The Department of Homeland Security is defending the First Amendment rights of a staffer who has come under fire for posts and political commentary related to the Capitol riot. Before joining DHS, Eric Lendrum (pictured right) likened the political fallout conservatives faced from the January 6, 2021 rally to slavery and the Holocaust.
He slammed Democrats for ‘cowering’ under their desks as thousands of angry Americans descended on the Capitol that day. ‘There’s something so gratifying about seeing the images of these members of Congress — especially the Democrats — crouching under their chairs, putting on those stupid, like, bubble masks, those anti-gas bubble masks, and then taking selfies,’ Lendrum said on an episode of his podcast The Right Take just days after the riot.
He also said in a 2021 blog post on the conservative website American Greatness: ‘American conservatives are, right now, on a course for being every bit as ostracized and alienated from broader society as Jews were in the years leading up to Nazi Germany.’ The junior-level speechwriter at DHS also shared anti-immigrant rhetoric on multiple platforms before joining the second Donald Trump administration. In an October 2022 podcast episode, he endorsed the far-right ‘great replacement theory,’ which is a belief that nonwhite immigrants are diminishing the influence of white people across the world.
While a spokesperson for DHS declined to comment on the social media activity of a junior staffer before joining the agency, they instead sent the Daily Mail a link to the text of the First Amendment of the Constitution when asked for comment. Lnedrum did not respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment on the reports detailing his online activity. Lendrum published on American Greatness until March 2025.
n his post-riot rant in 2021, he said conservative Americans are facing oppression like that faced by enslaved black people in America and Holocaust victims. ‘It has been said that the most surefire way to create an authoritarian regime is to completely dehumanize a significant portion of the population, so that their subsequent enslavement by the state will not face any larger resistance. It was true during slavery, it was true during the Holocaust, and it is true now,’ he wrote.
Lendrum has a relatively low profile, his employer and previous social media activity was first reported by NOTUS on Monday. The last time Lendrum posted to his X account was on the president’s birthday on June 14 this year when he published an image of himself alongside Trump. Lendrum has only 449 followers on X as of time of publication and appears to mostly use it recently to repost messages from Trump cabinet officials and allies. But he has used his X account in the past to share anti-immigrant sentiments.
He expressed lament with a New York Post headline saying that veterans were kicked out of hotels to make way for providing shelter to illegal ‘migrants’ during President Joe Biden’s term. ‘They are not migrants. They are not ‘undocumented.’ They are an invading army. The largest invasion in American history,’ Lendrum wrote on May 13, 2023 in a post to X. He added: ‘And what are you supposed to do with an invading army? Crush it, by any means necessary.’ Lendrum also claimed that asylum seekers are ‘scum.’
Before joining DHS, Lendrum also had a short stint as a press assistant at the Department of the Interior during Trump’s first term. ‘If I could work more closely with him, that is the one case in which I would ever go back into government work. Government work is not fun,’ Lendrum said in December 2022. And now, he’s back in Washington, D.C. for Trump’s second term working for one of the largest and most influential agencies in the federal government. A DHS speechwriter is responsible for preparing a myriad of public content for DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and her deputy. This includes ‘speeches, talking points, editorials, Congressional testimony, video scripts, web content and other written content,’ according to a description of the job.
President Donald Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky today at the White House, and boasted about his ability to end wars, making one major slip in the process.
The two world leaders met at the White House on Monday afternoon, along with a delegation of European leaders from the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Finland, the European Union, and NATO. The leaders showed up to support Zelensky at the high-stakes meeting that could determine the future of his country. Discussing the possibility of a ceasefire, Trump bragged about his track record of “ending wars.”
“I’ve ended six wars. I thought maybe this would be the easiest one. And it’s not. It’s a tough one,” Trump claimed. It comes amid alarming fears over the president’s health due to an injury being spotted.
As Trump rambled about the wars he has claimed credit for ending, he made a major slip, calling the Democratic Republic of Congo, the “Republic of the Condo.” It comes after the Prime Minister of Italy mocks Trump with a brutal eye roll.
On X, a viewer pointed it out, writing, “Yes, he just said ‘Republic of the Condo.’ Can’t get his mind away from real estate!”
Trump immediately corrected himself, briefly closing his eyes as he gathered his thoughts. The high-stakes meeting, which had many eyes on it, was an opportunity for Trump to shut down rumors that he is experiencing a cognitive decline.
On numerous occasions recently, Trump has slipped up and misspoken, causing viewers to call his mental capacity into question.
