Federal Agents Aim Weapon in Armored Vehicle at Anti-ICE Protesters

Just before 8 a.m. on Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was spotted with a film crew on the roof of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, Illinois, where protesters on the street below were met with aggressive force throughout the morning.

The facility has become a flash point due to its use in the Trump administration’s Operation Midway Blitz in Illinois.

“They’re committing crimes against humanity there,” Kat Abughazaleh, a Democratic U.S. House candidate in Illinois told The New Republic last month, after she was thrown forcefully to the ground by an ICE agent at a protest outside the facility. In recent weeks, many Illinoisans protesting at the center have been tackled, dragged away, tear-gassed, and otherwise menaced by masked federal agents clad in tactical gear.

Social media footage from Friday shows heavily militarized federal law enforcement—including officers with numerous agencies, an armored vehicle, and snipers stationed on the roof—as well as violent skirmishes in which protesters were hauled off, with more than a dozen reported arrests.

Local and state law enforcement were also present, drawing criticism, though the police say they were “not assisting ICE with any detention operations,” per CBS News.

As protesters gathered below early Friday morning, Noem was videoed on the roof of the facility by an ABC7 Chicago helicopter. The homeland security secretary, whose staged photo ops have earned her such monikers as “Cosplay Kristi” and “ICE Barbie,” was surrounded by cameras and a production crew.

Joining Noem for the photo op was Border Patrol commander-at-large Gregory Bovino, who eventually joined the scrum below, as journalist Taha Syed recorded him shouting at a protester before piling on top of him.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker decried Noem’s presence at the facility in a thread on X. “Federal agents reporting to Secretary Noem have spent weeks snatching up families, scaring law-abiding residents, violating due process rights, and even detaining U.S. citizens,” he wrote.

“Secretary Noem should no longer be able to step foot inside the State of Illinois without any form of public accountability,” Pritzker said, calling on her to hold a press conference. “Illinois is not a photo opportunity or warzone,” he added, “it’s a sovereign state where our people deserve rights, respect, and answers.”

President Donald Trump has offered a baffling legal justification for his extrajudicial military strikes on vessels the government claims are transporting drugs—and it’s a disturbing escalation of efforts to declare war against his enemies.

A confidential memo obtained by The Intercept that was sent to multiple congressional committees this week asserted that the president had sweeping discretion to order the executions of alleged drug smugglers because he had declared a state of “non-international armed conflict” against boats that are part of “designated terrorist organizations.”

But if the U.S. is at war, that’s for Congress to decide—not Trump—and the administration has offered no actual evidence to back up its claims that the vessels were linked to any drug cartel at all.

The memo claimed that Trump had the authority to determine cartels were “nonstate armed groups,” and that their transport of drugs constituted “an armed attack against the United States.”

To be considered a “non-international armed conflict,” a dispute must involve an organized nonstate party, or parties, and the violence between the parties must be “sufficiently intense,” according to the United Nations. Using this justification, Trump could potentially declare war against any group—real or imagined—that he wants.

Last month, the United States launched at least three deadly strikes on vessels, two of which were from Venezuela, that the government claimed were smuggling drugs. The Trump administration offered no legal justification for the initial strike, simply claiming the president had “absolute authority” to kill anyone he claimed was a drug trafficker. But that obviously wouldn’t stand up to legal scrutiny.

Trump officials tried shifting narratives, even claiming that the initial strike was an act of “self defense,” although the boat carrying 11 people had reportedly turned around by the time it was fired upon. After another strike, Trump claimed the victims were “confirmed narcoterrorists,” though the wife of one of the dead men claimed her husband was a fisherman. Certainly none of the men on board received a trial before Trump had them summarily executed.

Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, slammed Trump’s excuses in a statement to the Intercept.

“Drug cartels are despicable and must be dealt with by law enforcement,” said Reed. “But now, by the President’s own words, the U.S. military is engaged in armed conflict with undefined enemies he has unilaterally labeled ‘unlawful combatants,’ and he has deployed thousands of troops, ships, and aircraft against them.

“Yet he has refused to inform Congress or the public. Every American should be alarmed that their President has decided he can wage secret wars against anyone he calls an enemy.”

Donald Trump’s latest attempts to broker peace between Israel and Palestine include the threat of even more violence against Gaza.

In a lengthy Truth Social post Friday, the U.S. president urged Gaza’s residents to evacuate before he “extinguished” Hamas, promising to allow “all HELL” to break loose on the group if they refuse the White House’s latest ceasefire arrangement.

“As retribution for the October 7th attack on civilization, more than 25,000 Hamas ‘soldiers’ have already been killed,” Trump wrote. “Most of the rest are surrounded and MILITARILY TRAPPED, just waiting for me to give the word, ‘GO,’ for their lives to be quickly extinguished. As for the rest, we know where and who you are, and you will be hunted down, and killed.

“I am asking that all innocent Palestinians immediately leave this area of potentially great future death for safer parts of Gaza,” he continued. “Everyone will be well cared for by those that are waiting to help. Fortunately for Hamas, however, they will be given one last chance!”

Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. After their joint meeting, the president announced that the conflict had effectively come to an end, claiming that it was a “historic day for peace” so long as Hamas accepted the terms of a hostage exchange—and embraced an indefinite Israeli occupation. A 20-point plan released by a White House social media account also outlined Trump’s intention to redevelop Gaza into a real estate investment paradise—and to personally head a “board of peace” overseeing the region.

