President Donald Trump has ordered the Secret Service to stop providing a protection detail and other protective measures for former Vice President Kamala Harris, revoking an order signed in January by then-president Joe Biden to extend her security until January 2026.
Trump issued the directive Thursday in the form of a memorandum to the agency informing officials that they were “hereby authorized to discontinue any security-related procedures previously authorized by Executive Memorandum” concerning Harris, who under normal circumstances would have lost her protection on July 20, six months after the end of her term.
The end of Harris’s protective detail and the existence of the memorandum were first reported by CNN.
In a statement to the network, Harris adviser Kristen Allen said the former vice president is “grateful to the United States Secret Service for their professionalism, dedication, and unwavering commitment to safety.”
Since returning to office, Trump has used his authority over the Secret Service to punish perceived political adversaries by removing previously authorized protective details, even in cases where there have been documented threats to the people in question.
In his first days back in the White House, the president ordered the agency to stop protecting his first-term national security adviser, John Bolton, and his former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo.
Both men have been on a list of officials targeted for assassination by Iran in retaliation for the Trump-ordered drone strike on Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps leader Qassem Soleimani during the president’s first term.
But Trump nonetheless ordered their protective details to be withdrawn.
In March, he ordered an end to protection for former president Biden’s adult children, including his son Hunter Biden, at the urging of conspiracy theorist and far-right influencer Laura Loomer.
The ex-president had signed a directive extending protection for his adult children for six months after leaving office — something Trump had done for his own family before vacating the White House after losing the 2020 election.
But Trump declined to extend Biden the same courtesy and in a social media post, he expressed his disapproval of what he said were 18 agents assigned to Hunter Biden‘s security detail during his visit to South Africa this week. Hunter’s wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, is originally from South Africa.
“Hunter Biden has had Secret Service protection for an extended period of time, all paid for by the United States Taxpayer,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“There are as many as 18 people on this Detail, which is ridiculous! He is currently vacationing in, of all places, South Africa, where the Human Rights of people has been strenuously questioned.
Trump also said that Ashley Biden, who he said had 13 agents assigned to her, would be “taken off the list.”
A Washington state agency, the Department of Licensing, provided Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies with access to private driver’s license and vehicle information, KING 5 said in a report published on Friday, July 11. This is the case even though Washington has laws in place prohibiting local agencies from sharing personal data with the federal government if they’re using it for deportations.
A similar finding was revealed in 2018. After protests against the department sharing personal data with federal agencies, as well as legislative pressure, the Department of Licensing canceled a lot of those agreements.
KING 5 found that some of these accounts were quietly reinstated, including ones with ICE, Border Patrol and other Homeland Security entities. The news outlet wrote that this has led to a “dramatic” surge in data searches since the election of President Donald Trump, who campaigned on mass deportations.
Federal officials’ use of the Department of Licensing accounts increased by 188% since Trump was elected to a second non-consecutive term in November 2024. ICE’s account,for instance, showed searches for driver and vehicle records went from about 540 in November to 1,600 in May 2025.
The Department of Licensing said in emails to KING 5 that they are following state and federal laws, and attributed the increase in account use to significant variability” in monthly searches and a shift across “two presidential administrations with two different immigration ideologies.”
Jennie Pasquarella, the legal director of a nonprofit representing immigrants called the Clemency Project, expressed her concerns about the reopening of these accounts to KING 5.
“As ICE is ramping up their enforcement actions in our state, the last thing we want is for them to be able to search a treasure trove of information about home addresses,” she stated. “It is critical that we ensure that information is walled off so that people don’t fear accessing it.”
https://san.com/cc/washington-state-agency-shared-license-vehicle-info-with-ice-report
A flock of Ice agents, some masked, some sporting military-operator fashion for show, smooshed the New York City comptroller, Brad Lander, up against a wall and handcuffed him in the hallway of a federal courthouse in early June, shuffling the mild-mannered politician into an elevator like the Sandman hustling an act off the stage 10 miles north at Harlem’s Apollo Theater.
Like at the Apollo, Lander’s arrest was a show. News reporters and cellphone camera-wielding bystanders crowded the hall to watch the burly federal officers rumple a 55-year-old auditor asking for a warrant.
“I’m not obstructing. I’m standing here in this hallway asking for a judicial warrant,” Lander said. “You don’t have the authority to arrest US citizens.”
“This is an urgent moment for the rule of law in the United States of America and it is important to step up,” Lander told the Guardian after the arrest. “And I think the dividing line for Democrats right now is not between progressives and moderates. It’s between fighters and folders. We have to find nonviolent but insistent ways of standing up for democracy and the rule of law.”
…
“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part,” Mario Savio, a student leader in the free speech movement, a campaign of civil disobedience against restrictive policies on student political activity, said 60 years ago during a campus protest. “You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop.”
…
Hannah Dugan, a Wisconsin judge, allowed a man to leave through the back doors of her courtroom, allegedly in response to the presence of immigration officers waiting to arrest him. FBI agents subsequently arrested Dugan in her Milwaukee courtroom on 25 April, charging her with obstruction.
The FBI director, Kash Patel, posted comments about her arrest on X almost immediately, and eventually posted a photograph of her arrest, handcuffed and walking toward a police cruiser, with the comment: “No one is above the law.” Digitally altered photographs of Dugan appearing to be in tears in a mugshot proliferated on social media. Trump himself reposted an image from the Libs of TikTok website of Dugan wearing a Covid-19 mask on the day of her arrest.
