Ed Case

The secretary of state is knowledgeable, committed and ready with the data. Always.

Rubio said that speech-based deportations were one part of the United States' fight against antisemitism

The state of Colorado has settled a lawsuit against two Colorado Parks and Wildlife commissioners who violated the state's open meetings law by drafting an opinion piece last year in support of a state ballot measure.

Nearly all Democrats lined up against the bill and warned that it risks disenfranchising millions of Americans who do not have ready access to the proper documents.

Republicans say the act is necessary to ensure only U.S. citizens cast ballots. Democrats opposed to the bill warn it'll risk disenfranchising millions of Americans.

Republicans say the act is necessary to ensure only U.S. citizens cast ballots. Democrats opposed to the bill warn it'll risk disenfranchising millions of Americans.

Some Democrats expressed opposition to the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act on the House floor Thursday. Only four of them voted in support of the legislation.

The SAVE Act requires states to reject any voter registration application in which the applicant has not presented “documentary proof" of U.S. citizenship.

Trump has sought to use the powers of the presidency to retaliate against his adversaries.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. advocated for the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine during a visit to West Texas on Sunday to comfort two families whose children died of the disease.Why it matters: Kennedy has been criticized for downplaying measles risks and the efficacy of vaccines, notes Axios' Marc Caputo, who first reported on the secretary's visit to Texas.The secretary has a long record of sowing skepticism about vaccines.Driving the news: Both children in Gaines County were not vaccinated when they died of measles, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.Texas has the largest number of reported measles cases in the U.S. Kennedy wrote on X Sunday that 499 of the 642 confirmed cases in 22 states were in Texas.What he's saying: Kennedy said on X Sunday he's visiting Gaines County, Texas, to "quietly to console the families and to be with the community in their moment of grief."He said he's also there to support Texas health officials and to learn how our HHS agencies "can better partner with them to control the measles outbreak."Kennedy pointed to the deployment of a CDC team "to bolster local and state capacity for response across multiple Texas regions, supply pharmacies and Texas run clinics with needed MMR vaccines and other medicines and medical supplies," among other measures he said he'd taken."Since that time, the growth rates for new cases and hospitalizations have flattened," Kennedy said. "The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine."Flashback: In the face of criticism of his handling of the federal response to the outbreak, Kennedy wrote an op-ed for Fox News Digital last month with the headline "Measles outbreak is call to action for all of us" and the subheading "MMR vaccine is crucial to avoiding potentially deadly disease."In the article, Kennedy wrote "Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons," but said the decision to vaccinate is "a personal one."Go deeper: White House fed up with RFK Jr.'s sluggish press shop

