Tom Homan, the “border czar” who has been the architect of some of the Trump administration’s most harmful and callous immigration actions, was reportedly under FBI investigation for accepting a bribe—but the case was dropped after Donald Trump was sworn in as president in January.
MSNBC reported on Monday that Homan allegedly took $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents posing as contractors. According to government documents, Homan was recorded on camera taking the payment at a location in Texas in September 2024.
Homan reportedly took the cash in exchange for the promise of securing government contracts when the Trump administration took over in January of this year. MSNBC reported that FBI and Department of Justice officials believed they had a case against Homan for conspiracy to commit bribery.
In response to the outlet’s reporting, FBI Director Kash Patel argued that the investigation was a partisan operation that began under the Biden administration. Patel didn’t explain why Biden’s team failed to bring charges if partisanship was the motivation.
Even as the Trump team was burying the Homan case, the administration began orchestrating criminal investigations of Trump’s political adversaries. Those machinations recently came to a head after the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was fired because he wouldn’t charge New York state Attorney General Letitia James with trumped-up crimes.
This isn’t the first time that Homan’s name has come up in connection to corruption.
In May, it was reported that Homan worked as a consultant for the Geo Group, which operates immigration detention centers. Homan was paid a minimum of $5,000, although disclosing the exact amount he made isn’t mandatory—and then pushed mass deportation efforts as border czar, generating new business and lots of federal payments for his former employer.
Homan has been the public and extremely pugilistic face of the administration’s harsh immigration policies. He has made frequent media appearances, including a near-ubiquitous presence on Fox News. The MAGA mouthpiece news network has buried the latest report on his actions, naturally.
The former border patrol agent has a history of racist affiliations and as border czar has embraced racial profiling and using scare tactics against largely Latino migrant communities. He has admitted that ICE has arrested people without cause, and has threatened cities with Democratic leaders who have said they will protect immigrant communities.
Homan has even said he would use the Department of Justice to go after Democratic officials like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for speaking out against deportation actions. Now we know that this same department is apparently uninterested in pursuing justice if the crime may have been committed by Homan himself.
In Donald Trump’s world, nothing says freedom like targeting art and museums.
In the wake of recent attacks on the Smithsonian’s choice to feature more than just straight, white artists, the White House has created a detailed list of artists it deems too woke.
“This is ‘art’ from the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery commemorating the act of illegally crossing the ‘exclusionary’ border,” a White House X account wrote alongside a painting by Rigoberto A. Gonzalez.
“This is what President Trump means when he says the Smithsonian is ‘OUT OF CONTROL.’”
The painting in question features a realistic depiction of a family of four at the southern border wall as a mother, holding a baby in her arms, scales a ladder.
But the White House didn’t stop there.
In this June 25, 2018 photo, visitors sit near a print by Mexican-American, Los Angeles-based artist Ken Gonzales-Day, who was exhibiting his 2006 series "Erased Lynchings" at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, which shows a series of photographs of lynchings in which the victim has been digitally removed from the image.
In their attempt to drive home the right-wing talking point of how crazy and woke the Smithsonian truly is, officials created an entire webpage listing out each piece of art featured at the museum at one time or another that crossed some imaginary line.
The list, it appears, only includes artists who depict people of color or queer individuals. And predictably, the administration made it a point to bash artists who featured immigrants as well.
“A exhibit [sic] at the American History Museum depicts migrants watching Independence Day fireworks ‘through an opening in the U.S.-Mexico border wall’ and says America’s founders ‘feared non-White immigration,’” the White House wrote.
It seems as if the administration takes issue with the statement that the founders painted non-white immigrants in a negative light. Then again, the Trump regime labeled Venezuelan immigrants with no criminal record as dangerous gang members before throwing them into a foreign prison that’s notorious for torturing inmates.
The artwork’s description also points out how Latin American immigrants are often labeled as “invaders.” And with an administration and president insistent on calling them “illegal aliens” while making sweeping generalizations that immigrants coming from the southern border are murderers and rapists, the shoe sure does seem to fit.
