Trump Press Sec. Dodges Key Question on Identifying “Gang Members”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt refused Wednesday to reveal how the government had identified the hundreds of supposed gang members who were flown to El Salvador over the weekend.

Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act on Saturday, hoping to use the eighteenth-century law to suspend due process and deport scores of noncitizens who his administration claimed were members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. But the government has yet to provide any information on who those individuals are, or exactly how they were determined to be members of the gang, now declared an invading force.

During a White House press briefing Wednesday, ABC News’s Rachel Scott asked Leavitt to reveal any actual information about the hundreds of people the government had deported.

“Can the administration provide any more details on how authorities determined that each of those men were in fact members of a gang?” asked Scott. “And if the White House can publish images, photos, videos of those men, why can’t the administration just release basic information like their identities and names?”

“We are not going to reveal operational details about a counterterrorism operation,” Leavitt said. “But what I can assure you, as I said on Monday, we have the highest degree of confidence in our ICE agents and our customs and border control agents who have committed their lives to targeting illegal criminals in our country, particularly foreign terrorists.”

Leavitt insisted that immigration authorities “had great evidence and indication” that those who were deported were foreign terrorists, or members of the Tren de Aragua gang.

Authorities “were 100 percent confident in the individuals that were sent home on these flights, and in the president’s executive authority to do that,” Leavitt said.

But there was cause for concern on the government’s judgment from the beginning. Judge James Boasberg’s original order Saturday was to prevent the deportation of five of the individuals, after two legal advocacy groups said that some individuals had been falsely labeled gang members. Boasberg later issued a second order for a total stay on any individual deported under the AEA—but by then, planes were already in the air.

Meanwhile, ICE has openly admitted that it has nothing on several of the noncitizens who were deported, and implied that the lack of evidence was the very thing that helped the government assume their guilt.

ICE Acting Field Office Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations Robert Cerna argued that “the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose,” and “demonstrates that they are terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete profile,” according to ABC News.

The family of one man, Francisco Javier Garcia, who was among the 261 individuals deported to prison in El Salvador, claimed that their loved one did not have a criminal record in the U.S. or in Venezuela, according to NBC Miami.

It appears that at least a few of the individuals rushed on the planes were marked as gang members simply because of their tattoos.

The White House said that of the 261 people who were deported, 101 were removed as part of “regular immigration proceedings.”

A French scientist on his way to a conference in the United States was allegedly denied entry by Customs and Border Patrol over messages found on his phone that criticized President Trump’s science cuts.

The French newspaper Le Monde reports that on March 9, a space researcher was randomly selected upon arrival in Houston for a search, and CBP found messages criticizing the Trump administration’s treatment of scientists, which, according to the agency, “conveyed hatred of Trump & could be qualified as terrorism.”

The researcher’s phone and computer were allegedly confiscated, and he was sent back to Europe the next day. The news prompted the attention of the French government, which expressed alarm.

“I was told with concern that a French researcher, on a mission for the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), who was going to a conference near Houston, was banned from entering the US before being expelled,” said France’s Minister of Higher Education and Research Philippe Baptiste, in a statement Wednesday. “This would have been taken by the US authorities because the researcher’s phone contained exchanges with colleagues and friendly relations in which he expressed a personal opinion on the Trump administration’s research policy.”

According to one source cited by Agence France-Presse, CBP said that the French researcher expressed “hate and conspiracy messages,” prompting an FBI investigation, only for the charges to be dropped later. Another source said the scientist was banned due to messages “that can be described as terrorism.”

The incident marks a disturbing change in how visitors to the United States are treated. Legitimate criticism of the Trump administration occurs everywhere, and it’s no secret that Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency effort has resulted in millions of dollars in cuts to scientific research. The idea that criticism of this would rise to the level of terrorism and result in someone being barred from the U.S. is absurd.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell confirmed that Trump’s tariffs will make inflation worse.

“How much of the higher inflation forecast for this year is due to tariffs, and since the policy path remains the same, are you effectively reading this as a one-time price level shock?” a reporter asked Powell at his press conference on Wednesday. 

