Donald Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration. Here’s what he’s proposed

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📺 Trump's media legal battles skyrocket

Data: Axios research. Chart: Christine Wang/Axios Media-related lawsuits involving President Trump — along with a broader set of Trump-related defamation cases — have surged over the past two years compared with the decade prior, Axios' Sara Fischer and Kerry Flynn write. Trump, his businesses and his administration have been involved in 61 media and defamation lawsuits since 2015, including 16 in 2025 and nine so far in 2026, according to an Axios analysis. Keep reading ...

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Trump says US and Canada reached last-minute deal to delay 50% tariffs The two sides reached agreement less than two hours before the sanctions were to go into effect for about 5% of Canadian exports to the United States. They agreed to a three-day delay while negotiations continued. Read more.

Why this matters: The deal avoids, for now, another strain in already tense relations between the historic allies. A White House proclamation said Canada had expressed a commitment to remove measures the Trump administration considers discriminatory against U.S. alcohol, dairy and motor vehicle exports. Canada did not immediately confirm those commitments. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement “substantial progress” had been made but that important work remained.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ Ex-Fauci adviser pleads guilty to plotting to conceal COVID-19 research records during pandemic Trump administration moves ahead to end roadless rule on national forests Whistleblower alleges political pressure, lack of evidence in antisemitism probes targeting schools ICC slams US decision to sanction the court’s president and a senior prosecution lawyer  Preservation group urges Supreme Court to suspend Trump’s White House ballroom project Judge rules paint tests on Eisenhower Building can proceed, advancing Trump’s makeover plans for now

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South Korean and US militaries shorten exercises at Trump’s order South Korea’s military said in a statement the ongoing drills with the U.S. would end Friday, not Aug. 27 as initially planned, while the allies also agreed to downsize some joint field training exercises. Read more.

Why this matters: President Donald Trump had ordered his Pentagon chief to downsize joint drills just before they began Monday. Trump cited what he said was a good relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korea’s refusal to support him over Iran. The move likely reflected Trump’s hopes to reengage with Kim but could undermine U.S.-South Korean defense readiness.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ Trump says US has no talks planned with Iran Trump is threatening to bomb Oman, but why?

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Trump’s Deportation Ploy Blows Up in His Face

Last-ditch efforts to keep ICE out of the headlines appear to have been in vain.

The Trump administration’s push to keep ICE out of the headlines before the midterms does not appear to have convinced voters, with half of Americans saying its immigration crackdown is still too aggressive.

After the White House faced bipartisan backlash over the killings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis at the hands of federal agents earlier this year, President Donald Trump ousted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Her successor, Markwayne Mullin, pledged to make the White House’s mass deportation campaign more discreet, including by making fewer arrests in public. He also threw Noem under the bus by publicly calling her signature billion-dollar warehouse crusade a mistake in humiliating testimony.

But with less than three months until the midterm elections, a Politico poll published Wednesday suggests the makeover has failed to shift public opinion.

Half of Americans, including nearly a quarter of Trump’s 2024 voters, still say the 80-year-old president’s immigration campaign is too aggressive, according to Politico. That figure is “virtually unchanged” from polling in January and April, when outrage mounted over federal agents killing U.S. citizens Renee Good, 37, and Alex Pretti, 37.

Non-MAGA Trump voters are more than twice as likely as self-identified MAGA voters to believe that Trump’s mass deportation campaign has gone too far, with 31 percent describing it as too aggressive compared with 15 percent of MAGA voters, according to the poll conducted from Aug. 8 to Aug. 12.

The findings point to a potential vulnerability for Republicans heading into the November midterms on an issue that has traditionally been a source of strength for the party.“Voters really did want border security, but they did not want to see abuelita taken away because she’s been here for 40 years but without documentation,” Arizona-based GOP strategist Barrett Marson told Politico.

The poll, conducted by London-based polling firm Public First, found a notable proportion of Americans have noticed the administration’s attempts to change course. But those changes have done little to improve trust.

A 56 percent majority of Americans say there has been at least a “small shift” in how ICE is carrying out its immigration crackdown. But 44 percent of those respondents say the changes have made no difference in how much they trust the administration, while 30 percent say they have made them less willing to trust officials on immigration.

Whit Ayres, a Washington-based Republican pollster, told Politico that the stubborn public opposition is “not that surprising at all.”

Even with a lower-profile approach, the administration is still pushing to ramp up arrest and deportation numbers.

