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NBC News: White House reviewing Smithsonian exhibits to make sure they align with Trump’s vision
The president signed an executive order this year ordering the removal of “improper ideology” from the museum system.
The White House is conducting an expansive review of the Smithsonian’s museum exhibitions, materials and operations ahead of America’s 250th anniversary to ensure they align with President Donald Trump’s view of history.
The assessment, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal and confirmed to NBC News, will include reviews of online content, internal curatorial processes, exhibition planning, the use of collections and artist grants, and wording related to museum exhibit messaging.
The Smithsonian Institution includes 21 museums, 14 education and research centers and the National Zoo.
News of the review was outlined in a letter sent Tuesday to Lonnie Bunch, the institution’s secretary. White House senior associate Lindsey Halligan, Domestic Policy Council Director Vince Haley and White House Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought signed the letter.
“This initiative aims to ensure alignment with the president’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions,” the letter says.
It directs officials at eight museums — including the National Museum of American History and the National Museum of African American History and Culture — to turn over information about their current exhibits and plans to commemorate the country’s 250th anniversary in the next 30 days.
Within 120 days, museums “should begin implementing content corrections where necessary, replacing divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate, and constructive descriptions across placards, wall didactics, digital displays, and other public-facing materials,” the letter said.
“Additional museums will be reviewed in Phase II,” the letter said.
The review, which the letter said will include “on-site observational visits,” is aimed at making sure the museums reflect the “unity, progress, and enduring values that define the American story” and reflect the president’s executive order calling for “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”
That order, which was signed on March 27, calls for removing “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo.
“This is about preserving trust in one of our most cherished institutions,” Halligan said in a statement. “The Smithsonian museums and exhibits should be accurate, patriotic, and enlightening — ensuring they remain places of learning, wonder, and national pride for generations to come.”
The Smithsonian said in a statement Tuesday that its work “is grounded in a deep commitment to scholarly excellence, rigorous research, and the accurate, factual presentation of history.”
“We are reviewing the letter with this commitment in mind and will continue to collaborate constructively with the White House, Congress, and our governing Board of Regents,” the statement said.
NBC News reported in May that historical leaders and critics were questioning why exhibits at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall were rotating out. NBC News found that at least 32 artifacts that were once on display had been removed.
Among those items were Harriet Tubman’s book of hymns filled with gospel songs that she is believed to have sung as she led enslaved people to freedom through the Underground Railroad, and the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” the memoir by one of the most important leaders of the abolition movement.
The Smithsonian National Museum of American History also recently made headlines after it removed a placard referring to Trump from an impeachment exhibit, sparking concerns over his influence on the cultural institution. Mention of his two impeachments was restored to the exhibit after criticism of the removal.
In a statement, the Smithsonian said that the exhibit was temporarily removed because it “did not meet the museum’s standards in appearance, location, timeline, and overall presentation.”
“It was not consistent with other sections in the exhibit and moreover blocked the view of the objects inside its case. For these reasons, we removed the placard,” the institution said.
Trump’s executive order called for changes at the museum system, charging that the “Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology. This shift has promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.”
“[W]e will restore the Smithsonian Institution to its rightful place as a symbol of inspiration and American greatness — igniting the imagination of young minds, honoring the richness of American history and innovation, and instilling pride in the hearts of all Americans,” the order said.
Trump has also gotten more involved at another federally controlled D.C. institution, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He named himself the center’s chairman and fired the bipartisan board of trustees after vowing there would be no “anti-American propaganda” at there.
“We don’t need woke at the Kennedy Center,” he said in February.
House Republicans have moved to rename the center the “Donald J. Trump Center for Performing Arts,” but the law creating the center prohibits any of the facilities from being renamed.
Trump seemed to acknowledge the House effort in a post on Truth Social Tuesday.
“GREAT Nominees for the TRUMP/KENNEDY CENTER, whoops, I mean, KENNEDY CENTER, AWARDS. They will be announced Wednesday,” he wrote.
Defense One: How Trump’s DC takeover could supercharge surveillance
The emergency declaration, combined with new tech, will give government broad new abilities to watch and monitor citizens.
