The Justice Department dealt a significant blow to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' immigration detention project on Wednesday, declaring that a $608 million FEMA reimbursement cannot fund construction or renovation of the facility known as "Alligator Alcatraz." Instead, it can only finance routine operating expenses. The ruling contradicts previous claims by both Trump and DeSantis that federal funds would largely finance the state-run detention centers. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier acknowledged the reimbursement may not materialize at all. Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson stated there will be "no potential federal funding of the facility's design, siting, maintenance, or construction." The DOJ filing emerged from litigation by environmental and tribal groups seeking federal regulation of the facility. "Alligator Alcatraz," a walled tent complex in the Florida Everglades, reportedly houses non-criminal detainees pulled over in traffic stops despite claims it would contain only dangerous immigrants.
President Donald Trump's niece didn't hold back in an interview on Thursday when discussing the administration's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Mary Trump, a psychologist and author, has often criticized her uncle's administration and the president himself. During an interview with CNN's Erin Burnett on Thursday, Mary Trump said her uncle's statements about the Epstein files, and the Trump Department of Justice's efforts to obfuscate the files that have been released, show that Trump "has been acting like a guilty man."
"The fact of the matter is that, Donald, since the Epstein files have become an issue since he got back into the White House, he has been acting like a guilty man," Trump said. "And I think much more troubling is the extent to which the DOJ, which currently is acting as if it's his personal defense firm, is covering for him because the truth of the matter is, if he had no involvement in anything suspect, he more than anybody else would want full transparency."
The Trump administration has only released about 2% of the Epstein files in its possession, according to reports. And the files that is has released have undercut several claims Trump has made about his relationship with Epstein. For instance, Trump has claimed to have no knowledge of Epstein's crimes, yet called the Palm Beach Police Department with insider knowledge of Epstein's activities, according to one file.
A reporter who was unceremoniously ejected from Rep. Jasmine Crockett's campaign event for Texas Senate is speaking out in a piece for The Atlantic, describing her experience and what she believes it says about the campaign.
Crockett has sometimes been described as a rising star in the Democratic Party, for her ability to tear apart Republican witnesses in House committee hearings. Her main competition in the Senate primary is James Talarico, a Presbyterian minister and state representative who has been campaigning as a progressive unifier.
The reporter, Elaine Godfrey, has reportedly been on Crockett's bad side since writing a profile of her last year, in which she wrote a handful of unflattering personal details, including that Crockett used a headshot of herself as the lock screen on her phone.
When Godfrey showed up to a campaign event for Crockett's Senate run in Lubbock, she discovered the extent of those lingering ill feelings.
"As I attempted to join the other reporters interviewing the lawmaker, a woman with a badge approached me," wrote Godfrey. "'Are you Elaine?' she asked. I recognized her from the entrance of the event, where I had identified myself as she’d waved me into the building’s press area. Yes, I answered. 'Her team has asked you to leave,' she said. When I asked why, the staffer looked at her phone and read dutifully: 'They just said, ‘Elaine from Atlantic, white girl with a hat and notepad. She’s interviewing people in the crowd. She’s a top-notch hater and will spin. She needs to leave.’'"
Godfrey says she was promptly thrown out by armed guards, who "left me on the edge of a Texas-county road."
Crockett has denied that this took place, telling CBS News there is "no evidence" of any reporter being ejected from her events.
"Perhaps my — very real — ejection shouldn’t have come as a surprise," wrote Godfrey. "Crockett is not known for calm restraint. This, in fact, is core to her appeal. For the Democrats who are sick of their leaders wilting before President Trump like cut hydrangeas, Crockett is a refreshing exception."
"The two-term congresswoman has established herself as the most anti-MAGA candidate in the race and is unafraid to match the president’s vulgarity with insults of her own, such as when she referred to former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s 'bleach-blond, bad-built, butch body' and called Governor Greg Abbott, who uses a wheelchair, 'Governor Hot Wheels,'" she continued. "Crockett’s supporters believe that her pugnacity makes her well suited for this coarse, high-stakes political moment."
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sang the praises of tech billionaire Elon Musk after she claimed he helped expose spyware on her devices planted by her own staff.
