Trump Makes It Easier to Deport Haitians After Claiming They Eat Pets

The Trump administration announced Friday that it will soon end temporary protected status, or TPS, for Haiti. The move, set to take effect on September 2, would strip lawful status from more than 500,000 people, leading them to face possible deportation to the strife-racked country from which they fled.

The move reverses former President Joe Biden’s June 2024 decision to extend TPS for Haitians through February 2026.

According to the Trump administration’s announcement, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has “determined that, overall, country conditions have improved to the point where Haitians can return home in safety.” (However, per the State Department’s ongoing advisory warning Americans against traveling to Haiti, the country is plagued by “kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and limited health care.”)

Noem also claimed “that permitting Haitian nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to the national interest of the United States.”

The move is consistent with Trump’s long-standing penchant for demonizing immigrants—and Haitian immigrants in particular. In 2017, Trump reportedly said that 15,000 recently arrived immigrants from Haiti “all have AIDS,” during a meeting in the Oval Office.

On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump notoriously elevated a baseless lie about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio—many of whom reside there under TPS—eating their neighbors’ house pets. In reality, Haitians’ presence in Springfield helped revitalize the town, per a report in The Guardian.

The termination of TPS for Haiti would, as Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council observed, put the total number of people “de-documented” by the president at over one million. Last month, with the Supreme Court’s blessing, Trump stripped 532,000 other immigrants of their humanitarian legal status.

Donald Trump is ending trade talks with Canada after America’s northern neighbor imposed a digital services tax on U.S. technology companies.

The retaliatory duty amounted to a “direct and blatant attack on our Country,” according to Trump—though he did not elaborate on whether that meant his own tariff plan also constituted an attack on countries around the globe.

The president accused Canada of “copying” the European Union, which similarly imposed a tax on some of the biggest U.S. companies providing digital services, including Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft.

“Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday. “We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven day period.”

But the White House does not appear eager to organize its trade plan that has nauseated American markets for more than two months. The White House said Thursday that the deadline for countries to strike trade deals with the U.S. may be extended past July 9, a deadline that press secretary Karoline Leavitt described as “not critical.”

And in May, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick let slip that he believes reciprocity—or the idea of bringing tariffs between two countries to zero—would be the “silliest thing we could do.”

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 Americans who pay 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.

Two environmental nonprofit groups are suing to block Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s expedited plans to open “Alligator Alcatraz,” an ICE detention center in the middle of the Florida Everglades.

A nonprofit called Friends of the Everglades, Inc. and another called the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit Friday alleging that construction on the new facility was greenlit “without conducting any environmental reviews as required under NEPA, without public notice or comment, and without compliance with other federal statutes such as the Endangered Species Act, or state or local land-use laws.”

The groups sought to halt all activity at the site “unless and until Defendants comply with [National Environmental Protection Act] and related state, federal and local environmental laws and regulations,” which would include completing an environmental impact statement or an environmental assessment, providing time for public comment.

Earlier this week, Noem announced that construction on the $450 million facility would soon begin on a defunct Miami-Dade airstrip adjacent to the Big Cypress National Preserve using funding from FEMA—which Donald Trump’s administration plans to functionally shut down after this year’s hurricane season.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis gave a tour of the nascent facility on Fox & Friends Friday, touting that immigrants detained there would have showers, baths, and the “ability for food.”

“They’ll have the ability to consult legal rights—if they have that,” DeSantis said.

In addition to environmental impacts, advocacy groups have warned that housing thousands of immigrants in the sweltering heat of the Everglades, surrounded by marshes and their animal inhabitants, amounted to inhumane treatment.

A spokesperson for Ron DeSantis’s office told the Associated Press that the governor looked forward to litigating the case. The lawsuit names multiple federal and state agencies as defendants, including the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

“Governor Ron DeSantis has insisted that Florida will be a force multiplier for federal immigration enforcement, and this facility is a necessary staging operation for mass deportations located at a pre-existing airport that will have no impact on the surrounding environment,” said spokesman Bryan Griffin in an email.

