Travis Gettys

Stephen Miller has been increasingly targeting the children of immigrants in the Trump administration's nationwide crackdown, according to a new report.

President Donald Trump's deputy White House chief of staff has been a driving force in the mass deportation campaign, and the New York Times reported that Miller believes that millions of immigrants in the U.S. take more than they give, which has been refuted over and over by economic data.

“With a lot of these immigrant groups, not only is the first generation unsuccessful," Miller told Fox News this month. "Again, Somalia is a clear example here. You see persistent issues in every subsequent generation. So you see consistent high rates of welfare use, consistent high rates of criminal activity, consistent failures to assimilate.”

The administration is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, and Miller's statements signal his intention to remove recent arrivals and their children without legal basis.

“He wants to unilaterally upend the idea that we are a nation where immigrants can ever become citizens with full and equal rights as native-born Americans,” said Andrea Flores, a former White House official during the Biden administration who worked on immigration matters.

Miller's arguments also call to mind anti-migrant rhetoric from the early 20th century, when Congress imposed strict quotas to block immigrants from Asia and southern and Eastern Europe through the 1924 National Origins Act.

“Just as we saw with immigrants who arrived around the turn of the 20th century, the children of immigrants who have arrived to the United States since the 1960s consistently learn fluent English, obtain more education than their immigrant parents and achieve higher earnings, showing strong patterns of integration,” said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute. “Study after study has demonstrated the upward mobility of children of immigrants.”

The administration's anti-immigrant rhetoric has sharpened as the birthright citizenship case makes its way to the high court, and both Miller and Trump have singled out the Somali community in Minnesota, where nearly 60 individuals from that migrant community have been convicted of fraud schemes against social services providers.

“This is the great lie of mass migration,” Miller posted on social media. “You are not just importing individuals. You are importing societies. No magic transformation occurs when failed states cross borders. At scale, migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions, and terrors, of their broken homelands.”

Pratheepan Gulasekaram, a law professor at the University of Colorado Law School, said Miller seems to believe migrants are “forever branded by their origins, distinct and antithetical to the fabric of our community.”

“In short, he views immigration solely through the lens of cultural threat," Gulasekaram said.

The FBI requested a handwriting analysis after a message allegedly sent by Jeffrey Epstein to another notorious sex offender apparently suggested the implication of Donald Trump.

The letter, postmarked Aug. 13, 2019, three days after Epstein died in federal custody, to former U.S. gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, who was convicted of sexually abusing scores of young gymnasts, alleges that President Donald Trump shared their "love of young, nubile girls."

"Dear L.N. as you know by now, I have taken the 'short route' home," the handwritten letter states. "Good Luck! We share one thing … our love & caring for young ladies at the hope they’d reach their full potential. Our president also shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to 'grab ------,' whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair. Yours, J. Epstein."

Epstein was found dead in his cell Aug. 10, 2019, and his death was ruled a suicide. The letter was eventually marked "return to sender," according to an FBI request for a handwriting analysis that was also released Monday in a new batch of files disclosed by the Department of Justice.

"On Wednesday, September 25, 2019, Special Agent (SA) received a phone call from Bureau of Prisons Special Investigative Section (SIS) Lieutenant (LT) Tijuana Doctor regarding a letter that was received by the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC)," that document states. "The letter was a 'return to sender' and the following was written at the top left corner of the letter: J. Epstein Manhattan Correctional NYC NY 10007 The letter was postmarked NOVA 220 13 August 2019 and was addressed to Larry Nassar at 9300 S. Wilmot Road, Tucson, Arizona, 85756."

"This address is that of another Federal Bureau of Prisons facility," the document adds. "The reason for the 'return to sender' was the addressee was 'no longer at this address.'"

The FBI's office in New York, where Epstein was being held while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, asked for the analysis to determine whether the disgraced financier had written the letter to Nassar.

"FBI New York requests the Laboratory perform a handwriting analysis comparing the letter received from MCC and the handwriting of Jeffrey Epstein to conclude if the individual who wrote the letter was Epstein or another unknown person," the document states. "Handwriting samples from Jeffrey Epstein's cell at MCC will be submitted along with the letter in question (in IA envelope 1A65)."

It's not clear whether that analysis was conducted or what it might have determined.

An attorney for Jeffrey Epstein's survivors ripped into the Department of Justice Tuesday for making "a complete mess" of its release of files about the late sex offender's network.

