ICE Arrests Right-Wing Influencer After He Defends Trump Crackdown

A Brazilian influencer who openly backed President Trump’s hard-line immigration policies was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Saturday.

Junior Pena, whose Instagram account boasts almost half a million followers, was detained in New Jersey after missing a court hearing related to his own immigration status, a friend told the Brazilian Times.

Pena immigrated to the United States in 2009, according to The Guardian. He openly identifies as an immigrant on social media, and frequently shares stories of others who have come to the U.S. in search of a better life.

But he has also been outspoken in his support for Donald Trump, explicitly defending the president during his immigration clampdown.

After reports that Brazilians were among the many immigrants being detained and deported in Trump’s first week in office, Pena urged his followers to stay calm.

“Don’t panic, thinking they’re deporting everyone,” he said in Portuguese. “There’s a news report showing ICE arresting [people], which even includes Brazilians, but they’re all criminals. All criminals. Don’t believe just any influencer.”

Pena’s friends have now launched a fundraising campaign to cover the influencer’s legal fees and court expenses. The campaign hopes to raise $50,000.

Donald Trump was mentioned more than 38,000 times in the latest batch of Epstein files, according to a New York Times review of the Justice Department’s Friday public release of some three million pages from the sprawling investigation into child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The references include documents pertaining to Trump, his wife Melania, and their residence in Florida, Mar-a-Lago.

The president’s name appears in an FBI tip sheet several times in abuse allegations, including one in which an unknown source accuses Trump of forcing one of Epstein’s victims, presumed to be 13 or 14 years old, to perform oral sex on him, “approximately 35 years ago” in New Jersey.

Other mentions are bizarre, such as a censored image that is very clearly of the president, sparking concerns about how far the DOJ actually went to conceal Trump’s connection to Epstein. The photograph came up in an exchange between Epstein and Trump’s first term chief strategist, Steve Bannon, though the widely circulated image was not incriminating in and of itself.

Meanwhile, the agency neglected to redact nude images of young women in the files, some of whom may have been teenagers at the time.

All in all, Trump was flagged in more than 5,300 files in the document cache, according to the Times.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told CNN’s State of the Union Sunday that the DOJ reviewed the files last summer but did not find credible evidence against the president warranting further investigation.

“There’s a lot of correspondence, there’s a lot of emails, there’s a lot of photographs—there’s a lot of horrible photographs that appear to be taken by Mr. Epstein or people around him, but that doesn’t allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody,” Blanche said, noting that the public now has the opportunity to “see if we got it wrong.”

The Trump administration revealed on Friday that it would only release half of the Epstein files, blatantly violating the recently passed law that required the documents’ full release some six weeks ago and sparking concerns about a governmental cover-up.

Donald Trump’s botched takeover of the Kennedy Center is drawing criticism from America’s most prominent political family.

After a board of Trump loyalists voted to add Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center in December, the president announced on Sunday that the prestigious theater will shut down for two years for “Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding.”

The building will close on July 4 “in honor of the 250th Anniversary of our Country,” Trump wrote.

That means that while the Kennedy Center served as America’s cultural center for over 50 years, the Trump–Kennedy Center will last a grand total of seven months before closing.

Many have speculated that the planned temporary closure is an attempt by Trump to save face after his decision to rename the building led to a sharp decline in ticket sales and multiple artists canceling shows.

After Trump’s announcement, Joe Kennedy III, a great-nephew of John F. Kennedy, wrote on social media: “While this trespass on the People’s will is painful, President Kennedy would remind us that it is not buildings that define the greatness of a nation. It is the actions of its people and its leaders. So, do not be distracted from what this Administration is actually trying to erase: our connection, our community, and our commitment to the rights of all.”

Maria Shriver, the daughter of JFK’s sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, mocked Trump in her own post, writing: “I’ve determined that due to this change in schedule, it’s best for me to close this center down and rebuild a new center that will bear my name, which will surely get everybody to stop talking about the fact that everybody’s canceling… right?”

JFK’s grandson Jack Schlossberg similarly ripped into Trump. “Trump can take the Kennedy Center for himself,” Schlossberg wrote. “He can change the name, shut the doors, and demolish the building. He can try to kill JFK. But JFK is kept alive by us now rising up to remove Donald Trump, bring him to justice, and restore the freedoms generations fought for.”

Unsurprisingly, one Kennedy has taken a different stance: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s secretary of health and human services.

RFK Jr. said he had “bigger fish to fry” when asked about Trump renaming the building in December. He has not commented on the president’s announcement that the building will be shut down for two years.

In its latest release of files relating to Jeffrey Epstein, the Department of Justice included several unredacted nude photos of young women, some of whom may have been underage when the photos were taken.

