Trump’s Homeland Security Ramps Up Surveillance of Legal Immigrants

The Trump administration is now going to screen immigrants’ social media as grounds for denying immigration benefits, including international students and people applying for permanent residency.

The Department of Homeland Security announced the move in a press release Wednesday afternoon, saying that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services would be taking action, effective immediately, against “antisemitic activity on social media and the physical harassment of Jewish individuals.”

“DHS will enforce all relevant immigration laws to the maximum degree, to protect the homeland from extremists and terrorist aliens, including those who support antisemitic terrorism, violent antisemitic ideologies and antisemitic terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, or Ansar Allah aka: ‘the Houthis,’” the statement read.

The move follows the visa revocations and detention of students who have advocated for Palestine, such as Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, as well as the arrest and detention of Columbia University graduate and permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil. In both cases, the government made no indication that it has followed due process, and the two are not alone: Secretary of State Marco Rubio claims to have revoked the visas of over 300 students before Wednesday’s announcement.

Now DHS will begin policing the opinions of anyone seeking to study in the United States, ostensibly on grounds of opposing “antisemitic terrorism.” In reality, there is no proof that Khalil, Öztürk, or many other targeted students engaged in terrorism. Rather, the Trump administration has redefined terrorism to mean opposition to Israel’s brutal war in Gaza and support for Palestinian self-determination. In effect, the message is that immigrants and visitors to the U.S. no longer have the right to free speech.

Trump may have accidentally confessed to insider trading and market manipulation on Truth Social. 

“THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT,” the president wrote on Wednesday, a mere four hours before announcing a 90-day pause on most retaliatory tariffs except for China, yet another market-shocking announcement that caused stocks to shoot up. 

Insider trading is a very illegal practice that involves using special or private information to give yourself an advantage in buying and selling stocks. Someone with knowledge of an economic policy change that would cause the markets to shoot back up would be posting about how great a time it is to buy right before the policy change happened. This particular situation looks like the opposite of a pump and dump: a poop and scoop. This is when an exclusive group of people with private knowledge do whatever they can to drive stock prices down—like announcing debilitating global tariffs—and then buy stocks up strategically before the price goes up again. And with this administration, the corruption is completely out in the open. 

“Trump is creating giant market fluctuations with his on-again, off-again tariffs. These constant gyrations in policy provide dangerous opportunities for insider trading,” Senator Adam Schiff wrote on X. “Who in the administration knew about Trump’s latest tariff flip flop ahead of time? Did anyone buy or sell  stocks, and profit at the public’s expense? I’m writing to the White House—the public has a right to know.”

“Trump’s Truth Social now basically promotes veiled insider trading on upcoming announcements,” wrote health and economics expert Eric Feigl-Ding. “Trump’s benefactors are gleefully watching.”

The New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin called it two days ago on CNBC. *

“Given what the government’s been doing, and what this administration’s been doing, it would not shock me—and I hate to speculate—if we were to find out that a whole bunch of people who work in Washington as our elected leaders … ultimately sold stocks last week, or potentially worse than that, shorted the market.” 

The Trump administration—after crashing the global stock market and eroding U.S. legitimacy—is attempting to spin this as a win. 

“Many of you in the media clearly missed The Art of the Deal,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

* This article originally misstated Sorkin’s first name.

Donald Trump is once again the laughingstock of the internet after his shocking decision Wednesday to issue a 90-day pause on some of his sweeping tariffs—with the exception of China—after the White House insisted for days that the president had no intention to hit the brakes. 

“Many of you in the media clearly missed The Art of the Deal,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, as she tried to spin Trump’s sudden reversal as part of a long-unfolding plan to either boost domestic manufacturing or something else entirely—actually, it’s become kind of unclear. 

Online people were quick to make what have now become running jokes about Trump’s so-called “art,” and the Trump administration’s mind-boggling insistence that his tariffs are at once a brilliant negotiation tactic and a legitimate policy meant to bolster the U.S. economy. 

“Oh my god she did the meme,” wrote Tahra Jirari, the director of economic analysis at the Chamber of Progress, on X.  

“The Art of the Deal is panicking and reversing course less than 24 hours after tariffs go into effect?” wrote Aaron Reichlin-Melchick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, in a post on X. 