“Great, powerful, and very rich Nations of the Middle East, and the surrounding areas beyond, together with the United States of America, have agreed, with Israel signing on, to PEACE, after 3000 years, in the Middle East,” Trump wrote. “THIS DEAL ALSO SPARES THE LIVES OF ALL REMAINING HAMAS FIGHTERS! The details of the document are known to the WORLD, and it is a great one for ALL! We will have PEACE in the Middle East one way or the other. The violence and bloodshed will stop.”

Trump demanded that Hamas leadership respond to the agreement by Sunday at 6 p.m. EST.

“Every Country has signed on! If this LAST CHANCE agreement is not reached, all HELL, like no one has ever seen before, will break out against Hamas,” Trump emphasized. “THERE WILL BE PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST ONE WAY OR THE OTHER.”

Hamas was still weighing whether to accept the deal as of Thursday, reported PBS.

At least 49 Palestinians have been killed Friday alone by Israel and its ongoing starvation campaign, according to local medical sources that spoke with Al Jazeera. The war-sieged region has so far had 457 hunger-related deaths, including 152 children, since the October attack. The total death toll in Gaza since then has risen to 66,288 people with 169,165 individuals wounded, according to the Health Ministry.

Over nearly 24 months of fighting, Israel has cut off access to water, electricity, medical services, and food in the region, all under the banner of rooting out Hamas soldiers, forcing millions of people into mass suffering to satisfy its war. For decades, Israel has trimmed away and confiscated Palestinian land, claiming it for its own illegal settlements, thanks in large part to America’s financial support.

Last month, a United Nations commission determined that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Russ Vought and the Trump administration’s shutdown revenge tour rolls on as they continue to make blue city residents suffer in an attempt to force Democrats to fold to their demands.

On Friday, the Office of Management and Budget director froze $2.1 billion in funding for Chicago infrastructure, blaming it on DEI and wokeness.

“$2.1 billion in Chicago infrastructure projects—specifically the Red Line Extension and the Red and Purple Modernization Project—have been put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing via race-based contracting,” Vought wrote Friday on X. “More info to come soon from USDOT.”

The Department of Transportation blamed it directly on the government shutdown.

“Unfortunately, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries’ decision to shut down the government has negatively affected the Department’s staffing resources for carrying out this important analysis,” the department said. “We urge Democrats in Congress to stop holding the federal government’s budget hostage so USDOT can get back to the important work of the American people.”

Chicago is just the latest Democratic city to get hit. The Trump administration has already frozen $18 billion in infrastructure projects in New Jersey and New York, and announced cuts to $8 billion in energy funding from 16 blue states, as well.

It’s clear that this is a sort of hostage situation for Democrats: Give Republicans the awful austerity bill they want, or more people and more transportation projects get hurt.

“The Democrats should know that they put the White House and the president in this position,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said plainly on Thursday. “And if they don’t want further harm on their constituents back home, then they need to reopen the government. It’s very simple: Pass the clean continuing resolution, and all of this goes away.”

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker sounded off.

“At a time when federal agents are sowing chaos in Chicago, the Trump administration is holding bipartisan funding hostage,” he said on X. “It’s attempting to score political points but is instead hurting our economy and the hardworking people who rely on public transit to get to work or school.”

During Friday media appearances, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer tried to dance around questions about the weak labor market under President Donald Trump. But Fox News, of all outlets, wouldn’t let her get away with it.

Chavez-DeRemer told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo that the shutdown sent “a momentum of jobs gains” to a “screeching halt.” The claim was too outrageous even for Bartiromo.

“Well, I mean, you know the data, though. You know where we are. I mean, we’ve had three months of slowing jobs,” the host observed, asking Chavez-DeRemer for a sense of the “jobs picture today.”

Chavez-DeRemer evaded, touting supposed investment, trade deals, and growth in gross domestic product under Trump, while expressing the importance of skilled workers. Finally getting around to the job numbers, she put it delicately: “So while we’ve seen the numbers kind of hold steady, the goal is to not stop the momentum.”

In reality, the jobs numbers haven’t been holding steady. Due to the government shutdown, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics will not release its much-anticipated monthly jobs report for September on Friday, as planned. But other recent reports have been consistently disappointing.

This week, the BLS reported the worst hiring rate since June—and before that since before the pandemic and Great Recession era. Then the payroll-processing firm ADP found that the U.S. private sector lost jobs for the third time in four months, shedding 32,000 jobs in September.

In another media appearance later Friday morning, CNN’s John Berman didn’t let Chavez-DeRemer off the hook. When the labor secretary attributed poor job numbers to what the Trump administration “inherited from the Biden administration,” before lamenting that the ongoing shutdown slows the administration’s “momentum” to “grow those jobs numbers,” Berman challenged whether there is indeed any momentum.

“We have the strongest economy in the world,” Chavez-DeRemer insisted, leading Berman to cut in: “Jobs economy? Do we have the strongest jobs economy in the world? Do we have the strongest jobs economy compared to last year, when there were hundreds of thousands of jobs added each month?”

“Absolutely,” said Chavez-DeRemer, going on to blame the accuracy of BLS data—which recalls how Trump ousted the agency’s commissioner for a MAGA lackey following its abysmal July jobs report. “Because we saw those revisions under the Biden administration. That’s why this president has called on the modernization and streamlining of BLS to understand that we need modern information. We need to have accurate information.”