“It’s a lot easier just to go into an airport and find somebody who had overstayed a visa, had applied for an extension … and throw them into handcuffs and put them in a detention center. That’s the easy way to get the numbers up, and a great way to thoroughly antagonize public opinion,” he said.

Another Republican strategist, who spoke with Politico on the condition of anonymity, said Trump “ran on border security, and he’s following through.”

“But the visuals of wins are unfortunately overshadowed by the visuals of chaos,” they said. “There’s no question that the wall-to-wall coverage of the chaos that follows ICE makes voters squeamish.”

When contacted for comment, White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis told the Daily Beast that “Americans sent President Trump back to the White House with a clear mandate to deport criminal illegal aliens.”

“Every single day the Trump Administration is delivering on his promise to the American people to remove murderers, pedophiles, rapists, and gang members from American communities,” she added. “Americans are grateful to the President for removing these criminals from their neighborhoods and for Making America Safe Again.”

ICE raids during Trump’s second term in the White House drew headlines for sparking protests nationwide. The aggressive enforcement campaign has also put pressure on the agents tasked with carrying it out.

John Sandweg, a former acting ICE director, told Politico in an interview published last fall that ICE agents were “under tremendous pressure.”

“They’ve been under a lot of pressure to ratchet up the number of arrests. They’ve been forced to adopt some of these more aggressive tactics, because the [Trump] administration seems more interested in the quantity of people arrested, more so than the quality,” said Sandweg.

Reuters reported in July that at least seven people have been killed in immigration enforcement operations since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, while 53 people have died in ICE custody since the president’s second term began.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-deportation-ploy-blows-up-in-his-face/?

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Trump’s New Deportation Plot ‘Looks Like Human Trafficking’

A new draft contract for the administration’s self-deportation scheme has been branded “gross and un-American.”

The Trump administration is looking to pay up to $2.3 billion for a follow-on to its scandal-hit self-deportation scheme that will include payouts for unaccompanied migrant kids who “choose” to remove themselves. The original $915 million award went to Salus Worldwide Solutions in May 2025, a company barely two years old with no prior work as a lead federal contractor that has since faced corruption allegations over how it won the contract. The new deal contains no provisions for protecting the children it intends to target, and states their payouts will go only to “Government-designated adult recipients.” Rekha Sharma-Crawford, an award-winning immigration attorney, told PunchUp, the Daily Beast’s sister Substack, that the arrangement “looks and feels a lot like human trafficking.” Rep. Bennie Thompson, ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, called the focus on minors “gross and un-American.” The new contract also contains provisions for crews to enroll migrants already detained at 35 facilities, with mobile “rover” units roaming across the country on request. A DHS spokesperson said it would be “inappropriate to comment” until the award process ends. Salus did not respond to requests for comment.

Tom Latchem exposes the secrets, scandals, and stories that powerful people and institutions want to keep under wraps. Follow all of his reporting at PunchUp on Substack.

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Trump picks Dr. Heidi Overton, a top White House aide, to lead the Food and Drug Administration

WASHINGTON (AP) — Dr. Heidi Overton, a top White House aide, has been picked to lead the Food and Drug Administration, President Donald Trump announced Wednesday.

https://apnews.com/article/fda-donald-trump-heidi-overton-marty-makary-a54907d62a2482bd462410c0778266b9?

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Guileless Old Party (Anna Moneymaker / Getty)

