A report on a recent meeting between Trump and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

A report on a recent meeting between Trump and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

someone who was present in the room quoted below… From a White House Reporter,

“ I’ve covered a lot of Donald Trump press conferences over the years.

I’ve seen him lie, deflect, and embarrass himself in countless ways.

But what I just witnessed in the Oval Office may have been the most off-the-rails, unhinged display yet.

Trump sat down with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte — a serious figure there to talk about security and alliance unity —

but Trump wasn’t interested in that.

Trump Cartoon

No, Trump used the opportunity to fantasize about annexing Canada.

He actually said, “Canada only works as a state,” and gushed about how the U.S. would look on a map if we just erased the

border and took Canada as our own.

This wasn’t satire.

This wasn’t a joke.

This was the president rambling about absorbing another sovereign nation — while the NATO secretary general sat there

watching this clown show unfold.

And it didn’t stop there.

Trump started pushing the idea of conquering Greenland too, saying NATO might need to get involved in helping the U.S.

take it over — as if it’s a game of Risk.

He literally said we “need it for international security” and tried to rope NATO into his imperial fever dream.

The look on Rutte’s face said it all.

Then, Trump pivoted to his usual bigotry.

Instead of talking about defense cooperation or global security, Trump bragged about how he uses transgender people

as political pawns to rile up his base before elections — saying Republicans should “bring it up a week before the election” to

win votes.

In other words, he openly admitted he sees cruelty and manufactured culture war nonsense as a campaign strategy.

Despicable.

When asked about American small businesses hurting from tariffs, Trump did what he always does: lie and bluster.

“You’re going to be so much richer,” he said.

Meanwhile, Medicaid is being gutted, Social Security is under threat, and Trump’s billionaire cronies are cheering as the

safety net burns.

Oh, and then Trump suggested we start sending drug dealers to the Netherlands — yes, you read that right — in a bizarre

attempt at humor that landed more like a diplomatic insult, especially considering the NATO secretary general used to be the

prime minister of the Netherlands.

He kept rambling about how the U.S. doesn’t need anything from Canada, said the European Union is “very nasty,”

claimed we can’t sell cars in Europe (not true), and then told an utterly deranged story about how he “invaded Los Angeles” to

turn on the water — another lie pulled from his fantasyland.

What actually happened was that he diverted water from Northern California, destroying farmland and hurting his own

voters in the process.

To top it off, he said our allies shouldn’t worry about Putin, brushing off any concerns about Russian aggression with a shrug.

Let me be blunt: This is not normal.

This is not politics-as-usual.

This is a dangerous, unstable person with authoritarian fantasies, spewing nonsense in front of our closest allies while the

world watches.”

Keep speaking up.

Don’t accept any of this as normal.

by Ben Meiselas

 

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The deep roots of ICE’s disdain for civil liberties

For the last two decades, it has operated with little public scrutiny.

Americans are witnessing a real-time dismantling of due process in this country, particularly when it comes to immigration enforcement.

Last week, President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to label Venezuelan immigrants as members of the

Tren de Aragua gang and summarily ship them to foreign prisons.

On Thursday, The New York Times reported that administration lawyers determined the 18th-century law, historically

reserved for wartime scenarios, could allow “federal agents to enter homes without a warrant.”

The civil liberties we all value and that form a foundational part of U.S. democracy are quickly disappearing under the guise

of “national security” and “state secrets.

” It’s a big reason why U.S. District Judge James Boasberg called The Trump administration’s initial response to his order

blocking the deportation flights of Venezuelan migrants under the act “woefully insufficient.”

“They’re not gonna stop us,” border czar Tom Homan declared on Fox News.

“We’re not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think, I don’t care what the left thinks, we’re coming.”

That level of open defiance didn’t come out of nowhere.

Homan started at the Border Patrol as an agent in 1984 and rose through the ranks to serve as acting director of U.S.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during Trump’s first term.

He often boasts that he was the first ICE director to come up from within the agency.

What he doesn’t say is that the agency was built to behave this way.

