Hakeem Jeffries Serves up Word Salad Over Federal Aide’s Arrest

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries more or less admitted he has no plan to actually hold the Trump administration accountable for targeting sitting members of Congress and their aides.

Department of Homeland Security police briefly detained an aide to Jeffries’s fellow New York Democrat Representative Jerry Nadler on Wednesday. DHS officers entered Nadler’s Manhattan district office, which is above an immigration court, and accused staff of “harboring rioters.”

One staffer was handcuffed but ultimately was not arrested or charged. Nadler slammed his aide’s detention, saying the administration “is trying to intimidate members of Congress.”

“They’re behaving like fascists,” Nadler said. “We have to fight them.”

But when Jeffries was asked about the detention on Sunday, he had little more than vague statements to offer.

“In terms of how we will respond to what Trump and the administration has endeavored to do, we will make that decision in a time, place, and manner of our choosing. But the response will be continuous and it will meet the moment that is required,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union.

“What exactly does that mean? Have you not decided how to respond?” asked host Dana Bash.

Jeffries sat silently for several long seconds before finally responding with more bureaucratic jargon.

“We’ve publicly responded in a variety of different ways. We haven’t let our foot off the gas pedal in terms of additional things that may take place with respect to our congressional oversight authority and capacity. We will respond in a time, place, and manner of our choosing if this continues to happen,” he said.

Waiting for more bad things to happen is a markedly different strategy from what Jeffries promised just a few weeks ago. In mid-May, Jeffries warned the administration against targeting sitting members of Congress.

“It’s a red line,” he said. “They know better than to go down that road.”

But just a few days later, interim U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba announced criminal charges against Democratic Representative LaMonica McIver, accusing her of interfering with law enforcement and assaulting officers while trying to enter an ICE facility in New Jersey.

Jeffries has done nothing to actually stand up for McIver, or Nadler’s aide, or Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka, who was arrested for trying to enter the same ICE facility before the charges were later dropped. Safe to say that Jeffries’s bluff has been well and truly called.

Former Biden State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller now admits that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza.

In a Sky News podcast interview released on Monday, Miller—who was infamous for smirking every time he took a question on Gaza during State Department briefings in the Biden administration—said Israel is “without a doubt” committing war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza.

“Do you think what’s going on in Gaza now is a genocide?” asked Sky News correspondent Mark Stone.

“I don’t think it’s a genocide, but I think it is without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes,” Miller replied.”

“You wouldn’t have said that at the podium,” Stone pressed.

“Yeah, look, because when you’re at the podium, you’re not expressing your personal opinion. You’re expressing the conclusions of the United States government. The United States government had not concluded that they committed war crimes, still have not concluded that,” Miller replied.

Stone said, “But your personal view is that they have—and they were while you were there.”

“Yes,” Miller said, before stumbling over his words to add a qualification. “There are two ways to think about the commission of war crimes. One is if the state has pursued a policy to deliberately committing war crimes, or is acting reckless in a way that aids and abets war crimes, if the state is committing war crimes. And that I think is an open question.

“What is almost certainly not an open question is that there are individual incidents that have been war crimes where Israeli soldiers and members of the Israeli military have committed war crimes. And we do know that Israel has opened investigations. But look, we are many months into those investigations and we’re not seeing Israeli soldiers held accountable. So ultimately, in almost every major conflict, including conflicts prosecuted by democracies, you will see individual members of the military, of militaries, commit war crimes, and the way you judge a democracy is the way you hold these people accountable.”

“But Israel hasn’t,” Stone asked.

“And that’s my point, we have not yet seen them hold sufficient members of the military accountable, and I think it’s an open question whether they’re going to,” Miller said.

Miller, who served as Joe Biden’s State Department spokesperson for the last two years of his administration, spent that time defending U.S. arms sales to Israel, justifying U.S. vetoes of U.N. proposals calling for a ceasefire, and downplaying Israel’s war crimes—over and over again.

If Miller really believed that Israel was committing war crimes and could not express his true thoughts from the podium, he could have resigned from his position, like a few other brave people in the Biden administration did. But his Sky News interview reveals that he’s simply interested in avoiding blame, as Israel continues its mass starvation of Palestinians and its war crimes become even more evident to the public.

In fact, before his half-hearted admission that Israel is committing war crimes, Miller still took some time to blame protesting college students in his analysis of the situation.

“There was a time when our public discussion of withholding weapons from Israel, as well as the protests on college campuses in the United States, and the movement of some European countries to recognize the state of Palestine—appropriate discussions, appropriate decisions, protests are appropriate—but all of those things together were leading the leadership of Hamas to conclude that they didn’t need to agree to a ceasefire, they just needed to hold out for a little bit longer, and they could get what they always wanted,” he said.

