Trump’s DHS Unveils Chilling Strategy to Avoid ICE Facilities Scrutiny

The Trump administration has found a new way to block Democrats from highlighting the reportedly appalling conditions at ICE facilities: flout the law.

The Department of Homeland Security is imposing new restrictions on visits that members of Congress and their staff can make to ICE facilities, in violation of federal law. Under the yearly appropriations act, sitting members of Congress are allowed to enter any DHS facility being used to “detain or otherwise house aliens” without providing prior notice in order to conduct an oversight visit.

But under new rules released earlier this month, lawmakers must provide ICE with at least 72 hours’ notice before visiting a facility. Previously, congressional staffers only needed to give 24 hours’ notice. The new guidance also gives ICE the right to “deny a request or otherwise cancel, reschedule or terminate a tour or visit” for a number of reasons, including “operational concerns” or if ICE officials or facility managers “deem it appropriate.”

Representative Bennie Thompson, the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, called the policy “an affront to the Constitution and Federal law.”

“There is no valid or legal reason for denying Member access to ICE facilities and DHS’s ever-changing justifications prove this,” Thompson said in a statement. “To be clear, there is no agency or department that is ‘too busy’ for oversight. If ICE has nothing to hide, DHS must make its facilities available.”

The policy change comes amid disturbing trends both inside and outside ICE facilities. Since Donald Trump took office, immigrant detentions have ramped up rapidly, with White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller demanding ICE make upward of 3,000 arrests per day. The arrested people—very few of whom are the “violent criminals” Trump promised to deport and some of whom are American citizens—are reportedly being held in appalling conditions.

Meanwhile, Democratic members of Congress who have attempted to enter ICE facilities on oversight visits have been denied entry. Representatives Maxine Waters and Judy Chu were denied entry on separate visits to California facilities, while Representatives Jerry Nadler and Dan Goldman were blocked from entering an ICE office in New York. Representatives Delia Ramirez, Chuy Garcia, Danny Davis, and Jonathan Jackson were also kept out of an ICE center in Chicago for two days in a row.

The most dramatic visit was in New Jersey, when Representatives LaMonica McIver, Bonnie Watson Coleman, and Rob Menendez attempted to enter an ICE facility in Newark. Law enforcement agents arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who was with the legislators and was ultimately charged with trespassing.

New Jersey acting attorney general and former Trump lawyer Alina Habba later dropped the charges against Baraka, only to charge McIver with “assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement.”

McIver has slammed the charges as “purely political,” warning they were intended to “criminalize and deter legislative oversight.”

The Trump administration is reportedly considering nuking Iran.

The Guardian on Wednesday claimed that the U.S. military has reservations regarding the success of using a bunker-buster bomb, a nonnuclear weapon, to eliminate Iran’s Fordo nuclear facility, buried deep in a mountain. Two defense officials were reportedly briefed that only a tactical nuclear weapon could reach the facility, but The Guardian noted that Trump is not considering using a tactical nuke.

On Thursday, Fox News senior White House correspondent Jaqui Heinrich reported that the White House told her otherwise.

“I was just told by a top official here that none of that report is true, that none of the options are off the table, and the U.S. military is very confident that bunker busters could get the job done at Fordo,” Heinrich said.

After days of bombings and further escalation from Israel and the U.S., Trump is now openly floating nuking a country of 90 million to stop it from building the nukes the West has claimed it’s been building for decades. This disgusting provocation would leave countless innocents dead, poison the region for decades, and almost certainly lead to even deeper international conflict. All this from a president who ran on a promise to end endless wars and bring peace to the Middle East.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she wouldn’t “engage in hypotheticals” when asked two major questions on Trump’s plans for Iran.

First, she was asked whether Trump would circumvent Congress to strike Iran.

“[If] the U.S. were to take some type of military action, would the president go to Congress to seek war authority?” a reporter asked Leavitt at her Thursday press conference, referring to the power afforded to Congress by the Constitution.

