Tag Archives: Supreme Court

Independent: Trump team weighs releasing Ghislaine Maxwell’s interview with DOJ officials over Epstein case: report

Posted on by
Reply

It was not previously known that such a recording existed, but a final decision in whether to release it or not has yet to be made

The Trump administration is considering publicly releasing an audio recording of an interview with Ghislaine Maxwell and senior officials from the Department of Justice about Jeffrey Epstein, according to a new report.

It was not previously known that such a recording existed, and officials are currently discussing whether or not to release a transcript of the discussion between the British socialite and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Maxwell, 63, was the disgraced financier’s ex-girlfriend, and is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence after her 2021 conviction for her role in a scheme to sexually exploit and abuse multiple girls. Her attorneys have taken an appeal of her conviction to the Supreme Court.

The interview between the socialite and the DOJ came following ongoing pressure on the administration to be more transparent over the Epstein case, following a July 6 memo which stated that convicted pedophile died by suicide in 2019 and there was no evidence to support the existence of a so-called “client list.” Such claims caused uproar among the MAGA faithful.

Sources told CNN that the audio recording was currently being transcribed and digitized, but that some parts that may reveal sensitive information – like the names of victims – would need to be redacted.

The outlet reported that as of Tuesday morning, a final decision on whether to release the recording and the transcript, had not been made.

CNN also reported that, per its sources, some within the administration were concerned that making details from the interview public would bring the Epstein controversy back into the public spotlight, when many officials close to the president believe the story has largely died down.

When asked for comment by The Independent, the administration denied that any such decisions were being made about the transcript, and that Trump had already addressed the issue.

In a statement, Steven Cheung, White House Communications Director, said: “This is nothing more than CNN trying desperately to create news out of old news. He already addressed this issue in an interview with Newsmax, a real news outlet that routinely gets better ratings than CNN.”

Discussions about the recordings and transcript come after the DoJ admitted that the grand jury transcripts in Maxwell’s criminal case, contain mostly publicly available information.

Trump previously asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to make public “any and all pertinent” grand jury transcripts in both the Epstein and Maxwell cases, in order to stymie the ongoing furore.

A judge overseeing Maxwell’s case asked the government to provide more information to the court. The department provided a version of the transcripts that identifies which information is not publicly available. However, Bondi admitted in a Monday filing that “much” of the information in the transcripts was already made publicly available.

Trump weighs releasing Ghislaine Maxwell’s Epstein interview with DOJ: report
It was not previously known that such a recording existed, but a final decision in whether to release it or not has yet to be made

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/ghislaine-maxwell-doj-interview-epstein-b2802282.html

San Francisco Chronicle: Trump asks SCOTUS to allow profiling in California ICE raids

Posted on by
Reply

Any attorney who files or argues in favor of this appeal should be disbarred!

Any justice who votes in favor of this appeal should impeached and removed!

The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to allow officers to arrest suspected undocumented immigrants in Southern California because of how they look, what language they’re speaking and what kind of work they’re doing, factors that federal judges have found to be baseless and discriminatory.

Last month’s ruling by U.S. District Judge Maame Frimpong, upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, “threatens to upend immigration officials’ ability to enforce the immigration laws in the Central District of California,” D. John Sauer, the Justice Department’s solicitor general, said Thursday in a filing with the Supreme Court. “This Court should end this attempted judicial usurpation of immigration-enforcement functions” and suspend the injunction while the case is argued in the lower courts, Sauer wrote.

The Central District, which includes Los Angeles County and six other counties, has nearly 20 million residents, more than any other federal court district in the nation. It became the focus of legal disputes over immigration enforcement after President Donald Trump took control of the California National Guard in June and sent thousands of its troops to the streets in Los Angeles to defend immigration agents against protesters of workplace raids.

A 9th Circuit panel upheld Trump’s commandeering of the National Guard, rejecting a lawsuit by Gov. Gavin Newsom. But Frimpong, an appointee of President Joe Biden, ruled July 11 that immigration officers were overstepping legal boundaries in making the arrests, and issued a temporary restraining order against their practices.