“Now, the thing that I look back on, that I will always ask questions of myself about, and I think this is true for others in government, is in that intervening period between the end of May and the middle of January [2025], when thousands of Palestinians were killed, innocent civilians who didn’t want this war, had nothing to do with it, was there more that we could, could have done to pressure the Israeli government to agree to that ceasefire? I think at times there probably was.”

What brilliant insight.

Surprise, surprise: Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s biggest operation to date was also a huge failure.

Fox News national correspondent Bill Melugin reported on X Monday that ICE completed a massive month-long operation in Massachusetts in response to the state’s sanctuary policies.

Of the 1,461 arrests made as part of Operation Patriot, only 790 individuals—or roughly 54 percent—had criminal convictions or charges. Meanwhile, 277 detainees, or about 19 percent, had received final orders of removal or deportation, though it’s unclear whether there was overlap between those two groups. This disastrous sweep comes as the Trump administration sets a new quota of 3,000 ICE arrests per day, and continues to stray from its commitment to target criminals for deportation.

Fox reported that many of these arrests were so-called “collaterals,” a strange euphemism for people whose only crime was being with an ICE target at the time of arrest. Fox said that ICE had repeatedly warned sanctuary city officials that a failure to enforce immigration policies would result in collateral arrests. According to ICE’s own numbers, the agency made a minimum 394 wrongful arrests as part of Operation Patriot.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, wrote in a post on X Monday that this latest ICE sweep was even worse than April’s Operation Tidal Wave in Florida, which previously held the record for ICE’s largest operation with a whopping 1,120 arrests.

“Wow. Just 54% of all the people arrested during this operation had a criminal record at all. That’s an even lower percent than the big Florida operation in April, where 63% had criminal history,” Reichlin-Melnick wrote. “ICE is expanding its dragnet even more to go after people with no criminal history.”

ICE told FOX that Operation Patriot was significantly more difficult due to a lack of cooperation from local officials, and claimed that they’d encountered “almost daily interference” from activists.

But Massachusetts officials say that ICE had failed to communicate with them. Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey expressed outrage Monday after an 18-year-old student at Milford High School was arrested by ICE, just days before graduation.

“Yet again, local officials and law enforcement have been left in the dark with no heads up and no answers to their questions,” she said.

A day late and a dollar short, Donald Trump has finally responded to the violent attack in Boulder, Colorado.

Eight people were injured Sunday when a 45-year-old man allegedly attacked a peaceful protest remembering Israeli hostages still held in Gaza. The suspect, who has been identified as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, first fired on the crowd with a homemade flamethrower and then threw Molotov cocktails.

Mark Michalek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Denver field office, said that Soliman shouted, “Free Palestine!” A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security wrote on X that Soliman “is illegally in our country.”

About 19 hours after the fact, Trump shared his official reaction.

“Yesterday’s horrific attack in Boulder, Colorado, WILL NOT BE TOLERATED in the United States of America,” Trump wrote Monday on Truth Social. “He came in through Biden’s ridiculous Open Border Policy, which has hurt our Country so badly. He must go out under ‘TRUMP’ Policy. Acts of Terrorism will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law. This is yet another example of why we must keep our Borders SECURE, and deport Illegal, Anti-American Radicals from our Homeland. My heart goes out to the victims of this terrible tragedy, and the Great People of Boulder, Colorado!”

According to the DHS, Soliman, an Egyptian national, entered the country on a B2 tourist visa in August 2022. He filed for asylum the next month, and his visa expired in 2023. FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said that the agency was treating the case as an “act of ideologically motivated violence.”

But the DHS’s interpretation of Soliman’s time in the U.S. stretches the facts a bit (to put it mildly). Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, pointed out that it’s not clear whether Soliman was here illegally, given his asylum application.

“It’s not even fully accurate to say he was in the country illegally—despite the visa overstay,” Reichlin-Melnick wrote. “Because he filed for asylum before his status expired, by law he was not accruing ‘unlawful presence’ while waiting for an answer.”

About two dozen hostages are believed to be alive in Gaza. The Israeli government and Hamas are currently considering a U.S.-led proposal for a ceasefire. Both sides intend to propose amendments to the agreement.

Since the October 7 attack, Israel has killed at least 54,400 Palestinians in its relentless assault on Gaza. The majority of the victims have been civilians. Israel has also choked off almost all aid into the region.

On Monday, the Supreme refused to hear two significant cases challenging Maryland’s state-wide ban on semiautomatic rifles and other assault-style weapons like AR-15s. The court’s rejection of the cases, a somewhat surprising move for the conservative majority, means that the gun control law will stay in place—for now. The court also refused to hear a challenge to Rhode Island’s restrictions on high-capacity magazines.

