On Wednesday, President Donald Trump's advisor Tom Homan attackedKilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man the government admits was wrongfully deported to a prison in El Salvador.
Homan serves as Trump's "border czar," a position the president invented. Speaking to the press, Homan claimed of García, "He got more due process than Laken Riley got."
Riley was a Georgia student killed by a 26-year-old Venezuelan man named José Antonio Ibarra, not by García.
The comments infuriated legal analysts and others who fact-checked Homan, but they also lobbed insults of their own.
Wonkette managing editor Evan Hurst commented, "Nazi PE teachers like Tom Homan dutifully bark out the name of a murdered white woman in response to every suggestion that immigrants are human beings. Play a different song, dips---."
Military historian Jill Sargent Russell, Ph.D., proposed a question: "Mr. Homan, what standard of due process do you want applied to yourself?"
"Homan and others say this line *a lot* but here's the thing: Laken Riley was never accused of a crime and the guy who attacked her was not an agent of the state, so the comparison doesn't apply!" posted Ian Carrillo, an author and sociologist studying race, class, and the environment.
Immigration lawyer Matt Cameron wrote on Blue Sky, "He has been using this line for at least a month now and it just doesn't make any more sense no matter how many times he says it."
Former Justice Department appointee Eric Columbus remarked, "Homan says Ábrego García was 'ordered deported twice.' But he omits that the immigration judge ordered that he could not be deported to El Salvador for fear he would be harmed there. Due process isn’t enough — the executive has to follow court orders issued during that process."
"If this were a normal administration—one not bent on defying an order of the Supreme Court—Homan would just say 'We disagree with the court’s ruling but we’re going to comply with it and we’ll do what we can to facilitate Mr. Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States,'" said Lawfare legal analyst Anna Bower.
Reuters crime and justice reporter Brad Heath questioned, "It is true that the government, which is bound by the Constitution's requirement that it provide due process, is expected to behave better than criminals?"
The U.S. Army suspended a Wisconsin female commander after discovering portraits of President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had been flipped around to face a wall, according to an Associated Press report.
Fort McCoy’s website has an undated statement which says, Col. Sheyla Baez Ramirez has been suspended as the base’s garrison commander. The statement did not provide any details as to why, but said the matter was “under review.”
Baez Ramirez was the first female commander at the training base.
The outlet noted an April 14 X (formerly Twitter) post, which the Department of Defense showed photos of the Trump and Hegseth portraits on the base’s chain of command wall had been turned to face the wall.
A second photo from the post showed they had been flipped back to face the corridor. “Regarding the Ft. McCoy Chain of Command wall controversy ... WE FIXED IT!” the post read. “Also, an investigation has begun to figure out exactly what happened. ”
No one immediately returned email and voicemail messages The Associated Press left for Fort McCoy public affairs officials.
According to the AP, Baez Ramirez assumed the role of garrison commander at Fort McCoy in July 2024.
She previously served as chief of the Reserve Program, U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
She was commissioned as a military intelligence officer through the Reserve Officer Training Corps in 1999.
Neoconservative writer Bill Krisol is reveling in President Donald Trump's retreat on economic issues he once vowed he would remain rock solid on upholding.
Kristol even repeated the viral insult that got 150 million views on Chinese-run social media that "Trump chickened out" in his dealings with China's President Xi Jinping.
But Kristol's schadenfreude came with a caveat: "it would be a mistake to make too much of these reversals," Kristol wrote. "Trump’s commitment to autocracy at home and to dictators abroad isn’t going to change. Whatever tactical U-turns he pulls off, the fundamental danger of Trump and Trumpism remains."
Kristol maintained that Trump's flip-flopping was hurting him politically, citing a new Reuters-Ipsos poll showing Trump’s approval rating at 42 percent, "down five percentage points in the three months since inauguration."
"Indeed, Trump’s zig-zags raise the possibility the opposition can achieve the best of both worlds: A little less damage to the country and the world, along with a continued decline in Trump’s popularity," Kristol wrote.
Kristol encouraged Democrats to seize on Trump's moment of weakness to send a "clear and unequivocal" message: that Donald Trump is both a dangerous autocrat with destructive plans, but also that he is a bully who cowers in a real fight. "The good news is that no figure is more contemptible than a bully in retreat."
