SZA Torches White House’s Sorry Attempt for “Free Promo”

Yet another musician has joined the choir of voices refuting the White House’s latest string of ICE advertisements.

SZA torched the Trump administration for using her music in a pro-ICE ad, claiming that the blatant intellectual property theft was really just a transparent bid to rage bait artists into giving the violent campaign more attention.

“White House rage baiting artists for free promo is PEAK DARK ..inhumanity +shock and aw tactics,” SZA wrote on X Wednesday. “Evil n Boring.”

The White House published a Christmas-themed montage of ICE arrests Monday set to SZA’s track “Big Boy,” focusing on the song’s reprise “it’s cuffing season”—which, in the context of the song, refers to falling into short-term relationships during the cold winter months. Not ripping people away from their families and forcing them into modern-day concentration camps.

“WE HEARD IT’S CUFFING SZN,” the White House captioned the post alongside a chain emoji. “Bad news for criminal illegal aliens. Great news for America.”

The 36-year-old R&B singer was responding to a kindred comment by her former manager, Terrence “Punch” Henderson, who said that the White House’s efforts to “provoke artist[s] to respond in order to help spread propaganda and political agendas is nasty business.”

But the platinum record-producing duo aren’t alone in their opinion. The White House has also stolen tracks from Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter for similar purposes, earning the ire of the pop music spectrum in the process.

Last week, Carpenter seemingly won her own stand-off with ICE after the White House deleted another brutal arrest montage that stole her song “Juno.”

“This video is evil and disgusting,” Carpenter responded to the White House video in a comment that received 1.8 million likes and more than 163 million views—roughly half of the U.S. population. “Do not ever involve me or my music to benefit your inhumane agenda.”

The FBI’s branch and operations director couldn’t answer basic questions about the Trump administration’s designation of antifa as a terrorist organization at a congressional hearing Thursday.

Michael Glasheen was testifying before the House Committee on Homeland Security, and told Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson that after antifa, a political designation and movement that stands for “anti-fascism,” was designated by President Trump as a domestic terrorist organization, “that’s our primary concern right now.”

Antifa is “the most immediate violent threat we’re facing on the domestic side,” Glasheen said, prompting Thompson to ask, “So where is antifa headquartered?”

Glasheen was tripped up, and tried to say, “What we’re doing right now with the organization—” before Thompson cut him off and firmly asked, “Where in the United States does antifa exist, if it’s a terrorist organization and you’ve identified it as number one?”

“We’re building out the infrastructure right now,” Glasheen replied. This did not satisfy Thompson.

“So what does that mean?” asked Thompson. “You said antifa is a terrorist organization. Tell us as a committee, how did you come to that? Where do they exist? How many members do they have in the United States as of right now?”

Glasheen couldn’t offer anything concrete, saying that the answers to Thompson’s questions are fluid, and that it was “ongoing for us to understand that, the same no different than Al Qaeda and ISIS.”

Thompson pressed further, saying that he merely wanted to know the makeup of antifa, and Glasheen tried to deflect, saying that investigations are active, almost shrugging to say he didn’t know, allowing Thompson to illustrate the point he was trying to make.

“Sir, you wouldn’t come to this committee and say something you can’t prove, I know. I know you wouldn’t do that. But you did,” Thompson concluded.

The truth is that Trump’s targeting of antifa is spurious. Antifa is not anything close to a centralized group but rather a movement or ideology opposing fascism. Trump only designated it as a terrorist organization to go after any left-wing opposition to himself or his far-right allies. Thursday’s hearing made it quite clear that Glasheen, a career FBI official who has worked under multiple presidents, knows all of that. The question is how far the rest of the federal government is willing to take that lie.

Homeland Security Secretary and MAGA hardliner Kristi Noem got a fact-check to her face during her Thursday morning House hearing when Democratic Representative Seth Magaziner brought in a special guest.

“How many United States military veterans have you deported?” Magaziner asked Noem. 

“Sir, we have not deported U.S. citizens or military veterans.”  

Little did she know there was one staring right at her.

“Madame Secretary, we are joined on Zoom by a gentleman named Sae Joon Park. He is a United States Army combat veteran who was shot twice while serving our country in Panama in 1989,” Magaziner said. “Like many veterans, he struggled with PTSD and substance abuse after his service.... A purple heart recipient, he has sacrificed more for this country than most people ever have. Earlier this year you deported him to Korea, a country he hasn’t lived in since he was seven years old. Will you join me in thanking Mr. Park for his service to our country?” 