In a ruling Aug. 1 upholding the judge’s decision, another 9th Circuit panel said federal officers had been seizing people from the streets and workplaces based on four factors: their apparent race or ethnicity, the language they spoke or accent in their voice, their presence in a location such as a car wash or an agricultural site, and the type of work they were doing.

That would justify the arrest of anyone “who appears Hispanic, speaks Spanish or English with an accent, wears work clothes, and stands near a carwash, in front of a Home Depot, or at a bus stop,” the panel’s three judges said. They agreed with Frimpong that officers could not rely on any or all of those factors as the basis for an arrest.

But the Trump administration’s lawyers said those factors were valid reasons for immigration arrests in the Central District.

In April, U.S. District Judge Jennifer Thurston issued a similar order against the Border Patrol, prohibiting immigration arrests in the Eastern District of California unless officers have a reasonable suspicion that a person is breaking the law. The district is based in Sacramento and extends from Fresno to the Oregon border.

“You can’t just walk up to people with brown skin and say, ‘Give me your papers,’” Thurston, a Biden appointee, said at a court hearing, CalMatters reported. The Trump administration has appealed her injunction to the 9th Circuit.

The administration’s compliance with the Central District court order was questioned by immigrant advocates on Wednesday after a raid on a Home Depot store near MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, in which officers said 16 Latin American workers were detained. An American Civil Liberties Union attorney, Mohammad Tajsar, said the government “seems unwilling to fulfill the aims of its racist mass deportation agenda without breaking the law.”

There is ample evidence that many businesses in the district “unlawfully employ illegal aliens and are known to hire them on a day-to-day basis; that certain types of jobs — like day labor, landscaping, and construction — are most attractive to illegal aliens because they often do not require paperwork; that the vast majority of illegal aliens in the District come from Mexico or Central America; and that many only speak Spanish,” Sauer told the Supreme Court.

“No one thinks that speaking Spanish or working in construction always creates reasonable suspicion” that someone is an illegal immigrant, the Justice Department attorney said. “But in many situations, such factors — alone or in combination — can heighten the likelihood that someone is unlawfully present in the United States.”

The Supreme Court told lawyers for the immigrants to file a response by Tuesday. 

The case is Noem v. Perdomo, No. 25A169.

Trump asks SCOTUS to allow profiling in California ICE raids
The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to let officers arrest suspected undocumented immigrants in Southern California because of how they look.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/scotus-immigration-california-20809308.php

Raw Story: Supreme Court used wrong statute to make monumental birthright citizenship ruling: expert

Posted on by
Reply

Conservative legal scholar Jack Goldsmith revealed that the U.S. Supreme Court relied on an incorrectly cited statute to justify its shocking birthright citizen ruling.

Goldsmith, a former United States Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel under the George W. Bush administration, wrote that the decision written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett contained a key error, as Slate legal reporter Mark Joseph Stern summarized.

“Justice Barrett’s opinion in the universal injunction case rests on an error: For the purposes of historical analysis, she looked at the wrong statute and got the relevant date wrong by nearly *a century,*” wrote Stern on Bluesky Tuesday.

Goldsmith’s analysis looked at 18 interim orders that deal specifically with President Donald Trump’s administration. Notably, he specified that the cases involving a kind of ban on universal injunctions came amid lower courts’ efforts to temporarily pause Trump’s executive orders from going into effect until after they can be litigated.

The ruling in June stated that injunctions should only affect those involved in legal challenges, and shouldn’t be applied over huge swathes of the public.

It specifically referred to injunctions involving challenges to Trump’s attempts to limit birthright citizenship — a Constitutional law that states anybody born in the U.S. is a citizen. It said injunctions could only affect individuals or groups involved in the legal action, not the nation as a whole.

“The Court stated that Section 11 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 ‘endowed federal courts with jurisdiction over ‘all suits . . . in equity,’ and still today . . . ‘is what authorizes the federal courts to issue equitable remedies,'” the article cites the ruling.

