Investigators Say ICE Barbie Kristi Noem’s Latest Arrest Was a Setup

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem celebrated the arrest of a Mexican man she claims made a threat against Donald Trump’s life—but law enforcement thinks he’s been framed, according to a CNN exclusive report.

In a post on X Wednesday, Noem lauded the arrest of 54-year-old Ramon Morales Reyes, alleging that he’d sent a letter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as several other federal agencies, threatening to “shoot your precious president in the head.”

“All politicians and members of the media should take notice of these repeated attempts on President Trump’s life and tone down their rhetoric,” Noem wrote in her post.

But a high-level law enforcement official briefed on the matter told CNN that after speaking to Reyes, law enforcement officials had determined he wasn’t the letter’s author. A handwriting sample Reyes provided didn’t match that of the handwritten letter.

Further, investigators suspect that Reyes was set up by someone hoping to see him deported before a separate robbery case, in which Reyes was a victim, could go to trial.

One person suspected of playing a role in the letters had made jail calls inquiring about specific addresses, including one that received the menacing note.

In a press release, the Department of Homeland Security asserted that Reyes had written the letter. The agency also claimed that Reyes had “entered the U.S. illegally at least nine times between 1998-2005.”

“His criminal record includes arrests for felony hit and run, criminal damage to property and disorderly conduct with a domestic abuse modifier,” the DHS said.

The Milwaukee Police Department told CNN on Thursday that the case was still ongoing and that it was “investigating an identity theft and victim intimidation incident related to this incident.” Police added that no one had been charged at this time.

Earlier this week, Noem and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller announced that they intended for ICE to ramp up arrests even more, aiming to detain a minimum of 3,000 people every day.

President Trump is making remigration, a racist plan popular among the European far right, a reality, according to Reuters.

The State Department on Thursday announced its plans to establish an “Office of Remigration,” assuming it is approved by Congress, on July 1. The term “remigration” is a white supremacist concept pushed by Austrian neo-Nazi Martin Sellner that posits that all immigrants and “non-assimilated citizens” be forcibly removed, with the goal of establishing a white ethnostate.

“The Office of Remigration will serve as the [Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration]’s hub for immigration issues and repatriation tracking,” the plan the State Department submitted to Congress reads. “It will provide a policy platform for interagency coordination with DHS and other agencies on removals/repatriations, and for intra-agency policy work to advance the President’s immigration agenda.”

This isn’t the first time Trump has floated remigration.

“As President I will immediately end the migrant invasion of America,” he wrote on X in September. “We will stop all migrant flights, end all illegal entries, terminate the Kamala phone app for smuggling illegals (CBP One App), revoke deportation immunity, suspend refugee resettlement, and return Kamala’s illegal migrants to their home countries (also known as remigration).”

His deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, another proponent of right-wing white supremacist policy, backed him up.

“THE TRUMP PLAN TO END THE INVASION OF SMALL TOWN AMERICA: REMIGRATION!” he wrote at the time.

While remigration isn’t a household term in the U.S., it’s taken off in certain European political circles. The first “Remigration Summit” took place earlier this month in Milan featuring multiple far-right leaders and chants of “Save our nation, remigration.”

“It’s outrageous,” Wendy Via, CEO and president of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told Wired. “There is no hiding from the fact that the ultimate goal of ‘remigration’ is purely about ethnic cleansing. It is a terrible day for our country when ‘remigration’ proponents are crediting the US and Trump’s administration for normalizing the term.”

Those on the far right, particularly Sellner himself, think that the U.S. has been well on its way toward establishing remigration for some time now.

“There are differences between Europe and the USA, but the common line is the same: preserving the cultural continuity by stopping replacement migration. Reversing the flows with border security, mass repatriations, and incentives to leave,” Sellner told Wired.

Trump’s immigration crackdown, his extrajudicial disappearances of students based on their beliefs, and his invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act—which asserts that the country is being invaded by immigrants—are all obvious indicators of remigration already occurring here.

“Remigration is in fact already taking place in the US,” white nationalist author Cyan Quinn, who attended the Remigration Summit, told Wired. “The first flight of 64 self-deportees following President Trump’s stipend announcement have already arrived home safely in Honduras and Columbia.”

The Trump administration is collecting data on all Americans, and they are enlisting the data analysis company Palantir to do it.

The New York Times reports that President Trump has enlisted the firm, founded by far-right billionaire Peter Thiel, to carry out his March executive order instructing government agencies to share data with each other. The order has increased fears that the government is putting together a database to wield surveillance powers over the American public.

