Trump Team Has Full Meltdown Over CNN Story on ICE-Tracking App

Donald Trump’s sycophants are seriously pissed that people are trying to track ICE’s sweeping deportation efforts.

CNN aired a segment Monday night highlighting ICEBlock, an app that allows users to anonymously log sightings of ICE agents, serving as an “early warning system” about immigration enforcement, according to app creator Joshua Aaron. Users can provide additional information about what ICE officers are wearing, and details about their vehicles, to make their communities aware of ICE’s movements.

One by one, members of Trump’s team hit back at the report, touting the dubiously increasing rates of assault against ICE agents and threatening Aaron with legal action.

Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed during an appearance on Fox News’s Hannity that the government was investigating Aaron, and fretted that the app might “hurt” law enforcement officers.

“He’s giving a message to criminals where our federal officers are, and he cannot do that, and we are looking at it, we are looking at him, and he better watch out,” Bondi said. “Because that is not protected speech, that is threatening the lives of our law enforcement officers throughout this country, and shame on CNN!”

Crucially, the majority of people swept up in ICE’s sweeping raids aren’t criminals at all. Seven out of 10 people arrested during ICE’s crackdown in Los Angeles last month had no criminal convictions, and six out of 10 had never even been charged with a crime.

ICE acting Director Todd Lyons released a statement following CNN’s report, claiming that ICEBlock “basically paints a target on federal law enforcement officers’ backs” and touting the number of alleged assaults against ICE agents.

Border czar Tom Homan also railed against CNN for elevating the app. “This is horrendous that a national media outlet would be out there trying to forecast law enforcement operations throughout the country,” Homan said. “It’s incredible where we’re at as a country, and I think the [Department of Justice] needs to look at this and see if they crossed a line.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that the app “sure looks like obstruction of justice” in an X post Monday. “If you obstruct or assault our law enforcement, we will hunt you down and you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” she wrote.

CNN hit back at the implication that they’d crossed a legal line by reporting on ICEBlock. “This is an app that is publicly available to any iPhone user who wants to download it. There is nothing illegal about reporting the existence of this or any other app, nor does such reporting constitute promotion or other endorsement of the app by CNN,” a CNN spokesperson said in a statement to The New Republic.

This story has been updated.

The fate of the centerpiece legislation of President Trump’s agenda—the wildly unpopular, social safety net–slashing, “big, beautiful bill”—may rest in the hands of moderate Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. 

In recent days, the Senate has been seeking to buy off Murkowski’s vote to win over the key GOP holdout on the bill, which would be potentially ruinous to Murkowski’s home state, to say nothing of the other 49. 

To court Murkowski, the Senate exempted Alaska from a provision shifting greater portions of the cost to administer the Supplemental National Assistance Program, or food stamps, onto the states.

The Senate sought to add a version of the carve-out Monday night—which included just Alaska and Hawaii, evidently to pretend it wasn’t a carve-out for a single state—but it didn’t pass muster with the Senate parliamentarian, who has been winnowing away nonbudgetary provisions of the bill (which cannot be included if it is to pass as a budget reconciliation, which requires just a simple majority, rather than the impossible 60 votes that would be needed to break a filibuster). 

Early Tuesday morning, however, Senate Republicans succeeded in getting the SNAP carve-out in the bill—by having it apply to states with the highest error rates.

Several Democratic lawmakers have expressed their disapproval of the bribe. Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, for example, tweeted, “The most absurd example of the hypocrisy of the Republican bill: they have now proposed delaying SNAP cuts FOR TWO YEARS ONLY FOR STATES  with the highest error rates just to bury their help for Alaska: AK, DC, FL, GA, MD, MA, NJ, NM, NY, OR. They are rewarding errors.”

It’s unclear whether this’ll be enough to win Murkowski’s vote. Republicans failed to include other provisions to sweeten the pot—or, rather, make it less sour—such as one that would have increased the federal share of Medicaid spending for Alaska.

Summing up the absurdity of the situation aptly, journalist Sam Stein of The Bulwark wrote on X: “So basically, the future of this bill comes down to whether one Senator (Murkowksi) feels comfortable enough that she has shielded her state from the worst parts of this bill that the other 49 states (give or take a few) will have to endure?”

Stein also observed that Murkowski, in 2017, told the press she would be unswayed by attempts to buy her vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. 

Murkowski had said at the time, “Let’s just say that they do something that’s so Alaska-specific just to, quote, ‘get me.’ … Then you have a nationwide system that doesn’t work. That then comes crashing down and Alaska’s not able to kind of keep it together on its own.” We’ll soon know whether she maintains this noble resolve.

