Trump Wanted “Retribution” Against Pro-Palestine Students, Judge Rules

A federal judge used an anonymous pro-Trump threat he received to open his scathing 161-page ruling on how President Trump broke the law with his authoritarian deportations of students for standing against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

“Trump has pardons and tanks,” the scribbled threat to senior U.S. District Judge William Young (a Reagan appointee) read. “What do you have?”

Young responded directly.

“Dear Mr. or Ms. Anonymous, Alone I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, we the people of the United States—you and me—have our magnificent Constitution,” Young replied. “Here’s how that works out in a specific case—”

Young proceeded to explain to Mr. or Ms. Anonymous just how exactly the Trump administration violated the First Amendment rights of students like Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk.

“Secretaries Noem and Rubio … acted in concert to misuse the sweeping powers of their respective offices to target noncitizen pro-Palestinians for deportation primarily on account of their First Amendment protected political speech. They did so in order to strike fear into similarly situated non-citizen pro-Palestinian individuals, pro-actively (and effectively) curbing lawful pro-Palestinian speech and intentionally denying such individuals (including the plaintiffs here) the freedom of speech that is their right,” Young wrote. “Moreover, the effect of these targeted deportation proceedings continues unconstitutionally to chill freedom of speech to this day.”

He also called out Trump specifically and his obvious “problem” with the First Amendment.

“Where things run off the rails for him is his fixation with ‘retribution.’ ‘I am your retribution’ he thundered famously while on the campaign trail. Yet government retribution for speech (precisely what has happened here) is directly forbidden by the First Amendment.”

While tanks and pardons are quite formidable weapons, as Trump has shown, at least some judges still seem to believe in the power vested in the Constitution and their right to enforce it, even as they receive strange threats from the president himself or his anonymous fans.

“I hope you found this helpful. Thanks for writing. It shows you care. You should. Sincerely & respectfully, Bill Young,” Judge Young concluded in his response to the anonymous threat. “P.S. The next time you’re in Boston [the postmark on the card is from the Philadelphia area] stop in at the Courthouse and watch your fellow citizens, sitting as jurors, reach out for justice. It is here, and in courthouses just like this one, both state and federal, spread throughout our land that our Constitution is most vibrantly alive, for it is well said that ‘Where a jury sits, there burns the lamp of liberty.’”

The Trump administration is appealing to its ideological base to fill vacancies at the Department of Homeland Security.  

White House deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller announced to his followers on X Monday night that the office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services was looking for “homeland defenders” to approve or deny immigration applications.

“Calling all patriots. USCIS is now hiring ‘HOMELAND DEFENDERS,’” Miller wrote. “Your job will be to interview applicants for green cards, work visas and citizenship for approval or denial. Great pay, flexible hours, stay local. Sign up to be a Homeland Defender today!”

It was not immediately clear if “homeland defender” would be a new position at USCIS, or if it would differ in any significant way from the work already done by immigration service officers at the agency. But whether Miller is referring to a new title or an old one, the pay doesn’t seem to be all that he’s chalking it up to be: a batch of new job listings for immigration officers at USCIS describe the starting salary as nearly $35,000. (Job listings for similar roles in other areas of the country pay up to $107,000, according to USCIS’s career website.)

The openings come just weeks before DHS is set to introduce a more rigorous application process for wannabe green card holders. Those changes will go into effect on October 20.

Miller’s coded language paints a vivid picture of exactly who the white nationalist would like to see dictating the demographics of admitted immigrants. The 40-year-old has tasked federal agents with arresting 3,000 undocumented immigrants per day—a quota so astronomical that it has forced the agency to find unconventional subjects of detention, including noncriminal legal residents and even U.S. citizens. The result has been mass, intra-agency dejection: Former employees claim that ICE agents have reportedly never been so miserable.

After sending his state’s National Guard troops to help garden in Washington D.C., Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry is now begging President Donald Trump to deploy more soldiers in his own cities.

In a letter sent to War Secretary Pete Hegseth Monday, Landry urged the Defense Department to deploy 1,000 National Guard troops “to urban centers” throughout Louisiana. “Louisiana currently faces a convergence of elevated violent crime rates in Shreveport, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans coupled with critical personnel shortages within local law enforcement,” Landry wrote.

But in August, Landry approved sending 135 members of the Louisiana National Guard to Washington to assist in Trump’s federal takeover there. After finishing a sweeping crackdown on the city’s poorest, least white areas with high crime rates, service members have since been enlisted to help Trump’s effort to beautify the nation’s capital.