“You may have seen that goods inflation moved up pretty significantly in the first two months of the year.… Some of it—the answer is, clearly, some of it, a good part of it—is coming from tariffs,” Powell replied. “We’ll be working, and so will other forecasts, to try to find the best possible way to separate non-tariff inflation from tariff inflation.”

Powell also noted that Trump’s tariffs have made it harder for the economy to achieve price stability for consumers and for the Fed to get back to its goal of 2 percent inflation. 

“I think we were getting closer and closer to that. I wouldn’t say we were at that. Inflation was running around two and a half percent for some time,” Powell said. “I do think with the arrival of the tariff inflation, further progress may be delayed. The [Summary of Economic Projections] doesn’t really show further downward progress on inflation this year, and that’s really due to the tariffs coming in.” 

Trump has insisted that his tariffs—for now, just 10 percent on imports from China with broader tariffs on the way on April 2—are merely transitionary policies that will help consumers much more than they hurt. “Look, what I have to do is build a strong country,” the president said last week as his tariffs caused the stock market to tumble. “The tariffs could go up as time goes by, and they may go up. We may go up with some tariffs. I don’t think we’ll go down, but we may go up.”

We heard it from the horse’s mouth: Trump is shooting himself and every American consumer in the foot by levying aggressive tariffs on imports, all while promising to lower inflation. He’s insisting that he can have both. That couldn’t be further from the truth. 

President Donald Trump’s administration is going all in on smearing the federal judge who ordered the White House to hold off on its massive deportations—and now it’s just making stuff up.

During a press briefing Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt railed against Judge James Boasberg, who called a hearing after the Trump administration allegedly defied his order to pause deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.

As Trump’s lead propagandist, Leavitt attempted to paint Boasberg as “a Democrat activist,” but unfortunately for her, she got her facts wrong.  

“He was appointed by Barack Obama, his wife has donated more than $10,000 to Democrats, and he has consistently shown his disdain for this president and his policies, and it’s unacceptable,” she said.

NBC News’s Garrett Haake was forced to step in, correcting Leavitt’s mistake. “Judge Boasberg was originally appointed by George W. Bush, and then elevated by Barack Obama,” Haake said. “Just feel like I should clear that up.”

Boasberg was first appointed to D.C. Superior Court in 2002 by Bush, and then appointed to the federal bench by Obama in 2011. In 2014, he was appointed to the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court by Chief Justice John Roberts, where he served a seven-year term. 

Haake also asked whether Trump was serious about pursuing his threat to impeach Boasberg, considering that it would require a whopping 67 votes in the Senate. Roberts issued a rare statement Tuesday admonishing Trump, saying that calling for impeachment was not an “appropriate” response to a ruling the president didn’t like. 

“The president has made it clear that he believes this judge in this case should be impeached. And he has also made it clear that he has great respect for the Chief Justice John Roberts, and its incumbent upon the Supreme Court to rein in these activist judges,” Leavitt said. “These partisan activists are undermining the judicial branch by doing so. We have co-equal branches of government for a reason, and the president feels very strongly about that.”

But the main person undermining the power of the federal judiciary is Trump himself, who has decided to claim that any judge who rules against him is a partisan “lunatic.” He’s helped by members of his administration who execute his, seemingly more often than not, unlawful wishes. 

Within the past few days alone, Trump has been hit by an onslaught of legal decisions blocking his administration on everything from DOGE’s mass firing of probationary workers to the dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development, and the ban on transgender service members in the U.S. military, to name a few. 

During a tense hearing Monday, Boasberg had succinctly summarized the Trump administration’s position on his order, and the rule of law more generally, as “We don’t care, we’ll do what we want.”

Democrats aren’t so sure that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer should continue to front the party.

Several Democratic lawmakers in the House of Representatives believe that the New York lawmaker should “step down” after he pushed his caucus to back the GOP budget resolution Friday.

They include Illinois Representative Delia Ramirez and Maryland Representative Glenn Ivey.

“I’ve got no personal beef with Schumer, I think he’s a talented guy, but for me the bigger question is: Is he going to do this again?” Ivey told Axios Wednesday, looking toward the next government funding deadline in September. “When this comes back up in six months, is he going to take the same approach or not? If he’s still on that track, I’m for moving on.”