View in browser For many observers of American politics, the past few years have been disillusioning, knocking down hopeful beliefs about what the people of the United States will support or tolerate. Even some of Donald Trump’s backers have become disaffected. Yet somehow, a small caucus of non-MAGA Republican senators has managed to remain preciously naive about the president and the administration he runs. No matter how many times Trump or his aides show who they are and how they operate, these senators seem flabbergasted and saddened. No case illustrates the ease with which they are fooled like the confirmation of Todd Blanche as attorney general. Blanche was confirmed last week on a 50–49 vote, but only after GOP Senators Thom Tillis and John Cornyn extracted a written assurance from Blanche that a $1.8 billion fund for payouts to Trump allies would not proceed. Senator Bill Cassidy also wavered, but said he was persuaded by the vow. (All three men will leave the Senate at the end of this term: Tillis is retiring, and Cornyn and Cassidy lost primaries to Trump-backed challengers.) This weekend, Blanche was interviewed on Meet the Press. Kristen Welker asked whether he could “pledge that the Justice Department will always act independently of the White House.” Blanche refused—likely an honest answer, given his demonstrated willingness to follow Trump’s lead, but one that should worry anyone who believes in the rule of law; witness Trump’s repeated demands for political prosecutions, irrespective of evidence. Yet Blanche insisted to Welker that Trump “will never ask me to do something unethical or illegal. He never has. He never will.” That might reassure someone whose political memory stretches back only as far as early August. But anyone old enough to remember the slush fund, or Blanche’s starring role in negotiating it (as laid out by Federal Judge Kathleen Williams in May), would know that Trump not only has asked Blanche to do something unethical, but that Blanche complied. In order to vote to confirm, Cornyn, Tillis, and Cassidy had to convince themselves first that Blanche’s conduct in that case is not indicative of his basic moral compass; and second that he would be more accountable once permanently confirmed by the Senate than he was when he still had to win over their votes. If Trump finds or attempts to find some way to resuscitate the slush fund—as some experts believe he might—many people will be dismayed, but only this trio of guileless senators will be shocked. Cassidy’s willingness to vote for a Trump yes-man is all the more puzzling because he voted to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial, and because the president led the charge to defeat him in a primary. (The impeachment vote was Trump’s main reason for targeting him.) But Cassidy has a long record of credulity. As my colleague Nicholas Florko has reported, Cassidy—a physician—cast a deciding vote to confirm Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but only after the nominee made promises about preserving the existing vaccination regime, a pledge he promptly broke. On ABC’s The Week this past Sunday, Cassidy said “it’s pretty evident” that Kennedy’s vow was a lie. And on CNN’s State of the Union, he called the White House’s latest vaccine move, attempting to unbundle the measles, mumps, and rubella injection, “a crazy, stupid thing.” Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, another doctor, voted for Kennedy and has since been upset about the administration’s anti-vaccine steps. Who could have foreseen that the prominent vaccine skeptic would undermine federal vaccination policy? Two other moderate Republicans, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, voted against Blanche’s confirmation, issuing statements that noted the politicization of the Justice Department under his watch as acting attorney general. But they are not always so clear-eyed. Murkowski delivered one of 2025’s most unintentionally hilarious statements when she cast a crucial vote to pass Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act through the Senate. “My sincere hope is that this is not the final product,” Murkowski said in a statement. “This bill needs more work across chambers and is not ready for the President’s desk. We need to work together to get this right.” Naturally, that didn’t happen; the mystery is why she thought the White House, or Mike Johnson’s House, would improve the bill once she’d surrendered her leverage. Collins, however, is the dean of the credulous caucus. The Mainer, who faces a tough reelection campaign this fall, is perpetually concerned about Trump-administration actions, but seldom ready to actually use her power. Collins is a rare pro-abortion-rights Republican who previously said she wouldn’t support any Supreme Court nominee who opposed Roe v. Wade. In 2018, she voted to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who said Roe was “settled as precedent.” When Kavanaugh was part of the majority that voted to overturn Roe in 2022, Collins lamented the ruling but now says she didn’t regret her vote for Kavanaugh and would do it again. More recently, Collins helped pass a huge appropriation for ICE with few strings attached, then expressed dismay at the use of the funds to buy “shock gloves” for agents. Even her vote against Blanche was symbolic, because he had enough votes to be confirmed without her. One could easily write these senators off as cynical, but if they’re acting for political gain, it’s not working well: Cassidy’s and Cornyn’s mild deviations from Trump led to the end of their careers; Tillis’s retirement helped him avoid what might have been a stiff primary challenge. Many of their concerns appear earnest. Perhaps they really just are that gullible, unable to adapt to a Trump age that is leaving them behind. In defending his Blanche vote, Cassidy shrugged off attacks: “I’ll be criticized for this vote. What’s new?” But voters might reasonably expect that their elected officials are savvier about the world than a babe in the woods. Related: Why did Bill Cassidy do it? What Trump officials mean by “never”

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🚨 Bessent's bond alarm

Data: Mortgage Bankers Association. Chart: Courtenay Brown/Axios Axios' Courtenay Brown, who co-writes our midday Macro newsletter, explains why you should pay attention to chaos in the bond market: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent moved to calm the bond markets yesterday after a recent selloff made mortgages and other consumer loans more expensive. Why it matters: The bond market impacts how much it costs everyone — the government, consumers, and companies — to borrow money. The rising borrowing costs could deepen the affordability crisis, a political problem for President Trump heading into the midterms. Bessent's move to increase repurchases of long-term government notes and bonds (increasing demand for them) is largely symbolic but could still help bring those costs down. 🖼️ The big picture: The bond market is getting squeezed from multiple directions. War in the Middle East is reviving inflation fears, deficits are ballooning, and the AI boom is gobbling up cash — all pushing up the rates investors demand to lend the government money for decades. 🔮 What's next: Wall Street is skeptical the relief will stick, given that the Treasury Department's purchases are tiny compared with the roughly $30 trillion market for government debt. But the signal is important: Washington is showing it is willing to step in as high borrowing costs become an economic and political liability. More on Bessent's move.

