Notorious Drug Trafficker Got Five-Star Treatment After Trump Pardon

Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was given special treatment and provided with a room in a luxury hotel after Donald Trump pardoned him in December, ProPublica reported Wednesday.

Hernández, a member of Honduras’s right-wing National Party, was extradited to the U.S. in 2022 and sentenced to 45 years in prison on bribery and drug-trafficking charges two years later. Prosecutors said he enabled drug traffickers to “move mountains of cocaine” into the United States and used the millions of dollars in bribes he received for his political campaigns.

He cut a Trump-like figure in Honduras, attempting to overthrow the country’s Supreme Court in 2012 alongside a handful of other congressmen, in what was labeled a “technical coup” by local press. He was elected president in 2014, then reelected in 2017 amid accusations of electoral fraud.

His nationalist beliefs and lax economic policies—which Trump-aligned billionaires Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen have benefited from—are perhaps why Trump moved to pardon Hernández.

After Hernández, a noncitizen, was released from prison, a request to hold him in place until immigration authorities could arrive was waived by federal authorities. A team of officials was then paid overtime to escort Hernández from Hazelton penitentiary in West Virginia six hours east, to the five-star Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City. Rooms at the Waldorf go for $956 a night, at minimum.

Usually, people released from Hazelton are given a “a shitty bus ride or a cheap plane ticket,” one prison official told ProPublica.

Hernández’s lavish treatment appears even more amoral when compared to how the Trump administration treats other noncitizens who are detained. Immigrants are usually deported as quickly as possible, regardless of whether they possess a criminal record.

Hernández’s current location is unknown, though he has said on social media he does not plan on returning to Honduras. Maybe he can get a Cabinet position.

Republican lawmakers pretending that the SAVE Act isn’t a huge problem for married women are either lying or haven’t actually read the bill.

Speaking to Fox News’s Larry Kudlow Tuesday, Republican Senator Mike Rounds dismissed the “inauthentic, unprincipled” concerns that the SAVE Act would prevent married women who have taken their husband’s last names from voting.

Rounds claimed that most women who’d legally changed their names after marriage had likely already updated their driver’s license with their new name. If not—“you show ’em your marriage certificate and you’re on your way once again,” the South Dakota Republican said.

But in its current form, the SAVE Act doesn’t actually mention marriage certificates. In fact, the bill makes no mention of change-of-name documentation at all.

The forms of valid identification listed in the SAVE Act are a REAL ID, a U.S. passport, a military ID card paired with a record of service stating the holder’s birthplace, and a valid ID issued by the state, federal, or tribal government stating birthplace.

If the ID does not include the applicant’s birthplace, the applicant must also provide a birth record from a U.S. hospital or Consulate Report of a Birth Abroad, a final adoption decree, a Naturalization Certificate, or an American Indian Card.

Therefore, the SAVE Act threatens to disenfranchise the estimated 69 million women (and four million men) who change their names after they get married.

Rounds claimed that the bill had been tweaked since it was passed through the House last week, but it’s unclear whether marriage certificates were added to the docket of documentation that could allow citizens to vote in a free and fair election.

Speaking of free elections: The SAVE Act should be considered an unconstitutional nonstarter, as many of the forms of identification listed cost money to procure, posing an illegal tax for voters. A U.S. passport costs roughly $165, while a Real ID costs between $30 and $129, depending on what state the applicant lives in.

MAGA Representative Tony Gonzales reportedly had an affair with an aide in 2024. When she told the rest of the office last April, Gonzales abruptly cut her off and demoted her at work. A few months later, she set herself on fire and died. Gonzales is currently running for reelection in Texas.

Regina Ann Santos-Aviles was a 35-year-old wife and mother who served as the regional director for Gonzales’s Uvalde, Texas, office. 

An anonymous former staffer who described himself as Santos-Aviles’s “best friend” told San Antonio Express News that Gonzales stayed at a staffer’s family cabin in Uvalde, and Santos-Aviles spent between one to two hours alone with the married congressman there on two separate occasions. On May 29, just one day after Gonzales’s primary victory, Santos-Aviles made her affair known to the rest of the staff.

It appears that Santos-Aviles was punished for her admission, as meetings she set were canceled and the representative stopped traveling to Uvalde, something he had done regularly. Her husband also became aware of the affair, adding to her distress. She spiraled into depression and started taking medication for it in the summer of 2025. Her friend became concerned for her well-being, even alerting District Director John Falcon—to no avail. 

