New Democratic Governor Cuts Her State Out of ICE Operations

Virginia’s new Democratic governor, Abigail Spanberger, has ordered state agencies to stop cooperation with ICE.

Spanberger announced Wednesday in an executive order that four state agencies will be leaving ICE’s 287(g) program, including the state police and Department of Corrections. This means that these agencies won’t be making civil immigration arrests on behalf of ICE, rolling back an executive order from the previous governor, Republican Glenn Youngkin.

“Virginians deserve to have their state and local law enforcement resources devoted to the safety and security of their communities, not federal civil immigration enforcement,” the order states, adding that the current ICE agreements “improperly cede accountability and discretion over Virginia law enforcement to the federal government.”

While ending some state cooperation with ICE is a big step, many local sheriff’s offices and police departments in Virginia still have local agreements with the agency. But Spanberger’s move could be a precursor that Virginia’s House and Senate follow to restrict law enforcement relationships with ICE, especially considering that Democrats control both chambers.

Other states, such as California and Illinois, have already banned local law enforcement from working with ICE through the 287(g) program. On Tuesday, neighboring Maryland’s House and Senate voted to ban local police from the program as well. Support for ending cooperation with ICE is growing across the country as the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis and the agency’s violent detention of immigrants continue to horrify the public.

President Donald Trump says he has no clue why Tulsi Gabbard was spotted lurking around a federal raid at the election office in Fulton County, Georgia—but whatever the reason, it had to do with China!

During an exclusive interview Wednesday, NBC News’s Tom Llamas asked Trump point-blank why the director of national intelligence was present at the raid in Georgia.

“Why is Tulsi Gabbard there?” Llamas asked.

“I don’t know, but you know, uh, a lot of the cheating comes from, it’s international cheating,” Trump said. “You have people—they say—from China trying to, let me ask you, do you think China tries to influence our election?”

“We know that foreign governments try to influence a lot of things in this country,” Llamas replied.

“Well therefore, she’s foreign governments,” Trump said.

As per usual, it’s not clear whether the president was simply playing dumb or whether he’s actually clueless. But he used his garbled answer as a jumping-off point to boost long-debunked claims about election interference. However, a U.S. intelligence report released in 2021 resoundingly dispelled Trump’s and former officials’ repeated claims that China—not Russia—was the biggest threat to election integrity in 2020.

What’s more, The New York Times reported that Gabbard called the president on her cell phone after the raid. Trump initially didn’t pick up, but called back shortly after to talk to the agents on speakerphone. He thanked the agents and had questions for them.

Last week, White House officials spilled that Gabbard has spent months leading an investigation into Trump’s baseless claims about the results of the 2020 presidential election. Gabbard has reportedly regularly briefed Trump and his chief of staff Susie Wiles, as well as other well-known election deniers Cleta Mitchell, a far-right activist with the ear of the president, and Kurt Olsen, a former lawyer for the Trump campaign who helped mount the “Stop the Steal” lawsuits.

The president has pledged to donate any money he wins from his unprecedented $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS for leaking his tax returns.

“Any money that I win, I’ll give it to charity, 100 percent to charity, charities that will be approved by government or whatever,” Trump said in a sit-down interview with NBC News Wednesday, adding that he’d practically already won the suit.

“Scott Bessent is the head of the IRS. Pam Bondi is the head of the Justice Department. They are going to defend the IRS against you, their boss,” pressed NBC’s Tom Llamas.

But Trump shrugged that jarring comment off, acknowledging there had “never been anything like it.” Instead, according to Trump, the more palatable truth involved snatching billions from taxpayers to do with whatever he wants.

“What I would do? Tell them to pay me, but I’ll give 100 percent of the money to charity,” Trump said. One of those potential beneficiaries, according to the president, could be the American Cancer Society.

“You’d take it out of the system?” asked Llamas.

“No, I’m putting it back into the system,” Trump said. “If I give money to the American Cancer Society, I will give 100 percent of the money away to charity. I don’t want any of it.”

“Thirty-trillion-dollar debt, and we’re going to take $10 billion out of the system?” pressed Llamas, incredulously.