By McKenzie Funk for ProPublicaThe deportation flight was in the air over Mexico when chaos erupted in the back of the plane, the flight attendant recalled. A little girl had collapsed. She had a high fever and was taking ragged, frantic breaths.The flight attendant, a young woman who went by the nickname Lala, said she grabbed the plane’s emergency oxygen bottle and rushed past rows of migrants chained at the wrists and ankles to reach the girl and her parents.By then, Lala was accustomed to the hard realities of working charter flights for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She’d learned to obey instructions not to look the passengers in the eyes, not to greet them or ask about their well-being. But until the girl collapsed, Lala had managed to escape an emergency.Lala worked for Global Crossing Airlines, the dominant player in the loose network of deportation contractors known as ICE Air. GlobalX, as the charter company is also called, is lately in the news. Two weeks ago, it helped the Trump administration fly hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador despite a federal court order blocking the deportations, triggering a showdown that experts fear could become a full-blown constitutional crisis.In interviews with ProPublica, Lala and six other current and former GlobalX flight attendants provided a window into a part of the deportation process that is rarely seen and little understood. For migrants who have spent months or years trying to reach this country and live here, it is the last act, the final bit of America they may experience.Related | White House posts despicable video of immigrants being deportedAll but one of the flight attendants requested anonymity or asked that only a nickname be used, fearing retribution or black marks as they looked for new jobs in an insular industry.Because ICE, GlobalX and other charter carriers did not respond to questions after being provided with detailed lists of this story’s findings, the flight attendants’ individual accounts are hard to verify. But their stories are consistent with one another. They are also generally consistent with what has been said about ICE Air in legal filings, news accounts, academic research and publicly released copies of the ICE Air Operations Handbook.That morning over Mexico, Lala said, the girl’s oxygen saturation level was 70% — perilously low compared with a healthy person’s 95% or higher. Her temperature was 102.3 degrees. The flight had a nurse on contract who worked alongside its security guards. But beyond giving the girl Tylenol, the nurse left the situation in Lala’s hands, she recalled.Lala broke the rule about talking to detainees. The parents told Lala their daughter had a history of asthma. The mom, who Lala said had epilepsy, seemed on the verge of her own medical crisis.Lala placed the oxygen mask on the girl’s face. The nurse removed her socks to keep her from further overheating. Lala counted down the minutes, praying for the girl to keep breathing.Donald Trump promoting deportations at his campaign rally on Oct. 11, 2024, in Aurora, Colo.The stories shared by ICE Air flight attendants paint a different picture of deportations from the one presented to the public, especially under President Donald Trump. On social media, the White House has depicted a military operation carried out with ruthless efficiency, using Air Force C-17s, ICE agents in tactical vests and soldiers in camo.The reality is that 85% of the administration’s “removal” flights — 254 flights as of March 21, according to the advocacy group Witness at the Border — have been on charter planes. Military flights have now all but ceased. While there are ICE officers and hired security guards on the charters, the crew members on board are civilians, ordinary people swept up in something most didn’t knowingly sign up for.When the flight attendants joined GlobalX, it was a startup with big plans. It sold investors and new hires alike on a vision of VIP clients, including musicians and sports teams, and luxury destinations, especially in the Caribbean. “You can’t beat the eXperience,” read a company tagline.But as the airline grew, more and more of its planes were filled with migrants in chains. Some flight attendants were livid about it.Last year, an anonymous GlobalX employee sent an all-caps, all-staff screed that ricocheted around the startup. “WHERE IS THE COMPANY GOING?” the email asked. “YOU SIGNED A 5 YEAR CONTRACT WITH ICE? ... WHAT HAPPENED TO THIS BECOMING A PRESTIGE CHARTER AIRLINE?”One flight attendant said he kept waiting for the sports teams his new bosses had talked about as he flew deportation routes. “You know, the NFL charters, the NBA charters, whatever the hockey one is ...” he said.A second said his planes’ air conditioning kept breaking — an experience consistent with at least two publicly reported onboard incidents — and their lavatories kept breaking, something another flight attendant reported as well. But the planes kept flying. “They made us flush with water bottles,” he said.But the flight attendants were most concerned about their inability to treat their passengers humanely — and to keep them safe. (In 2021, an ICE spokesperson told the publication Capital & Main that the agency “follows best practices when it comes to the security, safety and welfare of the individuals returned to their countries of origin.”)They worried about what would happen in an emergency. Could they really get over a hundred chained passengers off the plane in time?“They never taught us anything regarding the immigration flights,” one said. “They didn’t tell us these people were going to be shackled, wrists to fucking ankles.”“We have never gotten a clear answer on what we do in an ICE Air evacuation,” another said. “They will not give us an answer.”“It’s only a matter of time,” a third said, before a deportation flight ends in disaster.Lala didn’t think she had a chance at a flight attendant job. She hadn’t, in truth, remembered applying to GlobalX until a recruiter called to say the startup was coming to her city. “But I guess I did apply through LinkedIn?” she said. She’d been working an office job — long hours, little flexibility — and was looking for something new.The job interviews were held at a resort hotel. The room was packed with dozens of aspirants when Lala showed up. After the first round, only about 20 were asked to stay. She couldn’t believe she was one of them. After the second round came a job offer: $26 an hour plus a daily expense allowance. Soon Lala got a uniform: a blue cardigan, a white polo shirt and an eye-catching scarf in cyan and light green.For part of her Federal Aviation Administration-mandated four-week training, her class stayed in a motel with a pool at the edge of Miami International Airport. Just across the street, on the fourth floor of a concrete-clad office building ringed by palm trees, was GlobalX’s headquarters.