But Ivey and Ramirez’s colleagues believe that more lawmakers interested in a Schumer resignation are hiding in the woodwork.

“I think there are some already there but just haven’t been asked directly or avoided the question,” an anonymous House Democrat told Axios.

The progressive group Indivisible called on Schumer to “step aside” on Saturday, accusing him of having “surrendered leverage” while handing Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their congressional allies the keys to dismantle government agencies and public services.

Schumer, along with eight other Democrats in the upper chamber, voted in favor of a budget that will strip billions from Medicaid in order to pay for an extension to Trump’s 2017 tax plan, a proposal that overwhelmingly benefits corporations and is projected to add as much as $15 trillion to the national deficit.

Republicans could not have passed the short-term budget without their help.

Schumer saw the vote as a potential salve on the eve of a government shutdown that he and his allies believed would temporarily hand Trump more control. House Democrats, including former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, strongly disagreed, arguing that the party should instead have pushed for an extension that would give them more time to negotiate the details of the resolution.

Frustration has apparently bubbled all the way to the top. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries dodged a question last week on Schumer’s future, though by Tuesday, he clarified that he still believes Schumer should be involved in Democratic leadership.

Medicaid insures more than 70 million Americans. The popular social program, established in 1965 under President Lyndon B. Johnson, represents nearly $1 out of every $5 spent on health care in the U.S. It pays for more than 41 percent of births in America, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, and is the largest financier of nursing home care in the country, according to HuffPost.

The White House made a confusing claim on Wednesday: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is welcoming American ownership of his country’s nuclear and electric power plants.

Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt proudly announced the news during a press briefing.

On their call, Trump and Zelenskiy “discussed Ukraine’s electrical supply and nuclear power plants,” Leavitt said, according to CBS News’s Jennifer Jacobs. “He said that the United States could be very helpful in running those plants. With his electricity and utility expertise, American ownership of those plants would be the best protection for that infrastructure and support for Ukrainian energy infrastructure.’”

This development leaves many more questions than answers. Why would Zelenskiy make this ask? And what would American ownership actually look like: boots on the ground? Is Trump done being obsessed with the rare earths? All these questions and more remain unanswered as Trump has yet to comment on the statement.

Rattling America’s longest-standing alliances is starting to cost the U.S. military industrial complex.

U.S. arms makers were shut out of the European Union’s enormous defense spending plan released Wednesday.

“We must buy more European. Because that means strengthening the European defense technological and industrial base,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The U.K. was similarly frozen out of the deal. Instead, the EU tapped South Korea and Japan to join the military program, which aims to spend more than $800 billion by 2030 as the bloc prepares for potential conflict with Russia.

“We need to see not only Russia as a threat, but also … more global geopolitical developments and where Americans will put their strategic attention,” said European Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius, according to Politico.

The sales pitch from American arms manufacturers simply isn’t as persuasive as it was under previous administrations. For decades, purchasing American fighter jets and weapons came with an added bonus of U.S. protection. But as global leaders have witnessed Donald Trump defy long-standing military treatises and aggress U.S. allies, that promise no longer feels like a guarantee.

Trump’s shocking hostility toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy during critical peace negotiations, his nonsensical trade war, his threats to annex Greenland, his whiplash decisions to suspend and un-suspend military resources and intelligence with Kyiv, and his insistence on making Canada the nation’s fifty-first state have all called the reliability of American protection into question.

And European nations aren’t the only ones thinking of nixing their American contracts. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Wednesday that he was reviewing a $13.3 billion contract from 2023 for dozens of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters for “geopolitical” reasons, as well as “the possibility of having substantial production of alternative aircraft in Canada.” Portugal announced similar plans last week, apparently wobbling on whether it would replace its aging air force with American made products.

“An important factor in the purchase of the F-35 by European governments was the idea that European defense would be built on a transatlantic basis in terms of strategy, institutions, and capabilities,” Gesine Weber, a Paris-based fellow at the transatlantic think tank, German Marshall Fund, told Politico Wednesday. Weber further noted that Trump’s intention to overhaul NATO makes the purchase of American arms systems “no longer have any added value for Europeans.”