The government is required by law to redact sensitive information and images in the Epstein files before releasing them, especially regarding anything that could identify victims. When The New York Times reviewed the latest files, however, they found 40 nude photographs of at least seven different people, with their faces visible.

The women in the photos could have been minors, as the Times could not confirm their identities or ages. Some appeared to have been taken at Epstein’s private island, Little Saint James in the U.S. Virgin Islands, while others simply showed bedrooms and other private spaces. The publication initially notified the DOJ on Saturday of the images, flagging more of them on Sunday.

The images flagged by the Times have since been removed or redacted. A DOJ spokesperson said that the department was “working around the clock to address any victim concerns, additional redactions of personally identifiable information, as well as any files that require further redactions under the act, to include images of a sexual nature.”

“Once proper redactions have been made, any responsive documents will repopulate online,” the spokesperson said.

The Trump administration remembered to redact a picture of Donald Trump that appeared in a text message conversation between Epstein and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. But somehow, it neglected a particularly sensitive set of photos and directly violated the law that mandated the release of the Epstein files, half of which still have yet to be made public.

One of Epstein’s abuse victims, Annie Farmer, called the news of the unredacted images “extremely disturbing.”

“It’s hard to imagine a more egregious way of not protecting victims than having full nude images of them available for the world to download,” Farmer told the Times on Sunday.

South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace used to make her staffers go on late-night booze runs, clean her house, and boost her on forums discussing the “hottest women in Congress”—and that was all before things got really bad.

In a sweeping profile published Monday in New York magazine, multiple former staffers detailed Mace’s yearlong nosedive from being a MAGA darling to being the mad captain of her own failing gubernatorial bid.

Almost a year ago on the House floor, Mace declared she was going “scorched earth” on her ex-fiancé Patrick Bryant, accusing him of assaulting her; filming her without her consent; and engaging in a conspiracy to drug, rape, and film other women. (In a shocking turn of events, Mace showcased what she described as her “naked silhouette” during the hearing.)

“She’s not okay,” one former staffer told New York magazine. “There’s nothing here I can point to and say, ‘Oh, this is normal.’”

“Looking at the floor speech and what went on there, it’s very clear that that was the breaking point to me,” the former staffer added. “Because you’ve now gone from standing up for people—whether rightfully, wrongfully, performative or not—you were on this mission, and now this is about you. The whole frame shifted, and she centered herself in it all. That’s when it became apparent to me that this is broken.”

A second staffer concluded that Mace had “deteriorated, and it sucks.”

Since that House speech, Mace launched a campaign to run for governor, mounted a humiliating temper tantrum at the airport, blew up her only chance at getting a crucial endorsement from Donald Trump by pushing to release the Epstein files, lost her campaign manager, and became the subject of a House Ethics Committee inquiry. A December poll found that support for Mace’s gubernatorial bid had taken a major hit, and she was floating somewhere around fourth place among other primary candidates.

As bad as things have gotten for Mace, things were never great for the people who work for her, and New York magazine was able to dig up plenty of new details.

Former staffers said Mace treated them like maids after she arrived in Congress in January 2021, ordering them to clean the multiple properties she was renting out on Airbnb, including her Washington townhouse. Ahead of election night in 2022, Mace instructed her staffers to spiff up her $3.9 million home in Isle of Palms, South Carolina, for a watch party, a former staffer with direct knowledge told New York magazine.

Mace also started dispatching staffers on late-night runs for alcohol to keep parties going at her home. “Look, when I worked for her, our poor scheduler was getting calls at two o’clock in the morning to come bring her bottles of tequila,” one former staffer told New York magazine.

Members of Congress are explicitly barred from instructing their staffers to run personal errands, and they are not permitted to purchase alcohol for their boss’s personal consumption.

One staffer alleged Mace’s excessive drinking and marijuana use became an issue. They recalled an incident in 2022 when Mace wanted to fire an aide for “doxxing” her because the aide told reporters she was out of the country, even though Mace had already announced her trip to a group of supporters just days before.

“She would definitely do it excessively,” the staffer said of the congresswoman’s drinking and marijuana usage. “And again, not to say that most members don’t or most staff don’t, but it got to the point where it was an issue.”

In response to questions, Cameron Morabito, Mace’s director of operations, hit back at suggestions of wrongdoing. “These allegations are so ridiculous they don’t even merit a response,” Morabito said. “I hope she sues you for every dime you got paid to write this defamatory bullshit.”

Mace also allegedly instructed a staffer to boost her standing on Reddit forums discussing the “hottest women in Congress.” She was “very adamant” about getting the staffer to upvote any posts about Mace and her attractiveness, one former staffer told New York magazine.

“We were scared of her,” one of the former aides told New York magazine. “She would make staffers cry. She would threaten to fire them, take their money away, not give them raises, not to give them days off, religious days.”