Noem dropped the explosive claims during an hour-long podcast appearance with MAGA personality Patrick Bet-David released Thursday. The clip was flagged by The Daily Beast.
“I’ll tell you, Patrick, even from the time I came into this office, it was—Elon and his team were extremely helpful to me,” she said. “They helped me identify that some of my own employees in my department had downloaded software on my phone and my laptop to spy on me, to record our meetings.”
Noem claimed staffers spied on multiple political appointees before she took action.
“They had done that to several of the politicals,” she added. “And so we ended up bringing in people, and that was something that, if you didn’t have those technology experts here in the department looking at all of our laptops and our phones and recognizing that kind of software, it would still be happening today.”
The scandal-ridden DHS chief revealed the culprits were "brought in, polygraphed, fired." She also claimed her office requires regular sweeps for listening devices and discovered a secret file room containing classified documents now in the hands of attorneys.
Aliya Rahman, a disabled woman with autism from Minneapolis who was severely injured by President Donald Trump's immigration forces in January, claimed on Thursday that she was targeted for removal from the president's State of the Union address.
Rahman attended the address as a guest of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who claimed Rahman was "aggressively handled" while she was escorted out of the House chambers. Rahman was later charged with "unlawful conduct" for allegedly standing in silent protest during the speech, a claim she denied during an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on Thursday.
Rahman added that she wondered whether she was targeted for removal because she's spoken out against the Trump administration.
"I think you do have to ask that question, right?" Rahman said. "I can be kind of a cold, logical, autistic person sometimes, and what I am seeing is that the people to either side of me are standing up and not just standing up, but they're making noise. I was actually quiet. So if the issue is disruption, I'm not aware that anybody on the floor even knew I was standing up."
Rahman spoke out against the Trump administration during a hearing in early February about how Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers treated civilians in Minneapolis. She told the committee of all Democrats that the officers who dragged her from her car tore the rotator tendons in both of her shoulders, which prevented her from using the cane she needs for mobility.
She also described the horrific conditions inside the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis.
"The only thing I'm known for is giving testimony about what I saw inside the Whipple Center," Rahman said.
President Donald Trump's Justice Department is suing the state of Oklahoma for refusing to turn over confidential information from its voter rolls.
According to KOSU, "Earlier this month, State Election Board Secretary Paul Ziriax wrote in a letter first obtained by Oklahoma News 4 that he could not legally share voter data with the DOJ. The Trump administration disagrees with Ziriax’s interpretation. Oklahoma was among five states sued Thursday by the DOJ."
Among the information the DOJ demanded from the Oklahoma State Election Board is the driver's license and Social Security numbers of people registered to vote — a demand they have made in other states as well.
"Accurate, well-maintained voter rolls are a requisite for the election integrity that the American people deserve," said Attorney General Pam Bondi in a statement announcing the lawsuit. "This latest series of litigation underscores that This (sic) Department of Justice is fulfilling its duty to ensure transparency, voter roll maintenance, and secure elections across the country."
A number of other states have also refused to hand over their voter rolls, and Oklahoma is not alone among Republican-controlled states. Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who famously rebuffed Trump's demands to "find" extra votes in 2020 and is currently running for governor, also did not comply with the order.
This comes as Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, who was elected as a hard-right candidate, has grown bolder in speaking out against the Trump administration's more controversial policies in recent months. In an interview this week, he criticized Trump for rolling back renewable energy projects and pursuing a no-tolerance mass deportation program.
A Minnesota judge threatened the Trump administration with criminal contempt on Thursday over repeated ignoring of court orders.
Judge Patrick Schiltz issued a scathing order Thursday, warning that he may pursue criminal contempt charges against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after finding a pattern of defiance he called unprecedented in American history. The order was flagged on Bluesky by Law Dork's Chris Geidner.
The judge said ICE had violated 97 court orders in 66 cases, and that an additional 113 violations across 77 more cases occurred largely after the government promised to improve compliance.
The ruling rebuked Daniel Rosen, the U.S. Attorney for Minnesota, who emailed the judge directly, accusing his Jan. 28 order of being "far beyond the pale of accuracy." After directing his clerks to independently verify every case, Schiltz concluded his original findings were essentially correct, and said Rosen's "statistically strong sample" was just the first 12 cases on a list of 75.