“In the beginning, we were told that because it’s a charter, it’s only gonna be elites, celebrities,” Lala said. “Everybody was really excited.”But flying was not going to be all glitz. The real reason for having flight attendants is safety. GlobalX was certified by the FAA as a Part 121 scheduled air carrier, the same as United or Delta, and it and its crew members were subject to the same strict standards.An Airbus A320 jetliner belonging to Global Crossing Airlines, also know as GlobalX Airlines, lands in Calgary in Aug. 2023.“We’re there to evacuate you,” one recruit told ProPublica. “Yes, we make good drinks, but we evacuate you.”Lala’s class practiced water landings in the pool at the nearby Pan Am Flight Academy. They practiced door drills — yelling out commands, shoving open heavy exit doors — in a replica Airbus A320 cabin. They learned CPR and how to put out fires. They took written and physical tests, and if they didn’t score at least 90%, they had to retake them.They were reminded, over and over, that their job was a vocation, one with a professional code: No matter who the passengers were, flight attendants were in charge of the cabin, responsible for safety in the air.Lala’s official “airman” certificate arrived from the FAA a few weeks after training was done. She was cleared to fly, ready to see the world.But what she would see wasn’t what she signed up for. The company was growing beyond glamorous charters. GlobalX was moving into the deportation business.Her bosses delivered the news casually, she recalled: “It was like, ‘Oh yeah, we got a government contract.’”The new graduates were offered a single posting: Harlingen, Texas. Deportation flights were five days a week, sometimes late into the night. Lala went to Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia and, for refueling, Panama.A standard flight had more than a dozen private security guards — contractors working for the firm Akima — along with a single ICE officer, two nurses, and a hundred or more detainees. (Akima did not respond to a request for comment.) The guards were in charge of delivering food and water to the detainees and taking them to the lavatories. This left the flight attendants, whose presence was required by the FAA, with little to do.“Arm and disarm doors, that was our duty,” Lala said.The flights had their own set of rules, which the crew members said they learned from a company policy manual or from chief flight attendants. Don’t talk to the detainees. Don’t feed them. Don’t make eye contact. Don’t walk down the aisles without a guard escorting you. Don’t sit in aisle seats, where detainees could get close to you. Don’t wear your company-issued scarf because of “safety concerns that a detainee might grab it and use it against us,” Lala said.“You don’t do nothing,” said a member of another GlobalX class. “Just sit down in your seats and be quiet.” If a detainee looked at him, he was supposed to look out the window.A rare public statement from the company about life aboard ICE Air came in a 2023 earnings call with GlobalX founder and then-CEO Ed Wegel, when he discussed the company’s work for federal agencies like ICE. GlobalX employees “essentially don’t do much on the airplane,” Wegel said. “Our flight attendants are there in case of an emergency. The passengers are monitored by guards that are placed on board the airplane by one of those agencies.”Fielding a question about how GlobalX ensures passengers are treated humanely, Wegel continued: “There have been threats made to our crew members, and they’re especially trained to deal with those. But we haven’t seen any mistreatment at all.”Flight attendants said they had little to do but sit in their jumpseats after delivering the preflight safety briefing in English to the mostly Spanish-speaking passengers. Above 10,000 feet, the two in the rear usually moved to passenger rows near the cockpit, then sat again. Some did crosswords. Others took photos out the window. On a deportation to Guatemala, one saw his first erupting volcano.Lala had been scared before her first deportation flight, worried that violence might break out. But fear soon gave way to discomfort at how detainees were treated. “Not being able to serve them, not being able to look at them, I didn’t think that was right,” she said.Some flight attendants, drawn to the profession because they liked taking care of people, couldn’t help but break protocol with passengers. “If they said ‘hola’ or something,” one said, “I’d say ‘hola’ back. We’re not jerks.”Another recalled taking a planeload of children and their escorts on a domestic transfer from the southern border to an airport in New York. He tried to slip snacks to the kids. “Even the chaperones were like, ‘Don’t give them any food,’” he said. “And I’m like, ‘Where is your humanity?’” (A second flight attendant said that children on a New York flight were fed by their escorts.)While flight attendants were allowed to interact with the guards, the dynamic was uncomfortable. It came down to a question of who was in charge — and which agency, ICE or the FAA, ultimately held sway. (The FAA declined to comment on this story and directed questions to ICE.)The guards often asked flight attendants to heat up the food they brought from home. They asked for drinks, for ice. “They treated us like we were their maids,” said Akilah Sisk, a former flight attendant from Texas.“In their eyes, the detainees are not the passengers,” another flight attendant said. “The passengers are the guards. And we’re there for the guards.”Some guards thumbed their noses at the FAA safety rules that flight attendants were supposed to enforce while airborne, multiple flight attendants recalled. “One reported me because I asked him to sit down in the last 10 minutes,” Sisk said. “But you’re still on a freaking plane. You gotta listen to our words.”Flight attendants said that if they told guards to fasten seatbelts during takeoff or stow carry-ons under a seat, they risked getting reported to their bosses at GlobalX, who they said wanted to keep ICE happy. The guards would complain to the in-flight supervisor, Sisk said, and eventually it would get back to the flight attendant.