However, he noted, it appears the Court didn’t look at the text or context of Section 11 when making its ruling.

“The Court’s claim that equitable remedies are authorized by Section 11 and thus ‘must have a founding-era antecedent’ is novel,'” the article continues, meaning that it’s new or unusual. “It [is] also questionable since Section 11 cannot have authorized equitable remedies in CASA.”

That’s when Goldsmith drops the hammer, saying “Section 11 is a jurisdictional statute” and that the jurisdiction in the CASA case was “based on federal question jurisdiction and suits against the United States. Neither head of jurisdiction is mentioned in Section 11, because neither existed until the last quarter of the nineteenth century. And none of the three heads of subject matter jurisdiction in Section 11 has any legal connection to CASA.”

So, under the Supreme Court’s logic “that jurisdictional statutes authorize equitable remedies, it should have looked to the state of remedies beginning in 1875, when the federal question jurisdiction statute was enacted, not 1789.”

So it seems that Amy Coney Barrett is not much brighter than the fascist who nominated her in 2020.

Supreme Court used wrong statute to make monumental birthright citizenship ruling: expert

https://www.rawstory.com/supreme-court-amy-coney-barrett

NBC News: Stanford student newspaper sues Trump officials over immigration law that they say led to chilling of free speech

Posted on by
Reply

The Stanford Daily accused the administration of using immigration provisions to threaten deportation, leading to censorship and violating First Amendment rights.

Stanford University’s student newspaper sued the Trump administration Wednesday over two provisions in federal immigration law that it says the officials have wielded against those with pro-Palestinian views.

The Stanford Daily, in addition to two former college students, filed the lawsuit against Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, accusing the administration of using the provisions to threaten deportation and the revocation of visas. They say the situation has led to censorship and violations of free speech rights.

The paper’s staff members who are on visas have self-censored and declined assignments related to the war in Gaza, fearful that their reporting could jeopardize their lawful immigration status, the lawsuit said.

“In the United States of America, no one should fear a midnight knock on the door for voicing the wrong opinion,” Conor Fitzpatrick, an attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which is helping represent the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “Free speech isn’t a privilege the government hands out. Under our Constitution it is the inalienable right of every man, woman, and child.”

A senior State Department official declined to comment and directed NBC News to comments Rubio has about visa holders and complying with U.S. law.

In April, Rubio wrote in an opinion piece published on Fox News that he would be taking a “zero-tolerance approach to foreign nationals who abet terrorist organizations.”

“The Supreme Court has made clear for decades that visa holders or other aliens cannot use the First Amendment to shield otherwise impermissible actions taken to support designated foreign terrorist organizations like Hamas, Hizballah, or the Houthis, or violate other U.S. laws,” Rubio said.

Tricia McLaughlin, spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, described the lawsuit as “baseless.”

“There is no room in the United States for the rest of the world’s terrorist sympathizers, and we are under no obligation to admit them or let them stay here,” she said in a statement.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs take aim at the Deportation Provision and Revocation Provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act. The first provision allows the secretary of state to deport noncitizens if the secretary “personally determines that the alien’s admission would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.” The second gives the secretary the power to revoke a visa or documentation at his or her discretion.

As the lawsuit points out, the Trump administration has cited the Deportation Provision as the basis for trying to deport Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested and detained for more than three months. Similarly, the administration used the Revocation Provision to detain Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk, who has also since been released.

Because of the administration’s use of the statutes, the lawsuit said, the Stanford Daily has received a number of requests from lawfully present noncitizens to have their names, quotes or photos removed from articles. Many international students have stopped speaking to the paper’s journalists, and current and former writers have asked for their opinion editorials to be taken down, the lawsuit said.

“The First Amendment cements America’s promise that the government may not subject a speaker to disfavored treatment because those in power do not like his or her message,” the lawsuit said. “And when a federal statute collides with First Amendment rights, the Constitution prevails.”

