DOJ Tries to Unmask Reddit and X Users Who Criticized ICE

The Justice Department is trying to obtain the names, addresses, financial data, and other personal information of Reddit and X users who criticize ICE’s violent immigration tactics.

Bloomberg reported that U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro has subpoenaed the massive social media platforms for the information of two anonymous users who made negative comments toward ICE. They are now part of a criminal investigation, even as Pirro’s office has yet to alert them of the charges. Attorneys for the users believe the investigations could be focused on officer endangerment regarding revealing the location of an ICE agent but dispute that their clients committed any crimes.

This is a clear attempt at intimidation of dissent and muzzling free speech, and it isn’t the first time. In February, the Department of Homeland Security sent out dozens of subpoenas to Google, Reddit, Discord, and Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram), demanding they divulge the personal information of users who have criticized or helped locate ICE agents.

The Trump administration is paying close attention to every Reddit thread and Instagram comment that opposes its massively unpopular deportation units—and is trying to take legal action against them. This insecure authoritarianism is a real low, even for this administration, especially as Trump moves to pay his own supporters who actually committed real crimes from a $1.8 billion slush fund.

The Trump administration has doubled down on Donald Trump’s threats against Oman.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned Thursday that Washington “will not tolerate any effort to impose a tolling system in the Strait of Hormuz.”

“Oman, in particular, should know the U.S. Treasury will aggressively target any actors involved—directly or indirectly—in facilitating tolls for the strait and any willing partners will be penalized,” Bessent wrote in a statement posted to X.

“All nations should reject outright any efforts by Iran to disrupt the free flow of commerce,” he continued. “Tehran’s days of terrorizing the region and the world are over.”

Trump shocked attendees of a Cabinet meeting Wednesday when he casually threatened Oman, promising to blow the country up if it tried to take control of the strait, which Oman borders.

“It’s international waters, and Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow ’em up,” Trump said. “They understand that, they’ll be fine.”

The president insisted that “nobody” would control the Strait of Hormuz, and that the U.S. would instead “watch over” the passage.

But Bessent’s toll ban would actually undermine Trump’s plan to make a buck off the vital trade route: The president pitched the idea of imposing a toll on ships traversing the Strait of Hormuz back in April, although it was not immediately clear how the U.S. would obtain control of the foreign waterway, let alone toll it.

Approximately one-fifth of all crude oil shipments funnel through the strait, which is situated between Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Most of that oil is moved toward China or India. In 2024, the U.S. imported roughly 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day through the strait, accounting for about 7 percent of total U.S. crude imports, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Nonetheless, the shuttered strait has caused a crisis of global proportions. The average cost of gas in the U.S. is $4.42 per gallon, with large swaths of the country pushing $5 a gallon, according to the AAA’s price tracker. That’s about 50 percent higher than prices were before the war started. Costs have also gone up for the rest of the world, a reality that has only aggravated U.S. alliances.

President Trump on Tuesday again refiled a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over a July 2025 report that he submitted a letter and explicit drawing to a birthday album for Jeffrey Epstein.

A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit last month, ruling he couldn’t claim the paper published the story with actual malice. Then Trump refiled and ran into another stumbling block on May 13, when U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles ruled that he couldn’t use the discovery process in his claims that the newspaper defamed him. In the new lawsuit, Trump’s lawyers wrote that the Journal’s reporters tried to “falsely pass off as fact that President Trump, in 2003, wrote, drew, and signed this letter” but “failed to show proof.”

Trump’s reasoning for the lawsuit is hollow, especially considering that the House Oversight Committee included the birthday book, complete with the drawing from Trump, in a September release of Epstein materials from his estate. It’s more likely that Trump is trying to shake down the Journal for a big settlement and intimidate its owners, the Murdoch family, into favorable coverage.

It’s a pattern that Trump has followed against other media companies, which ended up forking over money that supposedly is going to Trump’s presidential library. Trump also has pending defamation lawsuits against The New York Times for $15 billion and the BBC for $10 billion. It seems that he won’t stop until he’s made them pay for reporting that he doesn’t like.

The Trump administration is giving Venezuela’s new leadership a free pass.

The White House has instructed federal prosecutors in Miami to avoid criminal investigations into acting President Delcy Rodríguez, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

Rodríguez has been on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s radar since at least 2018, and has been tied to all sorts of criminal activity ranging from drug trafficking to gold smuggling. But all of that is apparently being brushed under the rug, as the Trump administration shows blatant favoritism toward the leader it installed earlier this year.

It is not clear if prosecutors were working toward charging Rodríguez with a crime. A Justice Department spokesperson told the AP in an email that “there was never an investigation into her to shut down.”

U.S. officials told the AP that the directive was intended to ease Rodríguez’s transition into power in Venezuela, and to avoid further destabilizing the oil-rich nation.

Donald Trump ordered U.S. forces to invade Venezuela in early January, sending hundreds of troops through its capital city, Caracas, to capture the country’s 13-year ruler, Nicolás Maduro. Maduro and his wife were transported to New York to face federal narcotics charges, to which they both have pleaded not guilty.

Trump failed to notify Congress before doing so, but he didn’t forget to tip off his friends at America’s biggest oil companies, which stand to gain the most from America’s newfound control over Venezuela’s oil supply—the largest in the world.

Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice president, was the major political benefactor of his sudden abduction. Despite her criminal affiliations, the Trump administration has opened the door for her to do business with the U.S., lifting sanctions (that were placed during Trump’s first term after she undermined Venezuelan democracy by supporting Maduro’s authoritarian rule) and allowing her to reestablish ties with U.S. banks, according to the Associated Press.

Beyond that, Trump has uplifted her name in an effort to sanitize her character, describing her as a “terrific person.”

Katie Miller doxed the Democrats’ social media manager after the party’s official account called her husband an “ugly fuck” following his transphobic comments towards Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico.

“The Democrats made history in Texas by nominating their first transgender senate candidate,” Miller wrote Wednesday over a post of Talarico, a baseless and nonsensical insult. Talarico is not trans, but has expressed support.

“Shut up you ugly fuck,” the Democrats responded, easily ratioing Miller’s original post.

That harsh, scary language got his wife, Katie Miller posting in his defense.

“Paulina Mangubat is who runs @TheDemocrats account. She’s 30, unmarried with no kids. Put your name on it next time,” Miller wrote, posting a picture of Mangubat. “This is what a sad, unhappy, female Liberal looks like. It’s why Pew reports 50% of them have been diagnosed with a mental condition.”

For what it’s worth, Miller’s post is pure projection. In the single picture she posted Mangubat looks nice, put together, and professional—much better than her husband who started this entire exchange in the first place.

Miller then went on Fox News to talk about how saying “ugly fuck” on X to her husband is the kind of behavior that led to the multiple failed assassination attempts on Donald Trump, even calling it “violent”—a ridiculous argument given Trump’s own violent rhetoric. Meanwhile, her husband is part of an administration that has shot and killed American citizens in the street. They know very well what real violence is. And what’s lost here is that this is all part of a last-gasp GOP attempt to slander Talarico because they’re afraid he’ll beat their boy Ken Paxton in the midterms.

For her part, Mangubat responded in good nature to Miller’s deranged post.

“Well, now seems like a good time to share that I’m getting married! We just put down the deposit on the venue and bought my dress lol,” she wrote. “I didn’t end up picking this one but I thought it looked nice.”