American Journalist Snatched Off the Street in Baghdad

American journalist Shelly Kittleson was kidnapped in broad daylight in Baghdad on Tuesday. The Iraqi Ministry of Interior stated that Kittleson, who has covered the Middle East for various outlets, was taken by “unknown individuals.”

“Security forces immediately launched an operation to apprehend the perpetrators, acting on precise intelligence and through intensive field operations, tracking the kidnappers’ movements. The pursuit resulted in the interception of a vehicle belonging to the kidnappers, which overturned as they attempted to escape. Security forces were able to arrest one of the suspects and seize one of the vehicles used in the crime,” the ministry reported.

The investigation to find the remaining perpetrators, and to free Kittleson, is ongoing.

Kittleson has written extensively for outlets like BBC World, Politico, Al-Monitor, and Foreign Policy. She was awarded the Premio Caravella award in Italy in 2017 for her war zone reporting.

“We are deeply alarmed by the kidnapping of Al-Monitor contributor Shelly Kittleson in Iraq on Tuesday,” Al-Monitor said in a statement. “We call for her safe and immediate release. We stand by her vital reporting from the region and call for her swift return to continue her important work.”

Senator Ted Cruz is jet-setting in tough times again.

TMZ spotted the Texas politician at the airport in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Tuesday, protected by a security detail composed of police officers, even as TSA agents aren’t being paid thanks to a partial government shutdown.

Like several other Republican senators, Cruz hightailed it out of Washington, D.C., over the weekend, first heading to Houston before swinging by the CPAC convention in Dallas. His Florida trip is only the latest time Cruz has decided to take a vacation instead of looking out for his constituents.

In January, Cruz headed off to sunny Laguna Beach, California, as a major winter storm was set to hit Texas. Last July, Cruz was sightseeing in Athens during Texas’s deadly floods, and five years ago, he earned the moniker “Cancún Cruz” for heading to Mexico rather than sticking around to help with relief efforts as many in his state lost electricity during catastrophically low temperatures.

At least 246 people in Texas lost their lives during that winter storm in 2021, but Cruz doesn’t appear to have learned to at least try to act like he cares. Since many TSA agents aren’t being paid, travelers are dealing with long security lines across the country and the Trump administration has deployed ICE agents to stand around in airports and do nothing except intimidate immigrants.

Meanwhile, negotiations on how to resume funding the Department of Homeland Security and at least attempt to reform ICE are going nowhere. Cruz and fellow Republicans don’t seem all that concerned as they head to more relaxing destinations.

The Daily Mail has reported that Bryon Noem—husband of the proudly anti-LGBTQ former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—likes to dress in drag as a large-breasted woman in his spare time. Mr. Noem has not exactly denied the report. 

The piece, published on Tuesday, asserts that Noem was an active buyer and participant in the online “bimbofication” community, where he confessed he was into “huge, huge ridiculous boobs” according to one model, and allegedly sent at least $25,000 to different members of said community. The Daily Mail obtained multiple messages and selfie photos of a man who does look exactly like Mr. Noem donning fake breasts and pursing his lips.

According to messages seen by the conservative British tabloid, Bryon, under the  pseudonym “Jason Jackson,” had extensive text and audio contact with one model.

“How are your boobs?” he asked the model. “Would you ever go bigger?” When she sent him a topless photos of her breasts, “Jason” replied with his own, stuffing two large balloons in a crop top. 

“You turn me into a girl,” he said. “Should I put on leggings?” The PayPal account tied to the pseudonym shows multiple payments to the model between $500 and $1,000.

“He’d say, ‘I love my wife, I want to get better,’” the model said. “Then he’d disappear, come back, and start again.” 

Bryon didn’t deny any of the photos or messages when The Daily Mail reached out to him. But he did deny endangering national security or making any comments about his wife. 