Four Supreme Court justices are needed to hear a case.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Samuel Alito wrote a dissenting opinion on the Maryland case, arguing that it wasn’t consistent with the Supreme Court’s conservative 2022 ruling that the right to bear arms extends outside the home, which loosened gun restrictions and caused states like Maryland and Rhode Island to enact bans like the ones being challenged in court.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the other conservative justice, wrote his own dissenting statement, calling the Maryland ban an “outlier” and positing ominously that “this court should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon.”

Chinese officials tore into Donald Trump on Monday, accusing him of sabotaging his own trade negotiations.

Trump claimed Friday that China had “totally violated” the terms of the 90-day tariff pause that the two countries hammered out in Geneva at the start of last month. In a lengthy Truth Social post, Trump insisted he had taken a soft-handed approach to negotiations in the weeks since, but now he was done being “MR. NICE GUY!”

Trump’s comments came just hours after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who was one of the principal U.S. negotiators in Switzerland, admitted on Fox News that trade talks between Beijing and Washington had “stalled.”

China hit back Monday, stating Trump’s claims that the Asian powerhouse had been withholding rare earths were “groundless.” In reality, officials said, the U.S. had “seriously damaged” the agreement by imposing restrictions on Chinese-made microchips and student visas for Chinese nationals.

“The United States had unilaterally provoked new economic and trade tensions,” a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said in a statement. “Instead of reflecting on itself, it has made bogus accusations and unreasonably denounced China for violating the agreement.”

“If the U.S. insists on its own way and continues to damage China’s interests, China will continue to take resolute and forceful measures to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests,” the spokesperson said, without providing details of what those measures might be.

The Trump administration agreed in May to temporarily lower tariffs on Chinese goods to 30 percent from 145 percent. China agreed to reciprocate by lowering tariffs on American products to 10 percent from 125 percent.

But it’s unclear what the future of tariffs between the two nations will be. In addition to the clearly struggling trade talks, two separate courts have deemed Trump’s sweeping global tariff plan illegal. The Trump administration plans to appeal at least one of those rulings.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced last week that the administration would work to “aggressively revoke” visas for those with alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party as well as for any Chinese national studying in “critical fields” in the U.S. Rubio said his department would also “enhance scrutiny” of all visa applications from China, including Hong Kong.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial board lambasted Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, stating that it’s time for him to either “serve Pennsylvanians, or step away.”

The board, which endorsed Fetterman for Senate in 2022, wrote in a scathing column on Sunday that the senator had “checked out” of the Senate in the midst of a crucial political battle with the Trump administration.

“He has missed more votes than nearly every other senator in the past two years. He regularly skips committee hearings, cancels meetings, avoids the daily caucus lunches with colleagues, and rarely goes on the Senate floor,” they wrote.

“To be sure, mental health is a serious issue and not something to ignore. If Fetterman is still struggling, then he should seek immediate help,” the board continued. “Instead, Fetterman complained people have ‘weaponized’ his mental health battles against him. Being an elected official comes with public scrutiny. If Fetterman can’t handle the attention or perform his job, then in the best interest of the country and the nearly 13 million residents of Pennsylvania he represents, he should step aside.”

Fetterman told The New York Times last month that he found the Senate hearings boring and “performative” and only returned to them recently because he felt “shamed” into doing so. “I would go visit my dad instead of a throwaway vote,” he said.

The Inquirer struck back.

“Spending time with family is laudable, but if that is his priority, then Fetterman should get a job closer to one of the eight properties he owns in his hometown of Braddock, Pa,” they wrote, also noting that Fetterman only has to work in the Senate for an average of 165 days per year, well below the rest of the country.

“Many of Fetterman’s constituents would like to work half a year so they, too, could spend time with their families. Safe to say, many would do it for less than Fetterman’s salary of $174,000, which is more than double the nation’s median household income.”

They also had time for Fetterman’s lavish, politically questionable travel habits.

“Fetterman has flown to Israel twice in the past year, including a recent all-expense-paid junket to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been accused of war crimes and corruption. He and his wife flew first class and stayed in five-star hotels as part of a fact-finding mission that cost $36,000 and was paid for by a New York-based nonprofit,” the board wrote.

It’s been a swift, hard fall from grace for Fetterman. The Inquirer’s editorial column comes after the New York magazine report that detailed his public and private outbursts, bringing the question of his fitness to serve to the forefront of the news cycle. The Times article, which the embattled senator also did an interview for, then highlighted how much he hates doing the job he was elected to do.

It seems obvious to everyone around him that Fetterman is not mentally stable enough to perform his duties as a U.S. senator, and it’s also clear that he doesn’t care for them much in the first place. Even if Senate hearings are boring (and I bet they are), it’s the least he could be doing. He’s a senator. If sitting in a congressional hearing in his basketball shorts is too much for him, then the Inquirer is correct. He should have some “shame” and let Pennsylvanians have a leader who cares.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem quietly removed a list of “sanctuary” states, cities, and counties after outrage from the National Sheriffs’ Association.

