DHS Suddenly Pulls Weird 180 on “Alligator Alcatraz” After Trump Visit

The Department of Homeland Security is suddenly trying to distance itself from “Alligator Alcatraz,” after weeks of promoting the Trump administration’s premiere wetland-themed concentration camp in the Florida Everglades.

In a court filing Thursday responding to a lawsuit from environmental groups, the DHS claimed that it had “not implemented, authorized, directed or funded” the construction of the new ICE detention center made up of tents on a defunct airstrip in Miami-Dade County.

“Florida is constructing and operating the facility using state funds on state lands under state emergency authority and a preexisting general delegation of federal authority to implement immigration functions,” the filing said.  

Environmental groups had alleged that in addition to skipping the necessary environmental reviews, the DHS had violated the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to provide a window for public notice and comment. The DHS argued that because it had not been involved in approving construction, “the ‘final agency action’ that the Administrative Procedure Act requires as a prerequisite to judicial review is entirely absent here.” 

But that’s not what the Department of Homeland Security said earlier this week. The DHS said it had signed off on a plan to house up to 5,000 people in Florida and planned to use funding from FEMA’s shelter program to reimburse the $450 million in estimated costs, according to Politico.

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

But the Thursday filing asserted that it was up to Florida to file for reimbursement from FEMA, though the state had not yet done so. 

The filing also stated that because Florida has an agreement under Section 287 (g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act so that “any decision to detain aliens ... would be Florida’s decision, not DHS’s,” according to Politico’s Gary Fineout. A majority of states have such an agreement with ICE, which allows immigration officers to collaborate with state and local officials. Using this legal gimmick, DHS could attempt to skirt accountability for the construction and management of ICE detainment centers across the country—while still taking the credit. 

For all of the president’s braggadocio about the economy, a key detail in last month’s jobs report paints a bitter picture for America’s market.

The June jobs report came with droves of good news: the unemployment rate had fallen to 4.1 percent, the lowest since February, and the Trump administration touted that the market had added 147,000 new jobs. But within the folds of the expansive report was a worrying statistic: The lowered rate was largely due to a growing cohort of Americans who either weren’t working or weren’t looking for work.

The number of Americans who had not looked for a job in the last month rose by 234,000 to 1.8 million, according to the report.

And the vaunted job gains—which were primarily enjoyed by the health care sector, public education, and local government—weren’t as major when assessed from another angle.

“The household survey, which is used to calculate the unemployment rate, showed a smaller employment gain of just 93,000,” reported CNBC.

The report indicated other weaknesses in the market, including concentrated job gains in a handful of sectors, slowing wage growth, and lagging participation, which dropped to its lowest level (62.3 percent) since 2022.

The positive numbers did offer a slight boon to the stock market, with the S&P 500 blooming in reaction to the report, but analysts were wary to overhype the gains.

“The U.S. job market continues to largely stand tall and sturdy, even as headwinds mount—but it may be a tent increasingly held up by fewer poles,” Cory Stahle, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab, wrote Thursday. “The headline job gains and surprising dip in unemployment are undoubtedly good news, but for job seekers outside of healthcare & social assistance, local government, and public education, the gains will likely ring hollow.”

“This is not a bad report, but it might not be as solid as it seems on the surface,” Stahle noted.

The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear two cases involving transgender athletes being banned from women’s sports at the youth and collegiate level—a troubling sign of the court’s willingness to engage with the contentious culture war issues that have come to define the MAGA right.

Hecox v. Little and West Virginia v. B.P.J are the cases in question.

The first case stems from Boise State University student Lindsay Hecox, who is banned from running on the girls’ track team under Idaho’s House Bill 500. The second centers on Becky Pepper-Jackson, a transgender middle schooler who was banned completely from participating in sports by West Virginia’s House Bill 3293, which similarly bans transgender kids from participating in sports.

“Like any other educational program, school athletic programs should be accessible for everyone regardless of their sex or transgender status. Trans kids play sports for the same reasons their peers do–to learn perseverance, dedication, teamwork, and to simply have fun with their friends,” the ACLU’s Joshua Block, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, said in a press statement. “Categorically excluding kids from school sports just because they are transgender will only make our schools less safe and more hurtful places for all youth. We believe the lower courts were right to block these discriminatory laws, and we will continue to defend the freedom of all kids to play.”

