Trump Sets Lowest Refugee Cap in History—With Priority to White People

The United States, once a haven for people from all over the world seeking a better life, will only admit 7,500 refugees next year, and most of them will be white South Africans.

The Trump administration’s new limit, published in the Federal Registry Thursday, is much lower than the 125,000-person ceiling set by the Biden administration last year. White House officials have not commented on why the number is so low, but the registry notice states the figure is “justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest.”

The notice also refers to “victims of unjust or illegal discrimination in their respective homelands.” The only specific ethnic group mentioned in the memo is “Afrikaners from South Africa,” and President Trump has used the term “unjust racial discrimination” to criticize South Africa’s current government. (Actual Afrikaners dispute Trump’s characterization).

Refugee organizations have condemned the move. Global Refuge’s CEO Krish O’Mara Vignarajah said in a statement that the move “doesn’t just lower the refugee admissions ceiling. It lowers our moral standing.

“At a time of crisis in countries ranging from Afghanistan to Venezuela to Sudan and beyond, concentrating the vast majority of admissions on one group undermines the program’s purpose as well as its credibility,” Vignarajah’s statement said.

“By privileging Afrikaners while continuing to ban thousands of refugees who have already been vetted and approved, the administration is once again politicizing a humanitarian program,” said the International Refugee Assistance Project’s president, Sharif Aly.

It’s no secret how much racism influences the Trump administration’s immigration policies. Trump infamously complained about people from “shithole countries” immigrating to the U.S., back in his first term, and baselessly attacked Haitian immigrants during his 2024 campaign, falsely claiming that they cook cats and dogs. That kind of thinking is now replacing the U.S. legacy of welcoming refugees and immigrants from all over the world.

House Speaker Mike Johnson tried to rewrite history Thursday in order to excuse why the Trump administration won’t provide funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program starting in November.

During a press conference, Johnson was asked why the White House wasn’t planning to fund SNAP benefits through the current government shutdown, even though SNAP previously remained funded during the previous one. That one, which lasted for 35 days from 2018-2019 during Donald Trump’s first term, is the longest government shutdown in history.

“The president, this administration has done exactly what it did in the first term, and that is bend over backwards to make sure we mitigate the harm,” Johnson said, adding that Trump had “done everything he can.”

HuffPost reporter Arthur Delaney, who asked Johnson the question, wrote on X shortly after: “I think it’s pretty clear the speaker is just not aware of what happened in 2019.”

Here’s a quick refresher for those of us who, unlike Johnson, weren’t working in Congress at the time. (Johnson was first elected in 2016.) During the government shutdown in January 2019, the Trump administration instructed the U.S. Department of Agriculture to pay out SNAP benefits early, so Americans could receive February benefits. 

Continuing resolutions have historically provided that SNAP funds can be available “payments due on or about the first day of any month” that begins within 30 days after the budget expires, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. As of Thursday, the shutdown has lasted 30 days. 

During the first Trump administration, the Agriculture Department clearly and repeatedly stated that SNAP contingency funds could be used in case of a government shutdown. This was confirmed by the Office of Budget and Management. 

That was seemingly the policy of the second Trump administration as well—until  August 2025, when the USDA published a memo claiming that SNAP contingency funds could not legally be used to cover regular benefits for the 42 million Americans that use them, and that using the contingency funds would prevent additional transfers to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), which is currently being paid for by tariff money.

It seems that Johnson has been on an all-time streak of not answering questions while he runs defense for Republicans’ disastrous shutdown, taking creative liberties with the truth and refusing to actually govern. 

Chicago’s ICE units will be spending this Halloween masquerading as human beings.

Federal agents will still be patrolling the streets and nabbing undocumented immigrants while children trick or treat across the Windy City, according to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, despite appeals from Illinois Governor JB Pritzker to hold off for the night.

“There is a lot of ICE activity, obviously, in that city … but the governor has asked you specifically to pause immigration enforcement operations in Chicago so he says that kids can safely celebrate Halloween,” said Fox News’s Sandra Smith during a Thursday afternoon interview. “Do you have any plans to alter activity tomorrow on that day?”

“No, we’re going to be out on the streets in full force and increase our activities to make sure that kids are safe,” Noem said. “Every day in Chicago we’re arresting murderers, child pedophiles, those who have perpetuated assault and pornography against children.

“We’re going to be out there to make sure that they can be safe, enjoy the holidays, spend some time with their families and their neighbors in their communities, and they don’t have to be the victim of a crime because of these illegal aliens that are in our country victimizing them,” she added.

