Judge Smacks Down Pete Hegseth’s Attempt to Punish Mark Kelly

A senior U.S. district judge on Thursday blocked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s efforts to punish Senator Mark Kelly.

In an exclamatory 29-page opinion, Judge Richard Leon tossed Hegseth’s attempt to censure the retired U.S. Navy captain after Kelly encouraged American troops to reject illegal orders. Hegseth attempted to silence Kelly on the basis that U.S. service members are not extended the same First Amendment protections as the general population—but that rationale didn’t fly with Leon.

“Unfortunately for Secretary Hegseth, no court has ever extended those principles to retired servicemembers, much less a retired servicemember serving in Congress and exercising oversight responsibility over the military,” Leon wrote in his ruling. “This Court will not be the first to do so!”

Leon further scolded Hegseth for trying to circumnavigate the judicial system in order to muzzle the Arizona Democrat by arguing that the military was better equipped to handle the dispute. To advance his point, Leon turned to the wise words of fabled folk singer-songwriter Bob Dylan.

“This Court has all it needs to conclude that Defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly’s First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees,” Leon wrote. “After all, as Bob Dylan famously said, ‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.’”

Leon’s decision arrived two days after a grand jury in Washington refused to approve Kelly’s charges, which were related to a pro-law and order video he took part in last November that enraged Donald Trump.

In the video statement posted to Facebook, six Democratic members of the House and Senate—a coalition of veterans and former national security professionals—urged servicemembers not to “give up the ship.” The bloc repeated that America’s military and intelligence communities “can” and “must … refuse illegal orders.” They made no reference to disobeying Trump directly, only reminding people to uphold the Constitution.

In reaction, the president called for their execution, writing on Truth Social that their behavior was “punishable by DEATH!”

This story has been updated.

House Speaker Mike Johnson pretended Thursday that he knew nothing about Attorney General Pam Bondi’s plot to spy on lawmakers—even though one Democrat had already warned him.

A photograph of Bondi’s notes at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday showed that the attorney general brought a record of what Washington state Representative Pramila Jayapal had searched in the DOJ’s unredacted files on Jeffrey Epstein—sparking outrage among lawmakers that the department had overstepped the separation of powers.

Speaking to reporters Thursday morning, Johnson offered one of his classic amnesiac responses.

“I don’t know anything about that, I’m not commenting on it. I haven’t seen or heard anything about that, but that would be inappropriate if it happened,” Johnson said.

But Johnson was lying—he had been told about it.

Jayapal told NPR News earlier Thursday that after discussing the issue with Johnson the day before, she believed there was “bipartisan agreement” that lawmakers should be able to review the files without being surveilled.

Setting aside the possibility that Johnson hit his head very hard in the intervening hours, it seems that the speaker is once again lying in order to play defense for Donald Trump’s administration—at the expense of the rights and privacy of his own colleagues.

The Department of Homeland Security is on the defensive Thursday morning over new bodycam footage that contradicts its version of events in the Border Patrol’s shooting of Marimar Martinez in Chicago last year. 

Martinez was shot five times in October after she followed a Border Patrol agent’s car in Chicago, honking to alert her neighbors of their presence. DHS initially claimed that when the officers exited their vehicle, Martinez tried to run them over, “forcing the officers to fire defensively.” She was charged with felony assault of a federal officer despite ending up in the hospital herself, while the agents were lauded for their exemplary work by Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino. 

“The @FBI just arrested two individuals who were allegedly driving these vehicles and attacking our federal law enforcement officers,” FBI Director Kash Patel said at the time. “They have been charged for assaulting federal officers with a deadly or dangerous weapon. Attack our law enforcement, and this FBI will find you and bring you to justice.” 

Newly released bodycam footage makes it clear that isn’t what happened. 

“It’s time to get aggressive and get the f**k out, because they’re trying to box us in,” an agent says before turning the wheel sharply toward the left. “We’ve been struck,” an agent says, before getting out of the car and gunshot sounds are heard. 

