Trump’s Latest Order Wants to Use Military for Terrifying Purpose

The president is following through on his threats to transform the American military into domestic watchdogs.

Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday titled “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Civilians,” effectively tasking Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to work out the kinks in determining “how military and national security assets” and personnel “can most effectively be utilized” to hamper crime.

The executive order also directed the creation of a legal defense mechanism to further shield law enforcement from potential consequences, and specifically tasked Bondi with prioritizing “holding state and local officials accountable” for potential wrongdoing, such as “directly and unlawfully prohibiting law enforcement officers from carrying out duties.”

It’s not the first time that Trump has threatened to turn the U.S. military on American citizens. Before Election Day, he suggested that the National Guard could be tapped to subdue “radical left lunatics” and individuals that he described as the “enemy from within.”

But Trump has  obviously been ruminating on the idea for a while. In September 2020, he warned that he would use force against Democrats if they chose to protest in the streets following his potential win on Election Day.

“We’ll put them down very quickly if they do that. We have the right to do that. We have the power to do that, if we want,” Trump said at the time, according to Politico.

“Look, it’s called insurrection,” he continued. “We just send in, and we do it very easy. I mean, it’s very easy. I’d rather not do that because there’s no reason for it, but if we had to, we’d do that and put it down within minutes.”

Ironically, it was his own followers who violently protested the election results.

The Trump administration is baring its teeth after Amazon announced it will show consumers exactly how much they’re being hurt by the president’s sweeping tariffs. 

The multinational corporation divulged on Monday that it would begin displaying how much of a product’s price is due to Trump’s tariff increase right next to the final cost, a level of transparency that makes it clear that the Trump administration bears responsibility for any price increases.  

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt took this act as a declaration of war, calling it a “hostile and political act.” 

“It was reported this morning that Amazon will soon display a little number next to the price of each product that shows how much the Trump tariffs are adding to the cost of each product,” a reporter asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who appeared alongside Leavitt at a press briefing early Tuesday morning. “So isn’t that a crystal clear demonstration that it’s the American consumer, and not China, who is gonna have to pay for these policies?” 

Leavitt stepped in. 

“This is a hostile and political act by Amazon. Why didn’t Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years? And I would also add that it’s not a surprise. As Reuters recently wrote: ‘Amazon has partnered with a Chinese propaganda arm,’” she stated. “So this is another reason why Americans should buy American; it’s another reason why we are onshoring critical supply chains here at home to sure up our own critical supply chain and boost our own manufacturing here.” 

“So is Jeff Bezos still a Trump supporter?” the reporter followed up.

“Look, I will not speak to the president’s relationships with Jeff Bezos, but I will tell you that this is certainly a hostile and political action by Amazon,” Leavitt replied.

This is a very confusing response. Amazon is showing the very real impact of the president’s wanton and spiteful tariff policies, something it has no control over. And yet the administration is describing it like some act of terror. How is it hostile to let Americans know just how much their president is costing them? This administration is willing to lie and finger-point to keep Americans in the dark about the negative impacts of Trump’s trade war.

A legal analyst for the conservative television station Newsmax accused the Trump administration of going on a “bit of a jihad” against judges in its public arrest of a sitting judge last week.

During an appearance on Newsmax Monday night, Judge Andrew Napolitano, a senior judicial analyst for the channel, argued that the Trump administration had gone too far by arresting Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan, and doing so in such a public manner.

“I think they overreached by arresting her,” Napolitano said.

“In a white-collar case with a public official—like there was here in New York with Mayor Adams—you don’t stop them on the street and put handcuffs on them. You say to his lawyer, ‘We need to talk to you about whether or not you will voluntarily surrender because we’re about to charge you with a crime,’” Napolitano explained.

“But because they’re on a bit of a jihad against judges, they decided to make an example out of this,” Napolitano continued. “I think this is the wrong case out of which to make an example. I think she has immunity.”

Dugan was arrested on obstruction charges for supposedly misdirecting Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents away from Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, an immigrant attending a pretrial hearing. According to the Department of Justice’s filing, Dugan allegedly let Florez-Ruiz exit the courtroom through a side door typically reserved for a jury. He then used a public hallway in the courthouse to get into an elevator and exit the building before ICE officers could stop him.

But Napolitano argued that Dugan had the authority to “decide where a person leaves her courtroom from and what she says to that person, and she can’t be prosecuted for it.” Napolitano noted that while there had been no arrest warrant for Flores-Ruiz, the FBI had been able to receive an arrest warrant for Dugan from a magistrate judge.

