Federal Judge Throws Out Indictment of TikToker Shot by ICE Agent

Carlitos Ricardo Parias—the TikTok streamer and immigration journalist who was shot by ICE in south Los Angeles this October—has had his indictment dropped by a federal judge.

U.S. District Judge Fernando M. Olgin on Saturday dismissed the indictment on the grounds that Parias was not given access to counsel while in ICE detention, and the government did not abide by the court deadline to release the body cam footage from the shooting.

ICE initially claimed that Parias, who goes by Richard LA online, was pulled over using standard operating procedures. According to the affidavit, Parias ignored commands to exit his vehicle, hitting two law enforcement vehicles before “accelerating aggressively” with his car. But U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli directly contradicted the government’s argument by revealing the agents “boxed him in,” which is not considered standard procedure for a traffic stop.

CNN reported that an ICE officer confronted Parias and used his weapon to smash Parias’s window, according to a law enforcement source who spoke to the outlet. Authorities believe the agent’s weapon fired while he was attempting to grab Parias, striking Parias and ricocheting to hit a deputy marshal. Parias was then charged with assault.

Marjorie Taylor Greene has spent her entire career profusely defending President Trump and his MAGA agenda. But their last conversation reportedly left her stunned, as he said he attacked both her and the survivors of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Greene fought for the release of the Epstein files for months, eventually teaming up with Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie, who were able to successfully force the administration to begin to release some heavily redacted files with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

When Greene implored Trump to invite some of Epstein’s female victims to the Oval Office in a show of support in September, she told the New York Times Magazine, he berated her, telling her that they didn’t deserve the honor. That was the last in-person conversation they had.

“How did all of this end up to a point where it was about releasing files about women who were raped, and not the serious things that I think truly matter about helping to get our economy stabilized again?” she said. “Help reduce the cost of living, fix the housing market, fix health insurance—for the love of God, what the [expletive] is the matter with these people?”

Her last text exchange with Trump occurred two months later, in which she told the president about the fears she held for the safety of her family, given a death threat against her son she’d received that morning, following Trump publicly rebuking her as a traitor. He responded with a long message that completely ignored her fears and attacked her personally once again.

The administration responded with complete disdain.

“President Trump remains the undisputed leader of the greatest and fastest growing political movement in American history—the MAGA movement,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told the Times. “On the other hand, Congresswoman Greene is quitting on her constituents in the middle of her term and abandoning the consequential fight we’re in—we don’t have time for her petty bitterness.”

The race to replace Donald Trump is on, but no one seems particularly keen on his successor.

Despite his supporters openly encouraging him to ignore the Constitution, Trump has reportedly told his Chief of Staff Susie Wiles “a couple of times” that he knows a third term isn’t possible. And that leaves many in MAGA looking for what comes next.

Turning Point USA, the organization that energized young voters to turn out for Trump, has recently reoriented its focus on Vice President JD Vance ahead of the 2028 election. Vance, according to the Charlie Kirk-founded conservative nonprofit, has the chops to take Trump’s spot on the next Republican presidential ticket. There’s just one glaring flaw: No one seems to like him.

A CNN poll conducted earlier this month found that just 22 percent of Republicans support Vance’s bid for the presidency. They cited his “intelligence” as a key factor in his potential success with American voters, as well as the likelihood that he would continue Trump’s agenda.

The president’s suggestions as to who could top the Republican presidential ticket in 2028 have been so quiet that they’re practically murmurs. Without ever explicitly signaling his support for Vance to lead the party, Trump has lauded his number two, publicly describing Vance as “very capable” and the “most likely” choice to front the Republican ticket.

Vance has not yet announced a formal bid for the Oval Office, but that hasn’t stopped major Republicans from chiming in with their support. State Secretary Marco Rubio told Vanity Fair that he would back Vance rather than challenge him for the next GOP presidential nomination, while Representative Anna Paulina Luna has also shown her support for the 41-year-old Ohioan.

Turning Point’s new leader and Kirk’s partying, gold suit–wearing widow Erika Kirk made waves with her own support for the vice president after she intimately embraced him on stage in October, weeks after her husband’s assassination.

Erika Kirk and Turning Point formally endorsed Vance for president at the group’s conference earlier this month, pledging to help get him elected.

Somehow, Vance is the best that the party’s got—as of right now. No other GOP figure, including longtime presidential wannabes State Secretary Marco Rubio and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, eclipsed five percent in the CNN poll.

