Trump administration pressuring U.S. trading partners to restrict access to Chinese exports and Beijing threatening countermeasures against countries that comply. It is unclear which officials from the United States and China have been in contact about setting up negotiations. Analysts have said that the two sides have different approaches to such talks. Mr. Trump would prefer to take the lead and speak directly to Mr. Xi, but China’s officials tend to prefer to negotiate details — and hash out a deal — in advance, before the leaders meet.

Reported similarly:
Wall Street Journal [5/2/2025 3:00 PM, Lingling Wei]
FOX News [5/2/2025 5:32 PM, Louis Casiano, 46189K]
NewsMax.com [5/2/2025 4:10 PM, Mark Swanson, 4998K]

FOX News [5/2/2025 8:25 AM, Rachel Wolf, 46189K] reports China is "evaluating" an offer from the U.S. to hold talks on tariffs, according to a Friday statement from the Chinese Commerce Ministry. This shift in tone could leave the door open for the world’s two largest economies to deescalate the trade war that has left global markets in turmoil. "The U.S. has recently taken the initiative on many occasions to convey information to China through relevant parties, saying it hopes to talk with China," the ministry said in a statement, according to a Reuters translation. The ministry also said that Beijing was "evaluating this.” However, while Beijing appears to be open to negotiations, the Chinese Commerce Ministry warned that it would not be forced into making a bad deal. According to the Reuters translation, the ministry said that "attempting to use talks as a pretext to engage in coercion and extortion would not work.” On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo on "Mornings with Maria" that he believed Beijing was looking to reach an agreement with the U.S. "I am confident that the Chinese will want to reach a deal. And as I said, this is going to be a multi-step process. First, we need to de-escalate. And then the over time we will start focusing on a larger trade deal," Bessent said. President Donald Trump announced sweeping global tariffs last month. He slapped a 145% tariff on Chinese imports. Meanwhile, Beijing put a 125% tariff on U.S. imports. However, the country recently waived the tariff on a host of American-made products. There were already exemptions for some pharmaceuticals, microchips and aircraft engines, but China added an exemption for ethane imports, according to Reuters. Beijing’s change in messaging regarding the tariffs comes in stark contrast to its April 23 comments during a U.N. Security Council Arria-formula meeting on "The Impact of Unilateralism and Bullying Practices on International Relations." At that meeting, China accused the U.S. of using tariffs to bully the rest of the world. "Under the guise of reciprocity and fairness, the U.S. is playing a zero-sum game, which is essentially about subverting the existing international economic and trade order by means of tariffs, putting U.S. interests above the common good of the international community and advancing hegemonic ambitions of the U.S. at the cost of the legitimate interest of all countries," Chinese U.N. Ambassador Fu Cong said in his opening remarks. A State Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the meeting was "a waste of U.N. Security Council members’ time." The spokesperson also slammed the meeting as an example of China’s manipulation of "the multilateral system to support its economic, political, and security interests." [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

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NewsMax [5/2/2025 6:11 AM, Staff, 4998K]
San Diego Union Tribune [5/2/2025 7:40 AM, Elaine Kurtenbach, 1682K]

NewsMax [5/2/2025 6:30 AM, Casey Hall, 4998K] reports the Trump administration ended U.S. duty-free access for low-value shipments from China and Hong Kong on Friday, removing the "de minimis" exemptions availed of by Shein, Temu, and other e-commerce firms as well as traffickers of fentanyl and other illicit goods. Items valued at up to $800 and sent from China via postal services are now subject to a tax of 120% of the package’s value or a flat fee of $100 per package - an amount that rises to $200 in June. Shippers are bracing for more package chaos at airports. Trump accuses China of unfair trade practices and blames it for a crisis over the deadly drug fentanyl. De minimis, a legal term referring to matters of little importance, describes the U.S. waiver of standard customs procedures and tariffs on imported items worth less than $800 that are shipped to individuals. It is one of the most generous such exemptions in the world: the EU de minimis threshold, for example, is 150 euros ($156). The U.S. has used de minimis since 1938 to reduce administrative burdens. During Barack Obama’s presidency, Congress quadrupled the waiver from $200, facilitating an explosion in the number of exempted packages entering the country. Shipments claiming de minimis have soared more than 600% over the past decade to over 1 billion items in fiscal 2023, according to Customs and Border Protection data. Contentions largely concern U.S. trade imbalances and the synthetic opioid fentanyl - which is fueling a national epidemic that killed nearly 75,000 people in 2023. Reuters reporters last year found they could easily import the core precursors for at least 3 million fentanyl tablets - with a potential street value of $3 million – at a cost of $3,607.18. The shippers mislabelled the packages as, for instance, electronics. Legitimate products, too, are controversial as Trump ramps up his rhetoric against China, with which the U.S. has its largest bilateral trade deficit, at $279 billion as of 2023. Big beneficiaries of de minimis include online retailers that ship goods mainly from China, such as Shein, PDD Holdings-owned Temu, and Alibaba’s AliExpress. Their growth prompted U.S. rival Amazon to start its own discount service, Haul, allowing marketplace merchants to ship $5 accessories and other items directly from China using de minimis. Shein declined to comment on possible changes to U.S. de minimis policy. In 2023, the company called for de minimis reform "to create a level, transparent playing field – where the rules are applied evenly and equally." Temu, AliExpress, and Amazon did not respond to requests for comment. Critics of de minimis also say it lets companies evade tariffs on Chinese goods and customs inspections under a law banning products made with forced labor.

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NewsNation [5/2/2025 7:15 AM, Anna Kutz, 6866K]

Bloomberg [5/2/2025 5:39 AM, Staff, 16228K] reports China has quietly started to exempt some US goods from tariffs that likely cover around $40 billion worth of imports, in what looks like an effort to soften the blow of the trade war on its own economy. A list of exempted US products covering 131 items like pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals has been circulating among traders and businesses over the past week. Some of these products were previously reported by Bloomberg News. It’s unclear where the list came from and it hasn’t been officially confirmed, but at least half a dozen companies in China have been able to bring in goods from the list without paying tariffs, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential information. The 131 items are worth about $40 billion, or around 24% of Chinese imports from the US in 2024, Bloomberg calculations based on China customs data show. The move echoes steps taken by the Trump administration to exempt smartphones and other electronics from its own “reciprocal” tariffs, including the 145% levies on China. Those US exemptions apply to about $102 billion, or roughly 22% of US imports from China last year, according to estimates by Gerard DiPippo, associate director of the RAND China Research Center. The notion that China’s exemptions largely mirror the US ones suggests this is more of a strategic move to match Washington’s actions rather than purely a goodwill gesture. It also points to Beijing’s priority of shielding its own economy from the fallout of the trade war. “China is likely trying to mitigate damage to its economy by avoiding a collapse in key imports,” DiPippo said. “The exemptions shouldn’t be interpreted as a signal to the US, as China has been quiet about its exemptions, working through business channels and avoiding public statements.” There are tentative signs the US-China trade standoff could be shifting. The Chinese Commerce Ministry said on Friday it’s assessing the possibility of trade talks with the US, giving a lift to equity markets. “The US has recently sent messages to China through relevant parties, hoping to start talks with China,” the ministry said in a statement released during a mainland holiday. “China is currently evaluating this.”

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