Erik De La Garza

Federal immigration agents have quietly been granted sweeping new authority to arrest people without warrants, according to a leaked Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo reviewed by The New York Times.

The internal memo, issued this week amid escalating tensions over President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown, significantly lowers the standard ICE agents must meet to justify a warrantless arrest. Rather than determining whether someone is unlikely to appear for future immigration hearings, agents are now instructed to consider whether a person might simply leave the scene.

“The change expands the ability of lower-level ICE agents to carry out sweeps rounding up people they encounter and suspect are undocumented immigrants, rather than targeted enforcement operations in which they set out, warrant in hand, to arrest a specific person,” the Times reported Friday.

The memo – signed Wednesday by Todd Lyons, ICE’s acting director, and circulated to all ICE personnel – cites a federal statute allowing warrantless arrests when a person is “likely to escape.” Lyons criticized ICE’s prior interpretation as “unreasoned” and “incorrect.”

“An alien is ‘likely to escape’ if an immigration officer determines he or she is unlikely to be located at the scene of the encounter or another clearly identifiable location once an administrative warrant is obtained,” Lyons wrote in the memo, according to the Times.

Former senior ICE officials warned that the change effectively guts the standard warrant requirement.

Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former senior adviser at ICE during the Biden administration, called the new definition “an extremely broad interpretation of the term ‘escape.’”

“It would cover essentially anyone they want to arrest without a warrant, making the general premise of ever getting a warrant pointless,” she told the publication.

Scott Shuchart, a former Biden-era ICE policy, said the memo “bends over backwards to say that ICE agents have nothing but green lights to make an arrest without even a supervisor’s approval.” But Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin insisted that the guidance “is not new.”

“This is simply a reminder to officers,” she wrote in a statement to the Times to keep “detailed records on their arrests.”

President Donald Trump late Friday issued a vigorous defense of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem while accusing protesters and Democrats of “criminal acts” and declaring they “should all be in jail.”

In a lengthy post on his Truth Social platform, the president claimed that “Radical Left Lunatics, Insurrectionists, Agitators, and Thugs,” were targeting Noem “because she is a woman, and has done a really GREAT JOB!"

“The Border disaster that I inherited is fixed, the violent criminals that were allowed into our Country through Sleepy Joe’s ‘sick’ Open Border Policy, are largely gone, or being strongly sought for purposes of removal, and the Murder Rate in the USA just reached the lowest level in history, 125 years!” Trump wrote Friday.

He then unleashed his vengeance on Democrats and the protests that have unfolded in Minnesota and major cities across the nation.

“Republicans, don’t let these Crooked Democrats, who are stealing Billions of Dollars from Minnesota, and other Cities and States from all over the Country, push you around,” Trump said in the post. “They are using this aggressive protest SCAM to obfuscate, camouflage, and hide their CRIMINAL ACTS of theft and insurrection. They should all be in jail.”

Trump concluded that he “was elected on Strong Borders, and Law and Order, among many other things,” before thanking Noem.

He ended by writing, “Remember, ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES!!!”

Minutes later, Trump posted again to praise border czar Tom Homan, whom he made responsible this week for the crackdown in Minnesota.

“Border Czar (Plus!) Tom Homan is doing a FANTASTIC JOB. He is one of a kind. Thank you Tom!!!” Trump told his followers.

Before President Donald Trump officially tapped Kevin Warsh as chair of the Federal Reserve, some inside the MAGA administration had already written him off.

According to a detailed report in The Wall Street Journal, senior Trump officials privately mocked Warsh as desperate and “finished” as he campaigned for the job, which the publication called “one of the most public personnel contests of Trump’s second term.”

“It would take 14 months, a reality-television-style public audition, a bitter behind-the-scenes campaign, and a criminal investigation of the sitting Fed chair” for Warsh to officially be named Trump’s new Fed chair, the Journal wrote Friday.

But according to the publication, that didn’t come without a brutal round of infighting among Trump administration officials.

“Inside the White House, some officials had written off Warsh entirely,” the Journal reported. “One senior administration official told The Wall Street Journal in early December that Warsh was finished, comparing him to a Venezuelan drug smuggler trying to cling to a boat after U.S. forces had fired on him.”

Another official dismissed Warsh as a “used-car salesman,” arguing that Trump believed Warsh “wanted the job too much.”

