Kristi Noem Guts ICE Oversight as Detainee Deaths Surge

As Donald Trump has rapidly expanded immigration enforcement, he and his administration have also begun stripping government oversight—and people are already dying, according to a report published by CNN Tuesday.

Court documents filed in April as part of a lawsuit against the Trump administration revealed that the Trump administration effectively shuttered three watchdog organizations at the Department of Homeland Security. Employees at the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, or CRCL; the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, or CISOMB; and the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, or OIDO, were abruptly suspended in March and given a separation date of May 23.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s budget requests for the fiscal year 2026, zeroed out the OIDO budget. The Trump administration has claimed that the budget request was merely a recommendation from the president, according to CNN.

While the DHS has claimed to have plans to reconstruct department oversight, rebuilding the watchdogs would likely take time—time that immigrant detainees don’t have. The new Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman Ronald Sartini, the person charged with reassessing the DHS’s oversight efforts, was stranded as the only employee assigned to CISOMB, CRCL, and OIDO, according to CNN.

As DHS carries out a massive reduction in force, the size of its detainment and deportation operation has only grown. Since Trump’s inauguration in January, 60 local, state, and federal prisons—public and private—have been detaining immigrants for DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

At least 12 people have already died in ICE custody so far this year, the same number that died in all of 2024. Administration officials have brushed off these deaths as business as usual, but Michelle Brané, a former Immigration Detention Ombudsman, told CNN that the death toll “could be much higher.”

“People’s lives are at risk,” Brané said.

Katie Shepherd, who previously served as a senior policy advisor at CRCL before she was removed as part of the DHS oversight cuts, said the agency was moving in the wrong direction.

“As the Trump administration is doubling down on immigration enforcement, and the number of people in custody is rapidly increasing, we should be increasing oversight, not eliminating it,” Shepherd said.

When asked about the ongoing cases at CRCL, Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told CNN that the department was still “committed to civil rights,” claiming that CRCL had “actually undermined civil rights protections as well as basic federal law enforcement.”

“All legally required functions are still being carried out—but in a more efficient and cost-effective way, and without compromising the department’s core mission of securing the homeland,” McLaughlin said. “Oversight offices continue to receive and open new complaints and investigations.”

The United States doesn’t have the missile stockpile it needs for the Pentagon’s military plans.

The country has only 25 percent of the Patriot missile interceptors left from its initial stockpile level after heavy use of the weapon in the Middle East “in recent months,” reported The Guardian Tuesday. The arsenal issue raised concerns within the Defense Department that U.S. military operations could be jeopardized, with the situation becoming “more acute” in the wake of Donald Trump’s attack on Iranian nuclear facilities last month. The president ordered the use of nearly 30 Patriot missiles in an exchange with Iran’s military.

The U.S. produces some 600 Patriot missiles per year, but concerns remain over Iran’s stockpile, which is believed to contain more than 1,000 ballistic missiles. Those could theoretically be weaponized against U.S. bases if the ceasefire with Israel were to collapse, reported The Guardian. Meanwhile, the U.S. has also divided up its reserves to aid Ukraine while it fights Russia, earmarking dozens of Patriot missiles for the Eastern European nation.

The reported shortage also halted a weapons shipment to Ukraine last week in what a White House spokesperson described as a move to “put America’s interests first,” blindsiding practically everyone outside of the White House, including the State Department, Congress, officials in Kyiv, and America’s European allies, reported NBC News.

The decision to cancel the shipment was grounded in the Pentagon’s global munitions tracker, which highlighted that a number of critical munitions had fallen below a minimum readiness standard for several years, at least since President Joe Biden began sending weapons to assist Ukraine in its war against Russia.

Trump appeared unconcerned by the shortage come Monday, however, when he told reporters ahead of a dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he would “send some more weapons” to Ukraine. He did not, however, disclose whether those shipments would include the Patriot missiles.

Trump also told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that he was “not responsible” for the canceled shipment, telling the war-battered leader that he had directed a review of U.S. stockpiles but did not order the freeze, according to sources that spoke with The Guardian.

The news of a shortage comes at a pivotal moment, with U.S. officials wavering on the country’s commitments to aiding Ukraine and Democrats and Republicans alike excoriating the White House’s decision to pull back.