President Trump and former DOGE head Elon Musk still seem to be on icy terms as their beef over Trump’s budget bill continues. 

Trump took to Truth Social at nearly 1 a.m. on Tuesday morning to assert that Musk was only against his One Big Beautiful Bill Act because it revokes the electric vehicle mandate that directly benefits Musk’s Tesla corporation. He also posited that DOGE should investigate Musk for the amount of subsidies he’s received from the federal government.  

“Elon Musk knew, long before he so strongly Endorsed me for President, that I was strongly against the EV Mandate. It is ridiculous, and was always a major part of my campaign. Electric cars are fine, but not everyone should be forced to own one,” he wrote. “Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa. No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE. Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!”

Musk had been lambasting the bill for days on X before Trump’s Truth Social post, and on Monday threatened to primary any Republicans who support the legislation and start his own third party if it passes. 

“If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day,” Musk wrote on Monday. “Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE.

“Anyone who campaigned on the PROMISE of REDUCING SPENDING, but continues to vote on the BIGGEST DEBT ceiling increase in HISTORY will see their face on this poster in the primary next year,” he wrote above a picture of Pinocchio up in flames. 

This dynamic—Musk eviscerating the spending bill, while Trump asserts that Musk’s known about the legislation and is only upset about the E.V. mandate removal—has been ongoing since early June. While Musk’s vehement opposition to the spending bill is surprising given his months of close proximity to Trump, this bromance seems to be all but over as the “big, beautiful bill” is likely to pass through Congress.  

It looks like Elon Musk’s break from political spending is over after all of five minutes.

“Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame!” Musk wrote on X Monday. “And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.”

Last month, Musk claimed he planned to do “a lot less” political spending going forward, after spending at least $20 million to back the Republican candidate in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race—and losing.

The billionaire technocrat said he thought he’d “done enough” and wouldn’t drop a dime unless he saw a reason to, despite his previous promises to bankroll the Republican primaries.

Well, it seems that Donald Trump’s wildly unpopular behemoth budget bill has called Musk back into the fray. The former DOGE czar has been an outspoken critic of the legislation, putting him at odds with his old ally Trump.

Musk seemed to be getting carried away with his dreams of small government. “It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS that we live in a one-party country—the PORKY PIG PARTY!!” he wrote earlier Monday in a post he pinned to his profile. “Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people.”

This latest threat ups the ante on his call to “fire all politicians who betrayed the American people” come November 2026.

If Republicans who support Trump’s disastrous spending bill should “hang their head in shame,” what should the guy who put him in the White House do? Might I suggest self-deporting to Mars and staying far, far away from U.S. politics?

As fireworks will rocket into the sky this weekend, national pride has, under Trump, sunk to its lowest point in recent memory, per a new Gallup poll.

Since January 2001, the polling firm has asked Americans whether they are proud to be an American, and this year’s results—published with the Fourth of July on the horizon and the semiquincentennial a year away—have proven to be the most dismal on record.

Only 41 percent of American adults reported being “extremely” proud to be an American, and only 17 percent were “very” proud, according to Gallup. Twenty percent find themselves on the less-proud portion of the spectrum, saying they are “moderately,” “only a little,” or “not at all” proud (19, 11, and nine percent, respectively).

Only 36 percent of Democrats report being very or extremely proud to be an American, a 26-point drop from last year. The only other time when less than a majority of Democrats were proud was in 2020, during a global pandemic.

Independents’ pride—which has steadily declined since 2001—is also lower than ever, with just 53 percent being very or extremely proud.

Meanwhile, Republicans, 92 percent of whom are very or extremely proud, are as chipper as ever. Members of the GOP have consistently floated around that figure, only dipping below the 90 percent mark in 2016 and 2020–2024.

According to Gallup, there is a significant generational divide in national pride: The younger the generation, the less likely than the previous it is to be very or extremely proud to be an American.

From 2021 to 2025, just 41 percent of Gen-Z adults and 58 percent of millennials were very or extremely proud, Gallup reports, whereas that figure for Gen X, Baby Boomers, and the Greatest Generation is 71, 75, and 83 percent, respectively.

In his inaugural address, Trump promised that his “top priority will be to create a nation that is proud, prosperous, and free.” Perhaps the best that can be said of his presidency is that he’s delivered to his base on that first promise.

Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan couldn’t care less that people are dying in ICE custody.

A reporter asked Homan Monday to respond to reports that Isidro Perez, a 75-year-old Cuban man who’d been living in the United States for nearly 60 years, died last week in ICE custody.