“We’d get an email from somebody in management: ‘Why are you guys causing problems?’” another flight attendant recalled. “They were more worried about losing the contract than about anything else.”Nothing bothered flight attendants more than the fact that most of their passengers were in chains. What would happen if a flight had to be evacuated?Protesters at a pro-migrant rally demand an end to deportations in New York on Feb. 9.Most of the migrants crowding the back seats of ICE Air’s planes have not been, historically, convicted criminals. ICE makes restraints mandatory nonetheless. “Detainees transported by ICE Air aircraft will be fully restrained by the use of handcuffs, waist chains, and leg irons,“ reads an unredacted version of the 2015 ICE Air Operations Handbook, which was obtained by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal advocacy group.The handbook allows for other equipment “in special circumstances, i.e., spit masks, mittens, leg braces, cargo straps, humane restraint blanket, etc.” Multiple lawsuits on behalf of African asylum-seekers concern the use of one such item, known as the Wrap, a cross between a straitjacket and a sleeping bag. A flight attendant said detainees restrained in the device are strapped upright in their seats or, if less compliant, lengthwise across a row of seats. Getting “burritoed, I call it,” the person said.The Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties investigated the asylum-seekers’ complaints and found ICE lacked “sufficient policies” on the Wrap, but how the immigration agency addressed the finding is not publicly known. ICE responded to one lawsuit by saying detainees were not abused; it said another should be dismissed, in part because it was filed in the wrong place. The cases are pending.Use of the Wrap continues. A video from Seattle’s Boeing Field taken in February shows officers and guards carrying a wrapped migrant into the cabin of a deportation plane.Neither the ICE Air handbook, nor FAA regulations, nor flight attendant training in Miami explained how to empty a plane full of people whose movements were, by design, so severely hampered. Shackled detainees didn’t even qualify as “able-bodied” enough to sit in exit rows.To flight attendants, the restraints seemed at odds with the FAA’s “90-second rule,” a decades-old manufacturing standard that says an aircraft must be built for full evacuation in 90 seconds even with half the exits blocked.Lala and others said no one told them how to evacuate passengers in chains. “Honestly, I don’t know what we would do,” she said.The flight attendants are not alone in voicing concerns.In an interview with ProPublica, Bobby Laurie, an airline safety expert and former flight attendant, called the arrangement on ICE Air flights “disturbing.”“Part of flight attendant training is locating those passengers who can help you in an evacuation,” Laurie told ProPublica. That would have to be the guards. “But if they have to help you,” who is helping the detainees, Laurie wondered.According to formal ICE Air incident reports reviewed by Capital & Main, the deportation network had at least six accidents requiring evacuations between 2014 and 2019. In at least two cases, both on a carrier called World Atlantic, the evacuations were led not by flight attendants but by untrained guards. Both took longer than 90 seconds, though not by much: two-and-a-half minutes for the first, “less than 2 minutes” for the next. But in a third case, it took seven minutes for 115 shackled detainees to escape a smoke-filled jet.Related | White House admits it sent innocent man to brutal prison in El SalvadorIn one of the World Atlantic incidents, part of the landing gear broke, a wing caught fire and the smell of burning rubber seeped in, according to investigative records obtained by the University of Washington Center for Human Rights. In an email to ICE Air officials, an agency employee aboard the plane later wrote that flight attendants made no emergency announcements for passengers. The flight attendants simply got themselves out.The ICE officer, guards and nurse were “confused on what to do and in which direction to exit during distress,” the officer wrote. He said that other than the flight crew, “no one has received any training on emergency evacuation situations.”The University of Washington’s collection does not include findings or recommendations from ICE based on what happened, and ICE did not say what they were when asked by ProPublica. The National Transportation Safety Board said that after the accident, World Atlantic launched a campaign to reinspect landing gear, gave employees and contractors further training, and revised its procedures for inspections. The airline did not respond to questions from ProPublica.Other reports obtained by the University of Washington mention fuel spills, loss of cabin air pressure and a “large altercation” on ICE Air after 2019 but no more evacuations, at least as of June 2022. More recent incidents that have been mentioned in the press include an engine fire last summer on World Atlantic and a failed GlobalX air conditioning unit that sent 11 detainees to the hospital with “heat-related injuries.”The rare guidance some flight attendants said they received on carrying out ICE Air evacuations came during briefings from pilots. What they heard, they said, was chilling and went against their training.“Just get up and leave,” one recalled a GlobalX pilot telling him. “That’s it. ... Save your life first.”He understood the instructions to mean that evacuating detainees was not a priority, or even the flight attendants’ responsibility. The detainees were in other people’s hands, or in no one’s.When asked if they got similar guidance from pilots, three flight attendants said they did not, and one did not answer. Two more, like the first, said pilots gave them instructions that they took to mean they shouldn’t help detainees after opening the exit doors.“That was the normal briefing,” said a flight attendant from Lala’s class. “‘If a fire occurs in the cabin, if we land on water, don’t check on the immigrants. Just make sure that you and the guards and the people that work for the government get off.’”“It was as if the detainees’ lives were worthless,” said the other.The day the girl collapsed on Lala’s flight, the pilot turned the plane around and they crossed back into the United States.The flight landed in Arizona. Paramedics rushed on board and connected the girl to their own oxygen bottle. They began shuttling her off the plane. Her parents tried to join. But the guards stopped the father.Shocked, Lala approached the ICE officer in charge. “This is not OK!” she yelled. The mom had seizures. The family needed to stay together.But the officer said it was impossible. Only one parent could go to the hospital. The other, as Lala understood it, “was going to get deported.”Most of the flight attendants who spoke with ProPublica are now gone from GlobalX. Some left because they found other jobs. Some left even though they hadn’t. Some left because the charter company, as it focused more and more on deportations, shut down the hub in their city.Lala eventually left because of the little girl and her family, because she couldn’t do the deportation flights anymore. Her GlobalX uniform hung in her closet for a time, a reminder of her career as a flight attendant. Recently, she said, she threw it away.She never learned whether the little girl lived or died. Lala just watched her mom follow her off the plane, then watched the dad return to his seat.“I cried after that,” she said. She bought her own ticket home.

