Kristi Noem Gets Brutal Fact-Check on Deporting U.S. Citizens

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was brutally called out Tuesday after she claimed the United States was not deporting its own citizens.

During a hearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, Representative Lauren Underwood of Illinois asked Noem if she believed that the U.S. government had the authority to deport American citizens.

“No, and we are not deporting U.S. citizens,” Noem said.

“OK great, I’m so happy to hear that you do not believe that the law gives you that authority, because the federal government has no authority under U.S. laws to deport any American citizen,” Underwood said. “And as I know everyone viewing this hearing today knows that several American citizens have been deported to date.”

“No, they haven’t. That is not true,” Noem replied.

“Secretary Noem, that was not a question,” Underwood said.

Last month, the Trump administration deported three American children to Honduras, alongside their immigrant mothers. Attorneys for the mothers have said that they wanted their children to remain in the U.S., but authorities have said the opposite. Border czar Tom Homan insisted that the children hadn’t technically been deported, and that the mothers had made a “parental decision” to remain with their children.

“If we didn’t do it the story today would be, ‘Trump administration separating families again,’” Homan said. “No, we’re keeping families together.”

While the official number of deportees who are actually American citizens is unknown, The Washington Post documented at least 12 instances in which U.S. citizens had been swept up in Trump’s immigration crackdown. A DHS spokesperson told the outlet, “We don’t have data to provide you on the deportation of U.S. citizens because we don’t deport U.S. citizens.”

Crucially, as the Trump administration continues to conduct deportations while denying due process to detainees, it’s likely the number of U.S. citizens wrongly removed will only continue to rise.

Underwood also asked Noem if she believed that the Constitution guaranteed due process to everyone in America. Noem repeatedly refused to give a “yes” or “no” answer.

“Ma’m, I am trying to ascertain your understanding of the law as it applies to your department, and you as its leader should be able to give us a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, because judge after judge has ruled that the law is not being followed,” Underwood said.

The Trump administration has continued to fight judges, flouting a Supreme Court ruling requiring the government to allow detainees “to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.” As a result of Donald Trump’s mounting threats against the judiciary, at least 11 federal judges and their families have been threatened and harassed since they ruled against Trump on issues of deportations, federal funding, and his war on “wokeness.”

Trump has instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to look into the legality of deporting prisoners who are U.S. citizens to foreign prisons, as he did with 238 Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador in March. He even said he’d help fund the construction of new prisons overseas. Even though Trump’s scheme to outsource the incarceration of American prisoners has absolutely no basis in U.S. law, Bondi refused to give answers about the (il)legality of the idea.

The Supreme Court is allowing Trump to temporarily move forward with his ban on transgender people serving in the military. The court’s three liberal Justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—all dissented, according to the brief order.

Trump’s ban “generally disqualifies from military service individuals who have gender dysphoria or have undergone medical interventions for gender dysphoria,” according to Solicitor General D. John Sauer.

Trans people are a hindrance to “military effectiveness and lethality,” Sauer wrote in a filing to the high court’s justices.

Litigation over the constitutionality of the ban is still ongoing. A Bush-appointed judge in a lower court blocked Trump’s executive order banning transgender troops in the military, which he signed on his first day in office.

Judge Benjamin Settle in Washington issued a nationwide injunction in March, ruling there’s “no claim and no evidence that [plaintiff] is now, or ever was, a detriment to her unit’s cohesion, or to the military’s lethality or readiness, or that she is mentally or physically unable to continue her service.”

Trump’s ban—and the claims that trans people are worse at operating lethal machinery simply because they are trans—is nonsensical. This is purely a culture-war item, a bone to throw at a base that’s been obsessed with transgender people for years now.

This story has been updated.

Senator Thom Tillis is likely just tanked Trump’s nominee for U.S. Attorney to the District of Columbia.

Tillis is opposing Trump’s pick, Ed Martin—who has been described as a “far-right election denier” and a “conspiracy theorist”—on the grounds of his legal and political support for January 6 insurrectionists.

“Mr. Martin did a good job of explaining the one area that I think he’s probably right, that there were some people that were over-prosecuted, but there were some [200 to 300 of them] that should have never gotten a pardon,” Tillis told reporters Tuesday, adding that he met Martin the night before.

“If Mr. Martin were being put forth as a U.S. attorney for any district except the district where January 6 happened, the protest happened, I’d probably support him, but not in this district.… Whether it’s 30 days or three years is debatable, but I have no tolerance for anybody who entered the building on January 6.”

