GOP Governor Leading Immigration Crackdown Hires Undocumented Workers

Republican Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen, a staunch supporter of President Trump’s extreme immigration crackdown, relied on undocumented Hispanic labor to build his multimillion-dollar pig-farming business, according to The New York Times.

As governor, Pillen has made Nebraska law enforcement collaborate with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, turned a former prison into an immigration center called the “Cornhusker Clink,” and referred to undocumented immigrants as “criminal illegal aliens” who are “the worst of the worst.” But he apparently doesn’t mind them when they’re making him rich.

According to the Times report, the Pillen Family Farms company’s use of undocumented labor has been an “open secret,” with at least 20 of the farms hiring undocumented immigrants. David Armendariz, a former employee from Mexico without legal status, told the Times that Pillen Family Farms accepted his fake ID. “Everyone knows that it’s not your name,” he said, “but they don’t ask you what your name is.” Armendariz said that as he worked there, he saw more and more Hispanic workers, many of them undocumented.

Pillen Family Farms has not been audited or inspected by ICE in the last 15 years.

The company apparently started tightening its requirements when Pillen started running for governor in 2022—and began hiring Mexican immigrants on special visas. Pillen himself has denied any knowledge of the undocumented workers on his farms.

“Jim Pillen never knowingly hired an illegal immigrant and went above and beyond the legal requirements to verify the immigration status of his employees,” a spokesperson stated. “[Governor Pillen] has the strongest immigration record in Nebraska history. Under the governor’s leadership, Nebraska has assisted the federal government in the deportation of nearly 1,000 illegal immigrants through its variety of partnerships with federal entities.”

“Four years of Jim Pillen has taught us one thing: What he says and what he does are two different things. His farm and personal business are just the latest proof,” Nebraska gubernatorial nominee Lynne Walz wrote on Wednesday. “He’s made a career holding other people to standards he won’t keep himself. The people paying the price are always the same—workers, families, the folks who can’t write a campaign check. Nebraska deserves better.”

The contradictions Walz points to also highlight how extremely intertwined immigration and labor are. Pillen Family Farms is not unique—many businesses and corporations knowingly hire undocumented immigrants from Mexico, Central, and South America because they know they’ll provide cheap labor with little oversight, which ultimately aids their bottom lines. And that’s what seems to matter most to people like Pillen.

Donald Trump gave Natalie Harp—and two other women in his administration—a hefty sum of cash last year.

The president gifted Harp $45,000 as a “cash gift for the holidays,” according to a copy of Harp’s most recent financial disclosure obtained by The Washington Post. That amount is equal to nearly a third of her $150,000 annual salary, according to the White House’s salary disclosure report to Congress.

Trump gave the same amount to his communications adviser Margo Martin, 31, and his deputy director of Oval Office operations Chamberlain Harris, 26. Harris also worked at the White House during Trump’s first term, and was tapped by the president last year to oversee the development of the White House ballroom project.

The director of Oval Office operations (and an alleged co-conspirator in Trump’s classified documents lawsuit) Walt Nauta also received a lump sum of $20,000, according to his own financial disclosure. Nauta is paid $175,000 a year.

A White House official told the Associated Press that Trump “has a longstanding practice of giving Christmas gifts to people in his orbit, including at times employees and aides, both in government and in his time in the private sector.” The official did not elaborate on whether other White House employees had received similar monetary presents, but added that the gifts were not related to “individuals’ official government duties, and therefore are entirely permissible under relevant legal and ethical standards.”

But former authorities on the matter disagree. Richard Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, told the Post that the payments seem to violate a federal statute that disallows the supplementation of administrative salaries from outside sources.

Harp has been a near-constant presence at the president’s side during his second term, incessantly posting to his social media accounts on his behalf to create the illusion that he is always online and always reacting. Another of Harp’s responsibilities involves handing him printouts—particularly of positive news coverage of himself or his administration—to satisfy his preference for hard copy. The unique role has granted Harp a tremendous amount of influence over what Trump sees while also embittering some of her White House colleagues, who have taken to calling her the “human printer.”

But it’s been Harp’s unusually familiar relationship with the president that has caught the public’s interest in recent months. In August, it was revealed that Harp had written the president adoring notes in 2023, telling him that “you are all that matters to me,” describing Trump as her “guardian and protector,” and signing off on the letter to her boss with: “All my heart.”

The situation got even weirder when it became clear that Harp was one of the few people who accompanied Trump through a secret plane transfer in Turkey, shuttling him from Air Force One to a military plane via a catering truck, during an Iranian surface-to-air missile threat. Other high-ranking Trump officials—including State Secretary Marco Rubio—were left behind on the decoy plane.

Trump and Harp’s dynamic spurred more backlash after Trump publicly defended her when Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff suggested that the duo had an untoward relationship. Around the same time, the White House cropped Harp out of photos from the Freedom 250 Grand Prix.

Never forget? Senator Ted Cruz suggested that President Donald Trump may not be able to remember what happened on 9/11.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked the Texas Republican Tuesday night what he made of Trump’s widely publicized—and decontextualized—comments at his weird 9/11 tribute earlier that day.