Surveillance footage from the road also showed no immediate obstruction or boxing in of the agent’s vehicle. 

Texts revealed that Border Patrol agent Charles Exum, who shot Martinez, was called  a “legend among agents” and praised for his “good shooting” by his colleagues. Martinez’s felony assault case was eventually dismissed.

The DHS took particular offense to CNN’s Omar Jimenez’s reporting of the bodycam footage. 

“Are we watching the same video? This is CNN parroting a lawsuit complaint for the sake of getting an emotional exclusive interview to rile up their 53 viewers. They should just drop the charade and hire the reporter as co counsel,” the DHS account wrote rather angrily on Thursday. “Once again @CNN demonstrates a complete aversion to the truth. Border Patrol law enforcement officers were ambushed and rammed. The officers can be heard identifying the threat ‘we are boxed in’ attempting to avoid conflict, by driving away, and then clearly identify when this violent rioter hit them with her vehicle. ‘We are hit.’” 

The DHS account is simply repeating the exact things that this new footage draws into question. It certainly doesn’t look like they’re boxed in, and it certainly does look like their car makes a hard maneuver right before they say they’ve been hit. 

“I appreciate the response, but the agent himself testified he wouldn’t consider this a ramming and this is also his vehicle in the highlighted circle at the time of the shooting,” Jimenez said. “Do you assess this as ‘boxed in’?”

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of over 100 Venezuelan men it sent to a mega-prison in El Salvador last year. 

U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg issued the ruling Thursday, giving the government one month to begin the process, noting that the men did not receive proper notice, due process, or a court hearing. Boasberg also said that the men would be able to petition for their return to the U.S. from overseas. 

“Against this backdrop, and mindful of the flagrancy of the Government’s violations of the deportees’ due-process rights that landed Plaintiffs in this situation, the Court refuses to let them languish in the solution-less mire Defendants propose,” Boasberg wrote.

If the government still has any of the men’s passports and identification documents, it has to return them, Boasberg added If they transferred those documents to El Salvador, “it shall make good faith efforts to obtain” them. The Trump administration will also be required to cover the air travel costs for any of the men sent to third countries who wish to return to the U.S.

The Trump administration has been fighting in court over the Venezuelans it sent to the brutal CECOT prison for nearly a year. The most famous case has been that of Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose imprisonment was overturned in federal court and upheld by the Supreme Court. The government still resisted returning him to the U.S., but nearly three months after he was sent to El Salvador, it finally brought him back home where he awaits a final decision on his status.  

Others, including people deported for merely having tattoos deliberately misconstrued as gang symbols, haven’t been so lucky, languishing in a prison well-known for human rights abuses as part of a $6 million deal with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. Now, if this ruling holds up, they will get some measure of relief from a merciless deportation policy. 

New Jersey’s newly elected Governor Mikie Sherill is the latest Democratic state leader to take action to protect her state’s residents from President Donald Trump’s deadly federal immigration crackdown.

Sherill signed an executive order Wednesday barring Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from entering, accessing, or using nonpublic areas of state-owned property without first receiving a judicial warrant. Examples of nonpublic state property include government offices, childcare centers, residential medical facilities, and state university residence halls.

While the Trump administration and federal law enforcement have tried to smear and threaten civilians monitoring ICE activities, Sherill doubled down on blocking their efforts.

The governor also announced that she would launch a portal for residents to submit details of their interactions with ICE agents in New Jersey. The portal is intended to allow state investigators to hold ICE agents accountable for the kinds of illegal actions Americans have witnessed across the country, including the use of excessive force, warrantless searches or arrests, racial profiling, and wrongful detentions.

“Today, we are making clear that the Trump administration’s lawless actions will not go unchecked in New Jersey. Given ICE’s willingness to flout the Constitution and violently endanger communities—detaining children, arresting citizens, and even killing several innocent civilians—I will stand up for New Jerseyans’ right to be safe,” Sherill said in a statement Wednesday.

Earlier this month, Abigail Spanberger, Virginia’s new Democratic governor, ordered state agencies to stop cooperating with ICE.

