Travis Gettys

President Donald Trump got busted for posting video of an immigration crackdown in a Republican-governed state to attack Democratic leaders.

The White House a graphic video on its official X account showing masked agents kicking down doors and making arrests as a voiceover recorded by Trump calls Chicago a mess and attacks the local Democratic officials, as the words “ILLEGAL CRIMINAL ALIENS, CARTELS, AND GANGS ARE POISONING OUR KIDS" appear on screen, reported The Daily Beast.

“An incompetent Mayor,” read the post's caption. “A delusional Governor. Chicago is in chaos, and the American people are paying the price. Chicago doesn’t need political spin — it needs HELP.”

The president posted the video on his own Truth Social account to spread its reach as he prepared to deploy National Guard troops in Illinois, but there was a problem with his justification for a military crackdown.

"The Daily Beast can reveal that much of the footage was actually filmed in April in Florida, the state home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence — with a big giveaway being that it features palm trees, which are not known to grow in Chicago," the website reported.

The freely available online video footage actually shows Department of Homeland Security’s Operation Tidal Wave, which officials described in May as the “largest joint immigration operation in Florida history" and boasted “led to 1,120 criminal alien arrests," and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker's team made fun of the Trump administration's attempt at disinformation.

“We know the lies don’t just come out of their mouth," Pritzker's office said. “So it’s not surprising that the Trump team spends more time producing videos purporting images of Florida as Illinois — rather than spending any time to lower prices or protect healthcare for hardworking Americans.”

Illinois has challenged the deployment in court, arguing the president's order violates violates the Posse Comitatus Act prohibiting the use of the military forces for domestic law enforcement.

A federal judge ruled last month that Trump's deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles was unlawful because they were engaged in impermissible law enforcement work, which Illinois has cited as a persuasive authority, but the White House argues the troops are necessary to “protect federal officers and assets.”

A former aide to President Donald Trump stunned his fellow panelists on "CNN This Morning" into silence with his prediction about the Nobel Peace Prize.

The U.S. president has openly campaigned for the award since returning to office in January, just days before the deadline for submission for this year's prize, and he's also made it quite clear that he covets the medallion because his longtime nemesis Barack Obama won it during his first year in office.

"My colleague actually asked President Trump yesterday about the Nobel Peace Prize and whether or not he thought that he was going to get it, and he said he didn't know," said Francesca Chambers, White House correspondent for USA Today. "Perhaps maybe they'll give it to him, so he still wants it, though, clearly."

Trump's hunger for the prize has shaped his diplomatic efforts and may have pushed Hamas and Israeli officials to reach a ceasefire agreement just hours before the award is announced, and his onetime White House communications director Mike Dubke told the panel not to count him out.

"The likelihood of Donald Trump getting the Nobel Peace Prize is like having an American pope," Dubke said.

Three seconds passed in silence as the realization dawned on panelists that the American-born Pope Leo XIV was elected earlier this year, and Dubke continued.

"My point on this is he deserves it," Dubke said. "No, I mean, if not Donald Trump, who... There's multiple places where there has been peace in the last six months because of Donald Trump. This is a award that was created by the inventor of dynamite, Donald Trump authorized the bombing of Iran, which I would make the argument without that the others in the Middle East wouldn't have come to the table for yesterday's peace deal."

Trump frequently claims to have ended up to seven wars in his nearly nine months back in office, although other world leaders are less generous in their credit, and another former White House aide joked the committee might as well give him the prize to shut him up.

"I would say give it to him so we can stop talking about it, because it is so obnoxious that he thinks he should get it," said Meghan Hays, who served as special assistant to the president and director of message planning for Joe Biden. "I mean, we could go through all the number of reasons why he shouldn't get it. He's going to invade Greenland, the rights he wants to take away from press."

Host Audie Cornish stepped in to say that Trump had not actually discussed invading Greenland, although the Danish prime minister said as recently as this week that the U.S. president was still interested in somehow obtaining the territory, and she discussed his primary motivation for winning the prize.

