Trump Press Secretary Freaks Out Over Questions About Deportations

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt flailed Monday when asked about the government’s shady system for classifying gang members. Desperate to dodge the question, Leavitt went on a tirade claiming that the reporter had no right to ask about it in the first place.

Outside of the White House, the Independent’s White House correspondent Andrew Feinberg attempted to ask Leavitt about how immigration authorities had been designating individuals as members of the Tren de Aragua gang, and therefore potentially subject to deportation under the Alien Enemies Act. 

Documents in a new court filing from the government stated that for an individual to be classified as a member of TdA, all they need to do is be a Venezeulan person older than 14 years and  score eight points on a survey of different characteristics, including having symbols in their tattoos or wearing certain logos, which were worth four points each. Feinberg did the math. 

“You can get classified by simply having certain symbols in your tattoos and wearing certain streetwear brands—that alone is enough to get someone classified as TdA and sent to El Salvador,” Feinberg said. 

“That’s not true, actually, Andrew,” Leavitt snapped. Feinberg insisted he was simply reading from court documents filed by the government. 

“No, according to Department of Homeland Security and the agents—have you talked to the agents who have been putting their lives on the line to detain these foreign terrorists who have been terrorizing our communities?” Leavitt asked. 

“I–I’m not denying that—” Feinberg said, but Leavitt continued.

“TdA is a vicious gang that has taken the lives of American women, and our agents on the front lines take up deporting these people with the utmost seriousness, and there is a litany of criteria that they use to ensure that these individuals qualify as foreign terrorists, and to ensure, to ensure that they qualify for deportation,” she said. 

“And shame on you, and shame on the mainstream media for trying to cover for these individuals who have—this is a vicious gang, Andrew! This is a vicious gang that has taken the lives of American women!”

“I’m not trying to cover for anyone,” Feinberg insisted, but Leavitt continued to attack Feinberg for even asking about the documents, once again unable to account for the government she purports to represent.

“And you said yourself there are eight criteria on that document! And you are questioning the credibility of these agents who are putting their life on the line to protect your life, and the life of everybody in this group and the life of everybody across the country? And their credibility should be questioned? They finally have a president who is allowing them to do their jobs, and God bless them for doing it,” Leavitt fumed.

Unfortunately for Leavitt, she works with the very journalists who are responsible for asking questions about the government’s wrongdoings—and when it comes to Donald Trump’s mass deportations, there seem to have been some significant ones. 

New documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union on Sunday showed that the tattoos ICE is using to identify individuals as TdA gang members included a range of innocuous images such as the Jordan “Jumpman” logo, a crown, a train, and a clock, among other things. Representatives for at least three of the people deported earlier this month claim that they were wrongly classified as gang members over their tattoos. 

Because the 261 detainees deported to El Salvador earlier this month were removed under the AEA, they were stripped of due process and the opportunity to legally challenge their designation as TdA members. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that another 17 individuals were deported there on Tuesday, alleging that they were members of MS-13 and TdA—possibly violating a court order. 

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is insisting that the media is overreacting to Donald Trump’s theories about staying in office for a third term. Speaking with reporters on Monday, Leavitt seemed to suggest that there was no merit to the idea, or the media’s alarm over it—despite the fact that Trump said he is “not joking” about staying in power.

“Look, you guys continue to ask a question about a third term, and then he answers honestly and candidly with a smile and then everyone here melts down about his answer,” Leavitt said.

Leavitt then pointed to Trump’s interview with reporters aboard Air Force One over the weekend—in which the president raised the idea that “people” were prompting him to run again—as the reason why Americans should not be worried about the unconstitutional effort.

“I have had more people ask me to have a third term, which in a way is a fourth term because the other election—the 2020 election—was totally rigged,” Trump said. “I just don’t want the credit for the second because Biden was so bad, did such a bad job, and I think that’s one of the reasons that I’m popular.… I think we’ve had the best almost hundred days of any president.”

But during a Sunday morning phone call with NBC News’s Kristin Welker, the president insisted that he was actually very serious and “not joking” about potentially circumventing the Constitution in order to lead the country for another four years after his second term ends.

