“Don’t Trust These Courts”: Trump’s Terrifying New Immigration Judges

The Trump administration is attempting to clear its immigration backlog by cramming the court system with MAGA-aligned “deportation judges.”

Across the country, there are 700 immigration judges tasked with handling more than three million immigration cases. The Justice Department has fired more than 100 immigration judges since Donald Trump returned to office, according to an investigation by The Washington Post. A similar number have retired.

To replace them all, the agency has opened a massive recruitment drive, offering up the specialized bench to some 140 individuals who, for the most part, have no experience practicing immigration law. Instead, some of the newly hired judges include a divorce lawyer who swore to “fight exclusively for the rights of men,” a Minnesota attorney who backed the ICE raids in Minneapolis that resulted in two U.S. citizens being killed by federal agents, and a judge who denied humanitarian protection to a Serbian immigrant because he didn’t look “overtly gay.”

These people are being installed following “completely inadequate and highly biased” training, Christopher Day, a former immigration judge, told Congress in March.

Former judges said that the hiring process, historically, could take months or even years. Their training involved five weeks observing court hearings, participating in mock trials, and practicing cases alongside their mentors before judging cases on their own. The National Association of Immigration Judges told the Post that the DOJ has since cut training down to three weeks.

Ex-judges who were forced out claim that the administration is attempting to excise dissent from the judiciary, singling out those who have ruled against the government, reported the Post.

“They’re trying to create a malleable workforce that will do what they want without question,” Kerry Doyle, an ICE official turned immigration judge, told the paper. She was hired under Joe Biden and fired last year before her tenure even began. “That’s what I think the goal is.”

The Trump administration has made mass deportation a cornerstone of its immigration agenda, repeatedly pledging to deport as many as one million people per year while Trump is in office. Under ex–Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Justice Department massively reallocated its resources toward arresting and prosecuting noncriminal immigrants, dropping tens of thousands of criminal probes in the process.

Much to the chagrin of Trump’s supporters, the actual exit numbers have been lagging. In a December memo, the Department of Homeland Security revealed that it had deported some 605,000 individuals since Trump’s return, a figure that it artificially fluffed by claiming that DHS law enforcement had also encouraged 1.9 million people to “voluntarily self-deport.”

Immigration court is one of the final, legally required steps before the Trump administration can throw the people out of the country, though the administration seems content to ignore the limitations of the law. Instead, the DOJ has attempted to ram cases through the system in an attempt to meet the White House’s demands, placing an enormous and unusual burden on America’s judges.

Six federal judges were fired just this month for prioritizing the law over the White House agenda. At least two had ruled against high-profile deportation cases in the last year.

The Justice Department’s rightward shift into the MAGA agenda has sparked concern among those in the legal community, who have argued that the agency’s recent politicization has undermined public confidence in immigration courts altogether. Some attorneys have expressed concern that even individuals who are likely to be granted asylum might avoid participating in the system, ironically avoiding the process of becoming documented for fear of being deported at the courthouse.

“It sends a message that: Don’t trust these courts,” Muzaffar A. Chishti, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, told the Post. “That is not good for the immigrants, it’s not good for the rule of law, and it’s not good for the ultimate integrity and reputation of our court system.”

The Supreme Court has given the Texas GOP a gerrymandering victory—just one week after the Democratic gerrymandering victory at the polls in Virginia. 

In a 6–3 decision along ideological lines on Monday, the Supreme Court reversed a lower district court ruling that blocked Republican redistricting efforts in Texas and reinstated a map designed to help Republicans add more seats to Congress. This new map could potentially flip five Texas House seats from blue to red, which could help Republicans maintain their paper-thin majority in the midterms.  

The party that freaked out and called foul after Virginia’s redistricting referendum will now celebrate its own victory—although it’s unclear how much it will really help them given President Donald Trump’s massively unpopular tenure.

The alleged White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooter critiqued the Trump administration constantly on BlueSky, and was particularly upset by the president’s AI Jesus post earlier this month.

Cole Allen, who described himself as a Protestant Christian—contradicting President Trump’s claim that Allen “hates” Christians—called members of the Trump administration “satanic idolators” after Trump shared the image of himself as Jesus Christ.