"The villain origin story of this is when Obama won the Nobel Prize and the perception on the right was he did not deserve it," Cornish said.

Hays went on to list Trump's attacks on civil liberties and other reasons she doesn't think he deserves the prize, and Dubke argued that Obama didn't deserve his award, either.

"All of your reasons have nothing to do with [what] the prize is given for," Dubke said. "It's like somebody goes into the hall of fame, but we're not going to put them in the hall of fame for their actions on the field because of their personal life. It's not all-encompassing for their entire."

- YouTube youtu.be

Republican congressional leaders have been quietly warning the White House not to move forward with plans to decimate the federal workforce and shred the social safety net under cover of the government shutdown.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and other senior Republicans have advised President Donald Trump and his aides against far-reaching cuts and firings – all Project 2025 priorities – that could turn voters against them, and GOP lawmakers are growing uneasy with the White House strategy as Democrats are refusing to play along, reported the Wall Street Journal.

"The Republican hand-wringing reflects discomfort among some in the party over the president’s shutdown strategy," the Journal reported. "Soon after government funding lapsed last week, Trump said the shutdown gave him an 'unprecedented opportunity' to make cuts at agencies. White House officials have said they are considering firing thousands of federal workers and have raised the possibility that some workers won’t get back pay."

"The White House strategy is aimed at putting pressure on Democrats to reach a deal to reopen the government," the report added. "But Democrats have refused to budge, arguing that Republicans first need to agree to extend expiring healthcare subsidies upon which millions of Americans rely."

The administration so far hasn't carried out the layoffs Trump threatened, although he said this week that option was still on the table, and his advisers have pledged to use tariff revenue to preserve funding for a food program for women, infants and children, but the president rattled Republicans by claiming he was working with Democrats on a deal to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies.

"Democratic lawmakers quickly said no such talks were under way and Trump later clarified on social media that he was 'happy to work with' the Democrats, but only after the government reopens," the Journal reported. "The mixed messaging from the president has frustrated some Republicans, who have said they are eager for Trump to chart a clear path forward for dealing with the shutdown."

The White House and Republicans are united around the message that Democrats are solely to blame for the shutdown, and GOP lawmakers insist negotiations shouldn't even start until they vote to reopen the government, but they also understand that strategy carries real risks.

"The simmering tension among Republicans comes as Democrats, who for months have struggled to recover from their losses in the recent election, have united around a shutdown message focused on healthcare," the Journal reported. "White House officials and some Republicans have privately acknowledged that they could take a political hit if voters blame them for higher healthcare costs. Ending the subsidies would result in higher premiums for more than 20 million people."

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has been waiting for Republicans to blink, as hundreds of thousands of federal workers are furloughed and others have been working without pay, and some of them – including military service members – could soon start missing paychecks.

"Presidents have some discretion over the effects of a shutdown, including which agency functions are given priority and which workers get furloughed," the Journal reported. "But if the shutdown continues, the pain from the shutdown will be difficult to avoid. People close to Thune and top Republicans said they acknowledge that without a spending deal, the government will be forced to make hard decisions."

A history professor is abruptly leaving the U.S. after a conservative group founded by the late Charlie Kirk singled him out for persecution, according to a report on Wednesday.

Mark Bray, who has taught about antifascist movements at Rutgers University since 2019, notified students Sunday that his courses would immediately move online as he and his family prepared to flee the country for their safety, reported the Washington Post.

“Since my family and I do not feel safe in our home at the moment, we are moving for the year to Europe,” Bray told students by email. “Truly I am so bummed about not being able to spend time with you all in the classroom.”

Far-right social media accounts called attention to Bray in late September, after news outlets quoted his remarks about President Donald Trump’s executive order designating antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization," and the Washington Post confirmed three death threats sent to the professor since Sept. 26.