President Trump has long mocked trans athletes, calling them “social experiments” during a speech at West Point earlier in the year. He just forced the University of Pennsylvania to wipe the records of trans swimmer Lia Thomas in exchange for the release of $175 million of funding for the university. A pro-government decision from the Supreme Court in these two cases would only increase that type of treatment nationwide.

“Our client just wants to play sports with her friends and peers,” said Lambda Legal senior counsel Tara Borelli. “Everyone understands the value of participating in team athletics, for fitness, leadership, socialization, and myriad other benefits. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit last April issued a thoughtful and thorough ruling allowing B.P.J. to continue participating in track events. That well-reasoned decision should stand the test of time, and we stand ready to defend it.”

The cases will be heard in the fall.

Lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia revealed gruesome details about his treatment at the notorious Salvadoran prison where Donald Trump has exiled more than 280 deportees.

In a 40-page amended complaint filed Tuesday as part of his civil case in Maryland, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys said their client reported being “subjected to severe mistreatment” upon arrival at Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, “including but not limited to severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and psychological torture.”

Lawyers for Abrego Garcia said that their client, who was deported as the result of an “administrative error,” was told upon his arrival at the notorious foreign gulag: “Welcome to CECOT. Whoever enters here doesn’t leave.”

Abrego Garcia was then forced to strip and was beaten for not changing his clothes fast enough. His head was shaved, and he was frog-marched to his cell and struck with wooden batons, leaving him with “visible bruises and lumps all over his body.”

Abrego Garcia and his cellmates were then “forced to kneel from approximately 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM, with guards striking anyone who fell from exhaustion,” the lawyers wrote. “During this time, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was denied bathroom access and soiled himself. The detainees were confined to metal bunks with no mattresses in an overcrowded cell with no windows, bright lights that remained on 24 hours a day, and minimal access to sanitation.

“While at CECOT, prison officials repeatedly told Plaintiff Abrego Garcia that they would transfer him to the cells containing gang members who, they assured him, would ‘tear’ him apart,” the filing stated. Abrego Garcia had repeatedly observed prisoners that he understood to be gang members “violently harm each other with no intervention from guards or personnel.”

These are the horrific conditions which the Trump administration has willfully inflicted on deportees it claims are gang members. But officials at the notorious prison could tell that not everyone fell into that category. According to the filing, after about a week, the group of detainees sent by the U.S. were divided based on who had gang-related tattoos. It was then that “prison officials explicitly acknowledged that Plaintiff Abrego Garcia’s tattoos were not gang-related, telling him ‘your tattoos are fine.’”

Trump had previously made the outlandish claim that Abrego Garcia’s hand tattoos indicated gang membership, referring to a photoshopped image of his hands with “MS-13” written on them.

The rumors about Elon Musk’s rampant White House ketamine use have circled back to a source: Donald Trump.

The world’s richest man and ousted Trump adviser was reputed to be a regular pill popper in May, when The New York Times reported that Musk’s drug use went “well beyond occasional use.” He allegedly took so much ketamine that it was affecting his bladder, took ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, and kept a daily medication box on hand stacked with Adderall, according to photos obtained by the Times. Musk has repeatedly denied the alleged drug use, posting a clean drug test on X two weeks after the story ran.

But that report, per Trump biographer Michael Wolff, was planted by the president himself.

Wolff told The Daily Beast Podcast Wednesday that he came across Trump’s recent braggadocio by catching up with the president’s associates.

“Trump speaks to them, and then they speak to other people,” Wolff said. “Whoever he calls, he says the same thing to everybody. So you know exactly what is on his mind.”

And, in the wake of the billionaire’s vocal rejection of the president’s “big, beautiful bill,” Musk was apparently on Trump’s mind. That was clear by Tuesday, when Trump threatened to deport his largest 2024 campaign financier back to South Africa via a post on Truth Social.

“In one of these phone calls—many of them—he was on about, you know, how many drugs he takes,” Wolff told the Beast. “‘He takes drugs all the time. You know that, don’t you? You know, The New York Times wrote about it. They said, he takes drugs.’”

For whatever reason, Trump had decided it was time to take credit: “‘Actually, we dropped a dime to The New York Times ... on Elon’s drug taking,’” Wolff recalled someone recounting from a recent conversation with the president.