Since then, the administration has been very quiet about these efforts, increasing suspicion. Meanwhile, Palantir has taken more than $113 million in government spending since Trump took office, from both existing contracts and new ones with the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. That number is expected to grow, especially given that the firm just won a new $795 million contract with the DOD last week.

Palantir is speaking with various other agencies across the federal government, including the Social Security Administration and the IRS, about buying its technology, according to the Times. Palantir’s Foundry tool, which analyzes and organizes data, is already being used at the DHS, the Department of Health and Human Services, and at least two other agencies, allowing the White House to compile data from different places.

The administration’s efforts to compile data began under Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative, which sought Americans’ personal data from multiple agencies including the IRS, the SSA, Selective Service, Medicare, and many others. In some cases, court orders hindered these efforts, but not in all of them.

Thiel has multiple ties to DOGE, both through Musk and through many of his former employees working for the effort or taking other jobs in the Trump administration. And this data collection effort could give Thiel, Musk, and Trump unprecedented power over Americans, with the president being better able to punish his critics and target immigrants.

Privacy advocates, student unions, and labor rights organizations are among those who have sued to stop Trump’s data collection efforts. Palantir’s involvement also gives a powerful tech company access to this data, and its CEO, Alex Karp, doesn’t exactly have a benign agenda, hoping to cash in on American techno-militarism. Musk too has plans for government data, using his AI, Grok, to analyze it. Will anyone be able to stop Trump and these tech oligarchs?

Donald Trump has decided that his reign as “Mr. Nice Guy” on his Chinese tariff plan has come to an end.

In a Truth Social post Friday, the president claimed that his supposedly soft approach on China in his tariff negotiations had greatly benefited their economy, but added that the Eastern powerhouse had “totally violated” the trade arrangement.

“Two weeks ago China was in grave economic danger!” Trump wrote. “The very high Tariffs I set made it virtually impossible for China to TRADE into the United States marketplace which is, by far, number one in the World. We went, in effect, COLD TURKEY with China, and it was devastating for them.

“Many factories closed and there was, to put it mildly, ‘civil unrest.’ I saw what was happening and didn’t like it, for them, not for us. I made a FAST DEAL with China in order to save them from what I thought was going to be a very bad situation, and I didn’t want to see that happen,” he continued. “Because of this deal, everything quickly stabilized and China got back to business as usual. Everybody was happy! That is the good news!!!

“The bad news is that China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US. So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!”

The announcement followed a Thursday night Fox News interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in which the trade negotiator said that talks between the two countries had “stalled.”

Earlier this month, the Trump administration temporarily lowered its import duties on Chinese goods to 30 percent from 145 percent. In exchange, China said it would lower its import tariff on American products to 10 percent from 125 percent. Both nations agreed to maintain a reciprocal tariff rate of 10 percent.

But how countries plan to continue negotiations with the White House over the hit-and-miss trade agreements is unclear, especially after components of Trump’s plan were deemed illegal by different U.S. courts. Trump’s tariff plan was blocked by a trade court Wednesday, with a three-judge panel ruling that the president’s plan exceeded “any authority granted” by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. (That ruling has been temporarily paused, leaving the tariffs in place while the government appeals the decision.) Less than 24 hours later, another court intervened in Trump’s levies, denoting in a two-page order that the duties were “unlawful.”

Elon Musk was getting high on ketamine, psychedelics, Adderall, and ecstasy frequently while on the campaign trail for President Trump last year. Multiple sources reported that the billionaire was using so much ketamine that it was hurting his bladder, a common side effect of frequent use. 

The New York Times reports that Musk traveled with a box of about 20 different pills on him, including but not limited to Adderall, according to a photo and multiple sources. 

Musk being high all the time might explain some of the “quirks” that his fans chalk up to him being some misunderstood genius. That weird, babbling speech at CPAC in February? The weird jumping? That might have something to do with frequent use of the drugs mentioned above.  

This is the richest man on earth. He was firing people and cutting programs without care at DOGE. He tried to buy an election in Wisconsin. He recently had another child with another woman, while Grimes tweets at him on X about theirs. He heiled Hitler and is still trying to get to Mars, all while he whines about his multiple companies “suffering.” His being an avid drug user is unsurprising, but doing so while hugely impacting the president’s policy is very troubling. 

Donald Trump unleashed a furious screed lamenting his recent legal loss on tariffs, and pointed the finger at “sleazebag” conservative billionaire Leonard Leo, the ex-chairman of the Federalist Society.

In a post on Truth Social Thursday night, Trump railed against the U.S. Court of International Trade’s ruling the previous day, which found that the president had exceeded his legal authority by imposing sweeping tariffs on dozens of countries, based on vague claims of “national emergencies.”