Congress passed a law last month compelling the release of DOJ investigative files, with redactions of victims' names, but attorney Helene Weiss told "CNN News Central" that documents that were briefly disclosed Monday night were revealing, but not quite what the law requires.

"It's troubling to say the least," said Weiss, whose law firm represents some survivors of Epstein's abuse. "This is a release from the Justice Department that we've been waiting for. As you know, it's a release that we were promised on Dec. 19, and the documents that we received in this release, again, were heavily redacted.

"They included some very inappropriate redactions, and the statement now from the DOJ being on the defensive when it was really their job to release these documents, their job to properly redact victims' names, that they completely failed to do.

"So the statement from the DOJ now, it's a little confusing and concerning in the context of what we're really seeing happening and what the DOJ has delivered to us, which is, quite frankly, a complete mess."

"The Department of Justice has officially released nearly 30,000 more pages of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein," DOJ said in a statement issued Tuesday morning. "Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election."

"To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already," the statement added.

"Nevertheless, out of our commitment to the law and transparency, the DOJ is releasing these documents with the legally required protections for Epstein’s victims."

More than a dozen survivors have already issued a complaint about the redactions accusing the DOJ of violating the law by exposing their names and personal information, but Maria Farmer – the first to file a complaint against Epstein, in 1996 – has said she felt vindicated that her name and complaint were part of the release.

"Maria Farmer, ... she's the exception we received in the batch from Friday, a document that's an FBI report from 1996 that says Maria Farmer reported her child sexual, her sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell to the FBI," Weiss said. "But this was just one document. We don't have Maria's interview notes, we don't have additional notes from 2006.

"We've received them before, but this new tranche didn't reveal notes. We also know that many survivors have interview notes. Dozens and dozens of survivors have reported that they were talking to the FBI, they interviewed with the FBI. Where are the victim interviews? Where are all of the victim interviews that we were promised?"

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One of the documents briefly disclosed by the Department of Justice contains an FBI tip related to a party allegedly hosted more than two decades ago by President Donald Trump that featured prostitutes.

An unidentified female told the FBI in in October 2020 that she had information about a "Jeffrey Epstein party" in 2000, according to a partially redacted summary of the tip — which has not been verified as accurate — that was included in a new batch of files posted online Monday night, but then removed several hours later.

"[She] met Lisa Villeneuve at a hospital where they were roommates in 2000," the summary states. "Villeneuve now goes by Ghislaine Lisa Villeneuve and sells real estate in Irving California. After [she] and Villeneuve left the hospital they remained friends. Later that year in 2000 around Christmas time Villeneuve invited [the tipster] to a party on Palm Beach Island, FL. [The tipster] believes the house belonged to Epstein."

"Before the party Villeneuve took [the tipster] to meet Bobby Cox," the FBI summary continues, based on the tip. "Cox was a young man and introduced himself as a model scout. Villeneuve laughed in response to Cox's introduction and said 'No, you're a pimp.' Villeneuve, Cox and [the tipster] then went to the party. They entered the property through the back yard and Villeneuve said she would go inside to speak with the hostess which [the tipster] believes was Ghislaine Maxwell. When Villeneuve took [the tipster] inside Villeneuve told to stay close and not go into any of the rooms."

"Villeneuve took [the tipster] to meet a man named Curt Schmidt, who is currently the CEO of Blue Buffalo," the summary adds. "When Villeneuve approached Schmidt he asked Villeneuve if [the tipster] was cool. [The tipster] stated she was cool. Villeneuve said no, he means cool to have sex. Schmidt said no he meant cocaine."

"Villeneuve took back inside and someone told the party that Donald Trump had invited them all to a party at Mar a Lago," the tip summary concludes. "[The tipster] told Villeneuve she wanted to go, but Villeneuve told it wasn't that kind of party, it was for prostitutes. [The tipster] hasn't spoken to Villeneuve since 2002."

It's not clear whether the FBI considered the information credible or did any further investigation of the tip, and no one with Villeneuve's name has previously been connected with Epstein or accused of wrongdoing.

"The Department of Justice has officially released nearly 30,000 more pages of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein," DOJ said in a statement issued Tuesday morning. "Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election."

"To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already," the statement added. "Nevertheless, out of our commitment to the law and transparency, the DOJ is releasing these documents with the legally required protections for Epstein’s victims."