Pod Save America host Jon Favreau also took aim at Trump’s deal-making prowess, writing, on X, “Art of the Deal: 1) Impose massive tariffs on nearly every country that crash the markets and create the conditions for global economic collapse 2) Make zero deals with zero countries 3) Pause tariffs 4) VICTORY!!”

While Trump bragged about the scores of foreign leaders who’d come to kiss the ring, many foreign officials said that they’d received no reply to their requests to make a deal with the Trump administration, according to Politico. 

With Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s hollow claims that Trump’s decision was not a response to the last week’s tumultuous stock market, many struggled to understand Trump’s rationale in power-checking foreign countries. 

Meanwhile, others suggested that Trump, having urged his followers on Truth Social that it was a “great time to buy” earlier Wednesday, was attempting to create a window for his allies to buy low, knowing he was about to rescind his tariffs.

But Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz pointed out that there was likely no method to Trump’s madness at all. 

“OUR PLAN IS WORKING PERFECTLY AND IS JUST A NEGOTIATING TACTIC BUT IT IS ALSO GOING TO BE PERMANENT AND WE WILL BE THE WORLD LEADER IN TEXTILES AND NOW THERE IS A PAUSE AND EVERYONE NEEDS TO CHILL BUT ALSO WE WILL NEVER BACK DOWN AAAAAAHHHHHH,” Schatz wrote in a hilariously candid post on X.

Donald Trump’s reversal on tariffs Wednesday afternoon seems to have caught his administration off guard.

The president announced on Truth Social that tariffs would return to a baseline 10 percent level in most countries, while staggering 125 percent duties would be imposed on China. But his own officials couldn’t explain why. When a reporter asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent if he could, he replied, “No.”

“Again, President Trump created maximum leverage for himself,” Bessent said, adding, “We have just been overwhelmed, overwhelmed by the response mostly from our allies who want to come and negotiate in good faith.”

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt, as usual, took a combative approach, telling reporters, “Many of you in the media clearly missed The Art of the Deal, you clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here.”

It’s obvious at this point that Trump has never had a plan for his tariff scheme, and is making it up as he goes along. Wednesday’s reversal was likely prompted by growing criticism from his own supporters and normally fawning right-wing media and by a government debt sell-off, showing weakening confidence in the American economy. But Trump’s own sycophants aren’t going to admit that the president would ever back off.

As Donald Trump’s tariff plan slams the stock market, investors are beginning to wonder if the president doesn’t have some broader economic agenda—but rather if he’s just mentally ill.

“In the last few days, we have had many conversations with macro fund managers,” wrote Tom Lee, the head of research at the financial analysis firm FSInsights.

“And their concern is that the White House is not acting rationally, but rather on ideology. And some even fear that this may not even be ideology,” Lee continued. “A few have quietly wondered if the President might be insane.”

Lee placed the blame for any economic fallout squarely in Trump’s lap, arguing that Trump’s decisions behind the Resolute Desk lead to a “binary outcome,” though they don’t always make sense.

“Multiple officials have stated they do not want nor expect a recession. And there are enough economy-savvy advisors that they are aware of this. Moreover, the two-to-three percent fiscal stimulus needed to reverse a recession would negate any promised cuts to government spending,” Lee wrote, underscoring that “this is a rational view.

Trump’s reciprocal tariffs and unexpected tariff reversals gave the market whiplash on Wednesday. China and the U.S. volleyed for most of the day, with Trump eventually claiming that he would spike levies on the nation, one of America’s biggest trading partners, to 125 percent after China revealed its own reciprocal tariff rate at 84 percent on U.S. goods.

Then, in the afternoon, the White House announced that it would be instituting a pause on the majority of its tariffs (except on China), lowering the tariffs to a universal baseline rate of 10 percent.

That sent the market into a frenzy, with the S&P 500 spiking by 7 percent in a matter of minutes.

Lee’s assessment—which was published early Wednesday, before the swing—argued that prolonged stock fluctuations would lead to “tightening financial conditions.”

“Thus, the longer this volatility lasts, the greater the risk the US and the world are getting pushed into a needless recession,” he warned.

Other financial experts, including JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Diamond, have similarly assessed that Trump’s plan has pushed the U.S. to the brink of a recession.