A MAGA lawmaker is blaming ICE’s heightened violence on local Minnesota leaders.

Senator Ron Johnson tore into Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison during a Senate hearing Thursday, accusing him of causing the deaths of U.S. citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, both of whom were shot and killed last month by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

“I, as a government official, would have said, ‘Back off. Let us work with ICE. Let’s cooperate with them. Let’s see if we can’t deescalate this,’” Johnson said. “But you, attorney general, did the exact opposite.

“Two people are dead because you encouraged them to put themselves into harm’s way!” Johnson said. “And now you are exploiting those two martyrs. That was a tragedy. It never should have happened.”

The Wisconsin Republican then claimed that activists in the region were being “trained” and “deployed” to escalate the situation with federal officers, citing instances in which protesters—such as Pretti—were captured on film kicking ICE vehicles.

On the ground in Minneapolis, that level of fabricated insurgency doesn’t seem necessary—locals are so irate with federal law enforcement and immigration agents that they have literally chased agents out of town.

But federal agents’ unwelcome presence, in Johnson’s view, not only precipitates but also apparently warrants the agents’ impulsive violence.

“Is it any wonder they’re at hair-trigger alert?” Johnson continued. “A tragedy was going to happen, and you encouraged it, and you ought to feel damn guilty about it.”

Then, after Johnson concluded his time speaking, he raised his voice again: “Yeah, sit there and smirk. Smirk. It’s sick! It’s despicable.”

Given an opportunity to respond, Ellison said that Johnson’s “theatrical performance” was “all lies.”

“You disgust me,” Johnson spat back.

After more than a month of protest and pushback from residents and local officials alike, Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan announced Thursday that ICE would withdraw from Minnesota. But Homan warned that “quick reaction forces” would remain in the state to go after so-called “agitators.”

Meanwhile, in Washington, Republicans and Democrats in Congress have come to another impasse over DHS funding, which is set to expire February 13. The two parties have been unable to reach a bipartisan consensus on whether to reform the violent agency.

Democrats have agreed to pass the package so long as Republicans concede to 10 demands on how to reel in ICE agents, such as requiring them to identify themselves, take off their masks, and obtain judicial warrants before forcing their way onto private property.

GOP congressional leadership, however, does not seem willing to change the status quo at all, decrying the seemingly bare minimum stipulations as “impossible” and “totally unrealistic.”

Two-thirds of young American men disapprove of President Trump, according to a damning new poll from the centrist Third Way think tank.

A nationwide survey of 1,462 men between the ages of 18 and 29 found only 38 percent generally approve of Trump’s first year of presidency. Fifty-eight percent say Trump has “negatively impacted their finances.” Sixty-five percent are struggling to pay the bills. And 61 percent believe that the president isn’t carrying out his campaign promises.

This report should sound alarm within the Trump administration. A bloc Trump won by 14 points in 2024 seems to have completely turned against him, and they’re citing issues from Epstein to the economy as driving factors. The respondents’ top three concerns were the draconian immigration raids (60 percent very concerned), lack of transparency on the Epstein files (63 percent), and Trump’s making massive health care cuts while offering tax breaks to the one percent (66 percent). Trump being the anti-woke president who lets you say slurs again doesn’t seem to be satisfying his base any longer. And perhaps the worst part—they hate JD Vance too. Only 26 percent of respondents were confident enough to proclaim their support for a President Vance in 2028.

See the full poll here.

Attorney General Pam Bondi was slammed for spying on members of Congress who viewed the Department of Justice’s unredacted files on Jeffrey Epstein.

When Bondi appeared at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday, she repeatedly referred to a binder of prewritten personal attacks, but it seems her notes contained something else too: a record of what lawmakers had looked up when given early access to the files this week.

One photograph of Bondi’s notes showed that they included a section called “Jayapal Pramila search history,” and appeared to include a list of the documents the Washington state Democrat had reviewed.

