For months, Donald Trump and White House officials had a habit of insisting that the president had delivered an economy with “no inflation.” The public has heard a lot less of such talk lately, and there’s no great mystery as to why. CNBC reported:
The consumer price index, a broad gauge of goods and services costs across the U.S. economy, rose at a seasonally adjusted 0.5% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 4.2%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. Both numbers were in line with the Dow Jones consensus.
Inflation climbed above 4% for the first time in three years, though the increase met expectations amid concerns over how much the surge in energy prices would impact the economy. The level was the highest since April 2023 and above the 3.8% level from April.
All of that related data, incidentally, was released shortly before White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told Fox News that Trump has transformed the U.S. into an “extraordinary paradise.”
Perhaps most importantly, NBC News’ report emphasized that inflation’s rise “has surpassed wage growth,” which necessarily exacerbates the affordability crisis gripping American consumers.
The White House has not yet commented on the new data, although Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council and the top economist at the White House, has argued in recent weeks that rising inflation should be blamed on Democratic policies in blue states. Those claims, like much of what Hassett has to say, have been thoroughly discredited.
And no one is buying it. The latest national CNN poll found that 77% of respondents, including a majority of Republican voters, agreed that Trump’s policies have increased the cost of living. The same poll found just 30% of Americans approve of the president’s handling of the economy, a career low for the Republican across both terms. That mirrored the results of the latest national Associated Press poll.
There’s no reason to assume those results won’t continue to get even worse.
Nancy Mace’s political career is likely over and will almost certainly be quickly forgotten. But the South Carolina Republican had the chance five years ago to create an enduring legacy by risking her office to steadfastly oppose Donald Trump’s “big lie” and self-coup attempt after he lost the 2020 election. Instead, she chose a squishy middle path between standing up for her country’s democratic legacy and pleasing the deranged boss of her party. And that path led her nowhere.
Mace chose not to run for a fifth term in the House so she could pursue the top job in the Palmetto State’s government, but after failing to qualify for the runoff in the South Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary Tuesday, the odds of her political ambitions reaching any higher have dimmed considerably. Though he didn’t attack her by name as he did with former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Trump endorsed one of Mace’s primary challengers after she was one of four Republicans who signed a discharge petition forcing a vote to release the unredacted Jeffrey Epstein files in 2025.
What this country needs is Republican lawmakers and conservative thought leaders plainly rejecting Trump’s thoroughly debunked stories about a massive conspiracy of election fraud across multiple states.
This wasn’t the first time Mace stood up to Trump. On Jan. 6, 2021, she published an op-ed in The Post and Courierbefore Trump incited a MAGA mob, in which she wrote, “Today, I will solemnly cast my vote to certify the results of the Electoral College,” adding, “If Congress ever had the power to singularly throw out the Electoral College, we would set a dangerous precedent that the ruling class can disenfranchise millions of voters across the country. Does anyone really want to give Nancy Pelosi this kind of power? Certifying the results is the only way to preserve our republic and our Constitution. We must follow this course, even when we don’t like the outcome. Even when we hate the outcome.”
After Trump supporters’ violence on Jan. 6 was finally subdued, Mace went even further, telling CNN, “I hold him accountable for the events that transpired for the attack on our Capitol,” and that “everything that he’s worked for … his entire legacy, was wiped out yesterday.”
She added, “And we’ve got to start over.”
But when Mace had the chance to vote to impeach Trump a week after the riot, she demurred, questioning the “constitutionality” of the impeachment process for an outgoing president and lamenting “violence on both sides of the aisle.”
A closer glance at her Jan. 6 op-ed shows her spreading a whole lot of baseless “big lie” innuendo: “Is there evidence of voting irregularities and voter fraud in multiple states? Yes.”
Mace then spent the next several years as a MAGA-coded culture warrior, taking on Trump’s political targets — especially transgender people — as her own. But her Epstein files rebellion seems to have been the last straw for Trump.
It’s a shame, because what this country needs most in June 2026 — just as it did in January 2021 — is Republican lawmakers and conservative thought leaders plainly rejecting Trump’s thoroughly debunked stories about a massive conspiracy of election fraud across multiple states. Instead, the most powerful and influential voices are spreading democracy-eroding falsehoods — because they can’t believe that 2000s-era reality TV show villain Spencer Pratt didn’t finish higher than third as a Republican in the Los Angeles mayoral primary.
To be sure, California’s vote-counting methods are, as The New York Times put it, “notoriously time-consuming, in part because of the state’s reliance on mail-in voting, and a requirement that officials do extensive work to check signatures, open envelopes and inspect ballots.”
But let’s be very clear about this. These Republican and conservative leaders are spreading baseless fictions meant to undermine any election that doesn’t go their way. And when it’s all said and done, for all the destruction Trump’s two administrations will have reaped upon the country and the world, the cynical deployment of voter fraud lies may end up yielding the most permanent damage.
What America really needs right now is a few honorable conservatives to stand against these despicable tactics with a clear voice. Mace had the chance to be one five years ago. Instead, she’ll leave the stage as just another Republican who briefly stood up to Trump, then vacillated, then rebelled again, but ultimately prioritized currying favor with the demagogic boss of her party over standing on principle.
For her efforts at placating Trump and MAGA, Mace is a replacement-level, power-hungry politician looking for a job.
President Donald Trump and his family have cashed in big since he won the 2024 election. Of the billions of dollars they have accrued over the past 18 months, the lion’s share has reportedly come from cryptocurrency assets that bear the president’s name or his family’s endorsement. The technology may be novel, but crypto lets the Trump family play the age-old game of separating fools from their money, all while leveraging Trump’s position in the White House to boost the sales pitch.
According to an in-depth investigation from Reuters, whose reporters reviewed thousands of documents, disclosures and blockchain records, the price of the crypto offerings Trump is marketing have plummeted — but not the profits that the Trumps have pocketed. Investors who trusted Trump’s business acumen have been left unable to achieve the profits they assumed were coming or even offload the assets as their worth collapsed. In effect, a predatory market that should be subject to stricter regulation from the government instead has been a massive cash cow for the president and his family.
Crypto lets the Trump family play the age-old game of separating fools from their money
(Reuters helpfully published a full methodology for how it calculated the gains and losses on the notoriously opaque crypto market. The White House did not comment directly on Reuters’ reporting but said in a statement: “All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people.”)
Trump has long preferred projects in which he features his name prominently but takes on little, if any, financial risk. The Trump Organization’s longtime M.O. has been licensing his name to real estate projects and reaping the benefits, even if the projects failed. Trump has also stamped his name onmattresses, wall sconces and slabs of meat. He even added his name to Bibles during the 2024 campaign.
At least all those were physical products. But in 2022, when he was out of the White House, Trump got involved in the burgeoning digital marketplace. The nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, sold for $99 each featuring his name and image as part of another licensing scheme. The cash flowed into Trump’s bank account before a “digital trading card” was sold. As a result, the latecomer entry into the NFT market, after months of decline in the NFT market’s value more broadly, mattered little to him when he had already extracted whatever value he could from the deal.
Trump and his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. fully entered the world of cryptocurrency in late 2024. Leading up to his inauguration, the three hawked the $TRUMP meme coin and “governance tokens” for their crypto business, World Liberty Financial. The resulting surge in interest in those offerings and two crypto companies with the sons’ backing have generated a massive flood of new revenue for the Trumps. The report Reuters published Tuesday highlighted how the influx of funding for the Trumps left behind those hoping to join in the windfall:
While they vary in size and structure, each of these ventures has followed the same playbook. The Trumps risked little up front. Trump family members — notably, the president’s oldest sons, Eric and Donald Jr. — hyped the venture. The Trumps raked in money as investors piled in. And those buyers lost big when, for various reasons, the prices of their Trump-related crypto assets later tanked.
A Reuters examination shows that the Trump family has used this template to generate at least $2.3 billion in profit from investors since Trump retook the presidency. On the other side of that cash bonanza for America’s first family: the more than a million investors whose net losses totaled $2.3 billion at the end of April, according to a Reuters analysis. Those investors include retail buyers of crypto and crypto-linked equities, as well as those who invested indirectly through funds such as exchange-traded funds with exposure to Trump crypto. The loss total includes paper losses on unsold investments.