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Invited media and military members held at gunpoint at Space Force base in California

VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) — Five news reporters and two members of the military who were invited to an event at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California were briefly detained at gunpoint by security officers who thought they were gate crashers, according to local news reports.

https://apnews.com/article/vandenberg-space-force-base-california-journalists-detained-4815c999cbcb9ea60c918429c0e0ade4?

The president and his many side projects

President Trump signs a stone for his new helipad on Wednesday. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)

Amid a war with Iran and a record national debt, President Donald Trump made time Wednesday to unveil his latest White House construction projects, taking reporters on an impromptu South Lawn tour of a redone driveway and new helipad. Trump said the driveway’s old asphalt was replaced with California-mined white granite, which he called a “very special stone.”

The tour skipped Trump’s signature 90,000-square-foot ballroom, which court documents show is at least 65% complete. But the project remains tied up in a legal fight that his administration has taken to the Supreme Court, arguing the structure and state-of-the-art bunker planned beneath it are matters of national security. Recently, he has tried to emphasize that argument by calling the ballroom the “military complex.”

Trump’s renovation list at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is much longer, but it tells a bigger story: His focus on construction — at such a consequential moment for the nation — reflects how much he sees reshaping the White House as part of his legacy. His taste for spectacle is just as apparent, as we saw with the UFC fight on White House grounds in June. Next up is a Trump-backed IndyCar race roaring through the capital this weekend.

+ Read more: Trump showcases White House construction

+ Video: Washington, DC, prepares for its first ever IndyCar race

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Trump’s White House Exodus Spirals With Major Departure

Another major player in the president’s team has scrambled for the exit.

One of President Donald Trump’s congressional point men has fled the White House, deepening a growing departure crisis.

James Braid, described by Politico as “the top White House aide in charge of liaising with Congress,” lasted just 19 months in Trump’s tumultuous second term, a tenure punctuated by several high-profile departures.

The timing will prove a headache for Trump, who, with just 75 days to go until the Midterm elections, could use a canny operator to bridge the gap between the White House and Congress.

Braid follows four of his colleagues out the door, with more departures on the horizon.

Andy Baker, 46, the White House’s deputy national security adviser and close ally to Vice President JD Vance, is on his way out. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, 28, White House Counsel David Warrington, 58, and Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson have also quit.

Braid, officially Trump’s director of legislative affairs, has been a vital conduit between the president and a narrow majority in both chambers. Indeed, Braid, who also served in Trump’s rollercoaster first term, played a key role in pushing through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Trump’s signature legislative achievement.

Braid’s next move remains unknown. His exit follows a string of departures that have stymied the wider operation. Perhaps the biggest of those is Leavitt, who announced earlier this month that she is leaving the administration to focus on her young family. Leavitt, who turns 29 next week, announced the move after a period of maternity leave following the birth of her second child, Viviana, in May.

“Our wonderful White House Press Secretary, and one of my most trusted aides, Karoline Leavitt, will be departing her role at the end of the month so she can spend more time with her beautiful young children and family, a decision I totally understand and respect!” Trump reacted on Truth Social.

The president added that Leavitt would remain one of his “top outside advisors, and an influential voice within the Republican Party.”

Leavitt has been the face of the administration, jostling with the press and hammering home Trump’s message. One of his lesser-spotted enforcers, deputy chief of staff James Blair, has temporarily departed the White House to oversee the president’s “entire political operation from the outside as well as midterm spending.”

Brash comms whizz Tricia McLaughlin was an early casualty. The Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, who is in her early thirties, left in February last year after carving out a niche as one of the administration’s most vocal defenders of its aggressive, often deadly, immigration crackdown.

Former Attorney General Pam Bondi, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer are all out, too. Noem’s firing in March meant that Corey Lewandowski, her senior adviser and rumored lover, got the boot, too.

Joe Kent was appointed as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center when Trump took office. He resigned in protest of the Iran war on March 17.