Other defense experts who spoke with the publication were more candid.

“If you keep punching your allies in the face, eventually they’re going to stop wanting to buy weapons from you,” an anonymous Western European defense official told Politico. “Right now we have limited options outside of U.S. platforms, but in the long run? That could change in the coming decades if this combativeness keeps up.”

Foreign sales are crucial to the U.S. arms industry. Historically, two-thirds of EU defense spending has gone to American contractors. Losing that could have ramifications for the U.S. economy.

But despite the Trump agenda, U.S. arms makers are still hoping that the looming threat of war will leave foreign nations with few other options than to buy their goods. Countries that surround Russia, including Poland and Romania, are still rushing to scoop up as many rockets, artillery, tanks, and warplanes into their arsenals as they can.

In December, NATO Chief Mark Rutte told the military alliance that it was time for Europe to “shift to a wartime mindset.”

“Russia is preparing for long-term confrontation, with Ukraine and with us,” Rutte said, urging NATO members to “turbocharge” defense production and spending. “We are not ready for what is coming our way in four to five years.”

Donald Trump apparently took over the Kennedy Center to make his own stylistic changes. 

The New York Times reports that during the first meeting of the center’s board of directors on Monday, its new chairman, President Trump, said that structurally, the center is in “tremendous disrepair,” adding that “the whole place needs work” and that he plans to seek funds from Congress to “bring it back.”  

Trump mused about covering up its signature columns with marble or granite, a signature part of Trump’s own buildings. 

“They never covered the I-beam,” Trump said during the meeting, according to a recording obtained by the Times. “I think the I-beams should be covered with some incredible stone—probably marble, but marble’s a bad outdoor stone, but looks better than granite. But it should be covered. And we’ll do that. We’ll add that in. But it’s not a small job.”

Trump, who last month fired the center’s board, installed his own loyalists, and had himself voted as chairman, waxed on about a number of topics during the meeting. He reminisced about his time attending various Broadway shows, including Cats, as an example of the kind of shows that the center should be hosting. 

“I walked in, I saw all these bodies, and then I noticed those bodies were gorgeous,” Trump said, regarding his impression of Cats when he supposedly attended its premiere. 

“They had silk tights on, and they were all ballerinas, and women from Broadway. And men,” Trump continued, adding, regarding the men, “I didn’t find those particular bodies as attractive to be honest.”

Trump floated hosting the annual Kennedy Center Honors, where attendees have criticized him in the past, resulting in him boycotting the ceremonies. 

“Believe me, I don’t want to do it, I don’t want to do it,” Trump said to the rest of the board. “I have enough publicity.” 

“They’ll say, ‘Trump wants to be the host.’ I don’t want to. But I want this thing to be successful,” the president continued, complaining that previous hosts were “always terrible” and calling himself “the king of ratings.” 

Trump also suggested honoring posthumous figures outside of the Kennedy Center’s usual domain of arts and culture, mentioning people from sports, politics, and business, such as Luciano Pavarotti, Elvis Presley, and Babe Ruth, instead of “radical left lunatics.” In a blatant nod to one of his backers, he suggested honoring Steve Wynn, a Republican donor and casino executive whose wife was named to the center’s board by Trump. 

“You could do entrepreneurs; you could do people that, you know, that were really in charge of show business,” Trump said. “I would say you could do politicians, you could do sports stars.”

In all, it seems that Trump took over the center to remake it in his own image: honoring the shows and people he likes, particularly from the era that he enjoyed the most: the 1980s. His decision to honor deceased figures probably stems from the fact that today’s stars dislike him and have often criticized him at various awards ceremonies, including at the center.

If Trump wasn’t president, wasn’t going to use taxpayer funds, and hadn’t unilaterally taken over a center that should belong to the American people, this would be fine. Instead, Trump appears to be transforming the Kennedy Center into his own personal cultural center, where he can honor and enjoy the entertainment he likes, set up the decor the way he wants it, and escape criticism while being feted and honored to boost his ego.