In a 6–3 ruling, the Supreme Court on Friday restricted lower courts’ nationwide pauses on Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order, though it did not rule on the merits of the order itself.

Now, thanks to the court’s conservative supermajority, the undecidedly unconstitutional order may go into effect, in at least some states, come next month—a prospect that has left many wondering how the Trump administration would enforce it.

During a Trump press conference celebrating the ruling, Attorney General Pam Bondi was asked for some details on that matter but failed to clarify anything.

“Who would be tasked with actually vetting citizenship [under Trump’s policy]?” a reporter asked the attorney general. “Like, would this be a situation where you have nurses and doctors checking for citizenship of parents?”

Bondi offered a nonanswer, citing “pending litigation” and promising answers in October, when, she said, the Supreme Court will decide on the constitutionality of the executive order. (The Supreme Court has not yet agreed to hear another birthright citizenship case or announced its argument schedule for the fall.)

The reporter followed up, asking whether undocumented babies would “be an enforcement priority.”

Growing steely, Bondi replied, “The violent criminals in our country are the priority now.” That answer runs counter to ICE’s own records that, according to the Cato Institute, show the government is “primarily detaining individuals with no criminal convictions,” and that even deportees with convictions are “overwhelmingly” not violent offenders.

Nonetheless, Bondi continued: “But you should all feel safer now that President Trump can deport all of these gangs, and not one district court judge could think they’re an emperor over this administration.” But are we really “safer” now that the courts’ ability to rein in Trump’s lawless orders has been significantly diminished?

Fox News is headed back to court for another massive defamation lawsuit.

California Gavin Newsom announced Friday that he is suing the conservative media behemoth for $787 million after host Jesse Watters claimed that Newsom had lied about a call he had with Donald Trump during the Los Angeles anti-ICE protests.

Newsom accused Watters’s show of lying to viewers about the phone call by airing a misleadingly edited video of Trump to make their point.

“If Fox News wants to lie to the American people on Donald Trump’s behalf, it should face consequences—just like it did in the Dominion case,” Newsom told Politico in a statement. “Until Fox is willing to be truthful, I will keep fighting against their propaganda machine.”

The sum that Newsom is seeking is nearly identical to the amount that the network paid Dominion Voting Systems when they settled their lawsuit in 2023. Dominion had sued Fox for defamation after Fox accused the electronic voting machine company of stealing the election from Trump.

The California governor is suing in his personal capacity, using funds from his campaign account to cover any fines or possible penalties. He has also said that he’s willing to drop the lawsuit if Fox issues a correction and forces Watters to apologize on air—which doesn’t seem likely. A spokesperson for Fox News told The New Republic that the company was looking “forward to” the case “being dismissed.”

“Gov. Newsom’s transparent publicity stunt is frivolous and designed to chill free speech critical of him,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

In the event that the case settles or goes to trial, Newsom has pledged that all proceeds from the lawsuit will go toward anti-Trump legal causes.

Newsom spoke earlier this month with the president for nearly 20 minutes on the phone after the protests had started, but according to Newsom, the protests “barely” came up, despite his attempts to veer the conversation toward Los Angeles.

“He wanted to talk about all these other issues,” Newsom said of the phone call. “He never once brought up the National Guard. He’s a stone cold liar, he said he did.”

Despite the high bar required for a public official to prove defamation, the governor’s lawyers argued that Fox’s coverage of the call met the legal standard for defamation, potentially harming his reputation with voters for future elections.

The Democrat’s suit holds similarities to another case from the MAGA side, in which Trump sued CBS’s 60 Minutes over what he claimed was a deceptively edited interview with then–Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris. That suit, which the network settled, has so far resulted in the exit of two executives from CBS as the suit has become a cornerstone issue in the pending sale of Paramount.

This story has been updated.