In fact, ICE officials had received an administrative warrant for Flores-Ruiz, which, unlike a judicial warrant, does not allow agents to enter private spaces and was not signed by a judge.

If Dugan is convicted, the charges may result in a maximum penalty of six years in prison.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has been touting Dugan’s arrest as a crackdown on “deranged” judges attempting to aid and abet undocumented immigrants that the Trump administration wants to round up and deport.

Dugan’s arrest is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to thwart judges who oppose the president’s political agenda. On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wouldn’t rule out arresting Supreme Court justices.

Canada overwhelmingly voted to keep Prime Minister Mark Carney in power Monday, siding with the interim leader over his right-wing alternative, conservative lawmaker Pierre Poilievre, who practically modeled himself on Donald Trump.

In the months leading up to the election, Canada’s Liberal Party was believed to be on its deathbed. But that all changed with Trump’s tariff talk, which radically ramped up anti-American sentiment among Canadian voters, with boycotts of American products sweeping the country.

Hours after Carney secured the win, he made it abundantly clear what Canada’s foreign policy will be toward its southern neighbor under his continued leadership.

“As I have been warning for months, America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. But these are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us,” Carney said. “That will never ever happen.”

Carney’s acceptance speech served as yet another eulogy for Canada’s relationship with America, marking the end of a prosperous and friendly relationship between the two countries while announcing the beginning of an era of Canadian independence.

“Our old relationship with the United States, our relationship based on steadily increasing integration, is over. These are tragedies, but it’s also our new reality,” Carney said.

“We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons. We have to look out for ourselves. And above all, we have to take care of each other.”

Trump has actively aggressed U.S. relations with Canada since his first term. Recent rhetoric about annexing Canada to become America’s “fifty-first state” has not played well with the Canadian people or its leaders, causing some residents of the country to candidly dub Trump an “asshole.”

On an economic level, Trump has repeatedly claimed that Canada’s trade deficits with the United States are “subsidies,” rather than indicators that America’s neighbors were purchasing more of its goods than they were selling in return. In 2023, that differential—or deficit—was nearly $41 billion with Canada, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The president has also vastly overinflated the reality of the deficits, wrongly asserting that the U.S. is “subsidizing” its neighbors to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars each. The obvious solution to that problem, per Trump, is to take Canada and its independence, folding it into his increasingly centralized government.

So much for poor, huddled masses: Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee intend to make it prohibitively expensive to immigrate to the United States. 

In a 116-page reconciliation amendment from Chairman Jim Jordan, Republicans have proposed a whopping $1,000 fee for asylum-seekers—the first of its kind in U.S. history. 

The fee would be no less than $1,000, they wrote, and would increase each subsequent year to the amount from the previous one rounded to the lowest multiple of 10 and multiplied by the percentage increase of the consumer price index for all urban consumers, year over year, starting in 2026. For every year that the case remains pending, the immigrant would be charged an additional fee of no less than $100. 

An application for Asylum and for Withholding of Removal, known as an I-589, currently costs $0 according to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services fee schedule. 

The amendment also proposed a fee of $550 for those applying for employment authorization under the Immigration and Nationality Act. The permits would elapse every six months, making it extremely expensive to work in the U.S. as an immigrant. It previously cost $520 to file an I-765 form by paper and $470 to file online. 

The amendment also proposed a $3,500 fee to sponsor the immigration of an unaccompanied child as “partial reimbursement to the Federal Government” for its processing and care of the child.  The amendment also proposes a $5,000 fee that can be reimbursed at the end of the child’s immigration proceedings “if such sponsor demonstrates that the unaccompanied alien child in the care of such sponsor was not ordered removed in absentia.” 

The proposed legislation would balloon up-front fees for sponsoring an immigrant child to a whopping $8,500. Previously, an I-130 petition for an alien relative would cost $675 for paper filing and $625 for online filing.

The bill also included several provisions that would make defending oneself in immigration court far more expensive. As previously stated, the bill imposed a $100 fee for any continuance past a year, except for “exceptional circumstances.” 

Additionally, it imposes a $1,050 fee for filing a waiver on the grounds of admissibility, or where the application for a waiver is adjudicated. These are waivers used by anyone who is not technically allowed to enter the U.S. for any number of reasons, ranging from health to national security and to prior removals. 

The bill also imposes a $900 fee to appeal a decision from the Department of Homeland Security, which currently costs only $110. This fee would not apply to appeals of a bond decision. 

