Why Is Senator Bringing Up Slavery-Era Rule to Discuss the Census?

Senator Bill Hagerty is dusting off the Three-Fifths Compromise as precedent for his bill to exclude undocumented immigrants from the U.S. census.

Hagerty appeared on Fox Business Friday to support the legislation, which would end the practice of counting all residents of a state—regardless of citizenship status—in the decennial census, which is used to determine congressional apportionment.

“We should only be counting citizens,” he said, arguing that his proposal to abandon centuries of precedent would stop Democratic states from “backfilling with illegal aliens.”

Fox Business host Ashley Webster let out a concerned huff and then asked: “Is it constitutionally legal to do that?”

“There’s constitutional interpretation, I think, that has been misapplied,” Hagerty replied. “It goes back to slavery days and, you know, what portion of a person is going to be counted, et cetera.”

Here, of course, he was referring to the notorious Three-Fifths Compromise, reached between Northern and Southern states at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, under which only three-fifths of a state’s enslaved population counted for apportionment and taxation purposes (all enslaved individuals were still included in the federal census, even if in an “odious way,” as legal scholar Steve Vladeck put it).

Not done making ludicrous statements in support of his bill, Hagerty went on to claim it was “not the intent of Founding Fathers” to count undocumented immigrants.

But the Framers, even while including the Three-Fifths Compromise, conspicuously opted to use the term “persons,” rather than “citizens,” to describe who was to be counted. In 1866, when the Fourteenth Amendment did away with the compromise, members of Congress chose to include noncitizens as well, deciding that apportionment populations include “the whole number of persons in each State.”

The U.S. Defense Department is sharing AI-generated images of female soldiers to make it seem like the government’s recruitment efforts are actually working.

In a propaganda segment on One America News’s The Matt Gaetz Show Thursday, Defense Department press secretary Kingsley Wilson lauded the department’s “incredible success” in recruiting women.

“These numbers are fantastic. Under the previous administration we had about 16,000 female recruits last year. Now we’ve got upwards of 24,000,” Wilson said. While the Pentagon has not officially released these numbers, it gave the same ones to Fox News earlier this week.

The broadcast showed several “photographs” of strikingly beautiful and notably diverse female officers. But lo and behold, a Grok AI watermark was distinctly visible in the corner of each image, revealing that the military’s newest recruits were nothing but ghosts in the machine.

A DOD spokesperson told CNN that they had not provided the phony images. Later, during Thursday evening’s show, Gaetz apologized for showing AI-generated images. “The DOD didn’t give us these images; Grok did. And we’ll use better judgment going forward,” he said.

But the DOD doesn’t seem to care either way. The clip—and the fake photographs—were shared by the Department of Defense Rapid Response account on X, touting the military’s success in hitting its recruitment goals early. The Army also said that it met its yearly recruitment goal of 61,000 new soldiers in June, but recruitment numbers were reportedly rising even before Donald Trump’s reelection. That didn’t stop Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from claiming a so-called “Trump Bump.”

One might recall just several months ago when Hegseth specifically said that women were not fit for combat roles. “It hasn’t made us more effective. Hasn’t made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated,” he explained. “Our institutions don’t have to incentivize that in places where traditionally—not traditionally, over history—men in those positions are more capable.”

Now his agency is desperate to welcome female service members—or, at least, make it look like it does.

As Washington, D.C., sues the Trump administration for attempting to install DEA Administrator Terrance Cole as the Metropolitan Police Department’s “emergency police commissioner,” D.C. police chief Pamela Smith on Friday filed a scathing rebuke of the move with the court.

On Thursday, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued the now-challenged order, which states—among other directives—that MPD officials would need Cole’s approval “before issuing any further directives.”

As Smith’s statement lays out, this would create chaos at the MPD.

“If effectuated, the Bondi Order would upend the command structure of MPD, endangering the safety of the public and law enforcement officers alike,” Smith said. “In my nearly three decades in law enforcement, I have never seen a single government action that would cause a greater threat to law and order than this dangerous directive.”

Requiring MPD leadership to receive Cole’s approval for all their directives would upset the department’s “deeply familiar” and effective command structure, Smith said.