Three days later …
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/30/democrats-trump-resistance
President Donald Trump’s decision to strip security protections from his own former officials has left them dangerously exposed at a time of escalating global conflict and political violence in the United States, The Bulwark’s Will Saletan argued in a piece published Thursday.
According to Saletan, the convergence of foreign assassination plots and domestic political attacks is not coincidental — and Trump’s policies have made the moment even more perilous. “We’re in a dangerous moment,” he said.
“These two challenges aren’t unrelated,” Saletan wrote. “They’ve converged before. They might do so again.”
During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump insisted that if he defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, he would maintain a strict separation between his business activities and the White House. And one of MAGA Republicans’ talking points is that Trump cares so deeply about the United States that he was willing to step away from his business, put his son Eric Trump in charge of the Trump Organization, and take a hit financially in order to be president and “make American great again.”
But in fact, President Trump’s net worth has increased substantially since 2016 and continues to increase. Trump, according to his critics, is monetizing his presidency in a wide range of ways,
…
The Guardian reporter continues, “He incurred numerous accusations of first-term conflicts of interest, as foreign officials from 20 countries descended on his hotels, while Secret Service agents in Trump’s security detail were made to pay premium rates, pouring at least $10m into his bank account. Such unprecedented disregard for time-honored ethical boundaries was shocking at the time. Now, it looks merely quaint.”
During his second term, Pilkington notes, Trump has monetized his presidency with everything from promoting Tesla vehicles to receiving a jet as a gift from the Qatari government.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) told The Guardian that Trump is operating a “pay-for-play presidency.” And Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, laments that Trump and his allies “have mastered the technique of flooding the zone” by “doing so much so fast that they are overwhelming the ability of ethics groups and institutions to respond.”
So, apparently we’re bum-rushing US senators now. From The Guardian:
In video taken of the incident that has since gone viral on social media, Padilla is seen being restrained and removed from the room by Secret Service agents.“I’m Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary,” Padilla shouts, as he struggles to move past the men removing him from the premises. “Hands off!” he says at one point.Emerging afterward, Padilla, who is the ranking member of the judiciary subcommittee on immigration, citizenship and border safety, said he and his colleagues had repeatedly asked DHS for more information on its “increasingly extreme immigration enforcement actions” but had not received a response to his inquiries.
This tinhorn governor of a state where nobody lives, this puppy-murdering hack whose political career outside of MAGA World was as dead as Custer, now gets to sic her black-shirted thugs on the senior senator of a state that she and her criminal boss and all their attendant lords have been lying about, and about which she had flown to Los Angeles to lie about some more.
Dumbass in a ballcap says what? She just admitted they’re blowing up the town to get rid of the mayor and governor. If the courts ever get their teeth back, this gaffe will figure prominently in many filings.
Meanwhile, Padilla is hauled into a backroom and driven to the floor and handcuffed.
And not for nothing, but threatening and/or assaulting the holder of any federal office is a felony and could draw you five to ten in the pokey. And these goons are pretty identifiable.
And, of course, the administration’s prevarication mill went into full operation almost instantly. From The New Republic via Yahoo:
In posts on X, the official DHS account and Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin released a statement attempting to justify wrestling Padilla to the ground and handcuffing him. “Senator Padilla chose disrespectful political theatre and interrupted a live press conference without identifying himself or having his Senate security pin on as he lunged toward Secretary Noem,” the statement read.
Tricia learned to lie like this at the AEI’s Leadership Institute.
But in a video of the altercation from Padilla’s office, the senator could be heard clearly identifying himself. “Hands off! I’m Senator Alex Padilla, and I have questions for the secretary,” said the California Democrat as a security guard pushed him out of the room.
It’s clear that the goons looked at him and just saw another angry brown face. And by their reactions, Tricia and her boss are similarly afflicted.
This is also all my bollocks. Noem knows who Padilla is and, if she doesn’t, she should, and he did identify himself. Third-rate hack with a fourth-rate alibi.
And what about Speaker Moses? What did you expect?
That sanctimonious sumbitch wants Padilla censured. And he spent the afternoon hiding. If he’s a Christian, I’m an Ostrogoth.
The day was not without its burlesque, however. In a House Oversight Committee hearing, Rep. Maxwell Frost asked Chairman James (Jughead) Comer to issue a subpoena for Noem regarding the events of the day. Comer, of course, refused, probably because Padilla was not carrying Hunter Biden’s laptop at the time. And then we were off.
On Thursday night’s edition of CNN’s OutFront, Burnett picked up on a comment from CNN commentator Xochitl Hinojosa, and asked Padilla if his race had anything to do with the heavy-handed response:
BURNETT: I don’t know if you just heard what Xochitl was saying. She was saying that what she finds so unsettling as a Hispanic woman is that she feels that this happened to you because of how you look. And that as one of two sitting senators from California, those — those Secret Service agents would have known exactly who you were. And in fact, after you started talking, you said, “I’m Senator Alex Padilla”, and you said it multiple times.
Do you think that it was because of how you look?
SEN. ALEX PADILLA (D-CA): Look, I don’t know what the motives are. I think the point is this, Erin, and as I said, when I — when I came out of the building a little while after the incident, if this can happen to me, a United States senator representing the state of California, if this is how the Department of Homeland Security and the people around the secretary will treat a United States senator for having the audacity to ask a question, then imagine what they can do — imagine what they are doing to people in communities, not just throughout Los Angeles, but throughout the country.