The largest group of respondents—some 64 percent of those polled—said they had “no one specific in mind” to top the 2028 ticket, suggesting an open playing field in which just about anyone could step in to win the Republican nomination.

Still, several of Trump’s most ardent supporters—including his first term chief strategist Steve Bannon—have advocated that the president should attempt to seek a third term. Vance, Bannon claimed in August, is simply “not tough enough” for the job.

Russia has apparently not agreed to a ceasefire, according to Donald Trump.

The U.S. president told reporters Sunday that Ukraine’s near-term peace prospects with Russia did not include an end to the violence.

“Did [Russian President Vladimir] Putin agree to a ceasefire to allow a referendum to take place?” a journalist asked Trump Sunday evening during a Palm Beach press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

“Not a ceasefire, and that’s one of the points that we’re working on right now,” Trump said. “He feels that look, you know, they’re fighting and to stop—and then if they have to start again, which is a possibility, he doesn’t want to be in that position. I understand that position. The president feels strongly about that, or something.”

“You know you have to understand the other side,” Trump insisted, speaking of the Russian dictator while just steps away from Zelenskiy. “I’m on the side of peace, I’m on the side of stopping the war.”

The detail adds to a growing pile of evidence that Russia isn’t negotiating in good faith to end its assault on Ukraine. The hostile foreign power has offered virtually nothing—not even temporary peace—to resolve the nearly four-year conflict. Yet it has been gifted unprecedented capitulations from the Trump administration, upending longstanding U.S. policy in the process.

Last month, the Trump administration unveiled a 28-point peace plan that catered to some of Russia’s most outrageous demands, such as requiring Ukraine to swear off NATO membership and to hand Moscow Crimea and the eastern Donbas region.

Still, Ukraine is pushing toward a resolution. In the weeks since Trump unveiled his plan, Zelenskiy and his team have drafted their own version of a peace plan, which he told reporters Sunday was “90 percent agreed to,” noting that the U.S.-Ukraine security guarantees were “100 percent agreed” to.

The sensitive issue of ceding Ukrainian territory to Russia, however, was still up in the air.

“I would not say agreed, but we’re getting closer to an agreement on that, and that’s a big issue. Certainly, that’s one of the big issues, and … it’s unresolved,” Trump said Sunday.

More than 13,300 civilians have been killed and 31,700 injured in Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022, according to a United Nations report from June. Last week, Russia bombed Kyiv, devastating portions of Ukraine’s war-torn capital and killing at least one person while injuring 27.

Trump pledged on the campaign trail that he would end the war on his first day in office, but still the conflict has dragged on, in large part due to Moscow’s tireless and ever-shifting demands. On Sunday, Trump told reporters that he has “no deadline” to resolve the war.

By Monday morning, Russian officials suggested that Moscow’s position could change yet again as they accused Ukrainian forces of attempting to attack Putin’s residence in the Novgorod region.

President Trump is claiming to have successfully bombed a “big facility” in Venezuela in yet another act of aggression and sign of the administration’s interventionist goals in the region. 

“We just knocked out—I don’t know if you read or you saw—they have a big plant, or a big facility, where the ships come from. Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard,” Trump told GOP donor John Catsimatidis on his Friday radio show.

A staffer close to the situation later described the target as a “drug facility.” And while details remain virtually nonexistent (how do we know this even happened?), the attack does align with the administration’s unsubstantiated narrative that the Venezuelan government is directly supporting drug traffickers. 

This is a major, violent escalation against Venezuela with absolutely zero explanation or justification to the American people. The so-called  “peace president” has bombed ships full of fishermen, stolen an oil tanker, threatened Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro with regime change, and even given the CIA the greenlight to meddle there.

The Venezuelan government has yet to respond. 

Trump was later asked to shed more light on the apparent bombing while taking questions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. 

“Can you say anything more about the explosion in Venezuela that you mentioned in a radio interview?” a reporter asked. “Did the military do that?”

“Well it doesn’t matter, but there was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs,” Trump replied. “They load the boats up with drugs. We hit all the boats, and now we hit the area.... It’s the implementation area, that’s where they implement … and that is no longer around.” 

He also refused to confirm whether the attack was performed by the CIA, but said that he knew “exactly who it was” but didn’t “want to say who it was.”

This story has been updated.