Press Secretary Says Trump Wasn’t Joking About Deporting U.S. Citizens

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt waffled Tuesday when asked about Donald Trump’s threat to deport U.S. citizens to foreign prisons.

During a press briefing, Leavitt was asked to explain Trump’s disturbingly enthusiastic response to Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s wildly illegal proposition for the U.S. government to relocate individuals incarcerated in the federal prison system, including American citizens, to the Central American country.

The reporter wanted to know how the government could legally remove U.S. citizens, and how many would potentially be subject to removal. The short answer is: It can’t, so none. But Leavitt didn’t say that.

“So, the president has discussed this idea quite a few times publicly, he’s also discussed it privately,” she said, making sure to say that Trump had only discussed “potentially” deporting U.S. citizens.

“These would be heinous, violent criminals who have broken our nation’s laws repeatedly. These are violent, repeat offenders in American streets,” Leavitt said.

“The president has said if it’s legal, if there’s a legal pathway to do that, he’s not sure, we are not sure if there is, it’s an idea that he has simply floated and has discussed uh, very publicly, in the effort of transparency,” Leavitt said.

But Trump didn’t simply float the idea; it was offered by a foreign leader—who has already struck a $6 million deal to take alleged Venezuelan gang members that the Trump administration removed under the Alien Enemies Act.

Leavitt also took the opportunity to present her own alternative interpretation of the Supreme Court ruling Monday on removals under the AEA.

The court’s decision would allow the Trump administration to proceed with deportations under the AEA, but crucially, the ruling upheld the detainees’ right to due process, contrary to the Trump administration’s rampage against legal protections for people it wants to deport.

The justices said that detainees were entitled to receive notice of their removal within a reasonable time frame, and must be provided with an opportunity to challenge their removal. But when a reporter asked about it, Leavitt rejected the ruling.

“That’s not quite true,” Leavitt said. “They said that they are entitled to a habeas petition, and we are going to continue to comply with the law.”

The ruling said that detainees could be provided the opportunity to file habeas petitions in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, a MAGA-aligned court in Texas where the deportation flights are staged. The petitions will likely have to be individually filed, rather than via class action, which could lead to a torrent of litigation for far-right judges to smack down.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor emphasized this crucial point in her dissent, writing that “the government cannot usher any detainees, including plaintiffs, onto planes in a shroud of secrecy, as it did on March 15, 2025,” and that it could not “immediately resume removing individuals without notice.”

“To the extent the Government removes even one individual without affording him notice and a meaningful opportunity to file and pursue habeas relief, it does so in direct contravention of an edict by the United States Supreme Court,” she wrote.

The right-wing StopAntisemitism group thinks that children’s YouTube educator Ms. Rachel should be investigated by Attorney General Pam Bondi for “pro-Hamas propaganda.”

The New York Post reports that the organization sent a letter to Bondi complaining about social media posts from the YouTube star, whose real name is Rachel Accurso, about Palestinian children killed by Israel during its brutal massacre of Gaza since 2023.

“Her posts have largely ignored the suffering of Israeli victims, hostages, and Jewish children, while she consistently amplifies misinformation from Hamas and other anti-Israel sources,” StopAntisemitism director Liora Rez wrote in the letter.

Rez also claimed that with “vast sums of foreign funds” being “directed toward propagandizing our young people on college campuses, we suspect there is a similar dynamic in the online influencer space.”

“We urge you and your office to investigate whether or not Ms. Rachel is being remunerated to disseminate Hamas-aligned propaganda to her millions of followers, as this may violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA),” Rez wrote to Bondi.

The organization accuses Accurso of using fabricated and debunked reports of children dying of hypothermia (that have actually been verified), and using death toll figures from Gaza that it says came from Hamas (but are actually considered reliable).

Accurso didn’t respond to the Post’s inquiries, but said on Instagram in May that “I care deeply for all children. Palestinian children, Israeli children, children in the US—Muslim, Jewish, Christian children—all children, in every country. Not one is excluded.”

The letter seems to be fitting into a pattern of pro-Israel organizations, such as Canary Mission and Betar, targeting critics of Israel’s military actions, as well as supporters of Palestinian self-determination. Betar says it has provided lists of noncitizen protesters to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security, and other government agencies, recommending deportation.

Several international students targeted by Betar and Canary Mission, including Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, have been detained by ICE as they fight deportation in the courts. But Ms. Rachel is an American citizen with a YouTube following of millions of children around the world, and has merely expressed concern about a human rights catastrophe. It seems even that is grounds for a criminal investigation in today’s political climate.

On Monday, the Internal Revenue Service agreed to start sharing tax data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help the Trump administration find and deport undocumented immigrants, according to The New York Times.