Today’s mistake is not the first one Trump has made when speaking about the Congo. He was accused of not knowing anything about the country, after flippantly saying, “many people come from the Congo. I don’t know what that is.”
On X, another user added, “Trump’s Freudian slip “Republic of the Condo” in his press conference reveals his preferred solution to all international conflicts: turn them into luxury resorts!”
Today’s meeting comes just days after President Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader rejected a cease-fire and called on Ukraine to cede land in the country’s east in exchange for a freeze in the front line elsewhere.
Trump and Zelensky’s last meeting in February ended abruptly and without any resolve. The two butted heads and Trump grew impatient with the Ukrainian president, telling him, “You’ve got to be more thankful, because, let me tell you, you don’t have the cards. With us, you have the cards, but without us, you don’t have any cards.”
JD Vance, who called Zelensky ungrateful during their February meeting, was also present today. It comes as Trump lets slip his true feelings about his wife Melania with a gesture at Zelensky showdown.
https://www.irishstar.com/news/us-news/trumps-geography-gaffe-during-zelensky-35752320
Former Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review a civil judgment issued against her for refusing to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Her actions, which took place shortly after the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision in 2015, have continued to spark legal debate. While plaintiffs and LGBTQ advocates have criticized the move as an attempt to undermine established rights, conservative activists have rallied behind Davis.
Davis argued that the First Amendment’s free exercise clause shielded her from personal liability while in office. She urged the Court to overturn Obergefell.
Attorney Mathew Staver wrote, “The mistake must be corrected.” Staver argued that Davis is “the first individual in the Republic’s history who was jailed for following her religious convictions regarding the historic definition of marriage, this should be it.”
Lower courts rejected her defenses and affirmed liability for state action in her role. A federal appeals panel concluded that she may not invoke the First Amendment against such claims.
Attorneys for David Ermold and David Moore have urged the Court to deny review. They noted that no appellate judge supported rehearing.
Attorney William Powell said, “Not a single judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals showed any interest in Davis’s rehearing petition, and we are confident the Supreme Court will likewise agree that Davis’s arguments do not merit further attention.”
The petition has arrived amid efforts in several states to limit recognition of same-sex marriages. Public support has remained high, but partisan divides have notably widened.
If the Supreme Court hears the case, it could revisit same-sex marriage precedents, though existing marriages remain protected under the 2022 Respect for Marriage Act.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/supreme-court-asked-to-review-marriage-ruling/ar-AA1KMc10
A speechwriter at the Department of Homeland Security has been linked to hateful posts on social media, reportedly claiming that American conservatives are ostracized like the Jews were in Nazi Germany.
A blog post reportedly authored by Eric Lendrum celebrated the January 6 insurrection and compared the following fallout for conservatives to the Holocaust and slavery, Notus reported.
“American conservatives are, right now, on a course for being every bit as ostracized and alienated from broader society as Jews were in the years leading up to Nazi Germany,” he claimed in a 2021 blog post on American Greatness, a rightwing opinion and news site. Lendrum posted on the site until March of this year.
His podcast, The Right Take, is listed in the author’s description on the site. On one episode of the podcast, he said he liked watching videos of scared legislators during the Jan 6 insurrection.
“There’s something so gratifying about seeing the images of these members of Congress — especially the Democrats — crouching under their chairs, putting on those stupid, like, bubble masks, those anti-gas bubble masks, and then taking selfies,” a laughing Lendrum said just days after the Capitol riot.
In another episode, published in October 2022, Lendrum said immigrants put Europe at risk, while also backing the “great replacement theory.” The far-right theory claims that nonwhite immigrants are damaging the influence of white people.
“Given the direction of Europe right now, we could use a far-right government at this point,” said Lendrum.
On X, the account @realEricLendrum has argued for the removal of transgender “ideology” and compared asylum seekers to “scum.”
In another podcast episode, Lendrum referenced his brief period as a press assistant at the Interior Department during the first Trump administration, saying that he would only return to government if he could be closer to the president.
“If I could work more closely with him, that is the one case in which I would ever go back into government work,” said Lendrum, whose online profile was first reported by Notus. “Government work is not fun.”
The Independent has attempted to reach Lendrum for comment.
The DHS Office of Public Affairs states that a speechwriter at the department is responsible for preparing “speeches, talking points, editorials, Congressional testimony, video scripts, web content, and other written content for the Secretary and Deputy Secretary.” The department ranks as the largest federal law enforcement agency.
In one of the blog posts linked to Lendrum, he appeared to argue that conservatives were facing political oppression similar to that of slaves and victims of the Holocaust.
