Here’s Who Convinced Trump to Block ICE’s Pause on Traffic Stops

Media reports are shedding a bit more light behind the scenes of President Donald Trump’s decision to quickly undo a suspension of Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicle stops.

The initial directive was first reported Tuesday, the morning after an ICE agent shot and killed Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero during a traffic stop in Maine. That fatal incident came just days after Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was killed in Houston in a similar situation. The command would have halted stops by ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division while its agents received additional training.

The next morning, Trump went public with his objections, overturning the change in a Truth Social post. “We CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools,” he wrote, “THE TRAFFIC STOP!”

It remains unclear whether the president was aware of the vehicle-stop suspension before it was issued. Officials at DHS and ICE told The Atlantic it’s “highly unlikely” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin would have moved forward with the change without the White House’s green light. (“Not a chance,” one DHS source told the magazine. “Someone got into the big boss’s ear. Three-ring circus.”)

But a high-ranking administration official claimed that Trump had not known about it, The Atlantic reports, and that Mullin never received the White House’s blessing. According to CNN’s sources, neither Mullin nor Tom Homan, the White House’s border czar, made Trump aware of the pause beforehand.

The night after the freeze was first reported, Trump was “livid,” according to Axios, airing grievances about the move to his advisers. CNN reports that the president grew “furious after watching coverage of the temporary change in policy that suggested he was weakening his immigration enforcement.” As one administration official told The Atlantic, the president believed it would “make them all look weak.”

And indeed, criticisms were pouring in from prominent MAGA anti-immigrant extremists, including Steve Bannon and disgraced former Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino, as well as officials in DHS and ICE—one of whom groused to the conservative Daily Wire, “Numbers are going down, we can’t do sh*t.”

Following Trump’s outburst, Mullin, despite apparently being behind the directive, announced that he was now “on the same page” as the president.

Republicans are reportedly “scared shitless” by what President Trump might say during his primetime address on election security on Thursday night. While he hasn’t said what specifically he’ll discuss, he’s promised that it will be “really big news.”

“The people I talk to are scared shitless.... It’s not scared shitless about the text of what he’s going to say, it’s, what does he add to the text?” an anonymous former Trump staffer told Politico on Thursday. “From the White House, they would prefer to be talking about economic conditions improving.... And any second of the day that’s not spent talking about that right now I’m sure frustrates many in the administration.”

Economic conditions are not improving, especially given the rekindled aggression in the Strait of Hormuz—making this election speech all the more troublesome for the GOP.

“If you’re asking me, when moms and dads lie down to sleep at night and can’t, what are they mostly worried about? I would say cost of living,” Louisiana Senator Joe Kennedy said. “That’s what I believe, but he’s the president and he was elected by the people, and he can talk about whatever he wants.”

Others on the right feel more bullish about Trump’s coming announcement.

“The election integrity revelations coming on Thursday and thereafter will be the exact tonic the MAGA grassroots base need to fire them up — to remind them of what they are really fighting for in these crucial November elections,” former Trump adviser Steve Bannon proclaimed.

Trump is expected to use his speech to highlight the declassification of intel documents that allegedly reveal foreign interference in the 2020 election. What else Trump will say is anyone’s guess, but one thing is certain: He’ll have his party members on the edges of their seats.

Vice President JD Vance is frustrating the Secret Service with his personal and family travel. 

MS NOW reports that last week, agents complained about a request to fly Vance’s son to a golf lesson across town on a helicopter. The trip to Joint Base Andrews, which has a secure, world-class golf center, would have involved a military helicopter crew on Marine Two, the helicopter that carries the vice president,  but was canceled at the last minute due to severe thunderstorms and high winds in and around Washington, D.C. 

It’s not the first time that Secret Service agents have been frustrated with last-minute travel demands from Vance and his family. Some of that has to do with Vance having young children, as the first vice president with such a family since Al Gore in the 1990s. Vance and his family, with three children aged nine, six, and four, have used the helicopter at the last minute to look at houses to rent or buy in Middleburg, Virginia. Vance’s wife, Usha, is expecting a fourth child later this month. 

Previous vice presidents and senior administration officials traditionally told the Secret Service of travel plans days in advance, especially regarding their families. But one unnamed agent told MS NOW that the Vances “change everything.” 

“They don’t stick to their schedules, and that costs shit tons of taxpayer money,” the agent said. 

Last minute, quickly arranged trips require agents to hastily change their schedules, often canceling planned days off and altering other plans for what agents call “off the record,” or OTR, movements. They have to rush to their new location and come up with new security plans on the fly, and repeatedly putting the Secret Service through this is bad for morale, agents told MS NOW. 

“The detail is tired of them not giving notice on things and making everything an OTR,” an unnamed source told MS NOW. “He [Vance] thinks he can still move around like a U.S. senator.”