“No, no I’m not joking. I’m not joking,” the president said, during a call in which he agreed with Welker that one such plan to keep him in office involved having Vice President JD Vance front the next Republican presidential ticket with Trump as his number two—roles that they would then switch once back in office.

“That’s one. But there are others too. There are others,” Trump said, refusing to clarify what the other plans are.

The seemingly far-fetched and unconstitutional idea would require the consent of most of the country—if Trump attempted to use traditional methods to stay in the Oval Office.

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.

Elon Musk’s own PAC may have just posted a filmed confession about buying votes in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election this Tuesday.

The world’s richest man has poured nearly $20 million into the state-level race between Trump-endorsed County Judge Brad Schimel and Barack Obama–endorsed County Judge Susan Crawford.

Musk’s America PAC on Monday posted a video featuring Ekaterina Diestler, a Wisconsin woman who won the PAC’s $1 million giveaway on Sunday. Diestler stated that her vote—and not just her petition signature—was how she received the money.

“My name’s Ekaterina Diestler, I’m from Green Bay, Wisconsin,” the woman said in the video. “I did exactly what Elon Musk told everyone to do: Sign the petition, refer friends and family, vote, and now I have a million dollars.” Diestler’s statement clearly says that Elon Musk told her to vote—among other things—for her chance to become a millionaire.

In an effort to drum up support and attention, Musk announced last week that he’d offer up two $1 million checks on X in a lottery-style system to Wisconsin residents, “in appreciation for you taking the time to vote.” Offering people money in exchange for voting is extremely illegal in the United States.

Musk deleted this post 12 hours later, after legal experts pointed out the massive bribe he was orchestrating. He instead changed the language to circumvent that illegality, writing that “entrance is limited to those who have signed the petition in opposition to activist judges.”

“Conditioning entrance to this event and eligibility for the $1 million payout on having voted arguably violates Wisconsin law, which prohibits offering or giving anything of value to induce a person to vote,” campaign finance lawyer Brendan Fischer told The New York Times.

Forget DEI buzzwords—the Trump administration’s government censorship ordinance is now infringing on language that will make it nearly impossible for agencies to do their job.

A leaked memo from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Research Service division revealed Sunday that the agency has banned some key language from its vocabulary, including the words “climate” and “vulnerable,” as well as the phrase “safe drinking water.”

Other baffling entries on the memo’s banned language list are “greenhouse gas emissions,” “methane emissions,” “sustainable construction,” “solar energy,” and “geothermal,” as well as “nuclear energy,” “diesel,” “affordable housing,” “prefabricated housing,” “runoff,” “microplastics,” “water pollution,” “soil pollution,” “groundwater pollution,” “sediment remediation,” “water collection,” “water treatment,” “rural water,” and “clean water,” among dozens of others.

“When evaluating agreements, those entries that include these terms or similar terms cannot be submitted,” wrote Sharon Strickland, the USDA’s Northeast area financial management, travel and agreements section head, in an internal March 20 email. The review will “ensure that we maintain compliance with the Administration’s EOS.”

It’s unclear how the guidance would do anything other than completely hinder the department’s ability to monitor the health and edibility of crops, or aid America’s rural development—some of its primary functions. What is clear, however, is that purging such basic speech will stifle scientific research and discourse.

Donald Trump began censoring the government as soon as he returned to office. In January, the Office of Management and Budget held tens of billions in federal funding hostage, requiring executive branch agencies to purge language related to “environmental justice,” abortion, DEI initiatives, “woke gender ideology,” and “illegal aliens” in their reports and missions. Otherwise, they would forgo their congressionally appropriated funds, per an OMB memo.

That threat has since rolled its way through the American legal system. Last week, an appeals court upheld a block on the sweeping freeze, agreeing with a previous court’s ruling that the 22-state coalition that brought the lawsuit would “irreparably suffer” under Trump’s ordinance.

“These harms included the obligation of new debt; the inability to pay existing debt; impediments to planning, hiring, and operations; and disruptions to research projects by state universities,” wrote Chief Judge David Barron.

Barron’s ruling echoed a similar decision issued by Judge Loren AliKhan in February, in which the federal judge indefinitely blocked Trump’s effort.