We shouldn’t ignore that, per Reuters’ calculations, the Trumps have profited at least as much money as outside investors have lost. World Liberty has sent 75% of the net revenue from token sales to the Trumps. Those tokens were meant to provide those who own them a say in the “new financial system” the company promises to eventually develop — though there’s been little progress on that front.
The price for those tokens, along with the $TRUMP meme coin, another straight-up licensing venture, have crashed. Investors have been barred from selling most of the coins they have accumulated, meaning even those who bought in early are unable to make money from their purchase or even cut their losses. Reuters interviewed an investor whose $2,000 investment in $TRUMP is now worth less than $120. (A spokesperson for World Liberty disputed the methods Reuters used to calculate the losses retail investors have seen.)
After hyping a product with almost no real value, the president and his sons have in effect siphoned billions of dollars away from investors who hoped to profit themselves
Buyers of this meme coin had even more reason to beware than investors in general given the volatile nature of the crypto market and Trump’s history of flimflam. As with most crypto tokens available to purchase, the World Liberty “governance token” and the $TRUMP meme coin also included fine-print disclaimers that their tokens are not an investment and that purchasers shouldn’t expect a profit. But that’s hard to square with the president’s marketing and him offering perks to investors including dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate and the White House.
After hyping a product with almost no real value, the president and his sons have in effect siphoned billions of dollars away from investors who hoped to profit themselves. Anyone else who did this would be accused of running a classic pump and dump scheme. But when it’s the president of the United States behind it all, the people who bought in have nowhere to turn. Instead, they’re left holding the bag.
Tech billionaire Bill Gates is set to appear before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday morning, the latest high-profile witness to testify as part of the panel’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft and one of the richest people on Earth, was among several prominent people to appear in the Justice Department’s release of the Epstein files. Those documents show that Gates and Epstein met multiple times, and those close to Gates maintained a relationship with the sex offender.
Gates has said that he was “foolish” to spend time with Epstein. “I thought it would help me with global health, philanthropy. In fact, it failed to do that, and it was just a huge mistake,” he told The Wall Street Journal in January 2025.
Gates is not charged with any crime connected to Epstein, and he is not accused of wrongdoing. After his appearance before the House Oversight Committee was scheduled in April, his spokesperson told MS NOW, “While he never witnessed or participated in any of Epstein’s illegal conduct, he is looking forward to answering all the committee’s questions to support their important work.”
Epstein cultivated a network of rich and influential people across industries, including businessmen, Silicon Valley investors and academics. Many of them who appeared in the Epstein files have faced professional consequences — to varying degrees — for having associated with him.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Two and a half days before a deadline to extend one of the government’s most controversial surveillance authorities, Democrats and some Republicans are digging in over President Donald Trump’s decision to install Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence.
The question over the next 65 hours is whether either side is willing to blink.
Pulte’s appointment has thrown a wrench into negotiations over Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which expires Friday. His selection — which can remain in place for up to 210 days without Senate action, and much longer if Republicans play along with some complex nomination games — drew swift criticism from lawmakers in both parties.
“Make a list of the million most qualified Americans for this job,” Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., told MS NOW on Tuesday. “The guy is not on the list.”
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told reporters Pulte “has no obvious qualifications.”
Senate leaders will need to garner 60 votes to pass a FISA extension. And talks have dragged on so long, they’ll need unanimous consent to agree to hold a vote before Friday’s deadline. Last Friday, seven Republicans opposed a procedural motion on the bill, joining nearly all Democrats to block an extension of FISA’s surveillance authority.
Section 702 is a cornerstone of the intelligence community’s surveillance operations. According to the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, information gathered through the program contributed to 63% of the articles included in the president’s daily brief. But it has long been controversial because Americans’ communications can be swept up incidentally when they interact with foreign targets.
Pulte, who currently serves as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has no intelligence background. And during his tenure at the housing agency, he’s accused several Trump critics of mortgage fraud, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
That partisan record has only intensified concerns among Democrats about placing Pulte in charge of the nation’s intelligence apparatus.
“If people have questions about how 702 is being deployed and about the privacy of American people who may be incidentally collected under 702, appointing someone whose only relative experience is as a lapdog of the president, someone who goes after president’s enemies, someone who would abuse the private data of Americans certainly didn’t help,” Schiff told reporters Monday.
Still, Pulte isn’t the only obstacle standing in the way of a FISA deal. Negotiations were already contentious before Trump announced his appointment.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who has pushed for changes to the law to require warrants to gather Americans’ communications said in a Friday statement that Pulte’s selection “is a symptom of the larger problem” with warrantless surveillance.
For many lawmakers, the solution is simple: Trump could withdraw Pulte’s appointment. But the president signaled Tuesday that he has no intention of doing so, announcing on Truth Social that Pulte will assume the role on June 19.
Even so, lawmakers and administration officials may be exploring some potential compromises.
One possibility under discussion would have the White House nominate someone else to serve as the Senate-confirmed director of national intelligence while allowing Pulte to remain in the acting role.
When asked Tuesday whether the White House was considering another nominee, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he thought the administration was doing just that.
“I think they’re weighing seriously making a long-term pick,” Thune said.
But so far, there doesn’t appear to be any resolution.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said he discussed Pulte’s appointment with Trump during a Tuesday morning meeting, but he deferred questions about any potential compromise to the White House.
“We talked about all that, and I’m gonna let the president speak to the issue,” Johnson said.
A different pick for the full-time director of national intelligence could draw enough support from Democrats to end the blockade against a FISA extension, even if Pulte remains in place as the temporary, acting director.
“If the president were to announce somebody very credible as DNI, it would make it much easier to get to where we need to get on FISA,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., told MS NOW on Tuesday.
But Kaine isn’t exactly speaking for all Democrats. Some were clear they wouldn’t agree to a FISA extension as long as Pulte is in place as the acting director.
Sen. Kelly suggested Pulte is the problem — and that he couldn’t support a FISA extension even if Pulte were just in an acting director role.
As Kelly put it, he couldn’t support Pulte “as anything.”
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said he wouldn’t engage in hypotheticals about finding a middle ground with the White House. But when asked if Pulte could temporarily stay on as acting director, Warner said the votes for a FISA extension probably wouldn’t materialize.
“I don’t know how— I don’t see a path forward, regardless of what I do, on how you convince the necessary Democrats, because listen, there’s plenty of Republicans who don’t want this renewed,” Warner told MS NOW.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., also said Pulte’s lack of qualifications fundamentally undermines his ability to do the job, even temporarily.
“To take Mr. Pulte, who runs the housing programs, and put him in charge makes no sense whatsoever, temporary or permanent,” Durbin said on the Senate floor Tuesday.
A large, burning cross was discovered at a Chicago park on Tuesday afternoon, and police said they are investigating how it ended up there and the motive behind it.
Video taken by a motorist shows the wooden cross engulfed in bright orange flames as it leans against a tree in Grant Park, a popular area near Lake Michigan. The Chicago Fire Department confirmed the flaming object was a cross, and said officials put out the fire.
Chicago Police said there were no reports of injuries and that they are investigating the motive and circumstances around the “object on fire.”
Keinika Carlton, 43, was driving home from running errands with her daughter and mother-in-law when they saw the cross on fire. She said she felt a combination of shock, sadness, disgust, as well as curiosity.
“Is this a racial thing? Is this a religious thing?” she said. “As Black women, of course, our first thought is racial, because burning crosses are known to be used as a tactic, an act of violence toward Black Americans in the South.”
Carlton estimated the cross was at least 6 feet (1.83 meters) tall. The experience was new to all of them, including Carlton’s mother-in-law, who grew up in Kentucky.
Carlton said as they slowed down to shoot a video of the flames, she saw around her other cars slowing down and people walking nearby, staring at the cross burning.
While the motive behind the burning cross was not immediately clear, cross burnings in the U.S. have historically been seen as “symbols of hate” that are “inextricably intertwined with the history of the Ku Klux Klan,” according to a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision written by the late Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. The justices ruled that the First Amendment allows bans on cross burnings only when they are intended to intimidate because the action “is a particularly virulent form of intimidation.”
Alyna Carlton, 22, said she never thought she would see something like that in her lifetime.