President Trump’s declaration of a “crime emergency” in Washington, D.C., will further entwine the U.S. military—and its equipment and technology—in law-enforcement matters, and perhaps expose D.C. residents and visitors to unprecedented digital surveillance.
Brushing aside statistics that show violent crime in D.C. at a 30-year low, Trump on Monday described a new level of coordination between D.C. National Guard units and federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, ICE, and and the newly federalized D.C. police force.
“We will have full, seamless, integrated cooperation at all levels of law enforcement, and will deploy officers across the district with an overwhelming presence. You’ll have more police, and you’ll be so happy because you’re being safe,” he said at a White House press conference.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, standing beside Trump, promised close collaboration between the Pentagon and domestic authorities. “We will work alongside all DC police and federal law enforcement to ensure this city is safe.”
What comes next? The June 2020 deployment of National Guard units to work alongside D.C. police offers a glimpse: citywide use of sophisticated intelligence-gathering technologies normally reserved for foreign war zones.
Some surveillance platforms will be relatively easy to spot, such as spy aircraft over D.C.’s closely guarded airspace. In 2020, authorities deployed an RC-26B, a military-intelligence aircraft, and MQ-9 Predator drones. The FBI contributed a Cessna 560 equipped with “dirtboxes”: devices that mimic cell towers to collect mobile data, long used by the U.S. military to track terrorist networks in the Middle East.
Other gear will be less obvious.The 2020 protests saw expanded use of Stingrays, another type of cellular interception device. Developed to enable the military to track militants in Iraq and Afghanistan, Stingrays were used by the U.S. Secret Service in 2020 and 2021 in ways that the DHS inspector general found broke the law and policies concerning privacy and warrants. Agency officials said “exigent” circumstances justified the illicit spying.
Now, with federal agencies and entities working with military personnel under declared-emergency circumstances, new gear could enter domestic use. And local officials or the civilian review boards that normally oversee police use of such technologies may lack the power to prevent or even monitor it. In 2021, the D.C. government ended a facial-recognition pilot program after police used it to identify a protester at Lafayette Square. But local prohibitions don’t apply to federalized or military forces.
Next up: AI-powered surveillance
How might new AI tools, and new White House measures to ease sharing across federal entities, enable surveillance targeting?
DHS and its sub-agencies already use AI. Some tools—such as monitoring trucks or cargo at the border for contraband, mapping human trafficking and drug networks, and watching the border—serve an obvious public-safety mission. Last year, DHS used AI and other tools to identify 311 victims of sexual exploitation and to arrest suspected perpetrators. They also helps DHS counter the flow of fentanyl; last October, the agency cited AI while reporting a 50 percent increase in seizures and an 8 percent increase in arrests.
TSA uses facial recognition across the country to match the faces and documents of airline passengers entering the United States in at least 26 airports, according to 2022 agency data. The accuracy has improved greatly in the past decade, and research suggests even better performance is possible: the National Institute of Standards and Technology has shown that some algorithms can achieve 99%-plus accuracy under ideal conditions.
But conditions are not always ideal, and mistakes can be costly. “There have been public reports of seven instances of mistaken arrests associated with the use of facial recognition technology, almost all involving Black individuals. The collection and use of biometric data also poses privacy risks, especially when it involves personal information that people have shared in unrelated contexts,” noted a Justice Department report in December.
On Monday, Trump promised that the increased federal activity would target “known gangs, drug dealers and criminal networks.” But network mapping—using digital information to identify who knows who and how—has other uses, and raises the risk of innocent people being misidentified.
Last week, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request concerning the use of two software tools by D.C.’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency. Called Cobwebs and Tangles, the tools can reveal sensitive information about any person with just a name or email address, according to internal documents cited in the filing.
Cobwebs shows how AI can wring new insights from existing data sources, especially when there are no rules to prohibit the gathering of large stores of data. Long before the capability existed to do it effectively, this idea was at the center of what, a decade ago, was called predictive policing.
The concept has lost favor since the 2010s, but many law-enforcement agencies still pursue versions of it. Historically, the main obstacle has been too much data, fragmented across systems and structures. DHS has legal access to public video footage, social media posts, and border and airport entry records—but until recently, these datasets were difficult to analyze in real time, particularly within legal constraints.