Democratic Representative Adam Smith referred to the decision to halt aid as “disingenuous,” claiming that his office had “seen the numbers” and had not seen any evidence that would warrant peeling back support from Ukraine.

“We are not at any lower point, stockpile-wise, than we’ve been in the three and a half years of the Ukraine conflict,” Smith, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, told NBC News.

Last week, after news of the halted shipment broke, an analysis by senior military officers similarly found that a Ukraine aid package would not jeopardize U.S. supplies, reported NBC.

Donald Trump announced Monday that the U.S. will send more weapons to Ukraine to combat Russia—making a lot of MAGA world livid.

Seemingly shifting his stance from days earlier, when the president halted certain weapons shipments to Ukraine, Trump told reporters, “We’re going to send some more weapons. We have to. They have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard now. They’re getting hit very hard. We’re going to have to send more weapons. Yeah, defensive weapons, primarily. But they’re getting hit very, very hard.”

This was confirmed in a Pentagon statement, which read: “At President Trump’s direction, the Department of Defense is sending additional defensive weapons to Ukraine to ensure the Ukrainians can defend themselves while we work to secure a lasting peace and ensure the killing stops.”

To many MAGA Republicans who support Trump for his supposed “America First” foreign policy approach, the news was aggravating.

“I did not vote for this,” wrote Trump-pardoned January 6-er Derrick Evans. Natalie Danelishen, who works for a foundation that seeks to build upon Trump’s idea of “freedom cities,” echoed the sentiment, adding, “What the actual fuck?”

“Who in the hell is telling Trump that we need to send more weapons to Ukraine?” posted the conservative comedy and political commentary duo Keith and Kevin Hodge.

“So Trump just said we’re gonna support funding Ukraine’s proxy war now?” wrote “America First” influencer @TiffMoodNukes, who likened Trump’s behavior to a MAGA talking point alleging President Joe Biden was a puppet for the deep state.

For other Trump supporters, the decision was salt in a fresh wound, after a Trump Department of Justice memo published by Axios this weekend denied the existence of a much-anticipated “client list” maintained by Jeffrey Epstein, thereby deflating MAGA conspiracy theories—that Trump and his team had long entertained—about elites’ connections to the deceased sex trafficker and financier.

Many within MAGA world have been left feeling that either Trump had strung them along or, worse, that his administration is now in on the imagined cover-up.

Newsmax host Todd Starnes posted, “The White House just announced they are going to send more weapons to Ukraine.… And it turns out the Epstein files were just an urban legend. I did not vote for this.”

“Hey, you didn’t get the Epstein List, but at least Ukraine is getting weapons!” posted a “MAGA Activist” who goes by “Chief Trumpster.”

“There was a time when I was willing to entertain the idea of ‘trust the plan,’” posted Mike Adams, a right-wing health influencer known as “Health Ranger.” “But after the Epstein files have been memory holed … and the ‘peace president’ is sending more bombs to Israel and Ukraine, and we all realize we’ve been lied to about so many things, the idea that anyone could still trust the plan is truly idiotic.”

Donald Trump’s team must have been in quite a rush to send out the president’s copy-paste “tariff letters” Monday because they somehow missed a glaring issue.

A letter to Bosnia and Herzegovina announcing a 30 percent tariff rate starting on August 1 was mistakenly addressed to “Mr. President,” when the chairperson of the Balkan country’s presidency is a woman.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is led by a three-member governing body that collectively serves as head of state, and its chairperson since November 2024 has been Željka Cvijanović.

Team Trump eventually caught the mistake, and hours later, the president posted a new version on Truth Social that used the proper “Madam President.”

Within less than a day of disseminating 14 letters to various countries, Trump has already backed off the rates and deadlines, saying that basically everything in the letters is still subject to change—including the recipients, it seems. It sort of makes sense that the president wouldn’t put too much stock in his stationery, because they obviously didn’t require that much effort to put together in the first place.

Someone was using AI to impersonate the secretary of state.

A State Department cable obtained by The Washington Post detailed that an individual, yet to be publicly identified, was using AI to send voicemails and write text and Signal chats in the tone and manner of Marco Rubio. They named themselves “Marco.Rubio@state.gov” on Signal.

The cable, dated July 3, said that this person “contacted at least five non-Department individuals, including three foreign ministers, a U.S. governor, and a U.S. member of Congress” for about two weeks. The State Department declined to reveal whether any of the officials messaged by the impersonator had actually been duped.