“This is spying, this is the DOJ spying on members of Congress and what we search,” Jayapal told reporters Wednesday night.

Speaking to MS NOW, Jayapal questioned whether the DOJ had intentionally laid a trap to get intel on Democratic lawmakers. “Is this [the] whole reason they opened [the files] up to us two days early? So they could essentially surveil members to see what we were gonna ask her about?” she said.

Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin told reporters that he had reason to believe that the DOJ was monitoring all lawmakers’ search history as they searched the files for evidence of a sex-trafficking operation. “I think it’s outrageous that they would do that, and it’s Orwellian,” Raskin said.

Pennsylvania Representative Summer Lee told Migrant Insider’s Pablo Manriquez that while keeping tabs on lawmakers’ search history wasn’t necessarily illegal, it was obviously problematic.

“It is a gross abuse of our ability to do and conduct oversight. They are essentially spying on us as we are looking through, and trying to do any sort of investigation, and bring about any sort of transparency about these Epstein files,” Lee said.

And Democratic lawmakers weren’t the only ones who had a problem with being spied on.

“It’s creepy,” South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace told reporters.

Jayapal told NPR News that after discussing the issue with House Speaker Mike Johnson, she believed there was “bipartisan agreement” that lawmakers should be able to review the files without being surveilled.

Virginia Representative Suhas Subramanyam had already warned on X Tuesday that the DOJ was “keeping a history” of all the files lawmakers were viewing. Congress members who were given access to the supposedly unredacted files were forced to share just four computers, navigate a broken search function, and were only permitted to take notes on a legal pad, the Democrat wrote.

Newly unredacted emails from the Epstein files reveal that Melania Trump was in friendly contact with Ghislaine Maxwell.

The first lady warmly reached out to Maxwell after New York magazine published its famed profile on Maxwell’s longtime criminal associate and boyfriend, Jeffrey Epstein, who was referred to in the piece as the “International Moneyman of Mystery.”

“Dear G! How are you?” wrote Melania Trump. “Nice story about JE in NY mag. You look great on the picture.”

Several photos were included in the body of the New York magazine piece, including separate images of Epstein with Bill Clinton, model Brenda Schad, Donald Trump, Robert Kennedy Jr., and Maxwell.

“I know you are very busy flying all over the world. How was Palm Beach? I cannot wait to go down,” Melania continued in her email. “Give me a call when you are back in NY.

“Have a great time! Love, Melania,” she concluded.

The email address on the note was initially redacted by the Justice Department, though why the agency protected Melania’s communications but outed the identities of dozens of Epstein’s victims is unclear.

However, unidentified sources told left-leaning news commentator Aaron Parnas that the email was issued by a “MelaniaKMelania” email, which was later found tied to a record of Donald Trump’s contact information under the banner of the Trump Organization.

Several prominent Trump associates, including officials within the administration, have been tied into the Epstein files in a significant way—including the president himself.

Donald Trump was mentioned more than 38,000 times in the latest batch of Epstein files, according to a review of the DOJ’s recent document dump. All in all, Trump was flagged in more than 5,300 files in the document cache.

Earlier this week, Congress gained access to the unredacted files, sparking shouting matches during Attorney General Pam Bondi’s hearing Wednesday about the Justice Department’s suspicious decision to protect the identities of Epstein’s associates (and the alleged perpetrators of sexual abuse) while harming the victims by releasing their names and contact information in full, as well as failing to censor nude images of them that Epstein collected.

Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan announced Thursday that the Trump administration is ending its ICE crackdown in Minneapolis.

“As a result of our efforts here Minnesota is now less of a sanctuary state for criminals,” Homan said at a press conference. “I have proposed, and President Trump has concurred, that this surge operation conclude.”

The surge began on December 1, and quickly alienated the residents in and around Minneapolis due to violent tactics and the targeting of protesters. Two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were shot and killed by federal agents last month.

“In the next week, we’re going to deploy the officers here on detail back” to their home states, Homan said, adding that “a significant drawdown of personnel is already underway.”

This is a developing story.