One of the unnamed plaintiffs appeared on the Canary Mission, the suit said. The website, run by an anonymous group, has published a detailed database of students, professors and others who it says have shared anti-Israel and antisemitic viewpoints. It has been accused of doxxing and harassment, in addition to launching personal attacks that depict pro-Palestinian activists as being in “support of terrorism,” the Middle East Studies Association of North America said. The plaintiff has stopped publishing and “voicing her true opinions” on the Palestinian territories and Israel, the suit said.

Canary Mission has told NBC News that it documents people and groups who “promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews” across the political spectrum. It did not respond to criticisms of its work.

The plaintiffs are asking the court to issue preliminary and permanent injunctions that block the officials from using the provisions against them based on engaging in what they consider protected speech.

“There’s real fear on campus and it reaches into the newsroom,” Greta Reich, the Stanford Daily’s editor-in-chief, said in a statement. “The Daily is losing the voices of a significant portion of our student population.”

Stanford student newspaper sues Trump officials over immigration law that has chilled free speech
The Stanford Daily accused the administration of using immigration provisions to threaten deportation, leading to censorship and violating First Amendment rights.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/stanford-student-newspaper-sues-trump-officials-immigration-law-rcna223477

Atlanta Black Star News: ‘Inherently Unreliable’: Trump’s Attempt to Clear His Name Backfires As a Blatant Lie from Maxwell’s Past Resurfaces and Destroys Her Credibility

Posted on by
Reply

From the rally stage last year, Donald Trump hyped the Epstein files as proof of a Democratic coverup to protect pedophiles who never faced justice.

Now, as public scrutiny lands squarely on the president, he’s calling the whole thing a “hoax.”

It’s a striking turn for Trump, who once amplified conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein’s black book and teased his base with promises of transparency. But with the recent disclosure that Trump’s name appears in the unsealed Epstein documents, and his administration suddenly going soft on convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, critics say Trump is no longer just dodging questions—he’s actively working to bury the answers.

The latest red flag? Trump’s own deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche — formerly one of his personal lawyers — conducted a nine-hour interview with Maxwell over two days last month. According to sources familiar with the meetings, Maxwell told Blanche that Trump had “never done anything in her presence that would have caused concern.”

But not everyone on social media was buying it.

“Shocking. You’re telling me Trump’s former lawyer turned Deputy AG ‘interviewed’ Ghislaine Maxwell while she is desperate for a pardon and Trump is publicly suggesting he might give her one, and she said she didn’t witness him commit any crimes? The fix is in,” the group Republicans Against Trump posted on X.

Blanche confirmed that Maxwell “didn’t hold anything back” and was asked about “one hundred different people.” But Trump’s insistence that the interview was “totally above board” hasn’t left anyone feeling convinced.

Making matters worse, days after the interview, Maxwell was quietly transferred from a low-security prison in Florida to the Bryan Federal Prison Camp in Texas — one of the most lenient facilities in the country, described by former corrections officials as a “country club.”

“Someone gave special preference to Maxwell that, to my knowledge, no other inmate currently in the Federal Bureau of Prisons has received,” said Robert Hood, former warden of the Florence supermax prison, who spoke with The Washington Post. “Inmates, if they have a sex offense, are not going to a place like that, period. It’s truly unheard of.”

Critics now see the nine-hour sit-down between Maxwell and Trump’s handpicked former lawyer as a quid pro quo in motion. As one observer put it: “Trump’s old lawyer, now Deputy AG, has a cozy nine-hour chat with Ghislaine Maxwell, who’s practically begging for a pardon, and—surprise, surprise—she swears Trump never did anything sketchy around her.”

Maxwell, the convicted accomplice of Epstein, was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years for trafficking and abusing underage girls. Federal prison guidelines state that sex offenders — particularly those with sentences higher than 10 years — should not be housed in minimum-security facilities like Bryan. Yet that’s exactly where she now resides, complete with arts and crafts, a dog-training program, and unfenced dormitories in a residential neighborhood 100 miles from Houston.

Even Trump feigned surprise: “I didn’t know about it at all, no. I read about it just like you did. It’s not a very uncommon thing,” he said when asked if he approved the transfer.