That’s changing. The 2017 Modernizing Government Technology Act encouraged new software and cloud computing resources to help agencies use and share data more effectively, and in March, an executive order removed several barriers to interagency data sharing. The government has since awarded billions of dollars to private companies to improve access to internal data.
One of those companies is Palantir, whose work was characterized by the New York Times as an effort to compile a “master list” of data on U.S. citizens. The firm disputed that in a June 9 blog post: “Palantir is a software company and, in the context of our customer engagements, operates as a ‘data processor’—our software is used by customers to manage and make use of their data.”
In a 2019 article for the FBI training division, California sheriff Robert Davidson envisioned a scenario—now technologically feasible—in which AI analyzes body-camera imagery in real time: “Monitoring, facial recognition, gait analysis, weapons detection, and voice-stress analysis all would actively evaluate potential danger to the officer. After identification of a threat, the system could enact an automated response based on severity.”
The data DHS collects extends well beyond matching live images to photos in a database or detecting passengers’ emotional states. ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit, for instance, handles large volumes of multilingual email. DHS describes its email analytics program as using machine learning “for spam classification, translation, and entity extraction (such as names, organizations, or locations).”
Another DHS tool analyzes social-media posts to gather “open-source information on travelers who may be subject to further screening for potential violation of laws.” The tool can identify additional accounts and selectors, such as phone numbers or email addresses, according to DHS documentation.
Meanwhile, ICE’s operational scope has expanded. The White House has increased the agency’s authority to operate in hospitals and schools, collect employment data—including on non-imigrants, such as “sponsors” of unaccompanied minors—and impose higher penalties on individuals seen as “interfering” with ICE activities. Labor leaders say they’ve been targeted for their political activism. Protesters have been charged with assaulting ICE officers or employees. ICE has installed facial-recognition apps on officers’ phones, enabling on-the-spot identification of people protesting the agency’s tactics. DHS bulletins sent to local law enforcement encourage officers to consider a wide range of normal activity, such as filming police interactions, as potential precursors to violence.
Broad accessibility of even legally collected data raises concerns, especially in an era where AI tools can derive specific insights about people. But even before these developments, government watchdogs urged greater transparency around domestic AI use. A December report by the Government Accountability Office includes several open recommendations, mostly related to privacy protections and reporting transparency. The following month, DHS’s inspector general warned that the agency doesn’t have complete or well-resourced oversight frameworks.
In June, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and several co-signers wrote to the Trump White House, “In addition to these concerning uses of sentiment analysis for law enforcement purposes, federal agencies have also shown interest in affective computing and deception detection technologies that purportedly infer individuals’ mental states from measures of their facial expressions, body language, or physiological activity.”
The letter asks the GAO to investigate what DHS or Justice Department policies govern AI use and whether those are being followed. Markey’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Writing for the American Immigration Council in May, Steven Hubbard, the group’s senior data scientist, noted that of DHS’ 105 AI applications, 27 are “rights-impacting.”
“These are cases that the OMB, under the Biden administration, identified as impacting an individual’s rights, liberty, privacy, access to equal opportunity, or ability to apply for government benefits and services,” Hubbard said.
The White House recently replaced Biden-era guidance on AI with new rules meant to accelerate AI deployment across the federal government. While the updated guidelines retain many safety guardrails, they do include some changes, including merging “privacy-impacting” and “safety-impacting” uses of AI into a single category: “high impact.”
The new rules also eliminate a requirement for agencies to notify people when AI tools might affect them—and to offer an opt-out.
Precedents for this kind of techno-surveillance expansion can be found in countries rarely deemed models for U.S. policy. China and Russia have greatly expanded surveillance and policing under the auspices of security. China operates an extensive camera network in public spaces and centralizes its data to enable rapid AI analysis. Russia has followed a similar path through its “Safe Cities” program, integrating data feeds from a vast surveillance network to spot and stop crime, protests, and dissent.
So far, the U.S. has spent less than these near-peers, as a percent of GDP, on surveillance tools, which are operated under a framework, however strained, of rule-of-law and rights protections that can mitigate the most draconian uses.
But the distinction between the United States and China and Russia is shrinking, Nathan Wessler, deputy director with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said in July. “There’s the real nightmare scenario, which is pervasive tracking of live or recorded video, something that, by and large, we have kept at bay in the United States. It’s the kind of thing that authoritarian regimes have invested in heavily.”