This is a serious 180 from previous protocol. U.S. law historically requires the IRS to keep taxpayer information like addresses and income under wraps, even from other departments of the federal government. Now Trump is classifying these deportations as criminal investigations to take advantage of a loophole that breaks from that IRS privacy practice.

“It’s unprecedented,” Center for Taxpayer Rights director and former IRS official Nina Olson told the Times. IRS chief counsel William Paul was fired as the deal was made and replaced with Andrew De Mello, a Trump appointee.

Undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022 at a rate of $8,889 per person, paying into programs with benefits that they’re barred from receiving. This IRS and ICE deal will likely push undocumented immigrants to stop paying those taxes and pursue unreported employment to avoid getting their information leaked to ICE. These “under the table” jobs are unregulated, dangerous, and often exploitative.

The Trump administration is continuing its unconstitutional attack on attorneys it disagrees with, this time by detaining an American citizen.

Amir Makled, an attorney representing a pro-Palestinian student protester arrested at the University of Michigan last year, was detained at the Detroit Metro Airport Sunday upon returning from a trip to the Dominican Republic with his family. 

Federal agents held Makled for 90 minutes, questioning him about his clients. They also tried to get Makled to give up his phone, which he refused to do, but agents did look at his contact list, the Detroit Free Press reported.

Makled was ultimately released without incident, but his detention is an indication of Donald Trump’s growing assault on attorneys taking cases he is against. The president has already issued executive orders penalizing five of the country’s top law firms, as well as a memo to the Justice Department directing the agency to punish immigration attorneys supposedly perpetuating fraud in the system.  

“This current administration is doing something that no administration has done—they are attacking attorneys,” Makled told the Press. “This is a different type of threat to the rule of law that I see. They are now challenging the judiciary, or lawyers, they’re putting pressure (on them) to dissuade attorneys from taking on issues that are against the government’s issues. We have an obligation as lawyers to stand up to this stuff.”

Trump’s punishment of law firms, which is a move out of the autocrat’s handbook, comes amid a larger crackdown on free speech and any sign—personal or institutional—of Palestinian solidarity. In recent weeks, several international students involved in pro-Palestine protests have been unlawfully kidnapped and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and nearly 300 international students have had their visas revoked for similar reasons.

Makled’s client, Samantha Lewis, is an American citizen and one of seven pro-Palestine protesters arrested at the University of Michigan last spring. The 38-year-old attorney is unsure whether this case is what triggered his detention Sunday, but he told the Press he will not stay silent despite the White House’s intimidation strategy.

“I have to be a person who can speak out when your rights are violated. We have to be the balancing act. We’re a nation of laws. You gotta have lawyers,” he said.

Trump’s Justice Department  is going to pull back on prosecuting cryptocurrency fraud, according to a memo from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

The memo, sent to the Justice Department Monday, states that the DOJ won’t be pursuing cases that Blanche said are better suited for financial regulators, instead focusing on crimes committed with cryptocurrency, such as selling illegal drugs, The Washington Post reports.  

Blanche also plans to dismantle the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, which was set up in 2022 to “address the challenge posed by the criminal misuse of cryptocurrencies and digital assets.” The move throttles an enforcement team that has successfully prosecuted market manipulation schemes and attempts to hide the owners of crypto assets. The unit was already hampered by the fact that in the Trump administration’s first days, its leader was transferred to a new sanctuary cities division in the DOJ. 

Now other attorneys previously focused on cryptocurrency will instead focus on immigration crimes and procurement fraud, the memo states, although federal prosecutors will still be directed to bring cases against people who defraud investors.

The shift away from prosecuting crypto crimes is not surprising for the Trump administration. The president has long cozied up to cryptocurrency investors, and even engaged in some shady crypto transactions of his own, such as his deal with Justin Sun, a Chinese national accused of fraud. Trump and his wife, Melania, have also released their own memecoins.

The president’s announcement last month of a new national “crypto strategic reserve” smacks of a blatant ploy to make some of his cronies richer, and the Trump family has reportedly held talks about taking a financial stake into Binance, a cryptocurrency firm that pleaded guilty in 2023 to money laundering. It seems that Trump and his cronies are looking to profit from cryptocurrency and want pesky regulations and law enforcement out of the way.

Elon Musk called Donald Trump’s top trade adviser Peter Navarro “dumber than a sack of bricks” Tuesday, once again betraying the administration’s deep rift over the president’s disastrous tariffs. 

Navarro found himself in hot water with Musk after he called the billionaire bureaucrat a “car assembler” during an appearance on CNBC Monday.  