CNN's Maria Cardona lost patience with a conservative panelist's efforts to justify the detention and deportations of U.S. citizens as part of President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.

The panelists were discussing the case of Dulce Consuelo Díaz Morales, a Baltimore mother in ICE custody whose attorney says was born in the United States, but Concerned Women for America CEO Penny Nance argued that mistaken deportations were to be expected in a massive operation she deems necessary, citing two examples of women who were slain by undocumented migrants.

"Listen, that was a very sympathetic story, and I did feel for her parents who said there's an empty place at their dinner table for Christmas," Nance said. "But I also think about Jocelyn Nungaray's family, who have an empty place forever, and also Laken Riley's family, who have an empty place forever, and the people who died because of drunk drivers who weren't supposed to be in this country..."

"Hold on, let me just finish," Nance said, fending off Democratic strategist Cardona's attempts at retort. "We need to make sure we get it right, and they need to do this. No, hold on, the overall story is the fact that 77 million people voted for Donald Trump, and they want us to close the borders and they want to clean up the mess because Venezuela sent in criminals into our country, and people that shouldn't be here were allowed in, and we've got to clean it up, and it's just messy."

Cardona finally got a chance to say her piece.

"Penny, you know I love you and we have been friends for quite a while, but what you're saying has absolutely nothing to do with this," Cardona said. "This woman is a U.S. citizen, she was born here. If that's true. Hang on, hang on, this makes – her lawyer was showing her birth certificate. What else do they need for this to be true?"

This makes my blood boil, and it makes everyone's blood run cold who are not just U.S. citizens," Cardona added. "I am a naturalized citizen – this terrifies me."

CNN's Audie Cornish put an end to a conservative panelist's efforts to exonerate President Donald Trump in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

The Department of Justice disclosed another batch of documents related to a sex trafficking investigation into Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, with the president's name mentioned frequently, but Concerned Women for America CEO Penny Nance insisted to "CNN This Morning" that Trump had nothing to fear from the contents of those files.

"Listen, President Trump signed the bill, the law that requires the release of all of this," Nance said. "I, as a survivor of an assault, I feel very strongly that this issue has to be treated with the respect that it deserves, and all of these victims deserve justice. That's what I told Alex Acosta."

Acosta had reached a controversial 2008 agreement as U.S. attorney in Miami that allowed Epstein to plead guilty to two counts of solicitation of prostitution and given immunity from federal prosecution. Trump nominated him during his first term as secretary of labor – although he resigned in July 2019 over criticism of that plea deal.

"Hold up," Cornish interrupted. "Look, I don't think the president is treating this – we don't feel satisfied by what we're hearing, and I don't mean to interrupt you, but you have victims speaking out repeatedly."

"I believe they will get what they deserve, I believe in time they will," Nance continued, "and I actually think that this began with Alex Acosta when he was was the prosecutor that gave him the sweet deal in Florida. President Trump actually fired him for it when this all became clear. It should have happened sooner, but it did, and I actually think that we have done ourselves as conservatives a disservice not requiring this to all come out immediately, because the truth is that all the victims have said that Donald Trump was not guilty."

"In fact, Virginia [Giuffre] said that – I'm sorry, I think I'm saying her name wrong – said that he didn't even flirt with her," Nance added, butchering the last name of Epstein's most prominent victim, who took her own life earlier this year. "So this is the issue is not about Donald Trump, but it is an issue about some very powerful people."

Cornish halted Nance at that point.

"Well, let me pause because I think we're actually going to learn more about the documents," Cornish said. "Number one, we're going to have a survivor on later today, so you'll get to hear from them directly, and it's important to note that the president, as you said, has not been accused of being involved in Epstein's criminal activity. We're going to be watching for what comes out of those documents today."

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Prosecutors considered placing sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in a cell with a Donald Trump superfan who was convicted of mailing pipe bombs to the president's enemies, according to newly released documents.

The Justice Department posted online thousands more files Monday evening related to the government’s case against Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s accomplice in sex trafficking. The Washington Post managed to download the full set before they were taken down without explanation.

"The files include correspondence among prison officials about Epstein’s psychological assessments, with discussions about holding him in a special housing units about two weeks before he died," the Post reported.

Epstein died in federal custody in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, and his death was ruled a suicide.

