Jeffries calls out Trump, Bondi, over Epstein
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The Independent
18 minutes ago
- The Independent
Facing fallout from Epstein and inflation President Donald Trump turns to misdirection
As the president faces a sustained rebellion among some of his most loyal MAGA influencers, and watches younger Americans who make up their audiences turn away, he appears desperate to find a new narrative on which his voters can fixate. Right-wing podcasters are far from the only ones talking about the issue. It has expanded through the so-called 'manosphere' and continues to dominate discussions on X, Reddit and other platforms including YouTube, where a wide range of political commentators are joining the fray. Reports indicate the issue has fractured the president's top advisers. The result: Trump is swinging at every potential issue that comes his way as he searches for a piece of red meat to throw at the hungry wolves. Over the weekend came the president's first and second attempts. A vow to revoke the citizenship of Rosie O'Donnell (clearly a pressing matter, and also, not legal) followed by a strangely-worded plea to his followers: just drop it, guys! Then a third, on Sunday: crashing the on-stage celebration of Chelsea as the club emerged victorious over PSG at the Club World Cup. 'What's going on with my 'boys' and, in some cases, 'gals'?' asked a very normal-sounding Trump on Truth Social over the weekend. 'We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and 'selfish people' are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein,' he continued. On Tuesday, the administration was hit with another bit of bad news. Inflation ticked up to its highest level in months in June as the president continued to threaten tariffs on the country's closest trading partners, and despite Trump's insistences to the contrary. For months, the president has raged at Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, demanding that he cut interest rates. Powell has refused, citing inflation risks; this clearly undermines Trump's insistence. Now, with Trump's so-called 'reciprocal' tariffs set to go into effect in just over two weeks, there will be even more questions aimed at the White House on the issue of how much higher prices will be for the average American consumer. Those immediate price hikes, should they continue or even accelerate, could severely undercut Republican members of Congress as they campaign for re-election into the beginning of next year on the passage of Trump's spending legislation which included the extension of the 2017 tax cuts. And so Trump needed a distraction. On Tuesday, that meant swinging at a familiar target: Adam Schiff, the junior Democratic senator from California. In a Truth Social post, he falsely accused Schiff of mortgage fraud for claiming a home in Maryland as his primary residence. But the practice is common for members of Congress, who spend months at a time working out of the Capitol and in decades past used to move their whole families to the D.C., Maryland or northern Virginia regions for ease of access to their jobs. Political pressure now forces many to maintain residences near the Capitol and back in their home states. This is of course hardly a burden for many members of Congress but can be difficult for younger members with more limited financial means. Legal analysts who looked at the residences have said that Trump's claims of clear illegality are false. And that's to say nothing of the can of worms the president could have opened with the following line: 'he must LIVE in CALIFORNIA because he was a Congressman from CALIFORNIA.' That could certainly be an awkward line of attack were it to be repurposed against Sen. Tommy Tuberville, the Alabama senator (and apparent Florida resident) who is now running for governor in the former state and already taking fire from Democrats on the issue of his residency. Schiff told Inside Washington on Tuesday that the post was 'just the latest example of political retaliation by Donald Trump against one of his perceived enemies'. But the president, right now, seems solely focused on moving his base past the one issue that has now divided it to a greater extent than anything since perhaps January 6. Ironically, that's the same kind of tunnel vision that led his vice president, JD Vance, to fan these flames to start with. It remains to see if he'll be successful, or if the administration can come up with something to satisfy his critics — who aren't growing any quieter. But the White House's current strategy reeks of desperation.
NBC News
40 minutes ago
- NBC News
ICE bars detained immigrants from getting bond hearings
The Trump administration wants to make millions of immigrants who entered the United States without legal authorization ineligible for bond hearings. This means they would need to remain in immigration detention as they fight deportation proceedings in court, which can take months and in some cases years. A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson told NBC News in an email Tuesday that the recently issued guidance "closes a loophole" in immigration law that had long been applied mostly to detain those who had recently arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border. 'All aliens seeking to enter our country in an unlawful manner or for illicit purposes shall be treated equally under the law, while still receiving due process,' the ICE spokesperson wrote. 'It is aligned with the nation's long-standing immigration law.' The Washington Post first reported about the new ICE memo instructing immigration officials to keep immigrants detained ' for the duration of their removal proceedings.' 'I don't think it's beyond anyone's notice that we are starting to see policies to keep people detained and keep people detained longer,'Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres, practice and policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told NBC News. 'We're seeing the administration's goal of detaining and deporting more people grow,' Dojaquez-Torres added. The new guidance seems to give immigration authorities broader discretion to detain other types of immigrants — such as those who have lived in the U.S. for decades and have U.S. citizen children, and may potentially have legal pathways to remain in the country. Bond hearings help detainees show to immigration judges that they 'are not a flight risk or a public safety risk,' Dojaquez-Torres. Under the new policy guidance, 'the judge doesn't even have the power to hear your bond case,' Dojaquez-Torres said. 'It doesn't matter if you're the best person in the world, a judge won't be able to hear your case… If they are agreeing with DHS' view.' In a Tuesday post on X, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said President Donald Trump and his administration plan on "keeping these criminals and lawbreakers off American streets." "Now thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill," which set aside $45 billion to build new immigration detention centers, "we will have plenty of bed space to do so," DHS wrote on social media. Rebekah Wolf, director of immigration justice campaign at the American Immigration Council, told NBC News the organization has already received reports from across the nation of some immigration judges who are already 'accepting the argument' from DHS and ICE. 'And because the memo isn't public, we don't even know what law the government is relying on to make the claim that everyone who has ever entered without inspection is subject to mandatory detention,' Wolf said. There have also been reports of other immigration judges who have disagreed with the new guidance and have granted a bond hearing since the policy went into effect last week, Dojaquez-Torres said. In these cases, 'ICE has appealed and refused to release people in the interim until the appeal has been finalized.' In the memo, ICE acting Director Todd M. Lyons, who oversees the nation's immigration detention facilities, wrote that the new policy will likely face legal challenges, The Washington Post reported.