If anything, it’s Noem’s immigration officers who are “victimizing” children. On Saturday, federal agents allegedly tear-gassed a group of school-age children in a residential Chicago neighborhood on their way to a Halloween parade.

The Trump administration’s pledge to prioritize violent criminals in their mass deportation scheme has not panned out. ICE agents have been tasked with arresting upward of 3,000 undocumented immigrants a day at Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller’s direction. That gargantuan figure has largely forced agents to focus on noncriminal immigrants, and has sent them hunting for potential deportees at kids’ sports practices. The unpalatable development has tanked job satisfaction for ICE officials and agents alike, who have reportedly never been so miserable despite constant praise and material bonuses from the White House.

Noem’s hatred for rapists only extends so far, however. She doesn’t seem to have any problem with Donald Trump, who was found liable for sexually abusing Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll, and who maintained a tight-knit relationship with notorious child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein for years.

Meanwhile, ICE’s presence has made some cities across the country significantly less safe. Earlier this month in Portland, Oregon, mistaken friendly fire between federal agents caused officers to escalate their efforts against anti-ICE protesters, resulting in officers firing a barrage of rubber bullets into a crowd that also contained local law enforcement, Portland’s police commander testified Wednesday.

Knowing another language apparently makes you too stupid to drive an 18-wheeler.

At least, that’s what Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem seems to believe. The secretary provided updates on Operation Midway Blitz in Indiana Thursday, boasting that the administration had captured 223 undocumented immigrants that she said had managed to obtain commercial driving licenses in “sanctuary states.”

The roads are apparently safer without them, according to Noem, who continued on to claim that foreigners in tractor trailers posed an “extremely dangerous” threat.

“Putting these foreigners in tractor trailers like the one you see behind becomes extremely dangerous,” Noem said. “I have driven semis over many, many years, and 18-wheelers, and understand they’re difficult to stop, maneuver.”

“You have to have a skillset, but also communication with those around you, and certainly in your training that’s important to make sure you’re operating it safely,” she continued. “Putting them behind the wheel of these tractor trailers, weighing tens of thousands of pounds loaded with explosive fuel, down the highway endangers every single citizen that is on our roads.”

Despite her insistence, it’s unclear just how much experience Noem actually has with these trucks. Noem catalogs several instances in her 2022 book Not My First Rodeo in which she was haphazardly tasked with operating a semi while working on her family ranch as a child, but she was never a licensed truck driver.

Besides that, Noem hasn’t exactly been a paragon of road safety herself. In 2010, The Hill reported that Noem—then a Republican congressional candidate for South Dakota—had a whopping “20 speeding tickets, three stop-sign violations, two seat-belt violations and a citation for driving with no driver’s license.” She had also been issued six court notices for failing to appear, and had two warrants out for her arrest.

Katie Miller, the wife of Trump adviser Stephen Miller, appeared on Piers Morgan’s YouTube show and melted down after other panelists challenged her lies. 

Miller, a former administration staffer herself, was part of a panel that included left-wing commentator Cenk Uygur, fitness influencer Jillian Michaels, and Palestinian American analyst Omar Baddar to discuss New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s comments on Islamophobia in the U.S. But upon having her lies called out, Miller attacked the other panelists, particularly Uygur, and accused them of antisemitism. 

“Why is it that every time someone wants to criticize Mamdani, it immediately comes back to the Jews and the anti-Israel movement instead of actually talking about his viewpoints?” Miller asked, her voice raised. 

“Nobody said Jews. You just said it. You always do that. We say Israel, you say Jews. We say Israel as a government. Please don’t make it about Jewish Americans,” Uygur responded, explaining that he believes that Israel should be a safe haven for Jewish people within its 1967 borders, without seizing the West Bank from the Palestinians. 

“You’re totally lying—it’s very normal for a Miller to be completely and utterly lying,” Uygur added, saying to Miller, “You and your husband are supposed to be working for America. Not for Israel. I think you’re betraying this country.” 

This set Miller off. 

“Quite frankly, I’m really sick and tired of this racist bigoted rhetoric that can comes from people like you against my husband, against my family, and my children. I am raising Jewish children in this country—” Miller shot back, before Uygur said incredulously, “Who brought your children into this? What a weirdo.” 

Miller even stooped to threatening Uygur’s immigration status, telling him to “check his citizenship application.”  

Baddar came to Uygur’s defense. 

“Somebody criticizing you personally is not an antisemitic attack,” the analyst said to Miller. “If somebody says that you are lying, that is not an attack on Jews, that is an attack on you, and just stop hiding behind identity. This is all the snowflake behavior that the right is supposedly criticizing the left for that you’re simply repeating here.” 