“I’m not gonna engage in hypotheticals. I gave you the statement from the president, he’ll make a decision in two weeks,” she responded.

Leavitt referred to another valid question as a worthless hypothetical again a minute later, when asked about Iran potentially retaliating with an attempt on the president’s life, as it has been accused of doing in the past.

“As for your question regarding Iranian retaliation, I’m not gonna engage in hypotheticals again. But I can assure the American public and the world that this administration is prepared and ready to defend American interests and assets, not just in the region but here on our homeland as well,” she said.

The Trump administration has already been supporting Israeli intelligence and helped them shoot Iranian missiles down. The United States is already at least tangentially involved, while seeming to inch closer to full participation by the day. These “hypotheticals” that Leavitt shirks are being asked because they appear to be extremely likely outcomes, not just some random scenario that reporters are trying to sensationalize. It’s deeply troubling that the press secretary is dodging questions about whether the president will respect congressional war powers or launch us into another one of Israel’s wars, leaving a massive door open for Trump to avoid future accountability.

The world is on edge waiting for Donald Trump to decide if he will order the U.S. military to attack Iran. And according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, everyone will have to wait a little longer—two weeks, to be exact.

Leavitt revealed Trump’s decision-making timeline during a press briefing at the White House Thursday.

“Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks,” Leavitt said, reading out a statement from Trump.

A reporter then pointed out that Trump often sets two-week deadlines only to move them to suit his needs, as he has done while tepidly trying to convince Russia to stop its war in Ukraine.

“How can we be sure that he’s going to stick to this one on making the decision on Iran?” asked AFP’s Danny Kemp, referring to a similar two-week deadline Trump has repeatedly given Russia to stop bombing Ukraine (with no tangible results).

Leavitt stammered as she claimed that Iran negotiations and Russia-Ukraine negotiations were completely different before pivoting to a tried-and-true fallback: blaming Joe Biden.

Trump has previously claimed that Iranian officials want to come to Washington and negotiate an end to Israel’s war, which has so far killed at least 639 people in Iran, according to human rights groups.

Tehran, for its part, has said that “no Iranian official has ever asked to grovel at the gates of the White House.”

“The only thing more despicable than [Trump’s] lies is his cowardly threat to ‘take out’ Iran’s Supreme Leader,” the Iranian mission to the U.N. wrote on X Wednesday.

Either way, making a people under attack wait two weeks to see if they will face further bombardment is a bonkers decision. It also marks a significant change in tone for Trump, who has so far indicated he is open to attacking Iran and has repeatedly demanded “unconditional surrender” from the Middle Eastern nation. But maybe he’s content to sit back and let Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu do all the dirty work.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security have claimed multiple times since May that there’s been a 413 percent increase in assaults against their agents to justify their officers wearing masks and refusing to identify themselves. The data states otherwise. 

The Washington Post’s Philip Bump penned a column asserting the obvious—ICE officers are covering their faces and wearing plainclothes while they kidnap people off the street to “avoid accountability” and make it “harder to say precisely who had plucked up a college student or local mother and sent them to jail in another state.”  

Bump first raised the question in May in an article that had acting ICE Director Todd Lyons so incensed that he wrote a letter to the editor claiming a staggering increase in assaults, writing “officers wear masks for personal protection and to prevent doxing.… Since President Donald Trump returned to office, ICE officers have seen a staggering 413 percent increase in assaults against them.”

The use of a percentage here is very intentional, as it’s easier to inflate and sensationalize. “A 413 percent increase could mean that the number of assaults went from 200 in 2024 to 1,026 in 2025—or that it went from eight to 41.… There’s a big difference between an increase of 826 assaults and an increase of 33—especially if some of those ‘assaults’ are of the Lander variety,” wrote Bump, who dug into the claim in a piece published Thursday.

Bump found that assaults on agents had decreased every month since 2024 and, despite repeated requests to ICE, wasn’t given any proof of ICE agents being doxxed, targeted, or assaulted outside the context of an immigration arrest. 