“The closer you get to her, the harder she messes up your brain,” said another former staffer. “It’s a classic story of ‘never meet your heroes.’”

One person close to Mace compared the congresswoman to how Bill Maher once described Trump: that she was not a crazy person but played one on TV. “We’ve moved past that now,” the person said. “Something’s broken. The motherboard’s fried. We’re short-circuiting somewhere.”

Donald Trump has decided to close the Kennedy Center entirely.

Starting in July, for the next two years, the performing arts space will undergo “construction, revitalization, and complete rebuilding,” according to a Trump Truth Social post Sunday evening.

The decision follows a year of canceled performances by a litany of artists who oppose the Trump administration’s agenda, Trump’s ousting of the center’s Democratic board members, and the center’s recent, potentially illegal name change.

Trump claimed that he deemed the decision necessary after a “year review” of the center, suggesting that he had anticipated an overhaul of the historically apolitical arts space as soon as he returned to high office.

“Based on these findings, and totally subject to Board approval, I have determined that the fastest way to bring The Trump Kennedy Center to the highest level of Success, Beauty, and Grandeur, is to cease Entertainment Operations for an approximately two year period of time, with a scheduled Grand Reopening that will rival and surpass anything that has taken place with respect to such a Facility before,” Trump wrote.

The center will shutter for the project on July 4, “in honor of the 250th Anniversary of our Country.”

“Financing is completed, and fully in place!” Trump continued. “This important decision, based on input from many Highly Respected Experts, will take a tired, broken, and dilapidated Center, one that has been in bad condition, both financially and structurally for many years, and turn it into a World Class Bastion of Arts, Music, and Entertainment, far better than it has ever been before.”

Long before Trump’s meddling, the Kennedy Center was widely considered a premier, world-class arts institution. But since the White House became directly involved in its operations and programming, its normally star-studded lineup has fallen apart.

In December, the president suddenly decided to rename the venerated cultural institution “The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts,” in a flagrant rejection of the laws that created the center in the first place.

Kennedy’s family was quick to rip the president apart for the half-baked idea Sunday.

“I’ve determined that due to this change in schedule, it’s best for me to close this center down and rebuild a new center that will bear my name, which will surely get everybody to stop talking about the fact that everybody’s cancelling … right?” mocked Maria Shriver, the thirty-fifth president’s niece, on X.

Kennedy’s grandson, Manhattan congressional candidate Jack Schlossberg, bit harder, arguing on X that Trump could try but would never succeed in killing Kennedy’s legacy.

“Trump can take the Kennedy Center for himself. He can change the name, shut the doors, and demolish the building. He can try to kill JFK,” Schlossberg wrote online. “But JFK is kept alive by us now rising up to remove Donald Trump, bring him to justice, and restore the freedoms generations fought for.”

The Department of Justice made a lame attempt to cover up Donald Trump’s face in a photo in the latest trove of Jeffery Epstein files.

The photo appears to be of Trump making a speech at an event. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon sent it in a text message to Epstein in 2019. In it, a small portion of Trump’s head, including his ear, are still visible next to a black box covering the rest of his face.

Why attempt to cover up this photo? On its own, it doesn’t incriminate Trump in any of Epstein’s crimes, and previous file releases have already established that Bannon and Epstein had a long correspondence. It seems as though it was an attempt to conceal Trump, although he is still identifiable underneath the black box. The rest of the files contain multiple references to Trump, his Mar-a-Lago estate, and his family members. They also contain interviews with Epstein’s victims, some of whom refer to the president.

The government has only released half of its total Epstein records, despite being required by law to release all unclassified files by six weeks ago. Trump continues to deny a close relationship with the convicted sex trafficker, despite mountains of evidence that one existed. It seems that the DOJ and Attorney General Pam Bondi are assisting the president in trying to minimize the obvious.

A whistleblower’s lawyer accused Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard of burying their client’s complaint about her, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

In a letter sent to Gabbard’s office in November, attorney Andrew Bakaj accused the director of preventing a complaint detailing her wrongdoing from reaching lawmakers. The complaint, which was originally filed with the intelligence community’s inspector general in May, is so highly classified that Bakaj himself has not been able to review it.

Typically, an employee is able to share a complaint alleging wrongdoing directly with lawmakers, as long as the director of national intelligence instructs them on how to securely transmit it. But months after the complaint was originally filed, it reportedly remains locked away in a safe, a person familiar with the matter told the Journal.

“From my experience, it is confounding for [Gabbard’s office] to take weeks—let alone eight months—to transmit a disclosure to Congress,” said Bakaj in a statement.

In addition to accusing Gabbard of wrongdoing, the complaint reportedly implicates “an office within a different federal agency” and raises potential claims of executive privilege, officials told the Journal. One official warned that disclosure of the complaint could cause “grave damage to national security.”