“I’m not sure that you can work for this admin and be *any flavor of genuine christian believer* and see Trump post something like this without understanding, at some level, deep down, that you are fucking damned, even if you’ll never admit it to anyone,” one of his reposts read. Allen even cited the Book of Revelation in response, writing that “there will be no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image, or for anyone who receives the mark of its name.”

Allen shared similar sentiments in his supposed manifesto.

“As a Christian, you should turn the other cheek.… Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed. I’m not the person raped in a detention camp. I’m not the fisherman executed without trial. I’m not a schoolkid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration,” he wrote. “Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.”

These are not the words of someone who hates Christians or Christianity, regardless of what Trump and the greater right wing say. Allen is expected to be charged with using a firearm during a crime of violence and with assault of a federal officer on Monday.

President Donald Trump was infuriated after hearing the alleged White House Correspondents’ Dinner gunman’s manifesto, and lashed out at a reporter who asked him about it.

On Sunday, CBS’s Norah O’Donnell interviewed Trump on 60 Minutes, and told him, “The so-called manifesto is a stunning thing to read.

“I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,” O’Donnell quoted directly. Then, she asked Trump, “What’s your reaction to that?”

“I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would because you’re horrible people. Horrible people. Yeah, he did write that. I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody. I’m not a pedophile—” Trump began to rant, before O’Donnell tried to cut in.

“Do you think he was referring to you?” she asked.

“Excuse me, excuse me. I’m not a pedophile. You read that crap from some sick person. Uh, I got associated with stuff that has nothing to do with me. I was totally exonerated. Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were involved with, let’s say, Epstein or other things,” Trump said.

“But I said to myself, ‘You know, I’ll do this interview, and they’ll probably,’—I read the manifesto—you know he’s a sick person. You should be ashamed of yourself, reading that, because I’m not any of those things, and I was never—excuse me, excuse me,” Trump continued, cutting off O’Donnell when she tried to interject with a question. “You shouldn’t be reading that on 60 Minutes. You’re a disgrace. Go ahead, let’s finish the interview.”

The words “pedophile” and “rapist” clearly triggered Trump during the interview, because he immediately went into full-on denial mode and attacked O’Donnell simply for repeating the shooter’s manifesto. An assassination attempt is a gravely serious event, but those words made Trump quickly grow furious because they referenced his connections to Jeffrey Epstein and a New York judge’s ruling nearly three years ago that said he could legally be called a rapist. At that moment, Trump was more upset about those accusations than the attempt on his life.

President Donald Trump really doesn’t want you to think he fell down.

Just one day after the White House Correspondents’ Dinner came to a dramatic halt when a man fired a weapon outside the room, Trump became defensive Sunday when speaking about the experience to CBS News’s 60 Minutes.

“It looked chaotic, at one point you were down, what was happening?” asked host Norah O’Donnell, referring to videos of the event that showed Trump appear to fall down while fleeing to safety.

“I turned, I started walking. They said ‘Please go down, please go down, on the floor.’ So, I went down. And the first lady went down also. We were asked to go down by agents as I was walking,” Trump said.

“They wanted you almost to crawl out?” O’Donnell pressed.

“I was standing up—pretty much—I was standing up, and turned around the opposite direction, and started pretty much walking out. Pretty tall, a little bent over, because you know, I’m not looking to be standing too tall. And uh, but I was walking out. Pretty—I’m about half way there and they said, ‘Please go down to the floor, please go down to the floor.’ So, I dropped to the floor, and so did the first lady.”

Videos of Trump exiting the stage tell a different story.

As Trump made his way offstage surrounded by law enforcement agents, he appeared to drop to the ground by accident. At least three agents appeared to reach down to lift the president back up, before ushering him offstage, one video showed.

In another video, security agents can even be heard announcing the room was “clear” as Trump moved off the stage, indicating there was no imminent threat that would have required him to crawl to safety.

It’s unclear why Trump would bother to rewrite this minor detail, of which there is ample video evidence. It’s not shameful to trip while running to safety in an emergency, but it seems that Trump’s fragile pride may be preventing him from telling the truth. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Questions abound after the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner Saturday, inspiring a mix of speculation and conspiracy across social media. The public still has few answers, but Donald Trump has addressed one lingering point of confusion: why the Secret Service secured Vice President JD Vance before they ushered the president out to safety.

