EU Staff Is Now Using Burner Phones to Evade Trump

The European Commission is issuing burner phones to officials traveling to the United States amid fears of espionage in Trump’s America.

It’s the kind of security measure typically saved for trips to China or Ukraine, where the fear of IT surveillance is high. But three European Commissioners will test out burner phones and basic laptops at International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington next week, sources told the Financial Times.

The move from the European Commission, the primary executive arm of the European Union, marks a new era of American-European relations, which have all but dissipated since Donald Trump took office in January. Last month, he slapped Europe with 20 percent tariffs, which he later reduced to 10 percent for 90 days. He has falsely claimed the EU was formed solely to “create a unified force against” the United States, he abandoned Ukraine in the face of Russia, and he threatened to withdraw American security guarantees to the continent altogether—single-handedly dismantling an alliance that has shaped the global order since Word War II, and simultaneously embracing Vladimir Putin’s alliance.

“The transatlantic alliance is over,” an EU official told the Financial Times.

The Commission did not confirm the issuing of burner phones to the Financial Times, but it did say that all EU officials traveling to the U.S. were told to turn off their phones and hide them in “special sleeves” at the border amid a rise in phone seizures from border agents in recent weeks. A number of tourists and visiting academics have been turned away for having criticism of the White House on their phone.

More than half of Europeans now consider Trump an “enemy of Europe,” according to a survey conducted across nine European countries last month. Thirty-nine percent of respondents said they thought Trump “acted like a dictator,” and only one in 10 respondents believed they could rely on American security and defense if armed conflict arises in the near future, yet another indication of dwindling trust in Trump’s America.

Donald Trump worked himself into a frenzy after watching CBS’s 60 Minutes
on Sunday, calling for the network to be penalized in a Truth Social post. 

“They should lose their license! Hopefully, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), as headed by its Highly Respected Chairman, Brendan Carr, will impose the maximum fines and punishment, which is substantial, for their unlawful and illegal behavior,” Trump posted. “CBS is out of control, at levels never seen before, and they should pay a big price for this. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

It’s Trump’s latest complaint about CBS, which he is already suing in a $20 billion defamation suit, claiming that the network deceptively edited an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris to make her look better before last year’s election. The FCC is also investigating the network over Harris’s interview.

Trump’s latest tantrum is over two segments on the show Sunday. The first was an interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which correspondent Scott Pelley traveled to the site of a Russian attack earlier this month that killed nine children. The second was a report from Greenland by correspondent Jon Wertheim on how people in the Danish territory are receiving Trump’s threats to take over the island.  

The president is trying to intimidate news networks that produce even the slightest bit of critical coverage against him, threatening lawsuits and FCC action. He has also threatened other news outlets, such as ABC and NBC, with ABC even capitulating with a legal settlement before Trump took office. In a presidential term already full of abuses of power, hopefully the free press in America continues to report critically of the Trump administration, otherwise they’ll be paving the way for autocracy.

Donald Trump’s administration has a new excuse for violating an order from the Supreme Court to return a man wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

In a seven-page filing Sunday, lawyers for the Department of Justice argued that the federal courts did not have the authority to order the executive branch to “conduct foreign relations” with another country, by facilitating the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a father in Maryland who was deported to El Salvador despite having received a protective order prohibiting his removal there.

The lawyers argued that the department could not be compelled to actually “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia because “reading ‘facilitate’ as requiring something more than domestic measures would not only flout the Supreme Court’s order but also violate the separation of powers. The federal courts have no authority to direct the Executive Branch to conduct foreign relations.”

Instead, the Justice Department was choosing to understand “facilitate” as “taking all available steps to remove any domestic obstacles that would otherwise impede the alien’s ability to return here.”

The government argued that the court could not compel it to make demands of El Salvador’s government, dispatch U.S. personnel, or send aircraft into foreign airspace.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis had ordered the government to report “what it can” about its ongoing efforts to return Abrego Garcia, and ordered the government to provide daily updates about its progress. In a separate filing, the government confirmed that Abrego Garcia was “alive and secure,” but in its filing Sunday, it argued it could not be compelled to report information on the case.