Schiltz noted that several government attorneys who had worked in good faith to achieve compliance — including civil division attorney Ana Voss — had since resigned.
"If anything is 'beyond the pale,' it is ICE’s continued violation of the orders of this Court. Increasingly, this Court has had to resort to using the threat of civil contempt to force ICE to comply with orders. The Court is not aware of another occasion in the history of the United States in which a federal court has had to threaten contempt—again and again and again—to force the United States government to comply with court orders," wrote Schiltz.
He added: "This Court will continue to do whatever is required to protect the rule of law, including, if necessary, moving to the use of criminal contempt. One way or another, ICE will comply with this Court’s orders."
A damning report about the relationship between Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her right-hand man, Corey Lewandowski, and its impact on the agency sparked outrage among political analysts and observers.
On Thursday, The Atlantic published a report, citing a forthcoming book by NBC News reporter Julia Ainsley about Trump's deportation regime, which found that Noem and Lewandowski's relationship has "warped the agency" into a fiefdom and has caused tensions between DHS and members of the TrumpWhite House. The report included details about how Lewandowski has embedded himself within the agency, and how Noem's seemingly "sociopathic" nature has won her the adoration of President Donald Trump.
The report sparked outrage among political analysts and observers, including a call for Noem to testify before a House committee next week.
"I look forward to you testifying under oath at the House Judiciary Committee next Wednesday," Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) posted on X. "Don’t forget your blanket."
"Sociopaths are terrific at spotting other sociopaths," George Conway, conservative attorney and Democratic candidate for a House seat in New York, posted on X.
"Can we bring shame back into public life?" Philip Bunn, assistant professor of political science at Covenant College, posted on X.
"This really stood out for me as well," political consultant Zak Williams posted on Bluesky. "Trump, and others in the administration, see nonwhite immigrants as animals, and having someone like Noem is something they like."
"Report: Trump thought being a dog-killer was an asset for DHS Secty Noem," John Barron, U.S. political analyst for ABC Australia, posted on X.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court this week, urging the justices to strike down President Donald Trump's executive order dismantling the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of birthright citizenship.
Trump's order would require anyone born in the United States to have U.S. citizen parentage to qualify for citizenship — a dramatic departure from the Constitution, which says that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."
Under Trump's order, people born in the country to noncitizens would be ineligible for passports or other federal documents related to citizenship.
USCCB implored the Supreme Court to reject this as a violation of the law and of human rights.
"As Catholics, amici are guided by the compassion of Our Lord Jesus Christ," wrote the bishops. "Our concern for our neighbors proceeds from God's command to love others as he loved us. John 13:35. The Conference is saddened by the 'climate of fear and anxiety' and the 'vilification of immigrants' that is all too common in the rhetoric concerning immigration policy."
"Thankfully, obstacles and prejudices over past generations have not prevented those generations of immigrants from making enormous contributions to the development of our great nation," the brief continued. "But to protect God-given human dignity, which is inherent in the judicial task of rendering just judgments, this Court should hold that the Executive Order is unconstitutional."
The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in the birthright citizenship case at the start of April. Several lower courts have already ruled against Trump's order, and the Supreme Court already ruled on a related but separate case that governed lower courts' power to issue injunctions against orders of this type.
MAGA-friendly Paramount has emerged as the victor in the high-stakes bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery, leaving Netflix empty-handed after the streaming giant walked away from the negotiating table, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
The David Ellison-led Paramount Skydance deal proved too much for Netflix, as the streamer announced it was throwing in the towel on its pursuit of Warner's crown jewels, including its sprawling movie and television studios and the HBO Max streaming service.
In a statement that screamed restraint, Netflix Co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters claimed they were simply being fiscally prudent.
“We’ve always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match,” the pair said in a statement. “This transaction was always a ‘nice to have’ at the right price, not a ‘must have’ at any price."
The move sent stock prices into overdrive, with Paramount surging 10% on the news, while Warner Bros. Discovery dipped 0.35% and Netflix climbed 2.29%.