These new exorbitant legal fees come as Donald Trump’s administration seems adamant on denying immigrants their due process and attacking U.S. immigration judges, several of whom were fired or placed on leave earlier this month. 

Other new fees included a $500 fee to apply for any Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, a $250 visa bond for all nonimmigrant visa applications, and a $1,500 fee for certain nonpermanent residents to apply to adjust a status before an immigration judge. The Trump administration has reportedly stopped weighing green card applications from asylum-seekers and refugees altogether, and even moved to detain individuals who petition for them. 

In a post on X, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee wrote that they were committed to “restoring immigration integrity, enhancing national security, and reining in the out-of-control administrative state.”

The U.S. Navy lost a $60 million fighter jet in the Red Sea Monday in another setback for Secretary Defense Pete Hegseth. 

The F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet fell overboard from the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, currently stationed in the area that’s part of America’s military campaign against the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The rebels have targeted U.S., Israeli, and other international shipping operations over Israel’s bombardment and aid cutoff to Gaza. 

The Houthis claimed to have launched a missile and a drone at the aircraft carrier on Monday,  and a U.S. official told CNN that the aircraft carrier made a hard turn to evade fire. The turn contributed to the jet falling off the ship. One Navy sailor had a minor injury as a result of the move. 

 “The F/A-18E was actively under tow in the hangar bay when the move crew lost control of the aircraft. The aircraft and tow tractor were lost overboard,” a statement from the Navy said. “Sailors towing the aircraft took immediate action to move clear of the aircraft before it fell overboard. An investigation is underway.”

Hegseth and his boss, President Trump, have bragged about U.S. military operations against the Houthis, and one U.S. airstrike in Yemen was the subject of at least two private group chats Hegseth created that are the center of the “Signalgate” scandal.  Trump continues to publicly support the former Fox News host as Pentagon chief, despite reports that he has begun the search for Hegseth’s successor. 

Meanwhile, Hegseth and his team are consumed by the search for leakers in the department, spending at least half of their time turning the DOD upside down. The department has been losing employees in the past few weeks, and not just because of mass layoffs. All of this is creating the image that Hegseth is in over his head and doing a poor job of running the largest military in the world, and perhaps should make an exit.

In an unsurprising development, President Trump is still far from achieving his promise of “the largest deportation operation in American history” after his first 100 days in office.

Scripps News reported Monday that there has not been a notable increase in deportations since Trump took office, which deeply contradicts the images (such as Kristi Noem in military cosplay) and narratives (like deciding every South American immigrant with tattoos is a Tren de Aragua member) that the Trump administration has been pushing.

“Frankly, I was shocked,” said Sue Long, co-founder of the nonpartisan Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which records immigration statistics. “[Deportations are] lower,” Long said. “Their daily average is simply 10 percent lower.” These numbers are lower than former President Joe Biden’s deportation rate, even as Trump portrayed him as some wanton open borderist during his campaign.

The White House insists that lower border crossing numbers are driving deportations down. And yet border czar Tom Homan still believes that he needs more resources and more deportations.

The leader of Canada’s Conservative Party is begging Donald Trump to stop weighing in on the country’s politics as it holds elections Monday, posting in English and French on X that Trump “should stay out of our election.”

“The only people who will decide the future of Canada are Canadians at the ballot box,” Pierre Poilievre wrote. “Canada will always be proud, sovereign and independent and we will NEVER be the 51st state.”

The post was in response to Trump’s Truth Social post earlier in the day where he once again provoked Canada by bringing up statehood and basically told Canadians to elect him, “the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half.”

“No more artificially drawn line from many years ago,” Trump added. “Look how beautiful this land mass would be. Free access with NO BORDER. ALL POSITIVES WITH NO NEGATIVES. IT WAS MEANT TO BE!”

Leaving aside Trump’s attitude toward America’s northern border with Canada versus its southern one with Mexico, the president is continuing to try to bully Canada even after his rhetoric caused a sea change in public opinion there. Prior to January, Canada’s Liberal Party, analogous to the U.S. Democrats, was set for resounding losses in the country’s next election.

Then Trump was sworn into office and started calling Canada the fifty-first state, instituting high tariffs, and generally attacking the country. The result was the heavily favored Conservatives losing their large polling advantage, and Poilievre, a right-wing politician who modeled himself on Trump, has seen his chances for the prime ministership plummet.