The first step: getting the draft Freedom City Act introduced in Congress.

Republican senators are brushing off concerns that high-profile arrests and deportations of foreign students may ostracize a group that is a major contributor to the U.S. economy. International students injected $43.8 billion into the U.S. last year, a key economic influx that has rebounded from a major downturn during the pandemic. California, New York and [...]

Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, was taken by immigration officials as she walked along a street in the Boston suburb of Somerville on March 25.

President Trump is expected to announce the details of his reciprocal tariffs plan after 4 p.m. at the White House.

Democrats are quiet now that nationwide injunctions are limiting Trump, but during Biden’s presidency, they introduced legislation to address it.

Democratic justices on the Illinois Supreme Court are mired in conflicts of interest; they must recuse themselves from the redistricting lawsuit.

“The president of the United States has essentially declared war on the rule of law in America.” Those are the words of J. Michael Luttig, a widely respected former conservative federal judge. His alarm, on MSNBC, is no exaggeration.

Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff intends to put an indefinite hold on Ed Martin's nomination to be the top prosecutor in Washington, D.C.

The White House is preparing to potentially veto a resolution to undo tariffs on Canada, which will have a privileged vote tentatively on Tuesday.

A major labor union launched a six-figure ad campaign on Tuesday featuring Tufts University Ph.D. student Rumeysa Ozturk decrying what it called an infringement on the First Amendment. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents nearly 2 million members in the United States and Canada, is launching digital ads and projections on buildings in [...]

Arresting and deporting people without evidence of criminal activity undermines the constitutional rights that protect us all.

Injustice for All is a weekly series about how the Trump administration is trying to weaponize the justice system—and the people who are fighting back.Would you like some good news, even if it is only a temporary dopamine hit? Of course you would. Let yourself experience the sheer joy of seeing the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals treat the Trump administration’s legal arguments with precisely what they deserve—scorn. On Wednesday, the appellate court issued a decision denying the administration’s request to overturn Judge James Boasberg’s order that blocked the Trump team from deporting migrants without due process. The ban is a mere two weeks long, briefly halting the practice of piling migrants into planes and sending them to a brutal mega-prison in El Salvador, where Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem did a cutesy media hit earlier this week. Donald Trump has justified this by invoking the Alien Enemies Act, previously used only in times of war. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem films her social media content in a brutal Salvadoran prison.The administration found the idea of a two-week delay so outrageous, it made an emergency appeal to the D.C. Circuit, saying Boasberg infringed on the executive branch’s power regarding national security. Things started going badly for the administration during oral argument when Judge Patricia Millett said that “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act.” Ouch. Judge Karen Henderson, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote an opinion concurring with the decision to uphold the stay, rejecting the administration’s ridiculous argument that courts aren’t even allowed to review the government’s conduct because national security blah blah blah. She also took the administration to task for using a random dictionary definition of “invasion” as its only support for the argument that we are somehow under attack by Venezuelan gangs, and therefore migrants can be deported. Millett’s concurring opinion pointed out the absurdity of the administration saying it doesn’t have to comply with the temporary restraining order while simultaneously challenging the order. “The one thing that is not tolerable,” Millett wrote, “is for the government to seek from this court a stay of an order that the government at the very same time is telling the district court is not an order with which compliance was ever required.”The administration may take this to the Supreme Court, where Trump can see if the conservative majority will do him a solid, like they so often do, and let him keep deporting anyone he wants based on, well, nothing except the dictionary. The judiciary rouses itself from slumberThe judicial branch finally seems to have realized that it is suboptimal for judges to be threatened with impeachment and defunding just because the president doesn’t like their rulings. There’s also the tiny problem of death threats. It no doubt stings that the Trump administration has lost lower court battles over its unprecedented funding freeze, its mass firing of government workers, and its horrific deportations. No other administration, though, has reacted to losses in court by deciding to just rid the world of these meddlesome judges. The judiciary has set up a task force about security and the independence of the courts. Federal judges and court clerks will make up the task force, which will help the judiciary “respond to current risks, and to anticipate new ones.”There should be no risk to judges for ruling against Trump, and it’s appalling that it’s reached the point where a task force is needed. But here we are, and it’s good the judiciary eventually noticed. Clarence Thomas is incandescent with rage that we can’t all have ghost guns like the founders intendedEarlier this week, the Supreme Court upheld an incredibly mild Biden-era rule about ghost guns. Ghost guns are sold as parts, not complete weapons, to be assembled by the buyer or another private party. They’re untraceable, have no serial numbers, and you don’t need a license to buy them. A ghost gun that police seized from an organized shoplifting crime ring.Regrettably, the regulation doesn’t ban ghost guns. All it requires is that ghost guns are treated like other firearms, requiring sellers to add serial numbers, verify buyers are at least 21, and perform background checks. You will not be surprised to learn that Justice Clarence Thomas finds this an outrageous limitation on freedom. His dissent predictably whines about “government overreach” and contains what feels like eleventy-thousand words debating the meaning of words in the rule. What he’s really mad about, though, is a worry that the ghost gun rule could be applied somehow to block home modification of AR-15s. God forbid. Have you considered that the people who really need reparations in America are the Jan. 6 rioters?When Ed Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., isn’t protecting a GOP House member from domestic violence charges, investigating nonexistent voter fraud, or threatening law schools, he’s very busy calling for reparations for the Jan. 6 rioters who stormed the Capitol. Martin fixated on this well before Trump tapped him as the top prosecutor in D.C. Back in January 2024, he mused that he had “finally come around” to reparations and that J6 insurrectionists should get “a big pot of money, like the asbestos money we got for asbestos victims.” Yes, literal insurrectionists who received the benefit of full due process in the judicial system are precisely the same as people who got mesothelioma thanks to breathing cancer for decades. It’s also an odd comparison because asbestos victims are paid out from private compensation funds, not the government, though veterans who were exposed during their service can apply for disability compensation. U.S. Capitol Police security video showed Tyler Bradley Dykes, marked in red, breaking into the Capitol. He had been sentenced to nearly five years in prison for assaulting police officers.Now Trump has picked up the torch, saying he’s thinking about establishing a government compensation fund for the very criminals he pardoned. Trump is not, of course, down with reparations for the descendants of enslaved persons. Guess we’ve finally found something the administration will spend money on. Too bad it’s this. Two more law firms get their turn in the barrel for ... reasonsIt was only a week ago that the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP rolled over and showed their tummies to Trump to get him to rescind an executive order targeting the firm. It was inevitable that capitulation would embolden Trump, who promptly issued new executive orders targeting additional firms he has beef with, Jenner & Block and WilmerHale. These executive orders generally suspend the security clearances of firm employees, block their access to federal buildings, and drastically restrict their ability to talk to government employees. WilmerHale was targeted because Robert Mueller worked there before and after his role as special counsel investigating Russian interference in Trump’s first election. In the case of Jenner & Block, attorney Andrew Weissmann, former deputy to Mueller, previously worked there. Former special counsel Robert MuellerNever mind that Mueller retired from WilmerHale four years ago, and Weissmann hasn’t been at Jenner & Block since 2021 and is now a Substacker.Both WilmerHale and Jenner & Block sued the administration on Friday. WilmerHale’s lawsuit points out that the executive order violates the separation of powers, the right to due process, and the right to counsel. Jenner & Block’s complaint explains that the executive order threatens not only the firm, but the legal system itself and that the Constitution “forbids attempts by the government to punish citizens and lawyers” based on their choice of clients, their legal positions, and the people they associate with.” Trump’s attack on law firms has had the desired effect, as firms are starting to refuse to represent his opponents. On Thursday, The New York Times reported that mega-firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom had entered into talks with the Trump administration to stave off a similar executive order. By Friday afternoon, Skadden was reportedly agreeing to give $100 million in pro bono work to administration-approved causes, which Trump called “essentially a settlement.”Now that’s some complying in advance. Campaign Action