“It kind of really opened my eyes, had me realize that I’m not that far removed from the past.”
Graham Platner prevailed in the Maine Democratic Senate primary, breaking 50% of the vote and clinching the nomination to face Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican whom national Democrats hope to topple on their way to recapturing control of the Senate in November.
Platner had 75% of the votes with only 8% of the ballots counted when The Associated Press called the race Tuesday evening, suggesting a dominant performance. Maine Gov. Janet Mills had just 19%. Mills’ name remained on the ballot despite the fact she dropped out of the contest in April.
The oysterman and political newcomer triumphed at the ballot box despite allegations that roiled his campaign before Election Day: that he sent sexually explicit messages to women outside his marriage and behaved in a demeaning manner toward some former girlfriends, including two incidents in which he was allegedly physically menacing to one of them. Platner denied those incidents.
“This is the state that raised me. This is the state that saved me,” Platner said at his victory party. “Maine, I love you. I love this state.”
Platner chastised national Democrats, who he said kept seeking a headline that would tarnish him and were missing the point. “In trying so hard to understand me, they failed to understand this is not about me at all. This is a movement about us.”
“This is the state that raised me. This is the state that saved me,” Graham Platner said at his victory party. “Maine, I love you. I love this state.”
The Democrat will now face Collins, a five-term incumbent who ran unopposed in the GOP Senate primary.
Platner also took harsh aim at Collins, calling her “spineless,” and said she “lied to us” about protecting abortion rights codified under Roe v. Wade after supporting Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court.
“Susan Collins doesn’t serve us. She serves Donald Trump,” Platner said. “We will take back the Senate seat. We will take back our power … I want you to imagine what you will feel like when we hold Trump and his criminal enterprise to account.”
In coming in first — and avoiding further rounds of counting as part of Maine’s ranked choice voting system — Platner technically defeated Mills in the Democratic primary. Mills was recruited by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., but her campaign never took off and she suspended it in April.
But her name remained on the ballot and voters could have chosen to side with their former governor as something of a protest vote against Platner.
Despite early strength, Platner’s road to nomination was paved with controversy.
Reports surfaced the week before the primary that Platner had sent sexually explicit text messages to multiple women while married. His wife, Amy Gertner, publicly defended him and criticized the release of private communications. Platner acknowledged he and his wife had gone through something difficult in their marriage “because of me” and denied the characterization of the messages.
A private meeting between Platner and Senate Democrats followed as questions mounted over whether his personal conduct would impede his ability to challenge Collins. Despite the controversies, key progressive leaders, including Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., have continued to publicly support his candidacy.
Those allegations were followed by a report in The New York Times in which one of Platner’s ex-girlfriends accused him of physically threatening her while they were dating. The Times’ report cited several former romantic partners who described “toxic” past relationships with him. Platner has denied allegations of “physicality.”
Several of Platner’s other past romantic partners who spoke to the Times described him as a “caring” partner and said they remain friends with him, according to the report.
The allegations added to several controversies surrounding the Marine Corps veteran’s insurgent Senate campaign. He faced backlash last fall over a Nazi-style tattoo he has since covered and defamatory comments he reportedly made about victims of sexual assault in Reddit posts that were deleted before the launch of his campaign. Platner has said he was unaware of the tattoo’s Nazi symbolism when he got it in 2007.
His populist campaign, however, resonated heavily with Maine voters who deemed him the best fighter to stand up to President Donald Trump and his allies in Washington, a group they say includes Collins.
Platner also won the support of prominent national Democrats who coalesced behind him in one of the most consequential races of this midterm cycle even after the fresh allegations came to light. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., stood by Platner at his first major campaign rally in Bar Harbor following the Times report.
Mills, on the other hand, did not endorse Platner when she suspended her campaign after months of trailing him in polls and in fundraising. Instead, the governor, who is term-limited, reminded Maine voters that she is “still on the ballot” as new allegations engulfed her opponent’s campaign.
The United States military said it completed its latest round of strikes on Iran on Tuesday following the earlier downing of a U.S. helicopter in the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Central Command announced.
The Associated Press reported that Iran said it retaliated with attacks in Bahrain and Kuwait and claimed it targeted a military base in Jordan that hosts U.S. forces. Jordan later confirmed that it had shot down five missiles.
Central Command said the U.S. strikes were launched “at the Commander in Chief’s direction” at 5 p.m. ET, in response to the downing of the helicopter.
During the strikes, U.S. fighter jets targeted Iranian air defense systems, ground control stations and surveillance radar sites involved in threatening U.S. forces and commercial shipping in the region, CENTCOM later reported in a statement.
“The operation was a proportional response to recent attacks on U.S. forces and international commercial ships transiting regional waters,” the command’s statement said. An earlier post to X described the strikes as proportional “to unjustified Iranian aggression.”
Military officials warned U.S. forces to “remain vigilant and postured” to defend against further threats in the region.
Kuwait also said its air defenses were activated after Iran said it targeted the Gulf nation in retaliation over the U.S. airstrikes.
President Donald Trump earlier blamed Iran for downing the helicopter and said it was a “necessity” for the U.S. to respond. But a U.S. official who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity said the helicopter went down after colliding with an Iranian drone. It is unclear if the collision was intentional, the AP reported, and CENTCOM earlier said the cause of the incident is under investigation.
Two service members on the helicopter were rescued by a drone boat, and Trump said they were “safe and uninjured.”
ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl said he was on the phone with Trump when CENTCOM announced the strikes, and that Trump doubled down on his earlier stance, saying, “This is a response to what they did with our helicopter last night, and I believe the response should be very strong, very powerful, and that’s what this one is.”
The strikes come as the latest escalation in the U.S.-Israel war on Iran, which is ostensibly on a break during a ceasefire while negotiations take place. But on Sunday, Israel and Iran exchanged fire, marking the first break in the ceasefire since April.
* The latest on the downed helicopter: “President Donald Trump blamed Iran for downing a U.S. Army helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday and said the United States must respond to the attack. A drone boat rescued two Army aviators who were aboard the Apache attack helicopter when it went down near the waterway that Iran has effectively closed during its war with the U.S. and Israel. Trump said in a social media post that both service members ‘are safe and uninjured.’”
* It would be great if this were true, but hasn’t he said the same thing too many times before? “U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that, despite the exchange of strikes between Iran and Israel, a deal to end the war in the Middle East could be reached ‘in two or three days.’”
* Meanwhile, in Lebanon: “Israeli airstrikes pummeled the city of Tyre in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least eight people and wounding dozens more, in the latest sign that a new U.S.-brokered cease-fire has failed to take hold.”
* On Capitol Hill: “The House on Tuesday narrowly voted to take up Republicans’ $70 billion immigration enforcement bill, clearing a key hurdle to enacting the measure to fund President Trump’s deportation crackdown through the end of his term. The vote was 213-211 along party lines, with every Democrat opposed. A final vote on the legislation, which if passed would go to Mr. Trump’s desk, was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.”
* A staggering statistic: “In the first years after birth, the human brain develops at a remarkable pace. Every second, more than a million new neural connections spring into being, shaping a person’s physical and emotional health for the rest of their life. Since the Trump administration entered the White House last year, at least 500 babies and toddlers have spent some of that pivotal time in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”
* Speaking of ICE: “Mismanagement at a massive Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Texas created unsafe conditions that contributed to detainee deaths and suffering even as millions of wasted tax dollars enriched contractors, according to a federal report released Tuesday.”
* In case this isn’t obvious, 2032 is during the next president’s term: “Social Security ’s retirement trust fund is projected to face a funding shortfall in 2032, a year earlier than last year’s projections, according to an annual report released Tuesday, while Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund will be unable to pay full benefits in 2033, which is unchanged from last year’s estimate.”
* Trump-appointed judges aren’t just wrong when issuing rulings: “A judge on the largest U.S. federal appeals court is facing a judicial misconduct inquiry after news reports over the weekend revealed that he had been criminally charged over a parking lot dispute in Idaho in April. Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Mary Murguia of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in an order released on Monday said she had initiated a judicial misconduct complaint against U.S. Circuit Judge Ryan Nelson after he was hit with misdemeanor charges of battery and malicious injury to property on April 22.”