This development is deeply ironic given how homophobic and transphobic the bulk of the GOP is. Bryon’s actions are the kind of thing Republicans crusade against—and only expect godless liberals to do, not strong conservative fathers married to former Trump Cabinet members. 

The last time Bryon was in the news was when his wife was repeatedly questioned about her alleged affair with Corey Lewandowski while he sat right behind her at a congressional hearing.

Spokespersons for former Secretary Noem told The New York Post that she is “devastated” and “blindsided” by the news. 

Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail that he would sic his deportation agenda on the “worst of the worst,” but that has not been the case.

Approximately 63 percent of the people arrested in Minnesota between December and February had no criminal record whatsoever, according to arrest data obtained by the Deportation Data Project.

During that period, federal agents cuffed more than 3,700 Minnesota residents, according to the dataset. But the numbers may still be higher: In early February, the Department of Homeland Security issued a memo claiming that agency officials had arrested more than 4,000 individuals in the state, emphasizing that the detainees included “murderers, pedophiles, rapists, gang members and terrorists.”

Just one in three of the arrestees actually had either a pending criminal conviction or pending charges, reported MPR News. The arrest data did not identify the exact charges against each individual.

The majority of those arrested in Minnesota were noncriminal immigrants. They were detained for civil immigration violations, such as overstayed visas, which have historically been handled through immigration courts in the U.S.

Some of the people arrested who had criminal histories were already incarcerated and taken directly from jail, rather than arrested during the street operations of ICE or CBP agents, reported MPR. Many of those taken from jail had not yet been convicted.

A similar story played out halfway across the country in Maine, where just 11 of nearly 200 people detained by Trump officials in January actually had a criminal record, according to federal data obtained Monday by the Bangor Daily News. The numbers suggest that the Trump administration made it a priority to target noncriminals: Roughly 80 percent of those arrested were detained on noncriminal immigration violations.

The Trump administration has repeatedly attempted to justify the mass arrests, insisting that the targets of their violent purge were horrific career criminals and that those protesting Washington’s overreach were domestic terrorists.

After agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in early January—the first of two U.S. citizens to be killed by federal forces occupying Minneapolis—White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt feigned confusion over the public backlash, playfully suggesting that she didn’t understand what the big hubbub was over the sweeping arrests.

Leavitt claimed that the people the administration was removing were “heinous murderers and rapists and criminals” who nobody in the country would want in their “neighborhood, in [their] community, around [their] children, and around [their] families.”

Months later, it’s clear that the Trump administration’s peremptory narrative was a lie. Just a fraction of the arrests were criminals in any sense of the word, while the vast majority were normal people living and working in Minnesota and Maine.

Donald Trump’s administration will bar green card holders (read: legal, permanent residents) from receiving small business loans, threatening to further unravel the U.S. job market.

The Small Business Administration has barred green card holders from receiving SBA loans and will expand that policy to SBA-backed loans from private companies starting in April, the Associated Press reported Monday. Additionally, any business that is even partially owned by a green card holder will no longer be eligible for a small business loan.

Speaking at CPAC Saturday, SBA administrator Kelly Loeffler touted the end of “DEI lending” to “foreign nationals.” Of course, the individuals affected by the policy change are not foreign nationals but legal permanent residents who may have lived and worked for their entire lives in the United States.

The SBA’s blatantly racist policy is an extension of the administration’s nativist preference that is making the country poorer.

Immigrants are more likely to start businesses than those born in the U.S., and nearly half of Fortune 500 companies in 2025 were founded by immigrants or their children. SBA loans are an essential resource for foreign-born entrepreneurs because they typically accumulate low interest and do not require a strong credit history.

This policy will undoubtedly wreak havoc on state economies that rely on immigrant-run businesses. For example, 99 percent of new jobs in California come from small businesses, and immigrant entrepreneurs account for 40 percent of the state’s economy.

As part of the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on immigrants—both legal and undocumented—the SBA’s new policy threatens to further unravel the U.S. job market, which has reached its lowest hiring levels since April 2020.