“I’m unaware of that, I’m not aware of that. I mean people die in ICE custody, people die in county jail, people die in state prisons,” Homan replied, brushing off that a man had just died on his watch.

“The question should be how many lives does ICE save? Because when they go in detention, we find many with diseases and stuff that we deal with right away to prevent that,” Homan said. Perez is at least the twelfth person to die in ICE custody so far this year, a notable uptick from previous years in line with the Trump administration’s directive to increase the rates of ICE arrests.

“People can argue with me all they want, but the facts are the facts. I think the politicians in New Jersey found this out, that we have the highest detention standards in the industry,” Homan said. He was referring to a group of three lawmakers the Department of Homeland Security previously claimed had stormed Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, last month.

Homan claimed that the lawmakers had found the standards of the 1,000-bed ICE detention facility to be “outstanding” and added that it was “probably the cleanest facility in that entire state.”

But crucially, the lawmakers who visited Delaney Hall last month never completed their inspection of the newly reopened ICE facility. A court filing in Newark Mayor Ras Baraka’s lawsuit against Alina Habba, New Jersey’s acting U.S. attorney, stated that lawmakers were kept in a waiting room inside the facility for over an hour before they departed to join Baraka outside, where a wild confrontation ensued, resulting in Baraka’s arrest and landing Representative LaMonica McIver with assault charges, to which she pleaded not guilty last week.

New guidelines released by ICE this month asserted that lawmakers are not permitted to inspect ICE field offices and must give three days’ notice before arriving to inspect another facility, in violation of federal law. ICE claimed that lawmakers have no right to inspect field offices, because they are not detention centers, though the agency routinely holds immigrants at field offices and does not distinguish between those offices and larger detention centers, according to Democracy Docket.

Despite the illegality of ICE’s rule, lawmakers have been repeatedly locked out of ICE facilities. “They are undergoing conditions that are inhumane, in my opinion. They were not able to change their underwear for 10 days,” said California Representative Judy Chu, after she was blocked from entering a facility outside of Los Angeles.

Instead of encouraging more visits, Homan referred individuals concerned over safety standards to ICE’s website.

“Go to ICE.gov and look at our detention standards; it’s the highest detention standards in the industry at a very expensive cost to the taxpayers,” Homan said, adding: “Go look for yourself and then come back to me.”

ICE facilities’ poor conditions are well documented. The agency recently renewed a contract with a facility that was previously decommissioned for its failure to comply with health standards, and the DHS has been quick to brag about its “Alligator Alcatraz” tent facility in the middle of the Florida Everglades.

President Trump’s Department of Justice is suing the city of Los Angeles on the grounds that its sanctuary city policy is an obstruction to the federal government’s mass deportation campaign.

“The challenged law and policies of the City of Los Angeles obstruct the Federal Government’s enforcement of federal immigration law and impede consultation and communication between federal, state, and local law enforcement officials that is necessary for federal officials to carry out federal immigration law and keep Americans safe,” the lawsuit, filed Monday, reads.

The DOJ is looking to overturn Ordinance Number 188441, which prevents Los Angeles’s resources, local police included, from being used for federal immigration enforcement as part of the city’s sanctuary status.

“Sanctuary policies were the driving cause of the violence, chaos, and attacks on law enforcement that Americans recently witnessed in Los Angeles,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement Monday. “Jurisdictions like Los Angeles that flout federal law by prioritizing illegal aliens over American citizens are undermining law enforcement at every level—it ends under President Trump.”

This is yet another installment in Trump’s monthslong beef with the city of Los Angeles and California as a whole. He slashed crucial federal funding to the state, and deployed the National Guard and the Marines without the approval of Governor Gavin Newsom to crush anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles. This lawsuit is driven by spite.

Donald Trump is trying to squeeze American rice supplies into Japan without a trade negotiation.

In a Truth Social post Monday afternoon, the president claimed that the Japanese people and their government were “spoiled” because they wouldn’t buy American rice. He then promised to send them a “letter,” in which he would assert the current rate of trade between the two nations.

“To show people how spoiled Countries have become with respect to the United States of America, and I have great respect for Japan, they won’t take our RICE, and yet they have a massive rice shortage,” Trump wrote, casually insulting the nation with which America has one of its largest trading relationships. “In other words, we’ll just be sending them a letter, and we love having them as a Trading Partner for many years to come.”

Japan has been struggling with a rice crisis for the last couple of years. The grain, which is a foundational ingredient in Japanese cooking, first started slipping from supermarket shelves in 2023, when extreme heat waves led to low crop yields. Then, a possible “megaquake” warning last year inspired people to panic-buy the pantry essential. The ensuing shortage has seen rice prices more than double since the crisis began, reaching between 4,500 and 5,000 yen, according to government data.

