“Go After Anybody”: ICE Gets Terrifying Marching Orders in California

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has quietly launched a 45-day immigration crackdown in California ahead of the midterm elections, instructing its officers to “go after anybody.”

The so-called “Operation Safe California” has not been formally announced yet, but two sources told the Washington Examiner Wednesday that operations have been underway for several days.

One source told the outlet that officers were “told to go after anybody, they can pick up anybody.”

The Examiner suggested that means that federal agents will target any undocumented immigrants, not just people with criminal records. There is no evidence to suggest that ICE has ever been so discerning.

News of this secret operation comes as early voting began this week in California, which has been a consistent target for punishment by the Trump administration. Voting rights groups cited an ICE detention that took place in Santa Maria, California, on Monday in the same area that voters had to pass through to reach a ballot drop box.

This latest surge of ICE activity comes more than a year after federal agents descended on Los Angeles in June 2025, which led to widespread protests and violent encounters with law enforcement. Of the hundreds of people detained as part of those raids, seven in 10 people had no criminal convictions.

A second source told the Examiner that “management want numbers.” Last year, White House deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller instructed ICE to arrest 3,000 immigrants a day, a demand that has overwhelmed the agency and resulted in inhumane and degrading detention practices. Now it seems, the Trump administration plans to turn up the temperature.

American diplomats are supposed to represent the interests of the U.S. above everything else.

David Milstein, an aide to U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, was running cover for the Israeli government, suppressing reports critical of Israeli actions, The New York Times reports. Milstein, according to several unnamed sources, quashed reports from the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem documenting Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank—including against Americans.

Milstein sent a cable from the embassy to Washington praising Israel for cracking down on Israeli settler violence, when in reality, embassy staff had drafted a report saying that the Israeli government wasn’t taking action. After Congress raised concerns about how Israeli authorities and settlers have killed nine American citizens, Milstein suppressed another embassy report, hindering lawmakers from investigating further.

Milstein also demanded any communications from the embassy’s section on Palestinian affairs go through him. This led to the embassy’s cables dropping from several per week to only a few per month, sources told the Times. They said that this kind of intervention is unprecedented for the embassy, and is preventing the U.S. government from getting accurate information about Israel from diplomatic channels.

Trump has rarely criticized Israel or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his second term as president, and he chose to appoint Huckabee, a Christian Zionist and staunch supporter of Israel, as ambassador. It’s not clear if Milstein’s actions have Huckabee’s blessing, but human rights groups and U.S. allies have raised concerns about all of these issues.

Last month, Canada, France, and the U.K. announced sanctions on Israeli settlements in the West Bank. That’s unlikely to happen in the U.S. anytime soon—and in fact the U.S. has threatened tariffs in response to the sanctions—but one would still expect U.S. diplomats to accurately document what is happening where they are stationed. In the case of Israel, however, the truth is actively being hidden.

President Donald Trump did nothing as one of his rallygoers attacked a peaceful protester.

Trump struggled to get through his address at a campaign rally in San Antonio, Texas, Wednesday night as his remarks were repeatedly interrupted by at least seven separate protesters.

As one demonstrator made his way out of the arena through the jeering crowd, a rallygoer in a red hat seized the protester’s shirt and yanked his hair, pulling him to the floor.

Other rallygoers appeared to intervene—but not the president of the United States. Instead, he basked in the roar of an angry crowd, wandering aimlessly around the stage. “Let me ask you a question, is there anything like a Trump rally? Is there anything like it?” Trump asked, smiling broadly.

In a separate incident, a rallygoer wearing a white cowboy hat stalked after two protesters as they were directed out of the arena. The rallygoer smacked one of the protesters’ baseball hats off and followed them threateningly, pumping his fists. He even appeared to lunge or kick one of the protesters, before being held back by a security officer.

Trump’s unwillingness to condemn his supporters’ violence (and in many cases, his decision to encourage it) is obviously nothing new. But the failure to address violence that unfolds before his own eyes is still shameful behavior from any leader—let alone the president of the United States.

Speaking at the rally, the president told demonstrators to “get the hell out of here,” and claimed they were “paid by enemies of our nation.” After the sixth interruption, Trump tried to laugh it off. “You know, I never talk about looks of a person, but those are really bad looking people,” Trump said.

More audio of Texas Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton has leaked, this time featuring the embattled lawmaker telling people depending on federal benefits programs to “suck it up” and prepare for cuts.

“The growing out of this is part of the solution, and making some reasonable cuts to mandatory spending—you’re gonna have to do it,” Paxton said at the same donor meeting that three other leaks have sprouted from, as first reported by The Texas Tribune.

“There is no solution. That’s just the reality. We have to suck it up,” he continued. “From Republican presidents to Democrats, we’ve been spending like crazy. And no one seems to care. And it’s gonna bankrupt us.”

Just about everything Paxton has said behind closed doors suggests that he is both out of step with President Trump and out of touch with the average Texas voter.

“At this point I wouldn’t be totally surprised if the next leak from this fundraiser is: ‘Honestly, you should probably just vote for Talarico,’” joked liberal podcaster Jon Favreau.

In previous leaks from the meeting last month, Paxton called Trump a drag on his campaign and said Trump’s war on Iran was raising prices and making it harder for him to campaign. Aside from the embarrassing amount of leaks, Paxton sounds like more of a “Never Trump” Republican rather than a willing Trump loyalist, as he portrayed himself during the primary election. This all comes as his long-awaited showdown with Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico draws nearer, with Talarico leading most polls by a small margin.

When Donald Trump gives, he expects something in return.

The revelation came amid an attack Wednesday night against Texas Representative Henry Cuellar, who Trump apparently believed should have become a Republican after he received a presidential pardon last year.

Speaking at a campaign rally in San Antonio, Texas, Trump insisted that he never expects quid pro quos when it comes to presidential pardons. But he then proved that untrue minutes later.

“I made no deal,” Trump declared, recalling his exchange with Cuellar. “I didn’t say, ‘Oh, I’ll give you the pardons if you turn Republican.’ I didn’t say that. No, I could have done that very easily but—where a crooked politician would have done that.

“But I thought there would be a good chance that Cuellar might say, ‘Wow, he did something really wonderful, you know, somebody has a heart.’”

The president then suggested Cuellar had been villainized by the Democratic Party and that he would have been welcomed into the Republican Party with open arms “if we asked.”

Just moments later, Trump mused about how Cuellar’s daughters had “begged” the president to pardon their father, and wished that they had used the “same level of charm to convince their mother and father to do the right thing.”

“I guess I expected maybe he wouldn’t run, or maybe he’d run maybe as a Republican, I don’t know,” Trump said.

Trump had shared similar thoughts on Truth Social hours prior when endorsing Cuellar’s opponent. The president accused Cuellar of a “tremendous act of disloyalty” and said Cuellar was an “extremely ungrateful person.”

“Henry Cuellar is a LOSER who, right now, should be serving a long-term jail sentence with his wife in a top level penitentiary,” Trump added.

The FBI raided Cuellar’s home and office in 2022 as part of a federal probe into the Texas Democrat’s ties to Azerbaijan. Cuellar and his wife faced a dozen charges of bribery, money laundering, and conspiracy—including allegations that they improperly accepted $600,000 in bribes from the central Asian country—before Trump intervened. At the time, Trump chalked up the charges to an improper intervention by the Biden administration, suggesting that his predecessor had weaponized the legal system to punish Cuellar for criticizing America’s immigration processes.