The government claimed Xinis’s request was “particularly inappropriate given that such discovery could interfere with ongoing diplomatic discussions—particularly in the context of President [Nayib] Bukele’s ongoing trip to the United States.”

Bukele, who struck a $6 million deal with Trump to house alleged gang members the U.S. government wishes to deport, arrived in the U.S. Sunday, according to the filing.

Last week, the DOJ presented another flimsy argument for not returning Abrego Garcia, ominously claiming that the government of El Salvador might have its own reasons for keeping him.

Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil will not be returning home to his nine-months’ pregnant wife.

Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Jamee Comans ruled Friday that Khalil, a legal permanent U.S. resident, can be deported out of the country. The 30-year-old—who has not been charged with a crime—can appeal the decision.

Khalil was detained in March, when several agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested and took him into custody at his Columbia University–owned apartment. At the time, ICE claimed that they were acting on State Department orders to revoke Khalil’s student visa. But when notified that Khalil was in the U.S. as a permanent resident with a green card, the agency told Khalil’s attorney that they would be revoking that instead.

He was initially held in detention at a New Jersey facility, before he was suddenly transferred to a remote ICE center in Louisiana, where the judge made her decision.

Comans’s decision sets up a confusing battle for Khalil. Last month, a judge in New Jersey offered a contrary ruling, temporarily barring Khalil’s deportation and ordering the case to be transferred back to the Garden State.

Khalil was targeted by the State Department for his participation in a pro-Palestinian demonstration that took place at the Ivy League university. The Trump administration claimed that Khalil’s participation in the protest made him a Hamas supporter, but the Syrian-born Palestinian refugee has counterargued that his arrest was a violation of his First Amendment right to free speech as he “advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza.”​​

In a letter penned from his detention facility last month, Khalil said that the threat of his removal from the country was part of a “broader strategy to suppress dissent.”

Under pressure to provide evidence supporting Khalil’s deportation, State Secretary Marco Rubio wrote in a memo earlier this week that although the immigrant’s actions were “otherwise lawful,” permitting his continued residency would undermine U.S. foreign policy to “combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States.”

“I have determined that the activities and presence of these aliens in the United States would have potential serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest,” Rubio wrote, further arguing that Khalil’s actions had contributed to a “hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States.”

Comans said Friday that the two-page memo had “established by clear and convincing evidence that he is removable.”

This story has been updated.

Thanks to a technical glitch, Donald Trump’s tariffs haven’t even been collected at U.S. ports.

On Friday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that an entry code in the U.S. system for American ships to use to have their freight exempted from tariffs isn’t working, and “the issue is being reviewed.” As a result, no tariffs are being collected by the U.S. government for the time being.

U.S. shippers told the news outlet that they have not been charged higher tariff rates on their containers as recently as Thursday, despite Trump’s claims that tariffs are in effect and are being collected. This latest snafu is on top of the fact that many companies and industry groups are still unsure of when tariffs will be collected, especially since Trump keeps changing the rates erratically in social media posts and executive orders, and making new threats almost daily.

“There has been some confusion on what President Trump has said in social media posts on when the tariff starts and what is written in the executive order,” Jarred Varanelli, vice president of U.S. sales at logistics firm Savino Del Bene, told CNBC. “Social media posts are not law on the pause and increase in tariffs. With the constant changes to the regulations, all customs brokers in our industry have a difficult task ahead of them.”

If there were doubts about the tariffs being a wise policy, those have increased several times over the fact that U.S. authorities can’t even implement them.

“Whether you agree or disagree with the policy, you have to ask, do we have the ability to do it this rapidly?” Dewardric McNeal, managing director and senior policy analyst at consulting firm Longview Global, said to CNBC. “This glitch may be an indication we need more time. It seems odd this is the time it happens. This adds policy chaos for the implementer.”

For now, CBP is telling shippers to pay duties and tariffs within 10 days of their cargo’s release, in which time it expects the glitch to be resolved. But the whole mess is just further evidence of a complete lack of strategy, planning, or direction with Trump’s tariffs. It doesn’t inspire confidence from the markets, hedge funds, manufacturing workers, or anyone outside of MAGAworld.