Wessler noted that in May, the Washington Post reported that New Orleans authorities were applying facial recognition to live video feeds. “At that scale, that [threatens to] just erase our ability to go about our lives without being pervasively identified and tracked by the government.”
Newsweek: Justice Department Issues Birthright Citizenship Update
The U.S. Department of Justice has released an update confirming that it plans to ask the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of President Donald Trump‘s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship.
The announcement was disclosed in a joint status report filed Wednesday, August 6, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
Why It Matters
The Justice Department’s plan to seek a Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship—entitled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship”—marks a critical juncture in the national debate over immigration and constitutional rights.
Signed on January 20, 2025, it directs the federal government to deny citizenship documents to children born in the U.S. to undocumented or temporary immigrant parents.
At stake is the interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which has long been understood to guarantee citizenship to nearly all individuals born on U.S. soil. A ruling in favor of the order could reshape federal authority over citizenship, impact millions of U.S.-born children, and redefine the limits of executive power—making this one of the most consequential legal battles in recent memory.
What To Know
On February 6, 2025, the district court in Seattle issued a nationwide preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of President Trump’s executive order.
The case under review, State of Washington v. Trump, was just one of several ongoing legal challenges in which lower courts have largely rejected the administration’s legal theory. District courts in Maryland (February 5), New Hampshire (February 10), and Massachusetts (February 13), have each upheld that the order conflicted with constitutional protections and halted its enforcement in their respective jurisdictions.
One of those judges, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin, an appointee of former President Barack Obama who sits on the federal bench in Boston, granted a nationwide preliminary injunction, affirming that the constitutional guarantee of citizenship applies broadly, and finding the policy to be, “unconstitutional and contrary to a federal statute.”
The government appealed the ruling and sought partial stays from the district court, the Ninth Circuit, and the Supreme Court. After the Supreme Court denied a partial stay, the Ninth Circuit requested further briefing and, on July 23, upheld the injunction.
The new update came in a joint status report filed August 6, 2025, in which the DOJ stated that Solicitor General D. John Sauer intends to file a petition “expeditiously” for certiorari—a legal term that refers to the process by which a higher court (most commonly the U.S. Supreme Court), agrees to review a lower court’s decision—in order to place the case before the Court during its next term, which begins in October.
This means the Justice Department has now formally indicated it will seek a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of President Trump’s executive order; though it has not yet chosen which specific case—or combination of ongoing cases—it will use as the basis for its appeal.
The parties plan to update the court further once those appellate steps are finalized.
Fourteenth Amendment At Stake
Since the adoption of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution on July 9, 1868, the citizenship of persons born in the United States has been controlled by its Citizenship Clause, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Courts have consistently upheld this principle for more than a century, most notably in the 1898 Supreme Court case United States v. Wong Kim Ark.
However, the Trump administration argues that the amendment should not apply to children of parents who lack permanent legal status, a position that has been repeatedly rejected by lower courts.
What People Are Saying
President Trump, during an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, December 8, 2024, said: “Do you know if somebody sets a foot—just a foot, one foot, you don’t need two—on our land, ‘Congratulations you are now a citizen of the United States of America,’ … Yes, we’re going to end that, because it’s ridiculous.” Adding: “…we’re going to have to get it changed. We’ll maybe have to go back to the people, but we have to end it. … We’re the only country that has it, you know.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters in June 2025: “Birthright citizenship will be decided in October, in the next session by the Supreme Court.”
DOJ attorneys wrote in the filing: “In light of the Ninth Circuit’s decision, Defendants represent that the Solicitor General plans to seek certiorari expeditiously to enable the Supreme Court to settle the lawfulness of the Citizenship Order next Term.”
Jessica Levinson, constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School, said: “You can’t ‘executive order’ your way out of the Constitution. If you want to end birthright citizenship, you need to amend the Constitution, not issue an executive order.”
What Happens Next
The Justice Department must decide which case or combination of cases it will use to challenge lower court rulings and bring the birthright citizenship issue before the Supreme Court. Once it makes that decision, the DOJ will file a petition for certiorari.