“In the simplest terms, the freeze was ill-conceived from the beginning,” AliKhan wrote in her ruling. “Defendants either wanted to pause up to $3 trillion in federal spending practically overnight, or they expected each federal agency to review every single one of its grants, loans, and funds for compliance in less than twenty-four hours. The breadth of that command is almost unfathomable.”

Mike Waltz has multiple Signal group chats in addition to the now infamous “Houthi PC small group” that he added a reporter to earlier this month, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

Two officials close to the situation told the Journal that Waltz has started Signal chats with Cabinet members regarding a peace treaty between Russia and Ukraine as well as various other military activities.

While Trump has publicly stood behind Waltz, the president—and the rest of his inner circle—has castigated the national security adviser for the biggest blunder of Trump’s second term (so far). The Journal reports that Trump went on a few different expletive-filled rants about Waltz over the phone last week, and multiple staffers have made their discontent clear. Some noted that if a conservative outlet like Breitbart had broken the Signalgate story rather than The Atlantic, Waltz would be long gone. Others went so far as to spread past clips of Waltz being critical of Trump, alleging he is a neocon unfit to serve the MAGA agenda.

The administration has rejected reports of internal frustrations with Waltz. “The chattering of unnamed sources should be treated with the skepticism of gossip from people lacking the integrity to attach their names,” said National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes.

Vice President JD Vance may have stepped in it with his fellow Republicans by questioning Donald Trump’s plan to strike the Houthis, NBC News reported Sunday.

Earlier this month, Vance, and other senior Trump officials discussed sensitive plans to strike the Houthis in Yemen in a Signal group chat that was widely publicized after Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz accidentally added a high-profile reporter. In the chat, Vance alone aired doubts about the plan, warning that the strike was not in alignment with Trump’s America First policies, because it would help Europe more than it would help the U.S.

“I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now,” Vance wrote. “There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”

When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth insisted that the strike wasn’t about the Houthis at all but about safeguarding trade and reestablishing deterrence, Vance relented. “If you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again,” he wrote.

Hegseth agreed, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller responded, “As I heard it, the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return.”

Vance distinguished himself as the most ideological member of the Signal chat, freely expressing his contempt for Europe and a profound lack of interest in preventing the disruption of trade routes. Vance’s reluctance to help another country was arguably the most MAGA position to take—but some of the more hawkish senior Republicans didn’t like that he didn’t mindlessly submit to Trump’s directive, NBC News reported.

“Capitol Hill Republicans still have their jaws on their floor with how actively the VP worked to try and undo a Trump decision,” one senior Republican official in Washington wrote in a text. “Thank goodness Miller stepped in and put him in his place.”

“It’s one thing to have a healthy interagency debate before a decision is made. It’s another to try and undo a Commander-in-Chief decision once Trump gives the execute order. This is the latter, and it’s very Bolton-esque,” the senior Republican official added, referring to John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser who has become an outspoken critic of the president.

Some Republicans even believed that Vance’s question was tantamount to obstruction.

“These are the president’s policies, and for JD Vance to question them like that is ridiculous. He is the commander in chief,” another Republican on Capitol Hill told NBC News. It seems that to many Republicans, the most MAGA thing a person can do is agree with Trump about anything.

On the flip side, others in the Trump administration are reportedly concerned that the strike against the Houthis could lead to messy, drawn-out conflict.

“It’s 2002 all over again,” said one current administration official who spoke with NBC News anonymously because he wasn’t permitted to speak to the press. Already, the Pentagon has begun directing aircraft carriers and resources to the region, indicating that the fight with the Houthis is far from over.

During a trip to Greenland last week, Vance was asked whether he had raised his concerns with Trump and what he meant when he wrote that the president “wasn’t aware that his directions for Yemen were inconsistent with his message for Europe.”

“Well I didn’t quite say that. I think that’s a slight misunderstanding of what I said,” Vance replied, though of course, that was exactly what he had said.

In the end, Vance didn’t answer either question but instead launched into a rant about what he’d learned from “Signalgate.”

“Sometimes we all agree, and sometimes we all disagree. But it’s important that we all have an honest conversation amongst ourselves, and with the president of the United States about what we think is in the best interest of the national security of the United States of America,” said Vance, who had readily shut down his own dissenting opinion.