But turn back the clock just a few years to Trump’s first term as president, and remember how his administration was pointing fingers at the left for participating in censorship and “cancel” culture.
As always, the projection is strong with Trump and company.
In an unprecedented and dangerous move, the Department of Justice has sued all 15 federal judges in Maryland—a sweeping retaliation against a court order that temporarily halts deportations.
At the center of the legal firestorm is a May 21 order from Chief Judge George L. Russell III, which bans federal officials from deporting immigrants who file habeas corpus petitions in Maryland until at least 4 PM on the second business day after filing.
The goal, Russell wrote, is to prevent rushed removals that deny immigrants a fair hearing, especially after business hours or on weekends, when proper review becomes logistically impossible.
“The recent influx of habeas petitions concerning alien detainees … filed after normal court hours and on weekends and holidays has created scheduling difficulties and resulted in hurried and frustrating hearings,” the order reads.
Russell cited the All Writs Act and a 1966 Supreme Court precedent that gives courts limited power to preserve jurisdiction while they review urgent matters.
But the Trump administration isn’t backing down. In a broad legal challenge, the DOJ argues that Russell’s standing order illegally grants blanket relief to all immigrants without considering individual cases and unlawfully restricts the president’s authority to enforce immigration laws.
A cartoon by Clay Bennett.
“A sense of frustration and a desire for greater convenience do not give Defendants license to flout the law. Nor does their status within the judicial branch,” DOJ attorneys wrote.
The DOJ is asking the 4th Circuit Court to assign a judge from outside the Maryland district to hear the case, claiming that all 15 judges have an inherent conflict of interest since they are all named as defendants.
Legal analysts say this move is without recent precedent.
“It’s extraordinary. And it’s escalating DOJ’s effort to challenge federal judges,” Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola, told The Associated Press.
Speaking to The Washington Post, J. Michael Luttig, a retired federal judge, was more blunt.
“It is reckless and irresponsible and yet another direct frontal assault on the federal courts of this country,” he said.
The legal action appears to be the latest and most extreme salvo in the Trump administration’s ongoing war with the judiciary over immigration. And it didn’t take long for Democrats to sound the alarm.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore called the suit an “unprecedented effort to intimidate judges and usurp the power of the courts” and accused the Trump administration of “turning our Constitution on its head.”
Luttig says the administration helped create the chaos initially by rushing to deport immigrants en masse without proper notice or hearings. The Supreme Court recently ruled that one such group had a right to challenge their removal before being deported.
But that hasn’t stopped Trump officials, who have continued to lash out at judges who rule against them and openly question the courts’ authority to intervene.
Attorney General Pam Bondi clarified the Trump administration’s position in a statement on Wednesday.
“President Trump’s executive authority has been undermined since the first hours of his presidency by an endless barrage of injunctions designed to halt his agenda. This pattern of judicial overreach undermines the democratic process and cannot be allowed to stand,” she wrote.
President Donald Trump has criticized adverse rulings before—at one point calling for the impeachment of a federal judge who ordered for deported immigrants to be returned to the United States. While impeachment is unlikely and would require Senate conviction, it was enough to prompt a rare public rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
“Impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” he warned.
The Maryland bench, especially, has been a thorn in Trump’s side. Judges like Paula Xinis have forced the administration to reverse wrongful deportations. Others, like James K. Bredar, are overseeing lawsuits filed by Democratic state attorneys general who are challenging mass firings of federal employees.
And in a year marked by sweeping executive actions, Maryland judges have blocked key Trump policies related to immigration, transgender health care, and civil service rights. Of the 15 judges in the district, 13 were appointed by Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden.
But legal scholars warn that the lawsuit could break long-standing norms between the executive and judicial branches.