“We have supporting memorandums from the responding officers who indicated they observed inmate Epstein with a makeshift noose around his neck,” stated an internal email from prosecutors.

The documents also show that Epstein was nearly placed in the same cell as an infamous MAGA fanatic, but little further explanation has been disclosed about that matter.

"At one point, the documents indicate, prison officials planned to house Epstein in a cell with Cesar Sayoc, a fanatical supporter of Trump’s who in 2019 was sentenced to 20 years in prison after he mailed explosive devices to prominent Democrats and media figures," the Post reported. "The Federal Bureau of Prisons did not respond to requests for comment about Epstein’s incarceration."

Sayoc told a federal judge after his arrest that attending a rally for Trump “became like a new found drug" during a particularly dark time in his life.

“By 2018, he was living alone in a decrepit and cramped van that had been his home for more than a decade," Sayoc's lawyers wrote. "A typical day saw Mr. Sayoc waking up in his van, showering at the gym, and cooking crockpot meals while inside the DJ booth of a strip club before heading off to his second job delivering pizza. As he grew older and more isolated, excessive steroid use increased his feelings of anxiety and paranoia.”"

Defense lawyers told the court that 'in this darkness, Mr. Sayoc found light in Donald J. Trump."

President Donald Trump flew on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's plane at least eight times, according to a large tranche of documents briefly put into public view by the Department of Justice.

The Justice Department released thousands of files Monday, three days after publicizing an initial batch in partial compliance with a law passed last month by Congress,. They appear to have been removed from the agency's website several hours later – but the Washington Post downloaded the full set before they were taken down.

"The documents show that a subpoena was sent to Mar-a-Lago in 2021 for records that pertained to the government’s case against Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s accomplice in sex trafficking," the Post reported. "They include notes from an assistant U.S. attorney in New York about the number of times Trump flew on Epstein’s plane, including one flight that included just Trump, Epstein and a 20-year-old woman, according to the notes."

"The newly released documents also include several tips that were collected by the FBI about Trump’s involvement with Epstein and parties at their properties in the early 2000s," the report added. "The documents do not show whether any follow-up investigations took place or whether any of the tips were corroborated."

Flight records show Trump “traveled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware),” wrote an assistant U.S. attorney from the Southern District of New York in an email dated Jan. 8, 2020, after a review of flight records as part of the government case against Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking.

“For your situational awareness, wanted to let you know that the flight records we received yesterday reflect that Donald Trump traveled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware), including during the period we would expect to charge in a Maxwell case,” the email states.

Maxwell was present on at least four of those flights, according to the prosecutor, and in some cases those flights included passengers who could be called as possible witnesses in a case against Maxwell.

“We’ve just finished reviewing the full records (more than 100 pages of very small script) and didn’t want any of this to be a surprise down the road,” the prosecutor wrote.

A teenage girl in Louisiana confronted a boy who was sharing artificial intelligence-generated nude photos on a school bus — and she was the one who was expelled after the fight.

The 13-year-old heard rumors of the nude images and went with two friends to meet with the guidance counselor at their school in Thibodaux in August. They accused a classmate and two students from other schools of creating and circulating the AI-generated images on Snapchat and possibly TikTok, reported the Associated Press.

“Full nudes with her face put on them,” said the girl's father, Joseph Daniels.

Technology has advanced far beyond most schools' cyberbullying policies because realistic deepfakes can be created by pulling photos off social media and using AI to "nudify" the image, which creates a nightmare for the students who are targeted.

“When we ignore the digital harm, the only moment that becomes visible is when the victim finally breaks,” said Sergio Alexander, a researcher at Texas Christian University focused on emerging technology.

The images had been spread on Snapchat, which deletes messages seconds after they're viewed, so school officials and a sheriff's deputy assigned to the school couldn't find them, and the principal doubted their existence.

“Kids lie a lot,” said Danielle Coriell, principal at Sixth Ward Middle School. “They lie about all kinds of things. They blow lots of things out of proportion on a daily basis. In 17 years, they do it all the time. So to my knowledge, at 2 o’clock when I checked again, there were no pictures.”

The girl's father said he "was led to believe that this was just hearsay and rumors," but the girl was miserable for the rest of the day and went to the counselor in the afternoon asking to call her father, but she was not allowed, and when she stepped onto the school bus that afternoon, she saw a classmate showing one of the nude images to a friend.

