JD Vance: Nonwhite Citizens Targeted by ICE Must Have Done Something

Vice President JD Vance seems to believe that Black and brown U.S. citizens in Minneapolis being pulled over by ICE did something to deserve it—including the cops of color being targeted.

“Earlier this week, local law enforcement accused federal agents of racial profiling,” a reporter asked Vance at a Thursday press conference in Minneapolis. “Why are there so many U.S. citizens being caught up in this operation?”

Vance blamed those getting arrested instead of the agents.

“Well, I think your question assumes something that’s not necessarily in evidence, which is that when there are American citizens who have been caught up in some of these enforcement operations, very often it is people who have assaulted a law enforcement officer,” Vance said, ignoring that nearly 200 Americans nationwide were detained, dragged, and beaten by ICE last year.

“They’re not being arrested because they violated the immigration laws, they’re being arrested because they punched a federal law enforcement officer,” Vance claimed without evidence. “That is a totally reasonable thing.”

But as that’s precisely the opposite of what Minnesota residents—and Americans everywhere–are claiming. Plenty of U.S. citizens have been detained for simply “looking” or “sounding” like an immigrant.

“Now to the accusation of racial profiling, it’s something that we take very seriously. We will take accusations of racial profiling back to Washington, we’ll certainly look into them as they come up,” Vance continued. “But this is not a group that’s going around and looking for people who violated the law based on skin color. They’re looking for people who violated the actual law—the law of our immigration system.”

Earlier this week, a local police chief warned that federal agents’ racial profiling is so pervasive that many of his cops are being targeted while off-duty. But when asked about that warning on Thursday, Vance was again dismissive.

“I saw one story about this from one local police officer who said this, and look … is it a concern? Absolutely. The first thing we have to figure out is whether it happened or not,” he said. “Many of the most viral stories of the past couple weeks have turned out to be at best, partially true.… We’re not gonna prejudge people.”

While the statement Vance is referring to was delivered by “one cop,” it involved multiple reports of racial profiling from the local force.

“As this went on over the past two weeks, we started hearing from our police officers the same complaints as they fell victim to this while off-duty. Every one of these individuals is a person of color who has had this happen to them,” Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley said on Tuesday. “We know our officers know what the Constitution is, they know when right and wrong is, and they know when people are being targeted,” Bruley continued. “If it is happening to our officers, it pains me to think how many of our community members are falling victim to this every day. It has to stop.”

A bipartisan effort to curb AI-generated deepfake porn has linked hands from Washington to Hollywood.

In an unlikely political alliance, Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared beside Republican Representatives Anna Paulina Luna and Nancy Mace Thursday in support of the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits, or DEFIANCE, Act. If passed, the bill would create a pathway for civil action against those who produce, distribute, receive, or possess digitally generated porn that uses the face or likeness of an individual without their permission.

In lockstep with the high-profile politicians outside the U.S. Capitol was another famous face: Paris Hilton, who argued that deepfake porn had “become an epidemic.”

“Before, someone had to betray your trust and steal something real. Now, all it takes is a computer and a stranger’s imagination,” Hilton said. “I know that today there are over 100,000 explicit deepfake images of me made by AI. Not one of them is real, not one of them is consensual.”

Hilton underscored that, barring new legislation, people have little recourse under the current system to stop the digital abuse.

“Each time a new one appears, that horrible feeling returns: that fear that someone somewhere is looking at it now and thinking it’s real. No amount of money or lawyers could stop it or protect me,” she told a crowd of reporters.

“It’s the newest form of victimization happening at scale, to your daughters, your sisters, your friends and neighbors,” Hilton added.

Tech experts argue that the production of deepfakes is doubling every six months, in part due to the widespread availability of AI. While much reporting has focused on the influence of deepfakes and artificially generated imagery on electoral integrity, coverage has practically glanced over the biggest victims of the practice. The vast majority of deepfakes—some 90 percent—are non-consensually generated porn depicting women, reported Context News in 2024.

The issue has come under increased scrutiny in recent weeks after Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok began churning out deepfake porn with its new image-generating capabilities. Some of the images included sexually explicit deepfakes of children, reported The 19th.

“A staggering one in eight girls today are experiencing the harms of AI-generated deepfake porn,” Hilton said.

Ocasio-Cortez has been fighting the battle against deepfake porn for years. In April 2024, she told Rolling Stone that the damage dealt by the disturbing practice is “not a question of mental strength or fortitude” but rather “about neuroscience and our biology.”