Vance claimed that he had “always supported the president’s decision to strike the Houthis.”

Banks are predicting a downturn for the American economy.

Goldman Sachs raised its 12-month recession probability from 20 percent to 30 percent on Monday, reported Reuters. The banking giant also downgraded American gross domestic product growth forecast from 2 percent to 1.5 percent, and projected three interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve.

In a Sunday note to its investors, Goldman speculated that the average U.S. tariff rate will rise 15 percent points over the next year, 5 percent higher than it previously predicted. That’s thanks to Donald Trump’s decision to spark a global trade war.

“Almost the entire [tariff rate] revision reflects a more aggressive assumption for ‘reciprocal’ tariffs,” the brokerage firm wrote in a memo obtained by Reuters.

Trump has driven a wedge in America’s trade and military alliances by suddenly imposing large tariffs on the nation’s longtime partners. On Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that his country’s cozy relationship with the U.S. had come to an end and that they would wean themselves off American products and services “at speeds we haven’t seen in generations.”

The seismic diplomatic shift followed another tariff announcement by the Trump administration, this time imposing a 25 percent hike on auto imports. Carney called the levy—which will take effect on vehicle imports April 3 and vehicle parts in May—a “direct attack” on Canada, but the news also immediately hit America’s Big Three automakers, whose stock dropped multiple percentage points in reaction to the news.

Trump’s tariffs will have an even more significant effect on Europe, which Goldman warned could enter a “technical” recession by the end of the year, with “little” growth—as in, 0.0 percent growth in the third quarter.

“We estimate that our new tariff assumptions will lower euro area real GDP by an additional 0.25 percent compared to our previous baseline, for a total hit to the level of GDP of 0.7 percent compared to a no-tariff counterfactual by end-2026,” Goldman wrote in another note issued Sunday.

Trump, however, seemed completely unconcerned by the looming economic peril. Speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump brushed off concerns about high unemployment and “stagflation,” which is when economic growth stagnates but inflation remains high. Instead, he insisted that “this country is going to be more successful than it ever was.”

“It’s going to boom,” the president said. “We’re gonna have boomtown USA. We’re gonna boom.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio may have just violated a court order stopping the Trump administration’s fast-tracked deportations.

Rubio announced that a group of alleged gang members had been deported Sunday night.

“Last night, in a successful counter-terrorism operation with our allies in El Salvador, the United States military transferred a group of 17 violent criminals from the Tren de Aragua and MS-13 organizations, including murderers and rapists,” Rubio wrote on X Monday morning. He noted that both TdA and MS-13 were considered foreign terrorist organizations, which implies that they could be subject to removal under the Alien Enemies Act, or AEA.

Rubio thanked the Salvadoran government and President Nayib Bukele for “their unparalleled partnership in making our countries safe against transnational crime and terrorism.”

Multiple judges have rebuked Donald Trump’s use of the AEA and filed injunctions against his administration—and Rubio’s latest deportations may have just violated one.

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy issued a temporary restraining order requiring the government to provide written notice and an opportunity for detainees to apply for protection before deporting them to a third country.

It seems that with this latest round of deportations, the Trump administration has violated that court order, and continued to fast-track its removal of alleged gang members.

Earlier this month, Trump invoked the AEA, a wartime law that suspends due process. Under the act, the Trump administration swiftly deported 261 Venezuelan nationals to Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, the prison in El Salvador that is notorious for human rights abuses. The U.S. government claimed that everyone deported was a terrorist.

The deportees were removed without notifying their family members or lawyers, and they were not provided with the opportunity to challenge their deportation or their designation as gang members. In many cases, the government seems to have rounded up immigrants for supposedly suspicious tattoos that ended up having nothing to do with TdA at all.

In another filing last week, Judge James Boasberg wrote that by sending the prisoners to CECOT, the Trump administration had likely violated the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, which states that “it shall be the policy of the United States not to expel … any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” Boasberg wrote that at CECOT, prisoners are reportedly abused, humiliated, and left to rot without their families knowing anything about their whereabouts or well-being.

