White House Struggles to Defend Trump Idea to Limit Kids’ Presents

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt lost it Thursday when CNN’s Kaitlan Collins quoted President Trump’s own statements on the economy and Christmas.

“If the economy is as strong as the president has said it is, then why is he telling parents two weeks before Christmas that they should only buy two or three dolls for their children?” Collins asked, referring to Trump’s comments at a rally in Pennsylvania Tuesday, in which the president told a Mount Pocono crowd, “You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter. Two or three is nice. You don’t need 37 dolls.”

Leavitt tried to deflect, saying that Trump actually meant that he wants products made in America by American small businesses, even if they cost more, because Americans would get a better-quality product and would be supporting their fellow Americans.

“Again, with respect to affordability, every economic metric, Kaitlan, and I wish you would report more on it, does in fact show that the economy is getting better and brighter than where it was under the previous administration,” Leavitt added, specifically pointing to inflation, real wages, and gas prices.

Collins pressed further, pointing out that grocery prices have been up, but Leavitt kept repeating that inflation was down and that the press didn’t report on the high levels of inflation under President Biden.

“My predecessor stood up at this podium and she said inflation doesn’t exist. She said the border was secure, and people like you just took her at her word, and those were two utter lies. Everything I’m telling you is the truth backed by real factual data, and you just don’t want to report on it because you want to push untrue narratives about the president,” Leavitt said.

Leavitt’s replies did nothing to explain why Trump would tell people to settle for less this holiday season. At his Pennsylvania rally, the president was repeating comments he made in the spring to try and explain away the impact his tariffs were having on consumer goods. But back then, as well as this week, his comments only raised more questions about the economic health of the U.S., and no amount of bluster by his staff can shut those questions down.

Want to visit the United States? Customs and Border Patrol will make you submit your social media history—and your family history and DNA too.

In an 11-page notice published in the Federal Register on Wednesday, CBP outlined several proposed changes to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, or ESTA, which screens and approves applicants traveling into the United States through the Visa Waiver Program.

Under the new rules, social media would become a “mandatory data element” for ESTA applications, and all applicants would be required to submit a social media history going back five years. But that’s not all.

The notice also said that it would add several “high value data fields” to the ESTA application, including “biometrics.” Examples listed were face, fingerprint, iris, and even DNA.

The Department of Homeland Security announced in November that it would begin uniformly collecting facial biometrics from all noncitizens upon entry and exit to the United States, removing prior exemptions for some travelers. In the new rules, CBP states that applicants, including third parties applying on an individual’s behalf, would be required to provide a “selfie” of the applicant’s face in addition to their passport photo.

Other “high value data fields” include information about applicants’ family members, their names, phone numbers, and addresses, as well as when and where they were born.

Travelers would also be prompted to submit their personal and business telephone numbers used in the last five years, and email addresses used in the last 10 years.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem abruptly ended her time before the House Homeland Security Committee Thursday, angering lawmakers by stepping away from the hot seat to attend a highly anticipated meeting on the future of FEMA.

Except that meeting never happened.

The FEMA hearing was scheduled to take place at 1 p.m. Noem was reportedly informed at 12:26 p.m. that it had been canceled, a DHS spokesperson told The Hill.

Just minutes before receiving that notification, Noem told the committee, “I have to actually leave this hearing early, because the FEMA Review Council is giving their report today on suggestions for changes to FEMA.

“I have to co-chair it, but I will be leaving soon to have to go do that,” she mentioned while responding to a question about FEMA’s distribution of funds.

Noem left shortly afterward, before Democratic Representative Julie Johnson had a chance to grill Noem herself. In response, Johnson made a comment that summed up her caucus’s collective reaction to the ICE captain’s time on Capitol Hill.

“I’m just going to take the position that she was scared of my questions,” Johnson quipped.

But rather than return to the hearing, which continued for a couple more hours, Noem simply … left.

It’s not a good time for Noem to be scurrying away from her responsibilities. In a drastic turn of events, Donald Trump is reportedly considering replacing Noem with outbound Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, a decision that would make Noem the first person to be pushed out of Trump’s second-term Cabinet.

Three former DHS officials with ties to the current staff said that the changeover could happen “really soon,” giving the term-limited Youngkin a future in Washington.

Trump established the FEMA council by executive order in January, around the same time that he pitched it would be better to do away with FEMA altogether in favor of handing disaster money directly to the states. The council is co-chaired by Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem didn’t deny that the Trump administration was illegally deporting people with ongoing asylum cases.

Noem spiraled out during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing Thursday, after Representative Dan Goldman pressed her on the government’s efforts to deport lawful asylum-seekers. There have been mounting reports that asylum cases are being routinely dismissed by immigration judges, and the asylum-seekers are then taken into ICE custody for expedited removal.