The war is proving divisive in the upper echelons of government, so losing Braid could hurt Trump even more. The conflict, launched by Trump alongside Israel in February without congressional approval, is also deeply unpopular with the public.

In fact, the 80-year-old’s approval rating has hit a nadir, a measly 33 percent, because of the war, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that concluded on Monday.

Americans are worried that the war is growing more and more attritional and the quick-in-and-out job promised by Trump is a fallacy. A huge 64 percent of respondents said they don’t have faith in the president.

This new low ties the lowest level of his first term, reached in December 2017.

The White House has been approached for comment on Braid’s reported departure.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-white-house-exodus-spirals-with-major-departure-of-james-braid/?

ps:The only question I have is this: Is it any different than when others have left the Biden, Obama, Bush 2, Clinton, Bush 1, Reagan White houses? Or is it because??

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Trump Goon Accused of Inciting Violence Against Judges

A complaint backed by 128 former judges says DHS lawyer James Percival put a “bullseye” on sitting jurists.

Donald Trump’s top Department of Homeland Security lawyer has been accused of risking bloodshed by publishing a “Worst of the Worst” list of sitting federal judges.

A group of 128 former state and federal judges, described by organizers as bipartisan, announced Wednesday that it had filed an ethics complaint against DHS general counsel James Percival. The Florida Bar member, 40, is accused of making false or recklessly misleading claims about judges who ruled against the Trump administration.

Threats against judges are already widespread. Updated U.S. Marshals Service figures show 415 threats against federal judges during fiscal 2026 through Aug. 17. A total of 307 different judges were targeted.

That didn’t stop Percival from unveiling his “Worst of the Worst, District Judge Edition” on his official X account July 23. He named Clinton-appointed Judge Matthew Kennelly, Obama appointees Allison Burroughs and Paula Xinis, and Biden appointee Hernán Vera.

The list included no Trump appointees.

Percival accused Kennelly of “judicial sabotage” over an immigration ruling. He claimed Burroughs deliberately slowed a case to obstruct deportations and described an order from Xinis as “crazy.”

He also accused Vera of endangering DHS officers by restricting their use of force against journalists, legal observers and protesters.

Percival continued his attacks the following day. He branded another judge, Clinton appointee Patti Saris, “rogue,” and claimed district judges were engaged in “mutiny against the Supreme Court.”

Led by former Florida Supreme Court chief justice Peggy Quince, Democracy Defenders Fund and Lawyers Defending American Democracy submitted the complaint.

Virginia Canter, Democracy Defenders Fund’s chief counsel and director of ethics and anti-corruption, said in a statement that Percival’s tactics “could be used to incite violence” against judges.

The filing cites U.S. District Judge Esther Salas, 57, whose 20-year-old son Daniel Anderl was murdered at their home in 2020 by a lawyer angered by her judicial work. Salas said Percival was “in essence, putting a bullseye on” the named judges.

The complaint also alleges Percival violated a Florida rule barring lawyers from knowingly or recklessly making false statements about a judge’s integrity.

DHS has defended Percival’s posts as “nothing more than a factual review of judicial decisions and their real-world consequences.”

Percival told Fox News on July 30 that he was not attacking the entire judiciary. He said he was identifying a small number of judges “who are causing the same problems over and over and over again.”

When asked about the complaint that had been made against him, he told the Daily Beast in an emailed statement: “In honor of former Florida Supreme Court Justice Peggy Quince, who just filed a bar complaint against me for calling out judicial activism, I will be creating a new award. The award is called the Justice Peggy Quince Lifetime Achievement Award for Worst of the Worst Judging. I am now accepting nominees!”

DHS and the White House regularly complain that threats and assaults against ICE agents have skyrocketed during Trump’s second term. DHS claimed last October that death threats had risen 8,000 percent.

The Daily Beast has contacted DHS for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/senior-trump-dhs-official-james-percival-accused-of-inciting-violence-against-judges/?

ps:They've learned from the most pathetic leader of all time!!!!!

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Trumpy Nut Who’s Giving ICE Electric Shock Gloves Is Exposed

Jeff Niklaus sees God’s “fingerprint” in his products and conspiracy theories everywhere else.

The founder and CEO of the company contracted to supply ICE agents with shock gloves has said the Hand of God played a role in Donald Trump becoming president.

“I think President Trump is doing a great, fantastic job,” Jeff Niklaus of Compliant Technologies said last year on Stand in the Gap Today, a Christian podcast on the American Pastors Network.