While attention inside the administration appeared to be shifting toward National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, who the Journal reported believed by late 2025 that he had secured the nomination, Warsh had something Hassett didn’t: deep backing from Wall Street.

“Wall Street insiders began calling administration officials to make the case for Warsh, with the explicit goal of edging Hassett out of contention, according to people familiar with the outreach,” the Journal stated. “The campaign was focused on the argument that Hassett was too close to Trump to have credibility with bond markets as an independent Fed chair.”

It was a “quiet campaign that could easily have backfired,” the Journal added.

But Trump made the decision official Friday morning, praising Warsh as “central casting” and declaring on social media that he would “never let you down.”

A chaotic scene unfolded Friday live on CNN as anti-ICE protests escalated in downtown Los Angeles, where reporter Veronica Miracle visibly struggled on camera.

During a live report from the demonstration, Miracle broke into a coughing fit after she and others in the area were hit with pepper spray.

“OK, I just got hit. Hold on. Hold on…I can’t breathe!” she said, gasping as she continued her report on “Erin Burnett OutFront.”

“Take your time, take your time…let’s make sure Veronica’s OK,” CNN anchor Erin Burnett said.

Miracle, whose leg appeared to be struck by a projectile that left a white mark on her jeans, described the scene Friday as something she had never seen before in her years covering protests in the area.

“We just all got pepper-sprayed, and so I’m just still recovering from that,” the CNN correspondent said. “There’s so much of the pepper spray still in the air, and so many people around us coughing and gagging, including us.”

“I’ve never seen this before,” she added. The protest began earlier in the day at City Hall and grew increasingly intense as demonstrators made it onto ICE property, according to the live report.

Despite the intense scene, Miracle continued to report live as demonstrators, many of whom wore gas masks, continued in Los Angeles and other major cities across the U.S.

MAGA world is in full meltdown mode over President Donald Trump’s acting head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency – but much of the social media outrage focuses on his Indian American heritage.

Politico reported earlier this week that Madhu Gottumukkala, Trump’s acting cybersecurity chief, had uploaded sensitive files last summer to a public version of ChatGPT. The report came as the Department of Homeland Security continued its probe of CISA employees who oversaw an “unsanctioned” polygraph test of the department head, which he reported failed, according to MS NOW.

But rather than focusing on the security concerns, many MAGA influencers instead zeroed in on Gottumukkala “for obviously racist reasons,” according to MS NOW opinion columnist Ja'han Jones. The attacks reflect a broader trend, he added.

“After the report, many of the responses from pro-Trump social media accounts — including prominent MAGA influencers — were basically just racist attacks focused on Gottumukkala’s Indian heritage,” Jones wrote in his Friday op-ed.

As a sample, he pointed to one X user writing: “You could pick any random midwestern White guy from a corn field, and he would be an infinitely more qualified candidate for this job."

“I can tell you for sure that there were thousands of qualified White applicants for that job who were not even considered,” another social media user wrote in response.

Jones noted that similar attacks have been directed at figures in Trump’s orbit, like FBI Director Kash Patel and Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

“So continues a trend that I and some of my MS NOW colleagues have written about previously: MAGA influencers attacking prominent Indian Americans who support Trump for unmistakably racist reasons,” he concluded.

“And now we can add Madhu Gottumukkala to this list as well.”

A major legal flaw has emerged in President Donald Trump’s blockbuster lawsuit demanding at least $10 billion from the federal government over the leak of his tax returns.

Trump filed suit Thursday against the IRS and the Treasury Department, accusing the agencies led by his own appointees of failing to prevent the unauthorized disclosure of his tax records during his first White House term. But legal experts are questioning the MAGA leader's claim that he did not learn of the leak until exactly two years before filing the lawsuit.

Under federal law, taxpayers generally have two years to sue the government after discovering an improper disclosure, the New York Times reported Friday. Trump’s complaint says he only became aware of the IRS leak on Jan. 29, 2024, when the agency sent him a formal notice – exactly two years before he filed suit.

Trump's assertion is “hard to support,” according to Leslie Book, a law professor at Villanova University.

“There was quite a bit of litigation and press coverage concerning the nature of the disclosure that Littlejohn engaged in,” Book told the Times, referring to former IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn. “To argue, as Trump is arguing in the suit, that he wasn’t aware of this, that he didn’t discover it until the I.R.S. sent that letter, frankly, I find hard to support.”