“That’s when I got angry,” the eighth grader said.

She slapped the boy, who video shows shrugging off the smack, and then hit him a second time, saying, “Why am I the only one doing this?”

Two classmates then hit the boy before the 13-year-old climbed over a seat and punched and stomped the boy, and video of the altercation was posted on Facebook.

“Overwhelming social media sentiment was one of outrage and a demand that the students involved in the fight be held accountable,” the district and sheriff’s office said in a joint statement released in November.

Although the girl had no disciplinary record, she was assigned to an alternative school as the district looked to expel her for a full semester, and the principal refused to answer questions at her disciplinary hearing about what punishment the boy would face.

“She just felt like she was victimized multiple times — by the pictures and by the school not believing her and by them putting her on a bus and then expelling her for her actions,” her father said.

But on the day of that hearing, three weeks after the fight, the boy was charged with 10 counts of unlawful dissemination of images created by artificial intelligence under a new Louisiana state law, and a second boy was hit this month with identical charges, but the sheriff's office declined to charge the girl in the fight due to the “totality of the circumstances.”

The girl has gone into therapy for depression and anxiety while attending the alternative school, where her father said she started skipping meals and stopped completing assignments, and Sixth Ward Middle School wants her to remain at the alternative school for another 12 weeks due to that missed work.

“Sometimes in life we can be both victims and perpetrators," said Superintendent Jarod Martin.

The girl's attorneys pleaded her case before the school board early last month, and they allowed her to return immediately, although she'll remain on probation until Jan. 29 – which her father said would prevent her from taking part in sports, extracurricular activities and dances.

“I was hoping she would make great friends, they would go to the high school together and, you know, it’d keep everybody out of trouble on the right tracks,” her father said. “I think they ruined that.”

Lawmakers are back home for the holidays without making any progress to avoid another threatened government shutdown that's just over the horizon.

Congress must reach an agreement to fund the federal government by Jan. 30, but Senate leaders gave up and punted the matter into the start of next year. Republicans and Democrats still haven't started negotiating the details on nine separate funding bills — making another shutdown increasingly likely, reported Politico Monday.

“We wasted a lot of time because the Senate’s not negotiating yet,” said House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-OK). “When they’re ready to negotiate, we can move fast.”

Cole and his counterpart in the Senate, Susan Collins (R-ME), finally reached an agreement over the weekend on the overall totals for the spending bills Congress still needs to pass after a month of discussions, and GOP senators expect to try again in early January to advance a funding package – but Democrats are growing impatient.

“They wasted all that time during the summer,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the House’s top Democratic appropriator. "Democrats are prepared. We’re ready to move. Let’s go."

The Republican appropriations totals aren't public, but Cole said the deal would keep overall funding below levels agreed upon in last month's stopgap funding measure to appease House budget hawks who want to keep funding flat for federal agencies.

“I don’t want any spending higher than current-level spending,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX). “If they’re busting the current levels, then they’re going to have to demonstrate to me why.”

House hardliners could create headaches for Speaker Mike Johnson and other GOP leaders if their demands aren't reflected in the funding bills.

“You can expect the smoke to start coming up from over that hill and that hill and that hill,” said Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV), who chairs the Homeland Security spending panel, "and there might even be some open flame.”

Amodei said some Republicans are openly talking about the possibility of another shutdown, but others think Congress will most likely keep funding levels the same for the pending nine bills, which Johnson wants to pass before the deadline at the end of January, but Republicans have doubts.

“I wouldn’t bet on that on Polymarket,” said one House Republican.

FBI Director Kash Patel has been riding around in a luxury armored BMW vehicle paid for with taxpayer funds.

President Donald Trump's pick to lead the bureau has been asking for the specially armored BMW X5s because he believes they would be less conspicuous than the Chevrolet Suburbans other FBI directors have been driven in, four sources familiar with his transportation told MS NOW.

“Government agencies, including the FBI, routinely evaluate, replace and update vehicle fleets based on usage, security needs or budgetary decisions,” said FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson, who confirmed the purchase. “The specific decisions referenced in this article were evaluated partly as a way to save taxpayers millions by picking cheaper selections or making cost structures more efficient.”

