ICE Barbie Kristi Noem Announces Twisted Plan for FEMA Budget

A controversial immigrant detention center under construction in Florida will be bankrolled by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, according to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

The center, nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” would repurpose a defunct airstrip in the Everglades in service of Trump’s draconian immigration agenda.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier unveiled plans for the facility last week.

In a video aired on Fox News, Uthmeier said of the 39-square-mile site: “You don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter. People get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.”

In an appearance on The Benny Johnson Show, Uthmeier announced that the project was underway. During that episode, the eponymous right-wing host giddily observed Uthmeier was “making [Trump’s] dream come true,” since Trump reportedly floated installing a snake and gator-filled moat at the southern border during his first term—a proposal so outlandishly ghastly that even Trump had the political tact to separate himself from it at the time.

The creation of the new facility, which would cost $450 million a year to operate, according to The New York Times, will be funded “in large part” by FEMA, said Noem in a statement published to X.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, we are working at turbo speed to deliver cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people’s mandate for mass deportations of criminal illegal aliens,” Noem’s statement said. “We will expand facilities and bed space in just days, thanks to our partnership with Florida.”

Noem said the money would come from FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program, which was created in 2023 by Congress and administered by FEMA to provide grants to organizations or state and local governments providing services to immigrants processed by DHS and awaiting legal proceedings.

The initiative has since been the subject of MAGA attacks and conspiracy theorizing. Now, if Noem follows through, it will apparently be used to help fulfill the president’s wildest immigration fantasies.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller owns a massive stake in Palantir, which stands to make millions off of Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown, according to the Project on Government Oversight.  

Miller’s public financial disclosure report said that the ghoulish Homeland Security adviser owns between $100,001 and $250,000 in assets at the defense company. Miller reportedly acquired the stock after Trump exited the White House in 2021, but sometime before he enacted his sprawling plan to bolster immigration enforcement. The data had been revised as recently as June 4. 

Last month, the Trump administration tapped Palantir to help build a massive system to allow federal agencies to better share their data with each other, creating a huge database that will serve as a surveillance tool for the state. Palantir has also been angling to get involved with the U.S. Navy’s efforts to fast-track warship building.

Palantir has been the highest performing company on the S&P in 2025, with its stock price surging 80 percent this year alone. 

Given Miller’s involvement in Immigration and Customs Enforcement, his financial stake in Palantir should raise significant concerns over potential conflicts of interest. Should he direct an update of DHS’s digital systems, Palantir could stand as a likely beneficiary. 

Virginia Canter, chief counsel for ethics and anti-corruption at Democracy Defenders Fund, told POGO that Miller was walking a thin line. “If he hasn’t stepped over the line, he’s just on the verge of it,” Canter said. 

“I just don’t think anybody would be comfortable with him keeping this stock,” she added. 

Trump’s immigration crackdown is already sure to line the pockets of many surveillance and private prison companies—now it might make one of his closest advisers a pretty penny, too. 

A federal judge has indefinitely blocked the Trump administration’s ban on international students at Harvard University.

“At its root, this case is about core constitutional rights that must be safeguarded: freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom of speech, each of which is a pillar of a functioning democracy and an essential hedge against authoritarianism,” Judge Allison D. Burroughs of the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts ruled on Monday. “Here, the government’s misplaced efforts to control a reputable academic institution and squelch diverse viewpoints seemingly because they are, in some instances, opposed to this Administration’s own views, threaten these rights.”

Trump ordered a 90-day suspension on international students at Harvard, claiming that the university was refusing to share information on students that were “known threats to other students or university personnel.” The decision left the status of countless students up in the air, as the school has nearly 7,000 international students, making up about 27 percent of the school’s student body. This is another installment of Trump’s war of attrition against Harvard and foreign students whom he perceives to be “anti-American.”

The Federal Reserve is waiting to see the residual impacts of the country’s new tariff plan before reducing its key interest rate, leaving the man in charge of implementing the agenda less than happy.

“‘Too Late’ Jerome Powell, of the Fed, will be in Congress today in order to explain, among other things, why he is refusing to lower the Rate. Europe has had 10 cuts, we have had ZERO,” Trump wrote in an excoriating Truth Social post about Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell Tuesday.

“No inflation, great economy—We should be at least two to three points lower,” Trump continued. “Would save the USA $800 Billion Dollars Per Year, plus. What a difference this would make. If things later change to the negative, increase the Rate.”

“I hope Congress really works this very dumb, hardheaded person, over,” he concluded. “We will be paying for his incompetence for many years to come. THE BOARD SHOULD ACTIVATE. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

But Powell fully disregarded the president’s call to reduce rates.

“For the time being, we are well positioned to wait to learn more about the likely course of the economy before considering any adjustments to our policy stance,” Powell said in prepared remarks obtained by the Associated Press.