Niklaus is a retired Army helicopter pilot, and the primary focus of the podcast was the Jan. 29, 2025 mid-aid collision between a military UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet (PSA Flight 5342) in the notoriously congested airspace around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. He suggested that God also played a direct role in this crash that killed 67.

“There’s so many near misses that I think the odds are we knew that the Lord allowed that to happen that day,” he said. “And it’s a sad situation and nobody wants to see that happen again.”

He proceeded into secular silliness, suggesting the Biden administration’s DEI policies bore part of the blame.

“But we have to understand there’s other agendas that came into play with the, if you want to call it the philosophy of a previous administration allowing people in cockpits and maybe other people weren’t allowed.”

He then went full MAGA.“And then we also know the effects of the vaccines,” he added.

Niklaus and Compliant Technologies did not respond to a query from the Daily Beast about the genesis of the 351-volt Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, or GLOVE, that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has reportedly committed up to $20 million to purchase under a single-source, no-bid contract. The Kentucky-based company’s website, which declares Compliant “#1 in Hands-On De-Escalation,” does have several videos showing GLOVES in action. The subjects appear to be quickly immobilized.

“That sucked! That was terrible,” one subject exclaims.

An on-screen caption reads, “It does suck. But, it sucks a lot less than other options.”

Another video reports, “We usually see compliance in 2 to 3 seconds.”

Page four of a GLOVE user manual viewable online includes a snippet of scripture as a kind of Biblical endorsement of the product soon to be issued to the agents of ICE. Romans 13:4:

“If you do wrong be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for no reason, for he is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.”

Niklaus, in an interview posted on YouTube in June, also said he believed God’s “fingerprint” was in his products.

The text of the manual says the company recommends against using the GLOVE on “vulnerable” people such as the elderly, small children, pregnant women, and the “severely handicapped.”

Does that suggest only slightly handicapped is fine?

When it comes to GLOVEs, DHS is a year behind Omaha, Nebraska, which purchased 40 pairs of GLOVEs for its police department last year. The total cost was $65,924, or $1,648 a pair.

But the acquisition of shock gloves for 29 school resource officers at Omaha’s high schools and middle schools initially received little public attention. That changed last week when the Associated Press reported that ICE was purchasing shock gloves, triggering an uproar among parents and students.

Omaha Mayor John Ewing and the city’s police department responded with a joint statement on Monday seeking to ease concerns by describing GLOVE as “the safest use-of-force option in the rare times when it is used.”

They stressed that strict protocols would be followed that include “verbal commands and a warning” before an officer even resorts to putting the GLOVE on. If their warnings don’t work, “an officer then puts one G.L.O.V.E. on their hand for skin-to-skin contact,” the statement said. “An electric shock ranging from 324 to 362 volts is administered in duration of one second up to 15 seconds. Once compliance is gained, the GLOVE is shut off or placed in standby mode.”

The statement reported the gloves have been used on two occasions during the 2025-2026 school year, once to detain a student who had been trespassing from another school, and once to restrain a student “who had made verbal threats and threw a chair at the school security guard, striking the guard in the head.”

The statement described the GLOVEs as safer than other alternatives: “A Taser emits higher voltage - up to 1,000 volts - via metal probes that latch onto the body. SROs also are equipped with batons, firearms and pepper spray – which have higher potential for harm.”

And the use of GLOVEs are subject to significant restrictions, the police department said, with officers “required to document the use and the circumstances surrounding it” and each case “subject to review through the department’s established use-of-force review process.”

The association with ICE still had parents voicing outrage, though, which was apparently enough to do away with the practice. Omaha School Board Superintendent Matthew Ray announced Tuesday that he had asked police to ”no longer be authorized to carry GLOVEs on any Omaha Public Schools premise.”

But ICE agents by the thousands are still slated to carry them, and there is a whole genre of online videos of them using excessive force with no apparent fear of review. They are not likely to give a verbal warning before even donning a GLOVE. They too often approach with guns drawn when civilians do nothing more than video them. And it is hard to imagine them documenting the use of GLOVES.

Niklaus did not respond to phone and email request for comment.

In response to a query about the particulars of Compliant Technologies’ contract for GLOVEs, a DHS spokesperson offered a non-responsive response, saying: “ICE is constantly assessing the needs of our officers in the field to ensure they have the tools and equipment necessary to safely arrest and remove criminal illegal aliens from our country. Every decision is made with careful consideration and appropriately reviewed to ensure that any technology ICE utilizes is consistent with all applicable law enforcement policies and standards.”