“It’s not as imaginary as people want to make it seem. It has real, real effects not just on the people that are victimized by it, but on the people who see it and consume it,” the New York lawmaker told the magazine, underscoring that the impact of deepfakes parallels the intention of physical rape and assault.

“Deepfakes are absolutely a way of digitizing violent humiliation against other people,” she said at the time.

The DEFIANCE Act passed through the Senate with flying colors earlier this month. If it passes a floor vote in the House, it would become the first federal law aimed at protecting victims of deepfakes, allowing victims to pursue damages starting at $150,000.

Donald Trump is trying to take revenge on financial institutions that dropped him after the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection.

The president filed a lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase and its CEO Jamie Dimon Thursday in Florida state court, seeking $5 billion in damages and accusing the bank of ending its business with him for political reasons. The lawsuit claims that Trump, his family, and different businesses were put on a blacklist “for any wealth management accounts that they have title to,” and asserts that Dimon authorized the action.

“Plaintiffs are confident that JPMC’s unilateral decision came about as a result of political and social motivations, and JPMC’s unsubstantiated, ‘woke’ beliefs that it needed to distance itself from President Trump and his conservative political views,” the lawsuit states. It also claims that JPMorgan never stated why it was closing Trump’s accounts.

Trump and his businesses “learned that they were debanked as a result of political discrimination against President Trump, the Trump Organization, its affiliated entities, and/or the Trump family,” the lawsuit states, though it does not explain how Trump and his businesses deduced this.

In a statement to CNBC, JPMorgan said, “While we regret President Trump has sued us, we believe the suit has no merit.”

“JPMC does not close accounts for political or religious reasons,” said spokesperson Pamela Wexler. “We do close accounts because they create legal or regulatory risk for the company. We regret having to do so but often rules and regulatory expectations lead us to do so.”

The lawsuit follows a threat from Trump on his Truth Social account on Saturday to sue JPMorgan Chase “for incorrectly and inappropriately DEBANKING me after the January 6th Protest, a protest that turned out to be correct for those doing the protesting – The Election was RIGGED!”

Trump already sued Capital One last year for dropping his accounts, and has joined his fellow conservatives in complaining about “debanking,” signing an executive order in September “guaranteeing fair banking for all Americans.” But the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has only received 35 total complaints related to political debanking since 2012, raising the question of whether Trump and the right are trying to force banks into submission.

The White House has called for a review of federal funding to more than a dozen Democrat-led states.

The Office of Management and Budget issued a data request Tuesday seeking information on funding to 13 blue states as well as Washington, D.C., in an attempt to “facilitate efforts to reduce the improper and fraudulent use of those funds,” according to a copy of the memo obtained by CNN.

The memo specifies that the info pull is simply a “data-gathering exercise” and “does not involve withholding funds.” But the initiative is eerily reminiscent of other recent attempts to punish the home states of sanctuary cities that have not supported Donald Trump’s political aspirations or immigration agenda.

The affected states are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington state.

“We are moving forward with taking fraud seriously,” an OMB spokesperson told The Washington Post.

Earlier this month, the Department of Health and Human Services cut off $10 billion in funding for social services such as childcare and aid for poor families in five blue states—California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York—over unsupported claims that the funds had been subject to fraud. Those funds were ordered to resume after a judge issued a temporary restraining order just two days later.

HHS also attacked millions in federal childcare credits for Minnesotans after 23-year-old right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley alleged there was a sprawling fraud scheme taking federal funds from Minnesota-based, Somali-owned day care facilities. Shirley’s report was riddled with problems, however—in no small part due to the fact that the results were skewed by which day cares granted him and another lone white man unannounced admittance to their premises. (Viewed another way, what well-reputed day care would willingly shuttle complete strangers into a facility full of children?)

The Trump administration, in turn, embraced the report, using it as leverage to usher a scourge of ICE agents upon Minneapolis, where their violent presence has only caused more problems, such as the killing of a 37-year-old mother, Renee Nicole Good. The video also offered fodder for a fresh wave of racism against the city’s Somali community, which the president has utilized to clamp down on immigration from East Africa.

Trump has long scorned sanctuary cities, ruing the fact that they have opposed ICE and his federal deportation mandates in favor of their local immigrant communities. Though he has tried several times to cut funding to such cities, the efforts have been routinely blocked by the nations’ courts.

But last week, the president decided he’d try again.

“Starting February 1, we’re not making any payments to sanctuary cities or states having sanctuary cities, because they do everything possible to protect criminals at the expense of American citizens,” Trump said while delivering a speech in Detroit. “And it breeds fraud and crime and all of the other problems that come with it.”

