Trump Just Revoked Deportation Protections From Thousands of Refugees

President Trump is taking deportation protections away from Syrian immigrants in the midst of a resurgence of militant groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Around 6,000 Syrians are currently living and working in America under Temporary Protected Status. Now they will be forced to return to a country that the United Nations described as “fragile,” and rife with “sectarian tension” just one month ago.

The U.N. reported that Syria still “remained in a volatile and precarious phase” six months after the fall of President Bashar Al Assad in December 2024. “Member States warned of growing risks posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and Al-Qaeda, who continue to view the country as a strategic base for external operations.… The interim Government of the Syrian Arab Republic, led by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), faced multiple security challenges, including asserting control over territory and diverse armed factions/fighters, as well as controlling foreign terrorist fighters, and countering ISIL resurgence.”

This does not sound like a stable, amicable situation to abruptly force Syrians to go back to. These people came here as civil war refugees under President Obama, and now they’re being forced back into a situation that has similarly devolved into factional violence.

Former Citizenship and Immigration policy head Amanda Baran told The New York Times that the Trump administration’s revoking of Syrian TPS while the country deals with an internal power struggle is “gutting for the thousands of Syrians here with T.P.S. and the communities in which they live.”

“Conditions in Syria remain dangerous and unstable, clearly warranting an extension under the law,” she continued. “This administration’s disregard for the expertise of human rights experts is having real, dire consequences on the lives of everyday people as demonstrated by this reckless decision.”

But the Trump administration sees it much differently.

“This is what restoring sanity to America’s immigration system looks like,” said Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for public affairs at Homeland Security. “Conditions in Syria no longer prevent their nationals from returning home. Syria has been a hotbed of terrorism and extremism for nearly two decades, and it is contrary to our national interest to allow Syrians to remain in our country. T.P.S. is meant to be temporary.”

Syrians will have 60 days to gather their lives and leave the country, or face arrest and forced deportation.

The Trump administration has also spitefully moved to revoke the TPS status of people from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Cameroon.

If you donate to President Donald Trump’s vanity construction project, then you, too, could have the privilege of leaving a physical stain on American history: In exchange for contributions, donors may be able to have their names etched into the stone of the new White House ballroom.

The ballroom, which will cost roughly $250 million, will be paid for by private donors and the president himself, Trump has said. White House officials have said that nearly $200 million has already been pledged.

So far, Google, tobacco company R.J. Reynolds, government cybersecurity contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, data analysis and surveillance company Palantir, and weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin have all donated, with Lockheed Martin donating more than $10 million to the project.

Some officials from donor companies say that their decision to contribute was made out of a desire to show support for Trump while still backing a nonpartisan cause, as the ballroom will outlive the president’s term, according to CBS. Of course, their pledge agreements call the project “The Donald J. Trump Ballroom at the White House.” But that could mean anything!

Indeed, donations to the ballroom may well be even more meaningful to the president than these corporations realized, as its development has proven a balm to Trump while he mourns the death of ally Charlie Kirk. In times of trouble, some people look to family; others look to faith. Trump looks to construction.

Is it a scene “right out” of Goodfellas, or is it just another day under the Trump administration?

That’s the question that Texas Senator Ted Cruz is asking, after he likened Brendan Carr to a “mafioso” over the FCC chairman’s recent threats to punish TV networks that refused to expunge Jimmy Kimmel from the air.

“I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said, I am thrilled that he was fired,” Cruz said on his podcast. “But let me tell you: If the government gets in the business of saying, ‘We don’t like what you, the media, have said; we’re going to ban you from the airwaves if you don’t say what we like’—that will end up bad for conservatives.”

The Texas Republican further condemned Carr’s actions as “dangerous as hell,” comparing the Trump administration’s slippery attraction to government-enforced censorship to the heinous power of the One Ring from Lord of the Rings. Opening the door to that at the federal level would not bode well when Democrats return to power, Cruz said.

“They will silence us,” Cruz continued. “They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly.”

But unlike some other conservatives who have chastised the Trump administration’s flagrant First Amendment overstep, Cruz actually wields a unique ability to hold Carr accountable: In addition to his other responsibilities, Cruz serves as the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, which has oversight authority over the FCC.

At a Politico event earlier this week—before the Kimmel fiasco—Cruz said that the First Amendment “absolutely protects hate speech,” even if it does not shield people from the “consequences” of their speech by their employers.

Kimmel’s late-night show was suspended indefinitely after he made supposedly controversial comments during his Monday night monologue about the political affiliation of Charlie Kirk’s suspected assassin. (Kimmel condemned Kirk’s death as a “senseless murder” but ruffled powerful feathers when he said that MAGA was rushing to claim that Tyler Robinson was “anything other than one of them”—which is technically true.)

On Wednesday, Carr suggested to YouTuber Benny Johnson that the FCC would open an investigation into anyone still platforming the comedian. Sinclair and Nexstar—two of the country’s biggest broadcasters—said they would no longer air Kimmel’s show. The timing was unmistakable: Nexstar, notably, 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.

President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social Friday boasting that China had approved a deal that would allow TikTok to keep operating in the United States under new ownership—but Chinese President Xi Jinping seems to think otherwise.

After the presidents spoke over the phone, Trump posted that they had “made progress on many very important issues,” including “the approval of the TikTok Deal.”

But the first official readout of the call, from an agency in Beijing, made no mention of the deal, according to Politico.

Instead, Xi reiterated China’s long-standing position that negotiations over the app will continue.

“China’s position on the TikTok issue is clear,” the readout said. “The Chinese government respects the wishes of companies and welcomes them to conduct commercial negotiations based on market rules and reach solutions that comply with Chinese laws.… China hopes that the U.S. will provide an open, fair, and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese companies to invest in the U.S.”

TikTok’s future in the U.S. has been up in the air for months. Trump has repeatedly pushed back enforcement of a law that requires the platform to either be controlled by a U.S. company or banned. The most recent postponement was Tuesday, when Trump delayed the deadline again until mid-December.

Lawmakers purportedly passed the ban to address national security concerns, and to prevent China from collecting Americans’ data. But ever since the 2024 election, Trump’s become partial to the platform—not for its viral dances or indecipherable Gen Alpha memes, but because he thinks it helped get him elected.

Liberal-left nonprofits are, understandably, on edge as the Trump administration appears poised to treat the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk as a pretext for cracking down on liberal and progressive organizations.

In the immediate wake of the shooting, President Trump baselessly pinned the violence on the “radical left,” vowing to hunt down organizations that he claims “support” violence or “go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.” Earlier this week, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller similarly promised to pursue “an organized strategy to go after left-leaning organizations” that supposedly promote violence.

Attorney and commentator Norm Eisen—who runs one such group, Democracy Defenders Action—has circulated a draft open letter, titled “An Open Letter Opposing Threats by the Administration Against Nonprofits & Charities,” among allies, reported Gabe Kaminsky, of the conservative digital publication The Free Press, on Friday.

The statement, which begins by condemning Kirk’s murder, goes on to say:

It is un-American and wrong to use this act of violence as a pretext for weaponizing the government to threaten nonprofit and charitable organizations, other perceived adversaries, or any class of people. They did not commit this murder, and the vast powers of the government should not be abused to threaten their constitutionally-protected free speech and other rights.

Attacks on nonprofits threaten to impede “essential work,” the draft letter continues, including “working with faith communities, caring for vulnerable populations, upholding the Constitution, [and] defending the rule of law.” Urging the government to de-escalate, it concludes: “This moment of tragedy does not call for exploiting a horrific act to further deepen our divides and make us less safe. It calls for unity—unity against violence and unity of purpose as Americans.”