But when asked if DHS was aware that the company’s founder has said that President Trump was “anointed” by God, the spokesperson had no response at all.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumpy-nut-whos-giving-ice-electric-shock-gloves-is-exposed/?

ps:Truly, truly, Spiritually Pathetic!!!!!

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US carries out its first deportations under pact for Liberia to accept 1,200 non-Liberians

HARBEL, Liberia (AP) — The United States on Thursday carried out its first deportation under an agreement for Liberia to accept up to 1,200 people who are not from the African country, one of the Trump administration’s largest efforts yet to deport people to countries other than their own.

https://apnews.com/article/liberia-us-deportees-318ab0f9ad74ada4fcd2dff8653c342e?

Federal agents seize devices from ex-Rep. Eric Swalwell in sexual misconduct probe, AP source says

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal agents seized electronic devices from former Rep. Eric Swalwell and searched his Washington home as part of an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct by the ex-Democratic congressman from California, according to a person familiar with the matter.

https://apnews.com/article/eric-swalwell-sexual-misconduct-investigation-congress-4615d9309781afd72fc2cd3fb7d7c121?

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Trump’s Attempt to Suck Up to Brutal Dictator Gets Humiliating Response

The president’s brags were met with a flat denial and a missile launch.

Donald Trump’s attempt to curry favor with Kim Jong Un received an embarrassing response from Pyongyang.

Trump, who radically cut joint military drills between the U.S. and South Korea while bragging about his “very good relationship” with Kim, suggested this week that he is secretly negotiating with the dictator and planned to meet with him this year.

In response, Kim Yo Jong—the North Korean leader’s sister and a top adviser—dismissed outright any talk of correspondence.

“As for reports coming out of Washington that there has recently been communication between the leaders of North Korea and the United States, I know absolutely nothing about it, and it would probably be the only matter related to our supreme leadership’s foreign policy of which I am unaware,” she said Wednesday.

She added that Trump’s move is “not even worth commenting on” and that cutting the drills does not cut their “provocative and aggressive” nature, the FT reports.

The situation escalated hours later when Pyongyang launched around 10 short-range ballistic missiles into the sea, South Korea’s military said Thursday.

Trump is gunning to revisit talks with North Korea after meeting with Kim Jong Un three times during his first term in a bid to denuclearize the Hermit Kingdom. His need for a diplomatic win has only become more urgent as the president now barrels toward midterm elections overshadowed by his ongoing war with Iran over its nuclear program. The U.S. president pledged that conflict would last a “few weeks” when he started it in February. Almost six months later, there’s no end in sight, and the president has privately admitted he might have to abandon his demands about Tehran’s nuclear capabilities altogether.

His latest overtures to the Kim regime have included canceling two major annual joint military exercises with South Korea. He said on Monday that continuing with those drills, which North Korea has always decried as practice runs for an invasion, would have been “inappropriate and hostile.” The exercises remain ongoing but will now end by Friday, six days ahead of schedule.

“If the U.S. side calculates that it can portray the measures it has recently taken as some kind of ‘goodwill gesture,’ it will not get the response it wants,” Kim Yo Jong said in her Wednesday statement.

She did, however, throw a consolation prize the president’s way, reassuring him that her brother, totalitarian leader of the country with one of the absolute worst human rights records on the planet, holds “fond personal memories and feelings” from their earlier meetings.

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-attempt-to-suck-up-to-brutal-north-korean-dictator-kim-jong-un-gets-humiliating-response/?

ps:What a pathetic suckup!!

[phkrause]

No Guarantees (Chip Somodevilla / Getty)