The public back-and-forth could be the beginning of a tough couple of days for Powell on Capitol Hill, as the chairman is expected to testify before both chambers of Congress.

Leading economists outside of the Federal Reserve have similarly argued that now is not the time to cut interest rates. Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic told Reuters that the country has “space and time” to figure out its ideal rates, especially since companies have already decided to increase product prices this year in reaction to hampered global supply chains.

So much for Donald Trump’s “12 Day War.” The U.S. president said Tuesday that both Israel and Iran have violated a ceasefire.

Trump was furious when speaking to reporters Tuesday morning, just hours after he’d announced an impending ceasefire that would end what he’d termed the “12 Day War.”

“Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and dropped a load of bombs the likes of which I’d never seen before. The biggest load that we’ve seen. I’m not happy with Israel. When I say, ‘OK, now you have 12 hours,’ you don’t go out in the first hour and just drop everything you have on ’em,” Trump said. 

“So I’m not happy with them, I’m not happy with Iran either. But I’m really unhappy Israel is going out this morning, because the one rocket that didn’t land that was shot—perhaps by mistake—that didn’t land, I’m not happy about that.

“You know what, we basically have two countries that have been fighting for so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing,” Trump said. “You understand that?”

While the president had openly bragged about bringing an end to the conflict, it seems he has predictably lost control of the other parties. 

Shortly after Trump had announced the so-called ceasefire deal, he was already reduced to begging Israel to back off its military assault. 

“ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS. IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES,” Trump wrote in a desperate post on Truth Social. 

“ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran. All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly ‘Plane Wave’ to Iran. Nobody will be hurt, the Ceasefire is in effect! Thank you for your attention to this matter!” he insisted in a separate post.

Israel proceeded to attack a radar station near Tehran, after claiming Tehran had fired more missiles. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country would restrain from any more attacks following a conversation with Trump, according to the Financial Times.  

Iran’s military denied having fired on Israel, state media reported.

The Supreme Court temporarily allowed the Trump administration to proceed Monday with deporting people to countries they aren’t from, such as South Sudan, without proper notice.

The 6–3 decision was split along ideological lines, with liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson all dissenting.

“In matters of life and death, it is best to proceed with caution,” the liberal justices wrote. “In this case, the Government took the opposite approach.”

The justices’ decision lifts a lower court order last month that required the government to give immigrants set for deportation to so-called “third countries,” or countries they have no connection to, at least 15 days’ notice to challenge the decision based on “credible fear.” Donald Trump had immediately appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, asking them to make it easier for him to deport people without proper due process. Monday’s decision by the Supreme Court is a hold on the lower court’s previous order while the case fully plays out in lower courts.

The decision focuses on a group of eight immigrant men from various countries—including Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, and Mexico—who were all boarded on a deportation flight headed to South Sudan. As the case played out in the courts, the flight halted in Djibouti, where the men have been trapped since April in a temporary base made out of a shipping container, along with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents overseeing their deportation.

For now, Trump has achieved a massive victory allowing him to speed up his deportations, sending people to just about anywhere he wants.

Multiple outlets have reported that the Trump administration’s claims that they “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities were slightly premature, causing the president to lash out on Monday.

“The sites that we hit in Iran were totally destroyed, and everyone knows it. Only the Fake News would say anything different in order to try and demean, as much as possible—And even they say they were ‘pretty well destroyed!’” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Then he got personal, attacking specific networks and even purposefully misgendering CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who is gay. “Working especially hard on this falsehood is Allison Cooper of Fake News CNN, Dumb Brian L. Roberts, Chairman of ‘Con’cast, Jonny Karl of ABC Fake News, and always, the Losers of, again, Concast’s NBC Fake News. It never ends with the sleazebags in the Media, and that’s why their Ratings are at an ALL TIME LOW—ZERO CREDIBILITY!”

No one is denying that the Iranian nuclear sites took substantial damage. But Israeli and U.S. military reports on the bombing contradict Trump’s claim of complete and utter obliteration. Israeli officials told The New York Times that the Fordo nuclear site, buried deep in a mountain, was not completely destroyed and that the Iranians had moved nuclear materials like uranium out of the site before the bombing. A U.S. military official said the same, admitting that not even 12 bunker-busters could level Fordo, even though the site is certainly out of commission for the time being. On Sunday, even Vice President JD Vance admitted Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium is still intact.

Trump is obviously playing strongman here, embellishing Israeli and U.S. strikes that have thus far killed over 400 civilians, damaged infrastructure, and may not even stop the Iranian government from continuing its nuclear program. All this is distracting Americans from his broken promise of ending endless wars and the ongoing domestic issues, like his retaliatory tariffs and his impending controversial spending bill. And when the media deviates from his winning narrative, he stoops to homophobic remarks and name calling. Very presidential.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a new defense partnership Monday between some of the United States’s biggest allies.