The organization that has conducted countless raids and crackdowns, kidnapped innocent people off the street, and handcuffed elected officials, is now trying to frame itself as the victim so that its officers can continue to feel big and strong behind the anonymity of their masks. 

“We should not and cannot take ICE’s representations about the need for its officers to obscure their identities at face value. That the organization would not provide evidence for its claims … diminishes the extent to which we should grant ICE the benefit of the doubt,” Bump wrote. “Leaving the question I posed in May: Why are these officers covering their faces if not to avoid accountability?”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants the Pentagon to tone any commemoration of Juneteenth way, way down, in keeping with his anti-diversity crusade.

Hegseth’s office requested the Department of Defense take “a passive approach to Juneteenth messaging,” according to an email obtained by Rolling Stone. The Pentagon’s office of the chief of public affairs also said in the email it won’t publish Juneteenth-related material online on Thursday.

Juneteenth marks the official last day of slavery in the United States. After the Civil War ended, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, on June 19, 1865, to free the last enslaved people in the country. President Joe Biden signed a law making Juneteenth a federal holiday in 2021. The bill passed with widespread bipartisan support in the House and a unanimous vote in the Senate.

The White House did not respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment about Hegseth’s directive. A Pentagon official said the DOD “may engage in the following activities, subject to applicable department guidance: holiday celebrations that build camaraderie and esprit de corps; outreach events (e.g., recruiting engagements with all-male, all-female, or minority-serving academic institutions) where doing so directly supports DOD’s mission; and recognition of historical events and notable figures where such recognition informs strategic thinking, reinforces our unity, and promotes meritocracy and accountability.”

It’s a little surprising that Hegseth didn’t choose to do away with marking Juneteenth altogether. Since being sworn in, the defense secretary has repeatedly stated that “DEI is dead” at the Pentagon.

Hegseth has banned the DOD from marking identity months such as Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and Pride Month. In February, the Pentagon was directed to scrub its website of all “news and feature articles, photos, and videos that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The DOD removed web pages about the Tuskegee Airmen, the World War II accomplishments of Jackie Robinson, and the Navajo Code Talkers, among others—although these were restored after widespread scrutiny.

Hegseth has also insisted on changing the names of military bases that were once named after Confederate figures. The bases were renamed following the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, and Hegseth is now working to revert the base names back to the pro-slavery ones.

Donald Trump insists that Iran is on the brink of developing a nuclear weapon, despite repeated statements to the contrary from his own intelligence officials. But rather than listen, the U.S. president is twisting reality to suit his plans.

The White House posted a video Wednesday of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee in March. Gabbard was delivering the Annual Threat Assessment from the U.S. intelligence community.

“In the past year, we’ve seen an erosion of a decades-long taboo in Iran on discussing nuclear weapons in public, likely emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decision-making apparatus,” Gabbard says in the clip. “Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.”

But the clip conveniently leaves out what Gabbard said just a few moments before that soundbite. As shown in Gabbard’s full testimony, the text of which is available on the Office of the Director of National Intelligence website, she actually says Iran is not close to developing a nuclear weapon.

“The [intelligence community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003,” Gabbard said immediately before the quote posted by the White House.

As Donald Trump seemingly rampages closer to ordering U.S. forces to attack Iran, he has sidelined Gabbard in his decision-making process. Trump has gone so far as to say he “didn’t care” about his own government’s assessment that Iran is still years away from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Instead, Trump says Iran is“very close to having it,” parroting rhetoric from the Israeli government, which has repeatedly insisted on Iran’s burgeoning nuclear capabilities as a flimsy justification for the massive military operation that has already killed at least 639 people, according to human rights activists.

Gabbard, for her part, has caved willingly enough: Gabbard told CNN Tuesday that Trump “was saying the same thing that I said in my annual threat assessment back in March.” So it seems that Trump didn’t need to edit Gabbard’s words, after all—she’s more than happy to lie for him on her own.