According to the publication, Littlejohn pleaded guilty in October 2023 to leaking Trump’s tax returns to the Times, along with other tax data of other wealthy Americans he separately provided to ProPublica.

Former Justice Department tax lawyer Francesca Ugolini added that Trump’s appointees could feel pressure to settle the case.

“It’s hard to imagine that they wouldn’t feel that pressure, even if it wasn’t explicit,” she said, according to the Times, adding that without congressional intervention to attempt to limit the DOJ’s ability to settle, “there’s not really another check.”

A group of Jeffrey Epstein survivors slammed the Trump administration’s latest release of Epstein files on Friday, accusing the Justice Department of exposing victims while shielding abusers tied to the notorious sex trafficker.

In a joint statement issued hours after the release of millions of Jeffrey Epstein-related documents, the group of 18 survivors rejected claims that the latest document dump amounted to transparency. They say it instead placed them back in the spotlight while the men who abused them “remain hidden and protected.”

“The latest release of Jeffrey Epstein files is being sold as transparency, but what it actually does is expose survivors,” the women said in the statement. “Once again, survivors are having their names and identifying information exposed, while the men who abused us remain hidden and protected.”

The survivors called the release on Friday “outrageous” and described it as “a betrayal.”

“As survivors, we should never be the ones named, scrutinized, and retraumatized while Epstein’s enablers continue to benefit from secrecy," they added.

The statement went on to single out the failure to fully expose Epstein’s network despite extensive reports by survivors, including Virginia Giuffre. “The scale of this failure is staggering and indefensible.”

The survivors called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to provide them with answers when she appears before the House Judiciary Committee on Feb. 11.

“This is not over,” they declared. “We will not stop until the truth is fully revealed and every perpetrator is finally held accountable.”

A federal judge on Friday dealt a major blow to President Donald Trump by permanently blocking his executive order that sought to impose new citizenship requirements on voters.

In a 110-page ruling, the court permanently enjoined Trump’s order claiming to mandate proof of U.S. citizenship for people registering to vote or applying for absentee ballots, Politico’s Kyle Cheney reported.

“Put simply, our Constitution does not allow the President to impose unilateral changes to federal election procedures,” U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote in her Friday ruling.

In rejecting Trump’s executive order, the judge found that its key provisions “are inconsistent with the constitutional separation of powers and cannot lawfully be implemented.”

“These consolidated cases are about the limits of the President’s power to dictate the rules of federal elections,” she wrote. The decision permanently bars federal agencies from enforcing the challenged provisions.

In addition to Trump, the Executive Office of the President, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and several cabinet departments and agency heads were named as defendants in the lawsuit.

The Pentagon on Friday night released a long-awaited National Defense Strategy that marks a “stunning reversal” from decades of U.S. policy by shifting the focus away from China and toward defending the U.S. homeland and the Western Hemisphere.

That’s according to a report in Politico, which added that the new Trump administration strategy breaks sharply from both Democratic and Republican administrations – including President Donald Trump’s first White House term.

“The National Defense Strategy — a dramatic shift from even the first Trump administration — no longer focuses primarily on countering China,” Politico reported Friday. “Instead, it blames past administrations for ignoring American interests and jeopardizing the U.S. military’s access to the Panama Canal and Greenland.”

According to the strategy, past administrations pursued what it calls “grandiose strategies” while neglecting the “practical interests” of the American public. While the document acknowledges that “Europe remains important,” it argues the continent now holds “a smaller and decreasing share of global economic power” and should no longer be the primary focus of U.S. defense planning.

The strategy stops short of labeling Europe a place in “civilizational decline,” but, as Politico noted Friday, “it does emphasize what the administration perceives as its declining importance.”

While China remains a concern, the emphasis has changed, with the Pentagon now calling for continued diplomacy with Beijing while “erecting a strong denial defense” in the Pacific to deter conflict. The document does not detail which forces or assets would be deployed, Politico pointed out.

Russia, Iran, and North Korea are mentioned as threats – but they play a secondary role, the document states.

Attorney General Pam Bondi refused to back down Friday after a federal magistrate judge declined to sign off on criminal charges against former CNN anchor Don Lemon, whom she accused of “terrorizing” parishioners during an anti-ICE protest inside a Minneapolis church.

Appearing on Fox News’ “Hannity,” Bondi sharply criticized Lemon and others involved in the incident, which she framed as an attack on a religious institution.