Noem initially refused to even acknowledge Park, who was staring blankly on an iPad held up near Magaziner. 

“Sir, I’m grateful for every single person that has served our country and follows our laws—”

“Can you please tell Mr. Park why you deported him?” Magaziner asked, talking over Noem. “This man took two bullets for our country. You have broad authority, by the way, as secretary, to issue humanitarian parole, to do deferred action. Will you commit to at least looking at Mr. Park’s case to see if you can help him find a pathway back to this country that he sacrificed so much for?” 

“I will absolutely look at his case.” 

Magaziner also brought in another veteran whose wife had been deported. 

Park was forced to self-deport over the summer due to drug possession charges linked to his military PTSD. 

“ I can’t believe that this is happening in America,” he told NPR in an interview before he left. “That blows me away, like a country that I fought for.”

The Trump administration is refusing to face the facts that they are the ones responsible for the suspected national guard shooter’s presence in the country.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was grilled during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing Thursday on Rahmanullah Lakanwal’s granted asylum, which was approved in April after she took over as head of the agency.

“You blamed [the shooting of the National Guardsmen] solely on Joe Biden. Who approved the asylum for this same person?” pressed Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson after Noem finally stopped cutting him off for long enough to allow him to ask the question in its entirety.

“Mr. Thompson, this individual that came into the country—,” Noem started deflecting, before Thompson pressed again.

“No. I want to know who approved—” Thompson continued.

But Noem cut him off again. “No, no, no, no. I’m not going to let you—”

When Noem refused to stop talking, Thompson called to reclaim his time. Then the chairman of the committee, Representative Andrew Garbarino, got involved, ordering Noem to stop speaking until Thompson could ask his question again.

“Yes or no, who approved the asylum claim?” asked Thompson, but Noem again blamed the Biden administration.

“I don’t want to file perjury charges against you, but I’m of the opinion that the Trump administration—DHS, your DHS—approved the asylum application,” Thompson said.

It’s been two weeks since the shooting took place. In that time, Noem has repeatedly thwarted attempts to pin her agency for Lakanwal’s asylum, even though that’s actually what happened. Instead, she has nonsensically claimed that the Biden administration’s vetting process for Lakanwal, which began after he entered the U.S. in 2021, had effectively made her powerless to the ultimate decision regarding Lakanwal’s ability to stay in the country.

Prior to the shooting, there were plenty of well-documented reasons to allow Lakanwal into America. He operated as a foreign partner with America’s intelligence services in Afghanistan, and worked with the CIA as a partner in the country for more than a decade before U.S. troops withdrew from the region. Unfortunately, however, Lakanwal struggled with PTSD as a result of the war, his family told CNN.

He allegedly shot two members of West Virginia’s National Guard on the eve of Thanksgiving. U.S. Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died from her injuries. The other victim, U.S. Air Force Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolfe, is “slowly healing,” according to his family.

A federal judge slammed Justice Department lawyers Thursday for blatantly lying about their efforts to remove Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man wrongfully deported to El Salvador last spring—and she ordered the government to release him.

In a 31-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis granted Abrego Garcia’s request to be released from ICE custody. In her ruling, she torched the prosecutors’ efforts to deport Abrego Garcia to Liberia, after they claimed they could not deport him to the country of his choice, Costa Rica.

“This time, when the Court sought information about Liberia and Costa Rica so to fairly assess the validity of Abrego Garcia’s claims, Respondents did not just stonewall. They affirmatively misled the tribunal,” Xinis wrote.

“They announced that Liberia is the only viable removal option because Costa Rica ‘does not wish to receive him,’ … and that Costa Rica will no longer ‘accept the transfer’ of him,” she wrote. “But Costa Rica had never wavered in its commitment to receive Abrego Garcia, just as Abrego Garcia never wavered in his commitment to resettle there.”

Costa Rican officials had previously put in writing that they had no intention to remove Abrego Garcia back to El Salvador once he was in their custody—while Liberia had made no such assurances. Xinis wrote that the government’s continued lies made clear that Abrego Garcia’s lengthy detention was not for the basic purpose of a timely removal to the third country.

Xinis also found that there was never any order for Abrego Garcia’s removal in the first place. “Indeed, Respondents twice sponsored the testimony of ICE officials whose job it is to effectuate removal orders, and who candidly admitted to having never seen one for Abrego Garcia,” she wrote.