As a result, Poilievre has tried to criticize Trump to capitalize on the patriotic fervor that the president has inspired in Canada. But the fact that his rhetoric and style mirror one of the most unpopular men, if not the most unpopular man, in Canada will not do Poilievre any favors when the polls close.

A MAGA talking head is the latest new recruit to the White House briefing room.

Rogan O’Handley, a.k.a. “DC Draino,” made his first appearance in the new media seat in the coveted federal space Monday, asking a question of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt that was more Trumpian propaganda regarding the potential death of habeas corpus than independent inquiry.

“In [Donald] Trump’s first 99 days, we’ve seen a coordinated assault on the rule of law by radical judges,” O’Handley said. “These judges are providing more due process to violent MS-13 and Tren de Aragua illegal aliens than they did for American citizens who peacefully protested on January 6.”

That is, of course, not true. Family members and friends of the deportees accused of being members of the violent Venezuelan gang claimed their loved ones had never been a part of Tren de Aragua. Further still, some of the men forced to board the planes had no criminal record—something that would not have slipped under the radar had they had their time in front of a judge.

And of course, January 6 was by no means peaceful.

O’Handley then went on to quote White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who claimed that it would be “ridiculous” to offer “full trials” for the 15 million immigrants who had crossed the border, presuming that they would all be kicked out of the country.

Last week, Miller claimed that it would take “centuries” to remove immigrants from the country if the Trump administration were to abide by the Constitution in executing its mass deportation program.

On Instagram, O’Handley insisted that his voice in the White House briefing room had tried to “provide solutions for doing mass deportations” rather than “complain.”

The White House opened up its briefing room to “new media” in January, a category that encompasses professional journalists as well as podcasters, influencers, and other news-related content creators. In Trump’s second term, these special few are allowed the first opportunity to speak during each biweekly session, during which Leavitt will typically answer 15 to 20 questions.

So far, some of the occupants of the “new media” chair have included content creators from Breitbart, the right-wing video platform Rumble, BreakingPoints, the Daily Wire, former Newsmax host Mark Halperin, and the right-wing substack Washington Reporter.

The Trump administration announced in March that it would be conducting a total shakeup of the briefing room’s seating chart, bumping heads with the White House Correspondents’ Association—an independent group that has traditionally overseen seat assignments—as the Trump administration attempts to control who gets their questions answered.

In the wake of Pete Hegseth’s massive Signal scandal, the former Fox News co-host’s Pentagon has become a place more concerned with P.R. than directing America’s military.

Speaking with Megyn Kelly, another former Fox News host, on her podcast Sunday, ex-Hegseth aide Colin Carroll attested that the secretary and his team have been “consumed” by the rampant leaks escaping the Department of Defense. Carroll claimed that Hegseth and his team likely spend upward of half their time trying to rein the gossip in.

“If you look at a pie chart of the secretary’s day, at this point, 50 percent of it is probably a leak investigation,” Carroll said.

Carroll had served as chief of staff to deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg before he was fired earlier this month amid an ongoing leak probe.

“That’s a bad thing for America. It’s a bad thing for the president’s objectives,” Carroll continued. “And in order to combat that image, it’s like, ‘Hey, I’m gonna go work out with the troops.’”

Carroll further argued that Hegseth’s recent obsession with filming his early morning workouts with troops was an effort to counteract numerous reports of Hegseth’s excessive drinking—accusations that nearly kept him from securing his gig fronting America’s military. (In a highly unusual move, Vice President JD Vance joined the vote in January to break a 50–50 tie on Hegseth’s confirmation, ushering the former Fox & Friends co-anchor toward Donald Trump’s Cabinet. Three Republicans—Senators Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins—broke party lines by voting against Hegseth’s confirmation.)

“While that is important—and it’s a thing to do to get out there and helps recruiting and helps morale—if you’re taking a half-day trip to the Naval Academy at the same time the budget is due, and we really need some support here.… Come on, you gotta weigh priorities,” Carroll told Kelly.

Hegseth’s tenure leading the Pentagon has been plagued by a trove of terrible decisions—as well as subsequent damning leaks to the press, exposing the defense secretary’s poor planning.

In March, Trump administration officials accidentally added The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a Signal chat regarding sensitive details of a plan to bomb Houthis in Yemen. The monumental slipup was a horrific omen for U.S. national security, whose weakest link is apparently a crew of Cabinet members who can’t even accomplish the basic due diligence of double-checking who they’re adding to a group chat hosted by a private company.