But according to multiple sources, the prison move followed her voluntary sit-down with Blanche — part of what ABC News described as an effort to defuse growing criticism that the Justice Department was shielding information about Epstein’s network.

That criticism intensified after Attorney General Pam Bondi declared the DOJ found no client list, no blackmail material, and no justification for further investigation — despite admitting Epstein harmed more than 1,000 victims.

Trump’s followers were among the loudest voices demanding answers. In 2019, his top advisers circulated theories about Epstein’s connections to powerful Democrats. Trump himself fueled suspicion when he publicly wondered if Epstein had been murdered. Yet now, as those same followers demand full disclosure, Trump’s tone has shifted dramatically.

“I want to release everything. I just don’t want people to get hurt,” Trump told Newsmax last week. “We’d like to release everything, but we don’t want people to get hurt that shouldn’t be hurt.”

Who those “people” are, Trump wouldn’t say. But the about-face has many asking whether Trump is trying to protect himself — or someone close to him.

The president’s name does appear in Epstein’s files. His associations with both Epstein and Maxwell have long been documented, including photos of the trio together. Still, Maxwell told Blanche that Trump “never did anything concerning” during the years they were acquainted.

The transcript of the conversation has not yet been released, although the DOJ is considering making it public — possibly as early as this week. An audio recording also exists, but there’s no confirmation yet that it will be shared.

Critics questioned how much credibility Maxwell’s claims carry, especially given her own legal jeopardy — and her history of lying under oath. She was previously found to have perjured herself at least twice in depositions related to Epstein’s abuse, casting further doubt on her recent claims that Trump “never did anything.”

Prosecutors said she lied when claiming she wasn’t aware of Epstein’s efforts to recruit underage girls, denied knowing anyone under 18 had ever been on his properties, and falsely stated she had never engaged in sexual activity with other women or seen sex toys at his residences.

Joyce Alene, the first US attorney nominated by Obama posted on X,

“Trump could give Ghislaine Maxwell a pardon on his last day in office, in exchange for favorable testimony now (SCOTUS has already said he can’t be prosecuted for it). She knows he’s her only chance for release. That means any “new” testimony she offers is inherently unreliable unless backed by evidence.”

She followed that up with more context for anyone who wasn’t clear, “And favorable could mean a lot of things here: exonerating him, testifying about other people that MAGA has long believed were involved with Epstein. She can’t be trusted because Trump can’t be trusted–the pardon power is his to wield for his personal benefit and she knows that.”

New York Times best selling author Seth Abramson jumped in the mix to respond to Alene, “Everyone must remember this. Anything Ghislaine Maxwell says at this point is without value because we cannot know what she was paid to induce any new Perjury (she has been charged with it twice in the past) until the final day of the second Trump term…should there ever be one.”

She’s currently appealing her conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court, and her attorney, David Markus, has said she “would welcome any relief.”

Her lawyers are also fighting the government’s request to unseal grand jury records from her and Epstein’s cases, arguing that releasing them would violate her due process rights and feed “public curiosity” at the expense of fairness.

“Jeffrey Epstein is dead,” the attorneys wrote. “Ghislaine Maxwell is not. Whatever interest the public may have in Epstein, that interest cannot justify a broad intrusion into grand jury secrecy.”

Yet some victims argue the public has a right to know. Annie Farmer, who testified at Maxwell’s trial, supports releasing the grand jury material with identifying details redacted.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department has said it wants to unseal the records precisely because of public interest, arguing transparency is essential—even while making clear that only law enforcement personnel testified before the grand juries.

Trump was forced to address the growing scandal on Wednesday as outrage over his administration’s handling of the Epstein case spiraled beyond control — even among his own supporters.

The political firestorm was consuming the White House. With some of his most loyal backers demanding transparency, Trump is instead digging in — denouncing the entire controversy as a “hoax” and attacking Republicans who disagree with him as “weaklings.”