The Trump administration remained publicly defiant this week as its immigration crackdown exploded into a global spectacle, ignited by two legally fraught deportation drives.The transfer of alleged Venezuelan gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador using an 18th-century wartime law, which could soon be taken up by the Supreme Court.The targeting of foreign students allegedly involved in pro-Palestinian activism on college campuses.Why it matters: In both cases, President Trump and his team are charging ahead with unapologetic force — even as the courts, immigration activists and civil libertarians accuse them of steamrolling due process.Zoom in: In the two weeks since Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, numerous reports have cast doubt on the alleged gang ties of some of the Venezuelans sent to El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center.The Department of Homeland Security says each of the individuals has been thoroughly investigated, with tattoos and social media posts among the evidence used to confirm their involvement with Tren de Aragua.But the families and lawyers of some of the detained men have pushed back aggressively, claiming they were targeted because of tattoos that have nothing to do with gang ties.In at least one case, a Venezuelan man with a pending political asylum case — and no tattoos — was deported to El Salvador because of a paperwork error, his lawyer alleged in an immigration hearing.Between the lines: The Trump administration has refused to acknowledge the possibility that innocent people are winding up in El Salvador's megaprison, a legal black hole known for torture and inhumane conditions."DHS intelligence assessments go beyond a single tattoo and we are confident in our findings," DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in response to allegations that one man's soccer tattoo was used as evidence of gang ties."Where was Laken Riley's due process? All these young women that were killed and raped by members of TdA, where was their due process?" Trump's border czar Tom Homan argued on ABC's "This Week." DHS Secretary Kristi Noem at El Salvador's megaprison. Photo: Alex Brandon/Pool/AFP via Getty ImagesZoom out: While the Trump administration has celebrated the arrests of violent criminals who entered the country illegally, authorities are also dedicating considerable resources to detaining legal immigrants involved in campus activism.The crackdown reached a potential inflection point this week after Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national, was arrested by six masked agents and transferred to a facility in Louisiana.Ozturk had co-authored an op-ed demanding Tufts acknowledge the "Palestinian genocide" and divest from Israel, but DHS has not provided evidence for its claim that she "engaged in activities in support of Hamas."What they're saying: Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the administration's right to revoke student visas at a press conference this week, but did not respond when asked what specific action Ozturk took to prompt her arrest."Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa," Rubio said, speculating that the number of revocations "might be more than 300 at this point."The Trump administration has discussed plans to block colleges from having any foreign students if it concludes too many are "pro-Hamas," as Axios first reported this week.The big picture: The promise of mass deportations was central to Trump's campaign, and recent polls show he's getting relatively high marks for his handling of immigration.But backlash is brewing among some conservatives, who are increasingly alarmed by both the lack of due process and the callousness with which the administration is treating deportations.DHS Secretary Kristi Noem drew flak this week when she posed against a backdrop of shirtless prisoners at El Salvador's megaprison, warning "this is one of the consequences you could face."The official White House X account has used viral memes to mock undocumented immigrants, including a ChatGPT-generated cartoon of an accused drug dealer crying while being handcuffed.The bottom line: "I don't defend due process because I love 'child rapists & drug dealers.' I defend it because the government often gets things wrong," Reason reporter Billy Binion wrote in a heated debate on X this week."The Constitution protects unpopular people for a reason."

