Trump Torched by Judge He Appointed for Secretly Deporting Children

A Trump-appointed federal judge on Thursday shredded the administration’s flimsy excuse for trying to secretly deport children over Labor Day weekend. 

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly wrote that the government’s claim that it had yanked children out of their beds to hastily reunite them with their parents in Guatemala had “crumbled like a house of cards.”

“There is no evidence before the Court that the parents of these children sought their return,” Kelly wrote in a 43-page filing. “To the contrary, the Guatemalan Attorney General reports that officials could not even track down parents for most of the children whom Defendants found eligible for their ‘reunification’ plan. And none of those that were located had asked for their children to come back to Guatemala.”

The judge excoriated the Trump administration’s defense for the children’s expedited removal, saying the government had “come up short on both the law and facts,” and “misstate[d] the legal standard” in trying to undermine the commonality requirement for a class-action lawsuit. 

“In any event, the record here is barren of evidence that any child in the proposed class wants to return to Guatemala, even if their parents can be found. All the evidence suggests the opposite: Plaintiffs have offered over 30 declarations from Guatemalan children who object to being sent back,” Kelly wrote. 

Earlier this month, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller claimed that a judge who’d initially blocked the children’s deportation was “effectively kidnapping these migrant children and refusing to let them return home to their parents in their home country.”

Kelly also slammed the Trump administration’s claim that it would not deport children deemed ineligible for removal, “given the possibility that Defendants may alter their criteria and then act in a way that would prevent judicial review, the risk of irremediable harm.”

“They cite no statute, regulation, or even policy statement requiring them. That means there is no legal roadblock preventing Defendants from changing the criteria (or how they interpret them) tomorrow, placing a currently non-eligible child onto the eligibility list, and hustling that child out of the country as they tried to do over Labor Day weekend,” Kelly wrote.  

He added that the government’s conduct plainly suggested the administration was “not applying their criteria accurately, consistently, or in ways that reflect good faith,” because it had attempted to rush the children out in the middle of the night on a holiday weekend, leaving little opportunity for legal intervention.

America’s allies have resorted to practically begging Donald Trump to be harder on Russia.

During a joint press conference Thursday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer pushed back against the U.S. president’s interpretation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, making plain how a strengthened American resolve could nip Russia’s recent incursions.

Trump first complained that Russian President Vladimir Putin “has let me down.”

“I mean he’s killing many people and he’s losing more people than he’s killing,” Trump said. “Frankly, Russian soldiers are being killed at a higher rate than the Ukrainian soldiers.

“But yeah, he’s let me down. It’s death. You know, it doesn’t affect the United States, we have—other than unless you end up in a world war over this thing, you could—this was a thing that would have never happened had I been president. And it didn’t happen for four years, most people agree, it didn’t happen. Nor was it close to happening,” Trump continued.

“I spoke to President Putin about Ukraine, it was the apple of his eye. I’ve said that many times, but he would have never done what he did, except that he didn’t respect the leadership of the United States,” Trump said.

“He, look—it doesn’t so much affect you, though you are a lot closer to the scene than we are,” Trump said, turning toward Starmer.

But Starmer couldn’t let the situation slip, instead spelling out—inches away from Trump—exactly why American opposition to Russia is so critical.

“We have to put extra pressure on Putin,” Starmer said, not facing the U.S. president. “It’s only when the president has put pressure on Putin that he’s actually shown any inclination to move.”

Starmer emphasized that Russia has only grown more bold in its invasion of Ukraine, referring to an incident in August when the Kyiv building hosting the British Council’s office was badly damaged by Russian bombs.

Trump has little to show for the profound international recognition he’s offered the Kremlin over the last few months. Against the advice of world leaders, Trump invited Putin to Alaska in August—tasking U.S. soldiers to literally roll out the red carpet for the Russian dictator. It was the first time that Putin had stepped foot on U.S. soil in more than a decade.

Still, Russia has not agreed to peace terms in its ongoing war against Ukraine. The superpower has instead insisted on receiving “international legal recognition” of its 2014 annexation of Crimea, an internationally recognized portion of Ukraine, along with four regions it has claimed in the three years since it first invaded Ukraine.

And Trump has continued to play it soft with the Kremlin. The U.S. leader offered a remarkably blasé comment regarding the breach of Russian drones into Polish airspace earlier this month, writing on Truth Social: “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!” Trump further suggested that the attack—which forced the Eastern European nation to shut down four of its airports as it scrambled to fire up its defense systems—“could have been a mistake.”

Russia took note of the absent pushback. Rather than de-escalate the situation, Russia decided to stoke more fear, tossing threats at Finland if it dared to oppose their power.