In a Truth Social post Wednesday morning, the president lashed out at his critics, comparing the uproar over the Epstein files to past scandals like the Russia election interference investigation and Hunter Biden’s laptop.

“These Scams and Hoaxes are all the Democrats are good at—it’s all they have,” Trump wrote. “Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullsh-t,’ hook, line, and sinker.”

Trump didn’t stop there.

“I don’t want their support anymore!” he added. “Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats’ work… I have had more success in 6 months than perhaps any President in our Country’s history, and all these people want to talk about is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax.”

Later, he doubled down during a press spray at the White House, brushing off the Epstein controversy as a “waste of time.”

“They’re wasting their time with a guy who obviously had some very serious problems, who died three, four years ago,” he said. “I’d rather talk about the success we have with the economy, the best we’ve ever had… Instead, they want to talk about the Epstein hoax. The sad part is, it’s people doing the Democrats’ work. They’re stupid people.”

When pressed Thursday on whether Trump had asked Bondi to appoint a special prosecutor in the Epstein case, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded bluntly:

“The president would not recommend a special prosecutor in the Epstein case. That’s how he feels.”

The defensive posture highlights deepening divisions inside the GOP — and even within Trump’s inner circle — over how the administration has handled the fallout.

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino reportedly clashed with Bondi over her decision to block the release of additional Epstein-related documents. Several high-profile conservatives have since called for Bondi’s resignation.

Trump, however, has defended Bondi, saying she has “handled it very well.”

‘Inherently Unreliable’: Trump’s Attempt to Clear His Name Backfires As a Blatant Lie from Maxwell’s Past Resurfaces and Destroys Her Credibility
“Trump’s desperate attempt to clear his name backfires as a past lie from Maxwell resurfaces, shattering her credibility. Discover the sh…

Daily Beast: Hegseth Posts Video of Pastor Saying Women Shouldn’t Vote

Posted on by
Reply

The evangelical leader says in the clip that the America where gay sex was outlawed was “not a totalitarian hellhole.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reposted a video that features the leader of the Christian evangelical movement he follows calling to make gay sex illegal.

The segment from CNN focused on Doug Wilson, co-founder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC).

“In the late ’70s and early ’80s, sodomy was a felony in all 50 states,” Wilson says in the clip. “That America of that day was not a totalitarian hellhole.”

He adds that he wishes America would bring back those laws, which made sex between people of the same sex illegal. In fact, sodomy was a felony punishable by imprisonment or hard labor in every state until 1962, when Illinois became the first state to remove criminal penalties for consensual sodomy. The Supreme Court invalidated bans on gay sex in its 2003 ruling, Lawrence v Texas.

At other points in the video, Wilson says that some American slave owners were “decent human beings” and suggests that women should focus on having and raising children.

“Women are the kind of people that people come out of,” Wilson says.

The video also features a female congregation member saying that she “submits” to her husband and a pastor from the movement calling to repeal the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

“All of Christ for All of Life,” Hegseth wrote alongside the clip. The CNN report noted that Hegseth has publicly declared his support for Wilson in the past.

Asked for comment, chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell told the Daily Beast that Hegseth is a “proud” member of a church associated with CREC and “very much appreciates many of Mr. Wilson’s writings and teachings.”

During the nomination process for defense secretary, Hegseth’s past comments arguing that women should not be allowed to serve in military combat roles resurfaced as a source of controversy.

Hegseth walked back the comments after it became clear that they might impede his nomination. He was eventually confirmed with a tie-breaking vote cast by Vice President JD Vance.

Since taking over the Pentagon, Hegseth has instituted more stringent fitness standards for women, and removed at least five senior female military officials from leadership roles.

In May, Hegseth sparked controversy when he brought his personal pastor, Brooks Potteiger, to the Pentagon to lead a monthly prayer circle. The pastor praised President Donald Trump as divinely appointed.

Hegseth, despite being a devout Christian, was rocked by reports during the nomination process detailing his repeated infidelity during his first marriage. He has been married three times.

Hegseth also has several controversial pro-Christian tattoos, including one that has been criticized as anti-Muslim, and others that allude to the Crusades.