“Well I mean you give it away anyway, they give away a lot of money,” Trump responded. “I’ll tell you what, speaking about that, Minnesota and these other states—we have massive investigations going into fraud.”

Trump, in a personal capacity, sued the IRS and the Treasury in a Miami federal court last week for a breach that occurred between May 2019 and September 2020. The problem: The breach occurred during the first Trump administration, when Trump himself was in charge of governing those institutions.

Legal experts have questioned the validity of the suit, arguing that the president’s complaints have long passed the statute of limitations. They have also raised a plethora of concerns relating to conflict of interest, questioning whether the leader of the executive branch could attempt to take one of the agencies under his purview for billions of dollars.

Either Melania Trump doesn’t know the law, or she doesn’t care to follow it.

The first lady denied that she was using the White House in order to promote her unwatchable documentary, Melania, during a press conference on Wednesday—mere minutes after plugging the film.

“Why do you feel it’s appropriate to use an official White House event to promote your documentary?” asked CNN’s Betsy Klein.

“This is not promotion,” Mrs. Trump said. “We are here celebrating the release of the hostages of Aviva [Siegel] and Keith [Siegel].

“That’s why we are here, it’s nothing to do with promotion,” she added.

But just moments prior, Melania did exactly that, referring to a scene from her film in relation to the recently freed American Israeli hostages.

“It was an emotional meeting, and it is captured on camera and available to see in my new film, Melania,” she said of her first meeting with Aviva Siegel.

It is strictly illegal for federal officials to use their public office for their own private gain, according to the Office of Government Ethics. It is also illegal for a federal official or employee to leverage their position in order to assist their friends, relatives, or nongovernmental affiliates, such as businesses or, perhaps, film studios.

So far, Melania has failed to impress audiences or critics, though it has defied expectations at the box office. The film, which was produced by Amazon’s film studios, cost a whopping $75 million. By Tuesday, it had raked in $7 million, reported MS NOW.

In the United States, reports have circulated that the film has not organically filled seats but rather relied on “fake ticket sales” or bulk seat purchases that were distributed to senior citizen centers or Republican activists for screenings over the weekend. In the U.K., the documentary’s premiere sold just one ticket.

But the eyes that did catch the flick were overwhelmingly unimpressed. On Monday, The Guardian corrected its scathing review of the film, apologizing to its readers for giving the film a single star. “A formatting issue led an earlier version to be awarded one star, when the reviewer’s intention was zero,” the correction reads.

It’s not the first time that the Trump family has used the prestige of the Oval Office to push product, however. Last year, Donald hosted a Tesla commercial on the White House lawn during an international boycott of the Elon Musk–led company.

And in the midst of the pandemic, the president and his daughter Ivanka used their federal platform to shill beans for Goya amid nationwide calls to boycott the company after its CEO said the country was “blessed” to have Trump as its leader. The stunt came during a push by the Trumps to increase the president’s appeal with Latino voters ahead of the 2020 election.

The Trump administration is probing claims of anti-white racism at Nike.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is investigating the sportswear company over “systemic allegations of D.E.I.-related intentional race discrimination” against white employees and job applicants. The commission filed a motion in federal court in Missouri Wednesday to force the company to comply with a September subpoena.

The EEOC’s chair, Andrea Lucas, who first joined the agency as a commissioner after being nominated by Trump in 2020, filed a discrimination charge against Nike in 2024 under President Biden, when the commission still had a Democratic majority. Last year, Trump fired the agency’s chair, Charlotte Burrows, and appointed Lucas to the position. In its court filing Wednesday, the EEOC argues that Nike has fought the agency’s subpoena and has provided only partial responses to the government’s requests for information.

“The E.E.O.C. seeks information directly relevant to the allegations that Nike subjected white employees, applicants and training program participants to disparate treatment based on race in various employment decisions, including layoffs, internship programs and mentoring, leadership development and other career development programs,” the court filing states.