On Thursday, the Trump administration was granted a temporary stay of the little-known federal court’s ruling while the government appeals—but that didn’t keep Trump from flying off the handle.

“Where do these initial three Judges come from? How is it possible for them to have potentially done such damage to the United States of America? Is it purely a hatred of ‘TRUMP?’ What other reason could it be?” Trump wrote.

Trump said that he regretted taking recommendations for judges from the Federalist Society, and lashed out at Leo specifically.

“I was new to Washington, and it was suggested that I use The Federalist Society as a recommending source on Judges. I did so, openly and freely, but then realized that they were under the thumb of a real ‘sleazebag’ named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions,” Trump wrote. “He openly brags how he controls Judges, and even Justices of the United States Supreme Court—I hope that is not so, and don’t believe it is!”

Leo is single-handedly responsible for installing the conservative majority in the U.S. Supreme Court, and tracelessly pumps hundreds of millions of dollars into the conservative legal movement every year. While two of the judges responsible for blocking Trump’s sweeping retaliatory tariffs were appointed by other presidents, one, Judge Timothy Reif, was appointed by Trump during his first term.

In 2020, Leo left the Federalist Society to start his for-profit conservative consulting group, CRC Advisors.

“In any event, Leo left The Federalist Society to do his own ‘thing.’ I am so disappointed in The Federalist Society because of the bad advice they gave me on numerous Judicial Nominations. This is something that cannot be forgotten!” Trump wrote.

Trump continued with a lengthy call for the Supreme Court to reverse the ruling, adding, “Backroom ‘hustlers’ must not be allowed to destroy our Nation!”

Trump’s move to shade the conservative playmaker comes as he prepares his own judicial nominees. Crucially, the Trump administration appears to have decided it no longer wants qualified judges in the first place, just political sycophants.

Pam Bondi told the American Bar Association Thursday that the administration would not cooperate with its vetting process, claiming that it favored candidates put forth by Democratic administrations. This move came shortly after Trump announced that he would nominate Emil Bove, his personal lawyer in the Stormy Daniels trial, for a lifetime federal judiciary appointment.

Elon Musk isn’t done with the federal government after all.

Days after the tech billionaire confirmed on X that his time as a special government employee had come to a close, the vice president revealed that the administration isn’t ready to let Musk go.

“I think there’s an effort by the media to sort of say the Elon era is over, and I think that’s actually totally wrong,” JD Vance told Newsmax in an interview released late Thursday.

“Now, he has, obviously, a day job, and he’s got to go back to his day job to run his companies, but the DOGE effort will continue, [and] Elon will continue to be an important adviser for both me and the president,” Vance continued. “And most importantly, the job of making the government more efficient, of not wasting people’s money, that has to continue. I think it’s one of the most important mandates that we got from the American people, and we will keep on executing on that mandate.”

And Donald Trump similarly appears to be trying to extend Musk’s time in office. In a Truth Social post Thursday, the president announced that he would be holding a press conference with Musk the following day, calling him “terrific.”

“This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way,” Trump wrote.

It’s no secret that Musk had been a decidedly unpopular figure in the White House weeks before he refocused his attention on his struggling electric car brand. In the few short months that Musk ran DOGE, reports emerged that practically everyone in the White House hated him. He had stomped on the toes of Trump’s Cabinet, failing to consult them before paring down federal agencies technically under their control. He got into a screaming match with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Earlier this week, Musk whined that DOGE had become a “whipping boy” for the administration’s failures. He interfered in a deal over an AI datacenter in the United Arab Emirates to try to get his company xAI a piece of the pie, and he told CBS that Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” was actually a bad idea.

But there are plenty of reasons why Trump and co. might want to keep the world’s richest man in their pocket.

Musk was Trump’s top financial backer in the 2024 election, spending at least $250 million in the final months of the president’s campaign after Trump was shot in July. Musk had also promised to funnel funds toward other Republicans, declaring in the wake of the November election that his super PACs would “play a significant role in primaries.” In the following months, Musk threatened to use his money to fund primary challengers to Republicans who opposed Trump’s agenda and to go after Democrats, and that he would be preparing “for the midterms and any intermediate elections, as well as looking at elections at the district attorney level.”

The week after Trump returned from the Middle East trip, however, Musk announced at the Qatar Economic Forum that he had “done enough” political spending.

“I think in terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the future,” Musk said.

Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and pro-Palestine activist detained by the Trump administration and threatened with deportation, thinks that government officials coordinated with anti-Palestinian groups and organizations to target him.

Zeteo News reports that Khalil and his legal team from the Center of Constitutional Rights filed a Freedom of Information Act request with several government agencies to “document and expose the reported collaboration between federal officials and private, anti-Palestinian organizations who have identified, doxxed, and reported him and others for purposes of securing the deportation of student activists advocating on behalf of Palestinian human rights.”