But Trump’s threat is particularly ill-timed, leaving the U.S. president with little negotiating power on the matter: Japan’s national supermarket association reported last week that the shortage appears to be easing, with prices for a five-kilogram bag dropping below 4,000 yen for the first time in the last two months, finally reaching the target goal set by Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.

Rice has become a sticking point in U.S.-Japanese trade negotiations. In March, Trump pledged to impose a 24 percent “reciprocal” tariff on Japanese imports, with its automobile and metals industries facing a slightly higher rate at 25 percent. Since a 1993 World Trade Organization arrangement, Japan has imported 770,000 metric tons of rice each year without tariffs—approximately half of which comes from the U.S., Time reported.

Changing the arrangement in favor of U.S. goods will face enormous pressure from Japanese leadership: the Liberal Democratic Party, which has been in power almost continuously since it was founded in 1955, has staunchly opposed adding a special quota for American rice imports.

The plea followed an embarrassing flub for America’s relationship with its longtime ally on Sunday, when Trump seemingly forgot the name of Japan’s prime minister in an interview with Fox News, instead referring to Ishiba as “Mr. Japan.”

In the same interview, Trump said that the letters would serve as the “end of the trade deal,” suggesting that no negotiations will take place after the White House hits the mailbox. “We don’t have to meet. We understand, we have all the numbers,” he said.

It’s not the first time that Trump has offered to stamp out trade talks by issuing a string of letters. He made similar promises on May 16 and June 11, claiming both times that the letters would be issued in a handful of weeks, though that never came to fruition.

The two musicians comprising the U.K. punk-rap duo Bob Vylan have had their U.S. visas revoked for leading chants against the Israeli Defense Forces during their performance at the Glastonbury Festival over the weekend.

The group has been under fire since leading the festival crowd in the chant, “Death, death to the IDF” on Saturday.

On Monday morning, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Laundau took to X to announce that the State Department “has revoked the US visas for the members of the Bob Vylan band.”

Landau described the decision as a retaliation against Bob Vylan “in light of” the chants at Glastonbury, which he described as a “hateful tirade” where the group led “death chants.”

“Foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country,” Laundau said.

The band, which has also been dropped by its talent agency, according to
The Hollywood Reporter, had upcoming tour dates scheduled in numerous U.S. cities.

Prior to the official announcement, the free speech advocacy group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, condemned reports that the State Department was looking into banning Bob Vylan for their expressive acts.

FIRE compared the then-planned ban to countries like Russia and China banning artists such as Selena Gomez and Katy Perry for speech that cuts against official state doctrine.

“Nations committed to free expression should not use their borders as a tool of censorship, as Russia and China have done with artists whose political expression they seek to silence,” FIRE posted. “Revoking visas from controversial musicians and artists doesn’t make our country freer or safer. But it may make it silent.”

This comes as the Trump administration pursues an aggressive campaign of revoking international students’ visas, including for political expression, such as pro-Palestinian advocacy.

Senator John Fetterman—known mostly for his basketball shorts, his disdain for participating at his fairly easy job, and his highly publicized mental health crisis—would rather be at the beach than in the Senate voting on Trump’s sweeping budget bill.

“Oh my God, I just wanna go home,” Fetterman said Monday in response to a question regarding when voting on the bill would end. “I’ve already … I’ve missed our entire trip to the beach, my family’s gonna be back before we … and again, I’m gonna vote ‘no,’ there’s no drama. The votes are gonna go. In fact the only interesting votes are gonna be on the margin, whether that’s [Susan] Collins, [Ron] Johnson, and those, but all the Democrats, we all know how that’s gonna go. And I think—I don’t think it’s really helpful to put people here till some ungodly hour.”

While the Republicans’ Senate majority makes the bill’s passing highly likely, some Democrats are still speaking out rather than longing for vacation. 

“If you are concerned about health care, which I suspect that everybody in the world is, this bill throws over 16 million people off the health insurance they have, according to the Congressional Budget Office, by cutting Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act by over $1.1 trillion,” Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said on Sunday night. “In other words, the top one percent [is] getting a $975 billion tax break, and that is coming directly by throwing 16 million people off of the health insurance they have.” 

But Fetterman has had a contentious relationship with the job he campaigned to do. That dynamic, combined with his mental health, extreme hatred of Palestinians, and his general rightward shift, only increase the questions surrounding his future as a Democratic senator, or as a senator at all.