The administration has had issues with AI-based espionage attempts before. In May, the FBI announced that there was an “ongoing malicious text and voice messaging campaign” against the Trump administration, using AI. And their issues with—and fondness for—the Signal app are now infamous.

“You just need 15 to 20 seconds of audio of the person, which is easy in Marco Rubio’s case. You upload it to any number of services, click a button that says ‘I have permission to use this person’s voice,’ and then you type what you want him to say,” Hany Farid, a digital forensics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, told the Post. “Leaving voicemails is particularly effective because it’s not interactive.”

While there are clear competency and privacy issues within the Trump administration, this case also points to what the future of political espionage will look like.

Even Donald Trump’s most sycophantic followers are turning on him over his administration’s handling of the Epstein files.

Against the expertise of individuals who had worked on the case for decades, Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested in January that the pedophilic sex trafficker had maintained a “client list,” supercharging ideas and theories about which high-powered individuals could have been involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes.

But the administration’s language changed abruptly on Monday, when the Department of Justice posted a memo confirming that no such “incriminating client list” existed, undercutting Bondi’s language. Far-right influencers who had absorbed themselves into the details of the case refused to believe that Bondi had misstepped—instead, they interpreted the sudden reversal as an administration cover-up.

“So I’m going to go throw up, actually,” said Alex Jones, the Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist. “Because I have integrity, and I just really need the Trump administration to succeed and to save this country, and they were doing so much good, and then for them to do something like this, it tears my guts out.”

But Jones wasn’t the only ex-Trump ally to lose his marbles over the update. Laura Loomer, who was not one of the lucky far-right influencers to receive an Epstein files “binder” from the White House earlier this year, called on Trump to throw his attorney general out of the government.

“President Trump should fire Blondi for lying to his base and creating a liability for his administration,” Loomer wrote on X, referring to Bondi as an “embarrassment.”

“I hope Trump realizes what an Fing LIAR Pam Blondi is,” Loomer continued in another post. “She’s useless. Covering for pedophiles and never arresting criminals.”

And Trump’s biggest 2024 campaign donor was similarly appalled by the DOJ memo.

“What’s the time? Oh look, it’s no-one-has-been-arrested-o’clock again,” Elon Musk posted.

The whole situation has thrown Trump’s position with his conspiracy-minded supporters into a bit of a pickle. The 79-year-old billionaire has achieved messiah-like status within the QAnon conspiracy circle for years thanks to the group’s principal belief that, despite his being named and photographed as an associate of Epstein’s and being a reputed fraudster, and despite being found liable by a jury for sexually abusing Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll, Trump will rid the world of Satan-worshipping, liberal-minded pedophiles who run the government and media.

Donald Trump said he may fold on his new deadline for tariff negotiations … again.

While sitting across the dinner table from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday evening, Trump was asked by a reporter whether the copy-paste “tariff letters” announcing the tariff rates for various countries were “final offers” or whether they were negotiable.

“More or less final offers,” Trump said. “We’re always subject to negotiate something that’s fair.”

“I would say the final—but if they call with a different offer and if I like it, we’ll do it,” he explained.

“Is the August 1 deadline firm now? Is that it?” the reporter pressed.

“No, I would say firm, but not a hundred percent firm,” Trump replied. “If they call up and say we’d like to do something a different way, we’re gonna be open to that. But essentially, that’s the way it is right now.”

Trump never seemed all that interested in committing to August 1. He dodged a question Sunday about extending the deadline, forcing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to step in and set one. The United States sent out a total of 14 letters Monday, announcing a tariff rate as high as 40 percent on Kazakhstan, Laos, Malaysia, and Myanmar. The stock market saw nearly one-percentage-point drops in the face of uncertainty.

In the Trump administration, it seems that a deal is not a deal, it’s a threatening letter, the terms of which are completely subject to change. Meanwhile, a deadline isn’t even a deadline, but an endless cycle of, in this case, nonexistent negotiations.

Stocks tumbled on Monday as Donald Trump unveiled new tariff rates for a number of countries, taking a few steps closer, once again, to the brink of a global trade war.

Trump in early April paused a number of hefty planned tariffs from going into effect for 90 days, promising to secure 90 trade deals in that time. The administration had only announced three deals with that deadline—this Wednesday—fast approaching, so Trump this week pushed the deadline to August 1. He also said his administration would announce a combination of tariff letters and trade agreements throughout the week.