National security adviser Mike Waltz is grasping at straws to defend the fact that he invited The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal group chat about bombing Yemen.

During an interview on Fox News last week, Waltz attempted to explain away the enormous bluster by claiming that the editor’s number had simply been “sucked in” to his phone.

“I’m sure everybody out there has had a contact where you, it was, it said one person, and then a different phone number,” Waltz told the network.

“But you never talked to him before, so how is the number on your phone?” pressed Fox’s Laura Ingraham.

“Well, if you have somebody else’s contact, and then somehow it gets sucked in. It gets sucked in,” Waltz said.

That response—which comes from an individual who is supposed to be the pinnacle of American expertise on national security matters—completely misunderstands how cell phones work. Lest it need explanation, cell phones do not “suck in” phone numbers; instead, numbers are inserted by the people who use the device.

“This isn’t The Matrix,” Goldberg told NBC News Sunday, responding to Waltz’s comments. “Phone numbers don’t just get sucked into other phones. I don’t know what he’s talking about there.

“My phone number was in his phone because my phone number is in his phone,” Goldberg continued. “He’s telling everyone that he’s never met me or spoken to me. That’s simply not true.”

Democratic Representative Sean Casten was a little more blunt, branding Waltz as “full of shit.”

“If what he says is true, then he is choosing to discuss classified information on a platform where—in his own telling—he has no control over who is listening in,” Casten tweeted Sunday afternoon, reposting a clip of Goldberg’s interview. “Either he’s a liar or a traitor. Pick one.”

Waltz was the singular admin for a group chat created earlier this month on the retail app Signal in which over a dozen senior Trump administration officials discussed seemingly classified information regarding an imminent attack on Yemen. To make matters worse, Waltz blindly added Goldberg, who reported on the exchange last week. Donald Trump has continued to back Waltz publicly, but in private, the president was reportedly “mad” and “suspicious” that Waltz had Greenberg’s contact in his phone to begin with.

Former intelligence officials have warned that America’s adversaries “undoubtedly” already have the chat records, largely thanks to the Trump administration’s special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff’s physical presence in Russia when he was added to the chat.

In an interview with MeidasTouch Tuesday, former national security adviser Susan Rice said that Witkoff’s use of Signal while in Russia basically hand-delivered news of the attack to the Kremlin hours before it took place.

“Russians have whatever Witkoff was doing or saying on his personal cell phone,” Rice told the podcast.

The Signal fiasco also angered U.S. military pilots, who claimed that such a careless leak had blatantly put the lives of service members at risk. Dozens of interviewed Navy and Air Force pilots told The New York Times that the Trump administration’s operational security blunder had not only upended decades of military doctrine but had also shattered pilots’ trust that the Pentagon would prioritize their safety.

“The whole point about aviation safety is that you have to have the humility to understand that you are imperfect, because everybody screws up. Everybody makes mistakes,” Lieutenant John Gadzinski, a retired Navy F-14 pilot who flew combat missions from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, told the Times. “But ultimately, if you can’t admit when you’re wrong, you’re going to kill somebody because your ego is too big.”

President Trump continues to pivot endlessly on tariffs, badly destabilizing the very market he claims he’s trying to balance.

“On the tariffs that you’re planning … you’re expected to hit something like 10 to 15 countries, is that right?” a reporter asked Trump on Sunday, referring to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s description of the countries with the largest trade deficits with the U.S. as the “Dirty 15.”

“I don’t know who told you 10 or 15 countries,” Trump replied.

“Well we heard that.”

“But you didn’t hear it from me.”

“How many countries will be in that initial chunk?” the reporter pressed.

“You start with all countries, so let’s see what happens,” Trump said, dramatically expanding his threat.

“There are many countries.… If you look at the history, and you look at what’s happened to us.… Go to Asia, and you take a look at every single country in Asia, what they’ve done to the United States in trade,” Trump continued vaguely. “I wouldn’t say anybody has treated us fair, or nicely.”

Trump plans to drop these reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday, which he is framing as “Liberation Day.” But this spiteful trade war will only hurt American consumers and manufacturers already dealing with inflation, potentially leading the country into a recession. But Trump has already admitted he doesn’t care.