“When it comes to tariffs and trade, we all understand in the White House—and the American people understand—that Elon’s a car manufacturer. But he’s not a car manufacturer. He’s a car assembler, in many cases,” Navarro said. 

“If you go to his Texas plant, a good part of the engines that he gets, which in the EV case is the batteries, come from Japan and come from China, the electronics come from Taiwan,” Navarro said.

Navarro explained that Musk’s view on tariffs differed from the White House’s because he wanted to continue to use “cheap foreign parts.”

Musk was furious. “Navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false,” he wrote in a post on X Tuesday. 

In a separate post, Musk claimed that “Tesla has the most American-made cars.”

“Navarro is dumber than a sack of bricks,” he added. 

Musk included a link to an article from 2023 citing a Cars.com study that found Tesla produced the “most American” cars. One extremely important caveat: The study included Canada as part of the U.S., which is, of course, subject to Trump’s “permanent” 25 percent tariffs on all imported vehicles and auto parts.

The more recent version of that same study, from 2024, found that the Tesla Model Y still topped the list, though it noted that the company no longer held “a vice grip at the top of the order thanks in part to changes in this year’s workforce calculations.” Still, the study included Canadian parts content as U.S. parts. 

And crucially, Navarro’s not wrong that Musk’s electric vehicle company relies on foreign parts. Tesla’s batteries are manufactured at its Giga Shanghai factory in China in collaboration with Chinese battery manufacturer Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Even if Tesla wanted to produce its batteries domestically, it would need to source materials such as nickel and lithium from other countries.

Over the weekend, the billionaire attacked Navarro’s defense of Trump’s tariffs on X, and posted a video of economist Milton Friedman that explains the global nature of supply chains, which was interpreted as a criticism of Trump’s sweeping “reciprocal tariffs” on nearly every country. 

Navarro replied by saying Musk “doesn’t understand” trade.

“The thing that’s, I think, important about Elon to understand, he sells cars. That’s what he does,” he said during an interview on Fox Business Monday. “He’s simply protecting his own interests, as any businessperson would do.”

“He’s got X, he’s got a big microphone; we don’t mind him saying whatever he wants,” Navarro added—though he may come to regret that sentiment.

Senator Mark Warner became exasperated Tuesday with Trump Trade Representative Jamieson Greer as he was unable to give a real answer as to why the president hit Australia—a key ally, with whom the U.S. has a trade surplus—with 10 percent tariffs on all imports.

“Australia is one of our strongest allies.… We have a free trade agreement with Australia. We don’t have tariffs,” Warner said. “We have a trade surplus with Australia.… With a trade surplus, with this strong relationship, Australia got hit with a 10 percent tariff as well?”

“Senator, Australia has the lowest rate available under the new program; they banned—”

“Ambassador, excuse me,” Warner interrupted. “There is a trade surplus. We already have a free trade agreement … so getting the least bad—why did they get whacked in the first place?”

“We’re addressing the $1.2 trillion deficit, the largest in human history, that President Biden left us with. We should be running up the score on Australia; they ban our beef, and they ban our pork—”

“Ambassador Greer, answer the question on Australia. We have a trade surplus with Australia; we have a free trade agreement. They’re an incredibly important national security partner. Why were they whacked with a tariff?”

“Senator, despite the agreement, they ban our beef, they ban our pork, they’re getting ready to impost measure—”

“But with your Greek letter formula, the fact that we have a trade surplus—”

“We have a global tariff on everyone,” Greer replied, continuing to evade the question. “We’re trying to address the $1.2 trillion deficit that Biden left us with, sir.”

“I think that answer.… Sir, you’re a much smarter person than that answer. The idea that we are gonna whack friend and foe alike, in particular friends … is both, I think, insulting to the Australians and it undermines our national security, and frankly makes us not a good partner going forward. The lack of trust from friends and allies based upon this ridiculous policy that goes into full effect at midnight tonight is extraordinary.

“A good day in hospice,” Warner continued. “I’m afraid if we keep these tariffs in effect, we’re looking like an economy that will be in hospice.”

The Supreme Court blocked an order Tuesday requiring the government to reinstate roughly 16,000 probationary federal employees ousted as part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s massive government layoffs across six different agencies.

In a brief two-page order, the court found that the nine nonprofit organizations that had brought the case lacked standing to do so. The ruling is a temporary win for the Trump administration’s efforts to gut the federal workforce, and for DOGE, which recommended the sweeping layoffs.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson would have denied the application, according to the order.

Last month, U.S. District Judge William Alsup in California ordered officials at the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Defense, Energy, Interior, Agriculture, and Treasury to “immediately” reinstate all fired probationary employees.