“Yes, Steven Miller is a destructive force in American society. That is not an attack on Jews. That is no reference to his identity. This is an attack on him individually, and just deal with the merits of this case,” Baddar added. 

Miller has not made many media appearances where her views were challenged, and it appears she can’t handle it. Her husband is responsible for many of the president’s worst policies, including his mass deportation efforts, but she can’t seem to handle the criticism being spoken to her face.

Watch the full show on YouTube. 

Red flags have been raised over asbestos and other potential health and safety risks during President Trump’s demolition of the White House’s East Wing.

“Federal law requires comprehensive asbestos inspection, notification, and abatement before any demolition,” the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization wrote in a press release last week. “No publicly available information demonstrates that these statutory obligations have been fulfilled.”

Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey described similar concerns in a letter Thursday to the firm carrying out the demolition, ACECO of Maryland.

“The demolition of a structure of the age and historic national significance of the East Wing demands the highest possible standards of care, not the lowest bid and a blind eye toward regulation,” Markey wrote, according to ABC News and The Washington Post. “Construction workers on the East Wing site, nearby office workers and tourists, and passersby could now be at heightened risk of developing lung cancer, asbestosis, or mesothelioma from the inhalation of demolition dust.”

There is no safe level of asbestos exposure, and the fibers can stay in the air for days.

White House officials have neither confirmed nor denied the presence of asbestos—which is very common in older structures like the White House—but have said that a “very extensive abatement and remediation assessment was followed, complying with all applicable federal standards.” They also say that “any hazardous material abatement was done in September.”

But ADAO President Linda Reinstein says she’s seen zero public information that would confirm that. “I am deeply concerned for White House staff and others working in or near the East Wing demolition site,” she said. “It remains unclear what measures have been taken to ensure the safe removal of deadly asbestos and other hazardous materials.”

The White House last underwent major reconstruction in the 1940s and 1950s, when asbestos use was at its highest.

A 33-year-old DOGE employee was tapped to run the U.S. Navy’s science and technology arm, though she appears to have no experience with the U.S. Navy, science, or technology, The Bulwark reported Thursday.

Dr. Rachel Riley was chosen to replace Rear Admiral Kurt Rothenhaus as chief of naval research, where he has served since 2023. The Office of Naval Research is responsible for disbursing billions of dollars in grants and contracts to benefit the Navy, and has historically been led by an active duty flag officer, according to USNI News.

Riley previously worked as a partner at McKinsey & Company, and completed a Ph.D. in social policy and an M.Sc. in contemporary Chinese from Oxford, according to her LinkedIn. She joined the ranks at DOGE and was assigned to the Department of Health and Human Services, where Politico reported she pushed for massive layoffs earlier this year.

A Navy spokesperson told USNI that Riley “brings deep acquisition, technology, and organizational expertise to the job, and we are pleased to welcome her to the team. We thank Rear Adm. Rothenhaus for his service as he is enroute to his next assignment. We do not have additional information to share at this time.”

Former naval aviator Senator Mark Kelly, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told The Bulwark that Riley was an unorthodox pick. “Usually the head of Naval Research is a very senior member of the military or the senior executive service with an extensive experience in technology, science, engineering,” he said. “That’s the kind of person we put in that job. So I think it’ll be important to see—and I don’t have a lot of information on this nominee’s background—but I do know it’s somebody rather junior who came from the world of DOGE.”

President Donald Trump has his own tenuous understanding of naval technology. Earlier this week, the president ranted about how he wanted to resume using steam catapults instead of electric catapults on aircraft carriers because he loves the way the steam looks pouring off the deck. Meanwhile, the maintenance on steam catapults is considered labor intensive and costly, compared to newer models.

Trump has previously claimed the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System doesn’t work, though there is no evidence that this is true. In January 2024, Trump baselessly claimed that magnets stop working when placed in water, and therefore were a stupid thing to put on a boat.

The United States will resume nuclear testing because everybody else is doing it, according to Donald Trump.

The president announced in a social media post Wednesday night that America would begin nuclear testing for the first time in 30 years in an effort to be on an “equal basis” with Russia and China. Neither of those countries appear to have conducted any nuclear weapons tests since the world’s nuclear-capable nations adopted the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1996.

“The United States has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, though that appeared to be a lie. Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal of any nation, with 172 more warheads than the U.S., according to data from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, or ICAN.

“This was accomplished, including a complete update and renovation of existing weapons, during my First Term in office. Because of the tremendous destructive power, I HATED to do it, but had no choice!” he wrote, though it was not clear how updating the arsenal had created more weapons.

“Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” Trump continued. “That process will begin immediately.”