Kristol also quoted former President Bill Clinton who said in 2002, “When people feel uncertain, they’d rather have someone strong and wrong than weak and right," adding, "Could we be entering a period when the public sees that Trump is both wrong and weak?"
Jose Hermosillo, a 19-year-old U.S. citizen, accused the Department of Homeland Security of detaining him and then producing a false account claiming he told them he was a citizen of Mexico.
In a Monday post on X, DHS argued that Hermosillo was at fault after he was wrongly detained.
"On April 8, Jose Hermosillo approached Border Patrol in Tucson, Arizona, stating he had ILLEGALLY entered the U.S. and identified himself as a Mexican citizen. Border enforcement processed Mr. Hermosillo lawfully," the post said. "Days later, his family presented documents showing proof of U.S. citizenship. The charges were dismissed and he was released."
"Mr. Hermosillo’s arrest and detention were a direct result of his own actions and statements."
Hermosillo appeared to claim he was a Mexican citizen in a transcript produced by DHS.
Judd Legum of Popular Information spoke to Hermosillo and determined that the DHS presented information that was "not true."
The man told Legum he was visiting his girlfriend in Tucson from his home in New Mexico. While there, he was admitted to the hospital for a seizure.
Following his release from the hospital, Hermosillo said he approached a Border Patrol officer for help returning home.
"I saw a car, and I ask[ed] him for help," he recalled.
According to his account, the officer asked, "You're not from here. Do you have your papers?"
Due to the medical emergency, Hermosillo did not have his state-issued ID but told the officer he was from "New Mexico."
"Don't make me [out] like [I'm] stupid," the officer replied. "I know you're from Mexico."
Hermosillo was arrested and detained for ten days until his family located him and provided proof of citizenship.
"Hermosillo said that he never told the officer that he was born in Mexico, was a citizen of Mexico, or entered the country illegally," Legum reported. "And he would not have said those things because they are not true. He signed the transcript released by DHS because the officer ordered him to 'sign everything.' But Hermosillo did not read it, because he cannot read."
"When I dream, I dream I'm still in there," Hermosillo explained.
A whistleblower at the National Labor Relations Board reported an unusual spike in potentially sensitive data flowing out of the agency’s network in early March 2025 when staffers from the Department of Government Efficiency, which goes by DOGE, were granted access to the agency’s databases. On April 7, the Department of Homeland Security gained access to Internal Revenue Service tax data.
These seemingly unrelated events are examples of recent developments in the transformation of the structure and purpose of federal government data repositories. I am a researcher who studies the intersection of migration, data governance and digital technologies. I’m tracking how data that people provide to U.S. government agencies for public services such as tax filing, health care enrollment, unemployment assistance and education support is increasingly being redirected toward surveillance and law enforcement.
Originally collected to facilitate health care, eligibility for services and the administration of public services, this information is now shared across government agencies and with private companies, reshaping the infrastructure of public services into a mechanism of control. Once confined to separate bureaucracies, data now flows freely through a network of interagency agreements, outsourcing contracts and commercial partnerships built up in recent decades.
These data-sharing arrangements often take place outside public scrutiny, driven by national security justifications, fraud prevention initiatives and digital modernization efforts. The result is that the structure of government is quietly transforming into an integrated surveillance apparatus, capable of monitoring, predicting and flagging behavior at an unprecedented scale.
Executive orders signed by President Donald Trump aim to remove remaining institutional and legal barriers to completing this massive surveillance system.
DOGE and the private sector
Central to this transformation is DOGE, which is tasked via an executive order to “promote inter-operability between agency networks and systems, ensure data integrity, and facilitate responsible data collection and synchronization.” An additional executive order calls for the federal government to eliminate its information silos.
By building interoperable systems, DOGE can enable real-time, cross-agency access to sensitive information and create a centralized database on people within the U.S. These developments are framed as administrative streamlining but lay the groundwork for mass surveillance.
Predictive algorithms now scan vast amounts of data to generate risk scores, detect anomalies and flag potential threats.
These systems ingest data from school enrollment records, housing applications, utility usage and even social media, all made available through contracts with data brokers and tech companies. Because these systems rely on machine learning, their inner workings are often proprietary, unexplainable and beyond meaningful public accountability.
Data privacy researcher Justin Sherman explains the astonishing amount of information data brokers have about you.