Pete Hegseth Posts Video of Pastor Calling for Gay Sex Ban
The evangelical leader says in the clip that the America where gay sex was outlawed was “not a totalitarian hellhole.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pete-hegseth-posts-video-of-pastor-saying-women-shouldnt-vote

Independent: Married immigrants trying to get green cards could be deported, new Trump-era guidance says

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Married immigrants trying to get green cards could be deported, new Trump policy says
Immigration authorities now say people seeking permanent lawful status through a citizen spouse or family member can still be removed

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-uscis-green-card-deportations-married-immigrants-b2803296.html

Alternet: There’s a very simple reason why Trump will never release the Epstein files | Opinion

Posted on by
Reply

Let’s get right to it, because time is not on our side, America: Donald Trump won’t order the release of the Epstein files because he is prominently featured in them.

Bare minimum, he associated with pedophiles.

Why is this so hard to understand?

Why isn’t this the end of the road for this monster?

Why isn’t this the only thread that is being pulled on right now with urgency by our bought-off and/or incompetent mainstream media?

Or did I just answer my own question?

Why isn’t every American calling (202) 224-3121 (that’s the U.S. Capitol switchboard) and demanding that Trump release the Epstein files like he said he would on the campaign trail?

Thank God, identifying and stomping out pedophiles is not yet a partisan issue in America.

An unheard of 82 percent of Americans — including 76 percent of Republicans — want these files released immediately. And while Democrats are doing what they procedurally can to get at the files, it will take time that we should all have decided by now that we do not have.

Shouldn’t Americans know, and just as soon as possible, the full details of their president’s relationship with a man who raped children? And shouldn’t THAT finally end the long, national nightmare we have endured for 10 years, while this dirty old man breaks everything in his blurry sight?

・We know without a shadow of a doubt that the man is a grotesque racist.

・We know without a shadow of a doubt he is a convicted felon, who assaults women.

・We know without a shadow of a doubt he cheats on his taxes even more than he has cheated on all his wives.

・We know without a shadow of a doubt he is a nuclear-powered liar, who is simply incapable of telling the truth, and lied 30,573 times the first time he tried to sink this country.

・We know without a shadow of a doubt he invited Russia to help him win the 2016 election, and then refused to call them on it in Helsinki.

・We know without a shadow of a doubt he is using the White House as his own personal ATM, and by many estimates has already pocketed billions of our dollars in crypto and airplanes, while taking endless vacations to his golf properties all over the world on our dime.

・We know without a shadow of a doubt he stalked girls in the dressing rooms of Miss Teen USA beauty competitions, because “(He’s) seen it all before, and (he’s) the owner of the pageant. And therefore (he’s) inspecting it.”

These are his words.

HIS WORDS.

And now we know that the shadow of doubt concerning his real relationship with Epstein and his victims is receding into the light, because this is where we are right now, good people:

Given Trump’s new-found executive powers granted to him by our corrupt Supreme Court that are fit for a king, we can be assured that if there wasn’t any damning evidence in these melting files that point to grotesque behavior with stolen children — or even better for him, there were names of his political enemies mentioned in the thing — he would have ordered these files replace the Bible in all these Christo-fascist churches as must-read material for his gurgling and snorting cult. In other words: It would be EVERYWHERE right now. There would be endless celebratory, back-patting press conferences, and Trump would order that it be read slowly, and with emphasis, on the CBS Evening News, which he recently acquired to add to his budding propaganda kingdom. You couldn’t escape it.

Except he’s doing none of this, is he?

Instead, he’s turning that certain color of rust orange, as he bends over at the waist, barrel-butt out, his 6-foot tie scraping his fat ankles, while his little, chubby hands do that weird accordion thing as he lashes out at anybody within his odious vicinity.

He’s posting INSANE distractions on his SOCIAL media channels THAT are ODDly capitalized and carrY the grammatical WAIT of a 4-year-OLD who has Trapped himself in a DOOR jam.