Vice President JD Vance thinks the infamously doomed Titanic is an apt metaphor for the United States.

“The Democrats talk a lot about the affordability crisis in the United States of America. And yes, there is an affordability crisis—one created by Joe Biden’s policies,” Vance said on Thursday, speaking at a rally in Toledo. “You don’t turn the Titanic around overnight. It takes time to fix what was broken.”

This is ironically a very Trumpian gaffe for Vance. The Titanic was lauded as an “unsinkable” ship, something so grand and so technologically advanced that it was simply too big to fail—until it ran right into an iceberg on April 15, 1912. Over 1,500 people died in the dark, icy ocean, and its name has now become synonymous with failure. Vance should’ve probably picked a ship with a better ending to compare to the U.S. economy.

“Does... does he know what happened to the Titanic?” Brian Tyler Cohen wrote on X.

And for what it’s worth, Americans are getting tired of listening to the Trump administration blame former President Biden for the current economic problems, while telling them to simply grin and bear it. A recent New York Times/Siena University poll shows that 56 percent of the country disapproves of Trump right now—and 58 percent of all of the poll’s respondents disapprove of his handling of the economy.

“At least he’s admitting what ship we are on,” another user said.

The White House on Thursday appeared to share a doctored photo after arresting two people it says were involved in an anti-ICE protest during services at a Minnesota church Sunday. The White House photo alongside the announcement made it seem as if one of the targets was crying, while the original photo shows otherwise.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said on X that Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights attorney and Minneapolis activist, had been arrested along with fellow protester Chauntyll Louisa Allen, a member of the Saint Paul Public Schools Board of Education.

“Listen loud and clear: WE DO NOT TOLERATE ATTACKS ON PLACES OF WORSHIP,” Bondi posted.

After the announcement, the White House shared the following photo of Levy Armstrong:

But as Lawfare’s Anna Bower highlighted, an initial photo shared by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—that otherwise looks exactly the same—doesn’t show Levy Armstrong crying.

The arrest came after protesters entered Cities Church in St. Paul on Sunday, where David Easterwood, who leads the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in the city, also serves as a pastor. Demonstrators disrupted the service, chanting “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good.”

The disruption quickly went viral among the MAGAverse and the Trump administration promised to bring forth charges, despite turning a blind eye to ICE and Border Patrol violence against Christian clergy in earlier incidents. Vice President JD Vance earlier on Thursday accused the St. Paul protesters of scaring “little kids.”

“Those people are going to be sent to prison so long as we have the power to do so. We’re going to do everything we can to enforce the law,” Vance said while on a visit to Toledo, Ohio. He plans to visit Minnesota later today.

FBI Director Kash Patel said in an X post that Allen was charged under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a law designed to stop people from intimidating or interfering with anyone trying to take part in a service at a religious center or get assistance at a clinic for reproductive health.

On Tuesday, Levy Armstrong called for Easterwood to resign.

“You cannot lead a congregation while directing an agency whose actions have cost lives and inflicted fear in our communities,” Levy Armstrong said. “When officials protect armed agents, repeatedly refuse meaningful investigation into killings like Renee Good’s, and signal they may pursue peaceful protesters and journalists, that is not justice—it is intimidation.”

This story has been updated.

The U.S. president appeared with yet another strange mark on his hands at the World Economic Forum in Davos, once again raising concerns that his health is not what he has claimed it to be.

Donald Trump—the oldest person to ever be elected president—was photographed with what appeared to be another large bruise, this time marring the back of his left hand. Normally, his right hand is bruised.

The 79-year-old has repeatedly claimed that he is in pristine condition, brushing off public alarm over his deteriorating body, but several health scares over the last several months have sparked questions over his ability to remain in office.

The large bruises on his hands—often covered with ill-matched makeup—have become a near routine fixture on the president’s aging body as they shift from hand to hand. The White House has blamed the superficial injuries on handshaking and aspirin, though doctors have suggested that the bruises could be the warning sign of something more serious.

Other symptoms of his deteriorating condition have been more concerning, such as the sagging mouth and drooping expression he sported in September during 9/11 memorial ceremonies, causing some onlookers to suggest that the president could have suffered a stroke.

The next month, Trump spent hours at Walter Reed Medical Center. The White House refused to disclose the reason, but eventually Trump let slip that he had received MRI scans, the results of which he said came back “perfect.” At least one former White House physician questioned the timeline of Trump’s appointment, pointing out that his four-hour visit to the hospital was far longer than would be required by an MRI test. Trump later revealed he might not have gotten an MRI at all, but something “less than” that.