The Court is not required to accept every petition, but because this involves a major constitutional question, it is likely to grant review. If that happens, the Court could hear arguments in 2026 and issue a ruling by June of that year.
For now, the Justice Department and attorneys representing plaintiff states—including Washington, Arizona, Illinois, and Oregon—have agreed to submit another update once the appellate process is clarified or if further proceedings in the district court are required. Until then, the order remains unenforceable, lower court rulings blocking Trump’s executive order remain in effect, and current birthright citizenship protections continue to apply.
What part of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment is so hard to understand? Only a Totally Retarded Dumb-Assed Idiot (TRDAI) could miss the meaning of it:
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Unfortunately there seems to be no shortage of TRDAIs in the Trump regime. 🙁
Justice Department Issues Birthright Citizenship Update
Fight over Trump’s order to deny birthright citizenship heads toward Supreme Court, with 14th Amendment protections at stake
https://www.newsweek.com/justice-department-issues-birthright-citizenship-update-2110176
Associated Press: Trump executive order gives politicians control over all federal grants, alarming researchers
An executive order signed by President Donald Trump late Thursday aims to give political appointees power over the billions of dollars in grants awarded by federal agencies. Scientists say it threatens to undermine the process that has helped make the U.S. the world leader in research and development.
The order requires all federal agencies, including FEMA, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, to appoint officials responsible for reviewing federal funding opportunities and grants, so that they “are consistent with agency priorities and the national interest.”
It also requires agencies to make it so that current and future federal grants can be terminated at any time — including during the grant period itself.
Agencies cannot announce new funding opportunities until the new protocols are in place, according to the order.
The Trump administration said these changes are part of an effort to “strengthen oversight” and “streamline agency grantmaking.” Scientists say the order will cripple America’s scientific engine by placing control over federal research funds in the hands of people who are influenced by politics and lack relevant expertise.
“This is taking political control of a once politically neutral mechanism for funding science in the U.S.,” said Joseph Bak-Coleman, a scientist studying group decision-making at the University of Washington.
The changes will delay grant review and approval, slowing “progress for cures and treatments that patients and families across the country urgently need,” said the Association of American Medical Colleges in a statement.
The administration has already terminated thousands of research grants at agencies like the NSF and NIH, including on topics like transgender health, vaccine hesitancy, misinformation and diversity, equity and inclusion.
The order could affect emergency relief grants doled out by FEMA, public safety initiatives funded by the Department of Justice and public health efforts supported by the Centers for Disease Control. Experts say the order is likely to be challenged in court.
Raw Story: Trump crackdown hits legal wall with new ruling
In the latest legal blow to the Trump administration, a federal judge in Rhode Island has prohibited officials from setting new restrictions on grants issued by the Violence Against Women Act based on Trump’s executive order purging the federal government of “gender ideology.”
VAWA distributes federal funding to communities to prevent domestic violence. Trump began moving to scale back some of these funds, which in 2022 were passed to support shelters that serve some particularly high-risk groups of women. Under Trump’s policy, any jurisdiction that seeks VAWA grants would have to commit against supporting transgender rights and diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, programs.
U.S. Senior District Judge William E. Smith’s order blocked this policy while litigation proceeds, finding that the Trump administration is likely to be in violation of federal law — and went into detail about how Trump’s policies risk a chilling effect on victims of domestic and sexual violence from receiving support.
“Many of the Coalitions that provide services to eligible victims who are transgender question whether they will now be permitted to provide the same quality of services, including acts such as: (1) providing trainings on servicing transgender and nonbinary crime victims, and (2) using those victims’ preferred pronouns, in basic recognition of those victims’ gender identity, because doing so would run afoul of the so-called ‘gender ideology’ Executive Order,” wrote Smith.
Furthermore, he wrote, they fear “they will no longer be permitted to discuss with victims options for responding to incidents of domestic or sexual violence other than reaching out to law enforcement, which in some jurisdictions can involve collateral consequences that might not be the preferred course for particular victims, because doing so would arguably violate the challenged condition regarding collaboration with law enforcement.”
This verdict comes just days before the Aug. 12 deadline for communities to file VAWA grants for the year.