Speaking with 60 Minutes on Sunday, Trump confessed that the delay was his fault.

“I wasn’t making it that easy for them,” Trump told correspondent Norah O’Donnell. “I wanted to see what was going on.”

Trump added that he was surrounded by “great people” and that he “probably made them act a little more slowly,” repeatedly telling his security detail to “wait a minute.”

“Just at that moment, where it looks like you go sort of down, you were telling them to wait?” asked O’Donnell.

“Well, what happened is I started walking with them, I turned, I started walking,” Trump said. “And they said, ‘Please go down, please go down on the floor.’ So I went down, and the first lady went down. We were asked to go down by the agents, as we were walking.”

“They wanted you to crawl out?” pressed O’Donnell.

“Pretty much,” Trump said. “I was standing up and turned around, the opposite direction, and started pretty much walking out. Pretty tall, a little bent over, you know, because I’m not looking to stand too tall, but I was walking out. Pretty much about halfway there when they said, ‘Please go down to the floor, please go down to the floor.’

“So I dropped to the floor, so did the first lady,” Trump said.

Saturday’s attack was the third assassination attempt on Trump, and the first to happen during his second term as president. The MAGA leader endured two other attacks on his life while campaigning in 2024, including an instance while he was golfing at Trump International Golf Club in Florida, and another at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in which a bullet clipped his ear.

The suspected shooter, Cole Tomas Allen, was apprehended and arrested at the scene. He did not make it to the ballroom, but was armed with a shotgun, handgun, and multiple knives when he attempted to rush a security checkpoint, according to the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department. Allen, a 31-year-old teacher from Torrance, California, was staying as a guest at the hotel when the dinner was scheduled to take place. He left behind a written “manifesto” in which he detailed his intent to target Trump administration officials, a senior U.S. official told CBS News.

President Trump is being sued by two watchdog groups for an internal White House memo asserting that text messages between officials could be deleted, regardless of a law stating the opposite.

The lawsuit was filed Friday by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

“These text messages capture the day-to-day business of the most powerful office in the country—and arguably the world,” the Freedom of Press Foundation’s Lauren Harper told The New York Times, arguing that the memo “sanctifies” the notion that Trump and his Cabinet “get to decide what becomes part of the American story.”

This all comes after the Justice Department claimed that the post-Watergate Presidential Records Act was unconstitutional earlier this month. And just a day after that, the White House sent that memo around, asserting that text messages between officials didn’t need to be kept unless they were “the sole record of official decision-making.” The memo is cited in the watchdog groups’ lawsuit.

Beyond text messages, the memo relaxes restrictions on emails from personal accounts and general record-keeping.

This lackadaisical approach is not new within the Trump administration. Trump has been known to tear important documents into little pieces and leave them on the floor, and was of course criminally indicted for taking classified records to his home in Florida after losing the 2020 election.

Even the State Department recognizes that the U.S. entered the Iran war on behalf of Israel.

A government release written earlier this week by Reed D. Rubinstein, the department’s legal adviser, detailed how the U.S. “is engaged in this conflict at the request of and in the collective self-defense of its Israeli ally, as well as in the exercise of the United States’ own inherent right of self-defense.” The release cited multiple letters issued by the agency to the U.N. Security Council as evidence of the apparent connection.

But the candid admission directly contradicts the White House and Donald Trump, who has repeatedly insisted that Israel had nothing to do with his decision to spark another unpopular Middle East war. Just this week, Trump complained online about the circling narrative, claiming on Truth Social that “Israel never talked me into the war with Iran” but that “the results of Oct. 7th, added to my lifelong opinion that IRAN CAN NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON, did.”

U.S. involvement in the war was reportedly arranged following a February 11 meeting between Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and several U.S. and Israeli officials in the White House Situation Room, The New York Times reported earlier this month.

It was reportedly Netanyahu’s direct influence—and the ensuing pressure campaign—that thrust America into the war. U.S. military commanders advised Trump that components of Netanyahu’s plan to attack Iran were “farcical,” but by that point, Trump had already been inspired to throw over Tehran’s theocratic regime.