After House Republicans initially showed opposition to President Donald Trump’s “anti-weaponization” fund, the House passed the GOP’s immigration enforcement reconciliation bill on Tuesday without any legislative restrictions on the proposed $1.776 billion pot of money.
The bill — which funds Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol for three years — passed on a party-line 214-212 vote.
The outcome reflects both the political and procedural realities facing Republicans in Washington, as they navigate razor-thin majorities, unified control of government and the ever-present risk of Trump’s wrath.
Procedurally, House Republicans had virtually no opportunity to offer amendments restricting the fund, a consequence of the chamber’s leadership-driven process. In the Senate, meanwhile, the parliamentarian ruled that most fund-related amendments would require 60 votes — a threshold supporters just didn’t meet.
Ultimately, all but one Republican senator — Sen. Susan Collins of Maine — voted for the bill, a remarkable reversal for several lawmakers who had previously said they couldn’t support the package without language blocking the fund. The White House had also signaled that Trump could veto the legislation if it included restrictions on the program.
Politically, many Republicans concluded that sinking the party’s signature immigration bill wasn’t a tenable outcome, particularly given Trump’s recent penchant for retribution against Republican naysayers.
In the end, GOP lawmakers opted to fight another day.
“A lot of us would like to see the weaponization fund be killed and buried forever,” a moderate House Republican told MS NOW, requesting anonymity to discuss the internal sentiments.
But, this lawmaker added, “not funding border patrol and ICE is, I think, unhelpful.”
“Holding something hostage for something on weaponization, I think, would be difficult to achieve, especially since the Senate’s already passed it,” this Republican said.
A number of Republicans toyed with opposing the reconciliation bill.
Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich., caused some drama on the floor after he unexpectedly voted no. (After a lengthy discussion with House GOP leaders, he ultimately switched his vote.)
Of course, more moderate House Republicans could have withheld their support until GOP leaders added language prohibiting Trump’s compensation fund — as some Senate Republicans wanted. And about a dozen conservative Republicans initially held out on supporting a rule to set up debate of the bill on Tuesday, arguing that GOP leaders should add language from another hardline immigration bill — H.R. 2, a sweeping measure to install more restrictive asylum rules, require businesses to use the federal “E-verify” system for worker authorization, and remove certain protections unaccompanied children.
In the end, every Republican voted for the bill and every Democrat voted against it. The only lawmaker to technically cross party lines was Independent Rep. Kevin Kiley of California — who was a Republican up until March and usually sides with the GOP.
Not every Republican was thrilled with that outcome.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who’s retiring at the end of this year, unleashed on his GOP colleagues in a lengthy email on Tuesday, slamming them for voting down his amendment that would have blocked the fund.
The result, he argued, will come back to bite Republicans during the November midterm elections.
“I’m sure most of you would prefer to move forward, but I believe we will look back at this experience as yet another reason why we will have historic headwinds against us in November,” Tillis wrote in the email, which was obtained by MS NOW.
“We missed an opportunity to remove a political albatross (the 1776 Fund) from around the necks of our colleagues who are in cycle,” Tillis said. “Instead, we added weight to that albatross by having 41 members vote to protect the program.”
Tillis’ amendment overwhelmingly failed in a 15-84 vote, with just 12 Republicans and three Democrats voting in support. Hours later, Tillis voted for the reconciliation bill after clearly saying he’d be a “no” without language pushing back on the anti-weaponization fund.
With the immigration enforcement package now in the rearview mirror, some House Republicans are setting their sights on a new strategy to block the anti-weaponization fund: A standalone bill sponsored by Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., to prevent federal funds from being used to pay claims submitted to the fund.
The push for the bill comes after Trump over the weekend said he still thinks the weaponization fund is “a great idea.”
“And so do many other Republicans,” Trump said.
“If they get it approved, that’s great,” he said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “If they don’t get it approved, I’d be disappointed.”
The comments flew in the face of remarks made by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who told lawmakers last week that the administration is “not moving forward with the fund. Period.”
Blanche’s comments seemed to calm the nerves of some lawmakers and clear the way for passage of the reconciliation bill without any legislative restrictions.
Fitzpatrick and Suozzi are planning to file a discharge petition to force a vote on the measure this week, a source familiar with the matter told MS NOW, a posture that is already prompting consternation in the Republican ranks.
During a closed-door House GOP conference meeting on Tuesday, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., urged members not to sign discharge petitions, according to a source in the room, as top lawmakers try to beat-back at a process that circumvents leadership’s wishes.
Fitzpatrick is firing back.
In a post on X, he said discharge petitions wouldn’t be needed if the House floor “was managed properly.”
“A successful discharge petition is clear and direct evidence of a poorly managed House Floor—because it demonstrates that the will of the majority of the People is being thwarted by the privileged few,” he wrote. “Leadership of both parties have been guilty of this for years.”
He added that the rise of discharge petitions in this Congress was just “further evidence of the brokenness of the two-party system—and the rise of Independent voters is a direct manifestation of this.”
But the limits of that strategy are hard to ignore. As forcefully as Fitzpatrick opposed the anti-weaponization fund, he ultimately gave up his most powerful bargaining chip. By backing the reconciliation bill without restrictions on the program, he helped clear the path for legislation that is almost certain to become law, while pinning his hopes on a standalone measure that’s almost certain to never become law.
Passage of the ICE and border patrol bill puts a bookend on a months-long fight over the administration’s immigration crackdown. That battle began in January, following the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis, which prompted Democrats to demand immigration reforms in exchange for additional funding and contributed to a shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security.
The dispute escalated in March, when Republicans agreed to separate ICE and Border Patrol funding from the broader DHS appropriations process.
But the disagreement reached its peak last month, when the administration blindsided many Republican lawmakers with the anti-weaponization fund — a proposal that exposed rare divisions within the GOP and continues to generate resistance even after Congress delivered Trump a major legislative victory.
Happy Tuesday. Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, the past week’s top stories from the intersection of technology and politics.
Treasury insecurity
The Trump administration’s choice to deepen the Treasury Department’s involvement in its racist anti-immigrant crackdown may have exposed taxpayers’ personal information, according to a new report from the Treasury’s inspector general.
The IG’s report “raises concerns about Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s ability to safeguard taxpayer information,” The Associated Press reported Monday. The IG report found the administration’s arrangement for the IRS to share data with ICE was error-prone and unreliable.
Under this arrangement, ICE can submit the names and addresses of people the agency says are in the United States illegally, and the IRS cross-references that information with tax records.
The arrangement has been challenged by lawsuits and led former acting IRS Commissioner Melanie Krause to resign from her role in February.
The report states that after the agreement was signed, ICE requested address information on more than 1.2 million people, and the IRS ultimately provided last-known addresses for about 47,000 people. [The inspector general] concluded that the IRS’s automated matching process was flawed. Inconsistent formatting in ICE’s data led to questionable matches, including in cases where incomplete or inaccurate addresses were labeled as valid, the report says. Representatives from Treasury and the IRS did not respond to an Associated Press request for comment.
New York City is using an artificial intelligence tool developed with help from consulting firm McKinsey & Company to administer SNAP benefits. The tool will reportedly be used to identify payment errors, as the Trump administration has vowed to withhold vital food aid funding from states with higher error rates. Given AI ethicists’ concerns about algorithms meting out discrimination, this tool certainly requires oversight to ensure it doesn’t facilitate harm.
Some prominent conservative influencers and lawmakers had a conniption after White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller publicly objected to efforts to limit the Trump administration’s spy powers.
Read my report on the backlash to Miller on MS NOW.
Trump’s AI orders for the military
President Donald Trump, who’s reportedly made investments in AI companies and whose sons are linked to drone companies, issued an executive order Friday calling on the military to accelerate its use of AI.
Speaking of Trump and AI, my colleague Steve Benen wrote about the president’s proposal for the government to take a stake in AI, continuing his quasisocialist (arguably, authoritarian) trend of having the government take a stake in supposedly free-market enterprises.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the social media company fixed a security issue that allowed hackers to use its AI chatbot to access Instagram users’ account passwords.