“The president and his attorney general will continue their ruthless attack on the federal Judiciary and the Rule of Law until the Supreme Court of the United States at least attempts to stop them,” Luttig warned. “Until now, the Supreme Court has acquiesced in the president’s war, while the devastating toll on the Federal Courts and the Rule of Law has mounted by the day.”
Attempting to deflect from courts repeatedly ruling against his immigration policy, President Donald Trump lied to reporters on Monday, claiming that the courts fabricated the need for cases to be heard—despite the right to a trial being a constitutional law for more than 234 years.
“The courts have all of a sudden, out of nowhere, they said, ‘maybe you have to have trials.’ Trials, we’re going to have 5 million trials? Doesn’t work, doesn’t work. You wouldn’t have a country left,” he said.
Trump has been under fire for denying detainees due process. Students like Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk have been abducted for their pro-Palestinian advocacy, and legal U.S. resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia was wrongly captured and deported to El Salvador.
On April 30, a court ordered the release of Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian immigrant who was held by the Department of Homeland Security while it tried to find a reason for his deportation.
Contrary to Trump’s statement, the U.S. Constitution explicitly lays out the right to a trial in the Sixth Amendment:
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
These rights were part of the ten amendments ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, and nothing in U.S. law or Trump’s executive orders have nullified them. The Sixth Amendment ensures that accusations leveled by the government against people have to be proven in a court of law and not just by royal fiat, as was done by the British government in the colonial era.
Trump’s unconstitutional remarks come just one day after he told NBC “I don’t know” when asked if the president needs to uphold the Constitution. Like every president before him, Trump took an oath of office, making it clear that this was a core element of his presidential duties.
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
The oath is not ambiguous, and defense of the Constitution is not optional.
Trump’s ignorance of U.S. law and history was also on display when he recently argued that the Declaration of Independence was a “declaration of unity and love and respect.” The document famously severed the relationship between colonists and England, leading to the bloody Revolutionary War where hundreds of thousands died.
Of course, Trump is the only president who has been impeached twice. In both instances, he was found to be in violation of the Constitution.
No wonder he thinks the right to a trial came “out of nowhere.”
President Donald Trump on Tuesday said a federal judge who attempted to block his administration from deporting hundreds of immigrants to an El Salvadoran gulag should be impeached and removed.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg halted Trump's attempt to deport without due process the alleged Venezuelan immigrants he accused of being members of a violent gang. Trump already ignored Boasberg's order to turn around the planes, which were carrying the alleged immigrants to El Salvador.
But now he wants Boasberg removed altogether, saying in a deranged Truth Social post that Boasberg is a "Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama."
"He didn’t WIN the popular VOTE (by a lot!), he didn’t WIN ALL SEVEN SWING STATES, he didn’t WIN 2,750 to 525 Counties, HE DIDN’T WIN ANYTHING!" Trump wrote in his insane and lie-filled screed. "I WON FOR MANY REASONS, IN AN OVERWHELMING MANDATE, BUT FIGHTING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION MAY HAVE BEEN THE NUMBER ONE REASON FOR THIS HISTORIC VICTORY. I’m just doing what the VOTERS wanted me to do. This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!! WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!"
Multiple House Republicans want to impeach judges who have ruled against Trump and his administration's other illegal actions, including those largely conducted through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
"I’m drafting articles of impeachment for US District Judge Paul Engelmayer. Partisan judges abusing their positions is a threat to democracy," Republican Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona said in a post on X in February, after the judge blocked DOGE staffers from accessing Treasury Department data. Shortly after that post, Crane introduced articles of impeachment against Engelmayer, accusing him of violating his oath and abusing his judicial powers.
And freshman Republican Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas said this past Saturday he was introducing articles of impeachment against Boasberg.
Co-President Elon Musk replied to Gill’s post, writing in an X post that Boasberg’s impeachment is “necessary.”
Elon Musk
But this is the first time Trump has publicly blessed Republican efforts to try to remove judges who are simply interpreting and applying the laws.