Trump has also appeared discombobulated and lethargic during critical meetings with world leaders. Over the course of the last year, Trump has fallen asleep roughly a dozen times during critical public appearances. It happened during Cabinet meetings, in the middle of bombastic military parades, while meeting leaders of critical allies, and even during the Pope’s funeral.

Earlier this week, Trump aggressed relations with Europe, wrote to the leaders of Norway that he intended to pursue Greenland since they had not given him a Nobel Peace Prize last year (Norway’s government has no control over the award or its designees), and spent more than an hour on the dais in the White House press briefing room mumbling to himself about a stack of papers.

Responding to his recent behavior, Ty Cobb, a former White House attorney from Trump’s first administration, said that the shift in Trump’s psychological condition was “palpable.”

Former Special Counsel Jack Smith doubled down Thursday on his decision to bring criminal charges against President Donald Trump.

“To be clear, I stand by my decisions as special counsel, including the decision to bring charges against President Trump. Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity,” Smith said during his opening statement at a public hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.

“If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that resident was a Democrat or a Republican,” he said.

Smith continued to assert that Trump had “willfully” broken the law.

“Grand juries in two separate districts reached this conclusion based on his actions as alleged in the indictments they returned. Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power,” he said.

“After leaving office in January 2021, President Trump illegally kept classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago social club, and repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents. Highly sensitive national security information was held in a ballroom and a bathroom.”

In December, Smith testified for eight hours in a closed-door hearing before the committee. He has long sought to testify in a public hearing, but was rebuffed by Republicans in favor of one behind closed doors.

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners—a commercially and critically successful African American vampire film—has set an all-time Oscars record with 16 total nominations. These include best picture, Michael B. Jordan for best leading actor, Wunmi Mosaku for best supporting actress, and Delroy Lindo for best supporting actor.

The film follows hustling twin brothers who simultaneously fight back against Jim Crow racism and vampires who are attracted to the blues music coming from their juke joint. The box office hit is defined by Coogler’s respect for African American music and culture.

“There’s a firm argument to be made that this art form, the Delta blues, is our country’s most important contribution to global popular culture. You know, I think it’s probably [Black people’s] most important artistic contribution to the world,” Coogler told Democracy Now! last spring. “And it was such a profound discovery, that this music made by people who were, you know, for all intents and purposes, living under a backbreaking form of American apartheid, you know, denied their humanity on a daily basis, would create something so artistically excellent that it would affect global culture from that time forward.”

Sinners’s 16 nominations eclipse the record of 14 that All About Eve (1950), Titanic (1997), and La La Land (2016) all shared. Its costume designer, Ruth E. Carter, also becomes the most nominated Black woman in Oscars history after being named in five categories. Other best picture nominees, such as Paul Thomas Anderson’s audacious One Battle After Another, Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, and Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme, will offer Coogler some stiff competition.

Win or lose, Coogler has made history and continues to produce a robust catalog of Black blockbusters—from Black Panther to Fruitvale Station to Creed to Sinners—that will be appreciated for years to come.

View the full 2026 Oscar nominations here.

Donald Trump’s support has plummeted, with a new poll showing that he is underwater with all of the groups responsible for his 2024 election victory.

The poll from The New York Times and Siena University has Trump with a 56 percent disapproval rating, and when that is broken down by age and race, the results look similar to 2020, just before Trump’s election loss that year.

Overall, 49 percent of voters say that the country is worse off than it was last year, with 32 percent saying it was better. About 56 percent of respondents disapprove of Trump’s management of the federal government, 58 percent disapprove of his immigration policies, and 66 percent disapprove of his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. About 44 percent of people who have turned against the president cite economic issues, and 58 percent of all of the poll’s respondents disapprove of his handling of the economy.

Clearly, Americans don’t like Trump’s policies. Reports from across the country, most recently Minneapolis, show Border Patrol and ICE agents engaging in violence against not only suspected undocumented immigrants but also U.S. citizens protesting against them. Despite a new law requiring full disclosure of the government’s unclassified Epstein archives, only about a small amount has been released, with much of what has been published fully redacted. And the public isn’t seeing any benefits from the president’s incoherent economic policies.

With the midterm elections only months away, Trump and the Republican Party seem headed for massive losses. That’s probably why Trump keeps “joking” about canceling elections; if ICE keeps making the headlines for horrific actions, the president keeps flip-flopping on tariffs, and the administration continues to stall on the Epstein files, it’s safe to say that Trump is in trouble come November.