The revised policy was shared mere minutes before Trump was scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, but the extended rationale came hours after.

“They seem to all be nuclear testing,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One Thursday. “We have more nuclear weapons than anybody. We don’t do testing. We’ve halted it many years ago, but with others doing testing I think it’s appropriate that we do also.”

Trump did not clarify where or when the testing would take place.

Nuclear weapons experts argue that Trump’s gambit won’t play out well for America. Beth Sanner, former deputy director of national intelligence, told CNN Wednesday night that it was a “bad idea” that would only serve to give U.S. adversaries a chance to further test their capabilities.

“Adversaries benefit more than we do,” Sanner told the network.

The dominoes have already started to topple: The Kremlin emphasized the terms of the nuclear armistice Thursday, warning that “if any country resumes nuclear testing Russia would follow suit,” reported the Associated Press.

The Trump administration’s mass deportation machine has skirted laws and challenged the American judicial system in the process. And at least one immigrant deported in that chaos happens to be a former Trump golf club employee, The New York Times reports.  

Alejandro Juarez, 39, was deported last month to Mexico without receiving a hearing in front of a judge, which immigrants are legally entitled to. Instead, after showing up to an appointment on September 15 at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices in Manhattan, he was detained, placed on the wrong plane, sent to Texas, and told to walk across the border to Mexico. 

Juarez, who lived with his wife and four children in Westchester County, New York, had previously worked as a server and food runner at the Trump National Golf Club Westchester for more than a decade. 

Soon after his deportation, ICE officials realized their error and scrambled to figure out his whereabouts, according to documents obtained by the Times. But initially, the agency told the publication that Juarez had not been deported and instead was detained for a 2022 DUI conviction. 

Juarez’s lawyer Anibal Romero was also left in the dark as he tried to track him down. He eventually received a phone call from his client, who told him, “I’m in Mexico.” When Romero showed up for Juarez’s September 25 immigration hearing without his client, he told the confused judge what happened, and an ICE lawyer in the court admitted that he didn’t know where Juarez was. 

ICE had to backtrack and admit what it had done, telling the Times that Juarez was “removed to Mexico early because he was put on the incorrect transport,” adding that the agency would bring him back into ICE custody while still working for his deportation. 

Meanwhile, Juarez’s family wonders if and when he’ll ever come home. His wife and three of his kids, ages 10, 12, and 16, are still in New York, with his 20-year-old son stationed in California with the Marines. 

“My 10- and 12-year-old children ask me on the phone: ‘When are you returning, Papi? We miss you. We can’t be without you,’” Juarez told the Times. 

Juarez is one of countless immigrants who are deported without due process, and sometimes even U.S. citizens are sent overseas by overzealous federal agents. Right now, all that stands in their way appear to be the courts, which are only able to slow things down. 

Even neocon Bill Kristol would rather have a democratic socialist for mayor of New York City than Andrew Cuomo.

In a Wednesday interview with Claremont College’s The Forum, Kristol, now The Bulwark’s editor at large, stated that the idea of “going back” to Cuomo, who previously served as New York attorney general and governor, would be “ridiculous.”

Kristol said he would probably vote for Mamdani in the general election if he lived in New York City, although he wouldn’t have thought to rank him in the primary. But the bulk of his ire was for Cuomo and the establishment.

“The idea of going back to Cuomo is just, I think, ridiculous. I think if it had been the first round, I would’ve voted for someone else and maybe wouldn’t have even ranked Mamdani, and would’ve had other people who were more centrist, liberal types,” he said.

“All these big shot, you know, finance types in New York, they couldn’t get behind anyone except for Andrew Cuomo. It’s really pathetic, in my opinion. So now they’re rallying to Cuomo with some of them, but I don’t have that much sympathy for that,” Kristol continued.

An ex-Republican like Kristol is, in theory, the exact kind of support that Cuomo would be looking for. The fact that he can’t get it from even the center right is an indictment of Cuomo’s lack of juice, energy, and integrity more than anything else. Kristol doesn’t even seem to like Mamdani all that much, but his disdain for Cuomo overrules that.

“New York is a huge city. [Mamdani is] not going to destroy it, I don’t think. He’s gonna set up five silly government-run grocery stores, I guess. I don’t think he even will do that [inaudible]. And so they’ll be fine,” Kristol said. “I do think the right’s reaction to Mamdani has been a little hysterical. He’s a very impressive politician. I don’t know that he’s going to be a very good mayor. He’s 33 years old, he’s never run anything. They’re good people who could work for him though, in New York. So, who knows? I don’t know.”

The interview has yet to be released in full.