In the midst of claiming that he’d taken a large group of construction workers to Ground Zero “right after it happened,” Trump recounted being carried out from under One Liberty Plaza by firefighters who were afraid the building would collapse. Trump’s disjointed retelling left open the possibility that he was describing an incident from the same day.

“He’s saying that there is evidence that he was there right after, I mean, he’s kind of making it seem like he was pulled out of the rubble, though, with the firefighters,” Collins said. “Do you think that’s appropriate?”

“September 11th was 25 years ago,” Cruz said. “It was a horrific moment for our entire country. And you can doubt whatever you want about Donald Trump, but the man is a New Yorker, he loves New York, and I have every doubt that what he’s conveying there is what he experienced and it was a traumatic experience for all of us.”

Cruz appeared to misspeak about his “every doubt.” Still, his comment suggested that Trump’s memory may not be what it used to be. Add it to the list of dozens of other instances of the president’s apparent cognitive decline.

The president’s early-bird 9/11 tribute was undoubtedly a total Trump-fest. He repeatedly veered into rhetoric boosting his own disastrous agenda, supporting the war in Iran, and attacking Democratic Socialists.

One Liberty Plaza did not fall down, and Trump’s anecdote only served to make light of the experience of New Yorkers who didn’t have their own skyscrapers from which to survey the damage and chaos of 9/11.

President Trump isn’t happy that his half-truths about where he was during the September 11 attacks are being called out. 

On Truth Social Tuesday night, Trump posted an angry rant attacking New York magazine for questioning his story of where he was on 9/11. 

“The Failing New York Magazine wrote a story that I wasn’t down at the World Trade Center after the Tragedy of September 11th, because nobody saw me there. Well, I don’t think I would be the first thing on anyone’s mind but, I was there, obviously not on the same day as the collapse, but shortly thereafter, with a large group of Construction Workers,” Trump posted. “The Fake News doesn’t want to listen, even when they know their story is false. That’s why their approval ratings are at an All Time LOW, but mine are VERY HIGH!”

In a speech at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., Tuesday, Trump claimed that he was working on a “big building” during the attacks, and that he took a construction crew to Ground Zero “right after this happened.” Then, Trump claimed, while he was at the U.S. Steel Building, it began to creak and two firefighters were forced to pull him away from the area. 

“I’ll never forget. Two firemen—we thought it was coming down on top of us and two firemen, big strong guys—and I’m not the smallest guy in the world—they grabbed me under the arms and said, ‘Gotta get out of here.’ And they literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. I’m big. They lifted me up and started running with me. I said, ‘Fellas, I can run myself.’ But they were amazing,” Trump said. 

CNN’s Daniel Dale debunked Trump’s narrative, posting on X that Trump’s story Tuesday wasn’t the same story that he’s told in previous years. 

“While campaigning in 2016, he told a version of today’s story about being whisked away from One Liberty Plaza by big firemen, but he said in 2016 that the alleged incident happened ‘a couple of days’ after 9/11 and claimed the creaky building was ‘not so far from us,’ instead of leaving open the impression he might’ve been a) inside it b) on 9/11 itself,” Dale posted. 

That was one of the many refutations of Trump’s story in the New York article, which cited other tall tales Trump has told about the 9/11 attacks. But to Trump, with his ongoing cognitive decline and massive ego, “Everything I said was exactly accurate.”  

The Justice Department has essentially ghosted the European law enforcement agencies investigating deceased sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, refusing to respond to their requests for assistance, according to The Washington Post.

Law enforcement officials in Poland, Norway, and Latvia told the Post they reached out to the U.S for mutual legal assistance, but none of them received responses. Britain, which has asked for unredacted copies of some Epstein files, did not publicly comment, though investigations there have stalled as well, thanks to the DOJ.

“We are in communication with officials from the Department of Justice, but they have not at this time approved the request,” Marianne Bender, state prosecutor for the Norwegian Okokrim unit, said in a statement. “This is very unfortunate for the Norwegian investigation, and Okokrim hopes that the U.S. Department of Justice will approve our request at some point.”

Lativian state police spokeswoman Simona Gravite made a similar claim, stating that Latvia “sent several requests for mutual legal assistance to the relevant authorities in the United States. However, no responses have yet been received.”

The DOJ has even refused to cooperate with Britain in its investigation into longtime politician Peter Mandelson—who was stripped of his title as U.K ambassador to the U.S. and forced to resign from the House of Lords. The Telegraph reported last month that the DOJ would not hand over unredacted copies of some files to assist in the investigation into whether Mandelson gave confidential government information to Epstein.

This stunning lack of cooperation from the DOJ is par for the course at this point. Domestically, it has done everything they can to deny the victims—and the American public—straight, unredacted answers into an investigation that President Trump made a crucial part of his campaign platform.

If Attorney General Todd Blanche can’t bring himself to meet genuinely with Epstein survivors in the U.S., it should come as no surprise that the Justice Department is acting in bad faith in European investigations as well. This is particularly sad. Epstein was extremely active in Europe, and international cooperation could have very well led to new connections in Epstein’s universe. Yet the DOJ continues to be uncooperative and nontransparent.