This past year of my cancer journey wasn’t just about forging through grueling infusions every other week, it was also about life lessons.

President Donald Trump is using every tool he has to challenge woke practices in America — and he has a lot of them.

Businesses can now get permission to poison both the environment and the American people simply by sending an email to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin. Thanks to Zeldin, a company can shoot an email requesting a presidential exemption under the Clean Air Act to a slew of Joe Biden-era rules. If their discreet email requests are approved, companies will be allowed to fill the environment with toxic chemicals such as arsenic, benzene, and mercury without regulations.Benzene might be the lesser known evil out of those three, but it’s definitely highly toxic. The chemical is known for causing cancer, such as leukemia. It can also lead to lung issues or blood disorders like anemia. In some cases, neurological disorders have been reported upon exposure. And as Trump and his cronies push away from clean energy, it’s no surprise that this chemical is commonly found in oil. “EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s action is an extreme and improper abuse of Clean Air Act authorities that only allow for exemptions from vital pollution protections in very narrow circumstances,” Environmental Defense Fund’s General Counsel Vickie Patton said in a statement provided to Daily Kos.“ This is a Trump EPA-led effort to evade established limits on toxic pollution that protect millions of people across the U.S.”EPA employees take part in a national march against actions taken by the Trump administration, on March 25, 2025, in Philadelphia.The environmental nonprofit is pushing back against Zeldin’s greenlight for companies to poison people in the name of profits. This week, the group filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain the names of the companies seeking exemption from environmental regulations.“The American public deserves to know what the Trump EPA and polluters are doing to the air they breathe,” Patton said.Since Zeldin was appointed, he has really gotten to work on his main goal of driving what he calls a “dagger through the heart of climate change religion.”Despite saying he believes climate change is real during his Senate confirmation hearing, Zeldin has done everything in his power to remove the agency’s ability to do its job. More so, Zeldin has been working overtime to remove grants for environmental projects that were already approved, paid, and in progress. And while the hammer hasn’t dropped, documents obtained by Democrats on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology last week revealed that the secretary reportedly intended to lay off key scientists.Related | EPA purges vital staff in win for Trump's 'polluter buddies'Workers within the EPA have gone so far to pen anonymous letters begging for help as the agency is dismantled within. “We cannot stand by and allow this to happen,” the workers demanded in an Environmental Health News op-ed. “We need to hold this administration accountable to serving the American people, applying the same mandates that we have held our federal workforce and grant recipients to: follow the law, follow the science, and be transparent.”All of this is of course building on the “bonfire of climate regulations” that Trump has set since the first day of this presidency, not to mention what he did the first time around.Campaign Action

'SUCH A CONFLICT OF INTEREST!'

WASHINGTON, March 28, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) in conjunction with the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans hosted a briefing on the U.S.-India strategic partnership and strengthening the relationship across defense, trade, and technology.From Top L-R: Sriram Raghavan, Vice President, IBM Research AI, Crowd Hears the Panel, Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (IL-8) with Dr. Mukesh Aghi, President and CEO, USISPF, Amb. Vinay Kwatra, Indian Ambassador to the U.S. with Congressman Marc Veasey (TX-33), Amb. Vinay Kwatra, Indian Ambassador to the U.S. with Congresswoman Janelle Bynum, (OR-5), and Congressman Ed Case (HI-1) watches on.The event took place on Wednesday, March 26th, on Capitol Hill with 11 Members of Congress, including Co-Chairs Congressmen Rich McCormick (GA-07) and Ro Khanna (CA-17); Co Vice-Chair Marc Veasey (TX-33) as well as, Jim Costa (CA-21), and Glenn Grothman, (WI-6), Raja Krishnamoorthi (IL-8), Ed Case (HI-1), Congresswoman Kim Schrier (WA-8), and Congresswoman Janelle Bynum, (OR-5), Congressmen Derek Tran (CA-45), and Herb Conaway (NJ-3).Speaking at the event, USISPF President and CEO Dr. Mukesh Aghi said: "The strategic partnership between our two democracies has been defined by past presidents as the most important strategic partnership of the 21st century. Our event with Members of Congress reflects both the bipartisan nature ...Full story available on Benzinga.com

Republican-led states are pushing the Trump Administration to lump all school aid. They argue it would save from onerous reporting requirements.

One-year-old River Jacobs is held by his mother, Caitlin Fuller, while he receives an MMR vaccine March 1, 2025 in Lubbock, Texas.

The worlds of supplement users and the Trump team overlap substantially.

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean Murphy resigned from the Department of Justice, telling NPR, 'It just was not a Department of Justice that I any longer wanted to associate with.'"

Sitting inside a Steak ’n Shake in Florida this month, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed the measles shot causes “deaths every year” and touted the “lifetime protection against measles” after an infection.

Ed Martin is not a typical pick for a U.S. attorney. President Trump’s choice to lead the federal office in D.C. has never been a prosecutor – making him the first person without that background to lead the office in over 50 years. Already in the role on an interim basis, he's sparked attention with [...]