Warner Bros. Discovery put its storied studio and streaming assets up for sale last year, drawing bids from Netflix, Paramount‑Skydance, and Comcast. Netflix struck a deal around Dec. 4 to acquire the coveted assets for around $83 billion, with hefty breakup fees on both sides. Paramount‑Skydance responded with a hostile all‑cash offer of about $108 billion, attacking the Netflix deal as anti‑competitive and lobbying regulators and politicians.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' vaccine bill faces unexpected opposition from within his own Republican Party. The legislation, sponsored by State Sen. Clay Yarborough, would allow parental preference alone to exempt children from school vaccine requirements. Sen. Gayle Harrell (R-Stuart), a Republican colleague, called the bill "dangerous" and said he cannot support it. Medical professionals have also expressed serious concerns. Pediatrician Nectar Aintablian warned the bill contradicts medical training and noted the importance of vaccination in preventing diseases he has witnessed throughout his career. Jennifer Takagishi, Florida chapter vice president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, criticized lawmakers for not listening to medical expertise, expressing frustration that families increasingly rely on social media platforms like TikTok for health research instead of professional guidance.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed her closed-door deposition before the House Oversight Committee in New York on Thursday "got quite unusual" after Republicans began asking her questions about conspiracy theories.
Speaking to reporters after the deposition, Clinton claimed that Republicans asked her the same questions "over and over again." She added that Republicans asked her about Pizzagate, a conspiracy theory that claimed a pedophile ring was being run out of a pizza shop in Washington D.C., and whether or not UFOs are real.
"I think they could have spent the day more productively," she said.
Clinton appeared for a nearly six-hour closed-door deposition on Thursday as part of the House Oversight Committee's investigation into disgraced financier and convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.
At one point, the deposition was temporarily paused after Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) sent photos to MAGA influencer Benny Johnson from inside the hearing room.
In her statement to the press, Clinton said she is not going to sit for another deposition. She also questioned why Republicans haven't questioned people with ties to Epstein or his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, like former Victoria's Secret CEO Leslie Wexner.
Wexner sat for a nearly five-hour deposition earlier this month. No Republicans attended the hearing.
A Democratic lawmaker Thursday revealed several insights about what happened inside the room where former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was pressed by the House Oversight Committee about her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein — explaining she did not know him.
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA) told CNN anchor Jake Tapper that Clinton explained she had never met the late financier and convicted child sex offender, and she did not have a relationship with his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.
"We would like the transcript to be released within 24 hours because the reality is she ran circles around the Republicans the entire time," Subramanyam said. "It's still going and she's answering every single question being asked. But the reality is we should be interviewing people who actually had a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, who knew the guy, who at least met the guy and know about his crimes. There's so many people in the files and Hillary Clinton is not someone we should be focusing on."
Subramanyam brought up how zero Republicans attended Les Wexner's testimony in Ohio last week, yet 11 Republicans were in upstate New York on Thursday. He also called out Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) for taking photos and sending them to a MAGA influencer who posted them during the closed-door meeting and violating the committee's rules, and pausing the entire testimony.
"This is a closed-door deposition. This isn't a family vacation. I don't know why she's secretly snapping photos," Subramanyam said.
"She demanded that if you're going to snap photos privately, why not let the entire media in? That was their demand, actually, to make up for it, but again, Republicans refused to do that," Subramanyam said. "This is a political sideshow. This did not help our investigation at all."
Subramanyam said it was time for the Trump administration to release the full files and that the president should testify, along with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
"I wish the press could have come in and just watched the whole thing," Subramanyam said. "I think what they would have seen and what the American public would have seen was basically Republicans embarrassing themselves. Some of the questions had nothing to do with Epstein and Maxwell, and our investigation, and were very much irrelevant to it. And so, again, this was perhaps part of the plan, was to sort of shift the blame and shift the tension from [President Donald] Trump and the Republicans to a Democrat like Hillary Clinton. But the reality was that she simply never met the guy, and it was a waste of our time."
Tapper mentioned that there were reportedly questions from lawmakers about the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and UFOs, and asked if those were actual questions in the hearing. Subramanyam said he could not reveal what was said, but that the video transcript could shed more light on what happened in the closed-door testimony.
"The transcript will be very revealing about that," Subramanyam said.