A new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a digital watchdog group, found that violent threats and hate speech toward lawmakers spiked last year after Meta rolled back some content moderation policies designed to protect users from harassment, bullying and threats of violence. After Meta made its decision, human rights groups warned the move risked fueling violence. Last year, Meta’s oversight board issued a ruling that found the company acted “hastily” and with little regard for global impact when it made those content moderation changes.
In a statement to MS NOW, a spokesperson for Meta said:
We regularly issue public reports tracking violating content on our platforms, and the prevalence of hateful conduct did not increase throughout 2025. We cannot address the claims in this report as we were not provided it in advance of publication.
My colleague Erum Salam got the scoop on a federal insider trading probe related to alleged online betting by scandal-plagued former Republican New York Rep. George Santos, whose prison sentence for fraud was commuted by Trump last year. Santos called the insider trading claims “preposterous” in a social media post.
Vice president and White House fraud czar JD Vance has asked the Justice Department to investigate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison over their handling of Medicaid fraud complaints.
Vance made the referral after receiving a 205-page report from the Republican-led House Oversight Committee alleging senior Minnesota officials failed to address widespread fraud in federally funded social services programs. The committee estimated almost $300 million in federal child nutrition funds and $9 billion in Medicaid-related funds were misused.
“Minnesota state officials are not above the law, and if they facilitated fraud, lied under oath about what they knew, or harassed and intimated whistleblowers, they must face justice,” Vance wrote on X on Tuesday.
“The allegations in the House Republican report are unfounded, and Vice President Vance’s referral is a political stunt from an administration that uses the machinery of government to target its perceived opponents while extending leniency to those aligned with its interests,” Ellison said in a statement issued to MS NOW by his office. “It is deeply troubling to see official powers and public resources diverted away from serving the people and instead aimed at pursuing political adversaries. That is not what government is for, and it diminishes public trust in our institutions.”
In the report, the committee alleged Walz’s and Ellison’s offices were made aware of fraud tips but went to “great lengths to keep them quiet, including intimidation through regular check-ins with high-level agency officials and threats of surveillance.”
The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the referral and did not confirm if it was pursuing an investigation. A referral from Congress or another official does not automatically mean the DOJ must pursue an investigation.
However, the DOJ under former Attorney General Pam Bondi and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has rarely failed to act on matters that President Donald Trump has declared important to him.
Minnesota, and Somalian immigrants in particular, became a target of the Trump administration after right-wing influencer Nick Shirley posted a video visiting several child care centers in Minneapolis, alleging they were empty or closed, and therefore misusing public funds. Shirley posted the video in December, months after the state itself had publicly flagged several providers as high risks for fraud and begun working with federal authorities to address it, including securing indictments.
During his State of the Union address in February, Trump seized on the outrage generated by the video by announcing a fraud task force to be led by Vance.
“You had people within Gov. Walz’s office who were saying, ‘You know what, this looks like fraud. It looks like these Somalian illegal immigrants are doing something that’s very shady,’” the vice president said in a Fox News interview late Monday.
“And then you had people who shut them down, who shut these whistleblowers down and said, ‘You know, you’re a racist or you’re a xenophobe for asking questions about where taxpayer money is going,’” he said.
Walz spokesman Teddy Tschann dismissed the committee’s allegations as politically motivated and hypocritical.
“Gov. Walz is glad to see fraudsters are going to prison,” Tschann said in a statement to MS NOW. “If the committee is concerned about corruption, they should investigate why President Trump continues to let fraudsters out of prison.”
And that’s how we should look at acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s work for the past two months. Blanche has served in a temporary capacity while Trump decided whether to nominate him permanently. It was a seemingly endless job interview — one he could fail only by disappointing the man conducting it. Last week, he finally passed the test when Trump announced that he would nominate him for the post, subject to Senate confirmation.
But his conduct during that audition should be disqualifying.
We’ve all been in job interviews, so it’s not hard to see what was going on here. When the interviewer asks whether you’re willing to work nights and weekends, you say yes. By naming Blanche acting attorney general, Trump put him in a position where he could either do the president’s bidding or risk losing the job he wanted.
That dynamic would be troubling in any Cabinet department. But it is especially dangerous at the Department of Justice, which possesses the power to investigate virtually any American. As Attorney General Robert Jackson observed in a famous 1940 speech, a federal prosecutor “has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America.”
The greatest danger, Jackson warned, comes when “the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense.” The reverse danger is just as real: A prosecutor can decline to pursue an ally despite compelling evidence.
For that reason, Americans have long expected the Justice Department to maintain a degree of independence from the White House. It was considered scandalous when former President Bill Clinton merely chatted with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on an airport tarmac while her department was investigating Hillary Clinton in 2016.
In the past, a Senate-confirmed attorney general could resist improper pressure from a president. That is what happened during Watergate, when President Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire the special prosecutor investigating him. Richardson and his deputy refused and resigned. Nixon ultimately got his way, but only at enormous political cost.
An acting attorney general is in a much worse position. If displeased, Trump didn’t need to fire Blanche. He simply could have declined to nominate him. No scandal. No Saturday Night Massacre. No political cost. Some supporters might even have praised him for changing course.
Trump relied heavily on acting officials during his first term, naming everyone from the attorney general to the defense secretary to the White House chief of staff in an acting capacity. He liked the arrangement because it gave him, in his own words, “more flexibility.”
Since returning to the White House, he has used the tactic far less frequently, in part because a Republican-controlled Senate confirmed virtually all of his Cabinet nominees. The major exception was Matt Gaetz, the scandal-plagued Florida congressman whose nomination collapsed before a vote.
Kash Patel’s tenure as FBI director has been a national embarrassment in a great many ways, but among the most jarring developments this year is the sheer volume of bureau personnel who have been purged for political reasons, leaving the agency destabilized.
MS NOW’s Ken Dilanian noted the ongoing purge “is without precedent in the modern history of the bureau. It raises questions about whether the Trump administration is trying to turn the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency into an instrument of presidential whim — exactly the thing he baselessly accused his opponent of doing.”
FBI Director Kash Patel fired a group of bureau intelligence analysts Friday over a rescinded 2023 memo about “radical traditionalist Catholic ideology” that has long been a focus of Republicans despite an investigation that found no anti-Catholic bias, three people familiar with the matter told MS NOW.
The analysts worked in the FBI’s Richmond office, where the memo originated, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to sensitive personnel issues. They said at least five analysts were included in the firings.
That these firings were tough to defend is notable in its own right — there’s little to suggest the FBI analysts did anything wrong — though I’m also struck by the degree to which they tie into a broader pattern.
One week earlier, Dilanian reported that Patel also fired a senior intelligence analyst, Deputy Assistant Director Emily Morales, who played a role in the FBI’s 2017 assessment of the motives of the gunman who attacked a House Republican baseball practice.
That came on the heels of Patel firing a dozen FBI agents and staff for their role in investigating Trump’s classified documents scandal. In the process, the bureau director gutted the global espionage unit, known as CI-12, shortly before the start of the war in Iran.
A month earlier, Paul Brown, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Atlanta field office, was also forced out, not because he’d done anything wrong, but because he questioned the value in re-investigating Georgia’s election results from six years earlier.
Around the same time, the FBI also purged the acting assistant director in charge of the New York field office, a former special agent in charge in New Orleans, as many as six agents in Miami, as well as agents who were pushed out for their involvement in the baseless “Arctic Frost” investigation in 2020.
A month before that, we learned about a lawsuit filed by 12 FBI agents who were fired for having taken a knee during racial justice protests in 2020 as part of an effort to de-escalate a situation that threatened to intensify.
Last August, Patel and his team ousted three experienced bureau leaders, including Brian Driscoll, a widely respected figure among rank-and-file agents who was removed after he helped prevent a mass firing of thousands of FBI officials who worked on Jan. 6 cases.
During his confirmation hearing early last year, Patel, a former podcast personality, assured senators that the bureau under his leadership “will not go backwards. There will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken by any FBI should I be confirmed as FBI director.”
As things stand, that testimony appears increasingly ridiculous.
Work on cases related to the criminal investigations into Trump? Fired. Work on Jan. 6 cases? Fired. Refuse to needlessly humiliate a former director? Fired.
It reached the point last fall when the FBI Agents Association said Patel was not only imposing “chaos” on the bureau, but that he’d also “disregarded the law and launched a campaign of erratic and arbitrary retribution.”