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The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Charlie Kirk backtracks after saying he's ‘done talking about Epstein,' claims he meant just ‘yesterday'
A day after proclaiming that he was 'done talking about' Jeffrey Epstein and that he would 'trust my friends in the government' amid the MAGA fallout over the Trump administration's handling of the disgraced financier's files, Charlie Kirk is now insisting that he merely meant 'yesterday' and he would continue to discuss the issue. The Turning Point USA founder's walkback comes as Donald Trump has been unable to quell the right-wing firestorm over his Department of Justice's memo last week that concluded Epstein was not murdered in jail and did not maintain a 'client list' in order to blackmail prominent figures who took part in his underage sex trafficking. Over the weekend, the president ordered his MAGA 'boys' and 'gals' to move on from the Epstein files, which he wildly suggested were fake and 'written by Obama' and 'Crooked Hillary.' He also urged his base to fall in line and support Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has been under intense fire for signing off on the memo despite previously boasting that she had the 'client list' on her desk. Trump has also privately doubled down on his support for Bondi, who recently clashed with FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino amid a growing rift between the FBI and DIJ over the fallout from the Epstein memo, prompting Bongino to consider resigning. With the president pushing his aides to let the Epstein saga die out, he's also called some of Bondi's most vocal critics in the MAGAsphere to get them to back off – including Kirk, who has been largely critical of Bondi. Additionally, speakers and attendees at this past weekend's TPUSA student summit bashed Bondi and the administration for their handling of the Epstein case. 'Plenty was said this last weekend at our event about Epstein,' Kirk declared on his Monday podcast. 'Honestly, I'm done talking about Epstein for the time being. I'm gonna trust my friends in the administration, I'm gonna trust my friends in the government to do what needs to be done [and] solve it. Ball's in their hands.' Adding that 'everyone knows my opinion about the Epstein thing,' Kirk concluded on Monday by reiterating that he would 'trust my friends' in the administration before telling viewers that he was moving on to other matters. 'I think that there was plenty of, let's say, speeches that were directed towards this topic this last weekend,' he stated. 'So we don't need to spend our valuable time on this program relitigating it.' With Kirk's comments about moving on from Epstein drawing scrutiny and headlines, especially in light of his phone call with Trump, the right-wing activist took to his Tuesday show to maintain that he had never intended to drop the issue altogether. Grumbling that he was responding to the 'viral fake news' that he was done talking about the deceased sexual predator, Kirk complained about the amount of coverage his comments on Monday received before reading them back in full, claiming he was misconstrued. ''Honestly, I'm done talking about Epstein for the time being.' Nobody, not a single news outlet, said 'for the time being.' They did not include that second part of the sentence,' he groused. (For the record, most publications included that part of the quote – including The Independent.) 'Again, no one covered the second part of the statement,' Kirk continued. 'No one covered it. This thing has, like, 10 million views on social media. And, unfortunately, too many people on our side fell for this garbage. And I get that it's heightened — and, by the way, part of this is I'm gonna have some compassion. This is a very hot moment. Very hot.' He also took issue with the amount of criticism he's taken for saying that he's going to trust his 'friends in the government,' noting that he's 'not trusting the government' but rather individual members of the administration that he knows his viewers admire. 'You guys are all fans of Dan Bongino and Kash Patel,' he said. 'We are trusting that they heard you, they heard me, and they are working to fix this. Let me finish this. But let me say this again — I would love to see the DOJ move to unseal the grand jury testimony.' After wondering if he 'should I have said those five words in the sequence I said,' Kirk continued to bash the media's coverage of his remarks before asserting that he merely meant he was taking a one-day break from Epstein-gate. 'When I said for the time being, I was talking yesterday,' he huffed. 'I was telling the audience, guys, I got a whole deck of stories I gotta cover here. You see, they wanna cover MAGA in disarray, and there is so much going on right now.' While insisting that he would continue to focus on the Epstein case during his podcast on Tuesday, that wasn't the case during a Fox News interview the same day. During an appearance on Harris Faulkner's morning news program to discuss TPUSA's weekend event, which saw thousands of attendees irate and angry over the Epstein fiasco, Kirk and the Fox anchor completely sidestepped the issue. Of course, Fox News has heeded the president's call to stop covering Epstein amid the continued backlash. Starting Monday morning, the conservative cable giant has all but ignored the issue, mentioning the deceased pedophile a total of just eight times the entire day, with zero mentions before the 6 p.m. ET hour. By comparison, the network's stars brought up former President Joe Biden 158 times.