“It has been said that the most surefire way to create an authoritarian regime is to completely dehumanize a significant portion of the population, so that their subsequent enslavement by the state will not face any larger resistance. It was true during slavery, it was true during the Holocaust, and it is true now,” the blog post stated.
Responding to questions from The Independent, DHS shared a link to the text of the First Amendment.
The X account linked to Lendrum argued that the U.S. should treat immigrants as an “invading army.”
“They are not migrants. They are not ‘undocumented.’ They are an invading army. The largest invasion in American history,” one post stated in May 2023. “And what are you supposed to do with an invading army? Crush it, by any means necessary. That’s the #AmericaFirst way.”
Also in the blog post about January 6, the author said, “The Democrats were absolutely terrified — literally cowering under their seats, horrified at the prospect of mere peasants walking through the halls of their castle.”
The lawmakers, including Republicans, were escorted by Capitol Police through the Capitol complex.
“The truth is that they are grateful the events of that day unfolded as they did,” the post argued regarding the Democrats.
In a podcast episode published in April 2023, he said he would “always properly deadname t***** freaks.”
“I will keep calling them t******* because I know it’s derogatory, and I know they freakin’ hate it. That’s why I deadname them. That’s why I use their original pronouns,” he said. “You control the language. Don’t give these freaks an inch on the language.”
“We need to eradicate transgenderism. Wipe it off the face of the Earth. Destroy it. Get rid of it,” he added. “As a disclaimer, I’m not saying to wipe the people out. I’m not saying get rid of the people. I’m saying eliminate the ideology. Cure these people.”
Maryland politicians and advocates publicly confronted the interim director of Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s Baltimore field office last week at the state’s premier gathering for policymakers, questioning her agents’ tactics for targeting and detaining immigrants and imploring her to resist what they called the harsher edicts of the Trump administration’s enforcement crackdown.
“Your officers have to do your job, but do you have to do it in a manner where the windows are broken?” Del. Joseline A. Peña-Melnyk (D-Prince George’s) asked ICE director Nikita Baker during a heated question-and-answer session at the Maryland Association of Counties Conference in Ocean City.
Peña-Melnyk, one of several in the audience to question Baker on Thursday afternoon, questioned why ICE agents would use force to detain otherwise cooperative people, especially in front of children, and pleaded with the acting director to honor “due process.”
“We need to be respectful because we are lacking empathy right now in this country, and we are abusing people and we have laws for a reason,” Peña-Melnyk said. “Can you please go back to your office and tell them to be kinder?”
Baker said she would go back to her agents and convey that message. She defended them as professionals who have a job to do: “I can understand your feelings about it, but, however, I can’t stop doing my job. And my job is to enforce the law.”
The emotional back-and-forth mirrored the alarm many throughout the Washington region have been saying about President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown since he took office earlier this year. The president declared a crime emergency last week in the District — mobilizing federal police agents and deploying the National Guard — and daily arrest sweeps have focused on immigration enforcement.
In Maryland, where many immigrant families reside, lawmakers are mobilizing to raise the issue during the 2026 state legislative session.
“What do we have to lose?” Peña-Melnyk said in an interview after the panel. “What in the world do we need to lose when we’re losing it all?”
While the General Assembly was in session from January to April this year, advocates warned lawmakers about the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics, including detaining people with no history of criminal violations. In one incident, ICE agents in Maryland broke car windows in front of children during arrests, according to the Baltimore Banner.
But the comprehensive policy agenda that was introduced at the start of the session was narrowed in the end, with lawmakers barely beating the clock to pass the Maryland Values Act. That law requires law enforcement to notify officials when they are conducting activity at “sensitive locations,” including schools, libraries and courthouses.
But the law doesn’t include language championed by the Democratic majority in the House of Delegates that would have banned 287(g) partnerships, which are signed agreements between local law enforcement and U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement that enable collaboration among agencies to deport people.
The Senate killed the effort to curtail the 287(g) program, with Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore County) saying he feared the move could provoke the White House amid Trump’s immigration crackdown and threaten critical federal funding amid a budget crisis in Maryland.
Those who championed the proposed law to limit 287(g), many of whom were in Ocean City for Thursday’s panel, said those fears have come true despite the state’s attempts to assuage the president.
“From the start, I believed that they were going to be who they are,” said Del. Ashanti Martinez (D-Prince George’s), chair of the Latino Caucus. “It’s our responsibility to be who we are as a state.”