Throughout Monday afternoon, the president took to Truth Social to share photos of 14 such letters on Truth Social—and they read not unlike Trump’s wild Truth Social posts. Countries such as Japan, South Korea, South Africa, and several smaller countries were told they will be hit with tariffs ranging from 25 to 40 percent, effective August 1.

“Our relationship has been, unfortunately, far from Reciprocal,” stated the letters, which were all identical but for the addressees and rates (leading TNR’s Jason Linkins to dub them “the Lorem Ipsum Accords”). The U.S. trade deficit “is a major threat to our Economy and, indeed, our National Security!” they continue, and the tariffs, Trump warns, “may be modified, upward or downward, depending on our relationship with your Country.”

The stock market didn’t take kindly to Trump reviving the prospect of trade war, as the Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq fell 0.9, 0.8, and 0.9 percent, respectively.

Planned Parenthood is suing President Trump over a provision in his “big, beautiful bill” that effectively defunds the crucial service provider. 

“The prohibition specifically targets Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its member health care providers in order to punish them for lawful activity, namely advocating for and providing legal abortion access wholly outside the Medicaid program and without using any federal funds,” Planned Parenthood wrote in the lawsuit, which was filed in Boston federal court Monday. “Thus, this statute must be doing something more — and it is. The Defund Provision is a naked attempt to leverage the government’s spending power to attack and penalize Planned Parenthood and impermissibly single it out for unfavorable treatment.” 

The Trump administration is celebrating this defunding under the guise of stopping more abortions. But the true impact of the cuts will be more people losing basic health care like pregnancy tests, cancer screening, and contraception. Under the Hyde Amendment, health care providers, like Planned Parenthood, have been banned from using federal funds for abortion for more than 40 years.

“This case is about making sure that patients who use Medicaid as their insurance to get birth control, cancer screenings, and STI testing and treatment can continue to do so at their local Planned Parenthood health center, and we will make that clear in court,” Alexis McGill Johnson, the chief executive of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement.  

According to a report from The Daily Beast, Senator Ted Cruz was vacationing in Greece as tragedy struck his state. Over the July 4 weekend, flash flooding took the lives of at least 95 people in Texas, including 27 children and counselors at Camp Mystic, an all-girls camp along the banks of the Guadalupe River.

Cruz was sightseeing in Athens as first responders began launching search and rescue operations, The Daily Beast reports. The senator reportedly landed in Greece on Thursday, July 3; was spotted at the Parthenon on Saturday, July 5; and is believed to have not caught a plane to San Antonio, Texas, until Sunday.

Cruz was accompanied at the Parthenon by his family and a security guard, according to a reported eyewitness, who told The Daily Beast: “As he walked past us, I simply said, ‘20 kids dead in Texas and you take a vacation?’” The senator is said to have “sort of grunted and walked on,” while his wife, Heidi Cruz, “shot [the source] a dirty look,” before “they continued on with their tour guide.”

During Cruz’s reported vacation, the senator posted about the flooding a number of times on social media.

He wrote on Friday, from his personal X account, “Please pray right now for everyone in the Hill Country, especially Camp Mystic,” adding that he’d spoken with Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, and the chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, as well as with President Trump.

On Monday, Cruz reiterated that he had spoken on the phone with the Texas officials “in the first few hours of this flood” and had told Trump, “early in what was transpiring,” that “this appears to be bad, really bad. There may be a very significant loss of life unfolding right now in Texas.”

On Friday and Saturday, Cruz shared messages on his official congressional X account, saying that he and his wife were “lifting up the victims of the central Texas floods in our prayers.”

The Daily Beast’s report recalls the infamous February 2021 incident in which the senator took a trip to Cancun, Mexico, during a historic winter storm that killed an estimated 246 Texans and left millions more freezing without power and drinking water.

During that 2021 scandal, which Cruz admitted was “obviously a mistake,” the senator shipped out to the tropics with his family, who wanted to escape the “FREEZING” weather, per texts from Heidi Cruz unearthed by The New York Times. Senator Cruz said he had planned to stay in Cancun for the weekend but returned to Texas early on “the first available flight,” as “leaving when so many Texans were hurting didn’t feel right.”