ICE Chief Lied to Congress About Training, Whistleblowers Say

A whistleblower report revealed Monday that ICE has been cutting corners on essential training for federal agents—despite what ICE chief Todd Lyons told Congress earlier this month.  

In a lengthy memo produced by Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Permanent Investigations, whistleblower documents indicated that new recruits were receiving significantly less training amid a surge in hiring, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.  

The schedules included in the whistleblower documents “indicate that current ICE recruits receive nearly 250 fewer hours of training than previous cohorts of recruits,” the memo stated.

Earlier this month, Lyons claimed that while ICE had reduced the number of training days from 75 to 42, the organization had adjusted the schedule in order to preserve the amount of training. “Five days a week was five eight-hour days. We’ve gone to six 12-hour days,” he said.

Whistleblower documents included in the memo indicated that ICE had also made sweeping changes to its training syllabus and testing requirements for cadets. 

A syllabus from this month compared to one from before the agency’s hiring surge indicated that ICE has cut entire modules, including force simulation training, government structure, criminal versus removal proceedings, and use of force. 

The standards for testing have also been significantly reduced. ICE recruits previously needed to pass 25 practical exams in order to graduate, and now they only need to pass nine. Among the more than a dozen exams that have been eliminated were tests on “Criminal Encounters,” “Judgment pistol shooting,” and “Determine removability.”

“All of these are now instead evaluated, if at all, mainly by open-book, multiple-choice written exams and without any graded practical examinations,” the memo stated.

These changes have come as Americans have witnessed ICE agents across the country practice excessive force, warrantless searches or arrests, racial profiling, and wrongful detentions. A new report Monday revealed that an ICE agent in Minnesota had accidentally discharged his weapon in a hotel room—nearly killing the person in the room next door. 

The memo was released ahead of another congressional hearing about ICE’s apparent abuses. 

Speaking at the hearing Monday was Ryan Schwank, an attorney who served as an instructor for new ICE recruits in Georgia. He claimed that ICE had cut firearms training, as well as legal classes on the constitutional limits of ICE’s authority and protesters’ rights.

Schwank previously tipped off Senator Richard Blumenthal’s office about ICE giving itself permission to forgo a judicial warrant in order to enter people’s homes. It was unclear whether he was the whistleblower behind the documents included in the newest report.

Utah, which has four seats in the House of Representatives, all held by Republicans, may soon add a Democratic congressional seat thanks to court-ordered redistricting.

A three-judge federal panel on Monday refused to block a new congressional map for the state that puts the mostly Democratic Salt Lake County, the home of state capital Salt Lake City, into one district, paving the way for the map to take effect in time for the 2026 midterms. It’s likely that Democrats would pick up the new seat.

The ruling comes after years of gerrymandering battles in Utah, and disrupts President Trump’s calls for Republican-led states to redistrict ahead of 2026. Utah Republicans’ proposed map would have ensured, as in previous elections, that the state’s entire congressional delegation would have remained Republican. In November, however, it was struck down by a state court, with Utah District Court Judge Dianna Gibson ruling that Republicans had divided Salt Lake County into four districts to help themselves.

Now, Democrats have a good chance to win a congressional seat in Utah thanks to a 2018 ballot initiative that created an independent redistricting commission and enshrined anti-gerrymandering legislation. Utah’s Republicans have undermined that initiative ever since, and their latest attempt prompted a lawsuit from activists including the League of Women Voters of Utah and Mormon Women for Ethical Government.

Technically, Republicans can still appeal Monday’s decision, but the state’s Republican Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson, who is in charge of the state’s elections, previously said that the final 2026 congressional map had to be ready by Monday.

Trump won’t be happy with the news, considering his efforts to avert a Democratic landslide in November. He pushed for Indiana to redraw new congressional maps eliminating the state’s two Democratic seats last year, only to have that effort rejected by the state’s Republicans. What else is Trump going to try in order to rig the midterms in his favor?

Nobody in Washington can seem to make head or tail of Donald Trump’s latest attempt to win over Greenland.

The president announced on Saturday that the White House would be sending a “great hospital boat” to Greenland, though exactly who would be responsible for the project—and why Greenland, which has nationalized health care, would need it—was not clear.

“Working with the fantastic Governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, we are going to send a great hospital boat to Greenland to take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there,” Trump posted to Truth Social.