Martin did his part to spread misinformation to help Trump on January 6, writing on X: “I’m at the Capitol right now. Abd [sic] I was at the POTUS speech earlier. Rowdy crowd but nothing out of hand. Ignore the #FakeNews.” Now this is coming back to bite him.

Tillis’s lone “no” vote among Republicans is likely enough to cause Martin’s nomination to die in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The U.S. attorney to D.C. serves as both the legal representative of the federal government and the local district attorney.

At least one thing has Republicans in D.C. on edge: Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s quest for power.

Now that Governor Brian Kemp is officially out of the race, the fervent MAGA acolyte is rumored to be one of a dozen conservatives considering a run for a Georgia Senate seat. 

But moving Greene to the upper chamber isn’t the concern—instead, Republicans worry that her conspiratorial, shock-and-awe style isn’t enough to win over Georgia voters beyond her district, believing that a Greene run could “alienate independent voters and disillusioned Republicans,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Tuesday.

In a hypothetical matchup conducted by the paper, Senator Jon Ossoff led Greene by double digits, crushing her with a 17-point lead. That’s in large part thanks to Greene’s lack of popularity with independents in the state,  according to AJC. Just 25 percent of independents in the mock poll backed a Greene Senate bid—a significant drop from Kemp’s 46 percent favorability with the same bloc.

Conservatives had flagged Kemp as the party’s best bet to snag what is believed to be the Democrats’ most vulnerable Senate seat. Instead, his exit announcement has given Ossoff—and the Democratic Party—a remarkable lift.

“It’s possible that Greene could win a Republican primary,” Republican consultant Mark Rountree told AJC. “But it’s unlikely she could win a general election, and conservatives would once again have blown an opportunity to defeat Democrats in Georgia.”

If the Jewish space lasers conspiracy theorist does decide to run, her platform would likely be nearly identical to Donald Trump’s. On Monday, Greene lamented that conservatives in both chambers weren’t completely on board with Trump’s plan, and that party members should simply “stick with the agenda” and “ignore the people” trying to do something different.

But nothing is set in stone right now.

“The polling shows that I can win the governor’s primary or the Senate primary or continue to represent my district,” Greene said to NewsNation Monday about a prospective bid. “That’s a choice that I can make. And I’ll give it some thought.”

President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday that the U.S. doesn’t “have to sign” any trade deals, inadvertently admitting that his administration hasn’t made any progress during the 90-day pause on his disastrous tariffs.

During a tense meeting to discuss tariffs with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, the president attempted to move the goal posts on actually completing any agreements with foreign countries.

“Everyone says, ‘When, when, when, are you going to sign deals?’ We don’t have to sign deals!” Trump said.

“We don’t have to sign deals. They have to sign deals with us. They want a piece of our market, we don’t want a piece of their market. We don’t care about their market. They want a piece of our market,” Trump rambled.

The president’s unwieldy statements downplaying the importance of the trade deals seemed to be cushioning the likelihood that negotiations would ultimately fail. Trump’s remarks also revealed that his administration has yet to complete a single trade deal.

Last month, Trump claimed to have already struck 200 trade agreements with foreign countries, a remark so outlandish it sent members of his administration scrambling to make it make sense. (There are also only 195 countries in the world.)

Instead of pledging to sign deals, Trump presented his own plan Tuesday. The president claimed that “at some point over the next two weeks,” he intended to sit down with members of his Cabinet and offer individualized deals to each country seeking tariff relief.

“We’re gonna say, ‘Here’s what this country—what we want, and congratulations we have a deal!’ And they’ll either say ‘Great,’ and they’ll start shopping, or they’ll say, ‘Not good, we’re not gonna do it,’” Trump said.

Trump claimed that the offers would include “very fair numbers,” but that they might also include other requests. He also said that his administration would be open to adjusting the deals based on how the countries responded.

“And then you people will say, ‘Oh it’s so chaotic,’ no, we’re flexible,” Trump said, referring to the press.

In any case, Trump continued to emphasize that his goal wasn’t actually to make deals, just to put out offers. “In some cases we’ll sign some deals, it’s much less important than what I’m talking about,” he said. He warned that in one day, he could present 100 offers, but “they don’t have to sign.”

Still, Trump said he wanted countries to “pay for the privilege of being able to shop in the United States of America.”