Trump got on the impeachment train after Musk, who has not just called for Boasberg’s impeachment but for the disposal of multiple other judges who have ruled against Trump.
“There needs to be an immediate wave of judicial impeachments, not just one,” Musk wrote in a post on X in February.
Even the right-wing New York Post editorial board has told Republicans to cut it out with their thirst for ousting federal judges.
“It’s nothing of the kind, and cheering it only makes Musk look reckless—a reputation he doesn’t need when many DOGE actions also face court challenge,” the board wrote.
Meanwhile, the Republican impeachment efforts have led to warnings from sitting federal judges that the campaign to clear the federal bench of anyone who rules against Trump will chill the judicial branch from applying the law out of fear of retribution or even violence.
“Impeachment is not—shouldn’t be—a short circuiting of that process, and so it is concerning if impeachment is used in a way that is designed to do just that,” U.S. Appeals Court Judge Richard Sullivan said at a news conference earlier in March, according to a report from Bloomberg Law.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, meanwhile, issued a statement condemning the calls for judicial impeachments.
"For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” Roberts said in a curt statement on Tuesday—a sign he thinks the impeachment talk is dangerous and not merely bluster.
It’s unclear if any of the impeachment efforts will make it to the House floor for a vote. But if they do, we will see just how many Republicans will shred the rule of law to blindly follow Dear Leader.
President Donald Trump thrust the country even further into a constitutional crisis over the weekend with a series of blatantly illegal actions that left legal scholars sounding alarm bells about the future of the United States.
Not only has Trump declared speech he doesn’t like to be illegal, he is even ignoring court orders as part of his deportation quest.
“Court order defied. First of many as I've been warning and start of true constitutional crisis,” Mark Zaid, a lawyer whom Trump targeted by removing his security clearance, wrote in a post on X.
Zaid also predicted that the actions Trump took this weekend “[u]ltimately will lead to Trump impeachment proceedings” if Democrats win control of Congress.
Trump began his past weekend by baselessly accusing media outlets that do not publish universally positive news about him of engaging in unlawful activity, saying in a nakedly partisan speech at the Department of Justice on Friday, “It’s totally illegal what they do. I just hope you can all watch for it, but it’s totally illegal."
President Donald Trump waves from the stairs of Air Force One upon his arrival at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on. March 17, 2025
On the same day, Trump signed an executive order targeting the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, revoking security clearances of lawyers who work at the firm, and saying he will cancel the contracts of any companies or entities that are represented by the law firm’s attorneys.
He targeted this law firm because it hired a prosecutor who worked on former special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia. Trump also targeted the firm because it employed a lawyer who worked at the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which successfully prosecuted Trump for falsifying business records.
Trump had already targeted two other large law firms—Perkins Coie and Covington & Burling—for similar reasons, all an attempt to try to scare lawyers out of representing people or causes Trump doesn’t like.
When Trump issued the new executive order against Paul, Weiss, a federal judge had already blocked part of Trump’s order against Perkins Coie, whose lawyers Trump tried to ban from federal buildings. U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell accused the Trump administration of illegally retaliating against the firm, which she said “sends little chills down my spine,” The Washington Post reported.
Not content with that illegality, Trump also effectively axed seven federal agencies created and funded by Congress, including the government-funded media outlet Voice of America. It was the latest time Trump ignored Congress’ directives by making the unilateral decision to cancel congressionally appropriated spending—many of which have already been overturned by federal judges.
Trump declared that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a foreign terrorist organization and an invading force, and used the Alien Enemies Act of 1798—which allows for noncitizens to be deported without due process if the president declares that the U.S. is at war—to say that anyone he deems a member of Tren de Aragua will be subject to “immediate apprehension, detention, and removal, and further that they shall not be permitted residence in the United States.”
“The United States is not at war, nor has it been invaded. The president’s anticipated invocation of wartime authority—which is not needed to conduct lawful immigration enforcement operations—is the latest step in an accelerating authoritarian playbook,” Democracy Forward President and CEO Skye Perryman, whose organization sued the Trump administration over the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, said in a news release.