Like many of the Democratic-led cities targeted by Trump’s federal takeovers, Louisiana’s urban centers have majority-Black populations. But unlike those cities, Louisiana actually has a crime problem.

Louisiana’s homicide rate in 2023 was 19.3 per 100,000 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s more than 300 percent higher than the homicide rate of the most recent site of Trump’s federal law enforcement takeover: Oregon, which had a homicide rate of 4.6 per 100,000 people that same year.

Shreveport, which is in House Speaker Mike Johnson’s district, landed at number 25 on Newsweek’s recent list of the 30 U.S. cities (with at least 100,000 residents) that had the highest number of violent crimes against people. In 2024, Baton Rouge had a murder rate of 36 people per 100,000 and New Orleans had a murder rate of 31 per 100,000. Baton Rouge’s murder rate is twice the rate in Washington. Meanwhile, Portland, Oregon, saw a 51 percent decrease in homicides in the first half of 2025.

While appearing on Fox News Monday night, Landry struck a sycophantic tone. “President Trump has amassed the best Cabinet of public servants and folks who really want to fight crime,” he said.

“Why would you not want your citizens to be safe?”

But Landry’s plea doesn’t detract from the lawlessness of Trump’s campaign to intimidate Democratic-led cities, and concerns that Trump’s sweeping crackdown and cuts to crime prevention programs could undermine already decreasing crime rates.

In a rare gathering Tuesday, top military leaders were summoned from across the globe to be lectured by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about new directives meant to uphold a “warrior ethos” in the military.

An issue on which the former Fox News pundit placed particular emphasis was the supposed crisis of “fat troops.”

“It all starts with physical fitness and appearance,” Hegseth told the seasoned commanders, being sure to pat himself on the back in that regard: “If the Secretary of War can do regular hard P.T. [physical training], so can every member of our joint force.”

“Frankly,” he continued, “it’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops. Likewise, it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon, and leading commands around the country and the world. It’s a bad look. It is bad, and it’s not who we are.”

Reacting to the remarks, some social media users poked fun at the weight of the man at the very top of the armed forces’ chain of command: President Trump. Among them was California Governor Gavin Newsom, who frequently trolls the president online—this time posting an unflattering photo of Trump during a 2024 campaign stunt at McDonalds with the caption: “I guess the Commander in Chief needs to go!”

During his address, Hegseth also laid out a bizarre no-beard policy (that will disproportionately affect Black service members): “No more beards, long hair, superficial individual expression. We’re going to cut our hair, shave our beards, and adhere to standards,” he said, adding, “We don’t have a military full of Nordic pagans. At my direction, the era of unprofessional appearance is over. No more beardos.”

President Donald Trump ranted Tuesday that U.S. warships don’t look tough enough anymore.

Speaking in front of a meeting of hundreds of U.S. military officials whom War Secretary Pete Hegseth had summoned to Washington, Trump said that his administration was reviewing the way that the U.S. builds warships.

“It is something we’re considering, the concept of ‘battleship.’ Nice six-inch side, solid steel. Not aluminum, aluminum that melts if it looks at a missile coming at it. Starts melting as the missile’s about two miles away,” Trump said.

But Trump made it clear that his complaints actually have nothing to do with efficiency or safety. “I am a very aesthetic person. I don’t like some of the ships you’re doing aesthetically,” Trump said. “They say, ‘Oh, it’s stealth.’ That’s not stealth. An ugly ship is not necessary in order to say you’re stealth.”

The U.S. Navy has been a particular sticking point for Trump, as the agency that is consistently behind schedule and over-budget flies in the face of his gestures at efficacy. In June, Navy Secretary John Phelan said Trump’s priorities for the military branch could be summed up as “shipbuilding, shipbuilding, shipbuilding,” a bid that sent defense contractors foaming at the mouth. Shipping experts have said Trump’s dream will likely cost billions of dollars—others say it is destined to fail.

Unfortunately, Trump doesn’t actually know anything about warships. U.S. warships are constructed using some aluminum to reduce weight and improve fuel efficiency, according to Wieland Diversified, a metal supplier. Aluminum is also resistant to corrosion and durable against the ocean waves.

Trump repeated a nonsensical criticism from his executive order that the U.S. once built one ship a day, and now they barely build one a year—which is obviously false. The president has also previously falsely claimed that magnets stop working when placed in water, and therefore were a stupid thing to put on a boat.