The censorship of Jimmy Kimmel was evidently a sacrifice at the altar of corporate interests.

ABC’s Wednesday decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel Live! came after decisions to pull the show from Nexstar Media Group and then Sinclair Broadcast Group, which own many ABC affiliate stations across the country. Earlier Wednesday, President Donald Trump’s censorial Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr had threatened broadcasters for platforming Kimmel, due to the host’s recent monologue about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. 

While Kimmel’s jokes focused on Trump’s and MAGA’s response to the killing, rather than the violence itself, Carr called it the “sickest conduct possible.” Nexstar and Sinclair followed suit, explaining their decision as a response to the purportedly “insensitive” and “problematic” comments. (Going beyond yanking the show, Sinclair also demanded that Kimmel apologize and donate to Kirk’s family and organization, and committed to broadcasting an hour-long tribute to Kirk during the show’s time slot.)

It is no coincidence that Nexstar is seeking to merge with another major media company, Tegna—a decision that requires not only FCC approval but also a change in regulations that limit companies’ reach. According to Poynter, the merger would expand Nexstar’s reach to 80 percent of TV households in the country, whereas the FCC currently has a 39 percent cap.  And Sinclair has pending business before the administration too—according to CNN media analyst Brian Stelter—and also proposed merging with Tegna, as The Wall Street Journal reported, following the announcement of Nexstar’s deal.

“So we know that two major TV station owners, both of which need to curry favor with the Trump administration, were the ones that most loudly and vocally condemned Kimmel and said they were going to not air the show tonight and in the coming nights,” Stelter said on Wednesday evening. “It’s an Occam’s razor situation. It’s exactly what it looks like.”

Fox News host Sean Hannity claimed that he couldn’t find a “single prominent conservative voice” pushing to knock Jimmy Kimmel off the air—but in July, President Donald Trump suggested that Kimmel would be “next” to be canceled.

“The left already—starting with humpty-dumpty CNN, Pritzker, Newsom—predictably claiming, ‘This is a conservative censorship. The MAGA crowd, Donald Trump got Jimmy Kimmel.’ That is false,” Hannity whined Wednesday night. “I can’t find a single prominent conservative voice in the country that even remotely wanted or hoped or was pushing to get Jimmy Kimmel taken off the air.”

But in July, after CBS announced that The Late Show With Stephen Colbert would be canceled, Trump celebrated the win against a vocal critic by listing who else he’d like to see taken off the air.

“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings,” Trump wrote on Truth Social at the time. “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert! Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them combined, including the Moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show.”

It appears that Hannity is playing defense for the blatant act of political overreach from the Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, who publicly pressured Nexstar Media Group, the broadcast company that owns ABC, to punish Kimmel for his speech. Nexstar is currently seeking FCC approval for a $6.2 billion deal to buy Tegna, an acquisition that would make Nexstar the biggest owner of local stations in the country.

During his show Monday, Kimmel said that MAGA had spent the weekend “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.” In fact, Republicans started doing that the same day Kirk was shot, casting blame on the left and the transgender community before the shooter was even identified.

Kimmel’s remark about MAGA comments wasn’t even a matter of opinion, it was a well-documented fact.

Despite Representative Nancy Mace’s best efforts, her Democratic colleague Ilhan Omar will get to speak her mind another day.

Four Republicans joined the Democratic caucus Wednesday night to quash Mace’s measure, sending the South Carolinian into a tizzy over the foiled plan and the diminished support inside her own party. Those conservatives were Representatives Mike Flood, Tom McClintock, Jeff Hurd, and Cory Mills, all of whom Mace put on full blast after the vote.

“They voted to shield a woman who mocked the cold-blooded assassination of Charlie Kirk … a woman who belittled his grieving family,” Mace posted in the wake of the failed vote. “They showed us exactly who they are. Never forget it.”

Over the last week, Mace has advocated for stripping Omar of her committee assignments and censuring her, and has publicly suggested that Omar should be deported back to Somalia for having allegedly “smeared Charlie Kirk and implied he was to blame for his own murder” during an interview with Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan.

Disjointed clips from that interview were similarly picked up and recirculated by far-right personalities, who claimed that Omar had said Kirk deserved to die. But that wasn’t accurate.

“No one said he deserved to die. Ilhan Omar said the exact opposite to me,” Hasan wrote on X. “She condemned his killing. And she said her heart goes out to Kirk’s widow.”

Omar also pushed back against Mace, arguing that she never made the comments that Mace was attempting to silence her for.

“Her [resolution] does not contain a single quote from me because she couldn’t find any,” Omar said. “Unlike her, I have routinely condemned political violence, no matter the political ideology. This is all an attempt to push a false story so she can fundraise and boost her run for Governor.”