“From improperly apprehending American citizens, to violating the ability of communities to peacefully worship, to now improperly trying to invoke a law that is responsible for some of our nation’s most shameful actions, this administration’s immigration agenda is as lawless as it is harmful,” she continued.
In this photo provided by El Salvador's presidential press office, prison guards transfer deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador on March 16, 2025.
Trump put more than 230 Venezuelans he accused of being Tren de Aragua members on a plane and sent them to a violent prison in El Salvador, where thousands of men are housed in cramped cells and are never allowed outdoors. It’s unclear if any of the men on the plane were actually members of the gang, with one lawyer for one of the deported immigrants saying that his client had been wrongfully labeled a gang member because of misinterpreted tattoos, The New York Times reported.
Trump sent the immigrants to El Salvador despite a judge ordering him to turn the planes around and return the immigrants to the United States, a blatant violation of the separation of powers.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the administration did not follow the order because "[a] single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft carrier full of foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil."
Even more disturbing is that the Trump administration then posted a propaganda video to his Truth Social profile. The video depicts the deportations, with masked jail officials mistreating the Venezuelans whom Trump sent to El Salvador, possibly never to be seen again.
And on Sunday, Trump took his lawlessness to new heights when he ridiculously declared in a batshit-crazy Truth Social post that pardons former President Joe Biden issued to members of Congress on the now-defunct committee that probed the Capitol insurrection are "VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT."
Trump said Biden’s pardons of the members of Congress are void because he baselessly claimed that Biden did not know that the pardons were issued. He appears to have based this new conspiracy theory off an article in the right-wing New York Post, which said that a “key aide” to Biden determined which orders he would sign and which would be signed by autopen.
However, from the Post’s own report:
One Biden White House source told The Post they suspect that a key aide to the then-president may have made unilateral determinations on what to auto-sign. The Post is not publishing that staffer’s name due to the lack of concrete evidence and refutations by other colleagues.
Meanwhile, as the United States delved deeper into authoritarianism, Trump was more concerned with his favorite pastime: golf.
In a move taken straight from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s playbook, Trump congratulated himself for winning a golf championship at one of his shitty golf properties in Florida, writing in a Truth Social post: "Such a great honor! The Awards dinner is tonight, at the Club. I want to thank the wonderful Golf Staff, and all of the many fantastic golfers, that participated in the even. Such fun!"
Susie Wiles, Donald Trump’s pick for chief of staff, issued a memo Sunday to Trump’s Cabinet nominees ordering them to stop making social media posts without approval ahead of the upcoming Senate confirmation hearings.
“All intended nominees should refrain from any public social media posts without prior approval of the incoming White House counsel,”the memo said, according to the New York Post.
Wiles also noted, “I am reiterating that no member of the incoming administration or Transition speaks for the United States or the President-elect himself.”
The missive comes after the spectacular flame out of former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s nomination for attorney general and the ongoing controversies of several other nominees, including Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mehmet Oz, and Tulsi Gabbard.
Gaetz’s nomination was withdrawn after the resurfacing of sordid allegations of illicit drug use and sexual behavior, including sending money to multiple women via PayPal and Venmo. Gaetz’s activity on social media was a key part of the controversy, as the House Ethics Committee's report notes.
“From 2017 to 2020, Representative Gaetz made tens of thousands of dollars in payments to women that the Committee determined were likely in connection with sexual activity and/or drug use,” the report states.
Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, has been accused of financial mismanagement, sexual assault, and public drunkenness. In response to reporting on these allegations, Hegseth has taken to social media to complain about “anti-Christian bigotry” in the media, the “lying press”, and the “Left Wing hack group” ProPublica.
Anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has also made strange social media posts. He recently posted a meme on X characterizing the medical industry as “financially dependent on you being sick,” as well as a video of himself with CGI-generated electric eyes and a link to his merchandise site.
