A Missouri town that voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in the 2024 election has come to regret its choice after a beloved neighbor was detained by ICE, according to The New York Times.
In the farming town of Kennett, MO, population 10,000, Times reporter Jack Healy met with residents who “supported in theory” Trump’s tough talk on immigration. Now they’re rallying around a Hong Kong immigrant named Ming Li Hui, who went by “Carol” in her adopted hometown.
“In the 20 years since she arrived from Hong Kong, she had built a life and family in Kennett, working two waitressing jobs and cleaning houses on the side,” Healy wrote. He quoted a Kennett city councilwoman who said, “Everyone knows Carol.”
But Hui has since been arrested and detained by the Department of Homeland Security as she awaits deportation back to her birth country.
“I voted for Donald Trump, and so did practically everyone here,” one woman told Healy. “But no one voted to deport moms. We were all under the impression we were just getting rid of the gangs, the people who came here in droves.”
Tag Archives: White House
Alternet: Trump fiddles while America burns — What we’re left with is a child tyrant’s policies, putting our economic survival in jeopardy.
Originally published April 07, 2025
After markets crashed globally in response to Trump’s tariffs, slipping into bear territory on Monday before wobbling up, down and back up again, the White House issued a tone deaf slapback about Trump’s golf game, saying, “[t]he President won his second round matchup of the Senior Club Championship today in Jupiter, FL, and advances to the Championship Round tomorrow.”
As Americans watch their retirement accounts drop, Trump has spent one-third of his 76 days back in office on the golf course, indicating he couldn’t care less. No one from his administration has faced critical questions about his “Liberation Day” strategy, and it appears Trump used ChatGPT to generate the whole thing.
…
The Wall Street Journal predicts that market values will likely continue to fall. Neither Navarro nor Trump seem to understand that factory owners can’t switch their locations overnight; investment strategies aren’t that nimble and take years to develop. They’re also tone deaf to the fact that foreign and domestic corporations need the rule of law to invest safely, and are repelled by Trump’s hatchet attacks on judges, lawfirms and the judiciary.
Financial markets, predictably, are reeling. Despite Trump’s false messaging that “tariffs are tax cuts,” everyone outside the MAGA bubble knows tariffs are a regressive tax paid by working-class Americans.
By all indicators, Trump has not considered any of the complexities needed to develop a strategic trade package, and says he “couldn’t care less” about the price of cars. Like a child with a singular focus on his playmate’s toy, Trump has been so fixated on 19th century tariffs and 19thcentury imperialism that rational policy discussions have stopped.
What we’re left with is a child tyrant’s policies, putting our economic survival in jeopardy.
https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/trump-golf-2671687324
Wired: The Trump Administration Wants to Create an ‘Office of Remigration’
“Remigration”—a far-right European plan to expel minorities and immigrants from Western nations—may soon have a dedicated office following a Trump administration reorganization of the State Department.
As part of a sweeping reorganization of the State Department, the Trump administration is creating an Office of Remigration. Remigration is an immigration policy embraced by extremists that calls for the removal of all migrants—including “non-assimilated” citizens—with the goal of creating white ethnostates in Western countries.
The details of the plan are contained in a 136-page notification document sent by the State Department to six Congressional commitees—including the House Foreign Affairs and Appropriations Committees and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—for approval by July 1, according to a copy reviewed by WIRED.
“The Office of Remigration will serve as the [Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration]’s hub for immigration issues and repatriation tracking,” the document reads. “It will provide a policy platform for interagency coordination with DHS and other agencies on removals/repatriations, and “for intra-agency policy work to advance the President’s immigration agenda.”
The notification says that the Office of Remigration “will also actively facilitate the voluntary return of migrants to their country of origin or legal status,” which is a key aim of remigration ideology.
There are three phases to “remigration”:
On [Martin Sellner’s] site, he lays out a three-phase plan to implement remigration. The first phase, dubbed the “Immediate Stabilization of Asylum Chaos,” has striking similarities to Trump’s current immigration policies.
…
The second phase of Sellner’s plan, following the initial removal of undocumented immigrants, includes the removal of “migrants who entered the country legally and have a residence/work permit, or temporary visa, but are an economical, criminal or cultural burden.”
