The Trump Administration Wants to Deny Kilmar Abrego Garcia a Trial

The Trump administration is once again planning to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia, this time as he waits in custody for the trial for his first wrongful deportation. This comes as its efforts to criminally prosecute him for being a gang member and drug smuggler fizzle out in court.

This time the administration is looking to send Abrego Garcia to an “unnamed” third country before he gets to have the fair trial he deserves in the United States. Trump maintains that Abrego Garcia is a dangerous criminal, part of the notorious MS-13 gang. Abrego Garcia has vehemently denied this, and even federal judges are having a hard time believing that story.

“The government cannot simply rely on the general reputation of a particular street gang to satisfy its burden,” U.S. Magistrate Barbara D. Holmes wrote as she ordered Abrego Garcia released on bail. “The government’s evidence that Abrego is a member of MS-13 consists of general statements, all double hearsay.… The government’s evidence of Abrego’s alleged gang membership is simply insufficient.”

Abrego Garcia was accidentally deported to El Salvador, sat in the CECOT megaprison, came back to the United States, was charged with crimes he very well may have never committed, and is now being deported to another random country before he can be put on trial for those alleged crimes. This feels like an administration trying to cover for the obvious, brutal mistake that it made by doubling down on Abrego Garcia’s alleged criminality and folding him into the countless other detainments and deportations that have been devoid of due process.

“We have said it for months and it remains true to this day,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said to Axios. “He will never go free on American soil.”

The Justice Department has said there is no timeline for Abrego Garcia’s deportation, and that it is not “imminent.”

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller is getting exactly what he wants: seven in 10 people arrested as part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s sweeping raids in Los Angeles earlier this month had no criminal convictions, the Los Angeles Times reported. 

Between June 1 and June 10, ICE arrested 722 individuals across the greater Los Angeles area. But 69 percent of those arrested had no criminal conviction, and 58 percent had never even been charged with a crime, according to a Times analysis published Tuesday of data from UC Berkeley Law’s Data Deportation Project. 

Despite the Trump administration’s hollow assurances that ICE would target criminals, the reality of the government’s massive deportation scheme has targeted average upstanding individuals, ripping family members, friends, and neighbors out of their communities. 

But to Miller, who is on a campaign to ethnically cleanse the country, that must be music to his ears. 

As ICE’s sweep of Los Angeles began at the beginning of June, Miller was reportedly furious when he heard that ICE officers had narrowed their field to undocumented immigrants with criminal records. 

“Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?’” one official recalled after a tense meeting between the ghoulish homeland security adviser and officials from ICE and the Department of Homeland Security.  

But DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin insisted to the Times that ICE arrests were “highly targeted.” 

“We know who we are targeting ahead of time. If and when we do encounter individuals subject to arrest, our law enforcement is trained to ask a series of well-determined questions to determine status and removability,” McLaughlin said. But reports of other arrests suggest that ICE will detain someone even if they know they’re not the target. 

Wall Street was right about the president: Trump always chickens out.

Despite spending weeks fuming about the fact that investors had clocked him for repeatedly reneging on his tariff plan, Donald Trump has once again decided to extend the deadline to implement them.

The White House said Thursday that the deadline for countries to strike trade deals with the United States may be extended past July 9, a deadline that press secretary Karoline Leavitt described as “not critical.”

“The president can simply provide these countries with a deal if they refuse to make us one by the deadline,” Leavitt said during a press briefing. “And that means the president can pick a reciprocal tariff rate that he believes is advantageous for the United States and for the American worker.”

Ultimately, it’s a “decision for the president to make,” Leavitt noted.

The TACO theory was coined in early May by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong, who added a catchy acronym to the practice of loading up on stocks when Trump first announces tariffs and then selling when he ultimately backtracks on enforcing them.

So far, that’s been true for enacting additional tariffs on Mexico and Canada, postponing his “reciprocal” tariff plan on dozens of countries after his April “Liberation Day” announcement went south, delaying a tariff on imports from the European Union, and smashing his plan to fine China, decreasing tariffs on Chinese products to 55 percent from 145 percent.

At the end of last month, Trump threatened to impose a 50 percent tariff on the European Union but quickly delayed the penalty to July after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen agreed to negotiate.

The extension for implementing practically all of Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs, however, is set to expire July 8.

Trump’s tariff proposals haven’t won the U.S. too much negotiating ground. Instead, countries around the world began observing that—rather than playing the waiting game to meet with the White House over potential trade relief—China’s tough negotiating strategy with the former real estate mogul had actually gotten the Eastern powerhouse a significantly better deal.

In the end, it will be the U.S. that pays the price when the Trump administration runs out of time on its “90 deals in 90 days” promise. On Tuesday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said that the central bank would wait to see the residual impacts of the country’s new tariff plan before reducing its key interest rate, as companies have already decided to increase product prices this year in reaction to hampered global supply chains.

The White House is embracing Donald Trump’s “Daddy” nickname in a pretty intense way for a guy whose name was in the Jeffrey Epstein files.