One online activist called him a “domestic terrorist professor," while another shared his home address in New Jersey, and the Rutgers chapter of the conservative student group Turning Point USA, which was founded by the late Kirk, launched a petition Thursday demanding Bray's firing, referring to Trump's executive order and smearing the educator as a threat to their safety.

Bray decided to move his family to Spain for the rest of the year, and he's optimistic they'll be able to return one day.

“I’m hopeful about returning, and I’m hopeful — and I say this as a history professor — that someday we will look back on this as a cautionary tale about authoritarianism,” Bray said.

The university told the Post that administrators were aware of the Turning Point USA petition and Bray's message to students.

“We are gathering more information about this evolving situation,” the university said in a statement.

Bray, the author of four books on anarchism and antifa, also faced widespread criticism when he told NBC News’s “Meet the Press” in 2017, while a lecturer at Dartmouth University, that violence was sometimes justified, after the deadly “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

Dartmouth's president at the time condemned Bray in a statement and accused him “supporting violent protest," but more than 100 of the university's faculty members rallied around him.

Turning Point USA did not respond to requests for comment on the report, but the Trump administration justified the threats he received by blaming Kirk's assassination, which remains under investigation, on "Democrat violence," but Bray characterized the threats chasing him to Europe as part of the president's crackdown on academic freedom.

“There’s been a concerted attack on universities, and I feel like this is a facet of that," Bray said, "to make it so that professors who conduct research on protest movements don’t feel safe sharing their research or teaching about topics that the administration doesn’t like.”

President Donald Trump amplified fears about his authoritarian ambitions by calling for the Illinois governor and Chicago mayor to be jailed as he deploys National Guard troops in the nation's third-largest city.

Troops from the Texas National Guard arrived Tuesday to assist in crackdowns on immigration and violent crime, but Gov. JB Pritzker vowed to challenge Trump's order and Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order prohibiting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies from using city property for civil immigration enforcement.

The president, in response, called for both elected officials to be imprisoned.

"Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers!" Trump posted on Truth Social Wednesday morning. "Governor Pritzker also!"

Neither official has been accused of committing a crime, and both of them defiantly responded to his post.

"Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power," Pritzker posted. "What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?"

"This is not the first time Trump has tried to have a Black man unjustly arrested," Johnson responded. "I'm not going anywhere."

Many other social media users also expressed alarm about the president's demand.

"The current President of the United States is militarizing our streets, creating a police state, and demanding the imprisonment of state & local elected officials he doesn’t like," posted former Republican congressman Joe Walsh. "Tell me again he isn’t a fascist. Go ahead."

"They are shooting ministers with pepper balls and the President is threatening to imprison a Governor," said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI). "There is no red line for these Republicans, even the good ones. They are gonna 'pick their spots' on the road to us becoming Belarus."

"Trump said this stuff all the time in the first term and people blew it off because DOJ ignored him," added former State Department spokesman Matthew Miller. "But with the Comey indictment and other investigations into his enemies list this term, have to take these threats deadly seriously. He means it, and so does the bureaucracy."

"If blue state governors and mayors aren't already thinking about the reliability of various police forces nominally under their control, they should start immediately," warned The American Prospect's Ryan Cooper.

"When Reuters (Reuters!) does the most straightforward, bloodless, nonpartisan headline possible and still comes up with ['Trump calls for jailing Democratic leaders as troops prepare for Chicago deployment']," noted Zeteo's Asawin Suebsaeng.

"If we’re drawing up a list of people who should be in jail..." mused journalist Mark Chadbourn.

"Donald Trump is calling for the Chicago mayor and Illinois governor to be locked up because they won’t bend the knee to his fascism and legitimize his lies and propaganda," wrote Democratic activist Melanie D’Arrigo. "Locking up political opponents to crush dissent is fascism, whether you like the word or not."

"The Trump administration is not just picking fights with blue states, the President is (again) threatening democracy," posted Rodger Payne, an international relations professor at the University of Louisville. "The leaders Trump wants to jail were elected democratically -- and unlike Trump, both easily exceeded support from over 50% of the electorate."