Williamson said the bureau had planned to acquire updated vehicles but declined to provide documentation that showed the BMWs were less expensive than the Chevrolets, and his critics say the new vehicle is another example of Patel's questionable spending of public money after using the FBI’s Gulfstream jet to see his girlfriend perform a concert and other personal travel.

“He needs a field jacket that fits just right, a ‘Punisher’-inspired challenge coin and a new fleet of foreign cars to drive around in,” said Stacey Young, a former Justice Department official who founded Justice Connection network of former DOJ employees.

MS NOW also reported, according to four sources, that Patel had asked the FBI earlier this year to purchase a new, more modern FBI jet for him to use, but that request was shot down over cost estimates that were between $90 million and $115 million.

Patel then asked for the communications equipment to be upgraded on the existing Gulfstream jet, two sources said, adding that he needed more reliable internet on board so multiple people could post on social media at the same time, but a person close to the director denied that.

“It wasn’t for social media," that person said. "He rarely, if ever, posts on social media himself. It was because we had multiple secure comms calls both scheduled and unscheduled that were dropping on official travel and we needed to fix it.”

New evidence is emerging that could deal a major blow to President Donald Trump's case for stripping birthright citizenship to the children of immigrants.

The president has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to restore “the original meaning” of the 14th Amendment, which his lawyers argued in a brief meant that “children of temporary visitors and illegal aliens are not U.S. citizens by birth," but new research raises questions about what lawmakers intended the amendment to do, reported the New York Times.

"One important tool has been overlooked in determining the meaning of this amendment: the actions that were taken — and not taken — to challenge the qualifications of members of Congress, who must be citizens, around the time the amendment was ratified," wrote Times correspondent Adam Liptak.

A new study will be published next month in The Georgetown Law Journal Online examining the backgrounds of the 584 members who served in Congress from 1865 to 1871. That research found more than a dozen of them might not have been citizens under Trump’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment, but no one challenged their qualifications.

"That is, said Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia and an author of the study, the constitutional equivalent of the dog that did not bark, which provided a crucial clue in a Sherlock Holmes story," Liptak wrote.

The 14th Amendment states that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside," while the Constitution requires members of the House of Representatives to have been citizens for at least seven years, and senators for at least nine.

“If there had been an original understanding that tracked the Trump administration’s executive order,” Frost told Liptak, “at least some of these people would have been challenged.”

Only one of the nine challenges filed against a senator's qualifications in the period around the 14th Amendment's ratification involved the citizenship issue related to Trump's interpretation of birthright citizenship, and that case doesn't support his position.

"Several Democratic senators claimed in 1870 that their new colleague from Mississippi, Hiram Rhodes Revels, the first Black man to serve in Congress, had not been a citizen for the required nine years," Liptak wrote. "They reasoned that the 14th Amendment had overturned Dred Scott, the 1857 Supreme Court decision that denied citizenship to the descendants of enslaved African Americans, just two years earlier and that therefore he would not be eligible for another seven."

"That argument failed," the correspondent added. "No one thought to challenge any other members on the ground that they were born to parents who were not citizens and who had not, under the law in place at the time, filed a declaration of intent to be naturalized."

"The consensus on the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause has long been that everyone born in the United States automatically becomes a citizen with exceptions for those not subject to its jurisdiction, like diplomats and enemy troops," Liptak added.

Frost's research found there were many members of Congress around the time of the ratification of the 14th Amendment who wouldn't have met Trump's definition of a citizen, and she said that fact undercuts the president's arguments.

“If the executive order reflected the original public meaning, which is what the originalists say is relevant,” Frost said, “then somebody — a member of Congress, the opposing party, the losing candidate, a member of the public who had just listened to the ratification debates on the 14th Amendment, somebody — would have raised this.”

Panelists on "CNN This Morning" speculated on rapper Nicki Minaj's motivations for taking part in this weekend's Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest convention, where she praised President Donald Trump and mocked California Gov. Gavin Newsom as "New-scum."

The Grammy-nominated rapper had criticized Trump's immigration policies during his first term, but is now hailing him and Vice President JD Vance as "role models" for young men. She told the conservative audience that Trump and Vance both had a "very uncanny ability to be someone that you relate to."

And the panelists wondered what was driving her about-face.

"Nicki Minaj seems to me like a single-issue type of voter," said Sara Fischer, senior media reporter for Axios. "She cared a lot about the 'bring back our girls' movement in Nigeria."