The FBI Agents Association added at the time that the director’s antics had created conditions that make “the American public less safe.”
Months later, as the number of those caught up in Patel’s personnel purge continues to grow, it’s tough to feel any better about the state of federal law enforcement.
It can be hard to regain footing after losing a job. It’s a reality many Americans have been forced to face under Donald Trump’s authoritarian rule and in the wretched economy he’s created. And it would seem former U.S. Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino can relate.
That might explain Bovino’s desperate search for relevance since the far-right former immigration official, who promoted neo-Nazi propaganda and faced accusations of cosplaying as a Nazi during his stint leading Trump’s racist immigration crackdown, was ousted from his role as the Border Patrol’s “commander at large” in January. (Bovino has denied intending to convey Nazi ideology.)
Since his ouster, Bovino has tried to keep himself in the limelight — an effort that includes his recent attendance at a pro-extremist, Nazi-aligned conference in Portugal, and one that appears to be fueling Bovino’s consideration of a presidential bid.
At least he said he’s exploring a 2028 bid in a social media post on Monday. That the post includes the phrase “men fight back” suggests Bovino’s potential bid is likely to be rooted in the cringeworthy masculinity rhetoric we’ve heard out of the MAGA movement over the past few years in particular.
NewsNation is reporting I’m exploring a run for President in 2028.
Here’s the truth: My one and only priority is deporting the 106 million illegals who are here. That’s it.
The grassroots support I’m seeing tells me the polls are completely wrong…
Bovino seems to be carving a lane for himself to emerge as a stalwart of the furthest-right fringe of the MAGA movement. At the conference in Portugal, he attacked the Trump administration for purportedly not being extreme enough in its mass deportation agenda and made the same baseless claim he made in the tweet above: that there are at least 100 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. To be clear, this would mean about one-third of all U.S. residents are undocumented, which is a fanciful assertion.
What’s not clear is whether there’s much of a constituency for a Bovino presidential bid, even among the MAGA movement. His mass deportation proposals align with beliefs espoused by the far-right “Mass Deportation Coalition,” a group of right-wing organizations that want Trump to ramp up his assault on immigrants. But Bovino’s rhetoric and tactics are arguably a key reason why polls at the start of the year showed a majority of Americans believed the Trump administration’s anti-immigration strategy had gone too far. And as my colleague Steve Benen noted in January, Bovino racked up a list of scandals and controversies so long during his time as border chief that even Trump was forced to admit he’s a “pretty out-there kind of guy,” seemingly alluding to his extremist tendencies.
But if there’s anything to take away from Bovino’s floating of a presidential bid, it’s that he’s among a list of conservatives jockeying to lead the MAGA movement after Donald Trump is no longer president.
Since the Trump administration entered the White House last year, at least 500 babies and toddlers have spent some of that pivotal time in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
ICE has dramatically increased detentions of children aged 3 and under, holding 25 of them in custody on an average day between January 2025 and March of this year, according to a new analysis by The Marshall Project and MS NOW of records obtained by the Deportation Data Project, a group of academics and lawyers who collect and share federal immigration data. That number is 10 times higher than it was in the previous 12 months under former President Joe Biden. Back then, on an average day, fewer than three babies and toddlers were held at facilities across the country.
Babies and toddlers in ICE custody Jan. 20, 2024 through March 11, 2026
Parents in ICE detention have complained of substandard conditions that frequently left their young children sick, isolated and regressing in their physical and intellectual development.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment about the increase in detained young children. But in an emailed statement, an agency spokesperson said families with children receive appropriate food, water and medical care. In a separate statement, CoreCivic — the private company that operates the primary ICE facility used to detain families — echoed that its facilities were safe for infants and toddlers.
“Our immigration system is breaking children,” she said.
* * *
In March, Joani, her husband and their 2-year-old son, Kaleth, showed up to a check-in appointment with immigration officials in California. Since the family immigrated and sought asylum in 2024, they had never missed a required appointment with immigration officials, according to the family’s lawyer. Nevertheless, that day, ICE took them all into custody.
As the whole family cried, Kaleth’s father was handcuffed and driven away to an adult detention facility in California. Joani and her toddler were taken to the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, the primary U.S. immigration facility that holds families with children.
Kaleth is seen in an undated handout photoCourtesy Kaleth’s family
At the family’s request, we are identifying Kaleth and Joani by their first names only.
Separated from his father, Kaleth was despondent in the Dilley facility, Joani said in an interview. He repeatedly scooted a tiny table over to a phone that was mounted on the wall, so he could climb up high enough to try to use it. Each time, Joani moved the table away so he wouldn’t fall. Even if he could have reached the phone, contacting his father in another detention center would have been impossible.
Kaleth stopped eating for 12 days. Joani said facility doctors attributed it to depression. When Joani tried to force him to eat, Kaleth vomited. He eventually stopped having bowel movements. Joani watched her son’s face grow gaunt, and his eyes sink into their sockets.
Lori Goodman, the CEO of LEAP, a nonprofit group that supports families with young children in California and has worked with Kaleth’s family, said children his age may express trauma physically since they have fewer verbal skills.
“He was so distressed that it manifested in his body in not being able to eat or digest.” Goodman said. “The longer a child is in that setting, the more the long-term damage.”
The most recent data available shows many very young children have spent prolonged periods of time in custody. Between Trump’s second inauguration and March of this year, ICE held at least 175 babies and toddlers for longer than a court-mandated time limit of 20 days. A federal judge interpreted 20 days to be the limit for detaining children in a 2015 opinion on the 1997 settlement in Flores v. Reno, which governs the treatment of children in immigration detention.
During the last year of the Biden administration, no children aged 3 or younger were held beyond the settlement’s 20-day limit. Biden had ended the practice of family detention in 2021, and the Dilley facility, which had mostly housed families, eventually closed. Trump restarted the practice and reopened Dilley shortly after retaking office.
In a May court filing submitted by ICE as required by the Flores settlement, the agency said it “works to assess cases and discharge minors from custody as promptly as possible.”
* * *
Alsu and Azat fled Russia last year, fearing that their opposition to the war in Ukraine would land them in prison and their 1-year-old, Amir, in an orphanage.
The family had braced themselves to spend a few weeks in immigration confinement upon arriving in the United States after crossing the southern border without visas, and presented themselves to authorities at a legal port of entry. But, as their incarceration stretched on, first in California and then at Dilley, they watched their once-lively son withdraw and begin hitting himself in the face.
“We came here to escape prison. We wanted to be free,” Azat said through a translator. “But once we arrived in America, we spent four months in detention.”
Dilley didn’t have many toys for toddlers, Amir’s parents said, and some desperate children resorted to playing with rocks. Even though Alsu and Azat knew it was important to read with him, they couldn’t find books in their native language of Russian. Amir’s speech development slowed. Eventually, he stopped saying anything other than two words: “mom” and “dad.”
Amir on September 17, 2025Courtesy Amir’s family
Griffin, the pediatrics professor, said it’s imperative for parents to talk to their children to help them develop vocabulary. But the fear and stress of incarceration can cause both parents and children to become quiet.
“They don’t want to talk, and no one’s talking to them, not in a normal way,” Griffin said. She noted that the experience can also damage the parent-child bond, as a child witnesses their parent’s loss of control.
Rahil Briggs, a psychologist at the early-childhood advocacy organization Zero to Three, said these types of developmental setbacks can have a domino effect.
“If we miss this foundational time in early childhood when we see all these wonderful things going on in brain development with memory and learning and executive functioning, then it’s just harder than ever to catch up,” Briggs said. “I can’t learn my ABCs because I’ve got to make sure that I’m safe in this scary situation. And because I haven’t learned my ABCs, now I’m not sure how to do this, and I’m not reading.”
Keeping Amir properly fed was another challenge.
According to Amir’s mother, Alsu, employees at Dilley forced her to wean him off formula, claiming he was too old. The solid food options, Alsu insisted, were not appropriate for a 1-year-old. She described being so desperate to get Amir to eat that she sucked a spicy pasta sauce off noodles so she could feed them to her son. She and Azat resorted to hiding cereal from the dining hall at breakfast in their socks and hoods for later, so their child wouldn’t go to sleep hungry.