Participation in civic life, applying for a loan, seeking disaster relief and requesting student aid now contribute to a person’s digital footprint. Government entities could later interpret that data in ways that allow them to deny access to assistance. Data collected under the banner of care could be mined for evidence to justify placing someone under surveillance. And with growing dependence on private contractors, the boundaries between public governance and corporate surveillance continue to erode.
Initially built for benefits verification or crisis response, these data systems now feed into broader surveillance networks. The implications are profound. What began as a system targeting noncitizens and fraud suspects could easily be generalized to everyone in the country.
Eyes on everyone
This is not merely a question of data privacy. It is a broader transformation in the logic of governance. Systems once designed for administration have become tools for tracking and predicting people’s behavior. In this new paradigm, oversight is sparse and accountability is minimal.
AI allows for the interpretation of behavioral patterns at scale without direct interrogation or verification. Inferences replace facts. Correlations replace testimony.
The risk extends to everyone. While these technologies are often first deployed at the margins of society – against migrants, welfare recipients or those deemed “high risk” – there’s little to limit their scope. As the infrastructure expands, so does its reach into the lives of all citizens.
With every form submitted, interaction logged and device used, a digital profile deepens, often out of sight. The infrastructure for pervasive surveillance is in place. What remains uncertain is how far it will be allowed to go.
President Donald Trump lashed out at one of the legal firms he's been attacking, saying that he's suing them for "unlawful acts." He moved on to then blast a federal judge he accused of being "sick."
"I’m suing the law firm of Perkins Coie for their egregious and unlawful acts, in particular the conduct of a specific member of this firm, only to find out that the Judge assigned to this case is Beryl Howell, an Obama appointment, and a highly biased and unfair disaster," Trump wrote.
The reporter explained that Howell is a U.S. District Court Judge in Washington, D.C. Trump sued Perkins Coie in Florida. The case is before Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks, who was appointed long before the Barack Obama presidency.
Middlebrooks already dismissed Trump's case and issued sanctions against him and his lawyer, Alina Habba.
The case before Judge Howell is Perkins Coie suing Trump over Executive Order 14230, which they said targets their firm. Howell has issued a temporary restraining order against the executive order.
Trump's order also required government agencies to request that contractors disclose their business with Perkins Coie. Howell's restraining order required those agencies to rescind disclosures and stop making the requests.
The Trump administration, however, claimed to have found a loophole in the court order allowing it not to notify all impacted agencies. In a Wednesday follow-up order, Howell directed the federal government "to immediately issue guidance to all other agencies" subject to the executive order.
Rubio posted to X Tuesday, "Today is the day. Under @POTUS’ leadership and at my direction, we are reversing decades of bloat and bureaucracy at the State Department. These sweeping changes will empower our talented diplomats to put America and Americans first."
Rubio's post included a reference to the programs that would be cut but didn't give specifics.
"Region-specific functions would be consolidated to increase functionality, redundant offices will be removed, and non-statutory programs that are misaligned with America’s core national interests will cease to exist," he wrote.
According to an internal memo viewed by The Washington Post, the cuts are expected to target "some human rights programs and others focused on war crimes and democracy."
The draft executive order that was "widely circulated among current and former officials over the weekend, outlined a more radical plan that involved numerous major changes, including shutting down the Bureau of African Affairs and eliminating numerous outposts across the continent," The Post reported.
Last week, Punchbowl News obtained a document showing the department was looking to consolidate outposts in Canada, Japan and some other countries. Other consulates were expected to undergo “resizing," according to the document.
The document also stated that the Trump administration will close 10 embassies and 17 consulates, including those in Eritrea, Luxembourg, Malta and South Sudan, and all of those operations will be folded into embassies in nearby countries.
Rubio hasn't confirmed the cuts outlined by Punchbowl News.
CNN's Maria Cardona laughed out loud at advice offered to embattled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth by conservative commentator Shermichael Singleton.
The Signalgate scandal flared up again after new revelations about a second group chat involving war plans in a non-secure setting, and Singleton told "CNN News Central" that national security adviser Mike Waltz had already accepted responsibility for adding a journalist to the first group chat, and he urged Hegseth to do the same for inviting his wife, brother and personal attorney to another.
"If the acknowledgment is one step, how are you going to clean this up?" Singleton said. "How are you going to have efficiencies in terms of communications of classified information about the Signal group chat with his wife and his brother?"
