Mark Ruffalo criticizes Joe Rogan for shock over Trump's ICE raids: 'A little late now'
The Oscar-nominated actor, who's been a vocal critic of President Donald Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration, slammed Joe Rogan after the podcasting sensation shared criticism of the Trump administration's sweeping deportation efforts.
In June, several demonstrations erupted across Los Angeles in response to several immigration raids. The federal invasions, carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, took place in parts of the city as part of a directive from President Trump to find immigrants living in the United States without legal status.
"We were told there would be no, — well, there's two things that are insane," Rogan, 57, told guest and Replit CEO Amjad Masad on a July 2 episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience." "One is the targeting of migrant workers. Not cartel members, not gang members, not drug dealers. Just construction workers. Showing up in construction sites, raiding them. Gardeners. Like, really?"
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Rogan previously shared support for President Trump, endorsing the billionaire businessman in the lead-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Despite Rogan's political grievance, Ruffalo criticized the podcaster for changing his tune on the Republican president.
"Dear @joerogan, it's a little late now to pretend like Project 2025 didn't exist and wasn't the playbook all along," wrote Ruffalo in a July 6 Threads post responding to a clip of Rogan's comments. "You are either not that smart or not that dumb. It's hard to tell at this point."
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Project 2025, also known as the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, is a political agenda published by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation in April 2023. The mandate suggests overhauling federal agencies like the FBI, abolishing the Department of Education, reversing federal approval of abortion pills and bolstering powers for immigration officials to deport undocumented immigrants.
Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, claiming he knew "nothing" about the controversial plan. But a USA TODAY analysis showed at least 31 of Project 2025's 38 authors or editors had connections to Trump or his first administration.
Stars turn out for 'No Kings' protests: Jimmy Kimmel, Mark Ruffalo and more
Amid protests against ICE's deportation raids in Los Angeles, Ruffalo joined the political front line and marched in a "No Kings Day" protest in New York. The nationwide rallies against the Trump administration occurred on the same day that the president held a controversial military parade in Washington, marking the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army.
"The Avengers" actor delivered a passionate speech at the rally, in which he claimed the Trump administration is "trampling on our rights and our laws and our freedoms."
"It's on us, guys. Literally, together, we're the Avengers now," Ruffalo said. "No one's going to come and save us, man. Americans unite."
Contributing: Brendan Morrow, Natalie Neysa Alund and Kinsey Crowley, USA TODAY
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Miami Herald
31 minutes ago
- Miami Herald
Naomi Osaka shouts out daughter during otherwise ‘negative' postmatch interview
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The Hill
35 minutes ago
- The Hill
Democrats see political gift in Trump's ‘big, beautiful bill'
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The House Democrats' top super PAC is finalizing another slate of ads — a six-figure mix of television and digital — that will launch in the coming weeks. And Unrig the Economy, an outside advocacy group, wasted no time complementing the effort. They've launched a seven-figure ad blitz targeting 12 vulnerable Republicans, with plans to spend an additional $10 million in the coming months. The ads highlight three of the most contentious provisions of the GOP bill: the cuts to health and nutrition programs, combined with a rollback of green-energy subsidies that's expected to spike utility costs across large parts of the country. 'Those are the three arguments that we see as the ones that hurt people the most, and the place that Republicans are most vulnerable to accountability,' a spokesperson for the group said Tuesday. The strategy is reminiscent of the Republican attacks on the Affordable Care Act, another wildly contentious bill that was broadly unpopular when Democrats passed it under President Obama in 2010. Months later, Republicans would pick up 63 House seats and flip control of the chamber — the same goal Democrats have set for next year's midterms. And the campaign extends far beyond Capitol Hill. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D), who says he is weighing a 2028 presidential bid, has already begun using the controversial legislation as a talking point as he looks toward next year's elections. 'Next year, I'll also be the head of the Democratic Governors Association, and especially in these rural states, where Republican governors have not spoken up whatsoever to stop this devastating bill, we're going to have strong candidates, we're going to win a lot of elections,' Beshear said in a CNN interview on Sunday. 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Yahoo
35 minutes ago
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Fact check: Debunking 11 of Trump's false claims at Cabinet meeting