“Imposing a new command structure ‘effective immediately’ will wreak operational havoc within MPD and create tremendous risk for the public,” stated the police chief. This would sow confusion among the thousands of officers lawfully required to report to her—and, she said, “There is no greater risk to public safety in a paramilitary organization than to not know who is in command.”

Smith also railed against the delays that the new emergency commissioner, who would be unfamiliar with “MPD procedures” and “the communities in which we police,” would create.

Manifold MPD leaders are constantly issuing directives, she noted—“from routine paperwork and personnel assignments to responding to domestic violence calls to crowd management to the execution of high-risk warrants.” The cumbersome demand that they all pass through Cole “would effectively freeze public safety operations,” Smith said, creating “confusion and delays [that] will endanger public safety, placing the lives of MPD officers and District residents at grave risk.”

This would be all the more disruptive, she added, at a time when hundreds of federal agents and National Guard members—all “unfamiliar with MPD procedures”—are descending on the city’s streets on Trump’s orders.

The White House has authorized the Pentagon to use military force against Latin American drug cartels—but the sweeping directive also appears to violate the sovereignty of America’s southern neighbor.

Sources working in or with the Trump administration told Rolling Stone Thursday that the president is serious about attacking Mexico unless the nation gives Donald Trump “what he wants.” U.S. government officials just had one stipulation: Don’t refer to the intimidation campaign as an “invasion.”

“It’s not a negotiating tactic,” a senior administration official told the magazine. “It’s not Art of the Deal. The president has been clear that a strike … is coming unless we see some big, major changes.”

Trump and Republican leaders have long embraced the idea of invading Mexico, citing rising fentanyl rates and drug trafficking as sound reasons to put American boots on the ground. In January, Trump told reporters that the possibility of sending U.S. special ops across the border “could happen.”

Mexico’s compliance with Trump’s agenda has been complicated. Last week, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to send troops across the border, though days later, the Mexican government extradited 26 alleged cartel members, including leaders from major gangs, to the U.S.

Attorney General Pam Bondi hailed the moves as “historic efforts to dismantle cartels and foreign terrorist organizations.”

Cartel monitors who spoke with Rolling Stone claimed that Mexico’s compliance is an effort to “stave off” U.S. military intervention and “preserve ongoing trade negotiations.”

Mexico has not finalized its trade deal with the Trump administration. Late last month, Trump and Sheinbaum agreed to postpone a potential 30 percent tariff rate for another 90 days, but just how long it will take for the two countries to reach an agreement remains to be seen.

Historically, it takes U.S. officials roughly 18 months to negotiate a new trade agreement with another country. That boils down to exhaustive reviews of the country’s prior trade, sorting through thousands of line items of products, and analyzing the complex minutiae of local import and export laws.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is so desperate to look cool, they’ve gone full Pimp My Ride—at the taxpayer’s expense.

A cringey recruitment video released Thursday by the Department of Homeland Security featured cars—a Ford Raptor and GMC Yukon—with massive ICE logos plastered on the side, and the name of the president printed on the back window in gold. Some have compared the large decal lettering and red stripe to the old design for the president’s private jet, nicknamed “Trump Force One.” The video shows the bulky cars swerving through the streets of Washington, as DaBaby’s “Toes” plays in the background.

“My heart so cold I think I’m done with ice,” the rapper sings over the Trump administration’s latest gimmick to recruit young people to execute the president’s sweeping and inhumane deportation scheme.

A Bluesky account called Boycott Citizens Bank and Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, posted several purchase orders for the cars featured in the video. The total cost for the cars alone was more than $380,000.

In reality, immigration enforcement vehicles aren’t quite so ostentatious—and that’s on purpose. U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicles are white, featuring a large blue or green stripe. But ICE most frequently uses unmarked vehicles with dark tinted windows and no license plates, so as to operate with a low profile. Common models are a Ford Explorer, Chevy Tahoe, and Dodge Charger, according to the League of Latin American Citizens.

In recent weeks, ICE recruitment has gotten desperate as DHS officials have started reaching out to retirees, hoping to lure them back into the fray. Meanwhile, ICE has removed its age requirement and dropped its Spanish-language learning requirement in an obvious attempt to soften the qualifications for joining Donald Trump’s squad of extrajudicial thugs.