“Every single day, I would break down, hysterical, because my child had gone without proper food,” Alsu said.
After they argued with staff members to get Amir better food, Azat alleges that employees in CoreCivic uniforms woke him up in the middle of the night, threatening to send the parents to separate immigrant confinement centers and Amir to foster care if they didn’t stop complaining.
“As a husband, as a father, I can see the sufferings of my child, I can see how much my wife suffers,” Azat said. “It was horrific for me, because I could do nothing to help them.”
* * *
Both Amir’s and Kaleth’s parents said their children suffered fevers and stomach problems during their incarceration at Dilley and that they struggled to get them adequate treatment. Many other parents have reported similar challenges accessing care inside facilities, including waiting for hours in line to get basic, over-the-counter medication.
Elora Mukherjee, a Columbia Law School professor who has represented more than 80 children and parents incarcerated at Dilley over the past year, said nearly all of her clients in recent months complained about poor medical care.
“Kids at this age also get sick more easily because their immune systems haven’t developed,” Mukherjee said. “Having such young children in a prison setting with hundreds of other kids and parents, it just makes them repeatedly, constantly sick. So they have fevers, they’re coughing, they’re vomiting, they have diarrhea. They are just miserable.”
Amalia and her parents were incarcerated at Dilley when the 1-year-old developed a fever and grew lethargic. Speaking through a translator, her parents said they returned to Dilley’s medical clinic again and again, but were only given Tylenol for her and warned not to complain. When Amalia’s mother, Kheilin Valero Marcano, went back to the clinic after her daughter lost consciousness, she recalled asking clinic employees, “How long are you going to leave her like this? Are you going to let her die?“
According to the family, Amalia eventually spent more than a week in an outside hospital, after her oxygen levels dropped to dangerously low levels. There, she was diagnosed with COVID-19, an ear infection, pneumonia, bronchitis and RSV, a common, but potentially serious, childhood illness that affects the lungs.
Amalia is seen in an undated handout photoCourtesy Amalia’s family
According to ICE’s standards, facilities should transfer sick people to an outside hospital if they cannot provide adequate care onsite.
Leecia Welch, a lawyer with Children’s Rights who has visited Dilley more than 10 times, said babies and toddlers, many too young to receive certain vaccinations, had some of the most troubling medical cases she’d seen, calling the situation “the most gut-wrenching.”
Welch recalled mothers in detention describing how stress and lack of nutritious food made breastfeeding difficult. Marcano said Amalia would cry throughout the night, because she’d tried to nurse and nothing would come out.
Other parents, whose babies drank formula, have stated in court documents that the facility did not provide enough bottled water to hydrate powdered formula, and purchasing additional water at the commissary was, for many, prohibitively expensive. Tap water at the facility, families said, smelled foul and made children sick.
Parents also described difficulties getting children to sleep. The lights in the Dilley facility were kept on all night, and toys that can help kids sleep were prohibited in living areas.
“They can’t go to sleep with a stuffed animal,” Welch said. “They can’t go to sleep with a security blanket, that’s just not allowed.”
***
Representatives for ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, did not answer specific questions about the conditions experienced by Kaleth, Amir, or Amalia. In a past social media post, DHS disputed claims lodged by Amalia’s family and insisted she “immediately received proper medical care.”
Brian Todd, a CoreCivic spokesman, said in an email that the Dilley facility provides toddlers and babies necessary supplies, including formula, healthy food and clean drinking water.
An ICE spokesperson made similar claims in an emailed statement and noted that the agency “is working rapidly and overtime to remove these aliens from detention centers to their final destination — home.” In a May court filing, ICE representatives stated that people are provided with an eye mask when they arrive at Dilley and, following complaints, the facility switched to lower-intensity lighting, though they remain on all night for security purposes. Agency officials also stated that water quality is monitored, babies under 12 months of age receive bottled water to make formula, and children have access to outdoor play structures, toys, multilingual books, and age-appropriate meals and snacks.
A court filing from lawyers for detained children called ICE’s claims “fanciful.”
ICE released Kaleth and his mother in April, two weeks after their incarceration, and they were later reunited with Kaleth’s father. According to Mukherjee, Kaleth had not eaten solid food the entire time. In the car from the airport, he devoured four packets of applesauce.
Kaleth has since recovered remarkably, said Goodman, the LEAP CEO — a testament to the family’s resilience and the strength of their parental bonds. She’s seen how Kaleth’s mother looks into his eyes, and comforts him when he is distressed.
“That is so powerful at counteracting the abuse that our government is perpetrating,” Goodman said.
Amir and his parents were also released, under supervision, in January. The toddler, now 2 years old, is laughing and speaking more. He’s not getting sick as often, and has stopped hitting himself. His parents say he seems closer to the happy child he was before ICE imprisoned him.
Even so, it’s too early to tell what the long-term effects of child incarceration will be on the hundreds of babies and toddlers who have gone through ICE detention since Trump re-entered the White House.
“The long-term damage caused by prolonged toxic stress — by essentially abusing these children — we’re going to see those effects. They’re going to impact every child who was there for many, many years to come,” Goodman said. “It’s incalculable the amount of damage that is being done.”
Graphics by Anna Flagg. Translation by Marina Kopinec and Seeno Merobshoev. Emily Berk contributed production.This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a non-profit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook.
Even after the president returned to the Oval Office, those efforts continued with Trump-branded guitars and Trump phones, among other things.
In light of just how much the president, his family and his controversial businesses have profited during his second term, it’s tempting to think there would be no need to pursue yet another merchandising opportunity. After all, as The Atlantic’s David Frum recently explained, Trump has taken self-enrichment “to a scale never seen before in America.”
That assumption, however, would be wrong.
MS NOW’s Jake Traylor and Soorin Kim reported Tuesday that there are Trump-branded “medallions” on sale, tied to this weekend’s UFC event on the White House’s South Lawn.
The souvenir gold and silver coins range in price from $249.99 to $11,999.99. That’s not a typo: A website called RealTrumpCoins.com is actually selling UFC Freedom 250 “medallions” that people can purchase for just under $12,000. (The website boasts that the coins were “designed” by the president himself.)
Donald Trump is selling UFC-branded coins for $12,000 to promote the UFC fight on the White House lawn
The reporting from MS NOW’s Traylor and Kim added that some of the profits are expected to go to the president’s licensing company, DTTM Operations LLC. And while the White House has said the president isn’t personally controlling his family business while he’s in office, his son Donald Trump Jr. is.
To be sure, the scheduled UFC bout, set to coincide with the president’s 80th birthday, was already controversial, and not just because of the bizarre structure that continues to take shape at the White House. There have also been related questions about Trump’s stock purchase in UFC’s parent company before the upcoming match on the South Lawn.
As for tickets to the upcoming event, NBC News recently reported that the tickets are technically free and that the UFC is footing the bill for the event. That said, sponsorship packages, including ringside seats, have been selling for $1 million or more, and no one seems to know where the sponsorship money is going.
The $12,000 gold coins, however, take this mess to a new and unsettling level.
This week, a new lawsuit was filed alleging corruption in connection with the upcoming UFC event, with the hopes of derailing the plans for the gathering, and a judge is expecting a response by Tuesday. Watch this space.
“You never like to say too early you won,” Trump told supporters on March 11. “We won. In the first hour it was over.”
Two days later, he was at it again, writing Iran was “totally defeated” and was living in such a desperate existence that its leadership was begging for a deal.
Yet this past weekend, Iran launched new missile salvos at Israel, which replied in kind. And on Tuesday, Trump said in a social media post that Iran had downed a U.S. Army helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz. The pilots were unharmed, but Trump said “the United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack.”
It’s not a stretch to assess that Iran’s leaders are putting just as much pressure on Trump as Trump is putting on them.