The intelligence community’s inspector general determined that the specific allegations against Gabbard weren’t credible, but it could not make a determination about the other claims, according to a representative for the federal watchdog. Bakaj said he was never informed that any determination was reached.

Last week, Gabbard was spotted lurking around a federal raid at the Fulton County, Georgia, election office. Having been completely sidelined from the typical responsibilities of the director of national intelligence, Gabbard has apparently spent months leading an investigation into President Donald Trump’s baseless claims about the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Donald Trump threatened to sue comedian Trevor Noah for daring to mention his long-standing connection with child sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Practically everyone at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards jabbed and sneered at the president and his administration, but the South African celebrity was the man who really got his goat, inspiring Trump to post a legal threat to Truth Social.

“The Grammy Awards are the WORST, virtually unwatchable!” Trump wrote at 1:01 a.m. Monday.

“CBS is lucky not to have this garbage litter their airwaves any longer,” he said, referring to the music institution’s 2024 contract to move its award ceremony to ABC for the next decade, ending a 53-year run at CBS.

“The host, Trevor Noah, whoever he may be, is almost as bad as Jimmy Kimmel at the Low Ratings Academy Awards,” Trump continued. “Noah said, INCORRECTLY about me, that Donald Trump and Bill Clinton spent time on Epstein Island. WRONG!!!

“I can’t speak for Bill, but I have never been to Epstein Island, nor anywhere close, and until tonight’s false and defamatory statement, have never been accused of being there, not even by the Fake News Media.

“Noah, a total loser, better get his facts straight, and get them straight fast,” he said. “It looks like I’ll be sending my lawyers to sue this poor, pathetic, talentless, dope of an M.C., and suing him for plenty$. Ask Little George Slopadopolus, and others, how that all worked out. Also ask CBS! Get ready Noah, I’m going to have some fun with you!”

Hours earlier, while setting up the nominees for the “Song of the Year” category, Noah quipped that the highly coveted prize was nearly as desired by artists as Greenland is by Trump—for a very particular reason.

“Song of the Year—that is a Grammy that every artist wants almost as much as Trump wants Greenland, which makes sense because Epstein’s island is gone, he needs a new one to hang out with Bill Clinton,” Noah told the crowd.

Trump has long relied on the legal system and lawsuits in order to settle his problems, using the incredible financial heft of his real estate empire or other investments to smother his opposition.

Donald Trump and his allies stayed connected to Jeffrey Epstein well after they claimed they had stopped communicating.

The president has long asserted that his close friendship with the child sex trafficker ended after the duo had a falling out over real estate in Palm Beach, ultimately nixing contact altogether after 2006, when a grand jury indicted Epstein on state charges related to prostitution. That same year, Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago (though Epstein publicly denied the finale of his membership at the time).

But documents published Friday amid the Justice Department’s larger rollout of another tranche of the Epstein files indicate that Trump’s narrative is far from the entire story.

An email out of the trove, issued by Epstein to an individual named William Riley, revealed that the sex trafficker was planning to call Trump as late as 2011.

“Before I call Trump, with regard vrginina ,, are there any other alternatives,” Epstein wrote on April 18, 2011.

It is not clear who Riley is, though a decorated Iraq War veteran known as William Sascha Riley was identified in November as another one of Epstein’s victims by Substack writer Lisa Noelle Voldeng. Riley claimed his adoptive father, William “Bill” Kyle Riley, worked as a pilot for Epstein and trafficked him to the global predator.

As it turns out, Trump’s friends had similarly malleable principles. In an interview with the New York Post podcast in October, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick recalled an instance in 2005 when Epstein—who was at the time his Upper East Side neighbor—invited him to tour his infamous East 71st Street townhouse.

“I say to him, ‘Massage table in the middle of your house? How often do you have a massage?’” Lutnick told the Post. “And he says, ‘Every day.’ And then he gets, like weirdly close to me, and he says, ‘And the right kind of massage.’”

“In the six to eight steps it takes to get from his house to my house, my wife and I decided that I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again,” he added.

But seven years after that visit, Lutnick was reaching out to Epstein to coordinate a family trip to the financier’s “pedophile island.”

“Hi Jeff, we are landing in St. Thomas early Saturday afternoon and planning to head over to St. Bart’s/Anguilla on Monday at some point. Where are you located (what is exact location for my captain)? Does Sunday evening for dinner sound good?” Lutnick wrote to Epstein in 2012, according to an email made public by the DOJ Friday.

Lutnick then mentioned he was traveling alongside another couple, and that both couples had four children each, before listing out the specific ages of all the children who would be traveling to the island with them.

Five years later, Epstein was donating to a charity of Lutnick’s choice, according to a 2017 email between Epstein and Lutnick’s associate.