Independent: Married immigrants trying to get green cards could be deported, new Trump-era guidance says
Immigration authorities now say people seeking permanent lawful status through a citizen spouse or family member can still be removed
Immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens have long expected that they won’t be deported from the country while going through the process of obtaining a green card.
But new guidance from Donald Trump’s administration explicitly states that immigrants seeking lawful residence through marriage can be deported, a policy that also applies to immigrants with pending requests.
Immigration authorities can begin removal proceedings for immigrants who lack legal status and applied to become a lawful permanent resident through a citizen spouse, according to guidance from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued this month.
The policy also applies to immigrants with pending green cards through other citizen family members.
People who entered the country illegally aren’t the only ones impacted. Under new guidance, immigrants trying to get lawful status through a spouse or family member are at risk of being deported if their visas expired, or if they are among the roughly 1 million immigrants whose temporary protected status was stripped from them under the Trump administration.
Immigrants and their spouses or family members who sponsor them “should be aware that a family-based petition accords no immigration status nor does it bar removal,” the policy states.
The changes were designed to “enhance benefit integrity and identify vetting and fraud concerns” and weed out what the agency calls “fraudulent, frivolous, or non-meritorious” applications, according to USCIS.
“This guidance will improve USCIS’ capacity to vet qualifying marriages and family relationships to ensure they are genuine, verifiable, and compliant with all applicable laws,” the agency said in a statement.
Those changes, which were filed on August 1, are “effective immediately,” according to the agency.
Within the first six months of 2025, immigrants and their family members filed more than 500,000 I-130 petitions, which are the first steps in the process of obtaining legal residency through a spouse or family member.
There are more than 2.4 million pending I-130 petitions, according to USCIS data. Nearly 2 million of those petitions have been pending for more than six months. It is unclear whether those petitions involve immigrants who either lost their legal status or did not have one at the time they filed their documents.
Immigrants and their spouses or family members who sponsor them “should be aware that a family-based petition accords no immigration status nor does it bar removal,” the policy states.
The changes were designed to “enhance benefit integrity and identify vetting and fraud concerns” and weed out what the agency calls “fraudulent, frivolous, or non-meritorious” applications, according to USCIS.
“This guidance will improve USCIS’ capacity to vet qualifying marriages and family relationships to ensure they are genuine, verifiable, and compliant with all applicable laws,” the agency said in a statement.
Those changes, which were filed on August 1, are “effective immediately,” according to the agency.
Within the first six months of 2025, immigrants and their family members filed more than 500,000 I-130 petitions, which are the first steps in the process of obtaining legal residency through a spouse or family member.
There are more than 2.4 million pending I-130 petitions, according to USCIS data. Nearly 2 million of those petitions have been pending for more than six months. It is unclear whether those petitions involve immigrants who either lost their legal status or did not have one at the time they filed their documents.
Previously, USCIS would notify applicants about missing documents or issue a denial notice serving as a warning that their case could be rejected — with opportunities for redress.
Now, USCIS is signaling that applicants can be immediately denied and ordered to immigrant courts instead.
Outside of being born in the country, family-based immigration remains the largest and most viable path to permanent residency, accounting for nearly half of all new green card holders each year, according to USCIS data.
“This is one of the most important avenues that people have to adjust to lawful permanent status in the United States,” Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, told NBC News.
Under long-established USCIS policies, “no one expected” to be hauled into immigration court while seeking lawful status after a marriage, Mukherjee said. Now, deportation proceedings can begin “at any point in the process” under the broad scope of the rule changes, which could “instill fear in immigrant families, even those who are doing everything right,” according to Mukherjee.
Obtaining a green card does not guarantee protections against removal from the country.
The high-profile arrest and threat of removing Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil put intense scrutiny on whether the administration lawfully targeted a lawful permanent resident for his constitutionally protected speech.
And last month, Customs and Border Protection put green card holders on notice, warning that the government “has the authority to revoke your green card if our laws are broken and abused.”
“In addition to immigration removal proceedings, lawful permanent residents presenting at a U.S. port of entry with previous criminal convictions may be subject to mandatory detention,” the agency said.
Another recent USCIS memo outlines the administration’s plans to revoke citizenship from children whose parents lack permanent lawful status as well as parents who are legally in the country, including visa holders, DACA recipients and people seeking asylum.