Alsup stated that the mid-February mass terminations were the result of an “unlawful” directive from the Office of Personnel Management, and torched the White House’s effort to claim that the decisions were based on supposed performance failures as “a gimmick.”

“It is sad, a sad day, when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” Alsup said in a hearing ahead of his ruling.

Despite the high court’s ruling, the fight to reinstate the workers isn’t over yet.

Another judge, U.S. District Judge James Bredar in Maryland, issued a similar order to Alsup’s applying to workers fired from 12 departments: Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs.

Bredar’s ruling was on a case brought by a group of states with Democratic attorneys general, and wouldn’t be subject to the same standing issue as the case decided Tuesday.

This is the third time in two days that the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s agenda. The court temporarily blocked an order Monday night requiring the government to return a man wrongly deported to El Salvador to the U.S. by midnight. In a controversial decision, the court also blocked an injunction stopping Trump’s deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.

This story has been updated.

The Trump administration’s calculations justifying the most consequential tariff scheme of the last century are all wrong.

In an op-ed for The New York Times published Monday, economist Brent Neiman, whose research was used to justify the White House’s implementation of reciprocal tariffs, wrote that the White House fundamentally misunderstood his work.

“My first question, when the White House unveiled its tariff regime, was: How on earth did it calculate such huge rates?” Neiman wrote in the op-ed. “The next day it got personal.”

Shortly after the Trump administration announced its plan to implement tariffs of 10 percent or more on 90 countries—which it claims will eliminate the trade deficit but has only spurred global economic chaos—the Office of the United States Trade Representative published its methodology for the tariff calculations, citing a paper by Neiman and four other economists.

“But it got it wrong. Very wrong. I disagree fundamentally with the government’s trade policy and approach,” Neiman wrote. “But even taking it at face value, our findings suggest the calculated tariffs should be dramatically smaller—perhaps one-fourth as large.”

So if the White House had done the math right, and wanted its absurd trade plan to actually work, 20 percent tariffs should have been … 5 percent.

That wasn’t the only mistake, Neiman pointed out. The Trade Office claimed its reciprocal tariff calculations would eliminate trade deficits with each American trading partner. Neiman concluded that is not a “reasonable goal.”

“Trade imbalances between two countries can emerge for many reasons that have nothing to do with protectionism.… There are some reasonable arguments in favor of reducing the overall trade deficit, such as to reduce risks from our debt. But these arguments don’t apply country by country,” Neiman wrote, further exposing the White House’s lack of reasoning.

Even if all trade deficits are eliminated (which Neiman points out is basically impossible), reciprocal tariffs still won’t work.

“The administration’s tariff formula assumes that a tariff placed on one country won’t affect imports from any others and ignores any implications for exports,” Neiman said. “These assumptions may work for an action against one small trade partner, but not for the broad salvo announced last week.”

Neiman went on to decimate pretty much every justification the Trump administration has provided for tariff implementation, including its selective picking and choosing of his research results to support its claims.

“As a result of these and other methodological choices, Wednesday’s reciprocal tariffs will bring average tariff rates to their highest level in over 100 years. I would strongly prefer that the policy and methodology be scrapped entirely. But barring that, the administration should divide its results by four.” Neiman concluded, a grim reminder of the economic chaos yet to come.

The Trump administration is thinking about bombing Mexico.

Former and current U.S. military officials who spoke with NBC News said that communication between the White House, the Defense Department, and intelligence officials have included discussion of drone strikes on cartels and their networks in Mexico. No final decision has been made, but the report is still alarming.

The CIA and U.S. military have been conducting more surveillance flights over Mexico in the wake of President Trump last month designating drug cartels in the country as foreign terrorist organizations. While the flights have been approved by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, the unilateral hostilities that the U.S, seems to be preparing for are not. This is set to make an already shaky relationship between the two allies even more unstable.

“We’re taking nothing off the table. Nothing,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in February when asked about military strikes in Mexico.

“There is no doubt if there were unilateral action inside Mexico, this would put the bilateral relationship into a nosedive,” former Mexican ambassador to the United States Arturo Sarukhán told NBC News. “It would be put in a tailspin, as it would represent a violation of international law and an act of war.”

Sheinbaum herself came out in staunch opposition to this very kind of activity from Trump back in February when the administration released the cartel terrorism designation.

“The people of Mexico, under no circumstances will accept interventions, interference or any other act from abroad that is harmful to the integrity, independence and sovereignty of the nation,” she said. “What we want to make clear with this designation is that we do not negotiate sovereignty, this can’t be an opportunity by the United States to invade our sovereignty…. They can call [cartels] whatever they decide, but with Mexico it is collaboration and coordination, never subordination, no interference and even less invasion.”