President Donald Trump again turned a Cabinet meeting into a wide-ranging conversation with reporters – and again uttered a whole bunch of false claims in the process. Trump's Tuesday remarks at the White House included inaccurate assertions about inflation, immigration, his tariff policy, the massive domestic policy bill he signed last week, China's use of wind energy, US and European aid to Ukraine, the US relationship with South Korea, and other subjects. Here is a fact check of 11 of the president's false claims. This is not a comprehensive list. Inflation: As he has repeatedly, Trump falsely claimed Tuesday, 'We have no inflation.' The US does have inflation – an annual inflation rate of 2.4% in May, an uptick from a 2.3% annual rate in April. That April rate was the lowest since early 2021, and lower than some economists expected for April after Trump imposed significant new tariffs, but it's not 'no inflation' whatsoever. (And on a month-to-month basis, US consumer prices increased 0.1% in May and 0.2% in April.) Tax on Social Security: Touting the new domestic policy legislation, Trump repeated his false claim that it achieves his campaign promise of 'no tax on Social Security.' It does not. The legislation does create an additional, temporary $6,000-per-year tax deduction for individuals age 65 and older (with a smaller deduction for individuals earning $75,000 per year or more), but the White House itself has implicitly acknowledged that millions of Social Security recipients age 65 and older will continue to pay taxes on their benefits – and that new deduction, which expires in 2028, doesn't even apply to the Social Security recipients who are younger than 65. Trump's tariff letters: Trump spoke of the letters he sent to various foreign leaders announcing the tariff rates he plans to impose on their countries beginning in August – and said, 'I just want you to know - a letter means a deal.' That's just not true. Multiple letters the White House revealed on Monday announced tariff rates Trump said he plans to unilaterally place on imports from foreign countries; those letters did not describe negotiated deals. Who pays tariffs: Trump repeatedly spoke of how his new tariffs mean other countries will have to 'pay' the US for the privilege of doing business in the US. Contrary to Trump's frequent assertions, it is the US importers who buy foreign products, not foreign countries themselves, who make the tariff payments to the US government. Tariff history: Trump repeated his regular false claim that the US was 'proportionately' at its 'wealthiest' between 1870 and 1913, when tariff revenue made up a much larger share of federal revenue before the reintroduction of the income tax. Trump didn't explain what he meant by 'proportionately' or 'the wealthiest,' but economists say that by any standard measure, the US is far wealthier today than it was in the early 20th century and prior; per capita gross domestic product is now many times higher than it was then. China and wind power: Trump, asserting that 'smart countries' don't use wind and solar energy, repeated his recent false claim that China, the world's biggest manufacturer of wind turbines, barely uses such equipment itself - wrongly saying, 'They don't have a lot of wind farms, I'll tell you; very, very few.' In reality, China is the world leader in the generation of wind power and has massive wind farms onshore and offshore; it continues to install additional wind capacity much faster than the US. California and energy: Trump, reviving a previous inaccurate complaint about California's use of renewable energy sources, falsely claimed: 'They have blackouts and brownouts every week.' The state simply does not; its power system has improved significantly since the rolling blackouts of a 2020 heat wave. Daniel Villasenor, a spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom, said in a Tuesday email that Trump is again 'lying about California.' Villasenor wrote: 'The state has not experienced any rotating outages since 2020 – and in the last three years, no Flex Alert calling to conserve power has even been issued. Not only has our grid been increasingly resilient, it's also cleaner than ever – clean energy provided for 100% of demand on our grid for at least some part of the day 167 out of the first 180 days of the year.' US and European aid to Ukraine: Trump repeated his frequent false claim that the US has provided 'far more' wartime aid to Ukraine that Europe has, saying the US is 'in there for over $300 billion; Europe's in there for over $100 billion.' Those numbers are not close to accurate. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank that closely tracks international aid to Ukraine, the US had committed about $139 billion in military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine from late January 2022, just prior to Russia's full-scale invasion, through April 2025 – well short of about $298 billion committed by European countries and the European Union. The gap was much narrower in terms of aid actually allocated through April 2025 – about $183 billion for Europe to about $134 billion for the US – but even those figures clearly disprove Trump's claim. South Korea's military cost-sharing: Trump repeated his false claim that South Korea convinced former President Joe Biden to let it stop making payments to help cover the cost of the US military presence in South Korea, saying Biden 'cut it down to nothing.' In fact, Biden's administration signed two cost-sharing agreements with South Korea, one in 2021 and one in 2024, that included South Korean spending increases – meaning South Korea agreed to pay more than it did during Trump's first term. US troops in South Korea: Trump again exaggerated the US troop presence in South Korea, falsely saying, 'You know, we have 45,000 soldiers in South Korea.' Official Defense Department data, published online, says the US had 26,206 military personnel in South Korea as of March 31, 2025, with 22,844 on active duty. Migration and mental health: Trump falsely claimed that unnamed foreign countries 'released their insane asylum – the insane asylum population into our country.' Even Trump's own presidential campaign could not produce any evidence for his frequent claims, which he has repeated for more than two years, that foreign countries deliberately emptied their mental health facilities to somehow get patients to migrate to the United States.