Lucas has made targeting DEI her priority since becoming chair of the EEOC, the agency responsible for handling discrimination complaints of all kinds. Under Trump, that means claims of discrimination from marginalized groups take a back seat to the far right’s belief in anti-white discrimination, which Trump too believes is rampant. The Trump administration is trying to make an example out of Nike, a high-profile multinational corporation, to push its racist ideology.

A Republican senator wants Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and ICE to stay out of his state.

Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker has come out against a proposed ICE detention facility in Byhalia, noting that the facility’s construction in the small town would not give the community anything in return.

“While I support the enforcement of immigration law, I write to express my opposition to this acquisition and the proposed detention center,” he wrote in his letter to Noem Wednesday. “This site is currently positioned for economic development purposes.... Converting this industrial asset into an ICE detention center forecloses economic growth opportunities and replaces them with a use that does not generate comparable economic returns or community benefits.”

Wicker also noted “serious feasibility concerns” like water and energy costs and medical care. “Existing medical and human services infrastructure in Byhalia is insufficient to support such a large detainee population. Establishing a detention center at this site would place significant strain on local resources,” he continued.

Wicker’s rejection reaffirms reports of discontent among red states that are being forced to become proving grounds for immigration raids on the whims of the Trump administration. It also comes as multiple Democratic states and cities, including Maryland and California, have moved to place greater restrictions on the actions of federal immigration agents.

Democratic Representative Maxine Waters caught Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in a clear and obvious lie during a congressional hearing.

“Did you write a letter to investors raising concerns about the impact of tariffs, writing that ‘tariffs are inflationary’? Did you say that at that time, yes or no?” Waters asked.

“Uh, no,” Bessent replied.

“OK … we have a New York Times article that agrees that you said that,” Waters said.

“Great, New York Times,” Bessent said, smiling.

Waters continued:

“Last summer, when you testified before a Senate committee, you said, and I quote, ‘There is no inflation. Tariffs are not being passed on to consumers.’ You were quite definitive, and even claimed that critics had ‘tariff derangement syndrome,’” she said. “Well, those comments are at odds with the statement you made to investors that tariffs are inflationary.... Are tariffs inflationary? Yes or no?”

“According to the San Francisco Federal Reserve … tariffs do not cause inflation,” Bessent said.

Bessent may have very well perjured himself, given the letter he claimed doesn’t exist certainly does. In that January 2024 letter, which Semafor’s Eleanor Mueller first highlighted, Bessent wrote: “Tariffs are inflationary and would strengthen the dollar--hardly a good starting point for a US industrial renaissance.” He then goes on to argue that Trump will weaken the dollar to “make US manufacturing competitive.”

Bessent attacked The New York Times to distract from Waters’s question, as if nothing reported about him in the paper could possibly be true. When asked to clarify, Bessent stated that if he even said that tariffs were inflationary, he was wrong.

This is all part of an effort to shield the average American from the harsh reality that they, not other countries, are shouldering most of the economic burdens of Trump’s tariff wars.

“Not only did he lie, but his advice was horrible on every level,” Representative Sean Casten commented. “Under Trump and Bessent they have imposed tariffs, overseen a collapse in the US dollar and delivered a collapse in US manufacturing jobs.”

The chief strategist during the president’s first term has a grim vision for the 2026 midterm elections, and it involves armed federal agents.

“You’re damn right we’re gonna have ICE surround the polls come November,” Steve Bannon said on his War Room podcast on Tuesday.

“We’re not gonna sit here and allow you to steal the country again,” Bannon continued, repeating Donald Trump’s thoroughly debunked 2020 election conspiracy. “And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.”

Caroline Wren, a GOP fundraiser that was on the podcast, agreed with Bannon, claiming that dissent against ICE activity and its funding was fueled by individuals who “don’t want ICE at the polling stations to stop illegals from voting.”

It is, and has been, illegal and impossible for noncitizens to vote in U.S. elections.

Bannon’s comments seem to be the latest escalation in a nationwide Republican push to tighten up voter restrictions to a dystopian degree. Last year, conservative lawmakers passed the SAVE Act, requiring people to confirm their names with documented proof of citizenship before they register to vote—a detail that legal experts have warned could prevent droves of married women from casting their ballot.