In their request, Khalil’s lawyers say that his arrest, as well as that of other pro-Palestine activists, shows patterns that indicate the government is working with outside groups who are working together to target such activists. These groups, which include the pro-Israel academic blacklist Canary Mission and far-right Betar USA, publicly take credit every time one of these arrests are announced.

As early as January, Betar, a Revisionist Zionist organization that has been labeled “extremist” by the Anti Defamation League was recommending foreign students and teachers to the Trump administration for deportation because they protested against Israel. Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student at Columbia University who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at what he thought was a U.S. citizenship interview, was also on Betar’s list.

According to Zeteo, the FOIA request cites several examples of Betar and other organizations creating profiles for Khalil and attacking him on social media. Activists from these organizations, such as Betar head Ross Glick, reportedly met with Senator John Fetterman and the office of Senator Ted Cruz to discuss deportation efforts.

Fetterman denied working with Betar, telling Zeteo that “I do not support private organizations coming up with deportation lists, and in any event, I would never participate or assist in that.” The State Department, on the other hand, didn’t deny working with such organizations.

“Given our commitment to and responsibility for national security, the Department uses all available tools to receive and review concerning information when considering visa revocations about possible ineligibilities,” a department spokesperson told Zeteo.

If the Trump administration is taking deportation recommendations from extremist, anti–free speech organizations like Betar and Canary Mission, it is violating the First Amendment to the Constitution in its immigration policies. But Trump and his associates have already shown the public that they don’t care about such freedoms for the people they oppose, let alone the law.

After the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, met with Donald Trump at the White House Thursday, the bank took the unprecedented step of releasing a statement asserting its independence.

The statement said that the Fed has an independent, nonpartisan role using economic data to set monetary policy.

“Chair Powell did not discuss his expectations for monetary policy, except to stress that the path of policy will depend entirely on incoming economic information and what that means for the outlook,” the statement said regarding Powell’s meeting with Trump.

The Fed added that Powell told Trump that he and other officials “will set monetary policy, as required by law, to support maximum employment and stable prices and will make those decisions based solely on careful, objective, and non-political analysis.”

Such a statement is rare from the Fed, which normally remains tight-lipped. Trump has made no secret of his displeasure with Powell for not cutting interest rates at the president’s request, and at one point Trump threatened to fire Powell to get his way. Trump later tempered his threat, but not without spooking international markets and worrying investors.

Powell also has been honest about the negative economic effects on Trump’s tariffs, prompting the president to level insults at Powell from his Truth Social account. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt didn’t dispute the Fed’s statement Thursday, but noted that Trump “did say that the Fed chair is making a mistake by not lowering rates.”

Powell’s statement suggests that Trump challenged the Fed’s authority during their meeting. Did Trump revive his threat to fire Powell? What will the president do if Powell stands his ground on interest rates? With Trump being dealt two major setbacks over his tariffs in the past 24 hours, he might get impatient and angry.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt just cannot seem to grasp the whole “checks and balances” part of the U.S. Constitution.

During a press briefing Thursday, Leavitt railed against the recent ruling of a little-known federal court that found Donald Trump had exceeded his legal authority by imposing sweeping tariffs on dozens of countries, based on vague claims of “national emergencies.” In a separate ruling, another federal judge also found that Trump could not collect tariffs on any of his orders.

“The courts should have no role here. There is a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process. America cannot function if President Trump, or any other president for that matter, has their sensitive diplomatic or trade negotiations railroaded by activist judges,” Leavitt said.

But the first decision was made by the U.S. Court of International Trade, which has nationwide jurisdiction over civil cases arising from international trade. The three-judge panel ruled that Trump had wrongly invoked the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, which allows him to respond to national emergencies, to justify sweeping retaliatory tariffs on Canada, China, Mexico, and dozens more countries.

Shortly after the briefing, the Trump administration was granted a temporary stay of the trade court ruling while the government appeals. Leavitt also asked the Supreme Court to step in on behalf of the president. In the meantime, Trump officials have set out to downplay the impact of the rulings, which could potentially upend ongoing negotiations with other countries.

Leavitt has repeatedly claimed that federal judges have no jurisdiction over the president’s ability to conduct foreign policy matters, rendering them powerless to rule against his illegal deportation policies. Earlier this week, Trump asked the Supreme Court to back up the administration’s efforts to remove immigrants to countries where they did not originate, after a federal judge ruled that he couldn’t deport individuals to South Sudan if they weren’t from there. Leavitt has also railed against the judge who paused Trump’s deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.