“It’s on the way!!!” he added.

In the days since, not one agency or office potentially responsible for the unnecessary humanitarian aid has recognized that the boat is a real thing that’s actually happening.

In a chain reaction of dodged ownership akin to hot potato, the Pentagon referred questions to the Department of Defense’s Northern Command, which redirected questions to the Navy, which in turn sent questions to the White House, CNN reported Monday. The White House has so far failed to share details.

Nonetheless, Landry, who has served as special envoy to Greenland since December, responded to the president on social media that he was “proud” to be working with the White House on “this important issue!” In a separate post on Sunday, Landry advertised that “once we get everything in place, we would love to welcome all those interested in helping!”

Greenland has expressed zero interest in Washington’s unsolicited aid package. The island currently has six hospitals that serve its 56,000 residents. Remote parts of the Danish-controlled territory have struggled with accessing specialized medical equipment—though that would hardly be addressed by a centralized boat at the coast.

Furthermore, the issue was tackled earlier this month, when the island’s capital city, Nuuk, settled on a new arrangement with Copenhagen that would allow Greenlanders to access specialized health care in Denmark.

“That will be ‘no thanks’ from us,” Jens-Frederik Nielsen, the Greenlandic prime minister, wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday. “President Trump’s idea to send an American hospital ship here to Greenland has been duly noted. But we have a public health system where care is free for citizens.”

Denmark’s political leadership felt similarly. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen snarked that she was “happy to live in a country where there is free and equal access to health for all. Where it’s not insurances and wealth that determine whether you get proper treatment.”

Trump’s offer appears to be just another component to his relentless quest to annex the mineral-rich territory. Trump has claimed that America “needs” Greenland “for defense.” But what exactly the White House stands to gain from controlling Greenland isn’t clear, especially in light of the fact that myriad existing treaties already give the U.S. unfettered access to Greenland as a military base.

CBS contributor Peter Attia, who was handpicked by Bari Weiss to join the network, is now resigning after his close friendship with predator financier Jeffrey Epstein was made clearer in recent Justice Department files.

Attia, a celebrity health and wellness influencer, expressed regret for being found out as a close friend of Epstein’s.

“I apologize and regret putting myself in a position where emails, some of them embarrassing, tasteless, and indefensible, are now public, and that is on me,” Attia said, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which first reported the news. “I accept that reality and the humiliation that comes with it.”

Attia shared hundreds of messages with Epstein throughout the 2010s—well after the financier pleaded guilty to procuring a child for prostitution—according to files made public by the Justice Department late last month. A simple search for Attia’s name in the Epstein files trove returns 1,838 results. Some of the messages are superficially benign, relating to health guidance, while others hint at a darker truth.

In a June 2015 email headed “fresh shipment,” Attia wrote to Epstein: “You [know] the biggest problem with becoming friends with you? The life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can’t tell a soul …” The email included an image that was redacted by the DOJ.

In another crass exchange with the convicted sex offender, Attia cracked about the various health benefits of giving oral sex to women.

In 2016 Attia wrote, “Pussy is, indeed, low carb,” to Epstein. “Still awaiting results on gluten content, though.” In another message from that year, he even told Epstein’s assistant that he went into “JE withdrawal” when he didn’t see him. And a year later, Attia chose to spend time with the convicted sex trafficker instead of visiting his infant son, who had been hospitalized after entering cardiac arrest.

Attia joins an all-too-short list of Americans who have actually faced some kind of consequences for their proximity to and chumminess with an absolutely depraved individual. Former Obama White House attorney Kathy Ruemmler; Hyatt Hotels chairman Thomas Pritzker; Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison chairman Brad Karp; and New York School of Visual Arts department chair David A. Ross each resigned from their posts after the extents of their relationships with Epstein were revealed. Others—like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Dr. Oz—remain unscathed.

The European Parliament is pausing the ratification of a trade agreement with the U.S. over Donald Trump’s tariff temper tantrum.

The legislative body’s international trade committee was supposed to vote Tuesday on a trade deal capping tariffs on imports from the EU at 15 percent, but after the Supreme Court’s ruling Friday that Trump’s tariffs are illegal, the fuming president responded by threatening a global tariff of the same rate.