It’s likely that Netanyahu continues to hold the reins. Last month, Trump told The Times of Israel that the decision to end the Iran war will be a “mutual” decision he makes with the Israeli leader—though Israel has not made peace negotiations easy, repeatedly defying fragile ceasefire arrangements by relentlessly bombing its regional neighbors.

It is not clear exactly what the war in Iran has accomplished. Together, the U.S. and Israel have killed thousands of Iranian civilians and obliterated Iranian civilian infrastructure. Meanwhile, 13 U.S. soldiers have died. But the regime has not been overthrown—if anything, it’s gotten more extreme.

The war also spiked the cost of living for people around the world and agitated international relations—particularly between the U.S. and longtime allies in the western hemisphere. It has cost American taxpayers more than $1 billion per day (the current total is estimated at more than $60 billion) and sparked a political rejection of MAGA ideology across the U.S. as the American public becomes more and more disillusioned with its increasingly infirm, unstable, and volatile president.

Republican Representative Thomas Kean Jr. of western New Jersey hasn’t voted on a single bill since March 5. Apparently, he’s been ill.

Kean Jr. and his staff never explained to his constituents why the lawmaker was suddenly missing in action, but the 57-year-old politician was recently willing to share an update with Republican leadership.

House Speaker Mike Johnson told ABC News Friday that he spoke with Kean over the phone the day before, during which the lawmaker explained that he has been dealing with an unspecified “personal health matter.”

“I was happy to speak to Tom Kean Jr. this afternoon by phone,” Johnson said, referring to their Thursday call. “He is attending to a personal health matter and expects to be back to 100 percent very soon. Tom is one of the most dedicated and hardest-working members of Congress, and I am grateful for all he does and will continue to do to serve New Jerseyans and our country.”

That lone response was the culmination of a small pressure campaign led by the other two House Republicans from New Jersey: Representatives Chris Smith and Jeff Van Drew. Both were unable to make contact with Kean. Van Drew told Politico that it had been “radio silence” from their conservative colleague.

New York Republicans were similarly stumped in their efforts to call and text Kean, while other Republicans—such as Representative Don Bacon—were completely unaware of their ally’s absence until they failed to find him on the House floor earlier this week.

“I was looking for him,” Bacon said Wednesday. “I didn’t know it was that long.”

Kean’s staff told Politico on Wednesday that the lawmaker was struggling with health issues, but did not provide additional details. Harrison Neely, a strategist for the lawmaker, told the publication that Kean will be “back on a regular full schedule very soon.”

Kean was elected to represent New Jersey’s 7th congressional district in 2022, and is months away from being thrust into a contentious midterm reelection cycle. He is currently unchallenged in the Garden State’s Republican primary, scheduled for June 2, but is likely to face tremendous opposition from Democrats come November. Over the last several months, New Jersey’s 7th congressional district has shifted from a “lean Republican” advantage to a toss-up, according to an analysis by the Cook Political Report.

It sure seems that the Trump administration is trying to pull a fast one on Senator Thom Tillis.

Just hours after the Department of Justice announced Friday that it had dropped the investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell over the renovation of the central bank’s Washington headquarters, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed that the case was still ongoing.

“The case is not necessarily dropped, it’s just being moved over to the inspector general who has critical tools at their disposal to continue to look into the financial mismanagement at the Fed,” Leavitt said while speaking to reporters.

As a member of the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, Tillis has repeatedly vowed to exercise his ability to single-handedly block Trump’s nominee to chair the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, until the investigation into Powell is dropped. Committee Democrats are united in blocking Warsh, so Tillis’s single “no” vote can tip the scales.

Tillis has said he believes Donald Trump wasn’t behind the investigation into Powell, even though the president has mocked and threatened to fire him repeatedly. Tillis suggested instead that it was the work of “somebody in the DOJ” who was hoping to “maybe garner favor from somebody in the White House,” according to NBC News.

Leavitt didn’t even bother to pretend the president wasn’t behind the investigation. “This has obviously been a priority for the president,” she said. “So the investigation still continues, it’s just under a different authority.”