The final phase targets citizens who are seen as “non assimilated,”and it involves passing laws to “target parallel societies with economic and cultural pressure” and entice citizens to migrate abroad with the use of loans, payments, and other assistance. The plan, Sellner claims, will allow “the wounds of multiculturalism to heal.”
This is like Hitler’s Mein Kampf, all laid out in writing and scarcely anybody is paying attention.

https://www.wired.com/story/trump-office-remigration-state-department-europe-far-right
Daily Beast: Paranoid Kash Patel Polygraphs FBI Agents in MAGA Purge
Top brass at the agency are being pushed out as the chief continues his obsessive quest to plug leaks.
The FBI has devolved into chaos amid Director Kash Patel’s ongoing efforts to rid the agency of staff disloyal to the Trump administration.
Patel is now subjecting senior executives to polygraphs at a “rapid rate,” The New York Times reports, as part of a wider effort to stamp out embarrassing news leaks from within the agency.
One senior official told the Times in its exposé that he was forced out last month after being subjected to a lie detector test. He believes he was targeted because he hadn’t told Patel about his wife taking a knee during the 2020 protests against police brutality in Washington, D.C.
…
Internal critics say the firings, forced retirements, unfair reassignments, and unit shutdowns have not only “obliterated decades of experience in national security” from the agency but also signal that the agency will not brook dissent over the actions of Trump as well as as Vice President J.D. Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the latter two who were caught up in a leak scandal involving commercial messaging app Signal.
The less qualified you are, the more paranoid you become?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/paranoid-kash-patel-polygraphs-fbi-agents-in-maga-purge
Alternet: Trump-capitulating law firms keep losing in a bad deal that is becoming worse by the day | Opinion
Trump Loses Again
In a 52-page opinion, U.S. District Court Judge John D. Bates—a 2001 appointee of President George W. Bush—rejected the Justice Department’s effort to defend Trump’s executive order targeting Jenner & Block. Trump’s own words doomed it:
Like the others in the series, this order—which takes aim at the global law firm Jenner & Block—makes no bones about why it chose its target: It picked Jenner because of the causes Jenner champions, the clients Jenner represents, and a lawyer Jenner once employed. (Jenner & Block v. U.S. Department of Justice, et al. Civil Action No. 25-916 (JDB) p. 1)
The court left no doubt that Trump had violated the Constitution:
Going after law firms in this way is doubly violative of the Constitution. Most obviously, retaliating against firms for the views embodied in their legal work—and thereby seeking to muzzle them going forward—violates the First Amendment’s central command that government may not “use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression.” (Id.; citations omitted.)
Describing how Trump’s actions undermine democracy, Judge Bates previewed the fate awaiting similar orders:
This order, like the others, seeks to chill legal representation the administration doesn’t like, thereby insulating the Executive Branch from the judicial check fundamental to the separation of powers. It thus violates the Constitution and the Court will enjoin its operation in full. (Id.; emphasis supplied.)
The firms that challenged Trump remain undefeated in the courtroom.
Raw Story: ‘Lying!’ Karoline [Bimbo #1] Leavitt derided as she claims to ‘debunk’ budget accusations
Social media users railed against Press Secretary Karoline [Bimbo #1] Leavitt for saying the House spending bill, aka “the big, beautiful bill,” will not increase the nation’s deficit.
Independent journalist Aaron Rupar was the first to flag the questionable remarks, uttered at an event Thursday.
“[Bimbo #1] Leavitt: ‘I also want to take the opportunity to debunk some false claims that have been circulating in the press. The blatantly wrong claim that the one big beautiful bill increases the deficit is based on the CBO and other scorekeepers who use shoddy assumptions.’”
Spencer Hakimian told his more than 100,0000 followers on X, “Has there ever been a less intelligent press secretary in U.S. history?”
Several more comments followed. Click the links below to read them:
Mediaite: Border Czar Tom Homan Says ICE Agents Assaulted and ‘Doxed Every Day’ Now in U.S.
