Bukele Has Cruel Plan to Make Trump’s Mass Deportations Even Worse

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele wants to exchange Venezuelan deportees from the United States being unlawfully held in prison for political prisoners being held in Venezuela.

He made the terrifying proposition to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro via X Sunday evening.

“Mr. @NicolasMaduro, you have said on numerous occasions that you want the Venezuelans back and free,” Bukele wrote. “Unlike you, who have political prisoners, we don’t have political prisoners. All the Venezuelans we have in custody were detained as part of an operation against gangs like the Tren de Aragua in the United States.”

Last month, Donald Trump invoked the rarely used Alien Enemies Act to unlawfully deport more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants—the majority of whom have no criminal record—based on unfounded claims that they were part of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua Gang. He also ignored a court order telling him to stop the deportation. The deportees are now being held in CECOT, a notorious prison in El Salvador that has no contact with the outside world.

Bukele happily agreed to hold the Venezuelan deportees captive in exchange for a $6 million payment from the U.S. government. In complete disregard for the lives of innocent Venezuelans, the self-proclaimed “world’s coolest dictator” is now proposing to trade human beings he was paid to lock up for a handpicked group of people he wants in El Salvador.

“The only reason they are imprisoned is because they opposed you and your electoral fraud,” Bukele said of the political prisoners he wants released. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that includes the repatriation of 100% of the 252 Venezuelans who were deported, in exchange for the release and delivery of an identical number (252) of the thousands of political prisoners that you hold.”

Among those he wants released include the son-in-law of former Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo González, lawyer and activist Rocío San Miguel, journalist Roland Carreño, four political leaders seeking asylum in the Argentine embassy, and nearly 50 detained citizens of various nationalities.

Venezuela’s chief prosecutor, Tarek William Saab, said in a statement that Bukele’s proposal was “cynical” and called the 44-year-old dictator a “neofascist.”

“The treatment received by Venezuelans in the United States and El Salvador constitutes a serious violation of international human rights law and constitutes a crime against humanity,” Saab said in the statement.

Bukele’s alarming idea for a swap comes as the Trump administration is desperately trying to deport more Venezuelan immigrants through the Alien Enemies Act. It looks like Bukele will do everything he can to capitalize on Trump’s stupidity and benefit his own authoritarian government.

Trump administration aide Stephen Miller thinks the United States deserves reparations for mass immigration.

That was Miller’s response to Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s idea that the administration be held in civil contempt and fined $1 million for each day it refuses to follow the Supreme Court’s ruling that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Savador, be returned to the United States.

“Where does our whole country go to get repaid for all of the wealth, all of the prosperity and security, that has been stolen from us by decades of uncontrolled, illegal mass migration?” Miller said. “We all deserve reparations for what has been stolen from us.”

Miller didn’t stop there, complaining that “we used to have a functioning public school system in this country,” until it was ruined by “open borders.”

“An entire generation of Americans—multiple generations, in fact—have been robbed of educational opportunities,” Miller complained, raising his voice.

The White House aide went on to blame immigrants for deaths from fentanyl, the rise of gangs, and violent crime against Americans.

“Where do any of their families go to get reparations?” Miller said. “There aren’t enough volumes that could fit into a library to calculate the carnage that has been inflicted by the Democrat Party’s policy of open borders.”

The Trump administration has accused Abrego Garcia, with no evidence, of being a violent member of the MS-13 gang and already admitted his deportation was an “administrative error.” He has no criminal record but continues to be held in El Salvador due to a deal the Trump administration made with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, whom it is paying to hold undocumented immigrants in the country.

Miller’s absurd demand belies the fact that previous administrations, including Democratic presidents such as Joe Biden and Barack Obama, deported countless undocumented immigrants. It also ignores the fact that, statistically speaking, native-born Americans commit more crimes than immigrants. But Miller’s views have long been influenced by xenophobia and racism, which is commonplace in the Trump administration.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed it was “fake news,” but purported plans to shutter huge sections of the Department of State sent shivers down the spines of U.S. diplomats over the weekend.

An alleged draft order circulated through the State Department over the weekend, outlining a complete overhaul of the agency to “streamline mission delivery” while eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse,” according to The New York Times. The plan recommended eliminating the department’s bureaus focusing on African affairs and all “non-essential embassies and consulates in sub-Saharan Africa.” It would also shutter bureaus on democracy and human rights, refugees and migration, and one that works with international organizations. It would abolish the special envoy on climate and shrink the U.S. diplomatic presence in Canada to a “significantly reduced team” overseen by Rubio himself.