The Department of Homeland Security published a list Thursday of what it called “sanctuary jurisdictions,” accusing the areas of obstructing federal immigration enforcement. “Each jurisdiction listed will receive formal notification of its non-compliance and all potential violations of federal criminal statutes,” the DHS statement warned.

The list quickly sparked a harsh condemnation from the National Sheriffs’ Association, which represents more than 3,000 elected sheriffs across the country.

“This list was created without any input, criteria of compliance, or a mechanism for how to object to the designation,” Sheriff Kieran Donahue, the group’s president, warned in a statement on Saturday. “Sheriffs nationwide have no way to know what they must do or not do to avoid this arbitrary label.”

The list was created “in a manner that lacks transparency and accountability” and that “violated the core principles of trust, cooperation, and partnership with fellow law enforcement,” Donahue added.

The warning was especially notable given that the National Sheriffs’ Association, which has supported Donald Trump’s most controversial Cabinet nominees in his second term, has also historically backed federal immigration enforcement.

By Sunday, the DHS website had removed the list of sanctuary jurisdictions. When asked about it by Fox News host Maria Batiromo, Noem wouldn’t directly acknowledge the move.

“I saw that there was a list produced,” Bartiromo said on Sunday. “Now, the list I don’t see anymore in the media. Do you have a list of the sanctuary cities that are actually hiding illegals right now?”

“Some of the cities have pushed back,” Noem said. “They think because they don’t have one law or another on the books that they don’t qualify, but they do qualify. They are giving sanctuary to criminals.”

In April, Trump signed an executive order calling on DHS and the Department of Justice to publish a list of sanctuary jurisdictions, describing their policies as “a lawless insurrection.” Sanctuary cities and states limit local police cooperation with federal immigration enforcement in order to foster an environment of trust between immigrant communities and police, so that people aren’t afraid to report crimes.

It’s no surprise the list prompted backlash from the National Sheriffs’ Association, as it did indeed seem “arbitrary.” San Diego City Attorney Heather Ferbert told local outlets last week that San Diego appeared on the DHS list despite having never had a sanctuary policy.

“We suspect this is going to be used as additional threats and fear tactics to threaten federal funding that the city relies on,” she said.

Donald Trump boosted a wild conspiracy theory Sunday that former President Joe Biden has secretly been dead for years.

Trump reshared an outlandish post on Truth Social from an anonymous pro-Trump account under the screen name “llijh” that claimed, “There is no #JoeBiden,” because he was executed in 2020.

“#Biden clones doubles & robotic engineered soulless mindless entities are what you see. >#Democrats dont know the difference,” the post read, adding dozens of unrelated hashtags such as “#Blackwomen” and “#Jews” and tagging several accounts, including CPAC, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and multiple right-wing media sources. The anonymous account has little more than 6,000 followers, while Trump’s has close to 10 million.

The president’s far-right shitposting is a clear appeal to his followers, who find themselves similarly detached from reality. Trump is well aware that Biden is alive. Just last week, Trump said he didn’t have any sympathy for the “vicious” former president, who was recently diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer.

“If you feel sorry for him, don’t feel so sorry, because he’s vicious,” Trump said during a press conference. “What he did with his political opponent and all of the people that he hurt—he hurt a lot of people, Biden, so I really don’t feel sorry for him.”

Senator Lindsey Graham is really hoping that Israel bombs the Freedom Flotilla that political and environmental activist Greta Thunberg is taking on an aid trip to Gaza.

“Hope Greta and her friends can swim!” Graham posted on X, linking to a Times of Israel article about Greta.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition is a civilian aid group that regularly goes into Israeli-controlled waters to deliver needed supplies to Palestinians as they starve behind Israel’s land and naval blockade. Thunberg and several others set sail on Sunday from Italy in another similar effort.

Graham’s post is clearly a call for targeted violence against Thunberg and the rest of the civilian passengers of the flotilla. In early May, another flotilla—which Thunberg was supposed to be on—was bombed twice on its way to Gaza. And while the Israeli government never confirmed or denied its involvement, it was obvious to the flotilla passengers that it was an IDF attack.

Graham’s incendiary post was quickly rebuked.

“This is when you sell your soul to Zionism. We are dealing with the Zio-Nazis who are the most murderous and hated people the earth has ever known. This is you,” Palestinian journalist Abubaker Abed wrote in response to Graham. “What a cowardly and despicable creature you are to wish death upon a girl! One day, all of you will collapse like smelly mosquitoes. You are a cancer to the earth.” Abed fled Gaza only recently to escape Israel’s genocide as the government continues to target thousands of other innocent journalists and civilians.

“A sitting United States Senator threatened a convoy full of nonviolent activists—including Greta Thunberg—with a bombing,” Medhi Hasan wrote on X. “It’s difficult to describe how sociopathic, unhinged, and criminal some of the pro-Israel folks have become.”