“They burst in through all doors, including Don Lemon, and started harassing and antagonizing and terrorizing these parishioners,” Bondi said Friday. “We are coming after you if you participated in that.”

Bondi continued to escalate her rhetoric, accusing protesters of being “staged” inside the church and claiming one parishioner “ran out the back door scared to death and broke her arm.” The attorney general then singled out Lemon while dismissing his claim that he was present only to document the scene as a journalist.

“I don’t care who you are – if you’re a failed CNN journalist – you have no right to do that in this country,” she told Fox News’ Sean Hannity.

“We don’t live in a third-world country,” she added. “We’re going to protect our houses of worship in this country.”

Lemon has denied taking part in the protest, saying he was there strictly to report the event. “I’m not part of the group…I’m a journalist,” the former CNN anchor said at the time of the protest.

But Bondi on Friday concluded Lemon is nothing more than "an online agitator."

"That's what he is now," she said.

Reaction was swift and brutal online after news broke that the Department of Justice sought to investigate Minnesota mother Renee Good for criminal liability even after her death – a move that elicited an “extremely rare” judicial rejection.

According to a report in MS NOW, aides to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche directed the U.S. Attorney’s Office and FBI agents in Minnesota to shift a civil rights investigation into Good’s fatal encounter with law enforcement toward a criminal probe of the deceased woman. A federal judge ultimately rejected the proposed warrant, despite the low standard of evidence needed, the report noted.

Social media users quickly reacted Friday night and appeared stunned and outraged.

“A judge had to inform these sick freaks that you can’t conduct a criminal investigation into a dead woman,” political commentator Krystal Ball, a former MSNBC host, told her followers on X.

“There is no bottom with these people,” investigative reporter Ali Winston added in his own social media post.

Author Jennifer Aaron Valent wrote in an X post that the country is being run by “an administration of lawless fools.”

“That should put some DOJ prosecutors in jail,” senior economist Dean Baker posted Friday. Attorney Robin J. Leader wrote bluntly, “This is absolutely disgusting. The DOJ has been completely corrupted by this President and Administration.”

Writer Keith Murphy added, “Shocking. This would devastate most administrations....But Trump's is so wildly corrupt that it's like a walk in the park.” While former NFL player Jumbo Elliott summed up the outrage in one word: “Ghouls.”

Former Trump administration official turned whistleblower Miles Taylor revealed startling details Friday about the dangers he says Donald Trump posed during his first White House term, revealing that the Department of Homeland Security quietly prepared for the real possibility of nuclear war.

Speaking at Zeteo’s “One Year of Trump” live event at the Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C., Taylor – a former DHS chief of staff who anonymously authored a 2018 New York Times op-ed about resistance from within – said internal fears quickly turned to concrete plans inside DHS.

“We were worried that the President of the United States could actually get us into a nuclear war,” Taylor said, recalling Trump’s infamous 2017 “fire and fury” threats against North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.

Taylor said some inside the first Trump administration initially assumed there was a strategy behind the bold rhetoric. “You might have thought there was some three-dimensional chess happening,” he said. “Behind the scenes, there was no strategy happening.”

He went on to describe a moment in early 2018 when then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis pulled him aside after a meeting. “He said, ‘You all need to be prepared like we are going to war,’” Taylor recalled.

What came next, Taylor added, was unprecedented.

“For the first time in the history of the Department of Homeland Security, we started to do exercises to prepare for the possibility that the president was going to get us into a nuclear war,” the former high-level official said Friday.

“That should scare the hell out of you,” Taylor told the audience. “That your government didn’t have enough control of its foreign policy that its homeland security policy had to anticipate that."

MAGA activist Laura Loomer unleashed a blistering attack on Vice President JD Vance on Friday, accusing him of protecting conservative figures she says openly attack Donald Trump while refusing to confront extremists within his own political orbit.

In an explosive post on X, Loomer tore into Vance over a laundry list of unresolved issues.

“Since the Vice President is so focused on ‘conservative influencers’ causing division, I look forward to seeing him condemn the conservatives who called his wife a ‘dirty j--t,’" Loomer wrote, while also turning her fire on far-right media personalities, including Tucker Carlson, who she said “has attacked every single policy of the Trump administration.”

“It’s rich, isn’t it? You can carry the casket of Charlie Kirk but you won’t call out Tucker for promoting a guy on his show who accused Erika Kirk @MrsErikaKirk of being involved in her husband’s assassination and who accused @tylerbowyer of being a homosexual pedophile,” she wrote. The latter reference was to Turning Point USA’s Tyler Bowyer.

