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.