They have quietly moved the disgusting Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s ex-girlfriend and co-conspirator, to a cushy federal prison in Texas. WHY?

Trump has no answers, which is why we need to keep asking this question:

WHY WON’T YOU JUST SHUT UP AND RELEASE THE DAMN FILES LIKE YOU SAID YOU WOULD?

Meantime, the stink has somehow gotten even worse, because there is breaking news that it has taken only six months for Trump to destroy the solid economy Joe Biden helped meticulously build after inheriting Trump’s mess in 2021 following the attempted insurrection.

Trump inherited the strongest economy in the entire world, and has screwed it up in record time. Job growth has stalled again, and is at a 16-year low — or the last time a Democrat was fixing a battered economy left in shambles by a Republican.

Prices are rising, not falling.

Why did anybody think it would be any different this time around?

Here’a another fact that never gets enough attention: Democrats make economies and Republicans break them. Go ahead, look that up.

I could stand to hear a helluva lot more about this, too, because while billionaires are being rewarded like never before in America, the rest of us are getting royally screwed.

The numbers back this up.

Right now, though, I want to know why our president is providing safe haven for pedophiles.

Based on what we know, you’d have to be a damn fool not to believe the worst.

There’s a very simple reason why Trump will never release the Epstein files | Opinion

https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/trump-epstein-files-2673859787

Inquisitr: “It’s Just a Matter of Time” — Expert Warns About Donald Trump’s Next Move That Could Cost Americans Badly

Posted on by
Reply

Donald Trump could get inspired by the government in Israel and try to do what they are doing right now, expert warned.

Critics have not spared Donald Trump since his reign began for the second time in January. Now, George Conway, a conservative attorney, has also warned Americans about what might happen to the nation if his administration continues its endeavors. Conway, who has been a longtime vocal critic of Trump, commented that he is steering the United States toward a grave constitutional crisis.

He made those remarks in a report on the ongoing turmoil in Israel, where Benjamin Netanyahu’s government voted to fire the attorney general who is prosecuting him over a corruption case. Although the Supreme Court has blocked the move pending judicial review, one government minister is prepared to ignore the decision. Conway provided the ordeal as an example of what Donald Trump might try to do next in America.

He tweeted, “Mark my words. Trump will defy our Supreme Court, too. It’s just a matter of time.” His comments came after the Trump administration tried to dodge a bunch of Supreme Court orders since his second term began. For example, in the Kilmer Abergo Garcia case, as part of the immigration crackdown, ICE wrongfully detained and sent Garcia to the notorious El Salvador prison, a facility known for its extreme conditions. His case created a vast controversy, especially when the administration threatened to ignore strong court orders against it.

Meanwhile, Karl Rove, a longtime Republican strategist, noted that Donald Trump’s problematic moves could cost him badly. During a Fox News interview over the weekend, he noted that the President is losing his strong grounds, which could result in a bad outcome during next year’s midterm elections.

“While he has strengthened the support among right-leaning Republicans, he has also sort of lost ground among independents, who at this point are disposed to say, ‘I’m voting Democrat in the midterm election,” Rove said, as per Huff Post. 

“To me, what’s ironic is, is that the Trump administration is making the same mistake that the Biden administration made,” the strategist added. He explained that there were mostly three issues that got Trump elected: the economy, the border, and inflation. While the President is definitely working on border issues, inflation and the economy seem to be the least priorities for his administration right now.

“Well, now we have ‘the golden age of American prosperity has returned,’ and Americans are not feeling that. I think that’s a big mistake for the White House and is likely to come back and bite ’em in the midterm elections,” Rove concluded.

“It’s Just a Matter of Time” — Expert Warns About Donald Trump’s Next Move That Could Cost Americans Badly
A conservative attorney warned that it would just be matter of time before Donald Trump starts taking action against people who would want to expose him.

Raw Story: ‘Family separation on steroids’: Expert lays into Trump plan to target newborn babies

Posted on by
Reply

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.

‘Family separation on steroids’: Expert lays into Trump plan to target newborn babies

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-family-separation