The use of a military helicopter for a child’s schedule is unprecedented, with agents usually using SUVs to ferry children around, current and former Secret Service supervisors told MS NOW. Using the helicopter for the golf lesson would have required approval from the White House Military Office, which reports to President Trump. The helicopter costs $16,000 to $24,600 in taxpayer funds for every hour of use, according to estimates from the 2022 Department of Defense budget.

“That is RIDICULOUS,” an anonymous source said in a message to MS NOW. “Pence and Harris never pulled anything like that.”

Agents have made coins and badges mocking Vance’s last-minute travel demands, incorporating the vice president’s secret service name, Bobcat. The coins and stickers have a picture of a Bobcat’s head with the words “Bobcat OTR Survivors Club.” The logo includes the motto, “Advance. OTR. Repeat.”

In a statement, the vice president’s office told MS NOW that “The Vances are grateful to the men and women of the U.S. Secret Service who serve our country with distinction. While protecting a Vice President with a large policy portfolio and a young and growing family presents a unique challenge, agents of the Secret Service do so with excellence every day.”

The White House is planning to strip commercial driver’s licenses from undocumented immigrants and effectively automatically transfer them to military veterans.

“My administration will soon take historic action to get illegal alien truck drivers who are just killing a lot of people—they can’t read signs, a lot of them are on drugs or alcohol, and they shouldn’t be driving these things. They came in totally illegally and they—we don’t want ’em,” Trump said Wednesday at a defense and innovation summit in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

“But they are driving all over American roadways and we’re going to replace them with proud American veterans,” Trump continued. “We’re going to take veterans, and we’re going to teach them a lot about driving trucks.”

“And in many cases they know we’re going to say any American who has driven a truck for our military will automatically be eligible for a commercial driver’s license,” he said, noting that while left-wing politicians are opposed to the idea, it doesn’t matter because “we’re the ones who are running it.”

The announcement comes two weeks after Pennsylvania State Trooper Michael Pahira Jr. was struck and killed by an undocumented immigrant driving a semi truck. The driver, Michael Bon, has since been charged with vehicular homicide and involuntary manslaughter. ICE filed a detainer for Bon the day after his arrest, according to a Homeland Security press release.

The initiative to strip noncitizens of commercial driver’s licenses has already begun. Roughly 200,000 immigrants had their commercial licenses revoked in March, preventing them from driving semi trucks, buses, and tractor trailers despite the fact that they had already passed the tests and met the requirements to drive such vehicles.

Beyond that, it’s not clear what type of vehicle handling in the military would provide adequate experience or training for a commercial license stateside. Granting such licenses to untested drivers could make the roads less safe.

During negotiations with the U.S. in Switzerland last month, the Iranian government reportedly warned Vice President JD Vance that President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner were undermining the chances of a peace deal.

Drop Site News reports, citing an unnamed Iranian official, that Iranian negotiators believed Witkoff and Kushner were more interested in trying to profit off the talks in financial markets than reaching a lasting agreement. The Iranians were also worried about Kushner and Witkoff leaking information to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Drop Site.

The Iranians sent a private message to Vance through an intermediary following earlier communication through Pakistani mediators. Those earlier communications reportedly included written documentation that “individuals close to President Trump” were using the war and diplomatic talks to manipulate markets.

“Even before the Islamabad talks kicked off [in April], we had already sent multiple messages to Trump through the Pakistanis, warning them about [Witkoff’s] overall destructive role in the previous negotiation,” the Iranian official told Drop Site. When the U.S. didn’t address the Iranians’ concerns, they sought to communicate with Vance “through an exclusive channel.”

Drop Site said it couldn’t confirm whether the intermediary delivered the message, although the Iranian official said his government was confident Vance got it. The Trump administration denied everything.

“A message of this nature was never conveyed to the Vice President or his team,” an unnamed U.S. government official told Drop Site. “Additionally, any insinuation that the other members of the president’s trusted negotiating team are operating under motives other than serving the president and delivering on his mission is false.”

Additionally, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly further denied the report and attacked Drop Site.

“No such message was ever transmitted to the United States. It’s sad that Drop Site News ‘reporters’ are so filled with hate for America and devoid of respect for themselves that they have become full-throated propagandists for the Iranian regime,” Kelly said.

With negotiations breaking down and hostilities resuming between the U.S. and Iran, the Iranian government does have an incentive to make the Trump administration look worse than usual. Unfortunately, even if this report is false, the White House’s track record makes it seem all too plausible.

Market manipulation has become all too common in Trump’s second term, particularly during the Iran war, with Trump making carefully timed statements that seem designed to create short-term stock gains. Suspiciously timed bets on prediction markets during the war also raised suspicions that insider trading was taking place within the White House, with the Trump administration even warning staff not to bet on world events.

It’s not the first time the business activities of Kushner, a real estate developer, seem to have overlapped with his work for the Trump administration, either. He and Witkoff reportedly pitched real estate projects and an investment fund to sweeten a deal with Iran. Kushner is also involved in the administration’s plans for Gaza reconstruction, where he has floated real estate projects too.