The 43-year-old Minaj last month shared a message posted by Trump about possible sanctions against Nigeria over persecution of Christians, and she told the Turning Point crowd that she would speak up for Christians.

"This was like an applause line because people had just been talking about the U.S. as a Christian nation at the conference," said host Audie Cornish.

CNN's Zachary Wolf wondered what was going on behind the scenes.

"There is something that we don't know going on here because like you said, she came out very publicly," Wolf said. "Trump is somebody who can be, you know, maybe not manipulated, but certainly encouraged to do something on somebody's behalf. We don't know what that is. So she sees some reason to come out and do this. You know, is it finding a new group of followers for her music? I doubt it."

"Is it a pardon for someone in her family?" Cornish added. "In the meantime, I think people are paying attention A, because pop culture likes what they would consider a heel turn. But second of all, I think it's just one of those moments where she had already been beefing with other rappers online. Her fans were already starting to ask a lot of questions, and this kind of adds to it."

"Yeah, and when's the last time she had a major hit?" Fischer wondered. "Like this brings her back into the news cycle, brings her back into the zeitgeist in popularity. This is going to go viral on TikTok. I mean, Nicki Minaj has been in the conversation for a long time. I can't believe 'Super Bass' was 15 years ago. So this keeps her relevant."

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White House chief of staff Susie Wiles revealed an "itch" that makes her no different from the rest of the self-promoters and cranks in President Donald Trump's orbit, a columnist observed.

The president's top staffer gave a series of shockingly revealing interviews to Vanity Fair's Chris Whipple, and New York Times writer Frank Bruni was fascinated by her motivations for dishing out gossip about Trump's "alcoholic’s personality" and dismissing Vice President JD Vance as “a conspiracy theorist.”

"Why did she do it? Why discard her usual discretion and speak so frankly, on the record, about her cracked compatriots in the Trump administration?" Bruni wrote. "It’s a great question, but it’s not the most important one, which is this: Why does she do it? I’m referring not to the interview but to her job. If she can see the incoherence, immoderation and instability all around her, why abet it?"

The answer to both questions is the same, in Bruni's estimation.

"The first year of Trump’s return to the White House has shown or reminded us of many things, including the fragility of democracy, the prevalence of cowardice and the intensity of tribalism," he wrote. "But it has been an especially stark and galling education in the intoxication of power."

"And Wiles is a more illuminating entry on that syllabus than other senior administration officials, who wear their vainglory so conspicuously it might as well be a sandwich board spelling out their attachment to their entourages, to their letterheads, to the pomp and the perks," Bruni added.

Unlike wildly unqualified administration officials like Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – whom she affectionately calls "my Bobby" – Wiles is a seasoned political pro who has preferred to work behind the scenes. But Bruni said her interviews betrayed that self-cultivated reputation.

"Wiles is certainly no Hegseth, showily doing push-ups with the troops; no Patel, with his premature expectorations; no Kristi Noem, zipping down to El Salvador for a macabre photo op," Bruni wrote. "But she’s also human, with an itch to make sure that her presence and her sway at the pinnacle of power don’t go unnoticed, unrecorded, underappreciated."

"Even someone like Wiles savors the air up there," the columnist added. "Even if it’s toxic with conspiracy theories and zealotry."

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) fired back at Vice President JD Vance's insult lobbed from the stage of a high-profile conservativhttps://www.rawstory.com/crockett-budget-bill/e conference.

The vice president slammed the Texas Democrat, who's mounting a U.S. Senate challenge for the seat held by Sen. Joh Cornyn (R-TX), from his wide-ranging and racially charged speech at Turning Point USA’s annual America Fest conference in Phoenix.

“Jasmine Crockett!” Vance exclaimed. “Oh, Jasmine Crockett, the record speaks for itself. She wants to be a senator, though her street-girl persona is about as real as her nails!”

Vance’s remarks were met with thunderous applause at the event aimed at young conservatives, but Crockett provided a substantially less positive reaction on social media.

"Imagine commenting on someone’s nails while at the same time ignoring that the only reason you got your political 'dream' job was because your boss incited a violent mob who wanted to hang your predecessor for, oh I don’t know, honoring his oath to the Constitution?!" Crockett posted on her X account. "How about you stop worrying about me, until we are on the Senate floor together & work to stop your boss from bankrupting our country while engaging in the largest corruption scheme we’ve ever seen?!"