Instead, the government argued that the court should take an October 10 “withholding decision” as evidence that an original order existed—but Xinis didn’t buy it. “The October 10 withholding decision is unambiguously not an order of removal,” she wrote.

Continued detention without a removal order violates Abrego Garcia’s rights under the Immigration and Nationality Act, as well as due process.

The Trump administration might be exaggerating their employment figures, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell warned Wednesday.

In a press conference, Powell said that staffers at the Fed think that the government could be overestimating the number of jobs created by 60,000 each month. With published figures stating that the U.S. has added an average of 40,000 jobs each month since April, the true numbers could be closer to a loss of 20,000 jobs a month.

“We think there’s an overstatement in these numbers,” Powell said at the conference, which followed a policy meeting at the central bank.

Much of the issue is how the Department of Labor counts jobs added or subtracted when new businesses are opened or others close shop. The government can’t easily reach out to companies just starting out, or that have gone out of business, so the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses a statistical model to guess. In recent years, BLS numbers have overstated job creation, sometimes by hundreds of thousands of jobs a year, resulting in revisions showing less jobs later.

But the Trump administration has not responded well to bad jobs reports. When payroll processor ADP reported that the economy lost nearly 32,000 jobs in November, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick scrambled to blame Democrats and deflect blame from President Trump’s tariffs. Trump himself fired the BLS chief over the summer because he was mad about the negative jobs data the agency produced. It’s not outside of the realm of possibility that Trump would put pressure on the agency to fudge better numbers.

Venezuela has condemned the Trump administration’s Wednesday seizure of an oil tanker, calling it an “act of piracy.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi accused the tanker of illegally sending oil to terrorist groups, justifying the administration’s hostile takeover.

“For multiple years, the oil tanker has been sanctioned by the United States due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations,” she wrote Wednesday on X, along with a video of the seizure. “This seizure, completed off the coast of Venezuela, was conducted safely and securely—and our investigation alongside the Department of Homeland Security to prevent the transport of sanctioned oil continues.”

The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry offered a very different read of the situation.

“The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela denounces and energetically repudiates what constitutes a brazen robbery and an act of international piracy, publicly announced by the President of the United States … making clear that the policy of aggression against our country responds to a deliberate plan to plunder our energy resources,” they wrote. “Under these circumstances, the true reasons for the prolonged aggression against Venezuela have finally been exposed. It is not migration. It is not drug trafficking. It is not democracy. It is not human rights. It has always been about our natural resources, our oil, our energy, the resources that belong exclusively to the Venezuelan people.”

President Trump seems to have fully embraced the piracy angle.

“What happens to the oil on the ship?” a reporter asked Trump Wednesday afternoon.

“Well we keep it, I guess,” Trump replied, before failing to answer where exactly the oil was originally going.

This is yet another ratcheting up of aggression against the Maduro government—and yet another example of the absolute disregard the Trump administration has for anyone else’s sovereignty but their own.

Andrew Tate, the self-avowed misogynist and accused sex trafficker with a massive online following, has a powerful ally in the White House: Barron Trump.

The college-aged Trump has been building a steady bromance with the woman-beating influencer since at least 2024, the pair’s mutual friend Justin Waller told The New York Times.

Tate and his brother Tristan are under criminal investigation in several countries related to their web cam business, facing accusations of sex abuse and human trafficking. The pair allegedly trafficked more than 30 women in Romania and Britain. Andrew Tate, who has amassed a following of millions of teenage boys and young men while calling himself the “king of toxic masculinity,” also stands accused of raping and beating a minor in Romania.

But those sordid details weren’t enough to keep the young Trump at bay. Waller, who proudly described himself to the Times as the “third [Tate] brother,” claimed that Barron had grown his relationship with Tate while nudging his father’s social media-based presidential campaigning efforts towards the podcasting manosphere.

As part of that, Waller was invited to a dinner Barron hosted at Mar-a-Lago in the spring of 2024. The two called “each other degenerate names,” discussed Trump’s potential running mates, and mutually agreed to join another guest’s podcast together, reported the Times.

Waller commented to the publication that the teenager was “not a bad ally to have—let’s be frank.”

In the months since, Waller said he’s tried to fill a “big brother” role for Barron (ignoring the fact that the 19-year-old already has two of those), claiming to have offered dating advice and personal connections to the freshman, including Tate himself.