An anonymous source with the Trump transition team claimed that the order to stop social media posts is not related to the recent online infighting between Trump megadonor Elon Musk and anti-immigration MAGA supporters. But the timing of the edict, coming directly from Trump’s right-hand woman, is extremely convenient.
Musk recently went on a posting frenzy, calling MAGA fans “upside-down and backwards” in their understanding of immigration issues, while telling one person to “take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face.”
The controversy generated international headlines, and Trump was dragged into commenting on the discussion—a less-than-ideal situation as he prepares for his inauguration.
Trump of all people telling others to be more mindful about social media posts is an ironic development. Trump made a name for himself as a political figure largely due to constantly posting inflammatory messages online. Most notoriously, he called on his supporters to protest the results of the 2020 election after losing to President Joe Biden.
“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” he wrote.
Donald Trump participated in a town hall with voters hosted by Univision on Wednesday night, and the event was a showcase of the headwinds Trump faces when he ventures outside of his right-wing bubble.
During the 2024 campaign, Trump has rarely faced questions from those who aren’t already supporters, and he has largely avoided media outlets that do not have a conservative bias. The voters who spoke to Trump at the Univision event respectfully questioned Trump on important issues, but he often veered off into unrelated ranting or avoiding the subject.
Ramiro González, a former registered Republican, told Trump he was disillusioned by the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and Trump’s role in inciting the attack. He asked Trump to win back his vote by explaining his behavior during the attack and his mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump restated his claim that he did nothing wrong on the day of the attack, despite his speech that day telling supporters to “fight like hell.” Trump also lied and said there were no guns at the attack, but there were.
“That was a day of love,” Trump said, as González looked on skeptically.
Another voter asked Trump why he pressured Republicans to kill a bipartisan border-security bill. Instead of answering, Trump filibustered and discussed his support for “strong” borders and complained about crime in cities run by Democratic officials.
Trump also continued to promote the debunked racist conspiracy theory that he and running mate JD Vance have advanced. Trump told voters he claimed Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating domestic animals because “I was just saying what was reported,” adding that migrants “are eating other things, too, that they’re not supposed to be.”
Trump’s poor showing on Wednesday comes after Vice President Kamala Harris was the guest of a Univision town hall last week. At that event, Harris expressed sympathy for a woman whose mother died after her immigration status held up medical care.
The troubled outing for Trump also stands in contrast to his appearance at an all-woman town hall event on Fox News, which the network aired Wednesday morning. That audience was more receptive to Trump, but the network failed to disclose that the crowd was packed with supporters picked out by the Georgia Federation of Republican Women.
At around the same time as Trump’s Univision event, Harris sat for an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier. Despite his hostile questioning, Harris deftly handled the inquiry and even called out the network for deceptively editing comments from Trump.
Earlier on the day of Trump’s Univision town hall, which took place in Doral, Florida, the Harris campaign hosted a nearby press conference with families who had been impacted by Trump’s policy of separating families at the border.
“I had no bed sheets, no bed, no nothing,” a young man identified as Billy told reporters, recounting his experience in detention. He said he was held in a room where the temperature was set to around 54 to 55 degrees.
Trump’s family-separation policy was widely condemned across the world, and the Biden-Harris administration has since devoted resources to reunifying affected families.
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer of Kentucky launched a probe against Vice President Kamala Harris last week, requesting that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection turn over all correspondence with her office—despite that she never oversaw the border.
Comer says the goal of the probe is to “understand [Harris’] role” in policy about migration through the U.S.-Mexico border. The very conveniently timed probe follows Comer having to abandon his dream of impeaching President Joe Biden, due to that investigation’s total lack of evidence.
But Comer is so in the habit of baselessly investigating his rivals that he just can’t give it up. And to say the least, his latest probe is as purely political and as meritless as his Biden probe.