Host John Berman asked whether Hegseth has ever acknowledged those group chats had been a mistake, and Singleton dismissed the question as ridiculous.
"Come on, John, I think, you know the answer to that question," Singleton said. "My point is, though, that he should say, 'Hey, look, in the past I made some errors here moving forward, this is how I have communicated about highly classified information with my staff or my advisors,' and I think that would, for the most part, settle this, politically speaking. I think the president is probably reluctant to make a decision at this point because he did spend so much political capital getting Pete Hegseth confirmed. If you recall, we reported on this exclusively, it was not an easy process for the secretary, and so I think if you're Trump, you're looking at this trying to engage – 'Well, if I do have to make a decision, do I want to make it within the first 100 days, or do I want to give the secretary an opportunity to sort of clean this up and see what happens moving forward?'"
"Again, this occurred around the same time as the previous Signal chat," Singleton added. "We'll see if the secretary has improved his communications moving forward. I would hope that he has."
Berman piggybacked off Singleton's remarks to ask Cardona whether she believes Hegseth has improved his communications, and she tilted her head back and laughed.
"Absolutely not, John," Cardona said. "Look, it is so pathetic for Republicans to be coming out and, No. 1, trying to defend him, and I'm glad Shermichael is not doing that, but we all know that no one is going to do what Shermichael says they should – and they should. But here's the issue, how much more possibly criminal, but certainly dangerous, chaotic incompetence is this White House going to expose the country to? I mean, the job that Hegseth has is one of the most important in national security terms, and so he is not only diminishing the U.S. brand, he is making us less safe on the global stage."
"He is completely turning the Defense Department into a chaotic snake pit, and we have heard how everything has been turned upside-down, and that's why everyone is now, you know, key people are resigning and talking to the media about it," Cardona added. "They're not leaking because they're talking to them on the record about how incompetent and how crazy things are at the Defense Department, and so how much longer is this going to take for the president and the administration to understand that this is making us less safe?"
MAGA influencer Steve Bannon challenged Republicans Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist after they called on President Donald Trump to extend tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
In a post to X this week, Gingrich suggested he had convinced President Donald Trump not to effectively hike taxes on the wealthy because it would doom Republicans' election chances. Bannon, however, has maintained that a higher tax rate was needed to help balance the budget.
"This is being misreported by the conservative media and the Republican media. They're saying all massive tax hikes for the wealthy," Bannon said on his Wednesday War Room program. "No, it's about massive tax cuts for working-class and middle-class people."
"What you're doing is not extending the tax cuts for the upper bracket," he continued. "It's called mathematics and — anybody! Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich, all of you. Bring it, baby!"
"And bring some math when you come, okay? Bring some math when you come because the program that you guys have is not sustainable."
In an MSNBC appearance, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey slammed several of President Donald Trump’s policies because of the negative impact they are having on scientific research.
“First, let's talk about Harvard. You actually have this post that you put up, Donald Trump's cuts to universities and hospitals mean scientists are being laid off, and shutting down life-saving research. It's bad for patients, bad for science, and bad for our economy. Give me a sense of your reaction to what is happening at not just Harvard, but beyond,” Host Mika Brzezinski asked.
“Well, this is bigger than Harvard, and I stand with Harvard,” Governor Healey said. “I support what they are doing it is very, very important that Harvard filed that suit and stand up to the bully that Trump is.”
The Governor claimed the consequences of removing funding from certain colleges, NIH, and other outlets is large. “[UMass Medical] had to lay off 200 faculty members. They've had to rescind offers to 80 graduate students. Mika these are scientists, okay? These are people who are discovering and working on life-saving cures for cancer, Alzheimer's, ALS, you name it, and all of that is being shut down.”
“Here's what also is happening, which Americans need to know. The ones benefiting from Donald Trump's misguided attacks on our universities and on research are benefiting China,” Healey said. “China is recruiting right now on our campuses all those scientists and faculty members, and students who've been laid off or had their offers rescinded and say, Come to China, we'll build you that lab. We'll give you staff. So, for a President who is about America first, he's making America last. He's making us weaker. He's making us less competitive, and it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart to know that patients will suffer [and] they're already suffering.”
She also believes, “[Trump] is driving everyone, including American students and faculty members, out of this country because they want to be able to do their research somewhere. So this is a very dangerous situation. Totally destabilizing and it's really pointing America in the wrong direction.”