“She talked about Tony every day,” he said. “She went from the number one employee in the office to nothing.” 

In August 2025, Santos-Aviles attempted suicide but survived. The next month, she self-immolated with gasoline and died a day later at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. 

Gonzales skipped the funeral and deflected blame when asked.  

“People throwing rocks at me, saying I’m doing nasty things—I totally get that. But the rumors are completely untruthful,” he said, calling Santos-Aviles’s death a “very tragic situation.”

Gonzales has mostly tried to avoid acknowledging his role in this tragedy. But now scrutiny is growing over the Trump-endorsed representative, with even MAGA sycophant Laura Loomer magnifying the situation. 

“A devastating report about GOP Representative Tony Gonzales and one of his former staffers named Regina Santos-Aviles who committed suicide by lighting herself on fire is set to drop this week,” she wrote. “Rep. Gonzales is married and has 6 children. Regina Santos-Aviles was also married and had a small child at the time of her suicide. I’m told the report is career ending!” 

San Antonio Express News has pulled its endorsement of Gonzales, signaling a tough road ahead for Gonzales’s political career. 

Stephen Colbert blasted CBS on his late-night show Tuesday night, contradicting the network’s claim that it didn’t block his interview with Texas state Representative and Senate candidate James Talarico.

On his show, Colbert displayed a printed copy of the network’s statement, which said, “THE LATE SHOW was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview with Rep. James Talarico.

“The show was provided legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal-time rule for two other candidates, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and presented options for how the equal time for other candidates could be fulfilled,” the statement continued. “THE LATE SHOW decided to present the interview through its YouTube channel with on-air promotion on the broadcast rather than potentially providing the equal-time options.”

Colbert said that this statement was incorrect, emphasizing that “every word” of his script in the squashed Talarico interview was approved by CBS’s lawyers, as is the case with every script.

“In fact, between the monologue I did last night and before I did the second act talking about this issue, I had to go backstage,” Colbert said Tuesday. “I got called backstage to get more notes from these lawyers—something that had never ever happened before—and they told us the language they wanted me to use to describe that equal-time exception. And I used that language. So, I don’t know what this is about.”’

Colbert said that he didn’t “want an adversarial relationship with the network. I’ve never had one,” and lamented the fact that CBS’s parent corporation appears to have preemptively abided by the FCC’s new interpretation of the equal-time rule, which used to exempt talk shows that were not considered “bona fide news” until FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, appointed by Trump, issued new guidance last month.

“I’m just so surprised that this giant global corporation would not stand up to these bullies,” Colbert added. “Come on, you’re Paramount! No! You’re more than that, you’re Paramount Plus. Plus what? I guess we’re all going to find out pretty soon.”

While Monday’s interview didn’t air, it has gotten millions of views on YouTube and other platforms that it wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. Now CBS and Paramount, owned by Donald Trump ally David Ellison, are receiving negative publicity over their decision, as is the FCC, led by Trump-appointed Brendan Carr. Colbert’s contract ends in May, and the next three months are going to be interesting.

When Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanded the urgent demolition of her agency’s 171-year-old campus in Washington, D.C., she claimed the structures were unsafe. But it turns out the more immediate threat to workers wasn’t the presence of “malicious insiders” looking to exploit the site’s weaknesses—it’s asbestos, Migrant Insider reported Tuesday.

Department of Homeland Security employees who worked at the agency’s facilities at St. Elizabeths described workers in full hazmat suits working alongside plainclothes DHS staff.

“It’s surreal,” one former DHS aide told Migrant Insider. “You’ve got guys in full PPE taking out asbestos, and then DHS staff in shirts and ties walking right by, breathing the same air.”

Employees were not offered masks or air quality tests—let alone remote work options. And the site lacks the proper signage alerting workers to the presence of harmful carcinogens.

“There’s one small sign in a side entrance indicating the area is a health hazard,” the former aide told Migrant Insider. “If you come in the main way you’d never know you’re walking into a demolition zone with asbestos in the air.”

Several staffers told Migrant Insider that they’d been largely left in the dark about construction, only receiving after the fact notices that did not mention any specific health risks. Others said they only learned about the construction after they saw sealed doorways and workers in protective gear. When staffers raised concerns about air quality to their supervisors, they were referred to building management, who offered scant answers.