The New York Democrat asked Noem whether she agreed that asylum was a lawful pathway to citizenship and that immigrants with ongoing asylum applications were legally in the country. Noem agreed asylum was “a lawful pathway.”

“So, if your department then deports anyone with an ongoing asylum application, you are violating the law, correct?” Goldman asked.

Noem immediately became defensive. “Joe Biden left us with a [inaudible] five billion cases backlogged,” she replied, attempting to dodge the question.

“I’m not asking about Joe Biden, I’m asking you a specific question,” Goldman said. “If your department deports anyone with an ongoing asylum application, you are violating the law, correct?”

But Noem continued to speak monotonously throughout the lawmaker’s repeated requests to answer the question, claiming that the Biden administration had “greatly violated” the asylum law.

“Why are you filibustering? Why can’t you answer the question? It’s a simple question,” Goldman asked, but the secretary continued to rant that the “asylum program was broken under the last administration.”

Clearly, Noem had no intention of openly copping to breaking the law—but Goldman said her artless obfuscation did it for her, since yes was the “obvious answer.”

“If you don’t like the asylum system, you change the asylum law. Bring it to us. We’ll work with you. I think it needs to be changed. But you can’t just decide that you’re not gonna follow the law—and asylum is a law—and deport people with ongoing applications. Unfortunately, that is exactly what’s happening,” Goldman said.

ICE attorneys at immigration hearings are increasingly asking immigration judges to dismiss asylum cases, and the Trump administration has instructed judges to grant quick dismissals. At the same time, the Trump administration has purged dozens of immigration judges and sought to recruit so-called “deportation judges” to help ramp up the government’s soft ethnic cleansing.

Health care bills are going to skyrocket next year after the Senate voted down a bill that would have extended subsidies for the Affordable Care Act on Thursday.

The bill needed 60 votes to pass, but only four Republicans broke with their party and voted to extend the subsidies that millions of Americans rely on: Senators Josh Hawley, Lisa Murkowski, Dan Sullivan, and Susan Collins, resulting in a total of just 51 votes in favor. Every single Democrat in the Senate voted to extend the subsidies, while Montana Senator Steve Daines, a Republican, did not vote.

President Trump said last month that he was against extending the subsidies “because the ‘unaffordable care act’ has been a disaster.” But the real disaster is just beginning.

Health care premiums have already gone up in several states, and lower-income states, including Republican-run states like Mississippi, Tennessee, and South Carolina, stand to suffer the most. Many Americans will likely drop their ACA health care plans, meaning that an estimated four million Americans could be without health care coverage.

Here are the 48 Republican senators who voted to end the subsidies and increase premiums:

1. Jim Banks (Indiana)
2. John Barrasso (Wyoming)
3. Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee)
4. John Boozman (Arkansas)
5. Katie Britt (Alabama)
6. Ted Budd (North Carolina)
7. Shelley Moore Capito (West Virginia)
8. Bill Cassidy (Louisiana)
9. John Cornyn (Texas)
10. Tom Cotton (Arkansas)
11. Kevin Cramer (North Dakota)
12. Mike Crapo (Indiana)
13. Ted Cruz (Texas)
14. John Curtis (Utah)
15. Joni Ernst (Iowa)
16. Deb Fischer (Nebraska)
17. Lindsey Graham (South Carolina)
18. Chuck Grassley (Iowa)
19. Bill Hagerty (Tennessee)
20. John Hoeven (North Dakota)
21. Jon Husted (Ohio)
22. Cindy Hyde-Smith (Mississippi)
23. Ron Johnson (Wisconsin)
24. Jim Justice (West Virginia)
25. John Kennedy (Louisiana)
26. James Lankford (Oklahoma)
27. Mike Lee (Utah)
28. Cynthia Lummis (Wyoming)
29. Roger Marshall (Kansas)
30. Mitch McConnell (Kentucky)
31. Dave McCormick (Pennsylvania)
32. Ashley Moody (Florida)
33. Jerry Moran (Kansas)
34. Bernie Moreno (Ohio)
35. Markwayne Mullin (Oklahoma)
36. Rand Paul (Kentucky)
37. Pete Ricketts (Nebraska)
38. Jim Risch (Idaho)
39. Mike Rounds (South Dakota)
40. Eric Schmitt (Missouri)
41. Rick Scott (Florida)
42. Tim Scott (South Carolina)
43. Tim Sheehy (Montana)
44. John Thune (South Dakota)
45. Thom Tillis (North Carolina )
46. Tommy Tuberville (Alabama)
47. Roger Wicker (Mississippi)
48. Todd Young (Indiana)

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 standoff 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.