Even Bill O’Reilly thinks that a third term under Donald Trump would be little more than a pipe dream.

“That’s a fantasy, and I don’t really consider those kinds of things,” the longtime conservative commentator told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo Tuesday night. “It’s not gonna happen, never will happen. It’s not worth my time or your time.”

Trump has repeatedly pitched the idea that he could stay in office after 2028, but the likelihood of that actually happening is near zero.

As outlined in Article 5 of the Constitution, any such change requires at least two-thirds of the Senate and the House to agree on the modification, with that change then requiring ratification by a minimum of three-quarters of states in the nation.

A second approach to repealing the term-limiting amendment could be via a constitutional convention, though two-thirds of states would need to support the motion to have one at all, and any proposed changes to an amendment would still require ratification by three-fourths of the states.

Beyond that, the MAGA leader would be 82 years old in 2028—the same age that President Joe Biden was when he left office—and that’s unlikely to play well with an American public that is increasingly tired of being led by the elderly.

Still, that hasn’t kept conservatives from trying to keep Trump in power. Republican lawmakers have already started to pave the way for the unconstitutional takeover. In January, Representative Andy Ogles filed a joint resolution to amend the Constitution’s Twenty-Second Amendment so that the executive branch leader could serve “for up to but no more than three terms.”

But O’Reilly had a different vision for the MAGA movement’s future.

“Donald Trump will serve out his second term, hopefully he’ll be successful, and then JD Vance will run for president in ’28 unless something happens. That’s what’s gonna happen,” O’Reilly said.

The idea that Trump could follow in Roosevelt’s footsteps came back to the forefront earlier in Cuomo’s show after Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon said he’s “working on it.”

“Chris, as you know, I’ve had greater long shots than this,” Bannon told Cuomo. “We’ve had greater long shots than Trump 2028, and we’ve got a lot of stuff we’re working on there. We’re not prepared to talk about it publicly, but in a couple months I think we will be.”

Bannon then proceeded to dodge a direct question on whether or not that meant a “revolution” or overthrowing the government. When pressed again, Bannon said that he “firmly” believes “in the revolution you’re seeing going on now: the revolution of common sense to deconstruct the administrative state.”

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tore into Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer over his backing of Republicans’ government spending bill last week.

In scathing remarks during a Tuesday news conference at a children’s hospital in San Francisco, Pelosi said she believed that Senate Democrats should have negotiated harder for Republicans to make concessions.

“I myself don’t give away anything for nothing,” Pelosi said. “I think that’s what happened the other day.”

Pelosi said that Democrats could have offered “a third way” forward, one that avoided a government shutdown while also allowing Democrats to abstain from co-signing the bill, staving off a complete government closure while negotiations continued.

“They may not have agreed to it, but at least the public would have seen they’re not agreeing to it—and that then they would have been shutting [the] government down,” Pelosi said.

The spending bill approved by a total of nine Senate Democrats and one House Democrat may serve as a sort of blank check for the Trump administration, which has already announced its intention to withhold funds allocated to programs it doesn’t support. While the bill will keep the lights on until September, it will also slash funding for health care and boost spending on mass deportations.

Ultimately, Pelosi said she supported Schumer’s leadership of the party—but not everyone feels that way. Widespread outrage has led to many calling for Schumer to be removed and replaced with someone willing to fight Trump’s agenda, such as New York Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.

But Senator Bernie Sanders said it wasn’t as simple as replacing Schumer. During an interview on CNN Tuesday night, the Vermont independent said that the issue demonstrated by Schumer’s surrender went beyond just him and was a structural problem within the Democratic Party.

“I know, everyone’s beating up on Chuck [Schumer], and I strongly disagree with him. Strongly. No one is in the caucus more critical of Schumer than I am. But it’s not Schumer, it’s the caucus, it’s not the caucus, it’s the Democratic Party,” Sanders said.

Sanders said that the Democratic Party had been taken over by billionaires and guided into the ground by consultants.

Schumer has continued to defend his choice, and his seat, saying that he is still the best person to lead the Senate and the best at winning Senate seats.