I disagree with the editorial board's characterization of Mahmoud Khalil as "a supporter of Hamas" rather than as a supporter of Palestinian rights.

An influx of immigrants has meant that Charleroi’s population, long in decline, has returned to levels not seen since the 1970s. With the new arrivals have come new businesses and newly refurbished houses. But not everyone feels like the community has benefited. And the Trump administration’s recent decision to change the immigration status of many Haitians means the town's revival is now in jeopardy of being reversed.

More than 30,000 immigrants in Illinois may loss health insurance if the state eliminates funding for noncitizen immigrants ages 42 to 64.

The Republican senator condemned college protesters opposed to Israel's war in Gaza on Wednesday and brazenly argued "all of them" belong behind bars.

Ed Yardeni, whom CNBC calls "one of the biggest bulls on Wall Street," claimed President Donald Trump’s extensive tariffs are raising the risk of "stagflation."Stagflation occurs when there's stagnant economic growth combined with high inflation and high unemployment. A full-blown recession happens when the economy shrinks, as evidenced by two successive quarters of declining gross domestic product. CNBC reported that Yardeni sent a note to clients Thursday, saying, “It has dawned on Wall Street (and us!) that President Trump’s tariffs aren’t negotiating chips to help the U.S. lower tariffs around the world, promoting free trade. They’re trade barriers, triggering other countries to respond in kind, and they jeopardize U.S. inflation and economic growth."ALSO READ: The new guy in charge of USAID doesn't believe in foreign aidTrump's on-again, off-again tariffs on Mexico, Canada, China, and the EU have caused major market instability, and Yardeni Research has now lowered its best-case S&P 500 target for 2025 by almost 9%," CNBC reported. “We can’t ignore the potential stagflationary impact of the policies that Trump 2.0 is currently implementing haphazardly,” Yardeni said. “In response to the now heightened risk of stagflation, we are lowering our S&P 500 valuation expectations and year-end price targets. If tariffs stick, the one-time price increase and uncertainty regarding its impact on inflation expectations are likely to be enough to keep the FOMC on pause."The Federal Open Market Committee is the policy-setting arm of the U.S. Federal Reserve.Just Thursday, Trump issued a fresh threat to impose 200% tariffs on all alcoholic products coming from the European Union in retaliation for its "nasty 50% tariff on whisky."Trump wrote on Truth Social, "If this Tariff is not removed immediately, the U.S. will shortly place a 200% Tariff on all WINES, CHAMPAGNES, & ALCOHOLIC PRODUCTS COMING OUT OF FRANCE AND OTHER E.U. REPRESENTED COUNTRIES. This will be great for the Wine and Champagne businesses in the U.S."Read the CNBC article here.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin is celebrating his many rollbacks to the organization, bragging about shooting a “dagger through the heart of climate change religion” and claiming that he’s “ushering in America’s Golden Age.”The EPA is about to experience its largest deregulatory action in U.S. history. Zeldin is rolling back 31 environmental regulations, one of which takes aim at a rule restricting air pollution from fossil fuel-powered plants. Another measure will move away from electric vehicles, allowing a larger embrace of oil-powered vehicles and their fuel suppliers.“By reconsidering rules that throttled oil and gas production and unfairly targeted coal-fired power plants, we are ensuring that American energy remains clean, affordable, and reliable,” he wrote in his Wall Street Journal op-ed. Zeldin even has the Supreme Court on his side after last week’s ruling in which the court sided with San Francisco in a monumental sewage case, making it harder for the EPA to regulate sewage discharge.And to make regulating even more of a challenge, Zeldin slashed his workforce by more than 150 people last week. As he wrote in his op-ed, Zeldin is working toward ending the Green New Deal—or as he put it, the “Green New Scam.”But the Green New Deal is something that even Zeldin himself cannot kill, since it’s a platform—not legislation. Despite these extreme rollbacks, Zeldin said that this is not a “retreat from environmental protection.”“We are protecting the environment not by shutting down energy production but by making it cleaner and more efficient,” he wrote. The op-ed offers a change of tone from what he said during his Senate confirmation hearing in January. Responding to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Zeldin said that he believes “climate change is real” and that “we must with urgency be addressing these issues.”In February, leading climate change expert Dr. James Hansen of Columbia University released a study claiming that “global warming has accelerated.”Surely it will only get worse as Zeldin takes his dagger to the EPA.Campaign Action

Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey said he thought he had a $12.5 million yearly commitment from UPMC a year ago, but the health care giant denies that it ever made such an offer.

On Monday night, a longtime employee of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) sat down with his wife at their kitchen table in a D.C. suburb and decided to leave the job he loves. Three days earlier, he was one of thousands of employees at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) who received [...]

"You're not gonna stop us, New York State," Homan said at the state Capitol in Albany. "You gotta change the sanctuary status. If you don't, get out of the way."

On this special episode of Uncanny Valley, we unpack Elon Musk's desire for a government shutdown that could become permanent. Plus: An update on measles misinformation in the US.

Sen. John Fetterman's political statements and his blunt nature haven't necessarily translated to his voting record, which show he tends to vote with his party on key issues.