Passing a ban on 287(g) agreements, Martinez said, would “highlight how we as Maryland are a welcoming state.”
Del Nicole Williams (D-Prince George’s), who championed the effort to ban 287(g) agreements, spoke on the Ocean City panel and announced that she will likely refile legislation that would curtail ICE’s power to deputize local police to enforce federal immigration laws.
“The Trump administration will probably continue to ramp up the enforcement activities that we have been seeing here in Maryland and across the country,” she said, noting that she has received a lot of requests urging her to reintroduce the 287(g) ban.
The panel focused on the relationship between Maryland and ICE, which varies substantially from county to county. Panelist Daniel Galbraith, the warden at the Harford County Detention Center, told the crowd about his county’s participation in the 287G program, a federal partnership between the Harford County Sheriff and ICE.
Baker outlined her agency’s responsibilities and championed its work to prioritize the deportation of violent criminals. She said the Baltimore field office had removed more sex offenders than any other in the nation, and had removed the second-largest number of alleged gang members. She also defended the choice of some of her officers to wear masks while arresting people because of incidents of immigration agents being doxed, threatened or followed home.
During her presentation, Williams called attention to the detention of Kilmar Abrego García, the Maryland man who entered the United States illegally when he was a teenager and applied for asylum in 2019. He was mistakenly deported to El Salvador by ICE and accused, without evidence, of being a gang member. The Supreme Court said in an unsigned ruling in April that his removal to El Salvador was illegal.
Baltimore City council member Odette Ramos, the first and only Latina on the council, recounted reports of masked ICE agents arresting city residents and taking them away in unmarked cars, and criticized the conditions of temporary holding cells in Baltimore that have drawn the attention of the state’s congressional delegation. Ramos urged Baker to use her position to make her agents act differently.
“It’s just really abhorrent that this is happening,” Ramos said. “I’m asking you to resist. I’m asking you to stop doing this.”
Other local officials and immigration reform advocates repeatedly questioned Baker over reported incidents of ICE allegedly violating due process rights and holding detainees in inhumane conditions. Baker’s responses drew mumbled rebuttals from the crowd.
Martinez, who moderated the panel, said he was glad the conference invited a group of people with differing perspectives on immigration enforcement to come together.
“We are having a lot of these conversations but in silos, right?” Martinez said. “Folks that are in support or folks that are opposed of the current enforcement measures of this administration are talking amongst themselves. I think this panel provided us an opportunity to get all the stakeholders in the room to have an honest and truthful conversation in a way that’s respectful of one another’s point of views.”
After the panel, a woman from the audience approached Williams and showed her a picture of her young granddaughter, whose father was deported a few years ago. The woman told Williams that she doesn’t know whether they’ll see him again, and that his absence has had a negative impact on her granddaughter.
“That’s the human side of this story that we’re dealing with,” Williams said. “And this is why I do what I do and why I fight so hard. Because these are actual human beings, these are my friends, these are family members, this is my community.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/08/19/maryland-ice-detention-legislature-baltimore
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) promised that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem can expect to be one of the first officials made to answer for the Trump administration’s treatment of migrants during a recent podcast appearance.
Jeffries told The Bulwark‘s Tim Miller on Monday that judgment day will come after the 2026 elections.
“It’s my expectation that Kristi Noem will be one of the first people hauled up to Congress shortly after the gavels change hands to get a real understanding for the American people as to this conduct that has taken place. The lack of respect for due process, for the rule of law. The unleashing of masked agents on law-abiding immigrant communities, and the disappearing of people in some instances, to other countries without any real evidence that criminal behavior took place,” he said.
Jeffries said he’s all for deporting violent criminals and felons, “but not law-abiding immigrant families, including in some instances, U.S. citizen children who’ve been sent overseas to a place that they’ve never known.”
Jeffries added that “all of this is going to require aggressive oversight activity.”
If Noem’s former grilling by Democratic lawmakers is any indication, both sides are in for a fight.
In the spring, Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) shamed Noem for incorrectly defining a basic tenant of U.S. constitutional protections.
“Habeas corpus is a constitutional right the president has to be able to remove people from this country,” Noem said, causing Hassan to fire back, “Excuse me, that’s incorrect…habeas corpus is the legal principal that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people. If not for that protection, the government could simply arrest people, including American citizens, and hold them indefinitely.”
“I also recognize that the president of the United States has the authority under the Constitution to decide if it should be suspended or not,” Noem said of habeas corpus.
“It has never been done without approval of Congress,” Hassan answered back. “Even Abraham Lincoln got retroactive approval from Congress.”