The document also pitched changes to how the foreign service works, ending an “outdated and disorganized generalist global rotation model” for a model that promotes specialization in one particular area. The plan called to terminate the foreign service’s contract to recruit fellowship candidates from Howard University, a historically Black institution.

Rubio responded to the report in a post on X Sunday, writing that it was “fake news.” But the proposed changes reportedly rattled diplomats, who thought the memo could be real, according to Politico.

“There’s a lot that could be reformed, but you could give infinite monkeys infinite typewriters, and they would come up with something better than that,” said one U.S. diplomat who spoke to Politico. They called the plan “bonkers crazypants.”

Amid the massive cuts proposed by the Trump administration, it’s no surprise that the radical reshuffling seemed like the real thing. Last month, Politico reported that the Trump administration was planning to cut the State Department’s budget by nearly half, zeroing out the funding for programs to promote democratic processes and counter drug trafficking, and shuttering up to three dozen embassies. This proposal would shrink the department’s budget from $54.4 billion in 2025 to $28.4 billion in 2026.

Last week, a memorandum that was part of a broader budget for 2026 that is due to the Office of Budget Management outlined a plan to close 10 embassies and 17 consulates. This includes U.S. missions in Eritrea, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Scotland, and South Sudan, as well as five outposts in France and two in Germany.

Politico reported that there was significant reason to doubt the veracity of last week’s memo, which was not consistent with other communications from the Trump administration to Congress and did not follow the typical structure of an executive order.

Pope Francis has died at 88. The first Latin American pope, Francis was both beloved and reviled by many for his progressive, humanistic principles, repeatedly warning against the dangers of climate change and creating greater acceptance of LGBTQ people within the church. He also made his deep distaste for Trump and his anti-immigrant policies well known. 

Here are four times the pope talked about Trump and his dangerous MAGA agenda:

1. “A person who only thinks about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” the pope said in February 2016, when asked about then-candidate Trump’s proposal to build a border wall and make Mexico pay for it. “That is not in the Gospel.” 

“For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful,” Trump replied. “If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which, as everyone knows, is ISIS’ ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president.”

2. Francis was also directly critical of Trump’s attack on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. 

“The President of the United States presents himself as pro-life and if he is a good pro-lifer, he understands that family is the cradle of life and its unity must be protected,” Francis said in 2017, after Trump ended the program giving legal protections to about 800,000 “Dreamers” who entered the country as children. “I think this law comes not from parliament but from the executive.… If that is so, I am hopeful that it will be re-thought.”

3. In 2025, he criticized Trump and border czar Tom Homan’s mass deportation plans.

“The act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.… What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly.”

4. The Pope’s final public criticism of the Trump administration came in February 2025, when vice president and recently reformed Catholic JD Vance used the Catholic concept of ordo amoris to justify mass deportation, isolationism, and a general resentment of immigrants.  

Francis attacked the very logic of Vance’s claim. 

“Christians know very well that it is only by affirming the infinite dignity of all that our own identity as persons and as communities reaches its maturity. Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. In other words: The human person is not a mere individual, relatively expansive, with some philanthropic feelings! The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation,” Pope Francis wrote. “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’ (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

Pope Francis’s death will leave us without a powerful moral barometer who always put principles over politics. 

The entire Pentagon is in total chaos after Signalgate part two.

The New York Times reported Sunday that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth shared sensitive details of a U.S. military attack on the Houthis in Yemen in yet another Signal group chat that included his wife, brother, and others in his inner circle. It’s the second time he’s done so in less than a month, after he and other members of Trump’s Cabinet discussed similar classified information in a Signal group chat that happened to include The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.

The news comes amid a wealth of other chaos at the DOD. Just hours after the Times report, Politico published an opinion essay by former Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot detailing the building’s “full-blown meltdown” spurred by Hegseth.

“It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon. From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president—who deserves better from his senior leadership,” Ullyot wrote.

First there was Signalgate, a scandal that Hegseth tried to lie his way through, instead of owning up to. Then came reports that the defense secretary brought his wife to classified meetings, and news that the Pentagon arranged a top-secret briefing for Elon Musk on China, behind Donald Trump’s back. To top it off, last week, a number of top DOD senior staffers were fired or left their posts amid rumors that they were leaking sensitive information, sending the building into “disarray under Hegseth’s leadership” Ullyot revealed.

“There are very likely more shoes to drop in short order, with even bigger bombshell stories coming this week,” he wrote. It’s hard to imagine what’s bigger than news that the man in charge of U.S. defense has shared sensitive military information over text, not once but twice. But, as Ullyot pointed out, “The Pentagon focus is no longer on warfighting, but on endless drama.”