“He and Barron spoke to Andrew over Zoom last year, Mr. Waller said, while the teenager was having a suit fitted by Mr. Waller’s tailor,” reported the Times. “Although they discussed the Romanian case, Barron did not say anything about helping the Tates, Mr. Waller said. They also talked about supporting Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign on their online platforms.”

In the wake of the assassination attempt on Trump’s life, Tate commented to reporters that he was “very close to the Trump family.”

Post-election, the White House assisted Tate, presumably due to his expanding influence over the president’s youngest child. Paul Ingrassia, the Tate brothers’ former lawyer-turned-DHS liaison, intervened in the process of a federal investigation on the Tates’ behalf, claiming that the order to do so had come directly from the White House.

House Republicans have voted to punish Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for not releasing footage of the Pentagon’s extrajudicial executions of alleged drug traffickers.

The GOP-led House on Wednesday passed an enormous annual defense policy bill that included a measure to withhold a quarter of Hegseth’s travel budget until the Pentagon turns over unedited footage of its strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

It’s not clear how much money is in Hegseth’s travel budget, but the bill’s language states that “no more than” 75 percent of that amount will be available until he provides videos to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.

The Defense Department has come under scrutiny in recent weeks, as it has presented conflicting information about a September incident in which the Pentagon ordered a second strike on the survivors of an initial attack—a war crime that experts say likely violated federal and international law.

The legislation passed the House 312–112, with 197 Republicans supporting the measure. The Senate will likely also approve the National Defense Authorization Act, which will then be sent to President Donald Trump, who has previously voiced his support for the legislation.

The $900 billion budget bill includes measures to repeal sanctions on Syria, provide some military aid to Ukraine, restrict U.S. investment in China, and prevent the Trump administration from significantly reducing the number of troops in Europe. It also includes a controversial provision allowing military contractors to be reimbursed for interest payments.

Even the Justice Department lawyer who defended the George W. Bush administration’s decisions to waterboard, bind, and sleep-deprive prisoners in the infamous 9/11 “Torture Memos” of 2002 thinks the Trump administration’s drug boat strikes are going too far.

“I don’t think there’s an armed attack” against the United States by the drug cartels, law professor John Yoo, the former Bush DOJ deputy assistant attorney general, told Politico in a Thursday article.

“They’re not attacking us because of our foreign policy and our political system,” Yoo continued. “They’re just selling us something that people in America want. We’re just trying to stop them from selling it. That’s traditionally, to me, crime. It’s something that we could never eradicate or end.”

Yoo’s criticism is significant given the widespread condemnation he received for his own support of unilateral, extrajudicial violence. He’s one of the “Bush Six” who was investigated internationally for war crimes, and his Torture Memo has been described as a “one-sided effort to eliminate any hurdles posed by the torture law,” making his rebuke of Trump’s bombings all the more alarming.

“The only way the strikes have any legal plausibility … is if we’re at war with Venezuela and the drug cartels are something like what we saw in Afghanistan after 2001 with the Taliban and Al Qaeda being so intertwined together that the drug cartels are essentially acting as an auxiliary of the armed forces or intelligence services of Venezuela,” Yoo continued, recalling his own experiences. “For some reason … the administration doesn’t want to say that’s what they’re doing, and they won’t legally justify it.”

It’s a bleak situation when someone who defended human torture and should probably be in some international prison is calling the current administration out for potential war crimes.

“This is the thing I think conservatives should worry about,” Yoo said. “Could a future President AOC say, ‘Oh my gosh, we are at war with the fossil fuel companies. They are inflicting masses of harm on the United States. It might be cumulative, but they’re doing it on purpose.’ … You just make the same exact arguments,” he said.

“That’s the danger you have once you start saying anything that hurts Americans could be an act of war.”

Nevertheless, the Trump administration continues its aggression in the Caribbean Sea, dropping bombs on boats without any kind of due process. On Wednesday, the administration even seized a Venezuelan oil rig.

And while Yoo’s input is worthwhile, it also paints a bleak picture regarding the prospects of anyone involved in the deadly boat strikes actually being held accountable. Yoo has never been tried for his actions and has had a cushy law professor job for years, even as he’s been internationally condemned for his very specific role in “enhanced” interrogation techniques. That doesn’t raise much confidence in the same standards being applied to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Trump.

Read the full column here.