“There’s this attitude that because this is a high‑security campus, they can do what they want and we’ll just deal with it,” one current DHS official told Migrant Insider. “But we’re talking about cancer‑causing dust in a federal workplace. People are scared, and they should be.”

The campus at St. Elizabeths is a national landmark originally built as a “Government Hospital for the Insane.” The National Trust for Historic Preservation and the D.C. Preservation League warned that Noem’s unilateral declaration to demolish the site was “problematic” and implied a “fundamental flaw” in her agency’s “security as a whole.”

The Make America Healthy Again campaign is now hinged on the idea that America wants to see two old men strip.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. invited Kid Rock to participate in a bizarre marketing video for his public health policy Tuesday, encouraging the nation to “GET ACTIVE + EAT REAL FOOD” by showcasing a freakish, half-naked workout montage of the duo set to the country rapper’s song “Bawitdaba” (the song that Rock definitely did not lip-sync during Turning Point USA’s alternate Super Bowl halftime show).

The clip begins with Kennedy, 72, and Rock, 55, flexing without shirts before the camera pans to the taxidermied body of a brown bear wearing a gingham fedora. Cue the music.

Over the next 90 seconds, the pair are depicted eating a giant plate of steak and sauerkraut (in line with Kennedy’s steak-and-ferments-only diet), doing biceps curls, using the pull-down machine (with improper form), holding each other’s ankles for sit-ups, flipping the bird while riding a stationary bike in a sauna (so badass), and climbing into a cold plunge tub while still wearing jeans. They also play pickleball, and drink “WHOLE MILK” in the pool.

The video is, apparently, formally affiliated with the Department of Health and Human Services, as the end of the lifestyle advertisement prominently features the health agency’s logo, along with Kennedy’s campaign slogan, “Make America Healthy Again.”

Kennedy’s off-the-wall notions about health have already proved disastrous for the health agency.

During a measles outbreak in Texas last year, the virulent conspiracist refused to endorse the tried-and-true measles vaccine, recommending instead that susceptible residents self-medicate with vitamins. He has transformed HHS, replacing independent medical experts on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel with a hodgepodge of vaccine skeptics. He also overhauled the child vaccination schedule without notifying his staffers, a decision that could potentially affect vaccine access and insurance coverage for millions of American families in the coming years.

And last month, the health secretary unveiled the outcome of his department’s monthslong project to reimagine the food pyramid. The result: an upside-down triangle in which butter, steak, and cheese play a leading role.

The Trump administration tried to prevent late-night television host Stephen Colbert from airing his interview with Texas state Representative and Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, but the attempt has backfired.

Instead of including the interview in his CBS show Monday night, which the network’s lawyers had warned against, Colbert posted the interview to YouTube and other social media channels, where it has already garnered millions of views on each platform, much more than a single TV broadcast of the show, which averages 2.3 million viewers.

Talarico himself posted the interview to his X account with the caption, “This is the interview Donald Trump didn’t want you to see.” It has gotten 8.3 million views as of this writing. On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’s YouTube channel, the interview has 2.4 million views, and clips of the show on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook are also getting millions of viewers.

Colbert defied CBS by mentioning the interview during his show Monday night and urging viewers to watch it online. He also called out the Federal Communications Commission and its Trump-appointed head, Brendan Carr, for the agency’s new rule requiring late-night talk shows to provide equal time for candidates across the political spectrum. Colbert highlighted a recent clip of Carr discussing both him and fellow late night host Jimmy Kimmel.

“If Kimmel or Colbert want to continue to do their programming, and they don’t want to have to comply with this requirement, then they can go to a cable channel or a podcast or a streaming service, and that’s fine,” Carr said in the clip. Colbert took Carr’s advice and put his interview with Talarico online, where it has taken off, giving Colbert and Talarico more publicity than they would have had otherwise.

The far right is using the murder of a mother and one of her sons to attack transgender people, completely ignoring the fact that the shooter had massive Nazi tattoos.

The shooter, who police said was born with the name Robert Dorgan but also went by Roberta Esposito, fatally shot their ex-wife and son at a hockey game in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, on Monday night. Esposito then turned the gun on themself, dying of a self-inflicted wound.

According to divorce records obtained by The Providence Journal, Esposito’s wife initially said she ended their 25-year marriage due Esposito’s “Gender reassignment surgery, Narcissistic + personality disorder traits,” before crossing it out and writing “irreconcilable differences which caused the irremediable breakdown of the marriage.”