Trump seemed to be on the same wavelength as Bannon the day prior, telling former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino during an interview Monday that Republicans should “take over and nationalize” elections in several states.

“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over,’” Trump said. “We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many—15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

Since he lost the 2020 election, Trump and his allies have obsessed over contrived claims of voter fraud—a statistical nonissue in U.S. elections. For instance, a statewide audit out of Georgia, the epicenter of Trump’s baseless theory, revealed in 2024 that just 20 noncitizens out of 8.2 million residents existed on the state’s voter roll, approximately 0.00024 percent of the state’s voting population. Out of those 20, only nine participated in elections years ago, before ID was required as a part of the voter verification process. The other 11 individuals were registered but never actually voted, according to the secretary of state of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger.

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday to allow California to use a newly drawn congressional map that could earn Democrats as many as five additional House seats in the upcoming midterm elections.

Republicans sued California over the new district lines drawn by Democratic lawmakers and approved by voters in November, claiming that the new map was racially gerrymandered.

When a federal judge found late last month that the map had been drawn along partisan lines, not racial lines, Republicans, joined by the Department of Justice, filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, who had championed the redistricting effort in his state, responded to the court’s decision Wednesday. “LFG,” he wrote on X.

The high court’s ruling represents another major victory for the Democrats in the face of Donald Trump’s vast gerrymandering scheme. Last month, Virginia’s Democrat-controlled legislature passed an amendment that would allow the state to redraw its own congressional map, potentially netting Democrats—who already control six of the state’s 11 districts—an additional three to four seats in November.

So far, five red states have moved to redraw their congressional maps at the president’s behest in order to hand a potential nine additional seats to the Republican Party: Missouri, North Carolina, Texas, Ohio, and Utah.

Last month, Trump told Republican lawmakers that he needed the party to maintain control of the House and Senate in order to avoid being impeached.

This seems increasingly unavoidable, as in a typical midterm cycle, the presidential party pretty consistently loses ground. Those basic odds, coupled with Trump’s dismal approval rating and Democratic candidates’ growing momentum, is a particularly bad sign for the president, who has started babbling about potentially canceling the midterm elections altogether.

Elections experts have cautioned that Trump does not have the legal authority or mechanism to cancel the midterm elections, but his continued ranting could hurt participation and spur distrust of election results.

This story has been updated.

The Justice Department attorney who told a Minnesota judge Tuesday to hold her in contempt because “this job sucks” has been removed from her post. 

Julie Le was filling in at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota to help with a heavy caseload as immigrants challenge their detentions. In court, she was asked by Judge Jerry Blackwell why Immigration and Customs Enforcement wasn’t complying with several court orders to release detained immigrants. Le admitted that her office, depleted by resignations in protest of Trump administration policies, simply could not keep up. 

“They are overwhelmed, and they need help, so I, I have to say, stupidly [volunteered],” Le said, noting that getting ICE to follow court orders was like pulling teeth. The stress clearly had gotten to Le, who normally works directly for ICE in immigration court, and she was unable to keep herself together. 

“I wish you would just hold me in contempt of court so I can get 24 hours of sleep. I work days and nights just because people (are) still in there,” Le said. “The system sucks, this job sucks, I am trying with every breath I have to get you what I need.” 

Le will now leave the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota and return to her job at ICE. The Minnesota office has seen more resignations in the past month than it normally has in a year, thanks to the Trump administration’s violent immigration enforcement in Minnesota leading to the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Meanwhile, the government continues to flout court orders and violently detain immigrants based on scant evidence. 

Blackwell admonished the Trump administration in court Tuesday, warning Le that “a court order is not advisory and it is not conditional.” 

“It is not something that any agency can treat as optional while it decides how or whether to comply with the court order,” Blackwell said. “Having what you feel are too many detainees, too many cases, too many deadlines, and not enough infrastructure to keep up with it all, is not a defense to continued detention. If anything, it ought to be a warning sign.”