At present, Musk and Trump’s previously buddy-buddy relationship appears to be torn to shreds. Musk is “pissed,” according to Wolff, and the billionaire is acting like it, flaming the administration and Republican lawmakers for pushing what he described as a “pork-filled” tax cut that would only serve to add trillions of dollars to the deficit.

Musk has promised to bankroll a new third party that he’s referred to as “The America Party” should Trump’s spending bill become law, using his inordinate wealth to fund primary opponents to any lawmaker that backtracked on their promises to reduce government spending.

On Wednesday night, a Fox News guest falsely accused Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland resident who was wrongfully deported by the Trump administration, of killing Americans.

In an appearance on Fox News @ Night, Monica Paige, White House correspondent for Frontlines, a program by Charlie Kirk’s conservative group Turning Point USA, discussed the GOP spending bill.

Paige urged Republican lawmakers to unify behind the bill, whose fate was then less certain, due to a number of holdouts whom House Speaker Mike Johnson has since reportedly won over.

Paige said, “If you’re going to vote ‘no’ on this, then you’re voting along with Democrats, especially Democrats like Maxine Dexter, who was on the Hill today, dressed in a white robe, who also visited El Salvador to go see Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who killed Americans.”

The accusation against Abrego Garcia, whom Trump deported to an El Salvador prison, where he says he was tortured, due to an “administrative error”—and who, upon his return, now faces federal charges—is a complete fabrication.

Paige apologized within a few hours on X, but, per a report from Mediaite, Gallagher failed to correct her on air, and the error remains unacknowledged by Fox, which did not immediately respond to TNR’s request for comment.

Paige’s apology states:

Tonight during an interview on Fox News, I inadvertently said that Kilmar Abrego Garcia ‘killed Americans.’

What I meant to say was that he has been connected with gang activity that has devastated the lives of many people, and killed an untold number of Americans. He has not been personally linked to the death of anyone even while being accused of gang activity including human trafficking, drug trafficking, and spousal abuse.

I misspoke and I apologize for the mistake.

While the retraction employs familiar MAGA talking points—elevating fiercely disputed accusations against Abrego Garcia, ostensibly to minimize Trump’s harrowing denial of his due process—that’s still more than can be said of Fox, which has thus far been mum on the error.

FOX News @ Night issued a correction in its segment on Thursday night, after this piece was published.

Florida Representative Randy Fine took a moment to remind people that the most important reason to pass the “big, beautiful bill” is to give Donald Trump exactly what he wants.

During a Fox News interview in the early hours of Wednesday morning, the Florida Republican tried to recenter amid lengthy deliberations over the president’s behemoth budget bill that was returned to the House.

“But what we have to understand that the American people are counting on us, and people are losing sight of what this bill does,” Fine said, before proceeding to not explain what the bill does at all.

“Imagine you’re a waitress working right now who’s depending on tips to pay your bills, or you’re an older person whose dependent on Social Security and you don’t want to pay taxes on what you earned for your whole life, or you’re one of the people who’s gonna lose all of the tax breaks they’ve had all of this time, we need to give certainty to the American people,” Fine said.

“But the most important thing is we’ve all committed to support President Trump. He is counting on us to deliver on his signature legislative achievement, and we just have to get the job done.” Fine said.

The most important thing is being transparent with the American public. The benefits of Trump’s No Tax on Tips provision are easily outweighed by massive cuts to essential programs such as SNAP, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act. Although Trump has claimed there will be no taxes on Social Security for seniors, that provision isn’t actually in his massive spending and tax bill.

Instead, seniors who are not on Social Security will get a short-term standard deduction boost, but those who do receive Social Security payments will get absolutely nothing. And the tax breaks that would be extended from Trump’s 2017 tax plan are skewed to benefit corporations and the very rich.

President Trump has no idea what’s actually in his sweeping, term-defining budget bill. NOTUS reported on Wednesday that House Republicans had to tell the president that his “big, beautiful bill” was indeed slashing Medicaid.

Trump had a sit-down with the more moderate House Republicans on Wednesday in which he told them that the three things they needed to let be if they wanted to win in 2026 and 2028: Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

“But we’re touching Medicaid in this bill,” one member told the president, according to NOTUS sources.

Trump has never been the wonkiest guy, but the fact that he was seemingly unaware that his “big, beautiful bill” is attacking Medicaid is alarming. Either he’s just completely settled into being a vessel for the Heritage Foundation while their guys spoon-feed him legislation, or his mental acuity needs to be questioned. Or both.