The policy appears to preempt court rulings surrounding the constitutionality of the president’s executive order that unilaterally redefines who gets to be a citizen in the country at birth.
That memo, from the agency’s Office of the Chief Counsel, acknowledges that federal court injunctions have blocked the government from taking away birthright citizenship.
But the agency “is preparing to implement” Trump’s executive order “in the event that it is permitted to go into effect,” according to July’s memo.
Children of immigrants who are “unlawfully present” will “no longer be U.S. citizens at birth,” the agency declared.
Trump’s order states that children whose parents are legally present in the country on student, work and tourist visas are not eligible for citizenship
USCIS, however, goes even further, outlining more than a dozen categories of immigrants whose children could lose citizenship at birth despite their parents living in the country with legal permission.
That list includes immigrants who are protected against deportation for humanitarian reasons and immigrants from countries with Temporary Protected Status, among others.
The 14th Amendment plainly states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”
The Supreme Court has upheld that definition to apply to all children born within the United States for more than a century.
But under the terms of Trump’s order, children can be denied citizenship if a mother is undocumented or is temporarily legally in the country on a visa, and if the father isn’t a citizen or a lawful permanent resident.
More than 150,000 newborns would be denied citizenship every year under Trump’s order, according to plaintiffs challenging the president’s order.
A challenge over Trump’s birthright citizenship order at the Supreme Court did not resolve the critical 14th Amendment questions at stake. On Wednesday, government lawyers confirmed plans to “expeditiously” ask the Supreme Court “to settle the lawfulness” of his birthright citizenship order later this year.
This is an abomination that will turn many thousands of lives upside down, separate countless couples and families who don’t have the resources to reunite and restart the immigration paperwork from overseas.
Raw Story: ‘Family separation on steroids’: Expert lays into Trump plan to target newborn babies
President Donald Trump’s administration has drawn up a draft of guidelines to block non-U.S. citizens from having children on U.S. soil and becoming citizens.
The Constitution details “birthright citizenship” in the 14th Amendment, saying that anybody born on American soil belongs to the nation. The Trump administration has tried to block that with an executive order.
Speaking to MSNBC, Slate legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern said the guidelines are a backdoor effort to reinstate the family separation policy from the early days of the first Trump administration. In that case, the government took children from their parents when they came into the U.S. In some instances, the children were given to a host family, while others were thrown in a “detention center.”
“For months, federal courts have prevented the U.S. government from even beginning to plan the implementation of this executive order, finding that it violated the 14th Amendment,” said Stern, noting that the Supreme Court then stepped in to allow it.
“What we see is that this administration doesn’t plan to give any kind of grace period to the children of undocumented immigrants. It will render them noncitizens and deportable from the moment of birth,” clarified Stern.
“The administration has also repealed a 14-year-old rule that barred ICE from entering and committing enforcement actions in and around hospitals. So, the government now has a setup where it can send ICE agents into maternity wards, as you said, to monitor births to demand papers from new mothers and fathers, and to potentially take away and deport their children, their infants, from the moment they’re born. If the parents can’t prove citizenship to their satisfaction.”
Under the new memo, there are about a dozen new classifications of people who will have their U.S. citizenship taken away.
“In fact, the trump administration has already started to quietly reintroduce family separation by relaxing restrictions that had been imposed over the last few years to prevent it from happening,” Stern noted. “The government seems ready to take away infants from their parents if they deem it necessary to effectuate immigration laws. And if this order takes effect, that baby would be deportable upon birth.”
Worse, he said, those infants could be taken, denied citizenship, and under Supreme Court rulings, they could be deported to a third-party country in which they or their parents haven’t set foot.
“This would be like family separation in the first administration on steroids, with a hugely disproportionate impact on the youngest and most vulnerable among us,” he characterized.
Western Journal: ‘That’s What I Call Results!’: Trump Admin Saves Jobs, Kicks 1500 Non-English-Speaking Truckers Off the Road
Don’t need to quote anything, the headline says it all.
Only problem here is that we were already short 60,000 truck drivers. Now we’re short 61,500 truckers, and we’ve added 1,500 ex-truckers to the unemployment rolls.
The net gain to us Americans is what?