Carney said on X that he’d met with European Council President Antonio Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to “launch a new security and defence partnership.”

The agreement opens the door for Canada into Europe’s $173 billion defense procurement plan, according to The New York Times. The deal blocks signatories from spending more than 35 percent of funds dedicated to any one project on products from non-signatory states—meaning there will be limits on purchasing American-made defense systems, artillery, and other materials.

This agreement comes as Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs threaten to upend global supply chains, potentially threatening domestic weapons manufacturing, and Iran begins to retaliate against the United States over its targeting of the country’s nuclear facilities over the weekend.

“In the face of rising global threats, Canada is building ever-stronger alliances,” Carney wrote. “Today’s historic agreement will build up defence capabilities across Canada and the European Union, protect our people and our values, and create strong opportunities for Canadian defence industries at home.”

After the meeting in Brussels, von der Leyen said that the allies’ new security and defense agreement was “the most comprehensive we’ve ever concluded,” according to the Times.

“As the saying goes, hard times reveal true friends,” she added.

As far as true friends go, Trump is certainly not one, and the hard times she referred to are the direct result of his actions in office. So, it should hardly come as a surprise that Canada has sought other allies as the U.S. pulls away.

Trump previously warned Canada that unless the country joined the United States, he would charge them $61 billion for protection under his new “Golden Dome” space weapons system.

Donald Trump just whacked the ball back to Russia with a string of eyebrow-furrowing comments on nuclear arms.

On Sunday, deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia and former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev wrote on social media that Russia’s “production of nuclear weapons” would continue.

“A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads,” he noted.

So Trump took to Truth Social Monday to play out the delicate foreign exchange, asking if Medvedev was “casually throwing around the ‘N word,’” as in, nuclear.

“Did he really say that or, is it just a figment of my imagination? If he did say that, and, if confirmed, please let me know, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump said. “The ‘N word’ should not be treated so casually.”

“I guess that’s why Putin’s ‘THE BOSS,’” he continued.

The U.S. president then opted against de-escalating the rhetoric, choosing instead to bring up America’s nuclear submarine fleet, which he claimed are “20 years advanced over the pack.”

“They are the most powerful and lethal weapons ever built, and just launched the 30 Tomahawks—All 30 hit their mark perfectly,” he wrote.

Without congressional approval, Trump directed airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities Saturday. The attack damaged facilities in Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan, with damage estimates expected to be “very significant,” according to International Atomic Energy Agency Director Rafael Grossi.

The action sparked backlash from some Republican lawmakers, including Representative Thomas Massie, who argued that war with Iran was not constitutional. Massie also chastized House Speaker Mike Johnson for practically handing over Congress’s sole authority to declare war to the White House, questioning online why the leading Republican lawmaker did not “call us back from vacation to vote on military action if there was a serious threat to our country.”

Massie offered Trump a full-throated endorsement in the 2024 race on the basis that he would prevent “needless wars abroad.”

Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, condemned the American attack on Iran, and said that “accepting the recent U.S. actions would undermine all the progress the international community has made in the field of nuclear non-proliferation,” according to Middle East Monitor.

Florida’s extreme abortion ban almost killed Republican Representative and House Pro-Life Caucus co-chair Kat Cammack. But instead of using her near-death experience to shed light on her party’s bad policy, she blamed “the left” for “fearmongering” and refused to call her operation an abortion.

Cammack told The Wall Street Journal that in May of last year, when she was five weeks pregnant, doctors found that her child’s embryo grew outside of the uterus where the fallopian tube meets, a life-threatening location. “If this ruptures, it’ll kill you,” a doctor told her, adding that the embryo had no heartbeat. The emergency room doctors and nurses determined that Cammack required a shot of methotrexate to terminate her potentially fatal ectopic pregnancy.  

But Florida’s six-week abortion ban, which had just been enacted, made those medical professionals hesitant to save Cammack’s life because they feared they’d lose their licenses, or even be prosecuted and sent to jail. After hours of arguments and one unsuccessful call to Governor Ron DeSantis’s office, the doctors conceded and gave Cammack the lifesaving care. Months later, Florida lawmakers clarified that doctors could act in cases such as Cammack’s because ectopic pregnancies were not abortions in their eyes. They refused to define an ectopic pregnancy.

Cammack, who is now pregnant again and due in August, is convinced that liberal rhetoric about abortion bans that are both restrictive and ambiguously worded is to blame, rather than the legislation itself. 

“It was absolute fearmongering at its worst,” Cammack told the Journal. “There will be some comments like, ‘Well, thank God we have abortion services,’ even though what I went through wasn’t an abortion.” 

Not every pregnancy complication is black and white, and treating it as such causes medical professionals to live in fear and puts their patients at greater risk of dying.