As it did with the first Signal scandal, the Department of Defense denied that Hegseth shared any classified information, and framed the whole thing as a smear campaign from the media.

“Another day, another old story—back from the dead. The Trump-hating media continues to be obsessed with destroying anyone committed to President Trump’s agenda,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell wrote, in a statement on X. “This time, the New York Times—and all other Fake News that repeat their garbage—are enthusiastically taking the grievances of disgruntled former employees as the sole sources for their article. They relied only on the words of people who were fired this week and appear to have a motive to sabotage the Secretary and the President’s agenda.

“There was no classified information in any Signal chat, no matter how many ways they try to write the story,” he continued.

The White House too stood behind Hegseth, despite an outpouring of cries from Democrats demanding he be fired to protect the safety of U.S. military personnel.

“The president stands strongly behind Secretary Hegseth, who is doing a phenomenal job leading the Pentagon,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Monday.

“And this is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change that you are trying to implement,” she added, offering a glimpse into the shaky disarray going on behind the scenes. It seems the White House is doing everything it can to avoid admitting that choosing a 44-year-old TV presenter with allegations of alcohol abuse to lead the U.S. military may have been a bad idea after all.

Donald Trump is incensed that Harvard University won’t give in to his administration’s draconian demands, and is taking further action against the institution.

The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday night that the White House plans to pull $1 billion in federal funding for Harvard’s health research, which comes after the administration cut $2.2 billion in grants and a $60 million contract with the university last week.

The White House is reportedly upset that the university publicly released a letter that the administration’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism sent it more than a week ago. The task force’s letter had a long list of demands, apparently under the impression that it would simply be a starting point for negotiations. Since the letter’s release, Trump has planned to treat Harvard even more harshly than Columbia University, which lost $400 billion in federal funding despite giving in to the administration’s demands.

Harvard President Alan Garber had written his own letter to the university community, rejecting Trump’s demands. “No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” he wrote.

Trump has already threatened to end the university’s tax-exempt status, which would cost the university millions of dollars, as well as its ability to enroll international students, which make up 27 percent of Harvard’s enrollment. Now the president expects an even more protracted fight with America’s oldest university.

“Instead of grandstanding, Harvard should focus on rebuilding confidence among all students, particularly Jewish students,” a White House spokesperson told the Journal. “The White House remains open to dialogue, but serious changes are needed at Harvard.”

Trump’s attacks on academic freedom echo the right’s long-standing grievances against higher education institutions in America, which it sees as bastions of liberal influence. Last year’s protests at universities across the country against Israel’s brutal war in Gaza incensed supporters of Israel and further drove Republicans to punish any university they perceive as failing to take action. After making an example of Columbia, Trump and his fellow conservatives are expanding their crusade.

Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen perfectly dismantled Donald Trump’s administration’s argument for ignoring the due process rights of immigrants such as Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

During an appearance Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, Van Hollen was asked to respond to comments from Patty Morin, the mother of Maryland resident Rachel Morin who was raped and killed by a Salvadoran man in 2023, a tragedy that Trump administration officials regularly revisit in their justification of the president’s mass deportation scheme.

Morin had criticized Van Hollen’s visit to El Salvador to find Abrego Garcia, whom the Trump administration mistakenly deported in March, during a White House press briefing last week.

“To have a senator from Maryland who didn’t even acknowledge, or barely acknowledged, my daughter and the brutal death that she endured, leaving her five children without a mother and now a grandbaby without a grandmother, so that he can use my taxpayer money to fly to El Salvador to bring back someone that’s not even an American citizen. Why does that person have more right than I do? Or my daughter?” Morin asked.

Van Hollen responded to Morin’s comments Sunday.

“My heart goes out to the Morin family. They suffered—experienced an unspeakable tragedy in the murder of their daughter, and I said at the time that my heart goes out to the Morin family. And I’m very glad that the killer of Rachel has been convicted in a court of law. That is how we hold guilty people accountable,” Van Hollen said.

“The courts of law are also where people get to have their due process so we don’t unfairly punish people who don’t have criminal records,” Van Hollen continued. “And so, my view is you can crack down and hold guilty people accountable and also respect the due process rights of everybody who is in court. And I am not sure why Abrego Garcia’s rights should be denied based on an awful murder that he had absolutely nothing to do with.”

Van Hollen returned from El Salvador Friday after finally meeting with a “traumatized” Abrego Garcia, and recounted the outrageous lengths the Salvadoran government had gone to to try to mislead the public about its treatment of Abrego Garcia.

The Trump administration has claimed that Abrego Garcia, who has no criminal record, was not only a member of MS-13 but a “top leader” and “engaged in human trafficking,” while only providing thin evidence that he was even affiliated with the group. In fact Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador as the result of an “administrative error.”