To be clear, this entire horrific situation could have been avoided if Trump had kept the U.S. in the Iran nuclear deal. Trump left the agreement in 2018 simply because it had been forged under his predecessor, President Barack Obama.

Two of the highest-ranking military Cabinet members have essentially been cut off as Trump teeters on the edge of joining Israel’s war on Iran, according to a report from The Washington Post.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, two people who you’d expect to be closely involved with the potential wartime situation, have been kicked to the curb in favor of his “tier one” advisory group on Iran, which includes Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine.

While Israel has bombarded Iran based on unsubstantiated nuclear weapons claims, Trump has yet to confirm U.S.-led military strikes on Iran, which could lead to global fallout. Reports Wednesday indicated that Trump has approved strikes but not yet given the final green light.

Hegseth has struggled to establish trust and consistency while leading the Pentagon, a job he was nearly disqualified from in the first place. Now it seems clear that the president does not take him seriously as a leader or confidant. “Nobody is talking to Hegseth,” one official told the Post. “There is no interface operationally between Hegseth and the White House at all.”

Trump has made his distaste for Gabbard much clearer, especially after she posted a three-minute-long X video last week that went mostly unnoticed at the time but now appears to be an obvious rebuke of U.S. support for Israel’s war on Iran.

“I don’t care what she said,” Trump stated on Tuesday when asked about Gabbard’s video, on Air Force One. “I think they were very close to having a weapon.”

While Gabbard’s booting from the inner circle seems to be ideology-based, Hegseth’s shunning feels like a competency and trust issue. Either way, the country’s two top defense leaders are not involved in discussions around starting a massive war, which points to a troubling level of internal discord and disunity, especially just months into Trump’s first year as president.

Donald Trump slammed a Fox News poll Thursday on Truth Social, accusing the network’s pollsters of being “always wrong and negative.”

“The Crooked FoxNews Polls got the Election WRONG, I won by much more than they said I would, and have been biased against me for years,” Trump wrote, referring to the 2020 election, which Fox correctly said that he lost. “It’s why MAGA HATES FoxNews, even though their anchors are GREAT.”

“I hate FAKE pollsters, one of the Worst, but Fox will never change their discredited pollster!” he added.

A Fox News poll released Wednesday shows that a majority of voters disapprove of Trump’s job performance by an eight-point margin. The poll, regarded as one of the best in the industry, found that a majority of voters are still feeling pessimistic about the state of the economy. 

Just Tuesday, the Federal Reserve forecasted higher inflation as business owners and consumers start to feel the impact of the president’s sweeping tariffs. On inflation specifically, Trump’s job approval is underwater by 30 points, with just 34 percent of voters approving of his performance on the price-level.

When it comes to the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” congressional Republicans’ sprawling package of tax cuts and health care “reforms” that the president has put his full weight behind, the poll found Americans oppose the measure by a large margin. According to the poll, nearly three in four independents oppose the measure, as do the vast majority of Democrats. 

The majority of voters across the spectrum disapprove of the president’s job on immigration and foreign policy, as his response to anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles and a collapse in diplomatic negotiations with Iran has dominated headlines.  

Elon Musk thinks White House presidential personnel director Sergio Gor is a “snake.” Gor, who is responsible for picking the approximately 4,000 executive branch staff members, reportedly made sure Musk’s good friend Jared Isaacman got his nomination to lead NASA rescinded.

“He is a snake,” Musk commented on Wednesday under an article describing the lack of vetting that Gor, who vets Trump’s staff, had gone through himself. The rivalry between these two men allegedly started in March when Musk, who was more involved with DOGE at the time, admonished Gor for not filling the Trump administration’s staff quickly enough, “humiliating” him in a Cabinet meeting. Isaacman lost his nomination shortly after, something that infuriated the world’s richest man.

There is obviously still bad blood between Musk and the Trump administration, and comments like these from Musk help illuminate just how and why the beef started. Musk’s flurry of tweets against Trump—claiming he’s in the Epstein files and attacking his One Big Beautiful Bill Act—were directly influenced by the spat between Musk and Gor.