Comer’s probe appears to stem from the widespread GOP fiction that Harris has been Biden’s “border czar,” with Comer saying in a Sunday interview on Fox News that Harris was “in charge” of the border and that she “failed miserably.”
However, her role in the administration’s immigration policy was not focused on the border but instead on diplomacy with officials in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, with a goal of figuring out how the U.S. can help those nations stem migration to the U.S.
Furthermore, Customs and Border Protection is overseen by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whom House Republicans impeached on partisan grounds earlier this year. And given Harris’ diplomatic role, she likely has very little, if anything, to do with border patrol.
In fact, in his letter to Customs and Border Protection, Comer blows up his own party’s “border czar” lie by admitting that Harris’s work wasn’t concerned with the border itself.
“Instead of focusing on the southwest border … Vice President Harris focused on the purported ‘root causes of irregular migration’ from Central America,” he writes.
In his Fox News interview, Comer attempted to further justify his probe by citing the cost of the Biden administration’s border policy.
“You know, this has had a huge impact on Medicaid because many of these people when they cross the border, they get free health care,” he said. “That’s what Medicaid is, is free health care. They get transported all over the United States.”
Oh yes, the cushy, pampered life of the Central American refugee.
Florida Rep. Jared Moskowitz, one of the best trolls of Comer in the Democratic conference, is treating this new probe with the seriousness it deserves.
Republicans have lit on what they think will be their most effective policy issue against Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign and—surprise, surprise—it’s immigration. Specifically, Republicans are falsely saying that the vice president has been in charge of President Joe Biden’s immigration policy, that she’s his “border czar.” And it’s a lie designed to benefit Donald Trump’s favorite topic: fear-mongering about immigration.
The lie is coming from the top, of course. On Tuesday, Trump told reporters, "Harris was appointed 'border czar' in March of 2021, and since that time, millions and millions of illegal aliens have invaded our country and countless Americans have been killed by migrant crime because of her willful demolition of American borders and laws.”
It was a regular theme of last week’s Republican National Convention, even before Biden ended his reelection campaign on Sunday and endorsed Harris. At least seven speakers at the convention, including failed GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, and Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida attacked Harris as being in charge of Biden’s border policy.
And on Tuesday, the odious Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York introduced a resolution “condemning Kamala Harris’ role as Joe Biden’s ‘Border czar’ which has led to the most catastrophic open border crisis in history.” In the real world, however, border crossings today are at their lowest point since Biden’s first full month in office.
The House GOP is so committed to this lie about Harris, they scrapped passing a government funding bill and are spending Thursday—their last day in session until after Labor Day—voting on this nonbinding ridiculousness.
Let’s set the record straight: In a meeting with Harris in March 2021, Biden tapped her to lead U.S. diplomatic efforts with officials in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras to stem migration to the U.S. In that meeting, Biden said that when he was vice president, he "got a similar assignment" and that the Obama administration secured $700 million to help countries in Central America.
"One of the ways we learned is that if you deal with the problems in country, it benefits everyone. It benefits us, it benefits the people, and it grows the economies there," Biden said in that meeting.
Harris was tasked with working diplomatically with Central America leaders to work on the region’s root causes of mass migration—corruption, crime, hunger, poverty—all the stuff the GOP, and in particular Trump, is incapable of understanding, much less addressing. If there were such a thing as a border czar under Biden—and there isn’t—it would be Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. ( House Republicans have also attacked him over the border, but that’s a different story.)
She also led the Root Causes Strategy, which has mobilized more than $5 billion in private-sector investments in Central America, investments that have helped to create over 250,000 jobs in the region and “provided funding for small businesses, and supported the economic inclusion of women,” according to Immigration Hub, an organization that pushes for immigration reform.
Answering the larger and tougher challenges of migration is what Harris and the Democrats have been trying to accomplish. The job is going to get only more complicated as climate change drives more migration.
The GOP’s reductive response to the entire issue is solely about the politics of fear and never about policy. They don’t want to solve the crisis; they want to keep running on it.