Trump’s budget bill will throw millions off of Medicaid to help fund tax breaks for the richest people in the country. At least 17 million Americans are expected to lose their health insurance by 2034, thanks to changes to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. It’s not that Trump didn’t understand that, it’s that he didn’t seem to know that was happening at all. To him, this bill is simply a GOP loyalty test with a massive check attached.

With House Republicans poised to pass President Trump’s centerpiece legislation, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is making the most of the customary “magic minute” he’s afforded at the end of floor debate. In a marathon speech that has lasted six hours thus far, the New York Democrat is taking to task supporters of the “big, beautiful bill,” which would deliver historic rollbacks in the social safety net.

Beginning just shy of 5 a.m., and ongoing as of this writing, Jeffries began by observing, “This bill represents the largest cut to health care in American history. It’s an all-out assault on the health care of the American people,” which renders hollow Trump’s January promise to “love and cherish Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.”

Later on, Jeffries addressed House Speaker Mike Johnson, saying, “I feel the obligation, Mr. Speaker, to stand on this House floor, and take my sweet time.” As his Democratic colleagues broke into applause, Jeffries continued, “to tell the stories of the American people” as well as “their health care,” “their Medicaid,” “their nutritional assistance,” “veterans,” “farmers,” “children,” “seniors,” “people with disabilities,” and “small businesses.”

Jeffries’s speech is working through a sizable collection of letters from residents of each U.S. state who are worried about losing health care coverage, or otherwise suffering under the legislation, as well as naming the Republican lawmakers who represent those concerned residents.

Shortly before 8 a.m., Jeffries said, “Budgets are moral documents. And in our view, Mr. Speaker, budgets should be designed to lift people up. This reckless Republican budget that we are debating right now … tears people down … and that is why I stand here on the floor of the House of Representatives with my colleagues in the House Democratic Caucus, to stand up and push back against it with everything we have.”

The longest “magic minute” was an over eight-hour speech delivered in February 2018 by then-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Jeffries, having recently completed his sixth hour of speaking, shows no sign of stopping soon—his effort echoing, to a degree, Senator Cory Booker’s record-breaking 25-hour speech in April lambasting the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

This story was last updated at 11:53 a.m.

It doesn’t appear that the president’s “big, beautiful bill” will muster enough votes in time.

Donald Trump has imposed a July 4 deadline on Congress to pass his signature legislative item, but actually meeting the due date has sent Republicans into disarray.

By late Wednesday afternoon, House Speaker Mike Johnson had already laid bare that the process would make lawmakers, and presumably their constituents, unhappy.

“All of us have to give up on our personal preferences,” Johnson told reporters. “That’s what I think people are recognizing and coming to grips with.”

The House Freedom Caucus had released a three-page memo earlier Wednesday heavily criticizing the Senate’s version of Trump’s exorbitantly expensive tax cut, flaming the Senate draft for adding pork where the House had proposed cuts. In their complaint, they advocated for more extreme slices from the federal budget.

But the hard-line fiscal conservatives aren’t the only party members opposing the bill: Moderates are worried about the high cost the legislation will have on safety-net programs, including some $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid, and swing-district Republicans are worried about political backlash in their Democrat-led states.

Any of these groups have the muster to keep the bill from passing: Johnson can afford to lose just three votes if he wants to push the bill to the president’s desk.

By the afternoon, some lawmakers had gone public with their complaints about the fiasco.

“We aren’t delayed because moderates whose constituents will be completely screwed are holding out,” posted Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell. “We are delayed because the most extreme members who want to hurt MORE people are holding out.”

Texas Representative Chip Roy, the policy chair of the House Freedom Caucus, told NBC News that the bill was not “totally exciting” for his conference and that he wasn’t sure if the bill would pass by the end of the week. He added that the half-trillion dollars in savings would have to come from somewhere else in the federal budget, though he wasn’t committed to ironing out the details in this package.

Congress is not supposed to be at the mercy of the president: The Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution to isolate three separate systems of government, intended to continually check one another’s power. But that has not been the case since Trump resumed office with a conservative majority in both legislative chambers as well as the nation’s highest judiciary. Instead, month after month, the federal government has seen lawmakers bend and capitulate to the president’s will, buying into his “mandate from the people” spiel, even when his policies cause direct harm to their constituents.