In the spirit of Easter, Donald Trump spent Sunday ranting on Truth Social, attacking judges, the left, and former President Joe Biden.

His first Easter address began normally enough, wishing Americans a “very happy Easter” and a day “full of Peace and Joy for all who celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.” But within minutes, the president flipped the script and went on a furious rampage against his favorite targets.

“Happy Easter to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting and scheming so hard to bring Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, the Mentally Insane, and well known MS-13 Gang Members and Wife Beaters, back into our Country,” he wrote.

“Happy Easter also to the WEAK and INEFFECTIVE judges and Law Enforcement Officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our nation to continue, an attack so violent it will never be forgotten!” Trump continued, on par with his attack on the courts that’s reached new heights in recent weeks.

Right on cue, Trump’s message then turned into a frantic blitz against the left, blaming Biden and the Democrats for allowing “millions of CRIMINALS” to enter the country in the “single most calamitous act ever perpetrated on America.”

“He was, by far, our WORST and most Incompetent President, a man who had absolutely no idea what he was doing.… But to him … and to all of the people who CHEATED in the 2020 Presidential Election in order to get this highly destructive Moron Elected, I wish you, with great love, sincerity, and affection, a very Happy Easter!!!” Trump concluded.

The official White House account shared the message on X, along with a graphic of Trump standing beside a person in an Easter bunny costume, seemingly addressing the country. The graphic reads, “Happy Easter to All, Even the Radical left Lunatics …”—a sobering comparison to last year’s Easter Sunday, which the White House declared Transgender Day of Visibility.

Donald Trump made nearly $240 million off of inauguration donations from billionaires and corporations eager to kiss the ring. 

The New York Times reported that this round of donations is more than double the already record-setting amount of money that Trump raised at his first inauguration, in 2017. 

The three biggest donations—made out to the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee—were from poultry company Pilgrim’s, which gave $5 million; crypto company Ripple Inc., which gave just under $5 million; and Republican donor, businessman, and potential ambassador to the U.K. Warren Stephens, who gave $4 million. Multiple other high-profile companies, including Meta, Amazon, JP Morgan, Target, also contributed to Trump’s massive inauguration haul. The record-setting donations underscore the level of corporate influence within this administration and raise the question of just how much it takes for President Trump to be bought. One million dollars sounds about right, as a whopping 140 people or companies each donated at least that. 

While the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee is not legally required to disclose how it’ll use its newly acquired millions, some have hinted that the funds will go toward the Trump Presidential Library. 

Not long before Pope Francis passed away Monday, he met with Vice President JD Vance and lectured him about immigrants.

The 88-year-old pontiff seemed to initially snub Vance over the weekend, having his deputy Cardinal Pietro Parolin and the Vatican Foreign Minister Archbishop Paul Gallagher meet with Vance on Saturday. The Vatican described that meeting as “an exchange of opinions on the international situation, especially regarding countries affected by war, political tensions and difficult humanitarian situations, with particular attention to migrants, refugees, and prisoners.

“Finally, hope was expressed for serene collaboration between the state and the Catholic Church in the United States, whose valuable service to the most vulnerable people was acknowledged,” the statement from the Vatican added.

Vance’s office issued its own statement, saying that the group discussed “the plight of persecuted Christian communities around the world” and Donald Trump’s “commitment to restoring world peace”—making no mention of immigrants, refugees, or prisoners.

On Sunday, Vance met with Francis in a brief meeting, telling the pontiff, “It’s good to see you in better health,” and accepting Easter eggs for his children. But the Pope’s official Easter sermon that day criticized hostility toward immigrants and international aid, a trademark of the Trump administration.

“How much contempt is stirred up at times toward the vulnerable, the marginalized and migrants?” Francis said in his address.

Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, has provoked tensions with the church with his defense of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, and even attacked the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in January for assisting immigrants, saying their concerns about the Trump administration were due to the fear of losing federal funding.

“Are they worried about humanitarian concerns, or are they actually worried about their bottom line?” Vance said at the time.

Vance further drew the ire of the Vatican when he invoked the Catholic concept of “ordo amoris”—the order of love—to defend the White House’s mass deportation policies, claiming in January that the well-being of Americans trumped any concern for that of immigrants.

Francis, the first and so far only Latin American pope, responded with a letter saying, “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups.

“The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan,’ that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception,” the February letter stated, pointedly criticizing mass deportation.

Francis more explicitly condemned Trump’s mass deportations on an Italian talk show that month, saying, “If true, this will be a disgrace.… This is not the way to solve things.”