She went on in her lengthy Friday afternoon post to accuse Vance of tolerating behavior from figures she described as “degenerates,” as long as they remain politically useful.

“You won’t call out the Republicans like your friend MTG who called Trump a pedophile protector and who lied and said Trump was trying to get her killed,” she added while aiming at the vice president.

Her post escalated further as she accused Vance of failing to condemn neo-Nazis who target Jews and Hindus, including his wife.

“We are all shocked you refuse to call out the Neo Nazis who attack Jews and Hindus like your wife and demand that she convert to be worthy in their eyes,” the MAGA influencer wrote.

She ended the rage-filled post by expressing her loyalty to the president.

“Let’s call it all out. Doesn’t that seem reasonable? @JDVance,” she concluded. “Or should we keep pretending this is about abortion? Disgraceful, actually.”

“My loyalty is to your boss, President Trump. And it always will be.”

A live interview on CNN took an uncomfortable turn Friday when anchor Jake Tapper challenged a Minnesota bookstore owner for insisting that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were using “concentration camps” to house detainees.

The moment unfolded during a segment on Tapper’s show, “The Lead,” featuring a co-owner of Moon Palace Books, an independent bookstore in Minneapolis, participating in a one-day economic “blackout” aimed at protesting ICE. Co-owner Jamie Schwesnedl appeared on the show to explain why he and his wife decided to close their store in solidarity with other businesses. But things quickly got off to a rocky start.

“We can’t do business as usual right now anyway,” Schwesnedl told Tapper. “Our city has been invaded by masked gunmen kidnapping family members, friends, and neighbors of ours to send them to concentration camps.”

Tapper, who is Jewish, quickly pushed back on the language.

“Just one note,” the longtime CNN anchor said. “I’m not here to defend ICE, but I’m not a big fan of people using the term ‘concentration camp’ to describe detention camps. That has a very specific meaning…”

Schwesnedl shrugged and cut in as he insisted the comparison was appropriate.

“I understand that,” he said. “But they take people to Fort Snelling, which literally was built as a concentration camp, and 'Alligator Alcatraz,' which I think we can all agree is a concentration camp.”

He clarified, “I’m not saying they’re Dachau. I’m not saying they’re putting people in ovens, yet. But these are concentration camps.”

Tapper appeared eager to move on. “Okay,” he said, waving his hand in apparent exhaustion.

“I don’t need to argue with you about it,” Schwesnedl said as they both pivoted around the sensitive and awkward live television moment.

“That’s fine,” Tapper said as he continued the interview to its conclusion without any further mention of the on-air dust-up.

A writer at the conservative National Review warned Friday that a looming Supreme Court decision on Donald Trump’s tariff powers could trigger political chaos – and potentially turn MAGA world against the high court.

In a column titled “The Storm is Coming to Washington, D.C.,” staff writer Jeffrey Blehar zeroed in on the case challenging Trump’s tariff powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The upcoming ruling, Blehar told readers on Friday, will determine whether “the entire basis of his foreign and domestic economic policy – is constitutional or not.”

But no matter how Trump’s handpicked, ultra-conservative Supreme Court rules, “the walls of the American civic settlement will bend and shake,” Blehar wrote. And, he noted, the MAGA movement is watching.

“If the Supreme Court upholds the Trump administration’s wildly expansive interpretation of executive branch power, I foresee little but disaster: Bond markets will probably crater, and Trump will be emboldened to wield tariffs as a child wields crayons,” he warned, adding: “Further and greater executive overreaches seem sure to follow.”

A Supreme Court rejection of Trump’s position could be just as disastrous, the conservative writer warned. “Does anyone expect Donald Trump to meekly submit to having his entire political agenda declared unconstitutional? I expect a wholesale rhetorical war of the most destructive and toxic sort imaginable.”

That backlash, Blehar suggested, could spark fury from Trump’s own movement – with MAGA activists suddenly turning on “the one last truly conservative political institution in America.”

“It has long been the object of the left to destroy the credibility and prestige of the Court, over which they lost ideological control,” Blehar wrote. “Imagine a world where they are joined by the most voluble activists and grifters on the MAGA right.”

“Batten down the hatches, Washington,” he concluded. “The true storm is coming, and perhaps sooner than you think.”