Trump Border Czar Tom Homan told reporters outside the White House on Thursday that assaults and doxing of ICE agents is way up, happening every day across the country, and that the administration of President Donald Trump plans to “take action” on it.
Speaking with reporters in an impromptu Q&A on Thursday, Homan covered a variety of Homeland and Border topics, including increasing numbers of reported assaults and instances of doxing — the exposing of personal details – of federal immigration enforcement agents.
Assault = doing to you what you do to them? ICE is abusing, kidnapping, incarcerating thousands of innocent people as they capture and deport a small number of real criminals. What goes around, comes around. If I had a fiddle, I’d play it for you. Your masked Gestapo thugs get no sympathy from me. There will be special place in Hell for them eventually, might as well get started now.
Doxing = a legal activity, protected by the First Amendment, if done with publicly available information. The names, addresses, and in many cases phone numbers are all out there. And connecting the dots is not a crime!

Associated Press: Trump’s big plans on trade and more run up against laws of political gravity, separation of powers
On Wednesday, an obscure but powerful court in New York rejected the legal foundation of Trump’s most sweeping tariffs, finding that Trump could not use a 1977 law to declare a national emergency on trade imbalances and fentanyl smuggling to justify a series of import taxes that have unsettled the world. Reordering the global economy by executive fiat was an unconstitutional end-run around Congress’ powers, the three-judge panel of Trump, Obama and Reagan appointees ruled in a scathing rebuke of Trump’s action.
The setbacks fit a broader pattern for a president who has advanced an extraordinarily expansive view of executive power. Federal courts have called out the lack of due process in some of Trump’s deportation efforts. His proposed income tax cuts, now working their way through Congress, are so costly that some of them can’t be made permanent, as Trump had wished. His efforts to humble Harvard University and cut the federal workforce have encountered legal obstacles. And he’s running up against reality as his pledges to quickly end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza have turned into slogs.
…
By unilaterally ordering tariffs, deportations and other actions through the White House, Trump is bypassing both Congress and the broader public, which could have given more popular legitimacy to his policy choices, said Princeton University history professor Julian Zelizer.
“The president is trying to achieve his goals outside normal legal processes and without focusing on public buy-in,” Zelizer said. “The problem is that we do have a constitutional system and there are many things a president can’t do. The courts are simply saying no. The reality is that many of his boldest decisions stand on an incredibly fragile foundation.”
https://apnews.com/article/trump-tariffs-judges-courts-setbacks-1864c944c8142f18fd3075d5643bdefc
Guardian: Trump tariffs derailed by law firm that received money from his richest backers
Previous backers of libertarian Liberty Justice Center include billionaires Robert Mercer and Richard Uihlein
Donald Trump’s tariff policy was derailed by a libertarian public interest law firm that has received money from some of his richest backers. The Liberty Justice Center filed a lawsuit against the US president’s “reciprocal” tariffs on behalf of five small businesses, which it said were harmed by the policy.
…
For its lawsuit against Trump’s tariffs, the Liberty Justice Center gathered five small businesses, including a wine company and a fish gear and apparel retailer, and argued that Trump overreached his executive authority and needed Congress’s approval to pass such broad tariffs.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/29/trump-tariffs-liberty-justice-center
Independent: Musk tried to block massive Trump-backed Mideast AI deal unless he was included: report
Elon Musk rushed to the Mideast to hold up a massive Trump-endorsed American AI operation in Abu Dhabi unless it included him, according to a new report
Retiring DOGE hatchet man Elon Musk rushed to the Middle East during Donald Trump’s visit there earlier this month to block a massive American AI partnership with the United Arab Emirates backed by the president – unless it included him, according to a new report. That apparently explains the tech billionaire’s sudden appearance at a Trump meeting with Saudi Arabia officials during the president’s three-country Middle East tour.
…
Trump’s team scrambled to soothe an irritated Musk so the president could announce the deal while he was in the Middle East, the Journal reported.
It wasn’t immediately clear if some kind of accommodation was worked out for the tech boss who has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the campaigns of Trump and other Republicans, or if he is now part of the deal. He could not immediately be reached for comment. His company has not been named as a participant in the business by any announcement of the deal.