Trump’s global tariff uses a different authority from those the court struck down, meaning that it’s an import duty that stacks upon existing tariffs. In effect, European companies will now be paying higher tariffs than they would under the negotiated deal.

A “whole range of products … are now much higher than the 15 percent in the old agreement,” said Bernd Lange, a German member of the European Parliament, who chairs the committee.

As a result, the committee on Monday held an emergency meeting in Brussels and decided to hold off on its vote for now.

“This is so uncertain,” Lange said. “It’s unclear if there will be additional measures.”

This is the second time the European Parliament has suspended ratifying the trade deal. Last month, the legislative body froze the deal after Trump threatened eight European countries with additional tariffs if they didn’t acquiesce to a U.S. takeover of Greenland.

EU officials, such as Maroš Šefčovič, the trade commissioner, want to keep the 15 percent tariff deal they negotiated, even though it’s unpopular in Europe because it requires the EU to drop most of its own tariffs. But Trump’s anger over the Supreme Court means that he is going to try different methods to use tariffs punitively to get his way over other countries.

“Any Country that wants to ‘play games’ with the ridiculous supreme court decision, especially those that have ‘Ripped Off’ the U.S.A. for years, and even decades, will be met with a much higher Tariff, and worse, than that which they just recently agreed to. BUYER BEWARE!!! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP,” the president wrote on Truth Social Monday morning. That’s not going to be reassuring to America’s international partners, even those who want to make a deal in good faith.

The U.S. women’s hockey team has declined an invitation to Donald Trump’s State of the Union address after the president was caught on video whining about having to invite them in the first place.

A spokesperson for the U.S. women’s hockey team—which earned a Gold Medal Thursday during overtime at the Winter Olympics finals in Milan—said that the players were unable to attend “due to the timing and previously scheduled academic and professional commitments.”

“We are sincerely grateful for the invitation extended to our gold medal–winning U.S. Women’s Hockey Team and deeply appreciate the recognition of their extraordinary achievement,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “They were honored to be included and are grateful for the acknowledgment.”

In a video of Trump’s phone call to the men’s team in the afterglow of their own victory Sunday, the president could be heard warning the players that he would be forced to extend an invitation to the women’s team to Tuesday’s State of the Union.

“I must tell you, we’re gonna have to bring the women’s team, you do know that,” Trump said as the entire men’s team laughed with the president. “I do believe I probably would be impeached.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is bringing in Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei into the Pentagon on Tuesday in an attempt to strong-arm him into lifting restrictions on the Pentagon using its Claude AI program for mass surveillance and unmanned weapons systems.

Claude has been the target of a federal push to make its AI tools available within classified networks—as it’s currently the only AI model available in that capacity. But this partnership is reportedly on life support, as the Pentagon is threatening to void Anthropic’s contract and deem it a “supply chain risk” for not complying.

“Just the DoD persecuting an up-and-coming tech company because they won’t want their product to be used to kill people,” one X user mused.

“Anthropic knows this is not a get-to-know-you meeting,” an anonymous senior Defense official told Axios. “This is not a friendly meeting. This is a shit-or-get-off-the-pot meeting.... The problem with Dario is, with him, it’s ideological. We know who we’re dealing with.”

Amodei has often cited his own qualms about the risks of his technology ending up in the wrong hands, even as he gifts it to Hegseth. But this upcoming meeting will reportedly be an ultimatum that either sees restrictions lifted or business taken elsewhere—a behemoth of a task given how deeply entrenched Anthropic’s AI system already is in the Department of Defense.

Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on July 6, 2019. Five days later, federal authorities told New York detectives to “stand down” in their investigations into the child sex trafficker.

Recently released documents from the Justice Department’s Epstein files reveal a new chronology of the events surrounding Epstein’s final arrest, Just Security reported Monday.

Email exchanges that took place between July 10 and 11, 2019, indicate that the FBI “directed” New York law enforcement to cease their Epstein investigations, including the New York District Attorney’s Office, or DANY, and the NYPD’s Special Victims Unit, or SVU.

“FBI reached out to NYPD leadership already and they were told that SVU has been directed to stand down and that all Epstein stuff needs to go to and through us. DANY could still try to go forward with their own investigators, so I think it is worth a call over,” reads one message obtained by Just Security.

Epstein died in prison in August that year.