The usual online far-right ghouls descended upon the news, foaming at the mouth for another opportunity to demonize every single trans person based on Esposito’s actions.

“Transgenderism is a severe mental illness,” commentator Evan Kilgore stated. “It’s time to bring back insane asylums for people like this.”

“President Trump needs to re-open mental institutions, and society needs to stop celebrating & encouraging transgender status,” former Trump delegate Christian Ziegler said.

“The Rhode Island trans shooter tweeted YESTERDAY warning that you shouldn’t point out that ‘trans women’ are really men or they will go ‘berserk,’” Libs of TikTok wrote. “Transgender people are violent and a danger to society.”

All of these reactions glossed over two major things. First, Esposito was a registered Republican. And according to the account Libs of TikTok referenced, they were a vocal Trump supporter. Secondly, Esposito had a massive Nazi SS tattoo on their arm.

People usually don’t have Nazi tattoos that they display prominently unless they have Nazi sympathies. People like that have killed more people, and currently have the power to kill more people, than any transgender person. And yet the issue here for the right is the person’s gender identity rather than the fact that they had a symbol of hate on their body. Probably because they have more in common with Esposito than they want to admit.

Donald Trump has gone on a posting binge following the death of civil rights activist and Democratic politician Jesse Jackson, even though Jackson opposed and criticized Trump.

Trump posted 12 photos of himself and Jackson from decades ago on his Truth Social account after he made a hollow tribute post to the late civil rights leader Tuesday morning, criticizing former President Barack Obama and Democrats in the process. The photos, some of which are in black and white, depict the two standing together at various events decades ago.

But Jackson and Trump did not get along in recent years. Jackson criticized Trump for fueling the birther movement that pushed the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, urging Black voters in 2016 not to vote for Trump. His criticism continued during Trump’s first term, as he attacked Trump’s efforts to build a border wall with Mexico and called his immigration policies “Germanesque.”

Jackson pulled back from political activism in recent years due to health issues, but in an August 2023 interview with David Masciotra for The New Republic, he said that “Trump wants to pull us back into white supremacy.” In May 2024, he defended students protesting the Israeli massacre of Gaza in a column for the Chicago Maroon. All of this contradicts the image that Trump is trying to portray of Jackson as someone he saw eye-to-eye with.

Even the issues Jackson championed as a left-wing presidential candidate in the 1980s are at odds with Trump: universal health care, tuition-free community and state colleges, paid family leave, subsidized childcare, and raising the minimum wage to a living wage. His message was much closer to that of Senator Bernie Sanders (whom Jackson endorsed in 2020), Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani than it ever was to Trump, no matter how many pictures Trump posts.

Donald Trump’s pardoning process has devolved into something that doesn’t make sense to anybody invested in the process.

After issuing thousands of pardons within hours of returning to office, Trump’s pardon pipeline went silent, and he even went so far as to ice out the woman tapped to handle the caseload, “pardon czar” Alice Marie Johnson, who was canceled on several times by the president.

Now, months into Trump’s second year, practically no one understands how to navigate Trump’s opaque pardon requirements, according to nearly a dozen sources that spoke with NOTUS. Those unidentified sources included lobbyists, attorneys, and White House insiders.

“There is no process, there is no right way to do this,” one individual involved in the process told the digital publication. “It’s chaos.”

A senior White House official rejected that characterization, telling NOTUS that there is a “defined process” in place to manage pardons.

“There has been no change to the pardon process,” another White House official said. “The Administration has always had a robust review process which involves the Department of Justice, Alice Johnson, and the White House Counsel’s office. Ultimately President Trump is the final decider. Susie is simply ensuring the process, which has always existed, is followed,” the official said, referring to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

But there is speculation that Johnson was pushed to the fringe over concerns that the public would not take kindly to the pardons, which all too often carry a covert personal tie or benefit for the president. The controversial recipients of Trump’s forgiveness include 1,600 January 6 defendants, as well as the alleged co-conspirators of Trump’s 2020 election interference case, including Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Boris Epshteyn, John Eastman, Mark Meadows, and 72 others.

Conservatives have reportedly been dismayed by the lack of progress, wondering why Trump opted to appoint Johnson if he never intended to allow her to do her job.

“If you elevate someone to a role like pardon czar and create a new pardon office, you should use it to carry out your goals,” a Republican operative told NOTUS.

Yet Trump has set no time on his schedule to meet with clemency advisers, an official told NOTUS.