If these events are any indication, Iran is not only holding its own but is arguably more aggressive today than before the U.S. bombing campaign began. Yes, the regime has lost a considerable portion of its military power and has cycled through senior officials about as often as the New York Mets have cycled through pitchers. But Tehran has not lost its ability to take the offensive and clearly believes it retains the upper hand against Washington.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Trump had high expectations when he initiated the war. The president was so pleased with the first strikes’ results, which included the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader of nearly 40 years, that he implored Iranians to take back their government. The Trump administration told the public — and itself — a story about Tehran’s many weaknesses; its economy was floundering, its people were unhappy, its command-and-control was breaking and its leaders were on the run or dead. Trump thought the Iranian regime would crumble or give up before it decided to retaliate by closing the Strait of Hormuz. Sooner or later, Iran’s nuclear program would be a figment of our imaginations.
Of course, none of Trump’s assumptions panned out. The regime is more unified and institutionalized than the White House anticipated. Khamenei has been replaced by his more inscrutable son, Mojtaba Khamenei, and the hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has become the most important power center in the Iranian establishment. The Strait of Hormuz remains shuttered.
Before the April 8 ceasefire, Iran was targeting its neighbors’ energy facilities, both to scare the Gulf states into pushing Trump to de-escalate and to heighten the pain at the pump. Though gas prices in the United States have dropped in the last month, as of Tuesday, Americans are still paying $4.16 a gallon — 40% more than when the war began. The unofficial extra tax has translated into terrible numbers for Trump: Even a 33% plurality of Republicans believe the war has had a more negative than positive impact on U.S. interests.
Iran is not blind to these dynamics. If anything, it’s emboldened by them. The Iranian military apparatus may still be recuperating from the heavy U.S. and Israeli airstrikes during the war’s first weeks, but the damage inflicted has failed to translate into strategic results. Killing Iranian generals, destroying Iran’s navy and damaging the regime’s drone manufacturing capacity were not ends in themselves but rather a means to an end — coercing Tehran into a settlement on U.S. terms. The scorecard for the Americans on that front is unimpressive. Iran hasn’t just survived the U.S.-Israeli onslaught; it’s effectively pushed back through asymmetric military tactics. It’s not a stretch to assess that Iran’s leaders are putting just as much pressure on Trump as Trump is putting on them.
This past weekend’s missile salvo against Israel is a case in point. This wasn’t a sign of desperation on Tehran’s part but rather Iran making its own threats credible. The regime had warned that Israeli airstrikes against its proxy, Hezbollah, in southern Lebanon, in contraventiosn of a previously announced ceasefire reaffirmed last week, would result in Iranian military action against Israel.
This war will impact the region’s geopolitics for years to come.
If Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thought this was a bluff, Iran put those illusions to rest by sending dozens of ballistic missiles toward Israel. (Fortunately, they only caused minor damage.) Trump, desperate to keep his diplomatic process with Iran alive, has since pressured Netanyahu into postponing whatever air campaign he was ready to order beyond the retaliatory precision strikes the prime minister authorized on Sunday and Monday.
To be clear, Iran is not solely dictating events, nor is it in a strategically advantageous position over the long-term. This war will impact the region’s geopolitics for years to come. For instance, the firing of thousands of attack drones and missiles into Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar (among others) has jeopardized the regime’s previous attempt at detente with its regional neighbors. Even the regime’s weaponization of the strait may not last; the Saudis and Emiratis are adapting by building alternative pipelines over land to ensure their oil exports are not held hostage to any future Iranian machinations there.
But from the U.S. standpoint, the war is producing a more extreme Iranian political establishment. Its positions on core issues for any agreement, like the nuclear program, are indistinguishable from the prewar status quo . And the previous risk-adverse behavior proffered by the regime’s older guard is increasingly perceived by the new powers that be as a mistake. Whatever happens next in the conflict, these developments don’t serve U.S. interests.
At first blush, the idea of a Democratic senator in a red state focusing attention on a mining project in Kazakhstan might seem odd. After all, many voters couldn’t find Kazakhstan on a map and probably have priorities that have nothing to do with foreign mining projects.
But Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, ahead of his re-election bid this year, took the time in recent days to highlight a Kazakhstan mining project because of allegations that the Trump administration invested American tax dollars in the endeavor, which has been linked to two of the president’s sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.
The emphasis wasn’t surprising. The incumbent senator has built much of his 2026 candidacy around the idea that corruption isn’t just a major national issue, it’s also the principal cause for the problems plaguing regular Americans in their everyday lives. “You aren’t the problem. Neither are your fellow Americans,” Ossoff routinely tells Georgians. “Corruption is why things don’t work for ordinary people.”
The senator’s focus appears to be resonating. Going into 2026, Ossoff was generally seen as the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent, but with 21 weeks remaining before Election Day, both parties see him as an increasingly strong candidate who might very well prevail despite Trump having won Georgia two years ago.
It’s not yet clear whether other Democrats will be equally inclined to emphasize corruption as a campaign issue, but with each passing day, the White House and its allies offer fresh evidence of a systemic issue. Consider some of the reporting and allegations that have surfaced over the last five days:
The Washington Post reported that of the publicly identified donors to the president’s ballroom project, more than half “have won new or expanded federal contracts worth more than $50 billion during the past six months.”
The Washington Post also reported that the Trump administration has sharply accelerated spending on border wall construction and that most of the money has gone to two companies with “ties to the White House and the Republican Party.”
As if there weren’t already enough questions surrounding special favors for MAGA Inc. PAC donors, CNN reported on the generous support Trump’s super PAC has received from those who either have federal contracts or who are trying to influence the administration.
The New Yorker reported on how the wealthy continue their efforts to buy presidential pardons.
Reuters reported that the Trump family has generated at least $2.3 billion in profit from investors since the president returned to the White House, which contrasts with “the more than a million investors whose net losses totaled $2.3 billion at the end of April.”
If we widen the aperture a bit, a new lawsuit was also filed this week alleging corruption in connection with the upcoming UFC event on the White House South Lawn.
This isn’t a comprehensive list, and again, these are just headlines from the last five days. A similar assessment of related reports from the last few months would supply a staggering list that’s vastly longer.
In a recent piece for MS NOW, Paul Waldman explained, “Voters might be willing to ignore all this self-dealing if the economy were doing great, everyone had health insurance, housing was cheap and gas was $2 a gallon. But when people are struggling, corruption takes on a new urgency. That’s because it provides a way for voters to understand a deeper rot in the system that manifests in all kinds of ways.”
The question isn’t why Ossoff is focusing so heavily on corruption as a foundational 2026 issue; the question is why every other Democrat isn’t pushing the same issue in their own campaigns.
The former impeachment attorney for Texas attorney general and Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton told MS NOW’s Ana Cabrera on Tuesday that he believes Democratic nominee James Talarico is “the better candidate” in the race.
“I don’t wish Ken any ill will. I don’t harbor any resentment for the man. I just think that Talarico is the better candidate,” Dan Cogdell told Cabrera. “I think he is focused on the issues that Texans care about, and I think he’ll do a good job.”
Cogdell, who represented Paxton both in his impeachment trial and during his federal securities fraud investigation, announced Monday that he would be voting for Talarico over his former client in the November general election. He told Cabrera that while he had fulfilled his constitutional duty to represent Paxton vigorously, “the Constitution does not require me to vote for him or endorse him.”
Prior to supporting Talarico, Cogdell had been an enthusiastic supporter of Paxton’s. Last year he donated $6,500 to Paxton’s campaign, Federal Election Commission records show; in March of this year, he donated $1,000 to Talarico’s campaign.
Cogdell told Cabrera that he came to support Talarico after learning about his campaign and priorities, saying, “I believe he’s focusing on the things that Texans are concerned about,” like gun violence, education and healthcare.
“I haven’t seen Ken Paxton mention any of those things in his run-up in this election,” Cogdell said. “I believe James is focusing on those things, and I think those things are important to Texans.”
Talarico beat out Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, in the March primary to win the Democratic nomination. A former public school teacher, 36-year-old Talarico has been lauded as a rising star within the Democratic Party, and polling suggests he has a real shot at winning Democrats’ first statewide seat in Texas in decades.
Paxton, meanwhile, defeated incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in last month’s Republican primary after securing President Donald Trump’s much-anticipated endorsement. But Paxton has been plagued by scandals, including a divorce initiated by his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, who said she was filing “on biblical grounds.”
Cogdell said that he does not regret representing Paxton, adding that he’s “proud of that work.”
A spokesperson for Paxton’s Senate campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from MS NOW on Tuesday.
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