From the beginning, ICE blurred the line between immigration enforcement and national security.

It operated with few restraints and even fewer consequences.

ICE was created in 2003, when immigration enforcement was restructured in the wake of 9/11.

As part of the newly formed Department of Homeland Security, the agency emerged from a climate of fear and mission creep,

with a mandate that fused counterterrorism logic with immigration policy.

The result was a militarized, opaque agency that quickly expanded its power.

ICE now employs more than 20,000 people, and its budget is around $8 billion, almost triple what it was in 2003.

And for the last two decades, it has operated with little public scrutiny.

The examples of why many critics have labeled ICE a “rogue” agency are endless.

As early as 2011, under a Democratic administration, the American Civil Liberties Union was already documenting how mass

immigration detention was ripping apart people’s lives.

In one example, that 2011 report included the story of a Vietnam veteran and a permanent legal resident from Haiti who,

at the time of the report, had been detained for eight years.

Since then, the patterns have continued, as a 2020 ACLU report shows.

In 2022, internal records revealed ICE agents had been using private data sources like utility bills and call records to conduct

unauthorized surveillance.

In 2023, Wired reported that ICE and its contractors “have faced internal investigations into abuse of confidential law

enforcement databases and agency computers” that led to “a swath of unlawful behavior, from stalking and harassment to

passing information to criminals.”

“Calling ICE a rogue agency doesn’t even quite get at how bad the problem is with them,” Emily Tucker, executive director at

the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, told Wired in 2023.

“They are always pushing to the limits of what they are allowed to do and fudging around the edges without oversight.”

Over the past few weeks, ICE and DHS have ramped up their most public-facing enforcement campaign yet.

Shackled Venezuelan immigrants, heads shaven, were paraded through a maximum-security prison in El Salvador and

broadcast to the world as a message.

But family members of some deportees have pushed back hard on the narrative, according to NBC News.

A mother recognized her son in the images from El Salvador, telling Telemundo that “he’s not a criminal.

He has no criminal record,” and if he is being deported, the U.S. government “should send him back to his country of origin.”

One Venezuelan soccer player, deported despite having legally claimed asylum, was accused of gang affiliation

because of a tattoo.

His lawyer confirmed it was the logo of soccer team Real Madrid.

CBS News later published the full list of names, raising more doubts about the credibility of the gang claims.

That hasn’t stopped officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio from doubling down.

Speaking with radio host Hugh Hewitt, Rubio said:

“It is my view that judges do not have the right to conduct the foreign policy of the United States.

Go beyond the immigration issues that people focus on.

These are alien enemies in our country.

They’re an organized group undermining the national security of the United States, and that needed to be dealt with.”

Even as this spectacle dominates headlines, other ICE abuses have gone under the radar.

In New Mexico, the local ACLU filed a complaint alleging that at least 48 individuals have been “disappeared” by ICE.

In Denver, longtime immigration activist Jeanette Vizguerra was suddenly detained earlier this week.

She’s the same activist named by Time in 2017 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Immigrant rights groups have started a campaign for her release, though in this environment, the chances are slim to none.

The brazenness of these latest actions and the political forces backing them have reached even more extreme levels.

Under Trump’s return, ICE has its strongest political ally yet.

Enforcement is being ramped up with little regard for the courts, the justifications or the consequences.

But the speed and scale of expanded enforcement is only possible because of how ICE has been structured under a

bipartisan consensus.

The agency has long relied on subcontracted enforcement, including privately owned detention centers with poor oversight.

These contractors profit from opaque systems with little accountability.

When violations happen, blame is diffused.

There’s always someone else to point to. Meanwhile, the government, under both Republicans and Democrats,

keeps cutting the checks.

This is a critical moment to ask not just what ICE is doing, but what it was built to do.

That should be a wake-up call for both immigrant communities and everyone who believes that due process and civil liberties

must always be protected in this country.

Trump’s extremism has a bipartisan foundation, and only by gutting and replacing that foundation can we have

immigration enforcement that also respects justice.

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