Boom! Wisconsin Brewer Who Promised Free Beer on Trump's Demise Loses License

Trump admin transforming FEMA into 'domestic terrorism' enforcement agency: report

The Federal Emergency Management Agency under President Donald Trump is preparing to engage in counterterrorism work, warned a political analyst.According to Ken Klippenstein, FEMA, primarily known for disaster preparation and aid, "is shelling out grant money to state and local authorities to build up capacity to carry out pre-crime operations against 'organized political violence,'" per a recent agency bulletin.It's part of Trump's executive order to attempt to stop crimes before they take place, a concept popularized to a dystopian extreme in the 2002 science fiction film Minority Report.The "pre-crime" operations, according to the bulletin, will include urging states to pay for "training to spot 'social media-based indicators,' analysts to monitor “'online behaviors and digital footprints,' and teams for 'managing persons of concern whose behavior indicates a potential trajectory toward domestic terrorism,'" Klippenstein's report indicated.In particular, said Klippenstein, the bulletin stresses "indicators" which "are something a person said or did that an officer has been trained to read as a sign of a crime that hasn't happened and may never happen." This is essentially "vibes-based law enforcement," he argued, "with the imprimatur of national security respectability" — and a grave threat to civil liberties.FEMA under the Trump administration has been plagued with troubles. A procurement rule enacted by former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem delayed disaster responses in several emergencies, including the tragic floods in Central Texas. Additionally, the third-in-command at the agency had to be let go after he started ranting that God had teleported him to a Waffle House.

Trump Team Overhauls Asylum Process to Speed Up Deportations

President Donald Trump’s administration has found a new way to gut due process and fast-track deportation for asylum applicants. U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services, or USCIS, the agency that manages visas, green cards, naturalizations, and other aspects of the legal immigration process, published a new regulation Monday allowing officers to refer hundreds of thousands of asylum applicants directly to deportation proceedings without interviewing them.The rule would scrap USCIS’s long-standing practice of offering interviews to asylum applicants already in the United States. The agency claimed that it had previously offered interviews despite there being “no statutory right to an interview or requirement to conduct one.” The rule would also remove references in Department of Homeland Security materials to a “right” to an interview and language asserting that asylum officers would review cases “in an interview.” “This means many people will never get a chance to argue their case,” Aaron Reichlin-Melchick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, wrote on X Monday. In order to receive asylum, applicants must demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution in their home country.The filing states that the new rule will “more quickly place certain aliens into removal proceedings” with immigration judges at the Executive Office of Immigration Review, or EOIR. Once asylum applicants are passed to the EOIR, the cases that are deemed “legally deficient” may be pretermitted, meaning those applicants can be deported without a hearing. No interview and no hearing? That sounds like a clear violation of due process—which the Trump administration has been angling to obliterate for more than a year.In addition, the new rule would allow asylum officers to “determine that the alien does not merit a grant [of asylum] as a matter of discretion without first making an eligibility determination,” and would also stop requiring a letter communicating that the basis for referral of asylum should include an assessment of the applicant’s credibility. The rule was published Monday, to be implemented Tuesday without prior warning or public comment period—and will likely invite a slew of legal challenges under the Administrative Procedures Act.

Democrats Call FIFA President to Congress After Trump’s World Cup “Quid Pro Quo”

Meanwhile, FIFA announced that it is planning to sell a major stake in the World Cup to a Kushner family firm.

Opinion | The Lindsey Graham Example

Will anyone take his place as an advocate for freedom and U.S. interests abroad?

Alarms sound as 'really troubling' signs of Trump's midterm ploy emerge: 'Makes me afraid'

A top Democrat in the House of Representatives sounded the alarm on Tuesday after some "really troubling" signs of President Donald Trump's midterm ploy emerged. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) joined CNN's Kasie Hunt on "The Arena," where he was asked about upcoming threats to the midterm elections. He mentioned the possible confirmation of Jay Clayton as Trump's new Director of National Intelligence as one threat, considering that Clayton wouldn't confirm that Joe Biden won the 2020 election during his Senate hearings. Trump has also directed his national intelligence agencies to be more involved in the midterms, which raised concerns about his intent to meddle in the elections. Raskin also noted that he has not seen evidence of Republicans campaigning in rural areas he's visited, which leads him to believe the party is focused on undermining the election rather than winning it. He shared a little bit about what it has been like to campaign in upstate New York with some of his fellow Democrats. "We see no evidence of Republican activity anywhere," Raskin said. "I don't even see MAGA hats anymore, which makes me afraid that they're just focused on trying to undermine the election or take the election through some kind of strategic mischief. We're not seeing Republican campaigning, and the bottom seems to have fallen out of their public support."Raskin also noted that Clayton would be taking over the DNI slot at a time when the intelligence agency is "a shell of itself." He noted that acting director Tulsi Gabbard "fired hundreds" of people during her tenure, and the new acting chief, Bill Pulte, conducted four rounds of layoffs that impacted a still-to-be-determined number of intelligence professionals. "What's really troubling is they're cleaning out that office as they go," Raskin said. "He's not really interested in the kind of national intelligence that we got, for example, about Vladimir Putin's involvement and interjection of himself in our 2016 campaign," Raskin added. "And that's where Trump rejected the findings of 17 different U.S. intelligence agencies and said he believed Vladimir Putin because Putin told him he didn't do it."

Zelensky and Netanyahu meet Trump as wars in Ukraine and Iran drag on

The two leaders were in Washington to attend the funeral of Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch supporter of Israel and advocate for US aid to Ukraine.

Outgoing Trump spy chief brags about firings that ex-officials call bogus: NYT

The outgoing director of national intelligence spent his last days on the job bragging about unproven firings, per the New York Times.Bill Pulte, the acting director of national intelligence, is expected to be replaced on Tuesday by Jay Clayton after a short-lived stint as President Donald Trump's spy chief. During his last days and hours on the job, Pulte bragged that he reduced staff at the office of the director of national intelligence (ODNI), a claim ex-officials doubt, according to reporting by the Times.The Times noted a "flurry of social media posts" by Pulte. In a Tuesday post on X, he wrote, "We are, this morning, Executing a 5th and near final round of Terminations, an approximately 30 percent Staff Reduction from Weeks ago."However, Pulte's office provided "no details" about the firings, the Times noted. Several former U.S. intelligence officials told the Times that they don't believe his claims of a reduction."The acting DNI has been quick to announce firings and make public claims about them, but has so far declined to provide the Senate Intelligence Committee with the information necessary to assess the accuracy of those statements or the basis for those decisions," Rachel Cohen, a spokesperson for Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), told the Times. Warner is the top Democrat on the committee.Other former officials told the Times that Pulte was counting people who completed their tour of duty at the ODNI and were returning to their home agencies as planned. He also appeared to have been counting unfilled positions at the National Counterterrorism Center and other parts of the ODNI as part of the terminations, per the Times.