View in browser Cory Mills’s reelection campaign was in trouble before it even began. Washington, D.C., police investigated the Florida representative early last year after a woman alleged that he’d assaulted her; later in 2025, a different woman was granted a restraining order against him. Neither woman was his wife. Mills, who has denied any wrongdoing, was never charged with anything, and the woman who alleged that he’d assaulted her walked back her claim after it became public. Still, questions lingered. Then, in February, Donald Trump endorsed him anyway, calling him an “America First Patriot and Tremendous Champion” of his district. Not everyone in Florida’s Republican establishment felt the same. Governor Ron DeSantis declined to back him, and Representatives Anna Paulina Luna and Mike Haridopolos threw their support behind his opponent. A House ethics probe is ongoing. On Tuesday, Mills lost his primary election—and despite never having rescinded his endorsement, Trump is now trying to back away from the congressman retroactively. “I told Congressman Cory Mills of Florida, a friend of mine, to get out of the Race, but he wouldn’t listen,” he posted on Truth Social yesterday morning. Mills’s opponent, Ryan Elijah—who already won the primary—now has Trump’s “Complete and Total Endorsement!” What does a presidential endorsement mean for a Republican facing a primary election in 2026? If not enduring loyalty from the White House, then at least a reliable boost in the polls. The candidates that Trump supports still tend to win big; about 96 percent of the politicians he tapped this year (more than 300 of them) won their primary, according to Ballotpedia—an impressive ratio. Trump clearly enjoys the perception that his endorsement makes or breaks a candidate. “If they don’t get the endorsement, they don’t win,” he said in 2021. For many voters, particularly in the MAGA camp, perceived loyalty to Trump remains a deciding factor. (Just ask Bill Cassidy.) But not every bet Trump makes pays off. An endorsement has never been an outright guarantee of victory, and the rare exceptions illuminate some truths about Trump and the GOP. Two of the president’s other picks lost their primary race on Tuesday: Megan Degenfelder, the head of Wyoming’s Department of Education, who was running for the state’s governorship, and the former Commerce Department adviser Catalina Lauf, who was up for an open House seat in southwest Florida. By CNN’s count, that makes 10 Trump-endorsed candidates who have so far lost their primary this year. No single, unifying theory can explain these races. Sometimes, the timing makes a difference. When Trump endorsed Degenfelder as Wyoming’s best choice for the governorship, back in January, the state’s education chief hadn’t even entered the race. Once she did, the nod gave her campaign an early lead—an advantage she held on prediction markets for about seven months, despite being outraised and outspent by her main opponent in the GOP primary. In the end, she couldn’t sustain it. Lauf got her endorsement from Trump last week, almost a full year into her campaign, and well after mail-in voting had already begun. Her primary was always more of a toss-up than Degenfelder’s, but Trump’s endorsement may have arrived too late to make a difference. The president also cares more about some races than he does about others. In Indiana, he was able to use his endorsement power to punish those who had opposed his agenda. Trump vowed that Republican state senators who were up for reelection would lose their race if they rejected a gerrymandering plan he backed—and in May, after a concerted effort and successful fundraising from the MAGA base, most of those politicians did indeed lose their primary. Compare that with what he gave Lauf: not much more than a one-off Truth Social post. Not every race is a blanket referendum on Trump’s endorsement power; the particulars always matter. The Republican strategist Doug Heye told me that “when the voters go in the voting booth, the word Trump doesn’t appear. It’s those candidates.” Mike Lindell, the Trump-endorsed MyPillow founder and MAGA stalwart, lost his bid for the Minnesota governorship earlier this month. He’d been leading in the polls, despite the fact that he was obviously unqualified—and that the state’s GOP leadership had declined to endorse him, suggesting that he’d be an “easy target” for Democrats. On Election Day, though, he lost to the experienced state House speaker Lisa Demuth. His adjacency to Trump couldn’t get him over the line. As much as Trump likes the idea that he alone can propel a candidate to victory, he also seems to try to skew the odds in his favor. As NPR points out, the president has lately been backing more incumbents than he did during the 2018 midterms (75 percent of his choices this year have been sitting politicians), which suggests a greater aversion to risk. He also tends to make endorsements much earlier than he used to, getting involved from the outset and attempting to deter competition. Recent history is full of examples of races where Trump’s endorsement did make a big difference: The Ohio Senate seat that ultimately went to J. D. Vance in 2022 was fiercely contested until the president made his pick. Often, though, the president is simply playing the odds, betting on the candidate he thinks has the best chance. That’s exactly what happened in Texas earlier this year. Ahead of the GOP primary for John Cornyn’s Senate seat, Trump was widely expected to endorse the incumbent. As my colleague Elaine Godfrey noted at the time, the senator tried to rename a highway after Trump in an effort to secure his support. But the president went with a competitor, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who’d been ahead in the polls despite being impeached a few years prior. Back in 2022, in the lead-up to Missouri’s Senate primary, Trump went with a more unusual strategy. He wrote on social media that he’d decided to endorse “ERIC”—but didn’t specify which of the three candidates named Eric he actually supported. Was it a gaffe, or a sly acknowledgment that he didn’t want to pick among them? Trump has been more involved in primaries than his predecessors were, setting a new expectation for how active presidents should be in those races. Many of his endorsements have been a boon for his favored candidates. But not every election is about Donald Trump. Related: Trump might already be a lame duck. David A. Graham on the price of Trump’s primary wins