The “stand down” directive circulated internally among several FBI agents in January 2020 with regard to investigating Epstein’s longtime criminal associate Ghislaine Maxwell and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former British prince.

“After our arrest was public some phone calls were made amongst NYPD brass and I’m pretty sure there [sic] investigation was closed and differed [sic] to us. I’m not totally sure of DANY’s involvement into that investigation or if they ever stopped. Our assumption was obviously that they closed anything they had after his death,” the FBI email reads.

“It may be an issue though if DANY somehow was continuing an investigation into Pri[n]ce Andrew or his best friend Maxwell. This is something we may want to figure out I’m hoping they are continuing to differ [sic] this case to us but we may not know without making a few inquiries.”

The concern was apparently over the potential for “competing cases” and internal anxieties that the public—and the FBI’s international partners in the U.K.—would be mixed up by news reports of multiple investigations from different agencies.

The Democratic National Committee’s secret report on why Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election has reportedly found that the Biden administration’s approach to Israel’s massacre in Gaza cost her key votes.

DNC personnel who worked on the report met with the pro-Palestinian IMEU Policy Project in a closed-door meeting, Axios reports, and the group told them that Biden’s and Harris’s support for Israel dampened support from progressives and young voters.

During the meeting, “the DNC shared with us that their own data also found that policy was, in their words, a ‘net-negative’ in the 2024 election,” Hamid Bendass, a spokesperson for the IMEU Policy Project, told Axios.

The report was deliberately buried last year, and now we can see one of the reasons why. The war in Gaza has divided Democrats, as well as the country as a whole, with many Americans agreeing with the conclusions of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and a United Nations commission that Israel committed a genocide of Palestinians in the territory.

While Harris called for a ceasefire during the campaign, she avoided criticizing Israel or calling for any kind of decisive action to end the war, such as an arms embargo on Israel, putting conditions on the billions of dollars of U.S. aid to Israel, or withdrawing support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who now has an International Criminal Court warrant out for his arrest over Gaza.

The 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago was noticeably absent of any Palestinian American representation and barely acknowledged the massive death toll in Gaza, seeming to purposefully sideline pro-Palestinian Democratic voices. Ahead of the 2026 election, pro-Israel groups are already spending millions in Democratic primaries. Keeping this report secret, and refusing to address the issue of unconditional support for Israel, would mean that the Democratic Party has learned nothing from 2024.

Surprise, surprise: Homeland Security Kristi Noem completely made up that far-fetched story about deporting a cannibal, multiple federal law enforcement officials told The Intercept.

Speaking to Fox News’s Jesse Watters in June, Noem recounted a terrible tale she claimed to have heard from a U.S. air marshal about a cannibal who tried to “eat his own arms” while being deported out of the country. Noem later repeated the story as she and Donald Trump toured “Alligator Alcatraz,” the president’s wetland-themed concentration camp in the Florida Everglades.

At the time, the Department of Homeland Security and ICE wouldn’t respond to requests to confirm Noem’s story. Now multiple federal law enforcement officials—including one from the DHS—are saying it’s a lie, The Intercept reported Monday.

“That is completely made up,” a senior federal law enforcement official told The Intercept. “That never happened.”

Two other federal law enforcement officials said there was absolutely no evidence to corroborate Noem’s story. One source told The Intercept that officials went to ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division to ask about the incident. “There was no information about it. It never took place. It’s a lie,” the source said.

When asked about whether they believed the story actually came from an air marshal or the secretary, one official was certain that it had come from the secretary.

The story never sounded particularly true. When pressed for more details at the time of her original telling, Noem couldn’t summon a single one. “He said he was literally eating his own arms. That for him, he was, that is what he did. He called himself a cannibal, ate other people, and ate himself,” she stammered. She said the man was taken off the flight to receive medical attention and then put back into the system.

Noem had used the chronicle of the cannibal as an example of the “kind of deranged individuals” who were being removed as part of Trump’s sweeping deportation efforts.

There is ample evidence to suggest that a cannibal is not the kind of person the Trump administration is deporting. CBS News reported that less than 14 percent of the immigrants arrested by ICE during Trump’s first year back in office have charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses.

Noem’s fake cannibal is just one of the many dangerous lies being peddled by DHS—as calls for her resignation continue to mount.