And Trump’s white supremacists are probably rolling on the floor laughing …
‘That’s What I Call Results!’: Trump Admin Saves Jobs, Kicks 1500 Non-English-Speaking Truckers Off the Road
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy revealed that there have been about 1,500 truck drivers who do not speak English taken off the roads as part of a push to ensure foreign truck drivers are not causing accidents. Back in 2016, the Obama administration stopped enforcing English proficiency requirements for truckers, according to a report from The Daily Signal. But in May, Duffy issued a guidance making clear that truck drivers who cannot…
Newsweek: Smithsonian issues update on Trump’s impeachment exhibit controversy
The Smithsonian National Museum of American History on Saturday released a statement on its website announcing that it would reinstall President Donald Trump to its exhibit about impeachments, saying that it never intended his removal to be temporary.
Newsweek reached out to the White House for comment by email outside of normal business hours on Saturday evening.
Why It Matters
The museum removed references to Trump’s two impeachments from its exhibit on presidential impeachments last month, igniting a debate about historical accuracy and political influence in public institutions.
The controversy centered on “The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden” exhibit, which included a temporary label about Trump’s impeachments that was added in September 2021. Trump remains the only U.S. president to have been impeached twice.
During his second administration, Trump has influenced the museum, which is independent of the government but receives funding from Congress. In March, he signed an executive order to eliminate “anti-American ideology” in the museum and to “restore the Smithsonian Institution to its rightful place as a symbol of inspiration and American greatness.”
What To Know
The Smithsonian confirmed the temporary label remained in place until July before being removed during a review of legacy content.
In a statement posted to the museum’s website, the Smithsonian said the placard “did not meet the museum’s standards in appearance, location, timeline and overall presentation.”
“It was not consistent with other sections in the exhibit and moreover blocked the view of the objects inside its case,” the statement continued. “For these reasons, we removed the placard. We were not asked by any Administration or other government official to remove content from the exhibit.”
The museum assured that the exhibit in the coming weeks would see its impeachment section updated to reflect “all impeachment proceedings in our nation’s history.”
“As the keeper of memory for the nation, it is our privilege and responsibility to tell accurate and complete histories,” the museum wrote.
The decision to remove the placard stoked concerns in the public about possible government interference, the shaping of public memory, and the integrity of historical curation at America’s most prominent museum complex.
A Smithsonian spokesperson previously told Newsweek: “In reviewing our legacy content recently, it became clear that the ‘Limits of Presidential Power’ section in The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden exhibition needed to be addressed. The section of this exhibition covers Congress, The Supreme Court, Impeachment, and Public Opinion. Because the other topics in this section had not been updated since 2008, the decision was made to restore the Impeachment case back to its 2008 appearance.”
Why Was Donald Trump Impeached?
Trump faced two impeachment efforts by Democrats during his first administration: First on December 18, 2019, and then again on January 13, 2021—just one week before he left office. He was ultimately acquitted by the Senate both times.
The first impeachment charged Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress over his dealings with Ukraine. Both articles passed the House with no support from any Republicans, and some Democrats split from the party.
What People Are Saying
Political analyst Jeff Greenfield wrote on X: “Orwellian is a much-overused phrase; but forcing the Smithsonian to erase the fact of Trump’s impeachments is right out of 1984. Did they drop that stuff down the memory hole?”
Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, posted images of media coverage about Trump’s impeachments on X, writing: “This is what Donald Trump wants you to forget. American never will.”
Former GOP Congressman and Trump critic Joe Walsh called the Post‘s report on X: “Despicable. Reprehensible. Dishonest. Cowardly. Trump’s 2 impeachments are historical facts. They are both part of American history. He’s using the powers of his office to try to rewrite history. I’m done saying ‘shame on him.’ Shame on us for electing him.”
A White House spokesperson told NPR: “We are fully supportive of updating displays to highlight American greatness. The Trump administration will continue working to ensure that the Smithsonian removes all improper ideology and once again unites and instills pride in all Americans regarding our great history.”
What Happens Next?
The Smithsonian acknowledged the need for a comprehensive update of its presidential impeachment exhibit. The institution stated the impeachment section will be revised in the coming weeks to “ensure it accurately represents all historical impeachment proceedings.”
No specific timetable was provided for when Trump’s impeachments or other new content will be permanently reintroduced.