The pair went on to speak about what the Bay State is doing to help small businesses dealing with tariff issues.
MSNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin mocked President Donald Trump for "blinking" under pressure and perpetuating the economic whiplash that continues to rile the markets.
Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski introduced Sorkin Wednesday, asking, "We have Trump blinking? Or, how would you describe it?"
"Oh! I think it's full blinking, lots of blinking!" Sorkin quipped while fluttering his eyelids.
He continued, "Actually, the market's up this morning. I think a lot of folks actually think that he's blinking. Whether he really will blink, we don't know. But it is a 180-degree turn, both in terms of what he's suggesting about how he's going to negotiate with China. For the last several weeks, he's been playing the role of strongman. Now, he says he wants to be nice and wants to find a compromise, which is going to be interesting to see how the Chinese react to that and will have either leverage over him or he'll have leverage over them. "
"[Trump] had been both, you know, on Truth Social and other places, saying that he thought that the federal reserve chair should effectively get fired, was too late, should have lowered interest rates. And now he's saying, 'I'm not firing him.' And I think he suggested basically that he was never planning to fire him, which is not what he said originally."
Sorkin said investors may be regaining some confidence because they see Trump course-correcting after "realizing he can't do all the things that he wanted to."
Sorkin concluded by pointing out the unpredictability of how the Trump administration has been reacting on any given day.
"What looks like a blink today could be very different tomorrow," Sorkin said.
President Donald Trump lashed out at U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, an Obama appointee hearing a lawsuit over an executive order against law firm Perkins Coie.
In a Wednesday message posted on his Truth Social platform, Trump called Howell an "unmitigated train wreck" after she declined to remove herself from the case.
"I’m suing the law firm of Perkins Coie for their egregious and unlawful acts, in particular the conduct of a specific member of this firm, only to find out that the Judge assigned to this case is Beryl Howell, an Obama appointment, and a highly biased and unfair disaster," Trump wrote. "She ruled against me in the past, in a shocking display of sick judicial temperament, on a case that ended up working out very well for me, on appeal."
Trump is thought to be upset with Perkins Coie after it hired Fusion GPS, which funded an investigation into him in 2016 and paid for the so-called Steele dossier on behalf of Hillary Clinton's campaign.
"I could have a 100% perfect case and she would angrily rule against me," the president whined. "It’s called Trump Derangement Syndrome, and she’s got a bad case of it. To put it nicely, Beryl Howell is an unmitigated train wreck. NO JUSTICE!!!"
For her part, Howell has accused Trump and the Department of Justice of trying to undermine the court.
“This strategy is designed to impugn the integrity of the federal judicial system and blame any loss on the decision-maker rather than fallacies in the substantive legal arguments presented," she wrote in one ruling against Trump's executive order.
“Adjudicating whether an Executive Branch exercise of power is legal, or not, is actually the job of the federal courts, and not of the President or the Department of Justice, though vigorous and rigorous defense of executive actions is both expected and helpful to the courts in resolving legal issues."
Writer and political commentator Molly Jong-Fast slammed Elon Musk for his work at DOGE, calling it “a lot of drama for not a lot of savings,” on Morning Joe Wednesday morning.
“I want to turn back to Elon Musk, the other part of that package. He seems to be leaving with a bit of a whimper here,” Jonathan Lemire said to Jong-Fast. “We played some audio from earlier on the Tesla call. He said he'd still be around now and then, a day here, a day there, but clearly his role is drawing down, and let's just talk about the legacy of DOGE, where it has plenty of job cuts, plenty of chaos, but nowhere near the savings Musk promised. I mean, not even close by a factor of a lot. They missed their goals and a lot of it, that they've said they’ve accomplished, they got wrong.”
“I mean, it was a lot of drama for not a lot of savings, and I think that's the top line,” Jong-Fast said. “Look, the reason why now Elon is on the defensive is because Tesla's profits were down 71%. That is a crazy number. Is there a huge precedent for that? That seems enormous to me. Look, he's now had to step back from this and remember they had numbers that were going to be humongous. They were going to save so much money, and it's been down, down, down.”
She believes, “There were ways to do this in a way that wasn't so aggressive that might have been, you know, with a scalpel and not with a chainsaw, and instead, Elon went with the chainsaw and the drama. Ultimately, it's reflected in these polling numbers, it's just not a popular move.”