The White House communications office released an eye roll–inducing supercut video Thursday about Trump’s trip to the NATO summit, declaring “Daddy’s Home,” using Usher’s song “Hey Daddy (Daddy’s Home).”

The video referred to NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s cringeworthy comment during a press conference Wednesday about Trump’s surprise military strike in Iran.

“They’ve had it, they’ve had a big fight like two kids in a schoolyard,” Trump said of Israel and Iran, revealing just how elementary his understanding of the conflict actually was. “You know they fight like hell, you can’t stop ’em. Let ’em fight for about two to three minutes. Then it’s easy to stop ’em.”

“Daddy has to sometimes use strong language,” Rutte joked. It seems that “Daddy” liked his new nickname. Now he’s even selling ugly orange T-shirts that say it, complete with his glowering mug shot.

When asked about Rutte’s comment and whether Trump viewed his NATO allies as his children, Trump seemed to love the idea. “He likes me, I think he likes me. If he doesn’t, I’ll come back and I’ll hit him hard, OK?” Trump told reporters during a press conference Wednesday. “He did it very affectionately. ‘Daddy, you’re my daddy!’”

Of course, Trump’s not the only one with a daddy kink: MAGA has been quick to embrace the new nickname, as well. Fox News anchor Jesse Watters gushed about his newfound father figure, applauding Trump for not abandoning NATO.

“The media said Daddy was gonna leave the family, but look at him front and center in the family photo,” Watters said of a photograph of Trump posing with leaders at the summit.

The MAGA mouthpiece joined in on the administration’s complaining about a leaked Pentagon report that had undermined Trump’s claims about the strikes in Iran being successful. “If you stab Daddy in the back, you’re getting more than a spanking,” Watters said. “The punishment for treason: the death penalty.”

And former Fox News host Tucker Carlson—who has since split with Trump over the conflict in Iran—referred to the president as “Daddy” on the campaign trail.

“When Dad gets home, you know what he says? ‘You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now,” Carlson said at a Trump event in October, comparing the U.S. to a teenage girl.

Trump’s new embrace of the nickname seems particularly disgusting considering the president’s alleged involvement in the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who faced allegations of trafficking minors.

Trump’s name already popped up in files released by his own government earlier this year. But one of his closest allies, Elon Musk, implied earlier this month that Trump could be more intimately involved in Epstein’s criminal activities, which explained why his administration was soft-footing the release of documents that it had previously promised to unveil.

The Trump administration is going full throttle against a CNN journalist.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt lost it on Natasha Bertand during a Thursday press conference, lashing the Pentagon correspondent for daring to report on Donald Trump and his aides.

Earlier this week, Bertrand really got under Trump’s skin when she reported on air that a leaked preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment of Saturday’s airstrike on three Iranian nuclear targets suggested it had not been as successful as the president had advertised, and had only set the country’s nuclear development back by some months, rather than by several years.

When asked about Bertrand’s report, Leavitt used the opportunity to bring up every story Bertrand has written that Trump doesn’t like. For more than two straight minutes, Leavitt flamed Bertrand for reporting that the Hunter Biden laptop controversy was “Russian disinformation” (the New York Post, which ran the original story on its front page, said in the aftermath of the report that the contents of the laptop were mixed with fake material and that most of the data could not be verified), while urging the crowd to agree that the story was a “lie” from the intelligence community.

She further claimed that Bertand had inaccurately reported on the origin of the Covid-19 virus, had taken Trump’s “suckers and losers” comment out of context, and had wrongly accused CIA Director John Ratcliffe of speaking “without any evidence” with regard to Iranian meddling in Trump’s presidential campaign.

“She should be ashamed of herself,” Leavitt said. “And that’s not what reporting is. Journalism is trying to find the facts and the truth, and this week we saw this same reporter being used to push a fake narrative to try to undermine the president of the United States, and more importantly, the brave fighter pilots who conducted one of the most successful operations in United States history.

“I think the American people fully know that this operation was a complete and total success,” Leavitt added.

Leavitt’s rant followed several days’ worth of anti-Bertrand comments by the president, who urged CNN to reprimand Bertrand and throw her out “like a dog.”

“It’s people like her who destroyed the reputation of a once great Network,” Trump wrote. “Her slant was so obviously negative, besides, she doesn’t have what it takes to be an on-camera correspondent, not even close. FIRE NATASHA!”

CNN released a statement defending Bertrand Wednesday, declaring that they stand “100 percent” behind her journalism, specifically including her and her colleague’s reporting on Trump’s attack on Iran.

“CNN’s reporting made clear that this was an initial finding that could change with additional intelligence,” the network said. “However, we do not believe it is reasonable to criticize CNN reporters for accurately reporting the existence of the assessment and accurately characterizing its findings, which are in the public interest.”

The White House has rejected the Iran strikes report, rebuffing the whistleblower Tuesday as a “low-level loser,” though it still acknowledged that the report had been classified as “top secret.” On Wednesday, the administration had apparently thrown the U.S. intelligence out the window altogether, siding instead with a narrative pushed by the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission that the attacks had “rendered the enrichment facility inoperable.”